Remedial Ch. 05-09

Chapter 5

Eleanor became a vegetarian in college after reading Eating Animals. The images of a piglet being kept in a cage for their entire life, flayed alive, and then mercifully killed burned into her consciousness.

She knows she isn't going to be killed or flayed alive, but she lets out a pathetic laugh at the juxtaposition of worrying about animals kept in captivity and now being nothing more than another animal warehoused in a cage.

She tries to find a comfortable position with the cool handcuffs behind her and the colder concrete floor beneath her.

But she realizes that's all the system sees her as, an animal unable to control her urges. Unable to control her drinking. Unable to control her own decisionmaking. Unable to control her own lust.

Her favorite English professor once told her she approached writing as if she was trying to solve a puzzle. With 24 hours in solitary confronting her, she feels the need to solve the puzzle of how to get a release given the Department of Corrections does not trust her with the freedom to control her own hands.

She scans the spartan cell and the edge of the metal bunk beckons. She tries to position herself face down with the end of the metal bunk. Riding the edge of the bed, that is the puzzle. She knows she can't get her jumpsuit off but she wonders if she puts enough force, she could give her clit just enough, even with a couple of layers of thin fabric in between.

The small part of her that still holds onto dignity feels aghast that she has been reduced to a bitch in heat.

But the rest of her wants it. With her hands well above her body and behind her back, she feels muscles extend she barely knew existed. She contorts her body more to allow a small part of the bunk to rub against her.

She thinks of him. She wonders if he ever imagined degrading her like this when she was Miss Larkin. But now she's inmate #120591.

She closes her eyes, trying desperately to find a tempo to fully lose herself. She picks up her rhythm as she imagines being back in her old classroom. He tells her she would look good in orange. He places handcuffs on her and leads her away. He takes her to the prison but he offers a small respite. He goes down on her using his tongue to taunt and tease her. She begs. She whimpers. She feels so close.

And a sudden shiver runs down her body, tingling every fiber of her being. Her body trembles as she gets down on her knees. She bathes in her own euphoria as she rests her head on the barely existent mattress. The small aftershock of pleasure overwhelms her again and she allows herself to welcome this exhilaration.

The oxytocin and dopamine mix together and allow her to melt away the joyless concrete and imagine she is back on her own king-sized bed. But slowly, she feels each part taken away and she is brought back to the solitary confinement cell. The buzz of an orgasm gives way for the familiar feeling of shame overtaking her yet again.

She knows she can't let go of her shame forever, but she wonders if she sobs, if every tear drains away, if she can at least live without the guilt, even for a few moments. Her tears keep falling as she thinks of everything she has lost. She misses watching Instagram reels and wearing short dresses. She misses her stupid orange cat Arthur and she misses going out to nice restaurants.

Most of all she misses freedom. Especially the small freedoms she never knew she could miss. The freedom to control her hands. The freedom to pick her outfit. The freedom to flirt.

The slim mattress on the concrete bunk dampens with her tears as she catalogs each loss. She can't outrun her guilt. She knows she doesn't deserve any freedom. She deserves to be locked in a cage.

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Chapter 6:

Time doesn't exist in solitary. There is no natural light and the meals are all the same. She assumes it's been close to 12 hours, but she really has no idea. Eleanor is on her side to minimize the pressure on her back. There's no good way to lay down with your hands behind your back and the rest of your body consumed by desire.

The only marker of time she gets is when the dull washed-out ceiling lights turn off and she is left in complete darkness. She assumes it's night, but it could just be a cruel game the guards play. She tries to sleep, but she misses her plush teal duvet that's put away in some storage unit. After suffering more anxiety-fueled insomnia, she even misses her regular prison-issued blanket which feels luxurious compared to the paper-thin sheet she has now in solitary.

Pounding on the heavy steel door wakes her up.

"Get up, inmate."

