I'm sitting in the corner looking at the wall, reading all the writing people have scratched into it. One thing I see manages to disturb me. It says "No one says that they know who's after me but they all are." It sends a chill down my spine.

Suddenly, I hear a loud bang, and I spin around. There's a guard standing in front of my cell. The guard says sarcastically, "Enjoy!" There's a tray on the floor. The guard dropped it there. There are several depressions in the tray, designed to hold food. It seems that whoever is in charge of the meals didn't understand its purpose, because I wouldn't call what is in the depressions any kind of food. In one depression there is a milk carton that has the beginnings of a green mold on it, in another there's some tan-colored fluid that looks like liquefied chicken, and a salad.

The whole tray stinks, probably from the milk. I don't know how the other prisoners can eat that, but I don't even touch it. I go over to the back wall of my cell and look out the window. Through my window I can see the alleyway on the side of the prison. There is a pile of trash, next to a dumpster. The brick wall of the building next door is about ten feet away.

A man turns in from the sidewalk and starts walking down the alleyway. We make eye contact, and I immediately notice that he is the guy that was outside my apartment. I can barely see a tiny bit of his gun. I run over to the other side of my cell, facing inside the police station, and yell to the guard, "Help! There's a man out side in the alley. He looks exactly like the one described in the newspaper! The one that was linked to the killings!"

"Yeah, right, whatever you say," he says in a hoarse voice. He must have been sleeping. He then mumbles to himself, "Darn, why can't they keep all the crazies locked up in the loony bin, instead of makin' me take care 'em?"

I walk back over to the barred window, just in time to see the man in the trench coat walk in to the building, through a side entrance in the alley. I go back to my corner, and wait. About half an hour later, another guard comes by and takes my tray. He says in a sarcastic 'poor thing' voice, "Aaaaw, you didn't like your food, poor thing." By now, I'm already so bored that I think I will go nuts. I just sit, and wait, and wait, and wait.

*	*	*	*	*

Several hours after that, six by my watch, I hear another familiar bang, as my dinner tray plops down. I moan, then try to go to sleep. There's a lot of noise there, but eventually it quiets down and I manage to get some sleep.

The next morning, I semiconsciously hear a shrill voice of a man who says, "Sir, sir, wake up." This was accompanied by a feeble attempt to roll me onto my back. A deeper voice said, "Here, I'll give you a hand." I then was jerked into consciousness when two large hands grabbed my shoulders in a firm grip and almost flung me into a sitting position. There was a huge ugly prison guard, who said in a mocking voice, "Time to rise and shine, sleepyhead! Wakey, Wakey!"

The small man with the shrill voice is wearing an ugly green suit, and a striped tie. He asks me if I am willing to take a lie detector test. I jump to my feet and say, "Definitely!" That is good. If he gives me a lie detector test than he will know that my story is true, and I can get out of here.

He tells me to follow him, and leads me to a room. The room has a linoleum floor, brick walls, a TV camera, and a table in the middle. On the table, there sits a machine, about the size of a microwave oven. The man asks me to sit down, and I follow his instructions.

He starts fiddling with the machine on the table, mumbling numbers and equations to himself. After a minute he says, "Okay, all ready," as he wraps a felt band that resembles a blood pressure tester around my upper arm. He sticks some wires to my fingers and forehead. Then the man gets up, walks over to the door, and signals to somebody outside the room. A few seconds later a man walks in, wearing a white shirt with blue stripes, a red tie, and dark gray pants. He sits down at the table and picks up a clipboard. He nods to the man in the ugly suit, and he flips a switch. The man in the striped shirt asks, "What is your name?"

"Robert Worthington," I answer. The small man mumbles to himself, and writes down a few notes. The man in the shirt continues with a whole line of questioning which feels like it will never end.

What explanation do you have for speeding down the road at speeds of over a hundred miles per hour, with four police cars chasing you?" He finally asks. This is the question I've been waiting for.

I started to tell my story. "I've always been a paranoid conspiracy theorist, and I accept it, but nothing made me surer about the national conspiracy than what happened to me. It all started yesterday. I woke up, dragged myself out of bed, and did my usual morning routine. I went into the bathroom, and took a shower. Then I went downstairs, and started breakfast.

I picked up the newspaper and read it. On the front page, in big bold letters, it read, "Group of Attempted Murders and Murders Believed to be Connected." I read the article about it. The article said that there were seven attempted murders and four successful murders, all in the past two weeks. All the witnesses and surviving victims of the crimes described the criminals as men with various builds, all dressed in black trench coats. They all carried the same type of illegal machine gun and double-edged knife -- also illegal. I thought to myself, "This has got to be something big."

