Three hours

“Three hours,” said the guard. “Three more hours until you get the chair you piece of shit.” He was looking at me with eyes that said he was serious about the law. I glanced at my book. Page 236—I had only read five pages in the last half hour. Clearly something was on my mind.

“Can you just give me a second please? I’m almost done with this chapter.”

“You’re a sick fuck,” came his reply. I didn’t take this guard for much of a reader. Sighing, I placed my book on the brick next to my bed. I was growing weary of these interruptions.

Let me back up a little. See, when I first arrived here, I had certain expectations. It’s not that I thought I would read every book on earth, but I wanted to at least try. What was the point of being here if I wasn’t going to use my time productively?

In the next cell I could hear the gentle sobbing that usually accompanies a letter from home. I could feel my pulse quickening as beads of sweat began to roll down my face and into my ears. That guy probably read his letter in record time.

“Three hours you piece of shit,” reiterated the guard. Like I needed a reminder. At my fastest I could read maybe forty pages an hour, which meant that I could definitely get through the final hundred pages of this book, but only if the guard stopped hounding me.

“You’re a fucking monster, you know that? How can you even live with yourself after what you’ve done?”

Jesus, I thought. At this rate I won’t even make it to the epilogue.