It’s about 8:30 in the morning. The place is pretty subdued with a number of people dotted around drinking coffee, munching on bacon and eggs.A rough looking, pale-faced, grey bearded man sits in the corner fiddling with a polystyrene cup.A tattered brown pair of trousers too short for him, a sleeveless waistcoat and a soiled white vest. A grey trilby hat covers his already balding head. A younger man in his early twenties sits opposite him, listening…That first night’s gotta be the worst no doubt about it. Marched in naked as the day you were born, body throbbing from that bastard hosepipe they set on you; and half-blind, skin burning from that delousing shit they throw on you. Yeah, not the best feeling in the world at all.And you don’t dare say anything out of line to the screws, I tell you, they should be the ones in there. Evil pricks, they are. I remember one time when some bastard named Eastwood, just cos he’d had a spat with his missus or something, decided to take it out on me for doing absolutely fuck all. I’ll never forget that beating for as long as I live, I’ve still got the gifts from it to this day.There were loads of cons watching as well. Wouldn’t dare step in though.
Shit-scared of what’d happen to them. To be honest I don’t blame them. I would’ve done exactly the same thing. I didn’t dare grass on Eastwood to the warden either. There’s no point really. Like hell he would’ve believed me anyway and that would have just led to more beatings from the prick himself.I tell you what, though: when you’re first put in your cell and those bars slam home, that’s when you know it’s for real. Your old life gone in the blink of an eye and a long season in the closest thing to hell stretching out in front of you with nothing left, nothing but all the time in the world to think about it. There’s no worse feeling I tell you. Looking back now, I wouldn’t even wish that on my worst enemy.I swear to you that first was the longest night of my life. I sat in the dark, a bundle of nerves trying to hold myself still. I felt like I might scream or shake myself to pieces. Didn’t sleep a wink. Like I could anyway with Bellick, L.J.
and all those other pricks trying to break me. And I tell you now, they almost did. The thoughts that were whirling through my head, even on the first night, thinking of all that time I had stretched out in front of me. I don’t even wanna talk about them but, between you and me, I came so close to doing it. I had it all planned out. Just a good job I lost my nerve at the last second.Everything about that hellhole made me sick. Your cell is small, old and dingy and has a horrible, dull vomit-yellow kind of colour spattered up and down the hard, stone walls. The only other things you get in the cell is the john in the corner, the dirty, disease-ridden bed, a stained sink and a shelf for all your belongings. If you dared to have them out on show. And the window, if you can call it that, was just a pokey hole in the wall, closed off by metal bars as if they think that you’re actually gonna be able to escape from there. I can tell you now, you can’t help but feel claustrophobic in that place. Shit it was, absolutely shit.Oh, and the grub they give you in there. Like scraping the bottom of the barrel it was. I mean it’s not as if they give you enough anyway, but what they do give you is crap.
And then you get some arseholes robbing what food you’ve got, and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s not worth it really, considering what some of them would do to you. Basic rations it was. Just enough to survive on. Almost every day I went hungry in that goddamn place, and you can’t help but think of the food you could be enjoying in the real world. Yep, it all seems so far away when you’re caged up in there, being treated like animals.I tell you what though, the first thing I’d tell anyone that I knew was going in there is get in with a crowd, any crowd, and quickly. Took me a good few weeks and those weeks on me own, fending for myself were hell. When you’re a loner everyone’s out to get you and they pick on you whenever the hell they feel like. Most of the time you wouldn’t dare fight back; too many of the bastards. You just have to put your head down and get on with it and hope they leave you be. I’m not too sure exactly how I got involved with my crowd. It just kind of happened. Most are willing to let almost any new fish in just to boost up the numbers. I tell you what though, there were some tough sons of bitches in our set and when I was with them, most wouldn’t dare terrorise me.To be honest though you never properly make friends in there. You just know that as long as you’ve got their back, they’ve got yours. A kind of protection policy, sort of. But as I said earlier, when the screws get involved and feel like starting something its pretty much every man for themselves.Oh, and the bloody racism in there is unbelievable.
Blacks stay with blacks and whites stick with whites. And you don’t dare mix with the opposite race either. That’s how it goes. I learned that straight away just by looking at the situation in the yard. Bloody good job I did as well or there would have been hell to pay. I would have definitely been on my own for good then. I’m not exaggerating either, it just did not happen in there. It’s like we were two different species. I haven’t even spoken about how we had to go about showering yet. It was a shite experience, it really was. They’re communal, as you’d expect, so there’s loads of showers in one big room. Not the cleanest of showers, mind you. Have all scummy shit up and down the walls and stuff, probably ain’t been cleaned in years, but I tell you now that’s the least of your worries when you’re in there. You’re constantly wary and on edge, looking around you and you get the occasional bastard watching you, eyeing you up; you know what I’m getting at.Most of the time it’s harmless and they’re just trying to intimidate you, but with some of the stuff I’d seen going on I was hardly gonna risk dropping my guard and let the exact same happen to me. Apparently half of them aren’t even like that when they first get put in prison. It’s something that they start doing somewhere along the way. I just thank my lucky stars that I was never put in that kind of situation and if I was I would put up one hell of a fucking fight to get myself out of it. The length of time I was in jail: none of that shit never even crossed my mind. Sick bastards, they really are.
How’d I get put in there? Bloody hell, that’s going back. Erm… I’m trying to remember exactly what happened, it’s all kind of a blur to be honest with you. Right, me and my girl, at the time, were broke, and I mean broke. Flat out. She was bad news by the way. Not the kind of girl you wanna spend the rest of your life and grow old with. It was more of a physical attraction between us. Never gonna last. Just wish I could have seen that at the time. Anyway, I thought to myself that I could just go and rob the local liquor store.No harm done. Just to help us out a bit financially. And let me tell you, she was well up for the idea, I didn’t let her do it with me though. No way. Doubt she would have had the nerve to anyway. First thing I did was acquire myself a gun. Had no intention of using it or that; just for security, you know. Put the shits up them, so to speak. Yeah, so I got my gun and, a Friday night I think it was, I went down there, balaclava on. You know, the works. So I went in there and I was bricking myself, mind you; shaking like a leaf.
They could probably tell from my voice when I first went in there shouting the odds. The dude behind the counter opened his till and was getting the dough out. Everything was going well up until this point. And then. ..then it all went horribly wrong. A man, about middle aged, greying hair, fairly well dressed decides to play the hero. He grabbed onto me trying to wrestle me to the ground. I didn’t know what to do. I.. .I just panicked, I guess. I pulled out the gun, aimed it at his head and pulled the trigger. BANG! I’ll never forget his face for as long as I live. Not a day goes by where I don’t feel regret, and not because I wasted my life in that hellhole or because anybody else thinks I should, but because I look back at myself then, just some stupid kid who did that terrible crime. I wish I could go back now, talk some sense into myself, tell him how things are and how they should have been. But I can’t. He’d still be alive if I could. That immature kid I once was has long gone now and I’m all that’s left and I’ve got to be the one to live with that. Back in the real world now though, everything seems to move a lot faster, nothing seems the same as it once was. People even seem to talk faster, and louder. I tell you one thing though. Prison. I’ll never, ever be going back there.
