Burglars in Blue

                        The slamming of the steel doors seemed to grow louder and louder.  The smell in the cell house was a mixture of Pine Sol, cigarette smoke and body order.

Oh God, what am I going to do?  I knew that going to the state penitentiary after being a police officer was going to be bad, but I can not survive much longer. 

I laid motionless, flat on my back, on my prison bunk.  I pulled the cotton sheet up over my head as if I were hiding and so that no one could see the tears run down my face.  I had a bad headache from not eating.  I never would have imagined that I could feel such total despair.  I was even more discouraged than I was when I was arrested by my fellow police officers.  There was nothing in my mind but hopelessness – overwhelming hopelessness.

Can this really be happening?  There are no more chances.  I’m all out of options.  How can I possibly survive this treatment?  Why can’t the guards see what is happening to me, or do they just not care?  This is not a nightmare.  I am really here…And I am alone…

I want to scream out for someone to help me, but the people that would hear my cries are not my friends.  I have no friends or allies in here. The guards have no respect for me – only distain.  I have disgraced the law enforcement community by robbing the people I was sworn to serve and protect.

Perhaps more than some, I hate to be alone.  I’ve always been a get-along, go-along kind of a guy.  Wanting people to like me is one of the reasons I’m in here now.

Maybe I should have accepted the warden’s offer to do my time in solitary confinement in the isolation unit, at least I would probably get something to eat.  This is unbelievable; no one should have to suffer like this.  What am I going to do?  I don’t want to die.  I particularly don’t want to die locked up in this miserable hell hole.

I thought back to my childhood.  We were poor, but I don’t ever remember going to bed hungry.