Life Sentence

Life Sentence by Jaricia Griess

“Life sentence,” the last words I heard from the judge. Now I am a just a number. Trapped in a silent space. Walls as clear as glass, yet they might as well be bars of steel. The days, or was it weeks, seemed endlessly brutal. Tremors, raw pain as drugs left my system. Curled up on the hard floor. No one checked on me. No one spoke to me. No one cared if I lived or died. I dreamt over and over of the threat, the fight, the blood. I squeezed the trigger. Threat gone, not gone. Replaced.

When I was finally free of the torment of withdrawals the first thing I saw was the metallic gray lines on the floor. I reached out, touched the closest one with one finger. Zap! The collar on my neck ignited a fresh agony. The hair on my head and arms stood up, my body went rigid, teeth gritted. The next day in a moment of madness, in a blind rage, I attempted a full body slam into the invisible wall marked only by the thin gray lines on the floor. I came to on the floor, drooling with a pounding headache, still inside those damn gray lines. This time as I became aware, I noticed I was not alone. Other inmates in the adjacent cells were pointing, laughing silently. Free entertainment for the incarcerated who are hungry for variety.

I can’t talk to the other inmates. We can see each other, but can’t hear each other. The loneliness is intense. I watch as some inmates pace in small circles, mouths moving, faces contorted with grief or impotent fury. I have conversations with myself just to hear another voice. I make up songs to pass the time. I eat, I sleep, I defecate in the hole in the floor, all in a temperature controlled cube. There are no guards. Everything is automated. There is no privacy. At night, when the lights are turned down, my dreams are my only companions.

Three times a day nourishment and water are delivered through a small, sliding window in the only visible wall. A small bar as tasteless as cardboard. Eat or starve. Every meal identical. Twice a week my cell filled with a white fog through vents high on the same wall. I choked and gasped the first time it happened, certain that this was the end until the small food window opened and spit out clean shorts. I figured it was some kind of high tech bath. Someone had thought of everything. The rhythm of life in this hole is monotonous. The bare bones of survival.

I took my life for granted: my family, my friends, trees, birds, sunshine, a breeze. When I was a kid there were rumors that this inescapable place existed. Threats made to children when they misbehaved. I never imagined I would end up here. It is not easy to believe in what you can’t see. I made my choices on the outside. I earned this. I was a fool. No one leaves here to tell his story of hell.

There was proof of life outside the hole. Once in a while, well dressed, obviously affluent, well dressed couples would walk between the rows of cells staying carefully between red lines on the floor. They walk close together, slowly. Some of the inmates squat and watch them like apes in the zoo. Some gesture impolitely with their hands or rudely expose themselves. Some dance to silent music. Others sit or curl up on the bare floor and ignore the parade. Did these couples come to watch the freak show? Their lips move but I can hear nothing. They cover their mouths with one hand and look thoughtful. They point and shake their heads. Occasionally, they smile and laugh. What could possibly be so amusing? Why these people walk through is a mystery. I stare and try to imagine what they are discussing.

After the last parade a phone and a note was delivered with my food. Call your mother, say goodbye. No other explanation. My guess is the hole can only support so many inmates. From time to time I notice an inmate is removed and escorted down the long, bright hall between the red lines, through the solid door at the end. The door of no return. I didn’t tell mom this when we talked. Hearing her voice, I tried to imagine her face. She cried. I cried. She said everything was her fault, that she failed me. Times were rough when dad left us, but some times were good. I failed her. I failed myself. Maybe beyond the door is a better place. Like heaven after purgatory. Or maybe it is the next level of hell. What could be worse than now. The call was cut short then two men in white jumpsuits came. They deactivated the invisible wall, removed me from my cell, then escorted me down the long aisle between the red lines to the door, while the remaining inmates’ eyes, set in concrete faces, followed me.

Through the door of no return is a room: all white and chrome, bright and sterile. Wires hung from the ceiling feeding energy to the man-sized, glass-domed shell in the middle of the room. On either end and across the bottom ran tubes, whose purpose I can only guess. I am given an injection and told to lie down inside the shell on a soft foam mattress. Escape is not possible. There is no more fight left in me. My last thought is that at least when they end me, I will go out in comfort. The terror of the unknown that gripped me as I walked into the room eased as the drug they gave me took effect. I closed my eyes and felt my collar being removed. The glass dome folded down as I drifted off into a dreamless sleep.

The machine began to hum and vibrate. Lights oscillate. A warm, moist cloud fills the shell with a gentle hiss obscuring the process going on inside the dome. Twenty-one hours later, the couple that had walked between the cells yesterday waited in an adjacent room, pacing and wringing their hands. A door opens. They turn as one. A woman in a white coat enters the room with a squalling, naked infant wrapped in a blue blanket. The couple both shed tears of joy and wonder as they are handed the infant. A miracle of technology. The re-creation machine gave them the son they selected and paid for from the inmates serving a life sentence for murder. A man, age reversed, redeemed, and sentenced to a new life.