My footsteps were as heavy as lead and even though the prison was alive with sound, all I could hear were my regulation shoes thudding against the hard stone floor. Mr Briggs the governor trudged me through seemingly endless corridors toward the recreation room with doors being opened before me and then locked behind me. Every second seemed an age and the noises from the inmates were now filling my head. Briggs seemed to be muttering something to me but all I could think about were those voices. Just before we turned the corner Briggs stopped me and reality came flooding back. “Look here” he said. “If I were you I would keep a low profile, don’t go trying to make friends here because no one will want you. Do you here me?” We turned the corner and I saw them. Men of every background, race and stature were in that room but to me they all seemed to merge into one redoubtable being. They were formidable and cruel but yet seemingly light hearted. The final door was opened and I couldn’t move. I just stood there watching them. “Get a move on boy.” I was brought to my senses with a violent dig in the ribs. I lumbered into the room. A bald man looked up from his paper and his face turned from surprise and alarm to disgust and revulsion.
He turned to the man sitting next to him who then stood up and knocked his cup to the floor. I watched it roll across the floor until it came to stop but I couldn’t look up. When I did, his stare hit me like a fist. I found it hard to breathe. Other men were noticing that something was going on and more and more of them were eyeing me with hatred. Silence. The tension was building inside me with dark feelings of self pity and anticipation. I felt like a cornered animal waiting for the first strike but it wouldn’t come. I just wanted something to break the silence. Anything. I was shaking head to foot and I peered round at the men that were brewing with deep hatred. These men were murderers and rapists with evil tendencies but I was scum even to them. I wanted to run but if I did where would I go?
FILTHY PERVERT! The shout had come from a middle aged balding man that was clutching the back a chair so hard that his knuckles had turned white. The other men were taken aback for a second and then the wave of hatred and insults hit me. It knocked the wind out of my lungs. I clamped by arms across my chest to protect my heart from the pain and I shut my eyes but the sight of them would never leave me. They started to close in on me. At first it was just a shove and the odd person spitting on me but then all at once they pounced. I was pushed to the floor and repeatedly hit over the head with tin cups and kicked in the stomach. I’m not a weak man and I have been in a few fights but I couldn’t even defend myself against one of these men. After what seemed like forever whistles were blown and the men were pulled off me. I could feel the blood running down my forehead going down my nose and over my mouth.
The taste of it wouldn’t leave me for days. I was half dragged to the medical room where my wounds were dressed. Briggs was there overlooking the write up of the incident. I thanked him for saving my life. He waited until the medic had left the room and dropped his pen. He strode towards me and bent down right to my ear. His voice was so sharp with hatred that it seemed to cut into my brain. “The reason I had them pulled off you was not because I thought they were going to kill you, I had them pulled off so that they could do the same horrible things every day you’re in here.” I could feel his spittle in my ear. “Death is too good for you and I’m going to see you rot in here for the rest of your pathetic life if it’s the last god damn thing I do.” He straightened up, adjusted his tie and strolled out of the room as if nothing had happened.
My mind was filled with the events off the weeks, days, hours and minutes leading to this point: Arguments raged within myself pain welled up inside me every time I returned to my cell even though it was the only place I was safe, it was also the only place where I was alone with myself and my thoughts. I was innocent. Why wouldn’t anyone believe me? I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t thinking straight and everyone makes mistakes. Whatever I did doesn’t even compare to what I had to go through every day and what I will go through for the rest of my life. Does anybody really deserve this treatment whatever their past? Everyone I love now has disowned me. I can’t talk to anyone or tell them how I feel. My own mother says she would like to see me hanged. I have lost everything. I have nothing. No future, only the past.
Life carried on. People came and went but the attitude of every one of them was the same. The endless cycle where days and weeks seemed to be one long struggle to keep my sanity. Every day I went to the library and kept my head down. Every day I ate the same food alone at the same corner of the room, every night I tried not to listen to what the inmates were shouting and every night I would cry myself to sleep. At the same time every day, the bell would ring and I would return to the same four walls. I would walk down the same corridor and get the same look from the junior officer. I would walk into the room and turn around to hear the familiar sounds. The same sound of the door slamming shut; the same sound of the key in the lock; the same sound of the inspection hatch sliding closed with the same black lettering spelling the name that brought out such deep feelings of hate of everyone in this jail, everyone in this land, the name Ian Huntley. Pity gone.
