Jay 2

Jay 2
The guard stops at my seat, hovering over me without any word. I glance side eyed at him, checking to see what exactly was going on. He takes a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, grabbing a single one from the pack to place it gently between his lips. I hear the familiar click of the lighter, as the smell of comfort greets my nostrils. The guard takes a deep breath in, and calmly breathes out the smoke in my direction.
I look back at the hole, wishing there was a way I could hide inside.
“What you waitin’ for?” He huffs at me, waiting for an answer. I have no idea how to reply, or how to find my voice to answer him back. Should I even answer a white man? What will he do to me? He could get rid of me easily. There are no laws that protect me anymore, as if there ever were any to begin with.
He puts his hands on both sides of my seat, crouching down to be almost at eye level. He takes another puff of his cigarette, blowing more smoke in my face. I close my eyes, trying not to cough in his direction. My hands clasp tight, the ties digging further and further with each adjustment. The only way out of this is in.
A slight chuckle comes from the white mans chest as he blows out more smoke. “It’s good thing you’re goin’ in there,” he voices cracks as he fills himself with more smoke. “Your kind don’t belong out in my world. Too dangerous.”
I feel myself f*****g shaking so hard I could fall out of my seat. But before I can make any visible movement, the guard grabs my shoulders and pulls me up. My knees and ankles feel weak from our long journey, and I stumble forward. With my lack of balance, he pushes me harder, causing me to fall.
“Get the f**k up.” He snarls. He crouches down by me, flicking his ashes on my neck before completely extinguishing his cigarette on my bare skin. I try not to say anything, make a noise in protest, but I scream as my mouth is being dug into the wet dirt of the aisle way.
“You won’t last a f****n’ week in there,” he says casually. “Now get the f**k up!” He screams.
Since my hands are still tied in front of me, I have to find a way to maneuver myself up. I shimmy my shoulders against the ground, trying to use my knees to support both my middle and bottom half. I grunt, trying to find my nonexistent strength.
“Did I not say get up?” The guard screams at the back of my head. He grabs my shirt collar, pulling me up and stretching the fabric in the process. My breath catches as I am half dangling, my arms barely resting on the ground below.
I finally get my balance as the guard aggressively stands me up. I look ahead of me, and the two other guards are standing in the entryway, smoking and holding rifles at their side. What the f**k do they think I am going to do? Run?
The guard pushes me forward, and I stumble but keep my balance this time. I see the two other guards ahead of me, backing out of the bus and waiting on each side of the entryway now, like I am some high security risk.
Making my way down the stairs, I finally get to see the sun in its entirety. It blinds me, covering me with light like a spotlight. I have the urge to put my hand up to cover my face, but I can only put my face to the side and squint instead.
Once my eyes adjust, I take a look at my new home. Ahead, all I can see is sand, sand, tumble weeds, and sand, making the air thick and hard to breathe; my asthma does not approve. The sun blankets over the land like a protective mother, causing a mirage. Maybe if I look hard enough, I will see a light in this dark situation.
“Get goin’ I said!” the guard yells. The barrel of a rifle smashes into my back, and my legs buckle beneath me. I fall to my knees with anguish, wishing that this was only a bad dream and I will shortly awaken in my bed with beads of sweat and shaky limbs. But, after those scary moments of my eyes going around my bedroom, I will realize that it was just a dream and I will go back to living as I always had. Well, that life I had is gone now, and this is what I am left with.

Somehow as I fell, sand was pushed into the air and got into my eyes. They are burning, irritated, and start to water to the point where I am blinded. Out of instinct, I move my hands, trying to get the foreign speck out of my vision, but to my displeasure, my hands are still bound in front of me. All I can do is move my head around to find a part of my arm that can potentially get the sand out and give me some relief. Unfortunately, my arm and eyes nearly meet, with less than an inch difference to some relief.
I start grunting, frantically moving my head around more. I don’t even notice the guard coming up behind me, lifting me up again from the collar of my shirt.
“What’s wrong, you s**t?” He says. But his words are faint and the vision of my surroundings are blurred.
He grabs my arm and pushes me back around to face him, and he makes a sort of clicking noise with his mouth that sounds like he was not satisfied with me.
“If you did as I told you, you would not be in this type of mess.” He says. We stand in silence, mother nature not even making a sound between us. My cheeks are soaked with my tears, and the blurriness is a mixture of his face and the light from the intense sun.
Suddenly, he puts both his hands on either side of my face, and starts to squeeze. I can feel my muscles in my cheeks start to contract. My breathing gets heavy. I breathe in. I breathe out. I breathe in. I breathe out. I breathe in a continuous cycle that gets faster and faster the more he squeezes my face. My eyes squeeze as my breathing picks up speed, causing more tears to fall. God. God hear my prayers. What have I done to deserve this?
His breathing is calm, collected, as if he was concentrating on my face like a hunter holding his finger on a trigger. But, as quick as he was squeezing, his grip loosened, and his thumbs moved up near my eyes wiping the tears away like a lover that was apologetic. He did this a few more times, getting more aggressive with each wipe.
After the fourth wipe of my eye, he stops his thumbs near the edge of my eyes, forcing me to look at him through slits. I try to open my eyes to focus on him, but the more my eyes open, the more blurry this white man becomes.
“Listen,” he says in a whisper. My heavy breathing and his words blend together, making a calming chaos. “If you wanted mercy, then you would have kept to your kind while you lived with the rest of us.” He pauses, putting more pressure to my face. He circles my eyes, almost imitating an intense massage. “If you can’t make it out here, right now, how the f**k do you expect to make it in there?”
I can’t tell if he is mocking me or taking pity on me. All I know if that as much as he is being an a*****e, there is some truth to his words. How the f**k am I, Jay, the one who got beaten up in school because he didn’t have the balls to hit back, going to survive in a land that was created for the criminals of our country? This guard is better off just killing me now and showing me mercy. Who will know if I die? I am considered dead in my old life.
“Now get up.” He releases his grip from my face and pushes me up to my feet. He keeps his hands on my shoulders, walking me forward. I stumble along, coughing from the nervous saliva that has built up in the back of my throat.
As we stumble for about a minute, we stop. I hear some voices around me, not sure if they are mocking, yelling, or just ignoring my existence altogether. It sounds like a muffled version of teenagers talking to one another in a school hallway.
Trying to ignore the rest of the people around me, my eyesight adjusts forward to the big, rusted doors ahead of me. They were overgrown with vines, which also extended to the rusted wall that surrounded the perimeter. If you were to compare the doors to anything you may have seen, I would say they were the poor, rusted out version of those wooden doors that lead into Jurassic Park. But, instead of a fun, adventure seeking world that Jurassic Park promised us, this was a journey that was only similar in the dangerous type of way.
I feel a hand reach into my back pocket, leaving something hard and slightly heavy. I look around, not seeing what was left.
“Nuh-uh.” The white guard whispers in my ear. “Not yet.”
I feel him shift beside me, taking his hands off my shoulders to leave me standing there alone. He walks to my right. I look over at him, seeing his rifle shift to his side. He puts his left hand up, circling his finger and looking up at something that I can’t make out. There’s a loud thud, then a continuous creak, forcing me to jump and look ahead at the doors awakening from their slumber and opening their arms to greet me home.
They open slowly and stop only halfway.
“Good luck.” The white guard whispers in my ear as he hits me hard in the head with his rifle. I welcome the darkness, hoping that it lasts forever.