Page 1 of Butterfly

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Theboominglaughs,theclick of pool balls, the scrape of chair legs, the clunk and clank of each gate that was opened and closed on his long trudge back to the wing warped in Ollie’s ears.

Voices murmured in his direction, but he spared them no thought. He had tunnel vision on his cell door.

His nose twitched as the smells of the place hit him. The smoke, the stale body odour that lingered, the kitchen cooking the next bland meal, and the overpowering blast of deodorant as men walked by.

This place, with its gunmetal grey skeleton, white walls and silver cell doors, was Ollie’s home.

For over eight years, it would be his home.

A prison.

He’d known that when he’d first walked inside nine months before, but something had changed.

Something had made his time behind bars seem endless.

It had made the place feel smaller and more claustrophobic than ever.

The inmates flittered around, buzzing with excitement, retelling a fight that had happened a few hours prior.

Sebastian and Pauly had come to blows.

Ollie hadn’t been in the wing at the time, but he was ordered out of the gym and back to his cell when the bell started to ring. The prison had been put into lockdown, but it only lasted an hour before the wing was open for business again.

That was when he’d been taken aside by a prison officer and escorted to the governor’s office.

That was when everything had changed.

With a heavy heart and a stumble in his step, Ollie pushed open his cell door.

Teddy, his cellmate, wasn’t inside. No doubt he had returned to the gym during their sacred moments of afternoon association. Teddy liked to keep in shape. He was lean, well defined, and primed for a fight whenever he felt the need to start one.

Ollie didn’t like the fights.

The dull smack of skin meeting skin reminded him of his father, of his fists, and his boot digging into Ollie’s ribs. The smell and taste of blood couldn’t be scrubbed from his memories, and the helpless feeling afterwards still lingered despite the action Ollie took against his tormentor.

Ollie didn’t go looking for Teddy. Instead, he heaved himself onto the top bunk and lay there, trying and failing to wrap his head around what had just happened.

He couldn’t, though.

What happened in the governor’s office had turned his whole prison experience on its head.

The cell felt smaller than it had that morning.

It felt colder andhardertoo.

They didn’t have much in their cell.

A bunk bed where Ollie slept on the top, a chest of drawers, a closet and a small desk.

He only had to pass the units for them to wobble and threaten to collapse.

There were pieces of paper tacked to the wall, and beneath Ollie, against the wall, there were his drawings of butterflies and fields that Teddy looked at for hours.

The tap dripped, the toilet gurgled, and a crack beneath the window howled on the windiest days.

Eight years.

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