As soon as the prison door swung open, a blinding light hit my eyes. It was annoying, but it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered to me was taking one more step to get out of that dark prison. When I say "dark," I don't mean there was no light. Actually, there were lights of various colors. Well, not everything has to be beautiful to be uncomfortable.
Honestly, I don't want to talk about what it was like inside the prison. I just want to move on.
The moment I took that first step, the second phase of my life officially began. With the question, "Now what?"
No one was waiting for me outside the prison. Actually, since it was outside the city, there really was no one except a poor soldier who had to stand guard in the hot weather. I felt more sorry for him having to continue his job without any protest than I felt sorry for myself for not having anyone to come see me after my release. It's not that I was overly compassionate or kind, I just felt like I needed to fill my mind with something at that moment to keep my thoughts from going where I didn't want them to.
I had to keep going, I couldn't ruin the taste of freedom after three years of imprisonment with these things. The first place that came to my mind was to find a fast food place and finally taste my favorite sandwich, a hot dog, after a long time.
I asked the soldier in front of the prison how I could get to the city. He pointed to the end of a dirt road with his hand and said, "Go to the end of the road and walk a little to the left. There's a bus stop there that goes straight to the city center."
City center! Wow, my house is there too... Oh, I forgot we changed our house a long time ago. The landlord was a jerk, he kicked us out on some pretext of money, but later it turned out he wanted to give our house to his more jerk son. I can't remember his name, but he was always after girls, or rather their bodies.
I gave the guard a simple thank you. I wasn't sure if it was enough. But at that moment, I really didn't care about these things. My brain had rusted in prison. In a way, my emotions had rusted with it. To put it simply, three years in a dark prison environment and listening to the painful words of the prisoners had made me depressed.