The Deafening Silence of Solitary Confinement

He walked down the long hallway in front of the guards escorting him to solitary confinement. The clicking of the guards' boots as they met with the tile floor echoed in the silence, the only sound he heard.

He looked at the locked doors lining the hallway on each side. Wonder if there's other people behind those, he thought. Really no way to tell because the doors had no windows, and except for those small slits which were covered, the doors were just another part of the wall.

"Here, get in here," said the guard as he swung open the massive door and pointed. Looking in, the man hesitated a second only to feel the thrust from the muscled arm of the guard pushing him inside. "Enjoy your stay, troublemaker," the guard said and laughed as he slammed the door shut.

He looked around trying to focus on the inside of the small dark room. Glancing up, he noticed the metal grid letting in the small amount of light filling the room. As his eyes adjusted, he saw a cot on one side of the room, and sitting on the other side was a metal toilet and tiny sink. How would he ever survive this for an entire week?

The fight had started over nothing really, but inside these prison walls, everything was something. Somebody wanting something you had was just an intimidating tactic, and he had learned early that once you allowed yourself to be pushed around, life would be miserable. He had seen it too often. The young punk had arrived a few days before and was trying to impress some of the tougher guys in the joint. Unfortunately, inside, the guards didn't care why a fight started. They were in charge of making an impression on the participants.

He lay down on the cot. The quiet was deafening. He noticed a slight buzzing in his ears, probably because it was the only sound around.

As the darkness settled in for the night, the man lay there thinking. One of the worst things about solitary confinement was the time to think, something someone in his position didn't like much. He begged for sleep to overtake him so the thinking would stop. No good could come from his brain going over the present, and the past was even worse.

When the judge had sentenced him to five years in this place, the man had sneered at him. He wasn't afraid. In fact, he wasn't afraid of anything. He'd do that standing on his head. That had been just a year ago, and already he felt like he'd been locked up for the entire five years. No, he wasn't afraid of anything he could touch, but he wasn't so sure anymore about himself. Maybe there's a part of ourselves we should fear.

And now, in the quiet and dark, that part of him he feared the most began to assault him. How had he let himself get to this place? He had let everyone down, his family and friends. He shouldn't be in this place. "Please, sleep, take me now so I don't have to think anymore," he whispered.

He thought about the last time his mother had visited him where they had to sit across from each other while guards watched their every move. He could tell his mother had wanted to reach over and hold his hand, but that was not permitted. He had been warned beforehand that no contact was a rule that would end their visit immediately. That look of sadness in his mother's eyes was almost more than he could bear as he lay in the darkness.

Maybe exhaustion would kick in sooner or later. Then, maybe he could find a little peace. He hated this. He longed for some of the sounds he usually heard at night, guards walking the hallways with their keys clinking as they hung off their belts and bounced against their leg. As hard as he listened, he only heard silence. He thought to himself, I never knew silence could be so loud.