by Salome Wilde
I just smile back and say, “Any time” and ruffle her blonde curls before getting up.
The first few days in a new prison can be rough. Everyone testing your limits, finding out if you’re a sheep or a wolf. No one gives Ella any hassle, though. They all know she’s with me.
Course, what that means and what they think it means are two different things. Riz looks at the dark circles under my eyes and nudges Jean and laughs, but she’d never guess they’re there because Ella and me lie in each other’s arms every night, chaste as a pair of dried-up old nuns.
And no it’s not what I’d planned. Course it’s fucking not. But there’s just something about Ella that stops me making a move. It’s like…Well. Reminds me of when it’s first snowed—which happened about once every ten years where I grew up in the South of England. Everything’s pure and white and perfect, and you almost don’t want to go out and play because making footprints in it would spoil it. Then again, there’s always some bastard who’ll come along and piss in it. But like I said, everyone knows Ella’s with me, so at least I don’t have to worry on that score.
Ella’s been with me a week (not that I’m counting) before she asks about it. “You’re not what I expected,” she says, tracing the curve of my bicep with one dainty little finger. She’s seen me—well, she couldn’t miss it, could she, not when we’re banged up together—doing pull-ups on the bunk. Push-ups and sit-ups on the floor. I like the way I look, like how I can hold my own in a fight against anyone. I don’t mind working hard to keep it.
“What do you mean?” I ask her.
“Well…You never…” and instead of finishing that sentence she takes my hand in her little one and places it on her breast.
I can’t breathe. “You want me to?” I ask her, and my voice don’t sound right but it’ll have to do.
Her eyes are black as pitch in the near-darkness. Big, wide pools I could dive straight into and never come up for air. “Yes,” she says, and it’s like a dam inside me bursts.
I close my eyes for a moment as I squeeze her breast, and I wrap my leg around her body, pressing my cunt against her hip, hard as I can. Then I push her T-shirt up, fingers fumbling. “Jesus, do you have to wear ’em so bloody tight?” I mutter, quiet so no one’ll hear it but her, and Ella giggles under her breath. She’s got her hands under my tank top, her little fingers stroking me, their touch soft as silk.
I slide down her body, find her tit with my mouth. Her nipple’s hard, and it tastes like salted caramel. I suckle on it and she gasps and arches beneath me. My hand’s shaking as I slip it into her knickers and find her hot and wet, just waiting for me. Her little pussy sucks in one finger, then another, like it’s half starved.
Maybe it is. God knows I’ve been dying of hunger here.
“More,” she breathes out.
I stroke my thumb over her clit, and she whimpers, her fist stuffed in her mouth. I let her nipple fall from my lips. “Like that?”
“Yes. God. More.” She grabs my head and pushes me back down on her breast. Her other hand’s found my tit and she plays with my nipple as I fuck her with my fingers. Then I rub her juices all over my thumb and work on her clit again. Ella’s hand on me loses all control, grabbing and squeezing my tit hard, the pressure just edging pain. Fuck, it’s good.
She whimpers again, and her whole body trembles as she comes, her pussy clenching on my fingers inside her like a heart beating. I stroke her through it, her chest heaving as she tries not to make a sound.
My girl.
I hold her beautiful, sweaty body in my arms, and I don’t even care that I haven’t come. Just being inside her, watching her fall apart, that’s enough for me.
Not for Ella. “Can I…?” She nods down at the bed, and I’m not sure exactly what she means but I’m pretty sure I’m okay with whatever, so I nod, too. Ella slithers down my body and pulls at my kecks until I lift up my hips for her to ease them off.
I scramble up to half-sitting and open my legs wide to give her more room. The bed creaks, and we both freeze, then shake together with quiet, breathy laughter. Half a second later, her mouth is on my cunt, and she’s licking me, and I’m not sure I know where the fuck I am or even who I am, but it’s good, it’s all so fucking good. My jaw’s clenched to stop any sound coming out, and the sheets are bunched in my hands. There’s waves of pleasure spreading up through my body, and it’s like I’m free, really free, for once in this fucking awful life. All I can feel is Ella’s tongue on my clit, first flat, stroking me from lips to hood, then pointed, darting, and when she does that it’s almost too much to bear. I want to groan out loud with the white hot intensity of it. Fuck, I want to scream.
