This dark chapter of my life lasted nine days in Hexll County Jail. The echoes of my name, the cold shackles, and watchful eyes of unseen forces became the rhythm of my existence. Each moment, a blend of the mundane and the profound, etched a story of survival and resilience against an unyielding system.

Nine days. It sounds brief now. But time doesn’t move the same way there. Each minute stretches like taffy, warped by fear and isolation.

"ALEX MIDAS!" The call of my name pierced the heavy silence, shattering the illusion of rest. There, in the oppressive embrace of the "natural holding cell," I lay coiled on the unforgiving floor, captive in a waking nightmare.

In a procession shadowed by uncertainty, I leaned toward the silhouette before me, the faint outline of hope. "Are we being released?" I ventured, my voice a fragile echo against the stark walls.

"I don’t think so," he returned, his words falling like stones into the pit of my stomach.

We were then taken to the elevators. Down we went, still bound with razor-sharp cuffs that cut into my skin. The descent felt unnaturally long, as if we were sinking deeper than the building's actual depth. The temperature dropped with each floor. In the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of movement in the elevator’s polished walls. It was a shadow that didn’t match any of our reflections.

The march continued, a few hundred feet to another elevator, this time ascending. "We’re in the main jail," someone whispered, a ghostly murmur in the dim light. "Turn around, face the wall, and pick up your leg," the guard commanded, devoid of warmth. Finally, the shackles were removed. "We must be going home," I thought.

But we were not going home. Instead, we sat and waited as inmates walked into a room and emerged dressed in jail uniforms. The transformation from citizen to inmate occurred with mechanical precision, but the true metamorphosis was happening inside my mind. Behind my eyes, neural pathways were changing. Stress and fear were rewriting my brain.

Each step stripped away another layer of my identity. Civilian clothes were exchanged for institutional uniforms. Personal effects were reduced to a mesh bag containing the bare necessities of confined existence—blankets, boxers, socks, a white sheet, and the absurdity of a red plastic cup and spork.

But it was the invisible things they took that weighed heaviest: dignity, autonomy, the illusion of control. Like everyone else in Hexll County Jail, I was learning the first rule of survival: hypervigilance becomes your new normal.

By the fourth day, with no connection to the outside world, my existence was suspended in a void of uncertainty. I constantly scanned for threats, tracked movements in my peripheral vision, and analyzed every sound for potential danger. My thoughts churned endlessly, trying to anchor myself in this disorienting reality.

The "experts" call this "institutionalization," but at that moment, it felt like my mind was constructing armor against the unknown.

The sixth floor became our temporary sanctuary. Scattered mats offered the illusion of rest. Through the window, patches of brown grass and sporadic green created a mosaic of the forbidden world beyond—a tableau of freedom that seemed to mock our containment.

As sleep's heavy hand descended, the abrupt extinguishing of light was a curtain call on consciousness, only to be cruelly lifted by the sharp bark of command. "Everyone on your feet!" Tobias Williams, the Jail Administrator, cut through the fog of fatigue. He was short and portly. His large forearms made his arms appear shorter than they were. A shiny red nose and bushy eyebrows dominated his face, and he looked to be in his mid-70s.

Something about him seemed fundamentally wrong. His movements were too precise, almost mechanical. Though he appeared elderly, his eyes held the sharp, predatory focus of something ancient, angry, and hungry. When he passed close to me, the air grew noticeably colder, and the fluorescent lights flickered moderately.

He paced back and forth like General Patton, sizing up his battalion. Each measured step was a display of control, a silent assertion of dominance. After a few minutes, he finally spoke, “Gentlemen, I am Tobias D. Williams, Hexll County Jail Administrator. It is my job to ensure the jail runs smoothly and that you have all you need to make your stay here as safe as possible.”

His words felt wrong in my mouth, like spoiled meat. The more he spoke about making our stay "safe," the more I understood we were anything but.

His voice dripped with oily sincerity that failed to mask the iron beneath. He continued, “The delays we are having are unusual; the new data entry system has been a steep learning curve for the young ladies who input your information. Rest assured, the next time you end up here, the issues will be dealt with.”

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Did this mother effer just say "the next time we end up here"? Does he know something we don't? Was he counting on the revolving door of a system designed to punish rather than rehabilitate? Or was there something more sinister in his certainty?

The thought clawed at my consciousness, a bitter seed planted in the barrenness of captivity. When Tobias Williams appeared, something primal in my brain recognized a predator. His eyes triggered an instinctual fear. He moved with military precision, but beneath his elderly facade lurked something far more sinister; it smelled of rot.

