Free 2 Grand Delusion by Matt Witten

tried to determine which crap smell came from which derelict.
    There wasn't much other entertainment to be had. It was hard to write graffiti, because all of our pens and pencils had been confiscated, I guess so we wouldn't stick them into our foreheads. One guy did manage to scratch "Habib was here" on the wall of his cage with a shirt button, talking to himself in Arabic the whole time; but it took him several hours. I didn't have his stamina.
    A couple of my comrades spent the night drunkenly tossing toilet paper through their bars, aiming for the video cameras that pointed toward each cage. They were trying to cover up the lenses. Personally I was grateful to have a lens pointed at me, protecting me from police abuse. But maybe some of the other guys wanted privacy to jack off or something. Anything to pass the time.
    Every half hour a cop would come through to make sure no one was slitting his wrist with a pants zipper. The cop and the inmates would trade a few "motherfuckers" back and forth, which was fun for a while, but by around four in the morning it got kind of old.
    At 5:30, though, we had fresh excitement. Some cop with bad breath came in, stopped at my cage, and sneered, "So you're the big, tough cop killer, huh? Not feeling so big and tough now, are you?"
    Immediately the rest of the guys wanted to know all about it. I wasn't really in the mood for sharing, but one of the drunks who came in after me had heard some talk, so he filled everyone in. Suddenly they all brightened up. Habib called out in an Arabic accent, "Two points for our side, my brothers, we nailed one of them motherfuckers," and the guys all burst out laughing and cheering.
    Somehow they got the idea it was my birthday, so they all sang "Happy Birthday" to me, which segued into "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," followed by "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." Then the Dalai Lama guy started chanting "Hare Krishna," and we all joined in.
    Their happy mood was infectious, and by eight a.m. or so, I was feeling pretty darn good for a guy whose whole world had just fallen apart. Our jailers brought us breakfast, and I never knew that greasy eggs, Wonder bread with margarine, and cold instant coffee could taste so delicious.
    An hour later the cops let us out of our cages and marched us up to the courtroom on the first floor to be arraigned. I looked around at Habib and the rest of the fellas. I'd been listening to them ranting, raving, and laughing all night long, but except for the two drunks cuffed outside the cages, I hadn't seen their faces. I was amazed by how young most of them looked. They couldn't have been a day older than twenty-two. Their voices at night were hard and angry; but their faces in the morning light were soft and scared. I tried to guess who had been calling out to the Dalai Lama for help, but it could have been any of them. They all looked like they needed help, and they all looked like the Dalai Lama was as likely as anyone else to help them in this sorry-ass world.
    I'd never been to an arraignment before, and I didn't know what to expect. They herded us upstairs through an empty stairway, then opened the back door to the courtroom. I stopped in my tracks and blinked. After a night spent in a tiny cage, this huge, spacious courtroom was a shock. Not only that, there were a hundred or more people sitting in the pews. Who were all these people? What were they doing here?
    And where was my wife? Where was my lawyer?
    Just then I saw Andrea peeling herself out of a pew and running toward the front railing. My heart filled, and I came forward to embrace her. But the bad-breath cop got in my way. "Back," he barked, and Andrea and I gazed at each other longingly as he corralled me into the jury box with my fellow crimies. I sat down on the hard wooden bench and looked around. Some of my new pals were cracking their knuckles, others were scratching their crotch hairs, and others were giggling insanely. All of us were scared out of our