Blood. 

Blood. 

So much blood. 

I’d never seen so much blood in my life before. It stained the walls in splatters. It flowed across the concrete floor in the direction of the hole in the wall. It was all over my clothes. 

Red. Red. Red. 

The alarms blared. Screaming in the distance. ‘Gunshot!” someone was yelling. 

I started hyperventilating. 

There was a hole in kevin’s body and it was leaking so much fucking blood that his body had to be empty by now. Hey lay in a giant dark pool, his clothes quickly absorbing the blood and becoming drenched. A metallic smell replaced the stench of piss. Rather, it combined with it to form an eye-watering odor that made me gag. I felt bile rising up my throat, and this time, there was nothing I could do to stop it. 

I vomited all over Kevin. Before coming to the island, I’d had Chinese takeaway. Pieces of undigested rice clung to Kevin’s shoes and swam in his blood. 

My legs felt weak. The hyperventilating worsened; my lungs burned. My heart was knocking against my ribcage with bone-breaking force, yet with all the blood pumping in my body, my mind was swimming, dangerously oxygen-deprived. 

I raised my head to see a stunned guard standing in the doorway. “Oh, my fucking God.” 

The guard rummaged around his belt for his holstered gun. He finally pulled it out, nearly dropping it, and pointed it at me. “Hands in the air, motherfucker!”

I fainted.  

****

Two Weeks Later

This can’t be happening. Relax, Julian; you’re just dreaming. Well, it’s more like a nightmare, but you gotta relax. 

The door slammed shut behind me. 

“Ah!” I jumped and looked over my shoulders in alarm, my eyes wide. 

“Keep walkin’, asshole!” The guard escorting me growled, baring his yellow teeth like a wild animal. Hate spewed from his eyes like molten poison. 

I looked around me to see that everyone was eyeing me pretty much the same way. 

They all wanted me dead.

I  killed their buddy. 

In the nightmare. You killed him in the nightmare, the helpful voice in my head quipped in. 

Yeah, right. 

This was as real as the handcuffs digging into his wrists, whether the voice in his had believed it or not. 

A part of me had… well, broken for a lack of a better word following recent chaotic events, starting with killing Kevin. Half of me was deeply delusional, it seemed, choosing to believe that all that had happened to me was a bad dream and not cold, hard reality. Any minute now, I’d wake up and all would be well, or so the voice insisted. 

I probably needed to see a therapist after these past two weeks, but I doubted prison offered the service. They probably wouldn’t even take me to the infirmary once the vindictive guards finished with me. They could do to me whatever they wanted, and no one would lift a finger to stop it. 

The realization nearly crippled me. 

“I said move it!” 

The catwalks groaned beneath my feet as we walked to my cell, passing by prison cell after prison cell on my left. 

“It’s him! Get up, you idiot. Look, it’s him.”

I glanced into a cell as I was passing by to see two inmates gawking at me. 

A feeling of dread slithered down my spine as I realized exactly why they were ‘fascinated’ by me. I was the ‘guard killer’. 

“He killed Kevin? He looks like a wimp!”

“Shut up before he hears you and comes for us!”

In the distance, doors clanged shut and inmates sporadically shouted. I glanced at a sign hanging on one of the walls. Cell Block C. After exploring the outer rooms, I now had the pleasure of exploring the inside of the most notorious prison on the planet as well. The place was a complete tragedy. The building was decades too old and was in desperate need of repairs. Old pipes running through the building’s walls occasionally moaned and roared, as if a beast lay trapped within the walls. Mold ran up half of the cracked walls, and disgusting insects flitted about.

Dread twisted my insides until I thought I’d lose consciousness. 

We finally got to my cell. I quickly glanced at the plaque by the door. Cell #34. 

I was roughly shoved inside, nearly tripping over my boots. 

How long would I have to suffer this indignation? 

Oh, I knew how long. For as long as I lived, be it ten or twenty or fifty years. I’d been handed out a life sentence. 

My shoulders drooped, weighed down by an impossible reality. Only yesterday I’d been dreaming about climbing up my office’s ranks. But today… Today, I was a convicted criminal sentenced to life in The Prison from Hell.  

Swallowing down my mounting anxiety, I turned around and presented my handcuffs to the guard.Now that I was in my designated cell, I needed to process. And to grieve all that I’d lost.

The guard sneered at me before stepping outside of the cell and slamming the door shut. 

“Wait, my handcuf-” He was gone before I could finish. I heard his heavy footfalls receding until they disappeared. He was gone. 

I stared at the cell’s closed door with growing horror. 

“Oh, my God,” I breathed, feeling the oncoming signs of a panic attack. My chest tightened unbearably. 

Breathe, breathe, breathe.

Relax, you know this isn’t real-

You shut up! 

As I focused on getting air into my lungs, I slowly took in my new surroundings. It was a dirty cell. In fact, it was so dirty that it looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in ages, and the toilet was clogged and overflowing with-

Repulsed, I scrunched my nose at the putrid stench. I backed away from the offensive toilet until my back collided against the cell’s door, the bars digging into my back. 

I couldn’t stay here! The condition of this cell was too unsanitary!

I turned around and wrapped my hands around the bars, feeling like I was about to go insane. 

“Let me out of here!” I screamed, my voice echoing in the cellblock. 

In response, the lights inside the cells turned off, leaving only the lights in the catwalks. I was bathed in semi-darkness. In here was the dark and out there was the light, and I was destined to stay in the dark forever. 

“You, shut up man! We’re trying to sleep!” Someone screamed back at me. 

“Hey, you shut up!”

“No, you!”

A screaming match ensued. 

“Hey.”

I gasped and pulled away from the cell door, shocked. 

I hadn’t heard him approach. 

Even though it had been two weeks, I’d recognise those blue eyes anywhere. 

Schneider Cross smiled at me from across the iron bars.