Doin' Time in the Blue Shadows
copyright 2001 by Pat Powers
copyright 2001 by Pat Powers
When the warder came to her cell, she was ready. She had on her work uniform. She stood at attention and walked out the prescribed three paces and waited while the jailer swung the door shut behind her. Then she joined the long line of other women who walked down the corridor to the mess hall.
Breakfast in prison was actually pretty good. There was a special prison farm mostly for older cons where they grew things, and some of those older cons were pretty good at growing things ... what else did they have to do, anyway? So there were biscuits and bacon and pancakes and apples and eggs and hash browns and a weird Southern thing called "grits" that was like oatmeal, only made from corn.
Sally dug in to breakfast. She needed the energy.
"How'd your shift run last night, Sally?" asked Nora. Her prison job was at the same place Sally's was -- the Blue Shadows.
"It was so-so," said Sally. "I was hoping for a quiet night, but apparently there's some kind of optometrist's convention in town. They kept saying, "How many fingers am I holding up?" and giggling."
"Yeah, those optometrists, what cards," said Nora. "I had a bunch of Japanese businessmen. They kept saying, "Just think, we lost the war and we STILL get to do this to American women!"
Sally smiled at that.
"How were those Japanese guys?" Sally asked.
"Not bad," said Nora. "They got permission from the warder to do some specials, and they were pretty darned inventive, but very, very courteous and concerned about whether I was comfortable and whatnot. Sure beats the usual drunken yahoos."
After some more conversation with friends, breakfast was over -- way too soon to suit Sally -- and they all headed back and waited for transport.
For prisoners, transport began with chains. She waited her turn in line like the rest. When the warders got to her, they shackled her feet, made her pull up her shirtwaist so they could put a waist chain around her and cuffed her hands to it behind her back. Sally didn't mind that so much, though having her hands cuffed behind her back got tiresome after a time.
It was the hood she hated. She understood the reason for it. Having prisoners working outside who were easily identifiable was asking for trouble, everything from rescue attempts to revenge by former victims or their friends and lovers.
Still, she hated the feel of the leather hood being dragged down over her hair, hated the feel of the zipper in back pulling the hood tight over her features, and hated the way they always seemed to catch on her hair at least once as they zipped up.
She also hated not being able to see. The hood buckled under her chin, leaving only her nostrils, mouth and chin exposed.. After the hood was in place, a guard would push the built in rubber ball gag into her mouth and buckle it tight, then snap the leather cover that concealed the ball gag and her chin, leaving only her nostrils exposed.
The smell of the hood was pretty awful too. Old drool. Yech. The hoods went through the prison laundry every day, but somehow the smell never seemed to go away. At least the laundering kept the smell down to a minimum. Otherwise, the clients might complain, and the cons all knew that that was what really mattered.
With her head sealed, her hands cuffed and her ankles shackled, Sally was ready for transport. She knew the route as a blind person does -- a certain number of steps here, where the texture changes because it's a stairwell so left and up two flights of stairs, one nine steps and one eleven steps. Then right and step down a doorway and outside. Turn left and walk until the guards tell you to stop -- you're at the bus.
Guards were ready at ever stop and turn to make sure the prisoners didn't trip and fall. Nobody was much worried about unassisted escapes, under the circumstances.
The guards led you to the bus and seated you, and you sat next to whoever they sat you next to. Then the long ride out of the prison to the city, in almost complete silence, in the bus whose windows were screened in from the time when prisoners rode unfettered and able to see. Now the screens served the purpose of concealing the vaguely disturbing sight of a busload of hooded women trundling down the street.
Although the bus was silent because all the prisoners were gagged and the guards untalkative, there were many conversations going on. The prisoners had developed "gag talk" a way of communicating by touch. They would (preferably) hold hands and tap messages into one anothers' palms with their fingers, using a simple code akin to Morse. It could also be managed by tapping one anothers' shoulders, sides or legs.
