By Inmate 220418
Saturday – Day 2
I wake up as the courtesy lights come on, still not fully illuminated my cell but enough that I could get a better look around my cell, not that much has changed. I continued to journal while the guards made their rounds, it was relatively an uneventful morning. While they were doing their morning checks, I heard some commotion outside my block, but wasn’t able to distinguish who was fighting.
Eventually we were rounded up and got in line for breakfast, the same as the day before, lined up against the wall, waiting until your turn to approach the guard, “Sir inmate 220418 requesting permission to cross the red line Sir.” I said to the guard in the doorway leading to the chow hall, and waited for the metal tray containing our meal. French toast, sausage, tater tots, and the same shit coffee as the day before.
I know my phone check is coming up soon, so I’m preparing what I’m going to check, being that I only get a limited time, I’m thinking of what I’d missed from Friday to Saturday morning. Upon being cuffed, I’m taken to the same visitation room to do my phone check. I ended up face-timing a friend of mine and checking in with him, he’s asking how my experience is going. Hearing his talk was a nice break from this experience, given that I’d been locked up for 32 hours at this point.
I wrap up my call and notify the guard that I’m finished with my check. This guard nicknamed ‘Ned Flanders’ for his thick mustache and contracting personality, he’s the type of guard who in an actual jail you’d fear due to his temper. Takes me out of the visitation cell, I get the bright idea to perform a fake out, I take a step out and he immediately jumps. “Ooh made you flinch” he takes that as a challenge and I’m forced up against a wall, I’m cuffed and shackled due to the little outburst. His cuffs dig into my wrist knowing that he was not afraid to get extra rough with me.
I’m taken back to my cell and uncuffed, and given some free time. The other inmates and I decided to have some nice quality time together, we talked about life outside and what we do for work. Alex to my right is a retired consultant, and Nick to my left works in DC. It’s these brief moments that make me realize how much I don’t actually need a phone in real life. Towards the end of our conversation, me and Nick were ordered to line up as it was time for our shower.
We’re led back down the hallway, through the chow hall, and back to the intake room where we are to have our guard inspected shower. I go first and hand my badge to officer ‘Loud Mouth’ as we’ve nicknamed him, he tells me to strip down and throw all of my old uniform in the bin to my right, a giant bin full of old uniforms filled the bucket. “Stand back on the yellow foot fronts inmate” said by loud mouth, “show me your hands” and we proceed to go through a full inspection.
Loud Mouth leaves no room for errors during his inspection, he checks my hair, my armpits, my ears, the inside of my mouth, and yes, even makes me squat and cough. I’m then ushered into the shower where I’m told I get one button press, as I’m covering the nozzle with my hand to avoid the cold water, I can hear Nick also getting the same stripsearch treatment. The water warms back up quickly and I’m speed running this shower, trying to clean myself with the same low scented shampoo given to me at intake. I wrap up my shower while another guard watches me in the background, and as the water stops, I grab my towel hanging on the hook just outside the shower.
Upon exiting, I can see the other guard nicknamed ‘Spam.’ A short bearded guard, couldn’t be more than 25 years old, “what size uniform inmate?” “Medium” I revert back to him, “you get XL” and hands me a uniform that while not my size, is not the worst thing I’ve worn. The bright orange jump suit is accompanied by bright orange socks, a white undershirt, and another brown pair of boxers. “That’s so we don’t have to see if you shit yourself inmate” said by loud mouth. After Nick is done showering, we head back down to our block.
After returning feeling much cleaner, Alex, one of the block mates, decides to be funny and flick water on me after watching his hands. I took that as a challenge and immediately started wrestling him. We only fight for a minute, as he lands on the metal table and I hold myself up pretty well. Once we dissolved the fight ourselves, immediately multiple guards came into the block and ordered us up against the wall. Both the inmate that started the fight and the block mate that had nothing to do with the fight are locked in their cell. Where I’m taken to one of the bars inside the cell, chained by my foot to the wall and hinged cuffed behind my back by none other than Flanders.
We’re all locked down while we contemplate and organize our stories, moments later, a guard returns and hands all three of us an index card. “F22 complaint card, please print legibly inside the box below.” A smirk came from the guard who handed it to me, as if they’d consider my complaint. I’m standing there contemplating how I’m actually going to write my complaint with my hands cuffed behind my back. We on the block continue to argue how we’re going to handle the situation when the guards get back to undo us. We acknowledge that the real troublemakers are the guards themselves.
