Locked Down

A death row inmate heading towards execution becomes a writer with delusions of being the opposite of what he is in reality.

John Simmons is a Twenty eight year old death row inmate from Florida waiting for his sentence of lethal injection in a week. He is now under twenty three hour lock down for fighting two days with another inmate In the cafeteria. In the cell he's in now he sits at a small desk with a pen and a pile of lined paper. He takes one of the pieces of paper out of the pile and takes the cap off the pen. Before he begins to write he goes over the memories of his trial and what he's been charged with. The first memory he thinks of is when he was seventeen years old and he got sent to a juvenile boot camp for slashing a students face with switchblade knife at the high school he used to go to. Then during those days of his youth he thinks of times when he lived at home just with his father who would always drink alcohol excessively and physically abuse him. John never knew who his mother was only hearing her come up in conservations saying that she committed suicide. When he turned eighteen he chooses to runaway and drift on the streets. He packs his clothes into a book bag and sneaks to get his father's pistol from his wardrobe. Right before he walks out the door he sees his father passed out on the living room floor. He nods his head and walks out the door. When he wanders around in the streets he spends his days mugging people in alley ways at gun point. Then by the end of the day he uses the money to buy food and to rent a motel. Then after two months of doing the same pattern he gets arrested and gets sentenced to three years in prison. During his first time of incarceration since he is still a young man he was taken advantage of by the older inmates. During his first year of sentencing the trauma causes him to have mental and emotional break downs. This lead him to have to be cared for in the psychiatric unit. After serving a year and a half of the three year sentence he was released on parole. When he got out he had no money and no place to go. He returned to the streets but this time he wandered around looking for any kind of job that's hiring. Each time he fills out an application he gets turned down because of the armed robbery felony on his record. The frustrations of not being able to find work causes him to build up more and more anger. He sits on a park bench all day drinking a bottle of whiskey. Then over night he sleeps on the park bench. The next day he walks the streets looking around at different people he passes by. Then as he walks on he sees an open truck parked out back of a bakery shop. Behind the truck he sees a van parked aside with two men suspiciously looking around to see if the area is clear. John walks up to them. They both pull out revolvers and aim at him "Just go about your business Mr."! John scratches his head. "Do you guys need any help"? The two men look at each other in confusion. "Oh and in case if you wondering if I'm a cop". John lifts up his shirt and shows all of his prison tattoos. "I say again, do you guys need any help"? They both put away their revolvers. "Go to that truck over there and help us load those boxes into this van". "All three of them quickly run back and fourth loading the boxes into the van from the truck. A few minutes later they finish up and quickly drive off in the van. A chef from the bakery runs out and sees that the back of the truck is completely empty. After John and the two other men drive off they stop at a street corner in front of a warehouse. John helps them unload the boxes into the warehouse. When their done John gets paid two hundred dollars in cash. Before they leave he asks them "Do you have any other work like this because I could really use the money". From then on John worked with the group of men in merchandise robberies, loan sharking, and occasionally gambling. Since John had become a hardened inmate for the loan sharking they sent John to collect by using intimidation. Each time he would either do it by gun point or by a beating with his fists. With the money that John got he bought himself a car and an apartment. In John's cell he writes all of these memories down. Outside the cell door he hears the warden through the intercom say "Lights Out"! He stops writing and goes to bed. The next he continues to write. This he goes deeper into the past of the trial that got him on death row. By the end of the trial he was convicted with four counts of murder. When he thinks back to how it all started he thinks of when his rackets of robbery and loan sharking came to an end when all of his partners got arrested on other charges. This caused him to go bankrupt and he receives eviction notices to his apartment. From this all of his anger and frustration build up again. He goes out on a drinking binge spending each night in bars. His first murder victim was a bartender who he stabbed after the bar was closed for refusing to give him anymore drinks. The second murder victim was a strangled prostitute found in the trunk of a car at a pier. The third murder victim was a gambler he shot in the head who owed him money from betting on a football game. The fourth victim was a woman he clubbed to death with a pistol from an attempted purse snatch. As John writes this all down he crumbles up the paper ad throws it into the trash barrel. He writes on a new piece of paper referring himself as a man named John Dawson. As he writes on he fantasizes himself as a successful lawyer owning a house in a suburban neighborhood with a wife and a son a daughter. He pictures himself getting up every morning having breakfast with his wife and kids and then heading to the firm carrying his brief case. From then on he pictures all of his murder victims playing an opposite role as something positive in his life. He sees the bartender as a caterer at him and his wife's wedding. He sees the prostitute as his secretary at the firm. He sees the gambler as a family friend who comes over for cook outs. He also sees the woman with the purse a friend of his wife. He even sees the men he did robberies with as fellow lawyers he works with who go golfing and fishing with him. A week goes by and it's the day of John execution. When he is escorted out of his cell by the guards he visions each inmate he walks by as being their own desired fantasies. As John walks in and sees the chair he closes his eyes and pictures a day that would be his last and how he would want it to end. It's of him walking down the street handing out one hundred dollar bills to strangers and donating food to children. The last thing he pictures is his mother alive and his father growing old together watching him and his children in the backyard of his house. The guards sit him down and strap him to the chair. Right before the shot is injected into him he looks on smiling picturing his last day of everyone whose ever been in his life celebrating all of his happiness.

THE END