The guards pretty much knew what they were doing but tolerated it. The rules called for silence -- they had that. If the prisoners wanted to tap at one another, so be it. If the brass wanted that stopped, there had to be a rule against it.
So Sally learned that her seatmate was Nekija from Cell 47c, and that she worked in the Velvet Fox. They yakked companionably for awhile about the food and the carryings-on of other cons and the guards, until the bus stopped at the Blue Shadows and it was time to let them out.
In order to qualify for prisoner services, a club had to have a rear entrance that was shielded from public view and yet open enough to let the guards make sure no rescuers were around. The guards hurried Sally and her co-workers across a short expanse of pavement and down a flight of steps into the air-conditioned hallway at the back of the Blue Shadows.
"Good morning ladies, punctual as ever," said the Blue Shadows manager. It was all for show -- they were gagged, they couldn't see him, but it beat the curt instructions of the guards.
Sally and the others stood quietly and waited as, one by one, they were led to their stations.
"No point in getting anybody ready to work just yet," said the manager. "No customers in this early."
This was pretty much the norm -- the customers trickled in during the morning, then there was a lunch rush and slow but steady business in the afternoon, followed by another rush after work.
The guards just took each prisoner and sat her on the floor near a wall, attaching her waist chain to chain that dangled from an eyebolt set at waist height. That's what happened to Sally, a short walk, a right turn as directed by the guard's hand on her shoulder, then carefully sliding to the floor with her back against the wall in response to downward pressure, and the clanking of a chain as her chain was hooked to the wall. Then silence.
More waiting, but no one to talk to. As usual, she had been drooling steadily because of the gag in her mouth, and the drool had leaked out of the corner of her mouth and covered her chin, under the cover, then it would drip down from her chin in long strings to her breasts. The impulse to wipe her chin was irresistible at times, but there was nothing she could do about it. Still, she did hate it. A lot. She didn't like having her hands cuffed behind her back either. There were places she wanted to scratch. A lot.
The customers started to trickle in over the next half hour and the guards began prepping their charges for work. When it was Sally's turn, the guard came in and unhooked her from the eyebolt in the wall and pulled her to the center of the room.
"You're going on the horse this morning, 90210," said the guard. "Hold for a moment while I prep you."
'Prepping' consisted mostly of stripping Sally prison overalls off her. Her shirt and pants had velcro tabs that made removing them without disturbing her cuffs, waist chain and shackles easy. Like all of the cons who worked this particular prison job, Sally wore no bra or underwear. They just got in the way.
When Sally was standing there stark naked but still chained and hooded, the guard said, "Lean forward now."
Sally could feel the edge of the horse against her upper thighs and so she had no problem leaning forward. The horse was one of her favorites, because it was so comfortable between customers. She leaned forward and let her body fall against the slick surface of the horse, its upholstery polished by the many bodies that had writhed atop it.
The guard snapped the D ring at the base of her hood to a short chain that was secured to the bottom of the horse. The horse was just a short, upholstered board set at an angle of about 20 degrees on top of a wooden frame that held the board about a meter in the air. Its height and angle could be adjusted easily via cranks attached to screws set in the base of the board. That way very short and very tall prisoners could as easily be accommodated by a single horse -- or more importantly, very short and very tall customers could. There was also a wooden frame rising a meter above the horse, with eyebolts set in it.
The guard attached the shackles on Sally's ankles to eyebolts set in the base of the horse, but did not release the chain running between her ankles. It was wide enough to comfortably allow her to straddle the horse and would only have to be reattached when she was released for lunch or to go to the bathroom.
Her wrists remained cuffed to her sides via the waist chain. This was for the safety of the customers. Some of the prisoners doing time in the Blue Shadows were there for killing husbands, lovers, total strangers, etc. The Department of Corrections was not about to risk an attack on a paying customer.
