That day it wasn't my fault, the bastard gringo called my wife a bitch, I was pissed off.
I ended up in jail, they gave me 10 years for allegedly attempted murder.
My brother died a few days later and left me his money. Mara wanted to take me out of jail with it, but I told her that she should leave with Jessy, our little girl, to live with her grandmother. If I got out anyway, we wouldn't have anything to eat.
But I fucked up… and badly, I don't even remember what it was all about, but I ended up fighting with other inmates, several of them ended up dead, those of us who barely lived were told that we would never get out of jail. I had behaved well, I didn't get in trouble, that time was not my fault either, but in my country prisons are corrupted.
I didn't dare to tell my wife what happened, I was afraid I would never see them again.
When I first saw that man, I thought he was a doctor, then I and several other prisoners were transferred from prison. They didn't even let me tell my Mara. I didn't know where the new prison was and they didn't want to tell us, but they did tell us that we would only have to spend a month there and they would let us out. I couldn't stand the happiness, I told myself that I had to behave well so they wouldn't fuck me over.
That prison is the strangest thing I've ever seen in my fucking life.
At first I thought they had taken us to an asylum, due to the bright white walls and the many doctors in lab coats that were seen most of the time. I thought they would incarcerate me in a padded cell, but they made me sleep in a small room without windows, or rather there were no windows in the entire prison. But I didn't get upset; I just wanted to get out and see my daughter.
There were a lot of jailors everywhere, and whenever we went out in groups with the doctors they would surround us, so we wouldn't try to escape. I thought they were taking us to do cleaning or to take care of patients, but there were no ill people anywhere, they just made us do a lot of stupid things: approach this thing, touch it like this, walk down this corridor and don't stop until we tell you to do so. Things like that, and then they would ask us a lot of questions. They always looked at me funny when I answered them, I tried not to tell them lies, but sometimes they would ask me to do the same things again, and then I would make up some bullshit and they would leave me alone.
Sometimes we didn't sleep, or we did the same things in the same place for several days. I saw how some of my mates stopped joining our group, but I didn't know why, the doctors wouldn't tell us. I only thought about my Mara and Jessy, they wouldn't let me see them, but I just had to wait a few more weeks.
When the month was over, there were less than half the group I started with. They wouldn't let me leave, they took me and my original group to a room and blew gas in our faces, and then they returned us to our rooms, as if nothing had happened.
I was upset, but I was trying to keep up my good behavior.
However, by the time I realized it, I had been here for almost 3 months and they wouldn't let me leave. I didn't know anything about my wife and they wouldn't tell me why they kept me here. The worst thing was that the few in my group were acting like idiots every month, pretending that they would let us leave in a month. I was sick of listening to their lies.
But things got worse, they were bringing us to meet strange people, and monsters that sometimes looked like people. It was difficult to survive, the questions got worse, I felt they wanted to kill us so they wouldn't let us out.
One afternoon, while we were eating, an alarm went off and a voice started talking all over the place saying something about one of those things. I guess it had escaped and was dangerous. Instead of letting us go to our quarters they took us to a storage room where there were many corridors, and gave us some guns. I guessed they wanted us as bait. One of my mates told me "there was only one week to go". I didn't understand why he said that, he and I had been in that prison for more than 4 months. I don't think he remembered.
We saw a huge crocodile, bigger than a bus, running towards us. We started shooting at it, it seemed injured, but it kept running towards us and I could hear it screaming with a human voice, all the while killing everyone. I had never felt so much fear as when I saw it open its snout towards me, as I prayed as much as I could and thought that I didn't want to die. That thing swallowed me in one bite.
When I woke up I couldn't see well, but I heard them screaming like crazy. There were a lot of soldiers pointing at me and the crocodile was lying on the floor, writhing, but alive. I thought the soldiers were going to get me out of there now that they had killed the crocodile. I couldn't get up, I only felt them move me among several of them, without stopping to point at me, and they locked me in this room. Here, where I have been for almost 2 years now.
They try to talk to me, but I don't listen to them. I know they won't let me leave, I fucked it up again.
But I can see all of them, everywhere, they say a lot of shit about me, they keep calling me by a number, but not the same as when they used to allow me to go out in the hallways. I've learned to see outside, and I've finally been able to see my Mara and my Jessy, they don't see me, they don't hear me, but I know they're okay.
It has never bothered me to be called "mexican" even though I'm not, nor to be called "blackie" or " shortie", nicknames have never bothered me, but it pisses me off… I hate to hear it… it makes me mad that they think I'm a freak. I'll try to escape, I know I can do it now. I'll go away with my family and no one will ever call me green again.1