Twist reached out and grabbed the front waistband of Reilly’s denim pants. The feel of unwanted fingers touching the bare skin of her belly made Reilly’s panic break free. She tried to get away. Before she knew it, she was lying on her back on a table with the rag that she had been using to wipe the tables pulled taut across her mouth and nose. The musty smell of dirty dishwater made her gag. Thing One stood at her head, holding her head firm against the table with the filthy cloth. Reilly was suffocating. Her arms and legs flailed, and she felt one of the others trying to grab her ankle. She reared up, her legs swinging up over her, and she kicked Thing One in the face. With a crunch she felt, rather than heard, her feet found satisfying purchase, and the rag loosened. She rolled away from her attackers, falling off the table. Her side struck the edge of the bench on her way down, and she landed hard on the floor. She strained to regain the breath that had been knocked out of her, and she grabbed her side when a lance of pain cleaved her in two.
She heard angry whispered words and the sound of rapid footsteps between the tables. The creak of the table under tremendous weight told her one of the goons was climbing over to get to her. She forgot about her painful ribs, and she rolled under the bench to get beneath the table. She crawled down the length as fast as she could. Her focus was to get to the end of the row of tables, hoping that she’d somehow be able to make it into the kitchen where there were other people. Metal braces made navigating under the tables difficult.
A large hand wrapped around her ankle and pulled her backward. Her arms slipped out from under her and her hips landed on the bars that she was halfway through. She tried to hold onto them as she was yanked backward, but she lost her grip. Her shirt rolled up as she passed through, and the metal tore at her exposed skin. Streaks of fiery pain made her cry out.
One of her attackers grabbed the back of her shirt and heaved her up. Her head slammed against the underside of the table, and she was thrown to the ground between the two rows of tables. A fist slammed into her jaw and another pummeled her stomach. Bile rose in her throat. Through a curtain of stars, she saw Betts above her, her face contorted into a fury that bordered on insanity. Dark liquid poured from the giant’s nose, and a cut separated one of her eyebrows. The huge woman straddled her, using her knees to pin Reilly’s arms to the ground. The pain Reilly felt as the bones in her arms were pressed into the cement floor under the full weight of the enormous woman was more than Reilly could bear. She wailed.
“Betts! Betts! Get off her!” Twist’s harsh whisper was close.
“Fuckin’ bitch! I’ll kill her!” spit Betts, and a fist hit Reilly in the temple. Lights flashed behind her eyelids as Reilly fought to remain conscious.
“Get off!”
The rain of punches ceased and the weight across Reilly’s midsection was gone.
Reilly groaned at the relief of having her arms free, but she didn’t have any strength to fight anymore. She shut her eyes and curled into a ball on her side. She tasted blood, and waited for the next onslaught. She disappeared into her head and hoped that whatever they did to her physically wouldn’t get through to who she was inside.
She was lifted and carried somewhere. Bright lights tempted her to open her eyes, and Fergie’s face was floating above her. A train of bright florescent lights flowed past her head.
“Fergie?”
The guard glanced down at her.
“If you ever want a job outside of here. Come see me when I get out. I mean that. You… you’re…”
Reilly forgot what she was going to say, and her lip, split and bleeding, hurt when she talked. But Fergie was there for her. She always was. Reilly closed her eyes. She opened them again as she was lowered onto a stiff sheet on a high bed. The smell of rubbing alcohol and bleached linens rose to greet her. She was back in the infirmary.
Dodged a Bullet
SHE MAY HAVE HAD A FRIEND in Fergie, but the warden was another story. It had taken a few months of Reilly being summoned to the warden’s office as well as an increase in subtle innuendo before his intentions became overt, but when it became clear, Reilly shouldn’t have felt surprised. Even so, she couldn’t believe how it went down. After weeks of indirect references and insistent, but timid attention, the warden didn’t simply ease into opening his heart, he jumped right in.
