afictionalphile
patreon
Stenton Taster Chapter (Not Part of Narrative)
🕑 Added 2022-04-16 03:21:54 +0000 UTCThis post is free sneak-peek into the ongoing narrative called Stentonville Prison for Inexcusable Women. The characters and events included in this excerpt are not retained in the main story, even though the main ideas and the approach to storytelling is the same.
So, you can get a feel as to whether this is a thing for you before giving the rest of the story a go, but not spoil anything for yourself. It's a spoiler without being a spoiler!
More information about Stentonville Prison for Inexcusable Women: https://www.patreon.com/posts/should-you-read-65185502
You need to be at least Preschool Tier to read the rest of this story.
Begin:
The thing they don’t tell you about prison is that it smells. You hear over and over again that you’re going to get eaten alive and that there’s always someone tougher. That you’ll go skinny and your skin will turn yellow from gruel. That, even as a woman, somehow your anus is going to become a spongy loofa. And, somehow, “your pussy is gonna know what boot tastes like once you wind up on the peninsula.”
Everyone leans in and whispers that the actual big secret is boredom. Jobs amount to nothing more than chores better entrusted to a six year old. Meals only take up so much of your day. Yard time is short and the grass is always dead and the draughts from the peninsula are harsh in every month save summer. The basketballs are always flat. The weight room is always crowded and ever in possession of an odd number of dumbells. Please, don’t bother with the decks of cards unless they’ve been recently restocked. Convision only plays educational documentaries and prison system news. With the exception of the parole report, nothing is worthwhile. The documentaries, beyond the animal sex episode of Wild Planet, are unwatchable after the third time.
But the smell. Everyone on the outside that could have warned anyone about the smell forgot about the smell. Perhaps this is not their fault.
The first flavor is concrete. Prisons around the world, and especially Stenton, were old prisons. If they aren’t built of large stone blocks they’re built from that coagulated milkshake of pebbles and air pockets that serves as the primary skeleton of all of the world’s worst buildings. There’s not much to innovate, the ancients had most of the design of a prison figured out. Build it thick and build it high. But contrary to its harsh sturdiness, concrete is porous. It sucks in chemicals and air and traps them away to desiccate in little hidden air pockets where they corrupt for eternity. Every room exudes decay that cannot be solved by washing towels or carpets or rugs. It is encased morning breath, captured brine wind, enshrined farts. The smell of dust growing into fungus. All of the following aromas filter and become one with the concrete, and will remain until the Atlantic reclaims the peninsula.
After this the smell is water. Not just the sea, which washes up into jagged crags and pools and rots. Incontinent cargo ships belch soot and slick that suffocates the fish and bubbles them up to melt for seagull tartare. No, beyond that is the water that gets hung in pipes that nobody bothered to fix. Sinks and faucets whisper foul concoctions of iron and detergent. Rain settles on the roof and on the platforms beyond the bars and fails to evaporate until life, free life, springs forth in a simplified pantomime of the origin itself.
And then, presumably at all prisons but especially at Stenton, there is the smell of shit. Copious amounts of human shit.
Casey was in her cell. She sat, because the scheduled time of 10:30am was for her and not for her guard. She also sat because she was used to it.
It was late in Spring. The plastic window that started six feet up and stretched two feet higher could not be opened, but Casey knew that it was a nice day. At least it was a nice day for the inland, and she could tell that by catching the sun, were she free to walk on the pathways down to the yard, which could remain beautiful even if they were flanked by thick blast walls. The walls, in addition to keeping Casey in, also kept the elements out, and thus a walk out there meant she was not exposed to the roaring gusts that entered the bay, which made everything out here some ten degrees cooler. At least, it was not hot, as last summer’s experience had taught her. Today, Casey had not been outside, and because of the dock she would not be going outside at all today. But she knew it was nice because cold days just couldn’t be this bright. Cold days were gray and shadowy.
Her dock was once a week and lately had been scheduled on Tuesdays. The day was irrelevant, but the timing was critical, and the last two had been late afternoon docks. It was better to get these things over with. The only dark spot, other than the upcoming dock itself, was the potential for a second dock. But she’d disputed that one, on account of an alleged misunderstanding, and there was a chance that she could still attend Thursday’s book club.
