Short Story - Life Sentence

When the verdict was read out, he laughed.

His loud voice rang through the courtroom, sending chills down the spines of the jury members. Head thrown back and teeth showing, he was lead out the door by two armed guards. 

“Four life sentences?!” he choked out between peals of laughter. “Why not make it five, or six? Won’t make a difference to me!”
The door shut, and the courtroom fell eerily silent. Slowly, the audience rose and departed, climbing into their carriages and heading home with a sinking feeling in their stomachs.

The man had been in the same isolated cell for roughly twenty years, the guards guessed, but he looked as youthful as the day he was condemned. He paced the cell every day in a futile effort to expend his restless energy, banned from going outside. The guards would never say it to one another, but when the pacing sped up and the inmate began muttering under his breath, they all gripped their guns a little tighter.

No one remembered when the man had first been assigned to his cell, and the old paper records had been lost when they had transferred everything to digital. The only information they had was a countdown, the ever-shrinking number of years until he was released.

Of course, he would probably die of old age before he walked freely again.

The man was peaceful enough, it seemed. He would pleasantly request a paper every morning, and on the occasion the warden approved the request, he would spend days without speaking, going over every single word until it must have been etched into his brain. Piles of old papers grew in the corners, stacked with loving care,

The oldest guard there liked to tell everyone how, when he had first began working at the jail, the prisoner would walk back and forth like a tiger cooped up for too long. But after more time had passed, the other guards dismissed this as no more than a tale made to frighten the youngest recruits.

No one thought anything of it when the man’s countdown hit zero. After they brought him through the necessary paperwork and retuned to him the contents of a small locker of belongings. It was only after the man had walked off towards the city that the guards realized that none of them could remember when the man first came to the jail, despite the fact that he couldn’t be much older than twenty-five.