The Inmate's Play Thing

Ten

Three weeks has passed by since the day Santiago claimed me in the jail cafeteria and in those three weeks nothing much happened. I was glad to be with him as he protected me from Jonas and his group of ragtag rapists.
Something I forgot to mention, they all got in here on accounts of child pornography and pedophillia.
Santiago told me he got in here on a false accusation. He was at a bar with his friends and when he told me he was too embarrassed to say what kind of bar it was. A fight broke out and the men who started it ended up smashing a lot of the bar's property. When the cops eventually showed up everyone but Santiago was passed out on the floor from head trauma or an alcohol induced sleep and since there were no cameras to look back on and the police had to take a witness account and Santiago was accused. The men who accused him of course were homophobic and just wanted to see Santiago behind bars and when the court case wrongfully declared him guilty of destroying property, starting a fight and even killing one of the bartenders who'd been stabbed in the gut with a busted beer bottle, he was sent to jail.
The justice system here is fucked.
I myself, well..
I was framed for my father's murder.

Of course, Santiago might understand since he was wrongfully accused of stabbing some poor bartender to death with a broken beer bottle but this was my own father.
Of course, the court knew I had a good motive to do it. My father was a homophobic asshole who drank his nights away watching football and screaming his head off at my mother whenever she did something he didn't like or sometimes even taking his belt out on me.
Jokes on him though, I'm a masochist.

The court has records of my father beating both my mother and I but they didn't do much about it. One time a police officer came to our house to decide wether it was a safe place for me to live and my father bribed his way out of it.
That was when I was 15.

The four years that followed that kept getting worse. He'd come home from his job as a dirty car salesman, his hair all slicked back and the thick stench of his hair oil in the bathroom. Although, it wasn't as bad as my mother when she came home from her job at the slaughterhouse.

When he got home he'd take off his blazer, tie and pants and he would sit back on the couch and drink until the sun came up, then the next morning if I'd stayed in my room all night and didn't bother him I usually came downstairs to his drunken doings. Sometimes the TV would be askew and a couple books would be knocked off the coffee table but other times a shelf would be knocked over, a lamp would be on the floor, the shade rolled all the way into the kitchen and a curtain would be pulled down.

My mom had finally had enough of his drunken ways one night and she brought home some tools from the slaughterhouse, framed me as the murderer and fled town for Las Vegas, Nevada.

Leaving me to deal with the cops when I woke up that morning.

The court hearing was unanimous from the evidence. She had gotten rid of any evidence that might suggest she had a part in it and all the evidence left pointed to me being the killer.

Which of course, I wasn't.
But when I was questioned by the police for why I had done it I was so shaken up from the aftermath of the killing that they'd assumed I was just some dumb kid who'd killed his father and now felt so incredibly guilty that I couldn't cope.

And now that left me with a 20 year sentence for homicide.

So far I'd served four months and I have 19 left and 8 moths now if they can't find and convict my mother.
From what I know, Santiago has 25 more left.

I was sitting on the bunk, gently swinging my feet off the edge of it, listening to Santiago read aloud. The hardcover book Henry got him. The book was Gone With The Wind. It wasn't my favorite but it passed time. In my opinion Scarlet O'Hara was kind of snooty and I couldn't really connect to her all that much.

There was a bang at the cell bars and I flinched, looking up to see Henry standing there with another convict.
Santiago sat up, gently put the book down and placed a hand on my shoulder, giving the convict a territorial death glare.

Henry stretched a little and let out a sigh, pulling the convict closer to the cell door.
"This is the guy I told you about, he's gonna be in your cell from now on. I guess he can take the top, you guys'll take the bottom?" He referenced to the bunk style beds.

The new convict didn't look as intimidating or scary as the other convicts here. He had that sort of Santiago vibe to him, like he wasn't meant to be here.

He was let into our cell and Santiago looked him over.
"You take the top, and if you even go as close to touching Jackson you're dead meat."
He growled.

The man nodded respectfully. He looked around my age, much taller than me at 6', though shorter than Santiago at 6'3.
I was a bush to them at 5'3.

He was handsome, dark hair parted to the side with an undercut, snake bites and a septum piercing. He had a couple tattoos and his eyes were a warm, comforting brown.

"Don't worry," His voice was gentle and he gave Santiago a small smile.
"I'm not like them."
He jabbed a thumb in the direction of Jonas's cell.

Santiago's hand relaxed on my shoulder and he nodded stiffly, still not trusting the new guy.

I kinda liked him.