She took a deep breath of air. She tried to focus on the dry dusty bits that floated and nothing else. Her eyes closed and her mouth became a circle. A notion of a yoga pose flitted through her mind, and her arm muscles twitched. But no, Casey could not bring herself to do yoga.
Although the digital clock on her cellmate’s bedside was broken and Casey never knew the exact time, Officer Grippen arrived at 10:48 am.
Guards at Stenton wore blue uniforms that were intended for practice and not for show. The tie was a clip and they wore no badge beyond a stitched name tag. They did not wear any sort of hat save beanies when it was cold. Their pants were black and khaki, and usually they wore sneakers. All that distinguished Officer Grippen from a mall cop was his utility belt. There were three pairs of steel cuffs, a thick black baton, a gray box that Casey knew was a taser, and a ring of keys. When he came around the catwalk to stand in front of Casey’s cell he clanked his arrival from far enough away that she was already standing in the center when he arrived.
“Prisoner 4023456,” he said, procuring an index card. “Present?”
He was a human rhino. His buzz was turning gray, and Casey always pegged him as retired military. A lot of them were former grunts that couldn’t hack it as cops or firefighters. Too impatient to collect checks to do nothing at roadside construction and unable to point radar guns the right way, and they did not lack any aggression. If she ever wanted to get on the other side of the bars, all she had to do was piss one off. They could get her through, but only in the manner that cheddar passes through a grater. Officer Grippen was the unflappable strong type, and her chest eased a little when she saw him. He was still a squarehead, though.
“Prisoner 4023456, present,” Casey replied. She faced him. He stood in the cell doorway, the only opening in the hardness that enveloped her.
“Prisoner 40..2345..6,” he began again. “ This is a court-ordered correctional to be meted out in accordance with your sentence and the discretion of this correctional facility. This correctional is to consist of...fifty...bare-handed spankings upon your unprotected posterior. If this is not the correctional due for your sentence, or if there are stays issued by the court presiding over your conviction that this correctional facility is not aware of, please raise this issue now.”
“I raise no issue.” Casey paused. “Sir.”
Officer Grippen slipped the index card into his pocket. He took a step into Casey’s cell and began to reach for his belt. He unlatched a pair of handcuffs, and then made her turn around.
But he did not ask for her wrists. That would come in a moment. Instead, Casey bent forward and stuck out herself towards him, where her backside came into contact with his palm.
“Have you defecated, ma’am?”
“Yes sir.”
“Thank you. Turn around for me please.” Casey did as she was told and Officer Grippen latched her wrists into the cold steel. He tightened the crank one click past uncomfortable. Casey wriggled her fingers and writhed her fists to make the tightness a bit more bearable, but Officer Grippen was already kneeling. He paid no mind being closer to her waistline as he fit loops around each of her ankles. They cinched off her jumpsuit so that they looked like strange orange clown shins, with bunched up fabric ballooning beneath the metal. Before locking them he ran a metal chain that had been hanging from his belt with his other cuffs and weapons.
“Bring your feet closer together ma’am.” Casey did so, caring not to kick him or plant a knee into his head. “Bring your feet apart now, so the chain is taut.” He held his hands on her calves as she did so, and now satisfied that the chain between her ankle cuffs was just wide enough for her to walk, but not much else, he rose again.
“Can you loosen these, they’re pinching right here?” Casey asked when he was standing and looking her over. She tried to twist both hands and point towards her left wrist, which was challenging and mostly a failure because it was one of the ones that had a steel block and spring between the two loops. There was almost no twisting or shearing movement possible. It didn’t matter much because the message was clear, and after a moment’s processing, Officer Grippen fetched his key loop and beckoned her hands towards him. She offered both, trying to meet his eyes, but he peered at the metal teeth in the loop. Counting how many he had turned through the catch. Finally, he grabbed her cuff and stuck the key back into the handle. He loosened it almost all the way, then ran it back through carefully. He stopped one click earlier than he had last time, removed the key, and dropped her hands.
Still tight on her right wrist, Casey knew better than to ask for more.