It's Officer Jones. Eleanor panics. Is there a camera in the cell that caught her in self-pleasure? She studied for prison. She Googled so many questions and tracked former inmates' AMAs on Reddit. She even read "How to Do Time in Prison: 10 Keys To SUCCESSFULLY Survive Prison". In none of her preparation did she encounter the question of whether solitary confinement cells would record horny inmates creatively pleasuring themselves

Officer Jones unlocks the double reinforced cell door, walks in, and looks down at her.

"Did you learn something while you were down here?"

She can't tell if this is a trap. Should she confess of her indiscretion and plead for mercy or feign ignorance and act chaste?

She bows her head down hoping no one witnessed her self-pleasure, "Ma'am, I know I am here to be punished. I will behave, I promise. Please, don't send me here again."

She fights back the tears but her voice quakes ever so slightly, "Ma'am, I know I've made huge mistakes and bad choices, and I just want to try to fix everything I've broken."

Eleanor remains frozen in place, bracing herself to be dressed down. But she sees Officer Jones' face and she swears her cruel expression softens.

"Good."

The curt response hangs in the air between the guard and inmate. Eleanor takes a deep breath and scrunches her shoulders to her neck in anticipation of the inevitable penalty to come.

"I'm going to take you to the GED classroom. Mr. Parks is there waiting for you."

She releases the tension from her shoulders as she puts her head down in the hopes it hides a pent-up exhale. She can't believe that Officer Jones doesn't berate her any further. Instead, Officer Jones uncuffs her, allowing her the small mercy of leaving the solitary wing entrusted with the freedom of her own hands.

As they walk towards the classroom, her anxiety returns. She never got detention once in her K-12 education, but she wonders if this is the same dread that so many schoolgirls have when they are sent to the principal's office.

"Inmate, you missed class."

"I'm sorry sir. I didn't try to miss your class. I was sent to solitary..."

"For not being able to control yourself, I know."

He pauses and she knows that part of her, the worst part, is so clearly seen.

"Write an essay for me, 500 words on the consequences of lacking the self-control of a law-abiding citizen."

"Yes sir."

"And make sure your handwriting is neat, or I'll make you write it all over again."

He gestures for her to leave as he sits down to start grading papers with a red pen. She wants so badly for him to see the non-broken part of her. She wants to earn a kind compliment because she did good work or behaved especially well in class.

She gets back to her cell and sits on the metal chair bolted to the floor. She picks up a pen and starts thinking of Justin's assignment. How can she convey what her lack of control caused?

She thinks about her final act of recklessness and lack of control as a free woman, the night before her sentencing.

She saved him on her phone as Logan Tinder. At some point she knew his last name, but their arrangement allowed both physical pleasure with no lingering emotions.

She knew he knew. The local news plastered her mugshot after the crash. Everyone saw the red dress from Nordstrom she got herself as a present for finishing grad school. Everyone saw the aftermath of her sobbing in the back of a police cruiser with her mascara streaking down her cheeks. Faith, a frenemy from college, even sent her a link to an Instagram post texting, "OMG, I'm so sorry you have to deal with this!!."

Eleanor made the mistake of clicking on the link and her Instagram app opened to show 31,497 people liked her mugshot with the caption, "Good teacher gone bad". She instantly regretted clicking to view the 846 comments, which alternated between calling her a murderer and reducing her to a sexual object. There was even a genre of mocking "I can fix her" comments by thirsty men that littered the post.

But he never brought it up. Their arrangement didn't allow for much talking. She kisses him deeply allowing herself to get lost on his soft lips.

A girl with better self-control could have spent this last night before her sentencing with her parents or even with her cat Arthur. She should not have given into the aching within her body of being needed and wanted by a man. But here she was with Logan Tinder matching his thrusts in their shared carnal rhythm.

She imagined the chains that awaited her in twelve short hours. She knew Montana didn't allow conjugal visits, but if they did, she wondered if Logan would come. She wondered if he would come in her tonight or pull out right when she needed him the most.

Her pleasure built as he rammed deep inside her. She hoped he would cum inside her even though he never once did before. She wanted to feel something, anything. She arched her back to meet his thrust and she moaned, half out of primal instinct and half because she knew he loved it.

