They Evacuated the Whole City. Except One Man.

When the sirens started, the city knew what to do. Everyone had practiced it. Leave everything. Get to high ground. Do not look back.

Everyone ran. Cars filled the roads out of town. Parents carried children up the hills. Within an hour, the streets were almost empty.

Almost.

At the edge of the city stood the old jail. Small. Concrete. Twelve cells.

That week there was only one prisoner. A man in cell four, waiting for his court date. His hearing was on Monday. It was Friday.

The guards heard the sirens too. They looked at each other. Then they locked the doors behind them and drove away.

The man in cell four heard the front door slam. He called out. Nobody answered.

Then the lights went out.

The first water came in under the door. Just a thin line of it, crawling across the concrete floor. Then it stopped being a line and became a flood.

He screamed. He screamed until his throat tore. Outside, the sirens kept howling. The water kept rising. And nobody in the whole running city could hear one voice behind concrete walls.

The water reached his knees. Then his waist. Then his chest.

He pressed his face between the bars and pulled at them until his hands bled. The water was cold and black. It smelled like the sea and the street at the same time.

When it reached his chin, he stopped pulling.

He let go of the bars. And he accepted that nobody was coming back for him.

Here is the part that should keep you up at night. Things like this do not only happen in stories. When hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, hundreds of prisoners were left locked in their cells while the flood water rose around them. They stood in the dark for days, chest deep, waiting for someone to remember them.

So ask yourself one question. If the sirens started right now, and you were the one behind bars, how sure are you that someone would come back for you?