Dubious Inmates

Doing time can be hard and long.

Billy should never have lost his temper, but now he’s serving some serious time for manslaughter. He’s bunking with a big hulk of a man who goes by King. And he soon learns why.

~~~~~ Excerpt ~~~~~

The door closed with a heavy clang, the weight behind the impact evident by the noise it made. Standing just in front of it, Billy cringed.

“Move it,” the gruff voice of the large guard ordered from his left.

Resisting the urge to make eye contact with the brutal looking man, Billy walked forward along the corridor. The men in line with him did the same in complete silence. As he walked, Billy looked up from the stone floor, studying the surroundings in his peripheral view as he moved, taking in the closed metal doors and the grim-faced guards standing at regular intervals.

Each of the officers looked carved from stone, their emotionless faces tight and still. The few times Billy made eye contact with one of them, his stomach knotted. They were hard men, strong men, real men. Yet they had to be this way; anything less was to invite violence. These guards were outnumbered by prisoners a hundred to one; men who risked their lives each day they came to work. They had to be tough.

What chance did Billy have of surviving? He considered his fate; twenty-five years for manslaughter. Twenty-five years he doubted he’d survive. A flash of anger coursed through his slender frame as he pictured his sister’s Latino boyfriend, the man he had stabbed to death with his father’s combat knife. Yet, as soon as the anger had come, it was gone, replaced by the familiar embrace of regret. Regret he had picked a fight with his sister’s boyfriend in the first place, regret he had been unable to beat the man in a fair fight, regret he had pulled a knife and stabbed him to death.

Now, he was in the big house, sentenced to a quarter of a century behind bars and—at best—would not taste freedom until just after his forty-fifth birthday. Fighting back a sob as the realization of his fate settled, Billy came to a stop when the inmate in front of him did.

The head guard announced, “We are about to enter the main block. There, you will be assigned a cell. You will sleep, live, and shit in your cell until we tell you otherwise… am I understood?”