After some time, several guards come into the block and tell me that I’m being transferred to a new block. I’m uncuffed from the wall and told “go pack your shit inmate” by Xanax, “This is bullshit” I rebutted back. I continue to back what little I have and as I make my way into the hall, I see another inmate standing in the hall with their stuff, presumably doing the same thing I’m doing and moving to my old cell. He was a bit quieter and less likely to cause a fight, but you really can never tell with some of these inmates here.
Upon entering my new wing, I’m told to set all of my things on the table in the wing and ordered to strip in front of the guards. I’m checked yet again but this time much more strictly, checking under my dick, making me squat multiple times just out of showing my compliance. After being thoroughly checked, I’m forced up against the wall while they search my things, verifying nothing is out of line. Upon completing their search, I’m then ushered into my cell with the rest of my belongings, and told to get settled in.
My new wing is much smaller at only two cells, a smaller table, and only one inmate in the block. Another inmate is in the cell to my left, he introduces himself as ‘Steam,’ a shorter man with curly black hair, one of those pretty boys. We start talking to each other through the open bars in our cell, while I’m getting settled into my new home. Come to find out, Steam is also a Florida boy, we end up nicknaming our block ‘Florida Block.’
After settling in, I decided to fill out my complaint card and gave it to the guard during lunch. “Too much guard abuse” and had it to Flanders. Lunch was uneventful and thankfully, we did not get cuffed together. Chicken noodle soup, with an orange, and more bread was served that day. We are eventually released to more rec time in the chow hall, but given my outburst, I’m ordered to be cuffed to one of the tables for my rec time. My former block mate is cuffed to another table so we are unable to fully interact with each other.
Ned Flanders comes back out and drops a pile of shredded paper on the table, his smirk lets me know that something is up. Upon looking at it, I can see one word ‘Abuse’ in my writing, these fucking guards shredded up my complaint card. “Put it back together” instructed by Flanders staring at me, as he walks away, the other inmates are roaming around the room and can see the shredded paper on the table. I decided to follow suit but not in the same way they expected me to.
I rearranged the the scraps of paper to write “Too Much Guard Abuse” and “Fuck the Guards!” Steam comes over and takes some of the scrap paper and writes “Cuntbag” off to the side, we start to develop a nice relationship. Multiple guards come by and see what I wrote, and walk off without saying much. I’m laughing every time they do so, knowing that I’m right, these guards go on a powertrip every chance they get.
When rec time is over, I’m still cuffed to the table and see Flanders, and two other guards coming over, the rest of the inmates are ordered out of the chow hall. They’re carrying this weird looking belt, “I see you didn’t follow instructions” said by Flanders, followed by an order “Stand up” I comply as best as I can but being cuffed to the table, I can only stand up as best as I could, and once one of the other guards uncuffs me I’m forced up against the wall. I feel the belt wrap around me and both of my arms are attached to the cuffs on the sides of the belt. I fight back as best as I could but they quickly overpower me before I can truly do anything.
The belt has two handle grips, and I’m slowly dragged backwards into a chair and my arms are locked down to the sides of this chair, a pair of shoulder restraints come down and click in like a rollercoaster. Both of my legs are attached to the bottom of the chair, preventing me from kicking the guards. I’m completely bound and helpless. Flanders sticks his boot on my crotch and claims “too much guard abuse huh? We’ll show you abuse!”
As I’m rolled away, I can see a good number of inmates to my left behind the bars in the hallway, “do you see what they are doing to me?” I shout before I’m wheeled into another room, my heart starts pumping knowing that I’m completely helpless now, and I’m sure I made the guards angry with my comment card. They wheel me into the drunk tank, I haven’t been in that cell since my intake. They tell me to count the bricks on the wall and they’ll let me out when I can correctly guess how many bricks are on the wall.
Nothing changed from the intake but one thing is for certain, I’m sitting there with no way out, my arms bound to the sides, any sort of movement is met with resistance from the bands that bind me. My stomach is especially compressed like a cold bear hug, no amount of struggling would take me out.
This is one of those moments that in my real life where I’d feel the need to keep moving forward, I need to find my next step. But instead I’m stuck in this cell, I’m stuck in this chair, it eventually becomes a loop, and I need to stop myself from spiraling. I need to force myself to accept this boredom, and really take a moment to accept my situation. I can’t control everything in my life, but I can control myself.