The whispers grew louder, recounting the night darkness claimed Tobias D. Williams. His transformation began on a moonless night in 1949, though the seeds of his damnation were planted long before. In an era when America's fault lines ran deep—when drinking fountains bore signs of segregation and certain doors remained forever closed to those of darker complexions—Williams had carved himself a kingdom of cruel authority along the state highways and Farm to Market Roads of what locals reverently called "God's Country."

That night, his patrol car crept along the endless asphalt. The headlights cut through the darkness like predatory eyes. Near the railroad crossing, they illuminated a lone figure: a Mexican laborer heading home after a long day in the fields. The sight ignited something primitive in Williams, a twisted pleasure familiar to those who knew his reputation for targeting the defenseless.

His service weapon gleamed as he forced the worker to his knees, barking commands that echoed across the empty landscape. Williams savored these moments—they were his theater, his proof of power. But this night, the script took an unexpected turn.

They emerged like specters from the darkness: fifteen men from the nearby community, their impromptu weapons—shovel handles, fence posts, and loose bricks—gripped with years of pent-up fury. "No te muevas," their leader commanded, his voice heavy with unspoken grievances. For the first time, Williams tasted true fear, his authority dissolving like sugar in rain.

As he turned to flee, the mob's retribution found its mark. His screams pierced the night but were cut short by an unnatural silence. The temperature plummeted, frost crystallizing on the grass despite the summer heat. A presence manifested—darker than the surrounding night, more substantial than shadow—and pulled Williams from his assailants' grasp.

In his desperate relief, Williams dropped to his knees in prayer, thanking divine providence for his salvation. The response came not from above but from everywhere at once, a voice like grinding granite that made his bones ache: "The Lord? No, Tobias. Your salvation comes from far beneath His kingdom."

The words slithered through his mind: "Your soul now belongs to the shadows, to Lucifer himself. Time—all the time you desire—can be yours. But from this moment until the end of days, you serve a new master."

And so, Tobias D. Williams began his long watch. Whether this was damnation or rebirth remained to be seen.

Those visions... they became more frequent. More vivid. How was I seeing things that happened decades before I was born? And why did they feel more real than my own memories?

Dinner arrived with clockwork cruelty—the infamous "Johnnie," a bologna sandwich that seemed to transcend time and space. I used to think time was fixed, immutable. But there, it bent and warped like a funhouse mirror. The only constant was that damned sandwich, marking time like some twisted hourglass.

Each "Johnnie" sandwich marked another meal, another day lost to this timeless void. Time distortion, they’d later tell me, was a common symptom of incarceration trauma.

I stole another glance out the window, pondering the uncertainties about freedom and longing for familiar comforts like my pet dogs, left behind during my arrest. They were taken to the Hexll County Animal Shelter. My chest ached thinking about them. I wasn't just separated from my freedom—I was cut off from everything that made me human, even the simple comfort of knowing if my pets were safe.

I expected to make bail within hours, yet I was now on the fourth day since my incarceration. The uncertainty of their fate gnawed at me, adding another layer of dread. I couldn't even make a phone call to let someone know where they were. The thoughts spun endlessly, a blend of fear and frustration.

Alone in my thoughts, I lay down on the mat to get a good night's sleep when the door once again opened.

The night brought new souls to our shared purgatory, sixteen more stories added to this chronicle of confinement. A familiar face leaned in close, his eyes wide with genuine terror. "They are watching. They are always watching," he whispered, his breath visible in the suddenly cold air. Before I could ask who 'they' were, his eyes darted to something behind me, something I couldn't see. He retreated into the shadows of the cell, leaving nothing but the lingering smell of rotting flesh.

"WELCOME TO THE HEXLL COUNTY JAIL!” The thundering sound of a door slamming followed, jolting us awake. It was the Jail Emergency Response Team. Apparently, our new quarters were their morning meeting place. They were sure to let us know they’d arrived.

Their morning ritual, performed with the casual cruelty of those who wielded power without responsibility, earned them their reputation: it takes a jerk to be a JERT.

There I initially overlooked something that was more unsettling. My nocturnal confidant had vanished. Had his presence been nothing more than a figment of my imagination, a specter born of sleep deprivation? Or was it something more?

How many days had I been sleeping? How many days have gone by? Had his warning been a product of my lack of sleep? Could it be something more? Or was it a harbinger of the supernatural veil beginning to lift around us?

Those thoughts were short-lived as I was to be on the move again. Someone handed me a laminated card that reminded me of a high school ID card. It displayed my photo, name, and my assigned inmate number. The final line indicated Unit 8D, Bed 2, where I would be housed in the general population.