You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison

I was jolted awake by a loud, annoying buzz followed by a red light above the metallic double doors flashing repeatedly. Guess we’ve arrived, I thought. I tightened my muscles and forced myself not to move as a huge yawn overcame me. Not like I could move anyways. We were all shackled together; both hands and ankles bound together by multiple chains.

I looked around at the people across from me. There were about twelve of us here, six on both sides of the van. Most of the guys looked like your stereotypical gangbanger, dark hair with even darker eyes, tattoos covering their bodies. At least I’ll somewhat fit in, I thought to myself and raised my hand to rub my scorpion tattoo neatly inked on my neck. The chains pulled at my wrist and I quickly dropped my hand, forgetting about it. I got a few dirty looks and I mouthed ‘sorry’.

These guys were all big in stature, a multitude of races. Black, White, there was even two Asian men who sat next to each other, their hands intertwined. One looked like he was about to shit himself, the other comforting him. I felt bad for him, he couldn’t have been more than twenty. Poor kid.

The older of the two noticed me staring and gave me a dirty look, forcing me to break eye contact and move on.

“We’ve been sitting in here for, like ten minutes. When are they gonna open the doors?” I looked up at the guy next to me. He glanced quickly at me, but didn’t bother to reply. My eyes began to wander again and they landed on a boy with somewhat long brown hair that covered his eyes. His hazel eyes were glued to the floor, his foot tapping rapidly against the floor. The guy to his left, a big black guy with muscles that looked like they could snap him in two pieces in an instant, took his own foot and pinned the boy’s to the floor. The kid looked up and struggled to release his foot from the man’s. God, he was young, too young. What was he doing here? He barely looked twenty!

He gave one final tug and the man moved his foot, sending the kid flying into the older Asian’s side.

“What the hell, man!” He pushed the kid back and turned to continued to comfort his friend.

The doors flung open and several officers dressed in blue suits lined up against them. One of them signaled for us to move, but when none of us stirred he started to bark out orders.

“Up! Get your ass’s moving, inmates.” He shouted; his short, almost Hitler-like mustache twitching as he spoke. His hair was shaven into a buzz cut, a five o-clock shadow on his face. He looked ex-military, almost. One by one we slowly began to stand and make out way down the removable steps they had placed in front of the door.
We slowly made our way through the barbed wired gates, turning the corner to reveal a huge cement building. Bars covered almost every single window that I could see, including the doors, and they didn’t even have windows.

I marched on with the others and we approached a side door, and one by one we all entered a large room with two long benches on both sides, just like in the van. Hitler came from behind us and unlocked the chains that held us together, but left our handcuffs still intact. We each took a seat on the benches as Hitler stood at the door behind him.

“Listen up, inmates, because I will only say this once. You WILL stand up when I call your name. You WILL follow me into the next room, where you WILL strip and shower. You will be cavity searched for any unauthorized items and/or weapons. There will be an orange jumper hanging on a rack, you WILL find your size and put it on. Do I make myself clear.”

I heard murmurs relating to “sure” and “Yes, sir”, but I stayed silent. The less I was seen, the better.

“Two at a time, starting with Ear-o and Way.”

“It’s I-ear-oh” I slowly pronounced. It was a common occurrence, but I’d rather get it out of the way now than later.

“Whatever, Air-o” He said bluntly. He looked up from his clipboard and walked towards me, un-cuffing me. He turned towards the hazel-eyed boy and did the same. We both stood up and looked at each other, and he let out a sigh of relief. I guess he was glad it was me and not some forty year old psychopath. For all he knew, I could still be a psychopath, though. Kid’s got a lot to learn.

We followed him through a short dark hallway that led into a shower room. The showers had tiny doors on them that were just big enough to cover our asses with, but not much else. At least they were separate and not like the gym showers back in high school. I shuddered at the thought. Three off-white sinks lined the wall across the showers, and Hitler stood in front on them, motioning us to begin.

We both stepped into the shower and turned our individual knobs, cold water blasting through the pipes and raining down on the both of us. A quiet yelp came from his side, causing me to chuckle. I was used to cold showers, actually preferred them sometimes over boiling ones, but obviously this was a preference we didn’t share.

“Bit too cold for your liking?” I asked him, taking the clean cloth hanging on the door and lathering some soap on it. At least the bar looked new.

“It doesn’t bother you? It’s f-freezing!” He stuttered.

“Might wanna get used to it then. What’s your name, kid?”

“M-Mikey, fuck that’s cold.” I heard him mutter to himself. “You?”

“Frank. Here’s a tip, Mikey. If you want me to call you that, I will. But if anyone else asks, tell ‘em Michael. The second they here ‘Mikey’, they’re gonna look at you like fresh meat. You already look way too young to be here, don’t give them more of a reason to think your innocent. They’ll tear your ass apart.” I laughed, but tried to stay serious.

“No offense, but I’ll ask my brother what I should and shouldn’t do. Thanks for the advice, though.” He chirped up, and shut off his shower.

Brother? “Your brothers here too?” I shut mine off too, having enough of the cold water.