That's why the other little safety precaution was taken, the one she hated most, after having to wear the hood and drool. The guard unsnapped the leather cover over her ball gag and unbuckled the gag, pulling it out of her mouth. Long strings of drool stretched out between her mouth and the gag as the guard removed it. The guard, carefully handling the gag by the straps only, dropped it into a disposable plastic bag, part of a supply that was stapled to a legs of the horse. It would stay there until needed.
Then the guard buckled the ring gag in her mouth. It was a rubber-coated steel ring about six centimeters in diameter, held in place by a head harness made of leather straps. The guard first insert the ring in her mouth at an angle, then straightened it up to full vertical position, forcing her mouth wide open. Then he tightened the strap holding the ring in place, humming softly to himself as he worked. He buckled it so tight that the straps pulled the leather of her hood and the corners of her mouth back. Then he buckled the straps that hung from the ones running across her cheeks, the ones that buckled under her chin. Finally, he picked up the straps that dangled in front of her face. They were formed in the shape of a "Y" with the two ends of the Y attached to the front of her gag. He ran the long end of the "Y" across the top of her hood and buckled it into a slot at the back of her neck.
Now the ring gag was fitted so snugly into her mouth that she couldn't move it at all. Nor could she close her mouth at all. She would not be biting customers during the next few hours. All any customer could see of her face was the end of her nose, her tongue, and the red, wet interior of her mouth.
"There, you're all ready to go, 90210," said the guard, giving her a friendly stroke on the shoulder as he applied the finishing touch, a short chain with an eyehook on either end. One eyehook went into a ring at the top of her hood. The other could be attached to an eyehook that was screwed into the frame that ran above and behind her. It held her head upright. The guard let it dangle loosely -- using that chain was a customers' option.
Normally the guards had very strict rules about how prisoners could and could not be touched, but these rules tended to be relaxed in the Blue Shadows and similar environs. The guards' touch on her shoulder was a friendly one, and felt nice. Some of the guards were nice, some were rapists with what amounted to a license to rape.
She heard the guard walk out of the room and she laid her head flat on the horse. The horse extended beyond her head so she could rest it when she wasn't with a client, though there was a hinged flap with a linchpin that could be removed when the customer wanted it removed.
The customer was always right in the Blue Shadows. Not that Sally had to worry about being nice to the customers. All she had to do was be there.
Sally thought about how she'd wound up being a pink thing chained in an empty room, waiting for men. The decision to offer female prisoners as sex surrogates (their official designation) in a work-release environment was probably inevitable, given the way the prison industry had expanded and the political pressure to keep funding low. Sure, prison industries could put inmates to work doing low-paying, low-skill jobs. But everybody in the prison system had always known, in the back of their minds at the very least, that some female inmates could make the prison system a lot of money -- one hell of a lot of money -- doing the one thing that all women can do for men. And many of the women in prison were already professionals in that very field -- in fact, some of them were in prison for BEING specialists in that very field.
The irony of arresting a woman for prostitution and then pimping her out once she was in jail wasn't lost on all the do-gooder, bleeding-heart journalists out there (the kind Sally had always despised, until she became a prisoner). They had a field day with it. But a ready-made explanation already existed. After all, in most states you could still be arrested for placing bets with a bookie, but buying a lotto ticket was perfectly legal and OK.
And the politicos saws to it that a lot of the money was used for good purposes. Much of it went to fund excellent support programs for the children of the families that were broken up by all the pot busts and the prostitution busts. Of course, foster care wasn't nearly so good as parental care and some children got raped and some died in foster care, but a lot did OK.
Some of the inmates swore that the cops were under instructions to make busts on attractive women to keep the program going. And the special dorm she and the other work-release program inmates were housed in was full of very attractive women. It was well known that the male guards considered it a plumb position. because fucking or giving a blowjob to a guard for a favor meant absolutely nothing to these women. It wasn't a matter of morality to them, it was just a matter of whether they gave 17 blowjobs to strangers that day or 18 blowjobs.
