Prisoner 4053 Ch. 03

Her mind wandered as she stood waiting in the yoke. She had sat with her uncle during his last days in the hospital, hours on end next to a man who had already ceased to be conscious, and this was a similar type of boring horror. There was little she could revisit because it had only just happened, and her fear of the hours and days and months and years ahead was too enormous to confront. If they were trying to build up anticipation, 4053 thought, they were failing -- but her feelings were, she was sure, their last concern.

Occasionally, she heard heavy footsteps in the hall. Everyone wore boots here, probably. It was not a sexy kind of facility, despite some of the products it turned out. She wondered if the employees were military, and then thought of Abu Ghraib. How far they had come as a country, from being horrified at the abuses inflicted on alleged terrorists, to watching their own citizens punished like this and responding with indifference. Not that slavery was new -- it had been going on in prisons since the thirteenth amendment. She had had license plates made by slave labor. She had watched on the news as inmate firefighters saved the west. She had gone to Texas and eaten meat there that had almost certainly been handled by an inmate at some point during its journey from farm to table. Expanding the varieties of penal labor available, and in turn expanding the population of inmates to accommodate it, had not been an unreasonable step. Nor had increasing the security of prison systems like this one; it prevented riots, when the inmates were isolated and couldn't speak to each other. And the public had largely accepted this. It was easy to say that people like 4053 deserved it.

She had been a sociologist, in her interrupted life. This hadn't been her professional area, but she had had an interest in it, and further, she knew that rates of recidivism were high. They would be higher for people like her, who would have the additional specter of trauma hanging over them, making it so much more difficult to avoid re-offending.

The idea of regular prison, though, sounded like a relief. Maybe it would be regular prison if she failed, after her release.

Footsteps were nearing. As much as 4053 wanted to be out of the restraints she wore, she held her breath, hoping that these handlers were not coming for her. She flinched as they approached, and panicked, trying to kick away, but of course she couldn't go anywhere. She couldn't even turn around.

A hand took her upper arm and steadied her.

"You're having kind of a hard day, huh?"

It was one of the first handlers she had encountered upon intake, and the kindness in his voice was enough to make her cry. She had been so stoic today. Now even more humiliated, she struggled to get her tears under control as he and his partner removed the yoke restraint. Neither comforted her further, and 4053 was glad, because she didn't want to accept it. One of them had fondled her. They worked here, and that was bad enough. Her vulva ached and throbbed with anticipation, though she had orgasmed not an hour before.

They walked her to another room. It echoed like a parking garage, and smelled like an indoor pool. She took deep breaths as she walked, trying to get herself under control, but she couldn't stop crying. She felt snot run out her nose and tried to sniffle it away, but there was too much of it.

"Just let it drip," the first handler said. "You're in a shower." He talked to her as he chained her to the hardware, her arms above her head, her feet spread wide and attached to the floor. "Here's the thing, honey. The rules are different from now on. You have zero control over what happens to you, but you also have a minimum amount of responsibility. This place is built for body fluids." He removed her goggles.

The handler stood behind 4053, and she couldn't see him or turn to see him, though his partner was in front of her. The partner was not unattractive, though he was frightening: he was big, and bearded, and she could imagine him getting explosively angry. He wore work pants tucked into his boots, and among other tools, he carried a crop on his belt. He was readying soap and towels. The faucet or showerhead was nowhere in 4053's sight, though she could see a hanging metal hose to the right. She was facing a wall with blue-green tile, and on either side of her was another wall, and in the floor there was only a drain. The second handler moved out of her sight, and she stood silently while the first handler started the water, which, to her surprise, was warm.

He lathered her hair. He wasn't gentle, but he wasn't rough, either, just efficient. Four-oh-five-three wondered why she wasn't doing this herself, but wouldn't have asked even if she still had use of her voice. She just wanted to disappear.

"She's your type, Nate," said the partner.

"Yeah I was thinking that. I'm kind of hoping she comes up for general selection. Look at these freckles."

"Would you bid on her if she goes to auction?"

There was a pause. "Not much, I'd rather just wait until the next one comes along. She's a little old to bring in much, though."

"I found my last one at auction."

"Here?"

"Yeah. She was a little more experienced, too. Good price."

"I don't know why people don't like the inexperienced ones."

Nate rinsed her hair with the handheld nozzle, holding his other hand on her brow to keep the water from her eyes. His rubber apron brushed her calves. He shut off the water and put 4053's goggles back on, and then wiped her nose with his wet hand. It was a kind thing to do. Kindness -- what a thing to be focused on right now, while they discussed her like she was a piece of meat.

"More fighting," the partner speculated. "They participate a little less."

"See, I like the new ones. They're scared. You can make things easier on them."

"They don't really know enough to be grateful, yet."

"I think this one would be plenty grateful. She knows what's ahead of her. She's seen some of the fucked-up shit that goes on in the leasing programs. Haven't you?"

Four-oh-five-three wondered if she was expected to respond. She had. It had been a part of her frantic internet searches when she was released on bail. There were health and safety standards, but some of them involved machines, mock snuff and executions, body modification, beatings, humiliation, torture.... If there was a way to enact or pretend to enact violence on a woman, there was a company leasing women like 4053.

The conversation continued without her input. "I taught the last one how to develop Stockholm Syndrome. She cried when I had to give her up. I had her for the standard three months."

"That's the one that went to the slaughterhouse, right?"

Four-oh-five-three's blood ran cold.

