Losing Light

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

My hands clench the sheets as I awaken. I don't quite feel right. It's as if I was bonked in the head. A teasing ache grows in my temples. I groan and sit up in a vain effort to regain a non-headache state. The fellow prisoner in the cell across myself is asleep, snoring with an almost obnoxious volume. Curiously, I walk up to the front of my jail cell and look around the hallway. Everyone else is asleep as well. Strange. I woke up before the designated time.

I sigh in frustration. I didn't think getting a damn rest was too much to ask for. My body tries to regain warmth as I curl into a ball with the sheets on. As I try to return to the little bliss I had, my attempt is interrupted. The ache grows, but now with a reasonable cause.

A small chunk of a rock.

Slowly, I dare myself to look up. A minuscule hole from the ceiling produces a tiny spotlight on my forehead.

There was a hole on the bottom of someone's cell. I grew tense at this discovery.

This prison wasn't exactly too technological. I had heard previous to my coming here that there was much controversy in keeping the prison to how it was sixty years before. However, the only thing keeping the prison in its low-technological state was the discipline the officers kept. There were random checks on prisoners, and the guards had strangely patterned schedules and routines to keep watch. The only technology they had here were cameras in every possible angle of the outside of the prison, which showed whoever was keeping watch in the screen room what were the going-ons. There were very few escapees from this prison, and every single one of them ended up being brought back.

Whoever was digging the hole would be in serious trouble if there was another cell check. They let us keep very few possessions, and those had to be evaluated and checked along with our cell. I myself only had a pencil, an eraser, and a small notebook. I'd need a new one soon; it was running out of pages from all the drawings, entries, and short stories I had scrawled down.

"Shit." A low grumble emits from the mouth of the one responsible for the small hole on my ceiling and his floor. It was most definitely a he, I decided. No woman could grumble as low and bear-like as a man.

"Why the hell didya do that for?" I whisper angrily, rubbing my temples. I did not need the guards to do a round of cell-checking and accuse me of trying to escape. As if I'd ever want to.

It has been seven weeks since I have pleaded guilty. I had been convicted of second-degree murder and would be spending eleven years of my life in prison. I was charged as an adult at the age of seventeen. I'd be twenty-eight when I would get out. My brother would be twenty-one, of the legal age to drink. It was a family tradition for the father and son to drink together once the son turned of legal age (or when there wasn't the legal age, it had been when the son was eighteen). Considering my father was dead and gone, I had told my brother I'd drink with him, which he was pleased with. I wouldn't make it in time. My release date would be several months after my brother's birthday. I did not want to stay here longer than I had to, and was trying to keep out of trouble in the vain hope of getting out sooner.

Having not have gotten an answer from the male inmate above me, I sigh in annoyance and lower myself back on my bed. I at least wanted to rest before the day started.

____________

The majority of my jail time was spent in the gym. In the seven weeks after my conviction, I had grown quite fit. I found myself being looked at in fear. No one bothered to mess with me due to my physical appearance, but others looked at me with curiosity. I honestly didn't know why. There were others who did not interact with fellow inmates.