Sally wondered about that looker business. Could her husband have gotten away with growing pot in the basement indefinitely if she had been plainer looking? Had some cop noticed her appearance during their investigation, and had that sealed the deal on their arrest and prosecution? Because they sure as hell weren't the only ones in their neighborhood who smoked pot.
Sally enjoyed the breaks between customers and was on the verge of falling asleep when she heard the door open. Moments later, she felt hands running across her body, rough male hands.
"You are a FOX baby," said a low, husky voice. "I mean, you have got a BOD. I dunno what you done to get in here, but it's a shame you're not on the street."
Probably a black guy, might be white. Sally didn't care.
Sally agreed that she had a bod. It was one of the major reasons she was qualified to work at the Blue Shadows. She had large breasts that spilled to either side of her rib cage as she lay on the horse. She had a nice, round ass that looked good in almost any position, including hanging over the edge of the horse. Her skin was golden brown and smooth as silk.
If her face has been visible, it would have been pretty good, but not up to par with her body -- large eyes, puffy lips, but maybe her chin was a little too large, her brows a little too craggy, her eyes a little too lined with care. It was a pretty face, but not as pretty as the body that supported it.
Sally also agreed with the business about it being a shame that she was naked and chained to a bench in the Blue Shadows. Prior to her arrest, she had been an upper middle class woman, working as an office manager, married to a teacher. A teacher who felt that the laws about pot were wrong, and who had gone with his conviction on that score by homegrowing marijuana in his basement.
It had seemed like a good idea for several years, right up until the day they got busted. Then they had learned what it was like to be identified as The Enemy in the War on Drugs.
Her husband was guilty, and attempted to claim all the blame for himself. But the DA wasn't satisfied with that. He wanted Sally to testify against her husband as part of an international drug cartel. Sally refused. In addition to its being not true, she understood that a wife could not be compelled to testify against her husband.
This was true, under law. But her lawyer had warned her that DAs had come up with a countermove in drug cases -- they used the threat of prosecution under conspiracy laws to force spouses to testify. That's what had happened to her. The DA had threatened to prosecute her for conspiracy if she didn't testify as he wanted her to. Out of love for her husband, pride and stubbornness, she had refused, and had been sentenced to ten years for her trouble.
Ten years. That was why she worked at the Blue Shadows. Years spent in this particular work-release program were two-for-ones. That got her sentence down to five years.
Her only consolation was that it was quite common for DAs to betray those who testified for them, finding some piddling thing wrong with their testimony and prosecuting them anyway. And often, the wife or girlfriend didn't have anything to plea bargain with, and the DA just prosecuted her because.
Especially if she was a looker.
There was a long waiting list of women for the special work release program. She was lucky to be in it, she had been told repeatedly. Good looks and the willingness to suck the right guard's cock or eat the right guard's pussy could move things along wonderfully.
Yet, strangely, lying naked, hooded, chained and gagged on the horse, she didn't FEEL all that lucky.
"I am going to make you so happy," said the man. Sally was glad she was gagged and didn't have to respond. She was not there to be made happy. She was there to make men come.
The man felt her breasts, and she had to admit he was pretty good, i.e., gentle and yet firm. She wiggled a bit as he worked her nipples, squeezing and kneading them and making them grow large in his fingers.
She fought an impulse to resist. She was helpless. She was a prisoner. This was her job as a prisoner. She could not resist. She had to relax, and let things happen, and it would be so much easier for her, she knew from experience.
Fortunately, she had worked in the Blue Shadows long enough that letting go was easy for her. She just consciously opened her body, thinking, "They all want to fuck me, let them fuck me."
So when the man moved in front of her and hooked the chain atop her hood to the eyebolt suspended in the crossbar above her, pulling her head up and back, then loosed the linchpin holding up the end of the horse her head had rested on, giving him free access to her open mouth, she was relaxed and ready for it. She even stuck her tongue out through the O-ring gag and wiggled it at him.
Sure, her hands clenched and writhed in their bonds and her bottom wiggled as his cock probed her mouth. But he was very careful not to go all the way to the back of her throat.
