Page 2 of Pride

I closed my eyes and drove my forehead into the face of the guard on my left. As I felt his nose shatter beneath my skull, I swung my right foot in a circle, blindly searching for the leg of the guard on my right.

My foot came in contact with his leg, providing me a target for a strong uppercut. I clenched my teeth, tightened my stomach muscles, and swung my right fist upward in the direction of where I expected his face to be.

My knuckles collided with the bottom of his jaw. The sound of bone hitting bone provided reassurance that he wouldn’t be getting up any time soon.

I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms and did my best to focus on the man who stole my cookie. With blurry vision and burning skin, I cupped the loose handcuff in my left hand, swung it toward the thief’s arm, and handcuffed his left wrist to mine.

His eyes shot wide.

“Sickening feeling, isn’t it?” I chuckled out a sinister laugh. “Knowing you’re handcuffed to some crazy prick?”

While the guards struggled to get to their feet and the entire cellblock erupted in cheers, I pulled down on the handcuff, swept his legs out from underneath him, and fell to the floor beside him.

I forced him onto his stomach, twisted his right arm behind his back, and pulled against it until he writhed in agony. While he cried out in pain, I raised myself to my feet, lifting his left arm with me as I stood. The unmistakable popping sound of the joint breaking was my cue to release it.

In twelve hours I was scheduled to be released. Over a chocolate chip cookie, I added no less than six months to my sentence. As far as I was concerned, it wasn’t about sitting in prison or being free. It was about right and wrong. Most would argue my logic, but they weren’t me.

I was unique, there was no doubt about it.

I came into the world early, and was planning on leaving late. Everything that filled the time between my arrival and departure was either an opportunity for me to learn a lesson or teach one.

I glanced at the two fallen guards, shifted my eyes to the whining bitch of a cookie thief, and then looked around the cellblock. Maybe the next idiot who was challenged to steal a cookie from a former Marine turned inmate would think twice before he attempted it.

I pressed my boot against the broken arm of the cookie thief. As he winced in pain, I pressed my heel into his flesh even more. “Name’s Fisher Knox,” I seethed. “And don’t you ever fucking forget it!”