The whole situation had been surreal at first, what with his calling her to his office for tea and reading poetry to her. Most disturbing about it was that he had never even acknowledged the strangeness of the situation. The sense of expectation that came from his attention had exhausted her. Every time she had received a call to his office, she wondered if she could still pull off her act of ignorance over what she very easily guessed was a slow process leading to his asking her to have sex with him. In the weird ways of irony, she suspected that it was his sense of decorum that had kept him from pressuring her, or outright forcing her, into sex right away.
Then, one day, a little over three months into her sentence, Reilly had responded to the call to his office and had just taken her usual seat in the oversized chair in front of the expansive desk when he dropped to one knee before her, taking her hands in his.
“It would make me the happiest man alive to make you my wife, Reilly. Not right away, of course. It wouldn’t do to make our love public while you’re a guest here, obviously. But we can be discreet. The couch is a sofa-bed—“
She’d barely heard his words, her focus was on his sweaty hands over hers. She was slightly behind him in comprehending what was happening, but when he mentioned the sofa-bed, she had almost jumped up from the chair. He beat her to it, though. A phone rang and then a knock sounded at the door. He stood up quickly, backing up a few steps. She’d never been more relieved in her life, and she hadn’t realized that she had been holding her breath until the warden’s assistant opened the door a crack to tell the warden that the Governor was on the line.
She left his office that day feeling like she had dodged a bullet, but the kiss he had brushed across her surprised mouth before he opened the door to let her out had been a portent of things to come.
Different From the Others
FERGIE STOOD IN THE DOORWAY to the library, causing the small space to feel smaller than it already was.
“Ransome, warden wants you.”
Reilly felt like a trapped animal. The warden’s last words had haunted her.
“But the library is open for another twenty minutes,” she said, looking up from the stack of books that she was sorting. She’d spent her first few weeks as librarian applying for grants, and the rewards of her hard work had paid off with boxes of books, most of them used, as Reilly tried to stretch the limited funds as far as she could. The shelves of the little room were filling up.
“Everyone out. Library’s closed,” said Fergie, taking a book from the woman standing next to Reilly and placing it on the desk.
Abject impotence washed over Reilly as she locked up the library. She was crying by the time she arrived at the warden’s office. She never cried. She had tried to hold it in, but the feeling of helplessness was overwhelming. Fergie didn’t look at her as she took her normal post next to the door as Reilly went in.
He was near the door, hovering as he always did, awaiting her arrival, his hands fluttering near as she moved past him. She kept her face averted, and wiped her eyes.
“Reilly! Are you okay?” he asked, standing too close behind her. She heard concern in his voice, which made it even worse.
She stood in the middle of the room and nodded, but she didn’t turn toward him, not trusting herself to speak. His presence was a greasy shadow behind her and her stomach churned.
“Did someone do something to you?” he asked, shutting the heavy door and following her into his office.
She shook her head.
His arm fell across her shoulders and she struggled to keep from shaking it off. He led her to one of the chairs in front of his desk and pulled the other one close. He kept one hand on her leg and t
ook the handkerchief that matched his tie out of his breast pocket to offer it to her. She accepted it, but did not use it. It was scented with his cloying cologne.
Reilly watched her fingers twist the handkerchief in her lap. She felt cornered and was too exhausted to keep on fighting the warden’s advances. She didn’t see a way out of sleeping with him without making him an enemy.
“What is it, Reilly? What’s the matter?” he asked. The worry in his voice sounded genuine. And she hated him even more for it. She wanted to shove his reeking handkerchief down his throat. “Has your… situation gotten to you? It’s understandable. You’ve been so strong.”
She decided that making him an enemy was the lesser of two evils. She’d rather him lump her in with the “perverts and dykes” than let him touch her. She pulled her anger up and used its strength for courage.
“It’s this,” she said, motioning between them. “I can’t do it.”
“I don’t understand,” said the warden. The confused expression he wore made her want to claw his eyes out.
“You and me. I don’t want to make you mad, but I just can’t do it!”
