Five years. Five years of my life gone.

That’s about as much time as I spent in the marines. I don’t like that line of thought. It crushes me. The marines defined who I was more than anything in my life besides my family. So what has prison done to me?

It has hardened me. Even more than fighting overseas, if I’m being honest. I expected to see certain things in combat. I knew I’d lose people. But we were allies working towards a common goal.

In prison, it was every man for himself, and I hated myself for the things I had to do, just to get out. Just to have the hope that on the other side, there was still something good that waited for me.

I didn’t deny the charges in court. I merely stated my case as best I could. I told them what happened, and why I reacted as I did. I told them about my military service, and how much I fought and bled for my country.

But for that, I was sentenced to ten years. I got out with five on ‘good behavior’.

Good behavior.

That’s a joke.

Five years in a private prison, with other violent offenders. The food was shit. The guards treated us like shit. And we preyed on each other. Prison gangs ran things more than the prison administrators. Guards and prisoners working for thugs with connections on the outside.

Playing it good, doing my time and getting out was my goal. But how could I do that when I had multiple gangs pushing me to choose a side or get gutted by both?

In the end I did my best to stay out of the real fights, but I didn’t come out clean.

I feel guilty, real guilty. But above it all, I feel bad about the woman I lost.

I never even got to tell Alice what happened. I never had her full name and address. She was staying in Vegas only temporarily — she said she was staying in a hotel. I never gave her my full name and I had no address, fresh from serving my stint in the marines.

I had no hope of tracking her down. Not unless she was still at that club, after all these years, and I know the career of most strippers is pretty short. She would be long gone from there. Especially since her home was in Los Angeles, and she was just there for a brief stay.

She had dreams. She wanted to own her own little store. She wanted to raise a family. And the thought of her having moved on... it breaks my heart. I try not to think about what would happen if I find out she’d gotten engaged or married while I was locked up in a cell.

I can’t let thoughts like that drag me down, though.

Leaving the prison, one of my last remaining wartime buddies picked me up. In good times, he’s the last guy I’d turn to. He never came back from our time serving in Afghanistan and Iraq right. He couldn’t hold down a regular job, and he fell in with the wrong crowd.

But where do I get off judging? At least he avoided prison. And for all his faults, his new ‘friends’ had connections in my prison that helped me get through without getting tangled up in anything too bad. Without having to do anything that risked my getting out on time.

“You should come work with me and the guys,” he had offered on the car ride back. ‘The guys’ being his buddies, involved in all manners of crimes that I didn’t want to get tangled up in.

I had told him ‘no thanks’, because I was planning on staying legit and seeing to my dreams. Same as always. I needed to put the past in the past, and move forward with my life.

Looking back, I feel like a fool.

Months of job searching, crashing on his couch, and what do I have to show for it? Endless rejections. Even in a city like Vegas, which is supposed to be the best spot in the country to come look for work.

But the best I got on offer was a job as at a grocery store. The owner offered to pay me under the table, because corporate wouldn’t let him hire a guy with a criminal record. The pay was for less than minimum wage.

The job I was on my way to accepting before prison would’ve paid me $120,000 a year.

I’d be lucky to see that in a lifetime like this.

So one day, as I was getting ready to head out on another fruitless job search, my buddy comes to me in a fancy new suit. He’s always coming back with some shiny new outfit or toy, but he never makes me feel bad for freeloading. He never needs to. My guilt eats at me every day, and I wonder if I shouldn’t just take off out of Sin City.

But where would I go? I don’t even have enough for a plane ticket.

“Hey, Vik,” he says, “we need some help for something.” He’s anxious about asking me, I can tell right away. I’ve turned him down every time he asks, so it’s no wonder.

But this time I listen. I listen because I’m desperate. Because living off of anyone’s charity isn’t my style. And that sleeping on my buddy's couch saps a bit more of my pride and my soul each day.

“There’s this guy, right? A real piece of shit, trust me. He runs a sleazy brothel. Hurts the girls, ships ‘em in from the Philippines away from their families to people who do God knows what to them. Well… we need to put the fear of God into him, if you know what I mean.”

What am I supposed to say to that?