The dock was a physical space and structure within the cell block itself. Each cell block of Stenton started from a large central octagon that extended into four long hallways on every second face. In other words, an ‘X’ shape with a bulbous stop-sign shaped chamber at the intersect. Each block was a uniform three floors high, with the exception of the oldest block, cellblock A, which only had two. The interiors were exposed, and one could walk down every platform and peer into every cell without going through any doors or leaving the same open air. Sounded flitted and resonated down the halls of steel and cement, finding the same pores that the smells did. The noise reached a crescendo at the nexus, where the dock was located.
It was called the dock because it was a permanent stage seemingly floating in the middle of the main room. The supports of the metal and carpeted stage were drilled into the original linoleum flooring, as it was a later addition to the framework of the prison cell blocks. Surrounding the stage were plastic picnic tables, bolted to the floor themselves, upon which inmates talked, played card games, or passed the time. It hung between everything like a raft, terrible and isolated at the confluence of all the cellblock's activity, as the various denizens waited their turn to make port.
Officer Grippen walked behind Casey as she made her way to the dock. Her cell was C-221, halfway down the northern corridor on the second platform. It was only about a minute and a half walk after the fetters were all in place, but it would be faster if she could take longer strides and didn’t need to shuffle carefully down the stairs.
The yellow line was where they stood after the wakeup call, and before nightly lockdown. It ran along each of the floors, just outside the bars of the cells, and in front of each cell door were white footprints painted within the yellow line, so the women had no question of where exactly to stand during roll call.
The black line ran parallel to the yellow line, towards the middle of the corridor, and towards the railings of the catwalks. The black line had no painted footprints, instead it was solid back. It was for one purpose only. The same purpose that had brought Officer Grippen to her cell with a fistful of fetters. Casey walked the black line.
Along her way she passed other prisoners. The concrete platform featured a concrete railing, but the rest of the distance up the third platform above was protected further by a grate. This was to prevent anyone from leaning over or throwing stuff down or across the corridor, but most importantly it prevented anyone from tumbling, or being tumbled. Some prisoners leaned up against this grate, their fingers grasping the latticed metal like racoon fingers. They surveyed the northern corridor with blank expressions. Nobody was lying about the boredom. Each of them in time would notice Casey and her escorting officer, and slide backward toward the cells to let them pass. The black line was off limits except to step past it to get somewhere else; unless you were headed where the black line headed. Today, only one prisoner required a reminder from Officer Grippen to move out of the way. She hadn’t heard Casey’s fetters clanking against the floor, or the leathery creaking of Officer Grippens belt and boots. She dodged quickly, her own diaper bulging underneath her orange jumpsuit. Casey saw the woman look past her, to her escort behind her, and knew she was watching his face for any indication that by loitering on the forbidden black like, she’d crossed a different one. The officer said nothing to her, though, and Casey knew to keep on walking. More prisoners sat or laid on their cots beyond their bars, their heads waiting to see on whose limbs lay the steel that made all the clanking when they finally came into view. Casey didn’t blame them. What else were they going to look at?
It was a show, multiple times a day. Nobody memorized the dock schedule. Instead, they saw an officer walk down one way with chains, and walk back with one of the ladies three cells down. Right now, that lady was Casey, and tomorrow, or even later today, or even twenty minutes from now, that lady was them.
She stunk worse now that she was moving. There were many smells around her in the prison. The woman who had ducked back from the grate and cowered from Officer Grippen hadn’t smelled very good either. The bars were replaced regularly but the grates flaked rust that made your fingers smell like blood if you touched them. A few cells reeked as Casey did. But Casey’s mess was trapped in her jumpsuit, and now that there was no way for air to go through her ankles due to the cuffs, all of the breeze floated upwards. And backwards, she hoped.
Officer Grippen walked behind her and Casey felt his eyes upon her. Shackled in the block, with walls upon walls and rocks and the sea beyond, she wasn’t sure why the extra precaution necessary. Perhaps it was to prevent her from attacking him, but what would even that buy her? A hundred bonus trips to the dock at least. If he was so worried about her, though, he could enjoy the aroma all he liked.
