Page 110 of Freshman

He hadn’t thought of that in the holding cell.

Alfie ducked his head at the flashing lights of the press and stared at the heels of the man leading him out.

He barely registered the reporters when he’d gone in hours before, numb to the singe of camera flashes and the swirling barrage of noise.

On the way out, the constant piercing light irritated his raw red eyes, and the shouts from the journalists were a fierce wind flicking up the sea.

They were angry, and as he stood there, he realised they reminded him of a storm.

The crash and the flash assaulted his senses.

It was a storm of his own making, and it wanted to punish him, shipwreck him and never allow him to surface again.

He already felt like he’d drowned.

A prison escort officer opened the door of the van and beckoned Alfie inside. He stepped up, turned around and settled on the seat inside a small cubicle.

Then the door was slammed to conceal him.

He was spared the skull-splinting white light from the cameras, but he could still hear the roar and pulse of the angry public.

The van vibrated into life, and they pulled slowly away from the court.

Fists struck the side of the vehicle, people were rocking it, and Alfie heard the curses from the officers onboard.

He stared down at his cuffed hands, then closed his eyes. The slaps and shouts faded. The van bounced and swayed as it began its journey to the prison. Although Larkwood was the closest to both his home address and the court, they’d opted to send him to one farther away. He didn’t want to see his colleagues’ looks of disappointment and disgust, and the judge was unconvinced they would treat him the same as everyone else.

Blackhall was where he was heading, a long drive across the country to drag out the inevitable. He closed his eyes, tried to zone out.

It felt like hours passed.

The van took a turn, and Alfie’s shoulder hit one side of the cubicle, then the other side. He was tossed around in the small space, gritting his teeth as pain flared in both of his shoulders.

A screw who slept with a prisoner. He wasn’t going to get out of the prison system unscarred, mentally by the prison officers and physically by the prisoners.

The van hit a bump, and Alfie’s arse jumped off the seat. He grimaced at the dull throb of pain at his hip and scrunched his eyes tighter. Suddenly, his shoulder and hip both struck the side of the cabin and knocked the air from his chest. He grunted and opened his eyes once he realised the van had stopped.

It didn’t seem like a long enough journey, and he listened intently to the noises outside the van. There was shouting and thumps to the van, slams of doors, and then suddenly the one in front of him was wrenched open. A masked figure reached inside, and he resisted as much as he could, but his cuffed hands were grabbed and pulled. The only parts visible on the figure were his dark-brown eyes and his tattooed hands.

He was a man; Alfie could tell by his size and his roughened hands.

“What…what are you doing?” Alfie yelped.

The man dragged him from the van and hurried him across the road. Alfie tripped but managed to stay on his feet.

“Inside,” the man said, flicking his chin out at the trunk of a car.

Alfie shook his head and looked left and right up the road, but there were no cars about, other than the one he was shoved towards. The man struck the trunk with his fist, and Alfie turned back to him with wide eyes.

“I’m not getting in there.”

He tried to pull free, scrapped his heels on the road in his desire to escape, but the man was strong and yanked painfully on his cuffs. The trunk of the car popped open, and he was bundled inside.

Alfie tried to get back out, but the lid came down fast and he had to duck to avoid it.

“Who are you?”

There was no answer.

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