Sweet Hell on Fire

by Sara Lunsford

  Everyone backed away from us as we looked at each other, processing. Almost like the way you’d back up from a hungry lion—careful, hoping the predator doesn’t notice your movement and pounce.

  The relief OIC, a woman in her early fifties, who was like an angry bull when crossed, hopped on it immediately. “Well, since we’re just women, why don’t you come down to Seg and show us what we’re supposed to do? I don’t think we can figure it out all by ourselves. Do you?” She turned to look us.

  “No, I don’t think we can manage,” I said. “I have a vagina; therefore, I am incapable of doing my job.”

  He narrowed his eyes at us, as if there were some doubt as to whether we were serious.

  “Lunsford,” the male who would be assigned with us said under his breath. “I know you really have a dick. Even if he doesn’t.”

  It made me laugh, but I was still pissed off at what the Captain had said. Not just because it was a slur against women. I can even understand why men didn’t trust women as easily as other men in that environment. I’d seen firsthand too many women throw away their careers because some shit bag told them they were pretty.

  I didn’t like it, but I understood it. But this Captain, he’d seen my work. He knew I was a good officer. He knew the other two were good officers, and he knew we had good, solid reputations.

  We discussed it the whole way to the cell house. A couple of inmates from other cell houses yelled greetings to us on our way in and asked us about the weather, how we were doing, just looking to be acknowledged. My OIC told them she didn’t know and couldn’t figure it out because she was a woman. There were echoes of “fuck that” and “we’re fucked” the rest of the walk in. The inmates wanted nothing to do with us when we acted faux helpless. That was the calm before the storm. They knew we were pissed and wanted no part of it.

  We hadn’t been on duty for fifteen minutes when the first call came asking us what cells we had open for someone who’d popped off at the mouth before shift change. We informed the Captain that we didn’t know because we were girls and didn’t belong in Segregation. We asked him, in unison, to please send us a big, strong man to help us. When he could locate one.

  For women who couldn’t do the job, we pulled our own weight in contraband out of the cell house that day. The biggest find was the serrated blade we found in the cell of an inmate known to be HIV positive and who hated officers. It wasn’t unheard of for inmates to stick themselves and then use their blood as a weapon.

  What scared us wasn’t that he’d had it. There was all manner of shit hidden all around the prison at any given time. It was where we were and how he’d gotten it.

  Segregation was supposed to be the jail within the jail. It was supposed to be more secure than the rest of the prison. Inmates and their belongings were searched constantly. When inmates were brought into Seg, they were stripped naked and had a flashlight shined up their noses, in their ears, down their throats and up their asses. That blade was too big to be smuggled in the prison wallet (anus).

  So either someone hadn’t searched his property, or some dirty motherfucker brought it in for him.

  My mother finally heard back from her doctor. He suspected cervical cancer. She had to make an appointment to go back in for more tests, but she didn’t know how she’d get there because she was in so much pain all of the time that it was hard for her to even get out of bed.

  I went in to work and nothing was any better there. For that week I was two days Seg, two days tower, and one day open. This was an open day, and the cell house they put me in had just had an outbreak of scabies.

  Fucking scabies.

  Scabies are basically skin lice. They’re little bugs that burrow and squirm beneath your skin and make you want to rip your own flesh off to stop the itch. They’re also highly contagious. You can pick them up by a simple touch or contact.

  The whole cell house had to be quarantined and all of the bedding washed, every surface treated. I spent the whole shift drenching myself in hand sanitizer. I felt itchy just being there, but I knew better than to scratch. If I’d accidentally come into contact with any, they could be under my fingernails, or on my fingers or on my skin where I wanted to scratch.

  Itching is my Achilles’ heel. I’d rather hurt than itch any day.

  It wasn’t my Friday, but damn. After spending a shift walking around on my tiptoes, a beer couldn’t hurt. We went to a bar in the city with a mechanical bull. I remember saying I wasn’t going to ride it and I also remember a Hurricane in an orange juice carafe.

  Then I remember lying on the floor. No one would ever tell me if I actually rode the bull or not. I don’t think I did, but what other reason would I have to be lying on the filthy floor of a bar? Aside from the fact I’d drank three of those Jolly Green Giant-sized Hurricanes?

  There were too many people around me, and one guy in particular kept trying to touch me. Before I could knock his teeth out, one of the guys who was with our group, nicknamed Shrek, played knight in shining armor. With one shove, he knocked the guy back several feet and told him to keep his hands off me. He took care of me that night and a couple of others. It was nice to feel like someone really gave a shit about me just because I was me. Not because they felt I owed them something under the hat of wife, mother, daughter, or officer. Not because he was trying to get his dick wet. Because he was my friend. I really needed that. Probably more than I wanted to admit.

  I started my period.

  While that was not especially spectacular, the part where I sneezed and parted the Red Sea down my pants like Moses kind of was.

  I had menorrhagia, which means I bled a lot (no more, thanks to medical procedures); I almost died from it once. Sometimes being a pork chop comes in handy. At the time, the emergency room nurse said if I’d been a smaller woman, I would have bled to death.

