Personal Story

Personal Story

The awakening light of dawn flickered like a candle through the bars

of my cell. I sighed, a mixture of tiredness, cold and fear. Last

night had been long and I had not slept. That was not unusual these

days. Through the night, like the many before, I had been stumbling

through my thoughts and feelings. Back and fore, like a rocking chair,

trying desperately to make sense of my situation.

A sudden sound, thunderous to my ears, jolted me out of my thoughts.

It was the Guard on his morning rounds. " So how are we today Prisoner

122?" his voice came through the cell door, dripping with sarcasm.

I looked up from my place on that hard damp mattress and tried to

focus. His small pig - like eyes were nearly all I could make out from

the deep woods like gloom of the cell. I knew I should not waste the

little energy that I had, but there was no denying, I had come to hate

this individual intensely.

"I will call again at dusk" he grunted, sliding back the heavy flap. I

was once again alone with my thoughts. Clutching the thin coarse

prison blanket to my body, hoping that it and the daylight hours would

bring me some warmth.

I had lost count of how long I been confined in solitary to this cell.

Days, weeks, months. It did not seem to matter anymore or make any

sense.

The cell was about 2 metres by 2 metres. It was furnished with only

the mattress and a metal bucket for my waste slops. The walls were of

grey stone, scratched with the initials of the previous inmates.

Strangely, when I read these marks, it seemed that there was a

whispering down the years of their existence in this awful place. The

bars on the ...

... middle of paper ...

...alone.

The young man was indeed only two years older than me. He was just out

of Law School and I was one of his first cases but his first where a

long sentence could be handed down, I don't know why he told me. It

did not exactly fill me with confidence. He seemed to have just as

much fear as me. I told him my story, throughout which he spent

nodding his head or writing in his large notebook. The meeting did not

take long. The Lawyer did not want to stay long in the prison but get

back to the clean air of freedom.

The trail was to start tomorrow and would last for one day only. The

Judges, I was told by the Lawyer before he left hastily, are very

harsh in the city, particularly where robbery of money was concerned.

I was again left alone with my thoughts, this time not of the past,

but the future. What future?