FALSELY ACCUSED

Bruce painfully awoke at the sound of the first alarm. He had stubbornly grown accustomed to the daily routine still tried he got up from his top bunk and walked to the open cell doors for roll call. 

It had taken him a matter of months not to cry himself asleep and wake each morning frantic now he just shuffled his feet getting into position with a heavy and hopeless heart as he figured this would be his life for the next twenty years for something he knew he didn't do. Of course, that was the motto of every inmate he thought as the first shift officers came counted him and checked his cell. Yet in Bruce's case, he was purely innocent, railroaded by manufactured evidence and a paid witness he found himself in a state pen only a month from his first full year living the prison life. It was quite an adjustment for a guy who cherished his freedom and for the most part, followed the law. 

The next step in his day was hitting the showers, and then he’d head over to the mess hall and grab a bite of whatever was left. Washing up first helped him find some semblance of peace, although he had seen some brutal things go down in that location. It was the water running over him that gave him a connection to his life outside of the penitentiary dreaming he was a swimmer. People would always laugh when he'd tell them that, a black swimmer from the hood, right they'd laugh. Yet it was true, upon his arrest Bruce was a swimmer at his local Junior college looking to get a transfer to a university with a swimming scholarship. 

After breakfast, it was a blur yet it never felt like that as the time was a blur because it was filled with meaningless activities that unless you really tried, you could convince yourself there was a purpose to the activities you were into. Some exercised, while some played cards. Others would past the time reading, as some sat around letting the day go by. Bruce kept to himself as much as he could, but he was sensing things were changing on the outside his lawyer hadn't completely abandoned the case, which gave him hope, but on the inside, the inmates were eyeing him getting frustrated as he had been given some time to choose up. 

Choosing up or picking a side meant teaming up with a prison gang for protection in case something popped off. Security also made it that no one would pick on those from another band without permission. Yet at the same time protection came with a price that after nearly a year in Bruce understood what the cost consisted of and was not up to paying it in any fashion.