  I usually kept a clean uniform in the trunk of my car, but today was not a particularly lucky day, and when the Red Storm began, it was ten minutes until I had to be at my post.

  I approached the Captain. A different one today than the one who said women didn’t belong in Seg. But surprisingly, he would have been the easier sell. He had a wife.

  “Captain?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I need to run home.”

  “For what?”

  “A feminine issue.” That should be good enough, right? Everyone knows what that is.

  Wrong. “Being?”

  “It’s that time of the month.”

  “What time of the month?” Really? I think my mouth fell open.

  “Aunt Flo is in town.” I tried to be discreet; there were other officers still in the hallway.

  “Why the fuck do I care about your Aunt Flo?” He looked at me, a curious look on his face.

  Oh. My. God. Are you serious? Really? And I say again, really? At first I thought he was just fucking with me, trying to embarrass me. Until that questioning look on his face didn’t merge into a smirk or a laugh. He was serious.

  Well, fuck Aunt Flo and fuck him. “I’m on the rag, asshole. Riding the cotton pony. Plugging it up. Menstruating. Any of this ringing a bell?”

  His whole face turned a rather interesting shade of red, but I refused to be embarrassed. Better him, now, than having that happen on the tier in front of the inmates. That was my biggest fear while I worked there. Not getting shanked, or catching any fucked-up diseases, but bleeding all over myself like a stuck pig in a slaughterhouse.

  “You live across town, right? We’re short on shift. Just go to the warehouse and get a new uniform.”

  While that was all fine and dandy, I needed new underwear too. And socks. It had burst down my leg and soaked into my socks.

  “Uh, I need things that are not part of my uniform that I have to go home to get.”

  This time, he caught on and
slipped me a twenty to go up the street to K-Mart and buy some underwear and socks.

  I made it through K-Mart with my jacket tied around my waist, but I know someone must have seen the big flowering stain of red creeping forward on my thighs. Then I went to the warehouse to get new uniform pants. The warehouse was staffed by inmates, so I wasn’t looking forward to this either.

  “New pants. Captain should have called.”

  “I need the old pair,” the inmate said.

  Oh no, you don’t, a little voice in my head whined. You really don’t. I could feel myself starting to blush, but I shoved that down. I refused to be embarrassed. “I’m wearing them. I’ll bring them back after I wash them.”

  He eyed me for a moment before saying, “No problem, just sign for the new ones.” He pushed the paper toward me with a clean, shiny, and kind of starchy brand-new pair of pants.

  “Thank you.”

  “And you don’t have to bring them back. We’ll just throw them away anyway. No worries.”

  “Really, thank you.”

  I shrugged into my new pants and it was quite the feat trying to clean up in the dressing room with nothing but a box of Handi Wipes, but I made it to my post only five minutes late.

  Shift was short-staffed, so I got to go down to Seg and be acting Sergeant because I was the only officer in Seg who was regularly assigned to the post. What was especially cool for me was that I knew what I was doing. I was confident in all of my decisions and it was mostly a smooth night.

  Except we had an officer down there who didn’t think he should have to do what I said because he’d been doing The Job longer and I didn’t have a dick. I finally told him in no uncertain terms if he didn’t want to do what I asked in my cell house, he was cordially invited to get the fuck out of it. The First Sergeant backed my offer too.

  He asked if I was normally such a cunt or if it was because I was on the rag.

  I know he meant it to be rhetorical, but I’d already had a fun afternoon of confession, so I figured why the hell not? He asked. He had it coming.

  “As a matter of fact, I am.” Everyone laughed.

  He grabbed the microphone for the PA system. “Attention in the cell house, Lunsford is on the rag. I repeat, Lunsford is on the rag.”

  You motherfucker. I nodded silently for a moment and smiled before I took the microphone. “And this asshole took my last tampon for his mangina. Apparently, it’s sandy. So watch yourselves tonight, gentlemen.”

  The entire house roared with laughter, but later when I was out on the tier, no one gave me any shit whatsoever.

  It turned into a good night.

  I’d been counting down to my Friday all week. It hadn’t been a bad week, but I’d worked hard. It was time to unwind.

  At this point, I should have seen the pattern in my behavior, and maybe I did. But all I wanted was to be numb. Numb to the job I had, numb to the marriage I didn’t, numb to the distance growing between me and my children, numb to the fact my dreams were dying and it looked like this was going to be my life. I had thirty years of this to look forward to.

  I’d stopped writing, but I didn’t think there was a chance in hell I’d ever make it as a writer anyway. I’d sold several short stories to horror mags, anthologies, and other small venues. Nothing I could make a living from. I’d even finished a romance novel, but it had taken me ten years to do it and I had a bunch of really nice rejection letters. I’d almost wished someone would just tell me I sucked and that it was offensive I ever put fingers to keyboard because then I’d stop trying, stop wishing, stop that awful hope that sometimes felt more like a devouring black hole than encouragement.

  But The Job did that for me.

  I didn’t want to write about knights on white horses, maidens fair, or happily-ever-afters anymore. I didn’t want to write about any human relationships because I thought it was all bullshit. There were predators and there were prey. Someone does the fucking, someone gets fucked. Literally and figuratively. End of story.