They were practically at the dock. The black line diverged down a staircase and Casey knew to turn. She took the stairs slowly, waiting for each foot to hit the next stair before moving on. Officer Grippen put a hand on her shoulder to make sure she didn’t fall, which was nearly counterproductive. The staircase had a mini landing then hooked again before dumping Casey on the main level, close to the octagon. The black line continued from the end of the staircase toward the open center room. The light from ceiling windows blinded Casey momentarily, it’d been a while since the sun was this bright when she was docked, and she raised her hands together to briefly shield them. She must have stumbled off the path, because two strong hands grabbed her shoulders and pushed her a few feet to her right. Casey knew better than to apologize.
“Move! To the dock!”
Yes sir I know where I’m going sir. That at least, she didn’t say.
The taunt of the outdoors was a blessing though, because Casey didn’t see the prisoners who’d congregated until she was almost to the little trio of steps that actually led her to the dock. That meant a whole host of faces she wouldn’t know were watching her until she needed to turn around. Their presence was heavy, staring like the inmates in the cells except they were staring out in the open. They lounged on the picnic tables to view the docking, as if sometime soon it wouldn’t be their turn too. Voices echoed from the halls and indiscriminate laughter popped like balloons. It felt like a fair, or a noisy restaurant, except there was no food, no wares, and nothing but boredom.
And retribution.
The dock was in essence, a pillory. The feature of the rectangular platform were four stockades made of steel. They opened like jaws. Beside those were four chairs and a large table. Three women sat in the chairs, facing inwards at the set of pillories. They were fully clothed, like Casey. Without a word from her escort, Casey climbed onto the platform and joined them. Officer Grippen retrieved the index card that he had read from earlier, scribbled onto it with a crayon, and then slid it into a flap affixed to the back of Casey’s chair. Then he was gone, off to find the next on the schedule, or perhaps off to his lunch break.
“You came in time,” the prisoner in the chair beside her said. Casey had not noticed her on her way to the chair, having been too preoccupied with not tangling her leg irons in the last few paces. The prisoner’s name was Delia. Older, maybe in her fifties Casey thought, who had short, graying hair and fleshy thighs that strained against the side of her uniform. She’d arrived around six months ago and kindled somewhat of an acquaintance when they both had laundry assignments. Dropping by her cell could oblige you into more tales about her huckster husband and conniving children. “And I’m the one doing time. Can you believe it?” Although most conversations wound up along those lines, Casey still found her like able.
Casey looked out onto the pillories. All four were occupied by bare-bottomed inmates, their ends exposed to the greater cellblock. The four cardinal directions. Meat on the menu. Ham and a little slice of baloney. A bulb of garlic. Or, like one of the larger rumps in the pillories before them, a nice piece of sirloin. Pulverized. Their heads were locked into the circles, and their handcuffs had been undone so that they could have their arms put through too. Their feet weren’t restrained save the leg irons that Casey was already wearing. Why bother? Nobody was running unless they popped their head out of the thing like a cork. And besides, the guards had a much better time when the guilty could squirm.
One woman did just so now. Another rump obstructed the view, so Casey could only see the woman’s head and hands. They twisted and clenched as the guard behind her brought down his palm. The cracks of skin on skin fell like fireworks. She screamed for so long, his hand was already back at the height of his shoulder before she composed herself for the next one. Occasionally, the woman’s knees buckled. The guard drew his hand and waited until her hips were square again.
“Twenty-seven!” the guard called. Pop.
Ahhhhh… she sobbed.
“Twenty-eight!” the guard called again. Casey recognized Officer Sipho, and she felt her jaw clench.
“Twenty-nine!”
The woman mouthed a word, but said nothing.
There was one more, and then the guard called a break to mark halfway. The respite was mostly for him, to go over and run his hand under cool water. Strange. Casey thought. She knew this prisoner. Her name was Carla, maybe. She didn’t know her well, and now that her face was hanging and her long brown hair draped down like a rag on a corpse, Casey couldn’t place the name for sure. Youthful, a young heiress who became a vacuous shoplifter. But sixty spanks didn’t seem an appropriate dock for those charges.
“Her?” Casey asked.
