By Joshua Ryan
“This is Officer Nolan,” he said to his cellphone. “Open A292.” I heard the bars slide back.
“Inside, convict.”
I opened my eyes. There was a gap in the bars. The cell door was open. It wasn’t very wide. It was just the gate to a cage. I could tell that I’d have to tilt my bedroll to get it through. I lifted one side, maneuvering it. I would have to be careful not to let anything drop . . .
Then I saw it. There was something long and thick lying on the lower bunk, something brown that was shaped like a man. There were letters and numbers stamped on its surface. It was a convict, lying face down in my cell. Wait a minute! Couldn’t the officer see that the place was already full?
I almost blurted that out. Then I remembered: there were two convicts stuffed in all those other cells. That bundle of clothes on the bunk was only one convict. I was the other one.
I stopped in the doorway. I was scared to wake up that thing on the metal shelf. Jesus, it was dark in there, especially after the spotlight I’d faced outside. I could see a naked lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, but it wasn’t turned on. The only light was the gray stuff leaking in from the walkway. That was enough for me to see that the whole cell wasn’t much larger than a medium-sized closet. It was a lot smaller than my bathroom at home. What used to be my home. Half the cell was bunks, one shelf above the other on the right side, against the wall. A lot of the rest was toilet — a metal toilet squatting against the back wall, a toilet without a seat, with something that looked like a little sink built into the top of it. The thing was gleaming at me in the faint light. Christ! I thought. They wash in the shitter. A wave of contempt ran through me. Probably one of them crapped while the other one washed his face in the crapper. They were like cats in a cage, with a little litterbox all their own. And now I was one of them.
