The bus was dead quiet until the first convict started bragging.

By the time the third one opened his bag, the guards were trying not to laugh.

But the real shock came that night, when a single number shouted in the dark made hardened criminals collapse in tears.

Three men on their way to prison try to outsmart boredom with the one item they’re allowed to bring.

One clings to a deck of cards, promising endless games to pass the time.

Another dreams of painting his way into a new identity, imagining himself a folk legend behind bars.

Then the third calmly reveals a box of tampons, not for their intended use, but for the absurd promise printed on the label:

freedom, movement, adventure. In that bleak bus, his joke briefly cracks open a world far beyond razor wire.

Later, in the dark hum of the cell block, humor becomes its own secret language.

Old-timers have reduced entire jokes to numbers, proof that they’ve told them too many times to bother with the words.

When the new inmate shouts “twenty-nine,” he accidentally invents something they’ve never heard before.

Laughter explodes, not just at the joke, but at the miracle that, even here, something can still be new.