"Yeah, that's her. I've been there to see her a couple times. She's doing okay. Sometimes they don't, with the really awful stuff. They know it's fake, but it'll fuck anyone up."

Four-oh-five-three heard the water come back on. Nate didn't use his hands, as she'd feared, but a brush or a sponge -- it was hard to tell, on her back. He made a quick pass over her body and then rinsed her, and dried her with a towel. She tried to calm down. This was another thing she'd known about: how it wouldn't be all brothels or private owners. How some of what happened to her might be even worse.

He squeezed her hair out and wiped her face. The towel came over her back, rubbed the back of her neck dry. Then, without warning, Nate's arm came around from behind her, and pulled her firmly into his thick rubber apron. He rubbed his fingers in her vulva, and then slipped two of them inside her. There was nothing 4053 could do about it. His hand cupped her pubic mound and held her there against him. "We'll have to find out what's happening to you. Sometimes private buyers like to be the first ones."

"Usually not," said his partner helpfully.

Nate withdrew his fingers but held her against him for a long moment while he played, not gently, with her clitoris. "Good girl," he said. "You're all right. No one's hurting you."

Finally, mercifully, he let go. Four-oh-five-three was shaken. She had expected this. She had known this would happen. It was a guarantee. It was a perk for him and his colleagues. But expecting it hadn't lessened her terror when it had happened, and it didn't alleviate her dread now. Everything in her experience made that encounter scream Danger, and yet she was safer here than she had been on the street. He wasn't going to strangle her. He probably wasn't even going to do anything painful.

And her body, of course, was absolutely into it.

When he was done drying her, he let her stand naked for a moment, and took the opportunity to play with her nipples. She didn't fight. She wondered if he would take her right there in front of his partner, but was surprised to find him dressing her. It was a dress of rough cloth, with shoulder straps that buttoned on the top to make it easily removable even when its occupant was in restraints. The goggles came off again, and the handler brushed her wet hair, then pulled her hands down from where he'd had them clipped above her head. The belt and shackles went back on. She waited for the goggles to be replaced, but instead he left one of her shackles clipped to a hook in the floor and tossed them into a bin against the far wall.

He was stunning. Enormous, with huge hands, and southern European in looks, with a nose that looked as though it had been broken at some point. The first thing that 4053 thought was that it was a shame, that beauty wasted on a man who would rape a defenseless prisoner.

She wondered if his beauty would matter, later, when he was inside her. Now, when it was merely theoretical, she thought, at least he's pretty. At least she wouldn't have to look at someone horrifying while it happened.

When he turned back to her, she dropped her eyes to the ground. He left the partner cleaning up, and steered her down a warren of halls, and then into another, wider hall, with windowed doors on each side. Cells, 4053 understood. He turned her toward one and pressed his lanyard against a device in the wall, and the locks opened.

The cell was tiny. There was a narrow cot -- not even a toilet. The cot had no blankets, just a waterproof mattress. Four-oh-five-three thought she would be turned loose inside, but he walked her in and spun her so she faced him, and used the momentum to sit her down on the bed, facing the wall and not the door, before she could react. He was very big, and very close. He had her hands unhooked from behind her in a moment, and laid her down, and clipped first one and then the other to the side of the bed. She lay still while he chained her feet to the metal footboard.

"Good girl," he told her again. He reached up her skirt and rubbed her vulva. Four-oh-five-three tried to tell herself that it was all right. That it would still be all right if he unzipped his pants. That this was what she was here for. That he had, at least, showed her a few small kindnesses and wasn't taunting her. It could be so much worse.

He stood and tugged her skirt back down. "I'll be back in a few hours to help you toilet."

He turned the lights off when he left.

A single shaft of light came through the windowed door, but it was otherwise dark. And private. And for the first time since her arrival, 4053 was truly alone.

She cried. She didn't know how long she cried, but she had the luxury of time, and she used it. Probably she would have a lot of time from now on, in situations just like this, chained up and left to her own thoughts. You could only be actively used for so many hours in the day, and no one was going to leave the television on for her. She was one of those people who could live in her own head, and would welcome the opportunity to escape what was happening to her whenever she could take it.

The position that her handler had put her into was uncomfortable. She was a side sleeper, and tried to position herself on her hip, but the lack of a pillow and the hardness of the mattress made comfort impossible, so she moved back again and stared up at the dark ceiling or to the wall on either side. Anyone could come in here and do things to her, and she didn't have the luxury of even turning away.

Regardless, she slept, or thought she did. When the door opened and the lights came on, she felt the mustiness of sleep in her mouth. Her chest was heavy. It was Nate again, and he unchained her hands and sat her up. It was the first time her hands had been free since the morning.

"You're not getting up," he told her. "You're going to pee in a cup." He produced a silicone device with a tube on the end. "Put your arms around my shoulders."

She didn't want to. She hesitated. He put an arm around her lower back and lifted her enough to press the device against her vulva, and she had to grab for him, wildly, to keep from falling backward on the cot.

There was no way this could ever be efficient, 4053 thought. He'd use a catheter otherwise. Make her squat over the drain. He wanted her up close like this, hanging onto him. She thought about letting go and hitting him on the way down, but like his partner, he carried a crop on him too, and she assumed that he would use it if he needed to. She had also heard stories of prisoners having their sentences extended for assaulting handlers and guards.

So she peed. It was hard to do, and when she was done, she was nearly in tears again. He cleaned her up with a wet wipe and laid her down again, and it was hours more before she was disturbed.