Donut was annoyed.

Granted, he had a lot of reasons to be. Anyone who was being sentenced to prison because they couldn't prove the death of their psychotic roommate was in self-defence would be annoyed. But they would be getting annoyed at other things. The fact that they were getting sent to prison, perhaps.

Donut's prime irritation at the moment was the orange jumpsuit that came with the territory. It chafed something awful.

"Move along, wimp," the guard said, prodding him in the back. Donut kept walking, to avoid being prodded again by the red-haired woman who was marching him towards the sarge's office, but he was fidgeting. Trying to get the jumpsuit in such a position so that it would stop chafing. Maybe the jumpsuit was the real punishment. Spending the next twenty years, at the very least, in this itchy jumpsuit? That was probably, to Donut at least, the stage of Hell that was always left out.

As they got closer to the office, Donut started thinking about other problems that prison life was bound to have. The same bland food day in and day out. Doing laundry with cheap washing liquids that made the clothes feel scratchy. The fact that when he left, he would be at least twenty years older. That part worried him the most. All his youth, gone. Gone!

Prison just wasn't an inviting prospect to Donut. He was too pretty for prison! Who was going to appreciate that in prison? Donut considered this, and considered the movies he had seen that involved prison. He immediately shuddered. Yeah, he could think of people that would appreciate it. Huge, ape-like prison inmates. Never had he wished more that life was not like in the movies.

Not that he objected to gay shower sex. Just gay shower sex with people who looked more like giant apes than men. Too close to bestiality.

Donut was directed through a door, and upon entering he found himself in an office decorated with various war memorabilia. And seated behind the desk was a man in his late fifties, by Donut's guess. Though Sarge's war days were behind him, he still looked the epitome of the manly military man, crew-cut and all.

"Sit down, Cupcake."

Cupcake? Donut wasn't even wearing anything lightish red today. Just the ugly, orange jumpsuit. Donut sat down, all too aware of the guard still standing behind him, her nightstick at the ready. Sarge climbed to his feet and walked around him once. Donut wondered if this was some sort of intimidation tactic before Sarge snapped his fingers.

"Dammit. You don't look like a sports guy. You look like a pansy," he grumbled. "How is the team meant to smash the other team into the dust if it consists of a pansy, a dirtbag and Simmons?"

"...Uh. What?"

"Damn the dibs rule, damn it to heck. Damn Flowers." Sarge shook his head. "Well, you'll have to do. What's your name, Princess?"

"Donut."

"Sarge. Everyone calls me Sarge. And me and Captain Flowers are in charge of guarding you and the other murderers."

"I'm not a murderer, it was self-defence," Donut protested. The same thing he had protested to the police when they had taken him in, and that he had protested all throughout the trial.

"Yeah, kid, that's what they all say. Though to be honest, you don't look like no murdering scumbag to me. But get used to the prison, Cupcake, it's all you'll be seeing for the next twenty or so years. And if you want to survive that long, best to toughen up. Why else do you think we make them play sports every month? Apart from enjoying the glory of smashing the other team into the dirt?" Sarge thumped him on the shoulder in what was meant to be a manly gesture of comradeship. All it really managed to do was hurt a lot. "Stay on my good side, and we'll smash the other team real good. Got it, Cupcake?"

Donut nodded. Normally he might have been more talkative, but he was still pretty nervous about the inmates. Especially if they had to participate in violent sports each month. Donut didn't like violent sports, although he had been great at netball in high school.

Sarge grinned down at him, before stepping back towards his chair. "Tex, take him down to his cell." The guard behind him nodded, and grabbed Donut's arm firmly, steering him out of the chair and out of the room, through the prison. As she guided him through, Donut heard a voice come from one of the cells they passed.

"Hey, Tex. Tex!"

Tex came to a halt. "Goddammit. You, wait here," she ordered, before backing down the hallway a couple of cells to talk to one of the inmates, a man with black hair and a goatee. Donut couldn't hear what they were saying, since they kept their voices low. But he could swear, although it had been a very quick, practiced movement, that the inmate had passed her something. A piece of paper, maybe? After a few moments of talking, Tex walked back to Donut, slipping whatever the inmate had handed her into her pocket. "Move."

  Donut managed to glimpse a couple more inmates through the bars of some of the cells, although he just got more nervous every time he did. He saw a tanned, heavy-set man smoking a cigarette in one. In another there was a huge, blond man who Donut immediately assumed to be one of the ape-like men from in the movies. Even some of the inmates who didn't look that dangerous, like the lanky redhead arguing with the smoking man through the bars, scared him a little, simply because he remembered that these were all criminals. Criminals with blood on their hands, no less.

Eventually, Tex unlocked one of the cell doors and pointed at the bunk. Besides that, a toilet and an empty footlocker, the room was empty. And kind of smelly, like someone had thrown up in there. Donut wrinkled his nose. Lace. The cell definitely needed some lace. Or at least a nice rug.

"Don't make a fuss. Lights go out in a few minutes. Don't make any loud noise or you'll get punished, alright?" Without waiting for a response, Tex slid the door shut. The door didn't make much noise as it clanged shut. But that tiny clanging noise seemed incredibly loud to Donut, and rung in his ears afterwards. The noise was so... final. There was no getting out of this, now. He was stuck here.

Donut felt his eyes prickle, but he shook his head. Can't let the guys in those other cells hear him blubbering. He had to try and be tough. Although the words 'Donut' and 'tough' generally won't used in the same sentence, and if they were they generally had the word 'isn't' between them.

He could tough it out. He had to.

But if he already felt like breaking down into tears in his first five minutes in this cell, how was he going to survive twenty years?