(In the early days of the Women's Special Work Release Program, or Hos in Chains as the prisoners called it, some men had made a sport of probing their victims' mouths, going for the back of the throat in an attempt to make them gag and throw up. A few well-publicized assault prosecutions and signs relating to those prosecutions had put a stop to that game.)
So the customer merely went into her mouth, which got him hard, she could feel it. She used her tongue to get him harder. Some prisoners refused to do anything, just lay there. But Sally liked long rests between customers and so generally did what she could to get them off faster. Sure, the customers liked that, but it gave her longer breaks between customers, which worked to her advantage, too.
And she couldn't be sure, but she felt certain that if the prison were tracking customer satisfaction, she was probably highly rated, which gave her a little wiggle room within the program. As a gagged, naked woman chained in a room for the pleasure of men, she was a real success.
The customer finished up with her head and moved around behind her. As usual, he left her head hanging from the eyehook. It did make for a more erotic presentation.
There were no limitations on how hard and deep the customers probed her pussy -- or her anus, for that matter. All they had to do was use a condom. Not doing that would get you in jail fast, and with DNA testing, very certainly. It was the thing that had the administrators of the program most worried, and they'd created stringent laws and penalties to protect the women from AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
If you didn't use a condom, you would wind up in a jail cell yourself, very quickly, as several men had. And while there was no equivalent work-release program for men, the authorities still somehow hadn't managed to prevent homosexual rape from being commonplace in their prisons.
At least protecting her from AIDS was more than most brothels would do. But then, brothels looked on their charges as human beings who could make choices, not as animals to be caged and used. They let the whores make their own decisions about what was safe for them. Whereas prisoners did not make decisions except in very narrow ranges of circumstances, such as whether you would enter the Hos in Chains program at all.
She felt herself becoming aroused as the man behind her fucked her. This was normal, too. Over the course of her shift she would come several times. Some prisoners tried to conceal their orgasms, on the grounds that it gave too much pleasure to the men who used them. But Sally openly expressed her feelings, crying out and wriggling. It helped the men come sooner. Often, much sooner than they had intended to.
So Sally moaned and writhed as the man plowed into her, twisting her head helplessly in the chain and hood that held it up, though not so much that she appeared to be faking. Customers hated the feeling that their charges were faking.
The man behind her cried out and came. Sally had not come, but she felt pretty good down there. Next customer or two she would come.
The man withdrew from Sally. She hated just lying there with her love juices trickling out of her body and nothing she could do to clean it up. It was like the drool, which was also trickling out of her mouth. At least with the ring gag most of the drool trickled out of her mouth and down the exterior of the her chin without getting smeared agaisnt the gag cover.
She could feel the hands of the man as he gently stroked her body. A lot of men did that after fucking her. They had paid for their half hour with her, so they stayed and stroked her body while their cocks recovered. Some of them got her twice in half an hour. Some got her three times. Most got their one orgasm and left.
It wasn't like fucking her cost a lot of money. Fifty bucks. Of which the prison got 49 and she got one. That was the worst of it -- she wasn't just a whore, she wasn't just a bound and gagged whore, she was a cheap bound and gagged whore. A buck, that's all she got for a half hour of lying there being fucked and sucking on cocks. It was about as humiliating as it could get.
A lot of the women who worked in the Blue Shadows were ex-prostitutes. Prior to their busts, they wouldn't have given a man the time of day for fifty bucks. Much less one buck.
Her customer began rubbing against her with more vigor and enthusiasm. Must be a two-timer. She could feel his excitement and pleasure at the feel of her body, and at his own arousal. He would be telling his buddies he had done her four times. He walked around in front of her and rubbed his cock against the front of her hood, reaching down with one hand to feel her nipple and play with it as he did so.
