They didn't cuff me gently.
Two guards dragged me by the arms down a long hallway lined with rusted cell doors and the stench of rot. My feet barely touched the ground. My ankles were shackled, metal grating against the floor like chains being sharpened. I didn't fight it. Why would I? The sentence wasn't written in years. It was written in bones.
"This one's a lifer," one of them muttered.
"Not even a lifer. He's dead already," the other laughed.
Cells on either side lit up with movement. Inmates pressed their faces to the bars, grinning like wolves that smelled blood.
"Fresh meat!"
"What's he in for?"
"Don't matter. Look at him — already broken."
"Some psycho, I heard. Touched a girl or killed one. Or both. Who cares?"
Their voices blurred together like knives scraping inside my skull. The guards shoved me into the last cell at the end of the hall — solitary, but not the quiet kind. Just a concrete box with a piss-stained mattress, a busted toilet, and four walls that felt too close already. The door slammed behind me. I didn't turn. I just stood there, staring at the crack in the wall that looked like a mouth.
It didn't take long.
Day three in general population and they jumped me in the shower. Five of them. One held a towel over my face, another kicked my spine. Fists rained down, elbows cracked my ribs. Blood spilled down the drain. I didn't scream. I just curled up like a broken animal. I remember the sound of the guards laughing. One leaned against the wall and smiled while they stomped on my chest. Another said, "Don't kill him. That's for later."
They walked off like nothing happened.
I lay there on the cold tile, barely breathing, blood mixing with soap and water. The water kept running. My skin went numb. I tried to stand, but my arms didn't listen. When I finally crawled back to my cell, the other inmates clapped.
Mornings after that meant beatings. Some came from the prisoners — random punches, shoves in the hall, food trays smashed into my head. But the worst were the guards. They did it for fun. For boredom. Once, a guard caught me blinking too slow during roll call. He slammed my head into the wall until the world went dark and then left me lying there. No punishment. No nurse. Just bruises and blood drying in the cracks of the concrete.
Food came late. Cold. Sometimes not at all. If I asked why, they just smirked.
"Maybe you didn't earn it, Maniac."
That's what they called me now. Maniac. I never told anyone my real name. The files had it, sure. But they didn't care. They liked the label. It made it easier. Even the inmates used it. It echoed in the halls like a curse. Maniac. Freak. Monster.
I lost count of the days after a while. The lights never dimmed. The screaming never stopped. Sometimes it was me. Sometimes someone else. Didn't matter. It was all the same. Screams. Chains. Laughter.
They threw me in isolation once for "attitude." I hadn't spoken in two weeks.
Pitch-black cell. No mattress. No window. Just a hole in the floor and a crack in the ceiling that dripped water slow enough to drive me insane. I started whispering just to hear a voice. Then I started answering myself. Then I heard laughter that wasn't mine. When they pulled me out two weeks later, my eyes couldn't handle the light. I saw bugs crawling across the guards' faces, but when I tried to kill them, they weren't there.
They broke my fingers in year six. A new guard. Young. Still had that look in his eyes like this was just a game. He pinned my hand to the table and snapped my fingers one by one with the edge of his baton. No sedatives. Just a cloth in my mouth and the sound of cracking bone.
"Still breathing?" he asked after the fifth one. "Damn. You're tougher than you look."
I couldn't answer. My jaw was locked. My tongue was bleeding. He left me there, and I didn't move for hours.
They stopped hitting me around year nine. That was worse. Now they just watched. Guards would stand at the edge of my cell and stare for hours, eyes locked on mine. Never blinking. Never speaking. Just watching.
One of them tapped on the glass every time I tried to sleep. For six weeks.
Another carved "MANIAC" into the wall while I sat there.
They laughed when they saw me talking to it.
They called in a nurse once a month to check I was still alive. She never looked at me. Just drew blood, wrote notes, and left. I reached out once — not to hurt her. Just to touch something. Anything. She stepped back and whispered to the guard.
"He touched me."
That night, they took turns kicking me until I pissed blood. I couldn't walk for two weeks. They left me in my own filth. One of them said it'd build character.
By year ten, I stopped trying to remember my name.
Stopped trying to remember hers.
The girl. The lie. The reason I was here.
I didn't even know if she was real anymore.
Maybe I did hurt her. Maybe I didn't.
Did it even matter?
They'd already decided I was guilty. The papers said so. The world said so.
Guilty men don't get memory. They get punishment.
I started carving into the walls. Just lines. Over and over. My name, maybe. Or a name I thought was mine. Sometimes I scratched it into my skin. Just to feel it. Just to prove I still could.
Sometimes I'd laugh for no reason. Loud. Uncontrolled.
Once I laughed for six minutes straight.
The guards filmed it.
I think they posted it somewhere.
Entertainment.
I had a shard of mirror. I stole it from the old bathroom before they replaced the glass. Kept it hidden under the mattress. Sometimes I'd press it against my throat. Not hard. Just enough to feel the edge.
Other nights I'd hold it under my tongue. Taste the blood. Feel it cut the roof of my mouth.
One day, I looked into it and saw my eyes — wide, sunken, hollow. But still there.
Still me.
Barely.
Year twelve came quietly. No beatings that week. No food either. Just silence. As if the prison had finally forgotten I existed.
I sat there in the corner of the cell, holding the mirror shard in my hand. It looked dull now. Blurred. But I knew it could still cut.
I stared at it for hours.
No one came.
No footsteps.
No guards.
I placed it between my teeth and bit down.
Hard.
The glass cracked and stabbed through my tongue, through my gums, up into the roof of my mouth. My jaw spasmed. Blood spilled over my lips, warm and thick. I dropped to my knees, twitching. My body convulsed. The world tilted.
Everything slowed.
The last thing I saw wasn't the cell.
It wasn't the mirror.
It was the puddle forming below me — dark red, almost black — and in its reflection, my eyes.
Still wide open.
Still human.
Then it all went black.
And I was finally free.