He pulled out right before his climax, leaving her to come down frustrated and alone as always. A couple of strokes with his hand got him what he wanted.

She wanted to cry, but that was their agreement. She considered trying another booty call so she could cum from a man's intensity rather than using her vibrator for the thousandth time before being locked away for years.

She escapes the memory of her final encounter before her incarceration. Even though it was just three weeks ago, four miles away, it feels like a lifetime and a light year ago. With her best penmanship, she starts writing,

"The juxtaposition of who I was when I taught and who I was after work led to the worst mistake of my life.

Every morning in the mirror, I saw a broken and insecure girl. Instead of working on myself, I hid my flaws by using alcohol and sex. The crash was an accident, but if I'm being honest with myself, I earned this prison sentence with a long series of poor decisions culminating with me killing a man. Because of my crime, a girl lost her father, a woman lost her husband, and I wish every day it could have been my obituary instead of his..."

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Chapter 7

He grabs a foot-long wooden ruler and places it firmly under her chin to tilt her head up. She darts her eyes to the side and sees him, controlled and controlling all at once.

"Inmate, don't look down at your feet. I want you to face the class."

He offers her no reprieve. The skin on her neck stretches as he keeps the ruler like she is on display with her head on a platter and her chest jutting out. Each breath grows more desperate, getting caught in her throat.

She is trying to summon the courage to speak. She sees Emily's fear, Jennifer's empathy, and Layla's schadenfreude. What did she ever do to earn Layla's contempt?

"The juxtaposition of who I was when I taught and who I was after work led to the worst mistake of my life."

"That's a big word inmate. Can you define juxtaposition?"

She knows the meaning. Of course she does. She won a spelling bee in 5th grade with 'juxtaposition'. But with the force of the ruler, her thoughts melt. She clenches her thighs in order to suffocate her own arousal. She can't believe what she is being reduced to. She needs Justin... no Mr. Parks... to tame her.

"I asked you inmate, can you define juxtaposition?"

"Umm... I think the best way to put it is..."

The definition of the word eludes her. All she can think of is the shame building up within her. She feels caught between the instinct to hide and the urge to surrender.

"We don't have so much time to waste, juxtaposition is the placement of two items side-by-side."

He looks squarely at her.

"You won't impress me with fancy words if you don't know what they mean."

She gulps again as he motions for her to continue.

"Every morning in the mirror, I saw a broken and insecure girl. Instead of working on myself, I hid my flaws by using alcohol and sex. The crash was an accident, but if I'm being honest with myself, I earned this prison sentence with a long series of poor decisions culminating with me killing a man. Because of my crime, a girl lost her fath..."

Her vision starts blurring and she feels tears bleeding from her paper onto her trembling hands. She begs Justin with her eyes for any mercy.

He drops the ruler and it feels like she can breathe again.

"Inmate, see me after class"

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Chapter 8

She is alone with him. All she wants to be is taken. All she gets back is his annoyance.

"I assigned you a simple task."

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry sir. I didn't realize I would have to read it to the class."

"I expect better behavior from you Miss Larkin. On Monday, we don't have class, so I think instead of rec time, a day on the chain gang might instill some good behavior."

She imagines the cold metal on her slender wrists and exposed ankles. She shudders, but she realizes it's not completely out of revulsion.

"Sir, I promise, I can be better. I want to be better for y..."

He puts his index finger on her lips as her voice catches in her throat. Chills run through her body and all she wants is to lean forward into his arms. She would settle for even a small kiss or even his hand to caress her face. She doesn't need much, but he doesn't give her anything more.

"My decision on this is final. One of the guards will come get you from your cell at 5 AM to take you out on the chain gang. I expect you to behave while you are out in public."

She is left aghast. She used to see the chain gang once per week from her window right before leaving for work at 6:30 AM on Mondays. They cleaned up the downtown after all the weekend revelers made a mess of the sidewalks, alleys, and parks.

