The Kids

   "You. Grab your belongings and follow me." The guard said pointing at me. I stood up from the bench and made my way to the gate. The guard unlocked the gate with a huge metal key and opened it. I stepped out and stood next to her.

   While being locked up for six months, I learned the first cardinal rule of prison: DO NOT STAND BEHIND A GUARD. ALWAYS WALK IN FRONT OF, OR BESIDE THEM. I stood beside her and waited for her to lock the gate back up.

   "Come." She said and motioned for me to start walking. She followed me. We walked into a low-ceiling hall way that held cells on each side. The floor was concrete and the walls were cinder blocks. Everything in there was painted white. The flickering lights above made me feel like I was walking through a dungeon. I peeked inside the cell doors of each cell. Sometimes, there was a person inside the cell and they'd stand at the door as I passed by. They watched me with curious eyes. After I passed by, they shuffled back to their bunk.

   "Stop." The guard spoke.  She came up beside me and unhooked the ring of heavy metal keys from her belt. She looked through a few before coming to the right one. She unlocked the cell door and opened it up. She had to pull it a few times before it opened up, creaking. I stepped inside and waited for her to close the door behind me.

   I looked around the cell as she walked away. It was a 2-person cell. There was a top and bottom bunk screwed onto to the wall to my left. I looked at the slip of paper that was given to me while I was waiting inside the cage. B17-Top, it read. Great, I was on the top bunk. My cell was empty. So, why the top bunk? I rolled my eyes. Sigh.

   To my right was a stainless steel toilet. Well, thank God it wasn't winter. I'd freeze. Right next to the toilet was a metal desk and a counter that also served as a "chair" for the desk. I placed my sack on the counter and sat down. I was so tired from waking up at 4 in the morning and taking a long bus ride to this unit. I hoped this was my last stop. All I had was my small belongings inside the sack and the white uniform I wore.

   I heard the rattle of keys approach my cell. The guard stopped at my door and fumbled with the keys. She unlocked my door again and stepped aside to allow the inmate behind her to give me a bed roll and a gown. I grabbed the bed roll from her and placed it on the bottom bunk.

  As the guard was locking the door she said to me, "Chow will be in an hour. What do you want, pork noodle casserole or option?" In these six months, I also learned that option was always the safer choice for most prison food. Option was 4 slices of bread with a wad of peanut butter and a wad of grape jelly.

   "Option." I said. She nodded and walked away. Since I was in transit, waiting to be housed, I couldn't leave my cell. I was going before the classification boards the next day to be housed. In the meantime, I had to stay in my cell which meant that my food was to be brought to me. Well, time to unroll the bedroll.

   It was a blanket with two white sheets, a pair of ugly gray sock and a very small towel. The towel only covered my head. While I waited for night to fall, I heard the conversations between the other inmates down the hall. Some would scream across at each other. One inmate called out my cell number, "Hey, 17, what are you in here for? What you do?" I didn't respond.

   I had heard stories of this place. Back in the early 1900's, it used to be a boys unit. It was home to troubled boys and orphaned boys. They told me stories about balls rolling down the halls at night. Others said they could hear little boys talking. Yeah, I believed in that stuff but I was so tired, I didn't really care. I made my bed on the top bunk and rested. I drifted off until the guard came with that same inmate to deliver my tray.

   She opened the tray door to my cell and inserted my tray. Then she gave me my cup through the space in between the bars. "Thanks" I said. Then they went off to the next cell. I ate and placed my tray back in the tray slot to be picked up. I climbed back into my bunk and went into a fitful sleep. Between the other inmates talking to each other and the constant rattling of keys, I came in and out of sleep.

   Finally, night fell and we had to get up to present our ID's for the nightly count before we could all sleep. The halls got quiet. I could sleep now. I was so tired. I pulled the blanket over me and faced the wall.

   It must've been the middle of the night when I awoke. But, I was awake in my dream. It was like my body was still asleep but somehow, I could still see everything around me. I looked up at the ceiling and all I saw was heavy darkness. It was weird because the dim light from the hallway shone inside the cell. However, it was pitch black. I turned over and looked down at the ground. What I saw really scared me.

   In the middle of the floor was a little girl and a little boy. They were sitting on the ground with their legs folded. They had a piece of chalk in their hands. But, the scariest part of it all was the pentagram they had drawn on the ground. They were sitting on top of it. They didn't look happy or sad. They looked like they were concentrating on what they were doing.

   I swallowed hard and tried waking up. I couldn't really move. They weren't talking. But I could still feel them there. Finally, I jerked awake and the dim light was shinning back into my room. I could see everything in the shadows. The heavy darkness was gone. The kids were gone. The pentagram was gone. I fell back on the bed and took a deep breath. Was it a dream? It didn't feel like it. 'Till this day, I'm not sure if it was. Maybe it was a vision? I don't know. But that image of those kids on that pentagram still haunts me. Little did I know that wouldn't be my last experience...

Reviews

[Samuel Dickens]

Excellent. Your writing is concise, detailed, nicely flowing and quite interesting. The details of prison life are stark and frightening, the only similar thing in my own life to relate it to is boot camp. The after worldly switch near the end is chilling and makes the reader want to know more. A small error here--" I swallowed hard an I tried waking up." Also, "lied" is not a tense of "lay". Being stuck between sleep and awake is no fun. (it has happened to me)

[Max Hernz]

This actually really happened to me. Sadly, there is nothing more to tell. Other similar occurrences did happen but for this particular one, that is all I have to tell.
And, thank you for pointing my errors out. I will fix that. It is the first draft that I posted.