“Yeah?” Delia said, staring out at the pillories. “I mean who? Lookit right there,” she gestured again to the bottom closest to where they sat. The ass attached to the pillory was bare and facing them, meaning Casey couldn’t see the woman’s face. “She just got puttup. It’s Gracie.”
They hooked you up to a pillory when you were the next prisoner to get your docking. You got a front row seat to the spanking before yours. The punishing guard took a break for water or to put salve on his or her hand. If you were really unlucky, they’d trot off to take a leak to come back rested and ready. Then they’d dock you. After, you got to show off your penance to the entire block while the court-ordered retribution swung around to each new woman until some other asshole became the next asshole up. Gracie’s cheeks were white as an angel’s rap sheet, meaning she was that next asshole.
Still curious about the woman to the left, whom she thought was Carla, waiting for her dock to resume, Casey asked why seeing Gracie get spanked was something not to miss.
“Oh, you didn’t hear?” Delia permitted herself a wide grin. “I saw it actually, her cells across from mine. Didn’t think too much of it except that it was funny seeing them fuck around with a ramrod bitch like that. It was like, whoah wee, what’s the world coming to? Then I assumed it was a cellmate thing or whatever. But enough about that cause I heard the whole story from Trisha who was in the next cell over. From hers, that is.”
Casey observed the plaque embedded in the carpeting of the dock that proclaimed “No Ta-kin-.” The ‘l’ and the ‘g’ were worn away as long as Casey could remember. The sign’s need for replacement reflected how little the guards cared. And for just this purpose; gossip served as more efficient correction than any part of a sentence.
“So Trish said that they brought Gracie back from breakfast and locked her in. Not usual, happens to everyone, even ramrods. But this was different, they chained her to the cell bars, around her ankle. And cuffed her too. Trish said she could see all of it and then went over and looked to be sure. And fucking Gracie is bawling for them to change her diaper but they won’t. It’s great.”
The spanking resumed on the young rich shoplifter.
“About two hours later a bunch of guards. I want to say four? I was there and looking across and I think it was four. Trish said that they were charging her with something new.”
Casey thought for a moment. The shoplifter (Casey resolved to call her Carla, though she wasn’t sure) hadn’t gained any new stamina during the cessation of her scheduled restitution. Her knees were buckling far more often, and her head rolled every few impacts. Tears ran down her cheeks and her hair was half one way and half the other. Only ten more than mine.
She returned to Delia, and noticed her eyes shone. She had a wrinkled face, as if from a lifetime of squinting. It mighta been why, actually. “I thought she was put in for probation.”
Delia’s grin sweetened. “That’s exactly it!”
Despite the pauses, Officer Sipho carried on. He put his hand on Carla’s belly once, to get her hips more square. He never went to check her face.
“So this is what I heard. Trish said that they were charging with something related to a letter she wrote. Supposedly it was to a victim they never heard about. Well, to the father of one. Dumb ramrod forgot they read everything!” Delia allowed herself to laugh aloud. She even found a way to slap a knee, though it came out two hands flopping down on one and neither angled enough to get any sort of clap.
Casey nodded and observed the ass in front of her. It was small and the skin was tight, pulling the halves apart for a wide valley that showed everything. The ass could very well belong to Gracie, not that Casey doubted Delia. All you had to do on the dock was wait and observe, until it happened. And then you had to not squeal like Carla.
“Anyway,” Delia said, piping up one last time about the well-known ramrod. “It’ll be a good one, most of all because she’s probably hearing us right now and knows how many more of these she’ll have to do. And that’s what being such a bitch’ll get you.”
