Flash Fiction: Cut Short

Cut Short

It had been years since they last saw civilisation, having been locked up behind bars for 10 years for a crime they did not even commit.  It had been a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yes, for both of them. Sounds a bit strange doesn’t it, that two people could just happen to be in a bank when it was being robbed. Not that strange really, I suppose when you think about, many people are in banks to cash money etc. However, the being in the wrong place at the wrong time defence did not really hold up for these two men – since they were apparently in the wrong place at the wrong time wearing balaclavas and holding guns! But still they claim innocence and say they were setup!

The jury and the judge of course did not believe them, so they got sent down for fifteen years for committing a crime and obstructing the course of justice!  But now after good behaviour, they were being let out five years early. How lucky they were!

Lucky, would not be the word they would use at this moment. They were only 18 when they entered prison and had become men inside.  The things they saw or experienced is not what normal 18 year olds would want to go through. They went in innocent but confused young men but left hardened and yet scared men.

After so many years away how would they fit back into life? It was not going to be easy. Everything was different, people had changed, friends and family walked away from them. They were going to have to forge a new life for themselves, they just couldn’t go out and slot back into the one that they had when they were 18. No, life had continued on without them.

They knew it would be a hard slog to fit back in again and trying to make friends and restore old relationships. But they had each other. They decided if they managed to cope inside and stay alive then they would manage living out in the real world. They had each other, and as they discovered this was all they needed. They had told themselves that being out in the real world would be better than life was inside. No more bullying or people out to get them!

No one was at the prison to pick them up, they were left to make their own way home, wherever home now was. They had nowhere to go. But they had each other.  They walked over to the bus stop and waited for a bus, any bus would do, any bus that would take them away from the hell hole they had just left.

However what they didn’t realise, was that at the bus stop, their lives were about to change forever and not in a way that they had expected.  Five guys on Harley’s motorbikes wearing cuts drove past them filling the two men with bullets from their guns. 

The two men were out of prison at last, they were embarking on their new life outside.  But their new found freedom did not last very long – their lives were stolen in revenge for the crime they apparently did not commit!