  No, the only thing left to me was the escape I felt when I had a bottle in my hand.

  There had come a point in my marriage when I realized I was just hashing off days, waiting to die. I wanted it to be over. And I realized here, in this future I’d made with my newfound freedom, it wasn’t any better. I was still miserable and still doing the same thing. Every day was one more that I never had to live again.

  That night, I didn’t go out with my usual group from work; I went out with a friend of a friend and her crew. She worked law enforcement too and was also going through a divorce. Our situations were very similar.

  We went to a cop bar where we talked shop for a good portion of the evening. Everyone laughed while we related stories of some of the dumbest things we’d seen or done. I felt at home with these people, comfortable. I laughed too.

  Until someone’s ex-wife showed up.

  I happened to be sitting by her ex-husband. He and I had gone in together on a “bottomless” pitcher of beer, nothing more nefarious than that, but she lost her goddamn mind.

  That’s not to say I wasn’t considering fucking him. I was. I’d heard my husband was fucking other people. If I was honest with myself, it tore me up like razor wire, just like I knew all the rumors about me hurt him. But for as numb as I wanted to be, there were times I wanted to feel something too. And this guy, he was like me. Neither of us wanted anything but a quick fuck. That’s what it would be too. No “making love” or any other bullshit. No strings. Just two people in the dark who never had to look at each other again.

  This woman came into the bar screaming. She was short, blond, and skinny with a fake-bake tan and acrylic claws. The friend I’d come with tried to drag me out as soon as she saw her. Told me that she was crazy. I refused to leave. Fuck if I was going to let some bitch I didn’t know come in and ruin my night.

  Or at least, that’s what I said. What I meant was I wasn’t going to let some crazy cunt run me out of a bar or off a man. Even if he used to be hers. I didn’t back down at work, and she could bet her dumpy ass I wasn’t going to back down here either.

  I had to give this woman points for balls. She had them by the dump truck. I’ve mentioned it before that I’m not a small woman. I’m six feet without my shoes; I have seven tattoos, shoulders like a linebacker, and a right hook that can knock a man bigger than me on his ass.

  But crazy is also said to give people unusual strength.

  So when she hit me in the face, it smarted like a motherfucker.

  The thing about getting cracked in the chops, though, is after that first contact, your face goes numb. Or maybe that was the adrenaline? I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I grabbed that pitcher of beer and smashed it into the side of her head. The pitcher was plastic, but I hit her hard enough the pitcher cracked.

  The blow sent her flying. It was like watching one of those slobber-knocker punches from Rocky in slow motion. Her whole face mashed up like a demented bulldog, there was spittle and blood flying out of her mouth as her head spun to the side, and all the while she seemed to be arching through the air in a Crazy Bitch Cirque de Soleil.

  I launched myself up and out of my chair, but the guy caught me. Plucked me from the air like a baseball and jerked me back down into my seat.

  “I can’t let you do that,” he said.

  I looked at her and realized how pathetic she was, stalking her ex-husband in a bar and losing her shit all over some woman just sitting by him. A couple people from the group were alternately trying to restrain her from trying to attack me again and cleaning up the blood on her face where her lip had split open.

  “You better put your bitch on a leash.” I got up from the table and walked to the door.

  He followed me. “Hey, uh, give me your number and maybe I can make it up to you?”

  Really, asshol
e? REALLY? Still trying to get laid even though his ex had attacked me and he’d stopped me from giving her the ass-kicking she so desperately needed? More proof that men were all the same. Maybe he didn’t want to see her get hurt, I rationalized. I could understand that. Even though my husband and I were looking at divorce, I’d never want to see anyone hurt him. But she’d hit me. Pretty fucking hard too.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Come on, I thought we were having a good time.”

  “I’ve got enough complications. I wasn’t looking to exchange numbers. Just fluids. Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “I, uh, could come over later.” His hard mouth turned up in a smile.

  Suddenly, everything about him disgusted me. I just wanted to leave. I wanted to go somewhere and just…not be this person. Not have this life. I wanted my husband. I wanted him the way he was when we met. When he loved me. When his embrace had been the shield against the world instead of a cage.

  I pulled out my phone and thought about calling him, but I didn’t really have anything to say. Because I didn’t think he loved me anymore. He didn’t even like me. And I didn’t even like who he was.

  So I just left and walked down the street. My friend picked me up.

  “Where are you going, chica?” she asked when she pulled up next to me.

  We were in the city. I had no fucking clue where I was, where I was going, or how I’d get home. I couldn’t say at that point that I gave a fuck.

  “I don’t know; I just had to get the fuck out of there.”

  She stopped and opened the door to the truck. “I know another place.”

  “Yeah, with sturdier pitchers I hope.” I climbed in.

  “You only hit her once, but you fucked her up.” She nodded with approval.

  “Not as much as I would’ve liked,” I sighed. I found myself disappointed that I hadn’t beaten her until her teeth were spread on the floor like so many Chiclets. Not because she’d hit me, it wasn’t her in particular. It was because I wanted to make someone hurt like I hurt. I wanted to unleash my rage on someone and send it home with them. I didn’t want it anymore.