Are we ever safe?

I found myself in a prison cell with five other women. They looked so hard I thought I would never last through the night alive. They all stared at me as if I was a gourmet dinner for one and they were not willing to share.

The lights had dimmed since I arrived; the long night was just beginning.

A guard with his belly hanging over his belt wandered down the narrow aisle, a smirk on his face, softly whistling between his teeth. He stopped to crack a joke at the blonde-haired women who must have weighed over two hundred pounds and was at least six feet tall. She smiled at the guard; her two front teeth were missing. She scowled over in my direction.

Another dark haired man-women, I was not sure which, started to sing in a deep voice, a love song I remembered Tom Jones singing years ago.

Two of the skinny women swayed to their imagined beat. I could tell they where high on something. The fifth women, who had a scar running down her face from her eye to her chin, said nothing, just watched me from the corner of the room, rolling her eyes towards me. She inched over in my direction clucking her tongue and clenching her hands in frightening tight fists.

I would not be sleeping to-night, wondering when my lawyer would arrive. This was one huge mistake. I had not done anything wrong. I was told everyone says the same thing when arriving in this god-awful place.

Chanting, screams and crying were everywhere through the halls, the echoing sound of metal doors clanked as I could hear that food was coming. Catcalls howled about the slop that was being delivered. I could feel my fear and started to shake. The huge toothless Amazon moved closer and put her hand over my mouth.

The scream was coming from me as I awoke, not from a dream but a nightmare.