Prison Escape

Today, I escape from prison.

It is a dream, one I have to claw and smile and swallow my way out of. It is a dream with beep…beep…beep…and paperwork and cloth robes and bleached walls.

There are bars on the beds and they hide the sun, protecting us from nature with thick walls and windows that cannot open. The smell of chlorine burrows its way inside, first covering my arms and legs, then coming in through long streams of tainted breath, making a nest in my worn-out lungs.

In this prison, ladies wear white clothes and white shoes that match their white skin. The whites of their eyes shine down on me like evil dogs that fail to mask contempt. They hand me long white pills between polished nails, urging me on with pained white smiles. “Swallow- it’s good for you.” I watch their nodding heads, their obsessive trust in this medicine.

I lay in bed later, the effects of that long white pill making me shudder. I am cold. I am hot. I am sick. I am cold. I am hot. I am sick. It is a dream of beep…beep…beep…and paperwork and cloth robes and bleached walls.

Men walk the halls with big egos and white coats and little pens that click closed with authority. They know what’s best and urge me on though white teeth and hard eyes, “here’s another pill- now swallow.”

There are carts with airplane food served with more false smiles and plastic spoons. The smell overcomes me, reminding me of death and old soil and chemicals.

Each room in prison has an old lady that moans all night. She’s there just to keep me awake. Just as I doze off I hear her ragged breath, just as I drift into dreams the vampire comes around to take more blood. He reaches through the bars of my bed, searching for my arm, laughing when he sees my eyes, “no, one gallon was not enough.”

As I slip once again into a place beyond the bleached white, they put a band around my arm. Pump, pump, squeeze. Just another test, but they don’t want me better. They deprive me of food, sleep, and air. They hold back laughter and humor, looking at me in disgust when I say I have to get home to water my Farmtown Facebook crops. “They’re dying” I say. I see their eyes of cold hard black. There is death in their white robes and white eyes, death in their painted white smiles. Is this where I’ll die?

They already made me sign the paperwork just in case and it must be their plan. Their pills, their tests, their bars and old food.

They attach a dozen cords to my body with sticky tape. The plastic tentacles hold me back, the tape latches to my skin. They gave me a gown that I can’t walk in, so I stay in bed. I hear the wheels of the food cart and squeaky steps in the bleached hall.

The lady in the next bed moans. The machinery she’s attached to beeps and beeps and beeps. No one comes. I try to find some fresh air, I seek out the breeze but it’s all sealed, zombies sit at every corner.

“Are you OK?” they ask. I smile and say yes, holding back the tides of black anger that want to wash their white world away. If I was OK I wouldn’t be here. I would be sitting in the fresh air, dozing without the beeping sounds of machinery and the vampire and the rotting food.

To escape from prison I have to do everything they say. I swallow, I eat, I watch the election results on TV though a smile of white teeth. As I try to walk out the door they hold back one leg with excuses and paper work and pills. More drugs, more bullshit as the door swings shut.

It is a dream with beep…beep…beep…and paperwork and cloth robes and bleached walls. Today I escape.