Eventually, I hear the sounds of jingling keys slowly approaching, followed by the sound of the door opening up. “Alright, let’s get you back to the block,” said one of the guards, I’m taken out of each of the leg restraints, followed by my shoulder straps. I’m cuffed not by a pair of cuffs, but by the restraint belt itself that I was still wearing. My arms locked to my side and unable to lift my arms above my waist, I have limited mobility and I’m expected to resume normal duties.
I’m escorted back to my wing, Steam is there and checks in on me, I sit there kinda broken. Still contemplating how I can respond to the forced boredom, “I’m going to go lay down for a bit.” I go and lay down on my bed, unable to do much, my reach is so limited I couldn’t even journal in my book properly. The silence of the wing is calming, as if nothing truly matters.
About an hour later I get up still attached to the hip while Steam is in his cell reading his book. I can tell he’s concerned about me, but I don’t have a smart answer for him. Dinner is called and we are ushered to the hallway where we are lined back up against the wall. “Hands behind your back inmates,” I heard ‘from loud’ mouth, my petty attempt at moving my hands behind my back is met with the restraints on my waist. “Nice try inmate” followed by a small chuckle, I couldn’t think of a smart comment.
Dinner is finally served, sloppy joe, I sit down and I’m unable to reach my food, another guard comes over and loosens one of the restraints and I’m forced to eat with a limited reach. Saying anything would cause more trouble for myself, I comply and eat my food in silence. “Hey you good?” I heard from another inmate, Steam chimes in “he’s been like this a while since he got back.” I choose not to respond with the guards surrounding me and let others speak for me.
After dinner, I’m reluctant that they don’t choose me for chores, not that I would be much help given my limited reach. My restraints are tightened again and both of my hands are secured at my waist again, I’m back to the same limited reach I was before dinner. I go back to my cell to attempt to clean up, not having a full reach and only having one arm mixed with eating a meal with the name sloppy in the mix, turns me into a dirty boy.
I feel like I’m in a spot where I can be social again without the fear of having another punishment, I go where the rest of the inmates are. Who are all chatting in the hallway, going and being next to them, I’m able to relax a bit but keeping an eye out for guards really has me on edge. Knowing these fuckers, I do one thing to piss them off and they’re on me like a hawk, and I’m their dinner.
We’re quickly notified that we need to line back up, looking into the chow hall, we can see lines of chains on the table we were just eating at. No explanation of what we were to expect, and upon the gate opening up, we started lining up and kneeling on the bench attached to the table. One by one, leg cuffs are attached to us, along with a belly chain, finally we are cuffed in front of our body. I’m excluded from this due to my current restraints still in place, I’ve been locked in these same restraints for the past two hours at this point.
Upon all inmates getting restrained, we’re then led into the intake room where we can see the door to the garage open, a white van sits in the garage with its doors wide open. One by one, we are loaded onto the white van, the van is fitted with a steel cage only accessible by select doors, a long narrow white bench with a wall no more than a foot away from the bench. I can see them loading up all the inmates in this van, they get to me and I hear “van is full” with the sound of the van door closing. I think I’m safe from the transport but I hear another vehicle pull up outside the garage door.
I’m escorted back inside the intake room while they open the garage door, not that I would attempt to escape, I’m heavily restrained in a bright orange jumpsuit with the word ‘inmate’ imprinted all over this suit, not to mention it’s about 40 degrees outside, and the most amount of protection I have from the cold is yet again a bright orange jacket. “Close sally port” I hear over the radio from the officer keeping a close eye on me, I’m grabbed and escorted to the unmarked cruiser I was in just a few days ago.
I sit on the driver’s side while my co-inmate gets seated on the passenger side, he looks thrilled to be sitting in this van. Upon being buckled in by the guard, he closes the door and it’s pure silence. My feet have a bit more leg room than what I imagine the van has, but given that we’re in the back of a police cruiser, room is a relative term. The hard plastic seats offered very little comfort, and the windows were incredibly tinted. Even with the bright lights in the garage, very little light is reaching inside the cruiser. Eventually, two guards enter the front seats, “inmates secure, open sally port” said by the driver.
We start moving forward and I see we are leaving the facility, the drivers are quiet and so are we in the backseat. I see the real world again, at night time, the same view I saw just almost 48 hours ago, my vehicle parked where I last left it. We start driving around this small town, past different buildings, I can see people in restaurants seemingly unaware of what’s going on. While we’re driving around I see the white van ahead of us stop suddenly for deer crossing the road. I couldn’t imagine being locked in that white van and being a part of a break check.