Instead, I shake and I sweat and I come like I’ve never come before.
When I’ve stopped shuddering, Ella comes back up to kiss me, her lips warm and her tongue sweet with my taste.
That night, I sleep like the fucking dead.
* * *
After that night, I teach Ella all the tricks, and I don’t mean just in bed, neither. I might not have learned much in school, but I’ll tell you this: there’s no one inside who knows the system better than I do. I walk her through buying toiletries and tinned fruit and stuff on canteen, and I tell her how you get a newspaper subscription so you don’t forget there’s still a world outside these walls. I let her know which of the screws will “lose” your forms rather than bother dealing with them and how to sweet-talk ’em at the library so you can get help appealing against your sentence.
She’s a quick learner. Too bloody quick for my liking. It’s way too soon she comes back, eyes bright, saying she’s found the loophole that should get her out of here even with that dozy bastard she’s got representing her through Legal Aid.
When the day of Ella’s appeal comes, she holds my hands like she never wants to let them go. We both know this could be it. If she gets out, she won’t be coming back.
“I’ll visit you,” she says, eyes wide and earnest.
“Don’t,” I tell her. “You don’t belong here. Go live your life outside, forget all about this place.”
Written down in black and white, it looks bloody heroic, doesn’t it? Self-sacrificing. It’s not.
Believe me, it’s not. I’m a realist. Always have been. And the rest of what I am…Well, that’s no good for a girl like her. Not that she’d let me tell her that.
“I’ll never forget you,” she says. “You saved my life, my sanity. I couldn’t have made it through this without you.”
I’m a jaded old lag, cynical as they come. But the memory of her warms me long after her scent’s faded from my sheets.
* * *
Six months later, I get transferred to a D-category prison just outside Bristol for the last year of my sentence. It’s a bloody holiday camp after Cadwell. We get keys to our own cells, we can wear what we want and I’ll be able to apply for home visits after a month. Well, if I had a home to visit, I could.
I’ve been there barely a week when Ella arrives.
She’s not come to see me, mind. Nor anyone else. She’s moving her stuff into the next wing along when I catch sight of her down the hall. My heart stops for a moment, then beats double-time as I stand and stare at her.
She’s still got that wide-eyed innocent look about her. Her gaze is darting all around the place, fearful as a newborn fawn, and she’s hanging onto Cas, the biggest, butchest bulldyke in the place. Just as Ella’s saying, “I can’t believe it. How could anyone think I’d do such a thing?” and that bottom lip starts to tremble, her gaze meets mine.
There’s a tiny flash of color in her face, then she gives the tiniest of shrugs, defiance in her gaze even as her lips quirk up in a smile.
I can’t help it. I laugh. I laugh so bloody hard I nearly piss myself. Fuck me, I think, she played me good and proper, back in Cadwell. First time anyone’s managed that since I’m buggered if I know when.
I take a step forward, and then another. Cas may look hard, with her shor
n head and her muscular swagger, but she’s a pussycat underneath. All mouth and no fucking trousers. What Ella really wants, for however long she’ll be inside this time, is a woman with balls.
Someone like me.
From the way her smile broadens as I approach, I reckon Ella agrees.
Carved in Stone
by Sacchi Green
Brick walls crowned with razor wire closed in behind me like the trap that they were. I’d been foolishly hoping for stone walls, like a castle. Stone—granite, sandstone, marble—I understand, but brick has no character. At least the iron bars on the entrance gate that opened for us provided a touch of grim atmosphere. Inside, a wide expanse of grass gave way to acres of pavement, then more acres of brick buildings, the newer ones so featureless that even the few small barred windows did nothing to interrupt the general blandness. Fuck the stupid details. I gave up trying to distract myself from what lay ahead. Prison wasn’t intended to appeal to me. That was the whole point.
