• Jack sat on the iron frame bed, hunched over, his elbows resting on his knees while he used his hands to rub his face a bit. He sat, confined to that small room, contemplating his existence. It's not a subject that he particularly liked to reflect on, but, at the moment, he'd run out of things to think, or, at least, it felt that way. It was a short lived contemplation, however, because the silence began to distract him. He lifted his head up a bit, his deep, gray eyes darting around the room. It was so empty. He was supposed to have had cell-mates, but then the ended up placing the two guys in different cells. It was undecided, however, whether it was due to their instability, or his.

    He sat there for a moment, soaking in the deafening silence, before he kicked his feet up onto the bed, and reclined himself backwards, so that his head was laying on the pillow. Now, he stared up at the bottom frame of the bed above his, chewing on his lip absentmindedly. There were so many other things he could be doing right now. Working. Attending classes at the University that sat down the road from his home. Spending time with his friends, if, in fact, you could call them that. He could be painting, writing, finding some other way to progress time than scratching tally marks into the stone wall to his right. But, instead, he had trusted the man he'd just met, and landed here.

    Jack furrowed his brows at the thought of the man. He hadn't wanted to trust him, but he had such a presence to him, such a convincing manner that he Jack couldn't help himself. It seemed right. Now, however, he was contemplating his poor judgment. He turned his head to the side, looking at the tally marks on the wall. Counting them a few times, just to make sure he'd done so correctly, he realized that he'd only been in here for a week. Just one week. But it felt like forever. He wondered how people felt that had to spend life sentences in here felt. It must be the most awful thing in the world. With that thought, and the overwhelming boredom, Jack slowly drifted off to sleep on that uncomfortable bed.

    * * *


    "Jack."
    His eyes fluttered open, a bit startled from the low voice behind him. He pulled himself into a sitting position, and turned, his feet hitting the ground with a padded tapping sound. Again, his gray eyes scanned the room, stopping on a figure in the corner. He knew the voice sounded familiar.

    The figure was dressed in black pants, a pair of black Chuck Taylor's, a black dress shirt, the sleeves had been rolled to his elbows, and a pair of black, fingerless gloves. The most unusual thing about how he was dressed, however, was what was covering his face. The only piece of color in the entire ensemble. A golden lion's face adorned his head, though it was clearly only a mask, having a ribbon that tied around the back of his head to keep it from falling off.

    "What are you doing here?" Jack asked, his voice very hushed to make sure nobody else heard him.

    Without a word, the figure held out his hand, waiting for Jack to accept it.