“Yeah.” He replied, wrapping himself in a towel and stepping out of the stall. “He’s about six years older than me, turned twenty-two last April.” He stated as a matter-of-fact like way. Twenty-two. Six years older?

“Your only sixteen…” I whispered, half to myself, half not so much. My mouth opened slightly in shock.

“I don’t care if you don’t want my advice, but take this one. You tell no one, and I mean no one your real age, got it?” I emphasized and stared at him.

“Oh come on, I’m not that stupid. I may be a kid but I’m not that naïve.”

We both exited the showers with a towel around our waist. Hitler was on his radio, chatting with some other officer, no doubt.

“I need someone to get the newbies settled in, I’ll be there as soon as I get a replacement.” He turned towards us, releasing his radio and clipping it back to his belt. Not a moment later, the door crept open and another officer walked inside, his brown curls all puffy like an afro that covered him like a veil. Hitler turned and began to walk towards him.

“Toro! Perfect timing. Start the newbies cavity search and get them to the dining hall, then continue with the others down in the hull.” He ordered, barely giving him time to register what was going on. Afro just stood there with a confused look on his face.

“Dude, I’m off the clock and heading home. Go find someone else to shove their fingers up their ass’s” He rolled his eyes and started to turn around when Hitler grabbed his shoulder, spinning him back towards us.

“That’s an order, Toro. Tell your cats you’ll be late for dinner. Fight broke out in Block D, they need me there.” He hurried out the door, leaving us three alone.

“God, what a fucking asshole, no pun intended.” He grumbled. “Ok, so. Yeah.. Lets get this over with, I guess. Up against the wall, drop your towels and-” He scratched his head awkwardly. It was obvious he wasn’t used to this, or hadn’t done it before.

“Skip the kid, will ya? I promise he doesn’t have a knife shoved up his ass.” I interrupted, trying to cut Mikey some slack.

“Ok, no. Fuck this, I wanna go home. If you two can promise you don’t have anything hidden… Up there…. Then just go put on the orange uniforms so I can leave.” He started to say something I didn’t catch, I was too busy going through the rack of orange on the opposite wall. I quickly grabbed a medium shirt and pants and started to slide them on. I was hiking the pants up when I noticed a dark red stain on the hem on the pants. I rolled them off and flung them against the wall.

“God, do they even wash these anymore?” I muttered. “Hey, Mikey. Check the clothes before-“ I glanced at him, and cut myself off mid sentence. He was squinting at the tag, trying to read it. He then widened his eyes and moved the shirt further away. He sighed and threw the shirt in my direction.

“Hey, you mind checking what size that is? I can’t read a damn thing.” He looked at me apologetically.

“What, you have glasses or something?”

“Yeah, they took them away when I was first getting booked, that guy with the mustache said they could be used to make a weapon.” He rolled his eyes.

I was really starting to feel sympathetic for the boy, and that’s a new thing for me. I never really thought of anyone but myself growing up. My whole life was lived trying to cover up secrets and lie my way through everything, to further myself and for personal gain. Guess everything does change in prison.

I hung the shirt back on the rack after seeing it was a large. I grabbed a small shirt and pants and handed them to him, and told him to try them on. He softly thanked me and slid on the garments, which happened to be a perfect fit for him. The mediums were slightly baggy on me, but in a good way. And there was no way a small would hold all this fabulousness.

“Hey, Fro-man. Ass-hat took his glasses when he was first getting booked, do you think you can get him a new set, or something?” I looked up at Afro, who was now on the phone with someone. Another officer stood with him. He was also young looking, with blonde hair and bright blue eyes.

“Honey, I gotta go. I’ll be home soon.” He paused. “Yup, ok ok love you too. Bye.

Sorry what was that?” He turned and looked at us again.

“I said Hitler took his glasses during initial booking. You know where he can get another? He’s blind without them.”

“Yeah, are you guys finished?” We both nodded. He whispered something to the blonde and the officer walked back towards the room with the other inmates. Afro beckoned us towards him.

“Follow me. We’ll go to the infirmary, I know Becca’s got some extra pairs of glasses for situations like this. After we get you what you need, I’ll bring you to the Mess Hall for dinner, you guys must be starving.”

Dinner! I looked up at a clock we were passing, it was almost eight. My stomach growled in protest- I didn’t realize how hungry I was. Serves me right for skipping lunch.

“My names Ray, by the way. You’ll find a lot of the guards here to be major douchebags, just ignore them. If you ever have any problems, just come find me, ok?” He threw a soft smile in our direction.

“Great. I’m Frank, and this is Michael.” I nodded in his direction.

“Call me Mikey, please.” He looked up with his big, hazel eyes and smiled. I decided against bitching him out about his name, just this once. I had a feeling we could trust this guy.

Notes

Hey guys! Hazel here! So I've decided to team up with a friend of mine (Sapphir) and start another story, one that I haven't seen on this site in the month in a half I've been creeping on this site. SOO yeah, Why not. And by the way, I was thinking you might be interested in a video I made. For my ASL class, We have to sign a song for our final grade. Soooo guess which one I did? Haha no shock there. If you wanna watch, you can click the link here. Enjoy :3

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Xoxo
-Hazel