And now, she is going to be one of those inmates cleaning up the downtown.

Even if it will be her reality in a few short hours, all she can do is imagine herself on the chain gang. She can't sleep. Her slender wrists and exposed ankles already feel cold at the thought of the cool metal cuffs.

She finally starts fading. She gets one final look on her tablet and it's 3:14 AM.

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Chapter 9

The short bus ride from the prison to downtown taunted her. She knew she was close to her old apartment, but she didn't fully appreciate the Montana Women's Prison was literally only a five-minute drive away.

It stings even more that none of her friends had taken the time to visit her when all that separates them is a 300 second car ride. That's all it took to be forgotten.

She gets up slowly, unaccustomed to walking while chained with legirons and handcuffs. She stares out the window and she sees Club Lux where she spent too many nights drinking too much tequila while kissing too many boys. She exits the bus, goosebumps forming as her exposed skin meets the cool March air, and she looks up.

It's her old apartment.

The curtains on the 5th floor apartment are already different. The pattern looks like it's supposed to be Van Gogh's Fading Flowers. She wonders who lives there now, when only two short weeks ago it used to be her home with a lush olive green curtain set.

She sees her old balcony where she used to scroll Instagram in between grading papers. Now she is five stories below made to pick up trash from the street.

It is as if every force in the Montana Department of Corrections had conspired to create a perfectly tailored punishment for her.

Each inmate is handed a trash picker and a black 30 gallon trash bag by a guard. Just like Eleanor had seen dozens of Mondays before from her 5th floor window, the chain gang starts under the watchful eye of armed prison guards. These guards clearly value humiliating her and her fellow inmates by keeping them in handcuffs and legcuffs when it obviously slows them down from their supposed task.

She picks up the remnants of others' bad decisions. Two smashed glass Corona bottles, a busted iPhone, and a seemingly endless supply of discarded cigarette butts. As the morning progresses, some cars slow down for a few seconds to gawk at the female inmates made to do manual labor in public, but most cars just breeze through focused on getting to work or an appointment without worrying themselves about a cadre of incarcerated trash pickers.

She tries not to look up. She doesn't want to see anyone from her former life, a colleague, a Tinder hookup, or even a barista who may recognize her. She also can't bear to look at the signs of the bars she too often frequented and the last place she left before she became a killer.

She wishes she could be punished to take away the guilt, but she knows there is no punishment that can absolve her of her sins.

And so she picks up plastic wrappers and discarded to-go bags. She finds a rhythm, walking without chafing her legs or losing her balance. She is proud of this small accomplishment when she sees other first-time girls still struggling to get their footing.

She tries to work faster than all the other girls, even the ones who have been assigned to the chain gang countless times. She keeps filling bags and for each one completes, she allows herself a small smile as her pride re-emerges.

And then she sees him.

It's probably around 9 AM. Justin is in a peacoat and slacks. He looks good, but maybe he always looks good. He is waiting for someone to come out of the coffee shop. He's far away but she knows it's him. She interrupts her rhythm to just watch and see what he will do.

A woman comes out of the coffee shop and hands him a to-go cup. Eleanor feels her mouth go dry and her hands become numb. The trash picker falls out of her hand and hits the sidewalk.

He greets the woman warmly and leans in for a small peck. He drapes his arm around her waist as they walk off in the opposite direction.

Eleanor just wishes she could be that woman. Free. Held tenderly. Maybe even loved. Especially by him.

"Hey Eleanor, you alright?"

She comes out of her trance and looks at Jennifer. She can't believe this woman committed murder when her eyes have such deep care behind them.

"Hey yeah... I thought... I saw someone I knew... It sucks that this used to be my life and now..."

Jennifer offers a small smile.

"I'm a lifer and this will be my life, but you will get out one day and a girl like you will be able to rebuild your life."

Eleanor tries to smile back. But all she can think about is her own sentence. She knows nine years isn't forever.

But it seems like a lifetime.