Malice Aforethought

The noise of the place is surprising. It's two in the morning, but a scream echoes off concrete walls and mirror-polished floors. Laughter, whispers, and passionate grunts and breathing spill into the hallway.

Someone who looks like me stretches on a thin mattress, hands resting behind his head as he stares into nothing, waiting for sleep that slips by, uncaught, elusive, dreaded.

Steel bars stand sentinel against a life spent in a shotgun’s flash.

He is the me that almost was.

I alone know how close I came to the cage, and how close another man was to the grave.