We see a tall man cloaked in darkness running through the backstreets moving from trashcan to trashcan.
Red and blue light flood the alleyways illuminating the man for seconds at a time.
*WEEEE WOOOO*
The sound of police sirens blare through the silent night as the midnight moon shines overhead.
‘ARS, WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED PLEASE COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!’, a police officer with a megaphone shouts into the dark alleys.
The man freezes for a second with his eyes darting trying to think.
A woman wearing a short white dress clumsily through the backstreets holding a phone to her ear, ‘Yea I’m *hic* on my way back. He *hic* totally stood me up, but the bartender *hic* was nice enough to give me some free drinks.’
The man looks at the woman and smiles.
Three police officers slowly make their way down the alley with the police car on the street behind them.
The officers hold a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other that lights up the whole alley exposing a tall and strongly built man with nicely combed blonde hair holding the woman in the dress by the neck. He’s wearing sunglasses, skinny blue jeans, a plain black shirt with a denim jacket over it. (Editor’s Note: I know it’s nighttime, but sunglasses are always cool)
‘LET ME GO!!!! HELP!!!’ The woman screams and flails her arms and legs trying to escape his grasp.
‘Calm down, I need you for my safety and you need me for yours.’ The man’s voice is calm and smooth, in a different circumstance hearing his voice would put anyone at ease.
One police offer presses a button on his radio, ‘He has a hostage do not shoot.’
The second officer speaks up, ‘Ars, think about what you’re doing. Having a hostage only adds to your sentence, if you want to get off easier then let her go.’
Ars’ grip on the woman’s neck gets even tighter as he starts to panic, ‘I appreciate the offer big man, but I really like the idea of no jail. So let me go and this woman is as good as free.’
The woman’s eyes start to roll back as her neck closes up and, in an instant,
*BLARGHHH*
The woman throws up on Ars as he reactively drops her to the ground. She scurries off and cries running as far away from the situation as possible.
Ars throws his hands up in surrender, ‘You can’t blame me she almost got chunks on my “Lucci” jacket.’
The officers get closer still holding their pistols at Ars while one of them reads him his Miranda Rights (Editor’s Note: the Miranda Rights are phrases issued by the police to a suspected criminal that assures them their rights to remain silent and to an attorney stuff like that).
A handcuffed Ars is placed in the police car as it drives off.
Some time passes as we see Ars wearing a suit in a big courtroom.
The judge clears his throat, ‘With all the evidence coming to light I find you…. GUILTY.’
He hits the gavel on his desk.
Ars looks down with his eyes not conveying any emotion.
The crowd’s overall reactions looked pleased and relieved even though no words were exchanged.
More time passes as a prison bus drives past a sign that reads, ‘Metro City Prison’. Ars walks into a bare white room with speakers on the ceiling.
Ars looks at the floor to see a black jumpsuit folded in the middle of a room and a plastic bin right next to it.
A static voice comes through the speakers, ‘Please remove all clothing and items and put it in the bin. You may put on the prison uniform afterwards.’
He quietly complies as he takes off all his clothes and throws it in the bin, Ars starts flexing while completely naked looking straight at the security camera.
‘Sir please put on the uniform.’
Ars scoffs, ‘Just wanted to show off a bit.’
He picks up the black jumpsuit and sees the numbers “210” on the left side near the chest area.
As soon as he finishes putting the outfit on a door slides open revealing a guard wearing a fully black outfit with padded armor and a gun.
‘Prisoner 210 (They say it like: Two One Zero), follow me to your cell.’ The guard mutters in a low and rough voice.
Ars follows the guard out of the white room and out into the main prison which erupts with loud sound as you can hear everybody talking over everyone else.
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He looks up to see the floors and floors of cells that fill the building. Ars thinks to himself, ‘This prison is absolutely massive.’
The guard walks over to glass elevator doors and with a *ding* the doors open and the guard pushes Ars into the elevator. The guard pulls out a card from his pocket and scans it on an electronic box underneath all the elevator buttons and he presses the button labeled “4”.
Ars noticed that there are a total of ten buttons, and he assumes that means that there are ten floors in total, ‘Damn, I’m smart.’
Ars looks over to the guard, ‘You know for organizational purposes if I’m Prisoner 210 shouldn’t I be on the second floor?’
The guard stares forward and adjusts his hold on his gun without saying a word.
‘Alright I was just trying to help, don’t blame me if things get messy.’
*Ding*
The elevator slows down, and the doors open revealing a full floor of cells that look almost identical to the first floor.
The guard exits the elevator and turns left walking past several cells. As Ars walks by the prisoners in the cell stand up and get close to the bars looking at him with mean stares and glares.
‘Fresh meat, he looks a little green around the gills.’
‘Hey pretty boy, what’d you do, steal a pair of skinny jeans?’
The prisoners burst out laughing, slapping the bars, and stomping their feet.
The guard gets angry and yells, ‘SETTLE DOWN!’ with the prisoners going from a loud outburst to a quieter murmur.
Ars smiles and thinks to himself, ‘They are going to be annoying.’
After walking past three cells the guard starts to unlock the fourth cell, ‘This is your cell, breakfast, lunch, and dinner will be served at specific times and there are outdoor times. Your cellmate will let you know more specific things.’
