Seymour Pyle's Prison Release

An elderly inmate had once told Seymour Pyle that the grass isn’t any greener on the other side. Seymour did not believe him. “That’s why they put us in this god forsaken place, punishment,” he had objected. Seymour, however, was soon to be free. He sat on the thin prison mattress under a flickering luminescent bulb, and tried to remember what the outside world was like. Seymour supposed it was something like having the choice of 27 different takeaway shops in the phone book. Yes, that was what freedom was like. The TV was buzzing in the room, stifling the steady drone of silence. A short red-haired inmate banged his fist on the side of the to clear up the fuzziness. News stories that seemed so foreign they could be from another planet. The channels were flicked between early morning talk shows and reality TV. These fragments of stories were merely shadows and echoes of reality. Here, you sit watching a fuzzy metal box until suddenly you realize you’ve spent eight hours watching Chinese dating shows and vacuum cleaner commercials. Days spent just staring at walls. Until one day, you find you’d been there for 20 years. The prison warden clearing his throat cuts through Seymour’s thoughts, “Mr. Pyle, you are due for release”.

Seymour Pyle’s belongings consisted of this: a beige duffel bag, $139 and three cigarettes. He was now a free man. Turning this thought over in his mind ignited a spark of exhilaration, which eventually burned out into indifference. Sitting in a bus, he watched the outside world go by in a blur of neon signs and falling rain. A static hum of nothing reverberated throughout the bus as stone faces were positioned staring out of the windows or hunched over luminescent screens. Seymour stood up and lurched to the...

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...sson, I want to go back”. The police officer stared back at him. “Unfortunately buddy, we can’t arrange that for you”. “Well, what’s a man gotta do to get arrested?” The police officer looked at him again then went into an office. Seymour could hear the voices… “He wants to go to jail” “…quite common really, you’d be surprised how many people want to become incarcerated to escape their overbearing spouse” “yeah, but he just got out.” “Oh yeah, that happens too, jailbirds get out of jail then find they want to go straight back in. Just can’t handle reality, I suppose.” Seymour was getting desperate. He had an idea. Picking up a paperweight from the desk, he lobbed it at the front window. The glass splintered into smithereens before his eyes. Alarms began ringing and lights were flaring, and one thing was constant, one finds that nothing and no one ever truly change.