She laid there and took it -- it was all she could do. He smeared his cock on her face and her mouth and his fingers probed her body, and all she could do was writhe in her bonds. It was enough for him, however, for soon his cock was harder and he put it in her mouth. He probed her mouth more vigorously this time, and soon his cock was very hard. Back he went, this time for her anus. She groaned as he forced his way into her. He liked that. Soon he was in her and reaming her good. She groaned and tried to relax. At least the condom was lubricated.
After he came the second time, he dressed and left. He'd used up almost his full half hour. But there was still a respite for her. She let her head hang from the chain. It was not as good as resting her head on the board, but it was still pretty good.
The times between customers were not bad. She knew she did not have to do anything, or that anything would be done to her for a time. That was enough to make a good time now. Of course, when she got back to her cell after her stint in the Blue Shadows, she had a couple of hours of privacy. But that had been a bad time for her. It was to her mind, "after work" -- the time she had been able to spend with her kids on the outside. She really missed her kids. At such times, all that had happened came crashing down on her, and she went into a crying jag that lasted for hours.
She would shake with grief for all that she had lost, all because that miserable, idiot bastard of a husband of hers had been so sure that growing pot in his basement was some sort of inalienable right, or that people would treat him reasonably and well because he was middle class. Boy, had he been wrong about that. Middle class, lower class, it didn't matter, the prison industry was feeding off everybody who wasn't extremely wealthy.
Her only consolation, and one she took pleasure in, was that her husband was probably taking it up the ass and giving blowjobs to other inmates, and getting beaten up by them, too. And he wasn't getting a dollar for it, either. He was being allowed to keep breathing. And so she couldn't hate him. Whatever he had done, he was being punished for it, punished beyond all reason. As was Sally herself. The conditions in prison, and the ease with which people could be subjected to them, had become insane, monstrous. All she could do about it was lie on her cot in a cell about the size of a broom closet in the huge prison and cry.
Over time, the crying jags had shortened in duration, and then ended. There were, she supposed, only so many tears in her heart and she had cried them all. Now she just felt blue for a time after she got back to her cell, and most nights she was able to dispel the blues easily enough by reading or going out into the common room to watch TV. But sometimes the tears came back. And hers wasn't the only cell from which sobbing could be heard regularly.
Time spent in the Blue Shadows between customers was different. It was a sexual floating thing, a waiting for the next fuck, a feeling of being helpless, but also of being held by the chains and bonds. She didn't get held much in prison, not in any warm and comforting way, and there was something curiously warm and comforting about her bondage. It was a sort of support. She mentally and physically relaxed into it, and felt good.
She heard the doorknob turn again. Not a customer, she knew. It was the cleanup person for the Blue Shadows. She came in and pulled the condom out of Sally's butt where it had stuck when her customer had withdrawn. Then she (Sally assumed the attendant was a "she" -- she'd never seen one) toweled the various secretions off Sally's crotch and hood. She gave Sally a quick scent of perfume (Eau de Heau was what the cons called it) and also sprayed the room with a lightly scented room deodorizer. A quick check to make sure that nothing needed refilling, some fresh towels for the customers, and the final adjustment -- she flipped the board back up and secured the linchpin, then unhooked the chain that held Sally's head up, allowing her to lie her head on the board again.
Leaving the cons' heads up too long made their necks stiff, gave them cramps, and eventually muscle spasms, cutting down on their earning potential. So they always got unhooked between customers, though on busy nights they spend a lot more time with their heads chained up in the upright "blowjob" position than in the resting position.
Sally laid her head down on the board gratefully. She listened and heard the sounds of the attendant leaving the room. She was ready for another customer. Happily, she drifted off again. She wondered if she could have this on the outside, this incredible peace and calm that came with the near-total loss of selfhood. She wasn't Sally any more, just a pink thing lying on a board. All else had been taken from her, and though she hated it when she had her crying jags, here in the Blue Shadows it brought a certain peace and something that might have been happiness under other circumstances. She was bound, she was gagged, she was naked and blind and all this somehow enriched her.
She heard the doorknob turning ....
The End
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