Disclaimer:  I do not own any of these characters and am just playing around with them.

Beta Read by my cat Poofy.

Got a Light?

Louie and Harold led their new prisoner to his cell.  The man did not struggle.  He went quietly, calmly to his new home.  This unsettled Louie.  The middle aged Italian guard had handled hundreds of prisoners in his time working at Fort Rexford.  This man obviously had some plan; otherwise he would have been more trouble.  They had dragged men kicking and screaming to their cells for the first time for far less severe crimes than this man had been convicted of.

Once inside his cell, they unshackled the man and closed the door to his cell.  Louie watched him take a seat on his bunk and stare at the wall before him.  Louie shook his head and walked away.

But he’d returned, many times that day.  Each time, prisoner 786114 sat on his bunk, looking at the cell.  Studying it.  Louie figured that the man had the rest of his life to study those walls and knew he was up to something.

Hours later, Louie was about to get off-shift.  He made one last trip to his new charge’s cell at the end of the high maximum-security corridor and stopped at his side of the bars.

“Hey you.”  He called calmly.  The man looked at him and stood.  He approached the bars slowly until he faced the guard.

“You smoke?”  Louie asked and held out a cigarette.  The prisoner looked at the cigarette and took it from him.  He rolled it in his fingers and looked up at Louie curiously.

Louie struck a match and held it to the bars.  The other man put the cigarette in his mouth and leaned close to light it.  Louie quickly extinguished the match and stepped away from the cell.

The man inhaled and then began to cough as he pulled the cigarette from his mouth.  He looked up at Louie angrily and Louie smiled a little.

“You’ll get used to it, kid.”  He said.

The other man put the cigarette back into his mouth and then sat back down on his bunk.

“Hey, kid.  What should I call you?”  Louie asked.  The other man took the cigarette from his mouth and looked at Louie contemplatively.

“D.B. Cooper.”  Prisoner 786114 replied with a sneer.  Louie snorted in laughter and shook his head.

“I think I’ll just call you John Doe.“  Louie said and then he turned and headed for the time clock.

To Be Continued…

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