“We’re not cannibals.”

“I know you’re not a cannibal, and I know all your friends around here aren’t, either, but I really really really need you to do me a quick favor right now.”

“We’re not going to let you break the law.”

I laugh nervously.  “Who’s breaking the law?  I’m certainly not breaking the law.”

“Jailbreak is a felony.”

I eye the metal doorway, mere inches from my outstretched hand.  A dirty, striped man stands between me and this last hurdle, a disgraced man, and here he is trying to make a convict’s arrest.  “You know, when you put it that way, it’s no wonder that it sounds like a crime.  But I like to put it in the more precise terms of, I’m rescuing an innocent scapegoat from a terrible fate so would you please move from this doorway.”

“It’s my doorway.”

Exasperated, I’d like to scream, but loud noises may shock this dusty jailbird into making a brash, confused, and utterly crazy mistake that could get me landed here with him.  How he even came to be blocking this doorway, I have no idea--I’m fairly certain he appeared out of thin air just now.

“Let’s talk this through,” he says, still blocking my doorway.

“You know, I really would enjoy talking this through over a nice cup of coffee during visiting hours someday soon, but I don’t think now is really an opportune time.  I’m quite busy and my schedule is packed.”

“You talk about yourself a lot.”

“You’re right, I do.  I’m sorry.  Now, let’s talk about this doorway here…I kinda need to go through it.  Care to help me?”

“No.”

“Please?”

"No.”

“Please please please please please. Please.  I’m begging you.  Please.  Please just let me through this doorway.  I’m trying to save an innocent man.  Where is your sense of justice?  Have they swallowed it up here with everything else you own until your justice has been reduced to a thin, threadbare sense standing obstinately before a doorway?  Are you going to let them take from you the last thing you have left after even your sanity has fled?  Are you?”

“There’s no need to be afraid of me.  I’m not a cannibal.  But what you’re trying to do is illegal.”

I glance down at my watch and look at the man with extreme impatience; if I don’t act now, the window of opportunity will close up and swallow me alive.  “You’re just a crazy old bat,” I tell the unstable jailbird.  “That’s it.  Just an insane, senile old man who committed murder and now you have to pay for it.  Well, my friend, he was set up.  He was set up and now he needs to be rescued before anything bad happens to him.”

“That’s how you look at it, huh?  Rescue?”  The convict shakes his head sadly, backing away from the doorway.  “Fine, go.  Who am I to stop you from your twisted sense of rescue and justice?”

I run through the doorway and down a dusty hall while the jailbird calls after me, “Just remember this: someday, you are going to hurt someone.  Just make sure that ‘someone’ isn’t yourself.” 

I don’t look back until I reach the grimy cell of my destination.  The walls are black and the floor is black with soot.  The windows are black, too, and the open door is black.  The open door is black.

I stand in shock for a few moments, until a screaming alarm is sounded and two jail guards rush in behind me.  Hearing their hot breath, I sink to my knees on the floor and feel around with my hands for scraps of fabric, anything to tell me that he has been here and he will be back and maybe I can see him just one more time.  That maybe someday he can be free.

“Where have you taken him?!”  I demand of the guards as they each place a calloused hand on one of my arms.

“That’s none of your concern.  You are under arrest for attempted assistance of jailbreak.”

“Where is he?!”  I scream, as I watch the old jailbird being led past this cell and down the long hallway.  He cackles with laughter when he sees me with the guards.

“I told you!”  The jailbird jeers at me as some guards push him to keep going.  “You really messed up, didn’t you?”

“Where did you take him?” I beg the guards.  “Tyler Danish!  Where did you take Tyler Danish?!”

One of the guards takes his hat off and scratches his head.  “Tyler Danish.  He was removed this morning.”

“To where?!  Prison?!  I should’ve come sooner!”

“No, they let him go--he was found innocent so they let him out this morning."

"I thought I was going to be the one to free him."