The other guard on the dock, a woman who might as well have been Batwoman, considering all of the cuffs and restraints hanging from her belt, stood aside by another prisoner, a fifth prisoner on the dock who was not in pillories and who was also not in the seats like Delia and Casey, stood beside the scene. She was naked, her jumpsuit and diaper both removed already, and she stood looking upon the punishment of Carla with none of the glee Delia carried. When Officer Sipho completed his punishment of Carla, who afterward hung limp in her stock, he began to wash and lather his hands for Gracie. The Batwoman-guard moved toward this naked prisoner, and led her towards the pillory clockwise around the dock from the one Gracie occupied. The prisoner who had been there, who had been punished when Casey was still waiting in her cell, was released from the pillory. The Batwoman guard undid the lock and opened the wooden jaws and she, also naked, stood up. Casey shivered at the feeling, and the intense need to grab her ass that she knew she would feel. The guards didn’t like that though, and the woman was experienced enough to stand there and listen to every order of the female guard who’d let her out. The next prisoner was locked in the pillory to watch Gracie’s punishment, while the red-bottomed one followed her liberator to the changing table, which existed on the dock, off to one corner, close to the chairs. Leg shackles still affixed, she mounted the table and laid on her back.
Meanwhile, Officer Sipho approached the ramrod.
“Prisoner 58790834, Gracie Fenniworth, you are now going to receive your legally proscribed docking of fifty corporal punishments to your rear-end.”
He did not wait for a reply. His strokes were even and unfatigued. His jaw was set and he did not recoil or flinch as his wrist came down. He did not look like a man in strenuous labor, but rather one with the disinterested determination of getting the smudge out of the bottom of a cup while doing the dishes.
“Let’s see how soon she squeals,” Delia muttered.
The cuffs on the female officer jangled as she changed the red-bottomed prisoner into her new diaper. Casey only heard it, the crinkling of plastic and the litany of commands. Legs up, butt up, butt down, butt up. Legs up. Legs down. And then a little while later, off the table. Without looking, Casey knew that the red-bottomed woman was putting on her jumpsuit under the guard’s supervision.
She wished she didn’t have to turn her head around to watch. That would be easier to watch than what Gracie was getting. Ramrod or not. She looked at her feet, but she could still hear it. Thwack, thwack, thwack! She tried to listen to the rustling of the woman’s diaper as she stepped into one foot and then the other of the jumpsuit. She tried to hear the order from the guard to turn around, so that the back zipper could be zipped and locked on the woman. The jumpsuits prevented tampering being almost completely seamless, with scrunchy material on the wrists and ankles and a near unrippable ribbon of dense cloth around the neck. A single zipper ran down the spine. The nob was affixed by the neck with a little lock.
There was no escape from the jumpsuits, and no escape from Gracie’s beating in front of her. She searched inward. She found nothing good. Her sore neck from the cot she still wasn’t used to. The sweat on her back from the shower she hadn’t had today. The dryness on her tongue from the water she had been denying herself for the sake of the diaper still locked within her jumpsuit. And then, yes, wattabout that diaper? How it felt against her on the hard chair. How it spread when Officer Grippen had sat her down. How it…
Batwoman made her way down the line of chairs. “No shit, shit, shit,” she said as she jabbed her finger at the backs of each, reading each index card slipped into the transparent holster glued to the back. The jab startled Casey out of her introspection and back into an awareness of Gracie’s sobbing.
“You there, next.” She pointed and shouted this from behind the four chairs, but the prisoner in the chair beyond Delia knew already that it was her, and she got up. The woman who had been spanked, released, changed, and redressed was now long gone, her scheduled restitution paid. For now. She was free. ‘Free.’
Batwoman reversed the process she’d overseen with the red-bottomed woman with the new prisoner she’d selected. The lock came off, then the breasts came out. Then the woman got on the table, where her diaper was dealt with. Once again, Casey knew better than to look, but the woman was naked down to her leg irons fairly quickly, indicating that she hadn’t been sitting her chair like Casey was.
Finally, Gracie’s punishment neared its end. The guard began to show seeming moments of mercy, though these were in truth subtle agonies of their own. He would wait for Gracie to fix her posture in the pillory, extending the theater and terror in the ramrod he was punishing.
The process continued. Delia was next, robbing Casey of her conversation partner. She didn’t care enough to be sad to see her go. Once again, Casey merely listened to the commands. Legs up. Butt up. Stay up. Stay up. Jesus Christ. Casey knew that Delia would take longer than the woman before, and knew especially that there was nothing pretty to look at.