‘Thank you, I’m glad the tax dollars I don’t pay are being used in such a good way.’ Ars walks into the cell as the guard closes and locks it behind him.
The cell is very baren with bunkbeds on the left side and a toilet in the far-right corner with a dirty sink that is directly across the beds. The grey paint on the walls is mostly peeled away exposing the concrete underneath.
There is a person sitting on the bottom bunk staring at the wall in front of him paying no attention to Ars who just entered.
Ars waves hesitantly at his new cellmate, ‘Hi, I’m Ars I guess we’ll be together for awhile so let’s get off on the right foot.’
He has dark blue hair, (Editor’s Note: The style of the hair is closest to Houtarou Oreki from Classic Literature Club… I had to look that up) he has black eyes with dark bags underneath his eyes as if he never gotten a good night sleep. His skin is very pale making it seem like he rarely goes outside, and his face looks young with a very skinny body.
He looks up at Ars and back at the wall without saying a word instead he just slowly nods not even looking at him.
Ars smiles nervously, ‘What is with this guy he looks a lot younger than me, but he gives off an aura of someone who’s done something horrible. I better get on his good side.’
‘So, what is your name?’ Ars tries to move the conversation forward.
The boy looks over again and slowly points to the number on his jumpsuit, “019”.
‘I see, we’re not on the first name basis yet. Prisoner 019? That’s a mouthful to say, is it alright if I just call you Zero?’
He nods and goes back to stare emptily at the wall again.
Starting to feel more comfortable Ars starts to joke, ‘Well I have some back issues so I’m going to need the bottom bed.’
Zero stands up and mutters, ‘Ok.’ His voice is soft and frail. He walks over to the ladder and climbs it as he sits down on the bed and stares into space.
A boy’s voice different from Zero’s rings in his head, ‘You can’t keep living like this.’
A siren blares throughout the whole prison as there is a voice repeating, ‘DINNER TIME, MAKE YOUR WAY TO THE CAFETERIA.’
The cell doors swing open as all the other prisoners shuffle their way to the cafeteria.
Every prisoner must make their way up the set of stairs to the tenth floor which the whole floor is just the cafeteria.
Zero climbs down the ladder and makes his way through the way to the staircase. A confused Ars follows him and sees that all prisoners are pushing and shoving.
When they got into the staircase there are guards on each level holding guns yelling at everyone to hurry up.
At the tenth floor everyone is handed a metal tray as soon as they enter. The serving line spanned for about fifteen feet with the most looking delicious food that anyone has ever seen.
As the prisoners move down the line they grab as much food as they could piling more and more on the metal trays.
‘What happened to the usual sh*t?’
‘We got gourmet food up in here.’
Zero blankly stares at the food and grabs just an apple and exits the line to walk to an isolated table.
Ars quickly pushed food onto his tray and follows Zero, he puts his tray on the table and sits across from Zero.
‘Just an apple? That’s not healthy, you have to have protein.’ Ars starts flexing.
A tall, heavy-set man with tattoos all over his body comes to the table and slams his hand on the table, ‘Look at who’s with the freak show. A pretty boy.’
Zero doesn’t flinch as he bites into his apple not paying the man any attention.
The tattooed man got furious and grabs Zero by the collar, ‘So you’re just going to ignore me? I got some friends on the fourth floor who will make your life a living hell.’
Zero stares at him with a deadpan expression without saying a single word.
Gritting his teeth, the tattooed man grabs Zero’s collar and raises his hand to smack him.
Ars stands up and grabs the man’s arm, ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’ Ars looks over to Zero and sees no hesitation or fear on his face, he then looks over to the guards spread out the cafeteria and notice all of them are purposefully avoiding eye contact with him and the situation.
Ars clears his throat, ‘Yea I wouldn’t do that, I have a couple friends from my… bank robberies and with some bribes it’ll be easy to really cause some problems.’ (He looks away from the man the whole time, he sucks at lying).
The tattooed man drops Zero and nods profusely, ‘Sorry.’
Ars stood there dumbfounded, ‘This man is surprisingly docile.’
A guard comes rushing in ignoring the whole previous exchange, ‘Prisoner 019, you have a visitor come with me.’
The guard roughly picks Zero up and tells him to follow him.
After a few minutes of walking Zero is guided into a grey room with a table and two chairs with one guard in each corner of the room. (It looks like an interrogation room)
‘There’s the person I wanted to see!’ A man with bright pink hair in a mohawk, thick glasses, and a bedazzled suit calls out to Zero.
Zero takes a seat looking at the man with his normal blank expression.
‘I know you don’t know me, but I’m a big fan of you.’ The man gives a giant smile, ‘Everyone thinks that once you get into prison your life is over.’
The man twirled his fingers, ‘Well that depends on the sentence, but life during and after prison is worth living.’
Zero’s eyes adjust as for just a moment his expression changes to that of interest.
The man claps, ‘Incarceration gives certain people the power to push through adversity and come out the other side stronger than ever. It’s amazing, it’s almost like a game.’
He unfolds a piece of paper and places it on the table, the paper reads “Game of Sin: Turn your struggles into strength.”
Zero reaches out and grabs the paper as the man’s voice in a deeper more sinister tone speaks,
‘AND I LOVE GAMES’