He sat uncomfortably on his hip-wide bruise, perched on a stainless steel bench, staring at the cheap foam sandals on his feet. The feet were blistered, dirt caked, and bloody from his attempts to flee. The air in the cell was cold and he shivered from being soaked with river water. He looked at the red scrapes, multicolored bruises, and crimson gashes on his hands, arms, and legs while imagining what the ones he felt on his face looked like.

Drunks slept and snored all around him while the other prisoners who had been jailed for more serious crimes sat and brooded. One of the prisoners muttered to himself constantly through swollen and bloody lips beneath a purple eye socket. A vagrant urinated on himself during his whiskey dreams and caused the men next to him to curse and scatter.

He smelled the burnt powder stink on his right hand. The cinder block walls, thick shatterproof windows, and perpetually locked doors would be his home from now until the end of his life by way of needle thanks to that odor.