I dream of escaping

Poverty, everywhere I go. No father to raise me to be a proper man. A single mother working tirelessly to care for 4 of us. The same meals every day. Can’t even go to school – need to work odd jobs. Put food on the table, just to survive. Gunshots rule the streets every night. Bodies, blood, a regular sight. Power and sewage cuts. Large billboards echoing empty promises from politicians. 

I dream of escaping

Prison, the white soulless walls, devoid of anything that makes it human. Zero contact with the outside world. A hundred of us, locked up inside a huge cell. A rock-solid metal bunk. Just two toilets shared between us, a constant presence of nauseating fumes. Guards which strip us of everything we have. A life sentence here for each and every one of us.

They promise me

Money and power through violence. The first life I take is my crippled brother’s. I look into his eyes one last time. A gaze of betrayal, resentment, pain and fear as he bleeds out. No conscience is felt this time, only a sense of power. A void of emotion takes over. I have earned their trust. I am unstoppable now.

They promise me

I will never see the light of day again. Not a step of free will. Every move is being watched. We are not human, they tell us. We are the reason for the country’s problems. No one will save us. We will slowly rot away in this place, die alone and forgotten. It is only fair to all those whose lives we’ve taken.

Nothing matters anymore

Everyone fears me. They give me whatever money they have, and if they cannot satisfy me, I shoot. I see countless people kneel and beg for mercy. I laugh, because making them submit is so easy. Every kill fuels my desire. I ink the number 13 tattoo on my body to show my loyalty. With a gun in my hands, I am god. 

Nothing matters anymore

My soul is no more. I have no feelings. Nothing is meaningful in this life. The monotony of prison has taken away more than everything from me. Physically, I am still alive. On the inside, I am already dead. An empty vessel serving a mind eroded away, merely waiting to die here.

It all ends

When the army and police sweep in and take control of the streets. When they kill or capture my mates, one by one, until I am the only one left. When they torture them into betrayal and obtain my location. When they chain me up, 10 guns in my face, and transport me to a huge prison, where they tell me I will be here forever, with no chance of escape.

It all ends

When alas my body takes it no more, and after uncountable years in this place, I have grown old. The same walls, the same cellmates, their once youthful heads grown white, their pent-up anger long since dissipated into defeat and nothingness. I think about the family I have left behind. I want to tell them, do not be like me, never go into crime, grow up and get a proper job, live a proper life. To live the life I never got to live. As I take my final breaths watched over by emotionless guards on a concrete bed, I wonder if I will still be imprisoned in the afterlife, for eternity, with no chance of escape.