the time that burned up.

                                                                                                                                            Evie Hobbs

Dost thou love life, then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.  – Benjamin Franklin

It is always just so damn cold. That is what surprised Jeremy most when he had arrived at Holdale correctional facility. There was just no getting away from the cold. He noticed in those first days, in the ones that had been there the longest. Cold. They were all so cold. They would sit in their grey cell and just shiver.

             The room where the guests of Holdale saw visitors was at the epicenter of the facility. It was painted what the paint crew called “smoke embers”, (they had a flare for the dramatic,) and what the inmates referred to as more grey. It was a small room separated into cubicles that was again separated by glass. Inside each one was two mismatched chairs, that had been purposely made so that one leg was longer then the other as part of an experiment that the in-house physiatrist was performing.

The Warden’s wife upon seeing the room decided that it was in real need a ladies’ influence. This “ladies influence” consisted of a fresh linens frebreze being placed in every stall. Unfortunately, this policy did not last long as an agitated inmate tried to use the fresh linens frebreze as pepper spray. This angered the Warden and the guard, who had received the frebreze to the face, and this policy is no longer in place.

Jeremy was young, but prematurely graying. The guards liked to joke that his time with them was causing him to blend in with the walls. He was thin and tired looking but always menacing.

Jeremy found himself shivering in one of the frebreze free cubicles on a Tuesday. He had never liked Tuesdays, even when he wasn’t a resident of Holdale, there was just something about them that made him sure that it was going to be a bad day.

            Jeremy felt the familiar ball of regret and anger and rage and something else begin to form in his throat as he sat there on this Tuesday. He couldn’t control it any longer. It was a monster that he had let breed inside of him. All the late nights where he had sat up just thinking it had grown and emerged from the dark recesses of his brain, of his heart. This beast of emotion flooded into the forefront of his being.

It consumed him like fire, like the fire he had watched from afar. He remembered the heat on his face and the smell. The smell of things when they burn.

Jeremy, though his thoughts made him ache, remained motionless. He sat, surrounded by grey, waiting. He was waiting for his best friend and older brother, Josh to visit him. It would be Joshes first visit to Holdale even though it was Jeremy’s 117^th Tuesday on the inside.

Jeremy felt the fire inside him die down. He was almost sad to see it go because when it was gone his listlessness returned. From where he was sitting, he could see the one mandatory window for every 5 yards in Holdale.  Jeremy could see through it the concrete. He hated concrete but the world seemed to love it.  What a waste, what a tremendous, epic, terrible waste.

School had always been easy for Jeremy; his teachers said he could do whatever he wanted if he just applied himself. And Jeremy knew what he wanted. Josh had laughed when he had told him. He had said what a waste was time. But Jeremy didn’t think so. He wanted to be a landowner, a farmer, someone who lives off the land. After high school, he was going to work hard, save up and spend his precious time on his farm somewhere in Kentucky.

That was the plan that had always been the plan.

The fire rushed back into him, it burned horribly, his whole body tinkled from the pain of it as the fire lapped at his arms and legs.

            Josh had been the good one and he knew it. Jeremy was the screw up, the mistake that no one took seriously. Josh knew this, he knew. He knew just what to say to get Jeremy to do what he said. He remembered those times when they were young, he seemed so much bigger then him, so much more sure. There was love in there relationship at one point or at least admiration.

            Jeremy felt his fingers twitching, he was trapped. Trapped, stuck, forced to be wasting time, his time. Time that he had planed to use so meticulously when he was young.

            He knew that he could only blame himself for being in here. He thought it was the right thing, to prove that he was a man. To prove he put family first but that all felt so wrong now.  He had made the mistake, the mistake to trust to love even. Why had he wasted anytime doing that.

            Jeremy looked at his wrist. There was no watch there but one had resided there before his incarceration.  Josh was late, late just like that night with the fire. Jeremy had been mad because he had to walk home in the cold and he never liked the cold.

            Jeremy forced his eyes on the window again not seeing the concrete fields but acres of land that could have been his, if the time had been right.  The time was never right 1,182,940 minutes he had spent in jail. Josh had spent 1,182,940 minutes getting his degree, getting married and starting a family. He had even bought a farm….

            The Fire burned bright.  The sirens. The people everywhere. Jeremy felt time melt away and he was transported back to that night. Where was Josh? That was all he cared about. So what if his home plus half the block was on fire, where was Josh? Ciaos was the master of that night. Jeremy pushed passed his neighbors who were blacken by soot but didn’t care, they were too busy watching their houses burn.

            Jeremy found Josh on their childhood bus stop, sitting. He was the only person on the street that wasn’t looking at the fire.

            Jeremy began to shift his chair from one leg to the other trying to balance it. It wobbled, just as the physiatrist knew it would.

            Why had he agreed? Just given up. Thrown away his plans, thrown away his life all for what? His brother. His goddamn pyromaniac brother.

            Even than he had not understood why. Why light there childhood home on fire? But Josh had.  He waited until Jeremy went out for his unpleasant Tuesday appointments. He had said he just wanted to see how it felt. How it felt to hold a lit match in his hand, to drop it on the stack of Jeremy’s comic box collection.

            Jeremy knew that he would not let his brother go to jail; after all he was the good one. The one that everyone thought would succeed.  That was 2 years ago.

            Jeremy had always been hyperaware of time. And even without a clock he knew his brother was late. Where was Josh? He looked around the grey room and spotted the guard that had brought him down to this room.

            “When will my visitor be allowed in?”  barked Jeremy.

The guard made his way toward Jeremy with his hand on his taser. Jeremy made guards nervous.

            “Its seems that your brother won’t be coming today.”  As the guard said that he shifted back, he had been trained not to show fear but this guard was a little rusty.

            “When is he coming?”  Whispered Jeremy.

“I dunno they told me to take you back to your cell and to tell you that he has unfortunately had to reschedules indefinitely.”

                        The fire consumed Jeremy once again.