The van pulled up to the front entrance. I got out, retreating even farther into myself, forming a shell of detachment. I’d need it. At least the urge to throw up had receded. Inside, when it was my turn at the intake desk, my chest tightened. Could I hold my breath for a year and a half?
Not, apparently, and talk at the same time. “Alexandra McKenna.” I pushed my papers across the counter. The correctional officer had the obligatory heft and menace of a female movie cop and the trademark stony expression, although the twitch of one eyebrow revealed a trace of curiosity. My salt-and-pepper androgyny doesn’t attract much attention unless I want it to, but you don’t work with blocks of granite and marble without developing some muscle, and my jeans and old white T-shirt didn’t hide much. They’d be taken away soon enough. Everything I’d be allowed to keep was in one manila envelope.
Officer…I glanced briefly at the name tag on her breast pocket…Officer Gantry shuffled through the few photos, a sketch pad, and the list of addresses in the envelope. “That all? You know you’ll be searched?”
“Yes.” I do stony-faced pretty well myself.
Off to the next stop, where I got patted down by another husky female cop, and was made to strip, squat and cough. I managed a bored yawn. Prison-issue baggy clothes followed, along with sheets, a blanket and a stroll through a noisy dining hall. From the looks and smell of the food, I knew throwing up might still be an option. I noted a change in the tone of the general buzz; no doubt some idle speculation about me was spicing up the meal. I kept my eyes on my bundle of bedding and my guide’s ample ass.
“Top bunk on the right,” she said, unnecessarily since the other three beds were made up already. “You can dump your stuff and maybe still get what’s left of lunch.”
A shell of detachment could only take me so far. “Thanks, but I’ll pass. Just point me toward the lavatory, okay?” Getting there ahead of the crowd about to surge out of the dining hall seemed like a good strategy, or as close as I could come to one.
Or it would’ve been good strategy if it had worked.
“So-o-o-o. What have we here?” came a deep, mellow voice with a faint hint of an accent. And a distinct hint of derision.
I didn’t need to turn around. Her reflection loomed in the grubby mirror over the sink. Tall. Very tall. And wide, with a square face that had seen hard living, if those were scars I saw instead of streaks on the mirror. She had a strong jaw, wide mouth, high, broad cheekbones and dark hair cropped about as close as mine.
Shuffling sounds and murmurs let me know she wasn’t alone. Great. An audience. A face-off like this would have come up sooner or later, even if I didn’t give a shit about proving anything or challenging anyone. My voice almost managed to stay neutral. “So-o-o-o. What are you looking at?”
“I ask myself that very thing. What, indeed, am I looking at?” A Russian accent, or maybe Ukrainian. Something like that.
A sprinkling of giggles was interrupted by other women pushing their way into the room, impatient to use the facilities.
I’d been washing up with my sleeves rolled above my biceps. Without hurry I rolled them down, turned, and jerked my head toward the mirror. “You want to look at something? Be my guest. Let me know how you like what you see in there.” That might have been a good exit line if I’d been able to exit, but the crowd was now surging in force. The first arrivals, including my nemesis, moved well into the room, blocking my way.
“Yevgeniya Akhmatova, move your butt!”
“Yes ma’am!” Yevgeniya moved. So did her entourage, as much as they could. “For you, Miss Natalya, I move.” Her sidelong glance made especially sure I didn’t think she was getting out of the way on my account.
A space opened and a woman appeared: slight, silver-haired, with a regal bearing and a face so intricately lined that I itched to sketch her. She extended her hand. I shook it automatically, surprised to find my head inclining in a slight bow. So much for that shell of detachment.
“You’re Alexandra McKenna? We’ll be bunkmates. Come along and I’ll help you settle in.” She steered me toward the door like a border collie with an errant sheep, but I managed to cast back a long, assessing look at my antagonist and her hangers-on. Several of them returned my look with more than casual interest.
“A word of caution,” Miss Natalya said when we got back to our room. “That was Yev. I can call her Yevgeniya, once in a while, but nobody else dares unless they’re looking for a fight. Which nobody is. Not anymore.”
