AN: I wrote this for English class, and I kinda liked it, so I decided to post it.

---

There was never a time, back home, where I could not remember seeing her face. Her face was there the day they came to drag me away to that place they call prison. I can tell you two things about prison. The first is that people in prison never call it that. The second is that you don’t want to go to prison, but you also never want to get out. Once you’ve been locked in a cage for two years, you don’t want to rejoin the regular world. Things in the box were just too regular, too simple, for you to ever want to go back to the society where we must compete like animals every day of our lives.

They told me that I was free to go, and I didn’t know what to say. How many times had I waited for this moment? I had dreamed about it even during the sleepless nights where my cellmates cried for hours and those in the cages around us, when I would doze off for a few minutes and wake up again, having had a wild dream. I was free. They had released me from the cell that had so long imprisoned me, and yet I did not wish to walk free. What allowed me to walk out that door, with no guards beside me, was the thought of her. She told me, just before they took me, that she would wait. She would wait in that dingy apartment, where the wind blew through the cracks under the windows, children’s screams filtered through the thin walls, shouts rang out in the streets below, and every once in a while a gun shot was heard, with never-ending sirens blaring in the cold, still night air. She was waiting those two years, and I was finally coming back home.

They had given me back my money, and I was grateful. I had been keeping twenty dollars in my pocket for weeks, and when they hauled me off to jail, they confiscated it. I was sure it was lost, not that money mattered in prison. Then they just gave it back. I used it to take a quick cab back to our apartment. The driver was a white immigrant, from some country in Asia that I couldn’t recognize, maybe Russia, and he asked me in a thick accent where I wanted to go. That was an easy question.

“43 North Washington Avenue,” I said monotonously, and he gave me a funny look, but turned around and sped off anyway. It was in the bad part of town, and maybe that was what I had perceived in his troubled eyes. Or maybe it was the way I had said it, because I didn’t sound like I was from around there anymore, I sounded… different.

The cab smelled like cigarettes and faint mint from the air freshener hanging on the rearview mirror, and it was starting to make me sick. The streetlamps glowed orange in the dark night, flashing past my window, blinding me. We didn’t speak, me having nothing to say, him being wary of just my presence now that he knew where I lived.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, he pulled up to the tall apartment complex and read the cost of the trip out loud to me. I paid him with the twenty, the tip an enormous sum, but I didn’t care. Taking my small backpack from the trunk, I slammed it shut and he sped off without a backward glance.

I was finally home. The alley to the left smelled like piss, the homeless cats congregated under the parked cars, the drug dealers paced at the end of the block, sirens wailed from a few blocks away, and I looked up at our window, the sixth floor, fifth window over from the left. I imagined that I could see her face up there, smiling down at me through the dirt-streaked glass pane, and with an uplifting sensation in my chest, I went through the front door.

I had my key with me, and since it was late, I decided to use it instead of buzzing up and bothering her. Taking the key ring out of my back pocket, the tiny slices of metal clinked as I searched for the right one, finally shoving it into the slot.

It didn’t fit. The breath caught in my lungs and I struggled to stand, despite my bulky form. What was wrong with the lock? Did I have the wrong key? No, that couldn’t be right, I knew that this was the key. I decided to buzz up, ask her what was wrong with the lock, and if she could come open it, and sorry to wake her, and that I had missed her so much.

The harsh buzzing sound filled the entrance and I waited in the silence that followed.

“Yes?” a woman called through the garbled speaker, but it wasn’t her. “Well, who is it? It’s really late.” I was still silent, dumbstruck. “Jack? If that’s you, I told you not to lose your key again. I’m not paying for the replacement this time.” I walked away, staring at nothing, an iron ball in my stomach weighing me down. “Jack?” the speaker crackled, but I wasn’t listening as I walked out the door, back out onto the street.

The stray cats mewed and hissed as I disturbed them, and I looked up at the sky where the stars were blocked by an ominous orange glow. I was still a prisoner. I would always be a prisoner in this world.