"Sign here and you are free to walk away from this establishment."
The words of the police officer brought Jasmine Thomas back down to Earth from her daydream. After four years of living in the stone cold, heartless prison, it was hard to believe that this was finally her release day.
"Yes sorry." She replied quickly. Jasmine picked up the pen with trembling hands and sprawled her signature across the dotted line on the form.
"Thank you." She said shakily and collected her belongings from the tray that had been pushed towards her whilst she was lost deep in her thoughts.
Pushing a lock of dark hair out of her face, Jasmine started to walk slowly out of the harsh building in which she had spent precious years of her life. Despite the fact that she never lifted her eyes from the ground, Jasmine still found herself stumbling over her own feet several times on her way out of the jail due to the sheer amount of emotions she was feeling.
She was torn between anxiety and relief. She was free at last, she could start her life again, make her own choices, live how she wanted to, but she had nowhere to go, no money, no job. Nothing. She would have to start again.
Then there was the anger, anger at herself and at Shane. How could she have let herself become this?
A killer.
Just thinking about it made her feel sick. She had been heartless enough to kill a man and that terrified her. That was a side of herself that Jasmine had never even thought existed until that moment. How could she have been so angry, so inhuman, that she could bring herself to murder him? If she had done it once, what was stopping her from doing it again?
It was these thoughts that plagued her mind day and night with nothing to stop them from doing so; the only thing that could push them out of her head for even a few moments were the thoughts of one person.
Debbie.
Just the sound of her name made Jasmine's heart flutter wildly. Some days she would allow herself to spend hours in her cell just wonder how Debbie was, even though she's been determined from the very beginning to leave that life behind no matter how much it hurt her.
Pushing all thoughts of Shane aside, Jasmine took her first steps outside of the prison in four years.