Prisoner.

My name is James Bryan. Today is the day a judge and a jury will decide if I get out of prison. I’m twenty-six at present time and let’s just say it was one of those, wrong place at the wrong time, type of moments. I got convicted for a serious felony called involuntary manslaughter when I was twenty-three and sentenced three years in a prison cell. Not that it was my fault or anything. Picture this, two guys sitting in what is a well decorated and expensive gun show room. This room was my father’s. With cherry wood crown molding around the walls, gorgeous scarlet paint that almost looked like molten rock because it had such intensity and white accents around the room to just catch your attention with expensive designer furniture. It was beautiful. My best friend and I were sitting in this magnificent room looking at the well made and ancient guns my father owned. I picked one up and felt the kind of power it had. I had grown up around guns my entire life because it was part of my dad’s mission to make sure I was a well brought up hunter. In all reality, I hated hunting, but it was the one thing I had in common with my dad.
Sean and I were in my father’s gun room, and I was showing him my favorite gun. It wasn’t a very big one, a .25 air caliber at best. What I did not realize at the time was that this gun was still loaded. I don’t understand this, because as an experienced hunter, both my father and myself, you’d think I would have known to check the ammo, but I didn’t. This was my problem, and if I could go back in time I would change this fact, because it’s what changed my life. I held it up and somehow accidently knocked the trigger, which set it off. At first, I didn’t realize what had happened. For the first twenty seconds of a disaster, no one ever does anything. We stand there and watch the terrible things unravel. By the time I got control of myself, it was too late. The bullet had gone through Sean, slicing some major artery, or something like that, which is what the doctors told me. I’m not a med student, so I don’t know the specifics. All I know is that I somehow unintentionally killed him. I killed my best friend.
The next few weeks are kind of a blur. There was a huge trial, and although it was all unintentional, I was sent to prison for three years. Three years is a long time for a kid who’s enrolled in his junior year at a major university. So that’s what happened, and today is the day they’re letting me out. I guess I don’t really know what to think. I mean, my life just kind of stopped at twenty-three. I don’t know that I’ll be able to go back to school and finish out my years to go to grad school and become a lawyer. That’s my dream, to become a lawyer, and with everything that’s happened I don’t know if I’ll be given another chance. When you go in for an interview and people look at your criminal record, if they even get that far, all they see is: Felony. Three years in prison. Your fault. They don’t want to know the specifics, and they don’t care that it was an accident. When you’ve been in prison, everyone looks down on you and you don’t have any control over that. So I’m pretty terrified to say the least.
In two hours, I’ll have a completely new life, again. When it comes down to it, I guess I’m just excited to be free again. Prison is a scary place, with people that have actually meant to do the bad things they’ve done, unlike me. Some of them will never get out of here, and there’s no way I’ll ever want to see the inside of this place ever again. It’s not like I made any friends, because in prison, you don’t make friends, you only make enemies. This is real life to them, and now it’s my turn to start over.