• They say if you don't cry on the first night, you will on the second.

    When the thick judge smashed his hardwood hammer (I later found later that this was called a gavel) onto the bench high above me, and boomed out into the room in his deep, stereotypical voice that for the next six months my official residence would be a ten foot by three foot cell in “St. James' Hall for Uncontrollable Boys.” I didn't think it would be so bad. Now though, I'm not so sure.

    I'm sitting down in a small wooden chair, with a white sheet covering my front, and an extremely obese bald man with a badly concealed 'white power' tattoo on his shoulder is smiling a crooked black smile at me, clutching a pair of dangerously sharp scissors and a pale green electric razor. My face fell, I could feel the colour run down from my face, dropping along with my stomach.
    “Oh god.” I screamed in my head, desperate to get away. The fight or flight response had kicked in, and my cool blue eyes where desperately scanning the grey tilled room around me, searching for another exit. The barred window? The steel door marked with “Fire Exit”? The roof? Anything but the door behind my hairdresser. He closed in, and I finally bottled it, screaming out and trying to get away. My arms struggled at the leather strap that was healthily pinning it down against the arm of the wooden chair, and, obviously, it stayed there. With a chuckle, the man began to snip, and tear's of sadness and extreme fury rolled down my face in torrents as slices of my hair, my trademark, fell to the floor.

    Stepping back, and turning off the razor, the man left, and the room fell into an unnatural and evil silence that made my blood crawl in it's veins. I couldn't believe what was going on here. This was certainly not on the leaflet that the court's sent around to my house last month. The glossy four-folded piece of paper promised up-to-the-minute services, facilities, numerous certificates for fair treatment of inmates, and what seemed like a fun filled schedule of sports, play and lessons while the boys in the Hall where 'rehabilitated'.

    Standing up, and rubbing where the leather had rubbed into my wrists, I ran a hand up across my head, shuddering at the new sensation of feeling nothing but air where there was so much more before. A knock on the door a few feet behind me made me jump, and I swivelled in time to see a middle-aged man in a white coat and olive slacks come in through the door, a clipboard in hand. He smiled a smile so false, it made me feel sick. Motioning for me to sit down, I shook my head, and crossed my arms.

    They say if you don't cry on the first night, you will on the second.

    I had been in the place five minutes, and I was ready to make a dash for the exit....