Midnight Mystery Joshua Salama-Caro ‘23

bars of my cell rousing me from my sleep and disturbing my dream. I spent that entire day thinking about why Ja and Jo were in this dream that felt so real. At lunch I finally hit on it. I never knew why I had been arrested. There was a small part of me that believed that the dream was real. Each night it felt like a piece of the puzzle was coming together. Every night the dreams built on each other. One dream particularly stuck out to me. Ja and Jo told me to go give an elderly man what they called “medical marijuana” so I did. Soon after I came back, they broke the news to me that the elderly man I just visited passed away. I was oblivious to the scheme that they had just pulled. In the hallway to lunch I ran into another inmate named Sal. “Yo, Sal, what’s up?” I said. “Did you just call me Sal?” he asked? “Yeah,” I said. SLAM - it felt like a ten ton dump truck just hit me. Then a different one hit the back of my head; I was out cold. That was the easiest way to describe getting punished by whose name I later found out was Brock, not Sal. After that experience I finally pieced it together, Ja and Jo were against me. I could no longer trust them. The next few days I tried to keep my distance

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from them and they realized that too. It was time to make other friends. I started to become a “good prisoner”, doing everything that I needed to do and not getting into trouble with not only the guards but also the other prisoners. One day while walking back to the cell I walked in on Jo changing his shirt. Quickly I turned around, but before I did, I saw one thing, a tattoo. At that moment it all clicked. I had seen that tattoo before. Not only in my dreams but in real life. A phoenix stretched from shoulder to shoulder with the word “Mom” written on it. I just had to make it until tomorrow after lunch when I had my first meeting with my lawyer Anna Even. I could tell her everything and she could help me get out of this dump. By lights out I kept my guard up because I had a feeling that Jo suspected I knew what was up and I was almost certain he told Ja. I woke in total darkness. I tried to get up, but I was strapped to the bed. I flailed my head around until the canvas bag covering my head flew off revealing that all of my worst nightmares had come true.

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