The prison van screeched to a halt outside a cold, crumbling building labeled "St. Martin Youth Correctional Facility."
Grey walls with cracks like veins of sorrow.
Barbed wire crowning the fence like a monster's teeth.
The air smelled of rust, burnt food, and stale urine.
Fred sat still, hands cuffed, legs shackled.
His white school shirt was now brown with dried blood and dust.
> "Move it, convict!"
The guard — Officer Musyoka, huge, bald, scarred across one eye — barked.
Fred stumbled as he tried to stand.
Musyoka shoved him forward.
Each step toward the rusted gates felt like a step into death itself.
---
Inside, Fred was thrown into a narrow hallway lined with flickering lights.
Officer Musyoka and two other guards, Sergeant Omondi (light-skinned, missing two fingers) and Corporal Faith (young, brown-skinned, fake-smiling) ordered him to strip.
Fred hesitated.
A whip cracked the wall beside his head.
> "STRIP!"
Tears blurred his vision.
He pulled off his torn uniform.
Now naked, shivering, humiliated, he stood before them.
Musyoka sneered.
> "Fresh meat."
They laughed.
Faith tossed him a filthy brown jumpsuit, two sizes too big.
Fred dressed quickly, feeling every inch of dignity rot away.
---
He was led through a heavy metal door into the main hall.
Noise hit him like a hammer:
Screams
Fist fights
Laughter so twisted it sounded inhuman
Young boys between ages 13 and 21 packed the halls.
Some tattooed.
Some broken.
Some smiling wide, hollow smiles.
Each wore the same ugly brown jumpsuit.
Some had scars crossing their faces like maps of past wars.
Fred realized...
These boys were not here to be fixed.
They were here to rot.
Or to be trained into monsters.
--
At the intake desk, a fat woman in a stained uniform, Matron Esther, handed him a new name.
> "From now on, you're Inmate 5942."
Fred swallowed.
> "My name is Fred."
SMACK!
A hard slap sent him stumbling sideways.
Matron Esther leaned down, her mouth close enough for Fred to smell stale cigarettes.
> "You don't have a name here, boy. You are nothing."
---
Fred was shown to his "cell" — a crowded room with fifteen bunk beds.
No mattresses.
Just thin, filthy mats on metal frames.
The other boys — predators — eyed him like hyenas.
He tried to claim a bed near the corner.
> "That's mine," snarled Brayo — 17 years old, short but muscular, dark-skinned with dead eyes, leader of one of the prison gangs called the "Black Mambas."
Fred raised his hands.
> "Sorry, I didn't know—"
WHAM!
A punch caught him in the ribs.
Fred dropped to the ground, gasping.
The others laughed.
Someone tossed him a ragged mat at the center of the room — right next to the leaking toilet.
That was his spot now.
Among the piss and rats.
---
That night, Fred curled up on the cold mat, every bone aching.
Rats scurried around.
From another bunk, muffled sobs.
In the dark, someone screamed.
Somewhere else, a fight broke out — fists thudding into flesh, curses flying.
The guards didn't come.
They never came at night.
Fred hugged himself tighter.
He remembered J.J.'s smile.
His mother's cooking.
Dreams of making music.
Gone.
> "Will I ever get out of here?" he whispered into the darkness.
No answer.
Only the sound of another boy being beaten into silence.
--