“I’m not looking for anything. Just…getting by.” My tone was bleaker than I’d intended.
“That’s what we all do,” she said. “But we don’t have to do it alone.” Her smile was warm, kind and profoundly weary.
* * *
If Miss Natalya hadn’t been enough to crack my shell, our other two bunkmates would have managed it. Detachment was futile. They were young and fairly new here. Miss Natalya was clearly a self-designated “housemother,” easing us through the transition to prison life. The youngsters didn’t quite know what to make of somebody my age coming in for the first time, but that didn’t keep them from asking how long I was in for, what I was in for and what I used to do on the outside. Miss Natalya’s nod indicated that this was permissible prison etiquette, so I answered, as briefly as I could.
“Eighteen months. Conspiracy in a drug case. And I carve stone.”
That last part baffled them. Ellie—skinny, freckled and sandy-haired—wrinkled her brow. “Stones? Like, gravestones?”
“Now and then. These days most headstones are engraved by machines run by computer programs, but sometimes people who can afford it want the handcrafted touch and custom artwork. Sometimes statues.” People who could afford it also wanted custom-carved decorative stonework, indoors or around their elaborate grounds, and sometimes that stonework masked the entrances to secret spaces where illegal substances and profits could be hidden. Which was why I’d landed in prison. I didn’t feel like talking about that.
Ellie and curvy, dark-haired Carla—more reserved or maybe just shy—sat with Miss Natalya in the dining hall at dinnertime. So did I. Might as well get that particular “first” over with, and I’d skipped lunch. I nodded in response to introductions up and down the table, and made the best of the food on my tray; mushy mixed vegetables with carrots the only identifiable objects, some kind of processed meat and mashed potatoes so dense they would have been a cinch to model into a Devil’s Tower. I pushed the potato idly around for a while, until Ellie leaned closer, looked down and then said loudly, “Hey, did you draw a face in your potatoes?”
“What face?” I mashed my spoon across the plate to wipe out lines I’d made without conscious thought. A square face, strong-jawed.
“Alex is an artist,” Ellie announced to those closest. “She writes on stone, and makes pictures there, too. Right, Alex?”
The kid was enjoying the attention this got her. “Yeah, sometimes,” I said. “Hold still, Ellie.” I smoothed the dingy white mass into a flat
oval and drew one line, then another, looking up at her face now and then. A few women got up to watch over my shoulder. It wasn’t much, just a cartoon sketch, but if you already knew it was supposed to be Ellie you’d recognize her.
“Now do Carla!” Ellie said. Somebody behind me gave a low chuckle. Carla reddened. Maybe she could read my mind. If this were a friendly gathering in a bar, I’d say in my most seductive tone, “Ohhh yeah, I’d do Carla, any time.”
But maybe she really was just shy.
“Another time,” I said, and stood up. The pallid fruit cocktail had minus appeal. “Is it okay for me to leave for the lavatory?” Miss Natalya had been telling me where we were allowed to be, when, and the consequences of a misstep if the correctional officer on duty wasn’t in a forbearing mood. She glanced toward the door and then nodded.
“Ask the guard politely. Don’t push it if he says no.”
I turned around and saw with no surprise that the chuckler behind me had been Yev. Up close she didn’t look quite as tall, but still with maybe fifty pounds on me, plenty of it muscle. I nodded as though we’d been formally introduced and went toward the door to try my luck. For once, I had some.
But not for long. At least Yev had the grace to wait until I was out of the stall and at the sink before confronting me.
“What you are doing here? The truth!”
“What does anybody do here?” I kept my tone light. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this. The guard must already think we’re up to more than the ordinary bathroom routine.”
Her fierce glower wavered and almost let a smile through. “Nothing is out of the ordinary here. Nothing. But tell me what you are here for. In this place. This prison.”
“Haven’t my details spread through the grapevine yet? I’m here for eighteen months. For conspiracy in a drug case. I make…made my living as a stonecutter and sculptor. Anything else you want to know?”
“I want,” she said harshly, “to know how good a liar you may be.” I’d thought her eyes were a hazel close to green, but now they were steel gray.