We eventually arrive back at the facility with our vehicle arriving first, we are taken out and escorted back inside. The warmth from the facility hits me and I’m relieved that we’re in a warmer environment, we make our way back to the chow hall where we get our restraints fully removed and sent to the hallway. I can see a few cells were tossed while we were on the road. I wait for the rest of the inmates to return in the furthest part of the facility, back to where I used to bunk before my fight.
Inmates slowly start trickling in, talking about being in the van, it was completely blacked out, no lights, they all talk about the sudden stop they had. I revealed the reason, crossing deer jumped out. We all continue to talk about the drive when one inmate comes rushing back in with something in his hands. He sets down on the metal table a ring full of keys, but not just any keys, the block keys.
Immediately, all the inmates gather around looking at what to do with these keys, of course he placed them directly in view of the camera. I know we only have a limited time before the guards notice the missing keys and come barging in looking for them. I have a dark feeling come over my head, “it’s good to be bad” I’m fighting internally with what to do, do I risk getting punished, do I revert back to my old self? I made the choice, I grabbed the keys.
Immediately, I’m telling other inmates “quick get inside the cell.” I know if we are going to do something big, we need to be out of the view of the cameras. “Someone needs to hide it on them and walk out of here” I said, but nobody wants to take the blame for it. As we are arguing I hear the sound of the cell door closing and see Steam standing on the other side of the door!
“You BITCH!” I snarked at Steam, knowing that he just locked us in here. Now we’re four inmates locked in a cell with the block keys, and we start panicking what to do. I can’t believe my own block mate would betray us like that, his smile resembled the grinch in his evil twisted look. “You guys are fucked” said by steam as he slowly starts walking away.
We’re now figuring out what to do, do we hide it on one of us? Do we hide it in the cell? Do we throw it out to avoid it all together? Moments later, I see six guards come into the block, our level of fear jumps from a six to a ten. Me and one of the other inmates, ‘Brandon,’ gets close to the door and attempts to block the view of the inmates behind us while we figure out what to do. “We know you have it, don’t try and hide it” said by Dognuts, I guess us purposely blocking the door wasn’t the smartest choice.
The rest of the inmates in the block are escorted out while the guards group up and determine how to handle the situation. I can see their faces looking directly at me as if I was the ring leader. As they discuss, Brandon gets cuffed to the door by one of the guards who sneaks up on him. Dognuts approaches the cell, and while I’m distracted, and attempts to grab my shirt but only manages to get my ID, I’m already resisting against these guards, what’s one more rule being broken?
I can see they’ve developed a plan, and start to approach the door, one guard who has all the keys starts to attempt to unlock the cell door, I tell Brandon “grab the door, don’t let them in” I grab the bar and put my foot up against the door to give myself a bit of traction in these slides. We’re pulling the door shut as hard as we can. The door creeps open but we pull it shut again, victory I think, I tell one of the inmates behind me to grab Brandon and give him some support.
The guards attempt to pull the door open again, this time Dognuts grabs my arms and pulls me out of the cell. I’m immediately forced in the corner of the block against a wall and I’m resisting as best as I can. I tuck underneath his arms and use my feet to press off the wall, the force of another guard forces me back against the bars in the block, I attempt to get my footing and I’m pushed up the wall, there’s now six guards on me. My adrenaline is now pumping, I’m pulling and pushing against multiple guards, eventually one guard on the opposite of the bars I’m forced against gets me cuffed to the wall and I’m in a spot where I can’t resist any further. I took a look and saw the cell door is open, Brandon is attached to the door still, and both inmates are not holding the key. They each get escorted out of the block, we’re told “we don’t care who took the keys” and “we’re done here.” We’re escorted back to our blocks and told “10 minutes till lock down”
My heart is beating at the thoughts of what happened, being told I’m some scrawny punk kid who managed to put up a fight against six guards. I feel I’m not what people expect of me, I’m not just some punk kid, I’m a real fighter. Furthermore, someone who I started to care for would throw us under the bus and is just feet away from me. Good thing he’s behind a solid concrete wall, I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone, but I’m thinking of all the ways I could do something to him…
I take a while to settle down, and before long the lights go dark, leaving only the nightlight on. I prepare as best as I can for bed, my last night in this facility, and I’m reflecting on my experience. I’m 48 hours into my journey here with only 12 hours left.
To be continued…