The backstory:
Somehow I had infuriated people with power. The details of how I had done so were not very clear to me, but there was a lot going on in the country that offered ripe suggestions. Congress was trying to pass a series of terrible laws that had the potential to hurt a lot of innocent people, authorities all over the country were finding legal excuses to obliterate Constitutional rights, and the Senate wanted to contribute. In any case, whatever I had been fighting against had gotten the power brokers mad at me. So now Ann and I were going to jail. It wasn't fair that she was involved; but none of it was fair.
The story:
Ann and I were talking about the fact that we were going to jail. We discovered a number of things that might end up making our sentence bearable. Most importantly, we had been assigned the same cell (room really; it was awfully swanky as far as prisons go) in the women's prison. In fact we talked a whole lot about what prison would be like during our sentence. We were worried about the jailhouse culture of bullying and threats and sexual strong-arming. We had read that this was less of an issue in jails for women, but that it was still an occasional problem. We figured if we could keep to ourselves, we could weather the storm.
So, we were taken to jail and processed. During the processing of my transfer and the confiscation of my belongings, the head warden came by to greet me. Everyone was immediately aware of who he was, of course, because he was the only man in the whole complex. I have probably made his visit seem congenial, but no. It became clear very quickly that he walked the same circles as the people I had so mysteriously offended. He didn't hate me, but he had it in for me, and he made sure I knew it.
When Ann and I were finally deposited in our cell, we spent some time commiserating about our situation and the injustice of it all. I told her about my run in with the warden and how I was worried about what he would do to make my life hell. We talked about it and decided that he was limited in what he could do to me. We were all women being held against our will by this man; so Ann and I figured we could build up enough support amongst all the women, that he couldn't do anything too serious without invoking the ire of the whole jailhouse. Eventually our conversation came to an end. I went over to my cot on the other side of the room to lie down and Ann went to her tree to roost.
Shortly thereafter, an announcement was broadcast that I was to be escorted by the warden to another occupant's cell. This woman was known to us as the buffest of the sexual strong arms. The warden had wasted no time in exercising his power over me; I was to be soiled the very first night. Resigned to my inevitable fate as the only other man in the whole place, I went back across to tell Ann that I would probably be forced into a sexual encounter with the other woman; I was not thrilled. When I got to Ann (who was also my cat Sydney, and a dove) she told me she had come to the same conclusion and was hoping I would be okay.
Then I woke up.
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