He was driving in a quiet street of the city one night when he saw him coming by. In the heat of the moment, it all seemed rational, it simply made sense. He pressed on the brakes and did a sudden U-turn, his passengers begged him in fright to stop, knowing his victim’s car, yet he did not care.

 The car’s engine roared as he accelerated to catch up with his foe. The driver’s side window rolled down, and he unloaded his Glock's whole clip on the man. He left him by the road, 15 bullet holes landed in total on the car’s left side, with blood slowly seeping out from the door seals, and pieces of flesh all over the windows of the car. Inside, the victim laid slumped over on the steering wheel, the horn blaring for half an hour until the police arrived.

 The man stayed home for the rest of that week, he was too distraught to even move, as he regretfully thought about what he did, when suddenly, he heard two bangs on the door and six men dressed in black, holding up their weapons barged in. The SWAT team knocked his door down, tackling him to the ground, restraining him, and in the process knocking him out. He woke up on a cold metal rack, lying flat, his right eye completely swollen up, his surroundings made of concrete, with just a sink and a metal toilet in the room. He slowly rolled off the bed and pulled himself up, only for an officer to rush in and drag him into a detective’s room. Nonetheless, the man was too shocked to answer any questions, slumped over on the investigator’s desk, he sat there, only to be dragged back to his cell.

 He awoke the next morning to a lawyer, he conversed with him for a while, after which they placed him back in the ice-cold cell, with bugs creeping on the floor, and hardly any edible food at his disposal. His court date came and went, 30 years was his sentence...

 Two years later he was still in the same cell, in the same jail, indicted in the same system, not seeing daylight for years. His days were the same, indifferent, danger lurked in every corner he went to in prison. He preferred to rest on his bed whenever he was allowed to, his thoughts mixed, thinking about how only less than a tenth of his sentence had passed. 

 His life gone, his chances of having a family, of having a career, completely ended. In those two years, he has rethought his life choices, the actions he has committed, and the cost of the life he has taken. The banging of those 15 bullets, a sound which haunts him to this day, every night before he goes to sleep. Restless nights, scared of being a victim himself, sleeping next to killers and rapists, not knowing if he’ll live to see tomorrow. This is the burden he now must carry; some say it’s fair, others say it’s not, however, there is one thing the man knows for sure: his suffering is not ending any time soon.