Reilly didn’t expect to see the countenance of resigned agreement that transformed the warden’s face. He nodded his head and removed his hand from her knee.
“Does this have to do with Cray?”
“Cray?” She was confused.
“It does. I can see. I should have known.”
Reilly watched the warden run his fingers through his hair. It was the first time she had ever seen him lose his composure. Hope filled her at the thought that she might have found a way out.
“How… how did you know?”
The warden gave her a sad smile, and her hope grew. She didn’t break character, though. She maintained the expression of the distraught lover.
“I’m just relieved to know that I was right. If it can’t be me, I’d rather it be another man. You had me wondering, though, since he has never been to visit you. But one of the guards saw him leaving yesterday. They said that he wore a hat and sunglasses, and he used an alias. I looked it up. He hasn’t been linked to any other actresses since you’ve been here.”
The information confused Reilly. Cray had never come to the prison. She had made it clear that she didn’t want anyone to visit. The only visitors she’d had were the ones she couldn’t persuade to stay away—her mother, Alison, and Hank. Hank. Hank had visited the day before. The warden thought that Hank was Cray in disguise. She didn’t try to correct him. Maybe she had an out.
“We… we’re private,” she said.
“Of course you are. You’re a decent and complex woman, Reilly. I never knew what to think of the stories about you in the papers. But you haven’t taken up with any of the dykes in here. If you were that way, you would have by now. They can’t help their perverse nature. I was glad to know that the homo rumors were untrue.”
Anger burned Reilly from the inside out, but she had had enough practice with her mother that she was able to just sit there and stare over his shoulder.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you,” said the warden, misunderstanding her lack of response. “You must be tired of the stories. I shouldn’t have mentioned that horrible gossip. The indignities that you must have suffered from those obscene rumors.”
“You have no idea,” said Reilly through clenched teeth.
“I know. I know. Rumors can be mean-spirited. It must be hard to hear such disgusting lies.” The indignation he displayed on her behalf just fueled her anger.
“You think that they’re lies?” Why couldn’t she keep her mouth shut?
He just nodded his head.
“I’ll admit that for a while I wondered if they were true. Everyone knows that Hollywood has more than the normal share of perversion and sin running rampant through it.”
Reilly was beyond angry.
“What?”
He mistook the source of her anger, which saved her, but goaded him on to increase her rising agitation.
“No. No. Not you. I know that now. When you didn’t respond to my attempts to court you, though, I have to admit that I started to wonder if the rumors were true. I wondered if you just needed a real man to show you what you need. But—but I can just look at you and see that you aren’t that way,” he stammered. “You don’t act like those dykes. For a while I thought maybe that you were just playing hard to get. But it finally occurred to me that you’re in love with someone else. I just didn’t want to believe it until I saw how upset you were today.”
Reilly lost track of how many times the warden had just offended her. Her continued silence was the result of disbelief as much as it was anger now. Did the world really grow this kind of asshole anymore?
“I don’t want to sound arrogant, but most of the women here would jump at the opportunity to be with me. You’ve always been more reserved. That’s why I like you. You’re different from the others. It’s obvious that you don’t belong here.”
Reilly wanted to remind the warden that she had killed someone. She wanted to tell him that she deserved to be there more than many of the other women. She wanted to scare him with her soullessness. But she finally knew when to keep her mouth shut.
“Can you do me a favor?” asked the warden.
Reilly tilted her head, wondering what she could ever possibly do for him. He had all of the power.
“Let me know if it doesn’t work out between you and Cray. I can be a good man to you, Reilly. I know that these long distance things don’t often work out. And if he can’t wait, please let me know. I’d like a chance to treat you the way a woman like you deserves to be treated.”