Each time they took a prisoner off the chairs to be undressed and lowered into the wooden jaws, they took another out of the jaws to redress them. And each time this cycle completed, Officer Grippen arrived with another from elsewhere in the block. One arrived smelling fresh, well almost fresh, and when Batwoman thumbed through the index cards, once again she said “no shit.” And this time, with inflection, as if she was actually learning something she had not expected. That woman had been sat by Officer Grippen in Delia’s chair, and made no comment to Casey about whatever she must have smelled. She knew that Batwoman would take her next on account of her cleaner diaper, and sure enough, the woman was out of the chair to be undressed almost immediately, leapfrogging Casey.
Casey’s stomach rumbled, and the clock now said 11:30 am. Docking really didn’t take that long.
Delia’s docking came and went. She did not take it well, despite it only being twenty five in total, and fittingly whimpered and screeched in the same stock that Carla had previously occupied.
She wondered if Gracie the ramrod had overheard her, and what glee she took as she stared across the dock at Delia’s trapped head and hands.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit,” said Batwoman. “Alright, you.”
Casey stood for the first time in a while, and made her way to the table. The lock came off easily. She focused on the relief of no longer having shit in her pants.
“Are you physically able to bear the penalty? A negative answer here will warrant a full physical examination, and if you are deemed worthy the penalties will be increased by the discretion of the prison, up to a maximum of threefold the ordered count. Is that understood?”
“Yes ma’am,” she said.
Soon, her ass was bare. Her butt would have jumped for joy if it didn’t know what awaited it. Liberated from diapers and shit and sweaty jumpsuits for the first time since the showers! Though exposed to the entire prison, and though destined for something very sinister very soon, her ass cheeks stretched and basked in the openness.
And then it was time to bend. She wound up replacing Gracie in her stock, her bare bottom facing the chairs of the prisoners who would be going next. She watched the woman who leapfrogged her get her retribution, the woman who had arrived and to whom the Batwoman had said no shit. She watched her go through her fifteen. Just fifteen! She focused too much on her breathing to feel envy. She didn’t mind that her butt was facing the prisoners in the chairs. Up close and personal to a few was better than where Delia had been pilloried. That faced the whole arena of picnic tables and bored prisoners, who spent their day doing little more than watching and betting bottlecaps on how much each would squirm.
Soon, the officer was upon her. It was no longer Officer Sipho, her luck was too little to inherit a tired arm. Since Delia a relieving officer had arrived on the dock, one equally as strong and joyless in his righteous court-ordered duty.
50. Two sets of 25 with a little break in between. Every week. Every week for how long? There was parole. Damn Delia, that gossip. Damn that ramrod. How the hell did she only have the same amount as Casey? Damn the woman just before. Only fifteen. She could have had a few more minutes to herself.
It was a false hope that did not serve her; getting off and getting down was better. Maybe even it was better without the break. The break was likely for the guard, not for them anyway. Gotta keep the arm strong.
The officer finished with the woman beside her. He stepped to the narrow table that featured the faucet. It reminded Casey of Sumo wrestlers palming chalk after each faulted bout. Why was she thinking of Sumo. She would never go to Japan.
It was no good to be caught unawares. Somewhere along the line the officer had said his bit to her, but she had missed it. Somewhere, imagining the rice and chalk flinging through the air and a large man (maybe it was the diapers) stumbling towards the center of the ring, the first clap rang out.
Still raw and hot from the sweat and the shit, and from having to stand bent like a whore, the impact stung with incredible ferocity. She felt herself mist the air in front of her face. Lame cereal and the mealy apple she’d had for breakfast belched forth, as if the reverberations from behind forced her guts…
Smack!
That was only two…
Smack!
The girl right there didn’t cry even though it was only fifteen. I have to get to fifteen. That’s what they said, just make it to the next….
SMACK!
I’ll get the one on Thursday cleared. It has to be…
SMACK!
The little tendons in the back of her knee twanged as if she had just climbed twenty flights of stairs.
Sumos walked into the ring for glory. She had no reason to think of sumos except for the diapers. It was the damn diapers.
SMACK!
She wanted to be back in those damn diapers.
Casey did not know when she cried, but it was somewhere well before her break. In her mind she told herself it was before 35 remained on the count. But she had hoped for differences in her past before, and never when she woke up were those hopes true.
