This Life is a prison

This life is a prison. You may think your world is, but try making it your home for thirty years. I am about to be paroled. I never thought they would let me out. Let me introduce myself. Steve Smith, I have been a guest of the Jefferson City Correctional Facility since 1966, I was fourteen.

My only saving grace was I was 14 when it happened. Guess they thought it was too young to put me away for life. Four years in juvenile detention and then off to live with the big boys in State Prison.

Everyone in prison is innocent or at least it's not their fault they are here.
I am not. Innocent. I knew what I was doing and I didn't exactly plan it but I thought it over for a few seconds before I took aim and fired.

"Life is half spent before we know what it is." George Herbert said that.
My life is spent. Where will I go and what will I do when I get out of here? I don't know anything else.

My mom used to visit me every Sunday and bring lunch to the yard, she started bring enough for everybody when she saw how starved we were for home cooking. Then the warden thought better of the idea, you know she might just poison us all and they would be out of a job. She still kept coming and telling me everything about everybody and how much she loved me and how my life would turn around if I was a good boy now.

My mom died in 1982, bad heart, too much stress I figure. They wouldn't let me go to the funeral. No one has written or visited me since. Guess you can't blame them. Who wants to introduce Uncle Steve the convict to the kids at thanksgiving.

I guess you can tell my anxiety level is high. I got $109.95 coming to me for working all these years, a clean set of clothes that I will wear out of here, some toiletries and a bus ticket to a halfway house, where I can stay for three or four months till I get my own place.

George Herbert was an English Poet, he was only forty when he died in 1633 but he had a lot to say and I have had a lot of time to read. This is one of my favorite George Herbert quotes, "Do not wait; the time will never be "just right." Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along."

I am going to have to start now. My tools are few and most of them are rusty. I don't know how to start. I don't know how to answer all the questions that will be asked. How do I explain my life?

"The shortest answer is doing." George Herbert

George had a lot of wisdom he also said no man can knpw the depths of another mans burden. If you have ever been desperate, I don't mean the kind where you do something and are desperate not to get caught. I mean desperate to find the why, the reason just to try and make sense out of anything. Give me one good reason that's all I need. Doesn't even matter what the reason is for, it just has to be good.

No, I am not suicidal. I have a good reason for not doing that. Somehow it is not enough to spark that part of me that should would to live, to taste life and savour it.

They are known as the shell race

They are known as the shell race, because there is no doubt that they are souless.

It happened so quickly, so quietly. That no one thought anything was far from the norm. 

There is no escape

 

They are everywhere

 

Don't you see them?

 

There is no where to hide

 

At first I thought

 

Terrorist Among Us