Reasonable Doubt ✔ | Open Novella Contest 2020 | Complete

One - Alex

My back is killing me. The wooden seats, black-boxed wrist and ankle cuffs, and belly band are bad enough. What makes it worse is the tweaker I'm chained to. Fucker keeps twitching and jerking me around. My skin is raw from the pressure, neck and jaw tight.

I refuse to speak or protest. I'm still trying to coax my heart out of my stomach.

The bus comes to a stop inside the sally port. Officers with gray shirts and black pants conduct an inspection of the underside of the vehicle before waving us through. Once stopped, we're escorted out two-by-two along a loading ramp into the bowels of an industrial-sized laundry room.

The arch above our heads looks like something from a post-apocalyptic movie. In faded, engraved letters is the saying "We mend minds".

The metal doors clang shut, blocking the noise of traffic, wind, and birdsong from the outside. Instead, there's the hiss of machinery, the groans of air-locked mechanisms firing, the jingle of keys and cuffs, and garbled voices on radios.

I'm inside the living, breathing monstrosity of Lebanon Correctional Institution.

I'm in prison.

It hits a bag of sand getting slung into my gut. If possible, my heart drops into my ankles, my stomach into my throat. I want to puke.

After the guards unshackle us, they lead us into individual cells for a strip-search. Protocol, a safety measure. Just like being handcuffed for transport.

Orientation consists of a quick and dirty run down of everything we can't do while we're here. No drugs. No smoking. No fighting. No drinking. No fucking.

There's very little mentioned about what we can do. Or where we should go, for that matter. Once issued our hygiene (bar of soap, wash cloth, razor, and towel) and our linens (mattress pad, sheets, blanket, and two changes of clothing and socks) we are paraded down the hallways to our new housing unit.

Of course, there are stops along the way – medical, mental health, the school, and the trade shop – but I can't quite manage to pay attention. I'm too desperate to hold my head high, force my shoulders back.

I don't want to look like fresh meat. I don't want to look like this is my first time in the big leagues.

Despite where I find myself, I'm not stupid. Acting scared gets you victimized. Acting tough gets you put in your place and then victimized. Better to keep my head down, pretend I'm harder than I am.

Only I'm not hard, am I? I'm a kid. I turned eighteen yesterday.

"Williams, Rios," the CO escorting us pauses in front of a cell block. "You're in E-Echo."

Williams, older with gray in his beard, saunters toward the entrance. I follow, mimic his sauntering gait, try and quell the mounting fear.

There's too much saliva in my mouth and my eyelashes feel like they have a pulse.

Everything is loud. The walls and floor are cement and steel. There's nothing soft to muffle the noise. Everyone has to shout to be heard. It's made abundantly clear on the block.

It's a long corridor with stairwells toward the front and back. Two showers are on each range, closest to the stairs and barred shut. A few have inmates in them, peering down at us curiously. There are modular tables with chairs on the lower level, positioned right in front of the CO's desk.

"Hey, man," Williams announces himself to the officer. "Just off the bus."

"Williams," the CO, who's nametag reads M. Burke, guffaws. "You're back."