Prison stinks. Literally, smells of sweat, blood, urine and rotting flesh. Here in New Orleans there was poverty like no other. It wasn’t like Sierra Leone bad, it was worse. Because here there was no death. Just pain and suffering. All the prisoners in New Orleans City Jail including me have given up on all the guards. They only come when they’re dropping off new prisoners. The new prisoners the come in the hundreds about every two days. It’s an all male prison so there usually isn’t any rape. The Guards like to torture us by leaving a mound of food that goes up to the ceiling. We live in a building that’s about 5 stories high, and we have an open courtyard that goes from the top of the building to the floor. The reason it’s torture is because it’s gonna run out at some point. Meanwhile, over 2,000 bloodthirsty prisoners are here fighting over it. But no one ever dies. None of us has the heart to kill someone. Who would in a disgusting prison full of starving inmates? We all hope death will come but it never does. Every blue moon someone goes insane and tries to kill themselves by either jumping into the courtyard from a balcony for cells, or just throwing themselves around inside of a cell, until they crack their skull open or break their neck. It’s hell. I try to keep my sanity. I have formed a group of friends, if you could call us that. The posse is made up of Oliver O’Donnel, Charles Smith, Deandre Tomlinson, Ryan Anderson, and myself. We’re all around the age of 19, or 20. All we do is try to guard a small portion of the top floor for all of our food. We also have some cots that we stole from the other prisoners. In exactly one day, when the guards bring in another round of prisoners, my group and I are going to escape. We’ve planned it perfectly. When the first guards walk into the courtyard, we will take the first five and knock them out with some bricks we’ve knocked out of the wall near our cots. Once we’ve done that, we take them into the shadows,put on their clothes, and try to blend in with the other guards. Once they have taken all the new prisoners in we’ll leave with the guards and we’re free. After that we get in one cop car and drive away. We plan on going to Florida. For now I have to get some rest. Chapter 2 It’s morning time. The day I get out of this hell hole. I get off my cot. I take a deep breath. I look around, and take in the area. All the other prisoners are still asleep. I quietly and carefully walk over to the cots of my group. I quickly shake them awake. “Guys, hey, wake up.” They open their eyes like they’ve been awake all night. They dart their heads around. “Is every one asleep?”Oliver whispers. I nod my head. I motion with my hand towards the stairs. We move in one wave down the stairs into the courtyard. We freeze and look around carefully. Nothing. All asleep. We creep toward the doors. And then we hear the trucks of prisoners pull up. “Get to the corners !” I whisper. We all rush to our positions. Threats and insults are yelled outside. Then, the doors burst open and the yells become audible. “Get your grimy butts in there!” I hear a guard yell. Hundreds of prisoners stumble in through the doors. I see my team search around with their eyes looking for the right opportunity. I look around, and see one about my size, creep up slowly and yank him by the hair while keeping my hand over his mouth. He squirmed around but I had a lot of practice from fighting the other prisoners. I make my hand into a fist, and jab it directly in the middle of his collar bone and his shoulder. He grunts and falls asleep. I steal his clothes and put them on. Tight fit, but it’ll work. I quickly jump back into the jumble of guards. I look around for my friends. Three of them are in the back corner and two of them are in the front by me. I met eyes with all of them. Then, all hell broke loose. Chapter 3 As soon I took a step something fell on top of three guards. There was a huge roar coming from the balconies. “EVERYBODY GET THE HECK OUTTA HERE!” yelled the head security guard. A huge war cry came from the balconies and soon we could see the prisoners pouring down the multiple staircases. All the guards started rushing through the doors, some of them only getting to the outside of the door before getting mauled to death by a herd of prisoners. My team and I held back, staying in the shadows. We had seen this before. Back when we had first gotten in, there had been a riot with all of he prisoners trying to break down the doors when the guards were still here. All the guards had locked themselves in the office. They had called for backup and the prisoners knew that the cops would be here soon. They were banging on the doors with their fists and with bricks they had taken from the wall. Everyone was chanting “WE WANT OUT” I was hiding over in the corner, not wanting any part in the massacre that was about to happen. The prisoners were still chanting, and then all of a sudden, there was a huge boom by the door. Dust flew up everywhere. Light poured into the court yard. All the prisoners turned and looked. There was silence, everyone staring at the open hole, and then, gunshots flying out of the door way. Screams were coming from everywhere. Prisoners were falling by the second, covered in blood. I watched in horror until almost all were dead or putting their hands up in submission. This all came to me in a second. I then flashed back to reality. I looked around. Almost all the prisoners had gotten through the prison doors. My breath quickened. As the last few prisoners entered, the head police man looked around and saw me. He stared at me. It seemed as if he looked at every detail of my face for hours. He finally, reluctantly, looked away. I let myself breath again. The head police man yelled an order, and the mass of the guards started turning around and exiting the courtyard. Chapter 4 I held back a grin. We marched out of the doors, and into the parking lot that I hadn’t seen in years. I looked around for a moment to find which car to get into. I found it. A smaller, older police car, that wouldn’t grab so much attention. I started a brisk walk towards the car. Then out of nowhere, the head police man turned around and yelled “ FRAUD! ” in a huge booming voice. I turned around, just to see every guard in the parking lot point a gun directly at my head. “ FIRE! ” shouted the police man. I started running as fast as I could towards the car. Rounds after round of ammunition was fired at me. Then I felt a sharp pain in the back of my leg. Then another, even worse in the left side of my back. I stumbled, but kept running. No way I’m staying here. I sprinted harder than I had in my life. I felt a jarring on the whole left side on my body. Finally, everything was starting to get dark. My vision blurring. I took about three more steps before I heard one last booming gun shot. Square in my back, I could feel blood flying out of hole near my spine. I felt the blood on the back of my neck. I gasped and fell. Straight to the ground, with gravel and blood filling up my mouth. After that, was just darkness. Chapter 5 I woke up to lights. Flashing sirens. It felt like I was lying on some sort of cot. I could feel myself being lowered into a car, an ambulance. I kept hearing that one noise, ringing in my ears. A gun shot. I could tell I was dying. My essence, slowly fading away. Into a place far away, calm and peaceful. I wasn’t ready to die. I still had so many things do, things to improve. Constantly trying to find ways to destroy bad parts about me. Life is a battle. Life is a struggle. Life is a who, not a what. Not a thing that is just there, simply an accessory to another larger thing. Life is made up of multiple things that describe us as human beings. Love, passion, freedom. Those are only a few of the things that keep us alive. So lying there, helpless, made me frustrated. Angry. I wished that the person that fired that gun, that put me in this position, would rot in hell. I cursed that person for not giving me a chance at being the best I could be. I looked up at the night sky, ignoring the pain from my chest, and smiled. Not a nice smile, but a smile that showed that someday, somewhere, I would get vengeance no matter what. I would jump into a sea of glass, as long as I could destroy the one person who made the bad decision try to take a shot at me. I felt all this, and for once in my life, I was gonna get back up, and fight. I struggled against the straps holding me to the stretcher. I ripped them off, sat up and took a deep, slow, breath. The two nurses tried holding me down, but I shook them off, opened the door, and jumped. It was reckless. It was stupid. It was the most amazing feeling I had ever felt. I opened my eyes and saw that hard cement was less than a foot away from my face. I had one thought before my face was mauled by the tearing cement. Wow, my life is great. Then I died. Lockdown 6-8 1