There's Been A Mistake

    The clock read 1:48 AM as I heard a storm of people bust through my front door. Not just my sight, but my hearing felt blurry too. Sounds were muffled as my bedroom door slammed open and suddenly my body was being rolled out from under my blankets. As they unglued me from my bed, all I could see were tall, large men dressed in dark colors, but my puffy eyes could not make out any faces. I, a dainty little girl, was being roughly thrown from my house by these unknown people as a click of handcuffs rang out, signaling my restrainment. We exited the front door and all I could see were bright lights shining through my squinted eyes. I heard a car door open when a large hand pushed my arm, directing me to get in. And there I sat on the leather seats of a car owned by someone I did not know with my hands restrained behind my back. The outside air was brisk but the car was warm allowing me to fall back into my sleep though I tried to fight it away. 

I felt the car come to a hard stop. My eyes cracked open. Confusion ran through my head as my body started to wake up until I remembered what had happened a few hours earlier. It was still dark, but my eyes were slowly adjusting to the street light. I could hear the sounds of a quiet conversation and waves crashing. Where was I? No one else was in the car with me as I investigated further into my location. As I stared out the window to my left, the door on my right was harshly pulled open. A strong gust of wind flew into my face as a hand grabbed my arm. I heard a deep voice order me to get out of the car and I did as told. When I stepped out, the cold concrete ground forced me to shiver as I realized I hadn’t even had shoes on. 

I stood there still not recognizing any voices or faces. But I did hear a voice shyly say “San Fransisco” as I listened to the conversation happening at the front of the car. SAN FRANSISCO?! These mysterious strangers had brought me from my town of Redding over three hours to San Fransisco. But why? When the conversation ended more pushing and shoving came. This time I was being forced onto some sort of large boat. I was placed in a space underneath the top deck. Hollering occurred and I felt the boat take off from the dock. I sat by myself in almost complete darkness; I sat with just me and my thoughts. Where was I going? Who were these people? What did I do? Why me? Theories ran through my head as I questioned my every move. 

The boat came to a jarring halt and my body jerked forward a bit before hearing a door creak open. Yet another deep voice commanding me to get up. With the little strength I had, I lifted myself up off the cold floor of that boat and walked towards that man. I had asked these men what was happening several times but I never got a response. This man’s answer was no different from the rest. They led me off the boat before I took a step onto cold concrete yet again. The sky was still dark making things hard to see, but all I could make out was some large, intimidating looking building and water surrounding us completely

I was brought inside, my hands still restricted behind my back with only the clothes on my body. When they had finally undone the cuffs, red marks around both of my wrists had shown how much I really was struggling. Not only with trying to break free, but also trying to make out what the hell was going on. As they shoved me along, finally entering the building, everything started clicking. The sight of steel bars, guards, and many intimidating people unraveled my thoughts finally making me understand that I was in a prison. Not only a prison but the highest security prison in the United States: Alcatraz.

My heart pounded even faster now that I knew where I was. I scrambled through my words and thoughts trying to form some kind of real sentence. Yelling words in an attempt to figure out why I, an unknown girl from a town three hours away, was being put in a high-security prison. They have to have the wrong person, right? Wrong. I found this out when they had checked me in. I was held to the side, being physically restrained by one of the men while another talked to the lady who I assumed was in charge of the process of entering this place. I heard both of them blurt out my name, and my heart immediately dropped. They had woken up the correct person out of bed. They had shoved me all the way here because they needed me in Alcatraz. None of this made sense.

After I was “checked-in”, a different man came out from around the corner of one of many solid white walls and grabbed me from the other. Why did they all have to be so rough with me? I was not putting up much of a fight, seeing the situation I was in. The only “fighting” I did was the raucous I was making with my incoherent sentences trying to make something out of what was occurring. What was happening? Did I really do something that wrong? Was this all some kind of sick joke? Maybe a very realistic dream. As various questions spilled from my mouth, I received zero answers except for maybe a mumble or two from this new guy. 

We were weaving through many hallways, and then the man still holding my hands behind my back brought me into one of the several rooms. It was a pretty small square room, with a wall full of cabinets on one side of it. He sat me down in a chair, trusting me that I was not going to do something. His loud footsteps traced across the floor before making it to those many cabinets. Opening the upper one furthest to the left, he tossed me a long blue button-up and pants to go with it. I was also given a pair of socks and shoes, as I did not have any with me throughout any of this. The man left the room so that I may change, the only bit of courtesy I had seen in the past four hours. 

After changing I sat back down in my chair, giving me a minute to think through all of this. My mind raced. What had I done to be brought here? I put my hands in my head and tears fell. My clammy palms catching all of my feelings that sprang from the corners of my eyes. The quiet sobbing sounded through the small room and the officer or guard or whatever he was had twisted the knob, signaling to me that I needed to dry my damp cheeks. He motioned for me to walk out in front of him, my eyes now red and puffy. 

The man brought me to a long hallway, filled with hundreds of steel bars. Walking past all of the cells I made eye contact with so many of these dangerous criminals and hearing their thoughts wondering the same thing I was; why was innocent little me here? He brought me to a door at the end of the cages holding those rambunctious animals. Scrambling through his ring of keys, he found the right one and unlocked the heavy door in front of us. It slowly opened until it hit the wall beside it. I stepped in. In the room, another hallway of cages stood in front of me intimidating me. Though it was smaller, it felt even larger than the one we came from. What made these cells differ from the others, were the fact that every single one of them was empty. The man opened the first one on the left and shoved me in.

I sat on my new uncomfortable bed set across from the sink and toilet. I was alone now. The guard had left and I was all alone in this hallway of cages as there were no other women at Alcatraz. I could feel the loneliness creeping into my body. Days passed. As I started to get used to my new routine, I slipped into my new normal. Weeks passed. I stopped asking questions, I never got any answers. I made a few friends with some of the male prisoners. Months passed. Our food isn’t horrible, but it is definitely not was I was used to. Years passed. I’ve now sat here for years, not knowing why, but knowing I’m eternally stuck on this island

~S. Weenie