All of a sudden, a knock at the door interrupted my thoughts. I looked through the little hole in the door to see who was there. What I saw shocked me. It was a man, dressed in a black trench coat, just as described in the newspaper. I could see the lump in his jacket, which I was sure concealed his gun.

I didn't stop to think. I dashed to the window of my 8th floor apartment, opened it and climbed out onto the rusty fire escape. I heard gunfire coming from my room. I looked back over my shoulder, and saw at lest twenty or thirty bullet holes in my door.

The man started charging the door trying to break it down. I turned back, and started to head down the stairs. At that moment I immediately learned to appreciate how high eight stories really is. I couldn't panic any more from my fear of heights, because I was already completely panicked about the guy at my door who I was sure was trying to kill me. I scrambled down flight after flight of stairs.

Before I even realized it, I reached the ground. I stumbled and fell down with a thud, expecting more stairs beneath my feet instead of a level concrete sidewalk. I pulled myself to my feet, and half-running, half-stumbling, I managed to pack myself into my tiny Geo Metro. I drove away, with my sweaty, panicked grip on the wheel. I got myself to the police station, and screeched to a stop, only then seeing how fast I was going.

I had calmed down throughout the ride, and realized as I pulled up to the building that there were four police cars after me for speeding. They drove up around me, boxing me in. They got out of their cars, and they were laughing. "What was so amusing?" I thought. I was suddenly jerked into realization when one of them said, "Thanks for saving us a trip, buddy." They handcuffed me, and dragged me into the station.

I was yelling at them about how I could explain why I was speeding, and I told them that I was a victim, and not a criminal, but they wouldn't listen to me. The officers threw me into a cell, and one of them said, "You're gonna spend today and tonight here. Someone'll be around in the morning." That pretty much sums it all up." I say.

The two men stand up, and go over to the corner. They whisper loudly to each other, and I can hear them clearly.

"So, what do you think?"

"He believes what he is saying." The small man's voice somehow manages to keep its shrillness even in a whisper.

The man in the striped shirt whispers, "But is he telling the truth?"

"There's no way to be certain. I can only assure you that he believes what he's saying. In his mind, what he said is what happened. If he checks out in the mental exam, then what he said is most likely the truth." The man in the striped shirt walks back over to me, pulls the wires and the armband off of me, and asks me to come with him.

I stand up, and start walking to the door. I open it, and let him go first. He leads me down a series of hallways. We enter a room. It is big, with several computers, and a few tables.

On one table, the are several beakers, some test tubes, a Bunsen burner, and a couple of bottles, presumably with more chemicals inside them. There is also a section of the room that a separated by glass. Inside, there is a table, some machinery, and a counter. The entire room is spotlessly clean. Everything in the room is white.

The small man motions me to sit down at one of the empty tables. I sit down at the nearest one. He goes and locks the door, to make sure nobody comes in, and sits down across the table from me. He asks me an endless list of questions, so long, that I'm sure that at least two hours have passed. The man then tells me to go into the glass chamber. There are three sets of doors leading into it.

I open the first set, walk in and they close behind me. I go to open the second set of doors but they are locked. I hear the whir of a motor, and I notice that I am standing on a grating. I feel the flow of air coming up from the floor. It becomes faster and faster until my hair is straight up in the air. After about thirty seconds, it slows to a stop, and I can hear the click that the lock on the door makes. I notice the man looking at a computer screen, and jotting down a few notes.

I pull on the door, and it swings open easily. I walk into the next space between the doors. I hear a soft woman's voice that says, "Please place your feet together." I do as I am told.

I start to feel a tingling sensation is my feet, and yet again, I find my hair to be standing on end. "They must be running some kind of electricity through me. I wonder what all of these tests are actually doing," I think to myself. My hair drops back down, and I open the last door. I hear a hiss as I open the door.

I can hear the man's metallic voice over a cheap intercom. He asks me to lie down on my back on the metal table. How comfortable, I think to myself as I follow his instructions. I hear a hum as a machine warms up. Then the hum dies down and I hear a few beeps. This goes on for about fifteen or twenty minutes, accompanied by different beeps, dings, and other sounds.

I hear the man's voice. He tells me to come back into the other room, and I do so. He says, "We will have to hold you until morning, and then you are free to go." Free to go? That is unusual. It is surprising that there is not going to be any trial, or that they will not hold me as a witness.

He escorts me back to my cell, and apologizes for having to hold me longer when it is obvious that I am innocent. I am able to sleep well that night knowing that this is all cleared up. The next morning I awake to the sun shining in my eyes. It is a very nice way to wake up, compared to the usual "Buzz," of the alarm clock. There is already a breakfast tray filled with the familiar goop like my previous "meals."