After that the warden had backed away from his relentless pursuit. And in doing so, he acted as if he had committed a noble deed. Although he never tried to touch her again, and he didn’t call her to his office after that, she had often felt his oily eyes upon her. Once, he’d left a book of poetry on her bed. She’d known it was from him when she’d noticed the marked page on, “How Soft this Prison Is”. Her love of Emily Dickinson had been tarnished since then. But she’d been afraid to throw the book away. If he’d noticed it was gone, there was no telling what his reaction would have been. So, she’d endured its presence in her cell. A reminder that she was never alone. As if the excessive trips past her cell hadn’t been enough. She shuddered at the memory of the metal taps on his shoes tap-tap-tapping by her cell late at night when she was supposed to have been asleep, slowing as he approached, and quickening again once he had passed.
Fuck You, Warden
EIGHTEEN MONTHS, SEVENTEEN DAYS, SIX hours and twenty-three minutes. That’s how long it had been since she’d been brought to this place. Not quite noon, and the temperature in the shade already tipped past a hundred and ten. Reilly took a cautious step from the stale, air-conditioned chill of the gray building that had been her home. Pausing to get her bearings, she stood beneath the long, steel awning that jutted like a middle finger from the structure behind her. It did little to shield her from the glare of the midday sun. A dry heat wrapped around her, tightening her skin, creeping beneath the edges of her once-favorite clothes, clothes that now felt foreign. Her emerald eyes squinted against the wind and glare, as her lanky blond hair, held back by a well-worn black bandana, whipped against her neck. Unrelenting bright light assaulted her from all sides, and arid wind swept down from the barren landscape to pepper her with a fine spray of grit. She licked her dry lips, the chapped skin rasping against her tongue.
Footsteps followed from the dark doorway behind her and stopped. The hiss of the automatic security door clanged shut. Her eyes darted to the side, but she did not turn. She was going against instinct by keeping her back turned, but she knew who—and what—was behind her. What mattered now was what stood before her. Freedom. And although she would never escape her past, she didn’t have any intention delaying putting some physical distance between her and the last months of her life. Eyes forward, and ignoring the guard behind
her, she descended the two steps in front of her and moved down the cement pathway that led away from the tangent her life had taken.
Steel-linked fencing spanned the sides of the awning like a cage. A feeling of uncertainty fluttered in her stomach as she took her first hesitant steps, heeding the impulse to increase space from what lay behind her. Her back twitched with each step, as she felt the invisible links of a chain anchored to her spine. She tensed when she conjured the image of someone on the inside holding the other end of the chain in their fist, waiting for her foot to cross over some unseen demarcation point, just so they could yank her back with a just-kidding smirk.
When the fencing beside her rattled with a burst of wind, she almost broke into a run. Fighting that urge, she channeled the woman she used to be, the woman who had walked with poise down more than a few red carpets. She ignored her roiling guts and moved, even-paced, through the channel of wire fencing. Her pale unmanicured feet, clad in worn-out plastic flip-flops, slapped an even cadence across the cement. The footsteps of the guard who followed close behind were almost silent. A whispered shadow that reminded her that someone was always there, always watching.
Away from the building, the heat only intensified. The smell of dry sand and burned pavement swept over her. As she emerged from under the awning, next to the parking lot, the direct sunlight beat down on her. Its needle-like intensity scoured her, and she squinted out across the sun-bleached blacktop through tear-obscured eyes.
The synthetic fabric of the light blouse she wore flapped against her skin, and she was aware of the faint smell of her own stale sweat. Her gaunt hips, which had become used to the broken-in, denim pants that she had worn for the last eighteen months, felt strange in the once fashionable skin-tight capris that were now a size and a half too big. She was grateful for laser hair removal, as the warm air caressed the bare legs she wouldn’t have been allowed to shave. Out of nervous habit, she lifted a hand to chew on a thumbnail, and dropped it as soon as it touched her lips. Beyond the cloistered walls, she was unsure who could be watching her. Inside, she had gotten used to it. She knew there were prying eyes and hadn’t cared, as long as they had kept their distance. But she was on the outside now. It felt different when she didn’t know whose eyes might be on her. Aside from the bored guard behind her, it could be anyone. She had to assume it was everyone, although she was sure that none of her fans would recognize her now.
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