I was sent to the wrong type of jail #prison #horrorstories #nevergiveup

I was sent to the wrong type of jail
I was moved from county jail in October of 2016, following my conviction for armed robbery. I’m not here to garner sympathy, but I want to be clear on a couple of things; this was an unfair sentence.
Not in the usual “innocent man put in jail” type of shlock, but in the way that they were clearly pushing me towards being put in a particular jail. I had my blood tested, and my hair was sent to a lab. They took pictures of my fingernails. I’d never seen anything like it, but I was basically catatonic; I was in a bad place. Wanted it all to just be over.
At the time, I didn’t think much about the processing. I didn’t think about the records that were passed between the guards and doctors, and I didn’t care much about the blue rubber stamps that were put at the base of every signed legal document. I didn’t know what was normal and what wasn’t. I just wanted to get into the haze and no-brain the next six or so years away.
I was put in a cell with Lian Soon, a Chinese American man. To this day, I don’t have the slightest idea what he was in for. Guy looked like your average college kid, but there was just something off about
him. He just had this look of complete dissociation, like he was miles away. He never really looked at you; it was as if he looked straight through you. Then again, a lot of inmates get that. I barely managed to talk to him in the first few days. We agreed that I took the top bunk, but that was pretty much all we managed to talk about.
We had a straightforward schedule. Breakfast and work up ‘til 11, lunch, more work, some yard time, dinner. After that, we either got to our specialized programming time (religious services, NA, anger management, etc) or an extra hour in the yard. Then back in the cell, lights out by 11.
In my first few days, I had to go through a lot of orientation. There were the kind of who’s-who introductions you might expect, but also just someone pointing to which shelf they stock the detergent. Basic stuff.
I got a job cleaning the beddings. They were so cheap that a firm enough poke would go straight through ‘em, like a piece of paper. Washing them was basically putting them in a shredder. We had to go on such a low setting that they rarely ever got clean. I swear I saw a cockroach in one of the pillowcases once, and the damn thing was still alive after the wash and dry.
The pillows were also crap. They ripped easily, and feathers would get stuck to everything. Probably wasn’t a room in this whole facility without feathers littering the floor. Hell, they were even in the yard. Most of them were, in fact.
We’d have rotating schedules, so I rarely got to work with the same people two days in a row. I started to recognize a few faces, but people mostly kept to themselves. There was no locker room talk, no braggarts, no bravado; just people hunkering down and shutting up.
But even early on, I noticed something was off. I think it all came down to the yard.
People stayed away from the prison yard. No one used the exercise equipment. People just stuck to the walls, or silently walked by the fences. There were no loud conversations, no sports, nothing. And as soon as that free hour was up, people were pushing to get back in. From day one, I got the impression that the yard was a bad place to be, but no one was telling me why. What kind of prison has dust on the free weights?
By the end of the first week, I’d started to get into the routine. I was out cold by 10 most nights. Hell, I had the bedding with the least holes in ‘em, might as well use that luxury.
But there was that one night when I just couldn’t sleep. I’d lay down, and then all of a sudden I’d be wide awake. There was this whistling wind that came down the hall, and it just kept echoing in the back of my head. At first it was a wind, then a whistle. And with no other sound around, it kept growing in my head until it sounded like a goddamn fire truck siren. I’d push my hands against my ears, cover my head in a pillow, but it didn’t do a thing.
Finally, I just started to mutter to myself; just to fill the air with some other noise.
“Please stop,” I’d whisper. “Please stop.”
And the funny thing?
"It did. It stopped.
"
The next day, I was exhausted. I kept nodding off. Breakfast, lunch, dinner… pretty much anytime I could sit down. The guards would push me awake, and the other inmates just sort of stared at me. Some of them actively avoided me, like there was something wrong with me. When it was time for the yard, the guards took me aside and asked me to help clean the common area. No yard time for me, gotta sweep some feathers.
That night, I went to bed as soon as I could. But the moment my head hit that pillow I was wide awake again. And down through the hall, there was that howling wind. There was no way for me to sleep. The sound just kept growing, and all my tiredness was just… gone. Whispering didn’t work anymore; I had to speak out loud.