Flash of painful light, like staring into the sun on a cloudless day.

They could call it freedom if they wanted to, but the truth of the matter was that they wouldn’t be undoing Pony’s cuffs until he had made his way through the gauntlet of barbed fencing and razor wire to the last guard shack on the perimeter fence. Even a guy on parole was trusted no more or less than a lifer with a bad attitude and a sharpened toothbrush. He was a criminal, from the moment he stepped onto the grounds of the Turner Correctional Facility to the moment he stepped off. A piece of paper wasn’t going to change the way they saw him. He imagined nothing ever would, at least for the guards and the warden and the eight hundred other pieces of shit that he’d had to live with for the last fifteen years.

He walked alone for those last fifty yards, a great expanse of nothing cloistered on both sides by sharp metal, just wide enough for a man his size to tread lightly, to do everything in his power to avoid giving the ex-Marines in the guard tower a reason to put a bullet through his neck. The heat didn’t help, not that a Texas summer was good for anything except drought and the boiling of men’s blood. The sun hung alone in a clear sky and Pony lifted a squinting eye at it. Somehow, it felt different. Being that it was the same sun that had shone down on him throughout his term behind bars, he was confused by the sensation and idea that maybe things had changed simply by walking out that door. On this side of the wall, the sun felt like an old friend met after too long apart. He turned his whole face to it, closed his eyes, and watched his vision go red. Not even his eyelids could stop the penetrating rays.

That was the sun for you, he thought. Same as ever. He smiled at his renewed acquaintance as he approached the guard shack, blinded again by the glare coming off the plexiglass.