I wait and soon the man in the same ugly green suit comes by, and unlocks the door. He lets me out of the cell, and says, in his usual screechy tone, "We reviewed all of your test results last night, you're free to go, however if you feel that you are in danger, we can arrange for a safe place for you to stay. It's entirely up to you." I accept his offer, and ask him to give me a ride to the impound lot to pick up my car. "I would be happy to," he says as he moves close to my ear, and starts to whisper, "It's better than hanging around here."

I'm not exactly sure what to make of his last comment, but I assume he just doesn't like his job. He starts walking out the front door, and I follow him to his car. We both get in, and he drives over to the impound lot. I get out, and go over to the office, and ask the man behind the counter for my car. He goes through a door it the back corner of the room, which I can see leads to outside.

The man in the green suit walks in a few minutes later, just before the man that was behind the counter comes back with my keys. The man behind the counter tells me that my car is in row z, space 35. Great, I think to myself, this just keeps getting better and better. I ask him how much the fee will be, and he pushes a few buttons on a cash register.

"One thousand three hundred, twenty seven," I hear him say.

Slowly, I open my eyes, as I regain consciousness. I am lying down on the front seat of my car, on my back. The man the green suit, and the man the works at the impound lot are talking to each other a few feet away. The man in the suit notices that I woke up, and comes over to me.

"Huh, that gave you quite a shock, didn't it? Since it's the police's fault that any of this happened at all, I covered the bill." A huge sigh of relief escapes from my mouth. I say that I have to go do something.

"Okay. Come back to the station when you are ready to be taken to a safe place for the night." I thank him for paying for the impounding, and drive off. I head for the alley where I saw the man in the trenchcoat from my jail cell. Maybe there is some kind of headquarters there, where the man walked in from the alleyway. "Enough fooling around," I think to myself, "I am going to get to the bottom of this."

I park my car a block or so away from the alleyway, and walk over. First I check out the front of the building, because I don't want to be too conspicuous and go in through the back entrance. There is a large sign overhead that reads "Harry's Discount Watches and Jewelry." I walk in. I see a large, glass display case, with several watches and a lot of necklaces, bracelets, and rings.

There is a man who seems so angry that he's just about ready to kill the next person he sees. I can make out between swears that someone took his watch into the back, supposedly to try to find out what is wrong with it, but no one is coming back out. I walk behind the counter, and poke my head in through a doorway that leads to the back. There is no one there, so I walk in and look around. I hear one last angry shout from the man in front and then I hear the door opening and closing as the man leaves.

There is another door leading into a back room. I open the door a crack, and peer inside. There are four men, sitting at a table under a bright lamp hanging from the ceiling. All of the men except for one are smoking cigars. The room is full of smoke. Amazingly, they don't even notice me.

"Okay guys, here's the plan," one of them says in a gruff voice, "Each of you will take another person. Here are the addresses, and some other information, just in case you need it." As he spoke, he handed each of the three other men a slip of paper. They each took a look at the paper they were given, and then threw it into a garbage can in the corner of the room. They stood up, and walked toward me.

I jumped behind the door. I was sure one of the men looked right at me, but I hid anyway. They opened the door, and walked out. I didn't even dare to breathe. I stood frozen behind the door, hoping that none of them would see me. They walked right pass me, and out into the front of the store.

Now is my chance. I walk into the room and silently take the notes out of the trash can. I hear on of them yell from the front, "Hey, idiot! Close the door back there. We don't want anyone looking in there."

"This is bad," I think. "Not only is someone going to come back here, but it also means that there is no one else in the store besides the four other men." I hear footsteps, getting closer. I hide in the corner, hoping that he won't come inside the room. Suddenly, the door slams shut, and I hear it locking from the other side. The room goes pitch black, and I can't even see my hand six inches in front of my face.

I hear the man walking away, back to the front of the store. I rush over to where the door should be. I feel along the wall for the handle. I find it, and I try to open the door, but it is lock from this side too. Suddenly I remember about the door that goes into the alley. Maybe it goes from this room.

I walk over to the other wall, and feel all along it for the door. I feel the handle a twist it. Daylight pours into the room, and I walk out side. I close the door behind me, and run over to the police station next door, and show them the addresses. Then I get back in my car and drive home.

*	*	*	*	*

The next morning I am glad to see a front-page article on my four "friends" from the Jewelry store. The police went to the people on the pieces of paper before the men from the Jewelry store, and when the men tried to murder the people on the list, the police jumped out of hiding, and caught them red-handed. The men were arrested on seven counts of attempted murder, four counts of murder, theft, assault, and a whole slew of other charges.