by D. A. Maddox
“Yes, Your Honor, I accept the court’s judgment. I consent.” He got the words out as quickly as he could. He’d cried enough for one day, and in front of so many people, too. What a freak show. “Please, Your Honor, could we just get this over with?”
By the look on his new friends’ faces (if that’s what they were), he had a fleeting thought that he’d made a terrible mistake, saying that aloud.
The judge, however, seemed by her expression to wholeheartedly approve and agree.
“Absolutely,” she said.
Ms. Gibson rose from her chair. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You don’t deserve this.” And left.
Bye, Buddy thought. Um, thanks?
“Out of consideration for your continuing education,” the judge pressed on, “we’ve arranged for your discipline to take place this very weekend. It will shorten your time. And it’s quite unusual for the staff at Huntington, so please have that in mind during your stay. You should be grateful.”
Okay, more gratitude. Got it and filed.
“The court sentences each of you to sixty hours of incarceration, including two days of controlled judicial humiliations. I therefore remand you to the custody of Huntington Regional Adult Detention Center for the duration of sentence, hours to be credited from the time of your arrival. Processing and interview to take place immediately, sessions to begin Saturday morning—pending approval.”
Controlled … what?
One glance at the others told him that they were thinking the same thing.
“Of all the cases like this I’ve had to adjudicate,” the judge concluded, “this one was the most difficult. My heart goes out to you and your families. I truly do wish you well. Be brave.”
The gallery was emptying. His mother and father were already gone. Didn’t want to see this part, he guessed. Hard to fault them.
“Adjourned.”
Gavel.
The bailiffs moved in, unclipping handcuffs.
Chapter Four
Remanded
“What’s that?” Emma Jo tentatively asked, pointing.
They were outside, in back of the court building, having been taken out through the last exit any of them had wanted to make use of. It was a pleasant day, the early afternoon sun shining down the last of an Indian summer, the perfect day to be outdoors. Behind them, the unadorned brick wall rarely seen by the public. In front of them, the court employee parking lot, a sublot for police cruisers, and pulled up alongside the bottom of the concrete steps, a black van with a Channel 382 show logo.
Consequences, Live? she thought, incredulity and dread blending in equal measure.
They’d been cuffed up front this time. She’d had to point with both hands. Doing so only resulted in the cop at her elbow yanking her arms back down to her sides. “Your ride,” he said, squeezing the bare flesh under the short sleeves of her school-issued blouse.
“Hey—” she started. Why had she and Cassidy gotten the male escorts, while the female officers had gotten Buddy and Peter? Kind of backward, she thought, with all of the handling—which she considered borderline personal.
“Don’t talk, convict,” the cop said. He wasn’t especially mean about it—certainly not like Officer Maynard had been to Cassidy at their booking. Nor did he seem particularly concerned with her feelings. “Up against the vehicle, please.”
Buddy was already there, facing her when she was lined up next to him, cheek flat. His officer, the woman, kicked his feet apart without speaking to him—while at the same time her officer, the man, guided her face flat the other way. She then found herself staring at Cassidy, whose wide eyes were dead with surrender.
“Standard frisk,” the cop at Cassidy’s back said. He looked roughly the age of Emma Jo’s father. His hands canvassed her midriff, working up.
Emma Jo’s cop, slightly younger, moved in closer behind her. She put her feet apart without being told. She heard a click, a whizzing just above her.
There was a camera on top of the van. Its lens widened on her as she felt hands on the outside of her shirt, patting her front, causing her stomach muscles to clench out of reflex. “Relax, Miss Swanson,” he said. “It’s not broadcasting live—not until you get there, anyway. But get used to it. Everything’s monitored.”
His hands were beneath her breasts. He didn’t go under the shirt, thank God, but still…
“Everything’s recorded,” he said. But Emma Jo saw only Cassidy, who looked straight back at her as the older man’s hands crossed over Cassidy’s jeans skirt, her buttocks.
From the other way, from Peter, “Whoa, Officer, that’s—”
And then a thwap. Had Peter’s escort just swatted him across the back of the head?
“Your crotch. Yes, I know. Get over it, Two-oh-One.”
Peter’s booking number. Didn’t they have names anymore?
“Relax,” Emma Jo’s cop said again. “Be done in two shakes if you stop squirming. Gotta be thorough. Gotta be safe.”
He was on a knee, tubing her stockinged shins with his hands, then rising up to pat down her middle. A quick, two-handed frisk of her ass cheeks. Emma Jo sucked her lips in, biting down hard when the man snaked one hand around her front and patted her down there.
“Done,” he said, stepping back.
This can’t be right. It can’t be.
“We’re not … hiding anything,” she managed. She just barely kept herself from adding asshole.
He drew her back by the shirt collar. The door slid open automatically—or it seemed to, since the inside had nothing in it but three steel benches riveted with bolts into the sides of the three remaining walls.
“I told you to be quiet,” her officer said. “You’re in for a rough couple of days, miss, but you can still make it worse. Do yourself a favor and be a good listener, right?”
Facing away from him, she could feel his cold, blue eyes on the back of her head.
“I spoke to you directly. This time, answer.”
“Yes,” she said, feeling the fixed attention, too, of her new friends, although she herself focused straight ahead. “Right.”
“Yes, what? Right, what?”
“Yes, sir. Right, sir.”
“Good,” he said, patting her rear. “Up you get, convict. Ladies first.”
****
Without the use of their hands, they had to be buckled in by their escorts, who followed them in for that purpose. Then they departed, leaving them only with the driver, a woman or man they could not see. There was no glass between the driver cab and the back, just a wall with a bench, which Buddy and Peter shared. Cassidy had chosen the one at the back (which had no exit), and Emma Jo the one opposite the sliding door.
Inside, it was all steely gray, even the floor. The only exceptions to this, again, were cameras, one at the front between the boys and one at the rear over Cassidy. These were either painted white metal or shiny white plastic. They swiveled. Their lenses expanded and contracted to autofocus every time they targeted a different prisoner. Between Peter and Buddy, there was a metal box with perforations that might have been a speaker.
“Clear,” called the male cop who had served as Cassidy’s escort, the oldest of the four.
The sliding door hissed, then slammed shut with a noise so loud on the inside it made all of them flinch.
No tears, though. Good. Emma Jo didn’t much want to deal with that. She’d feel compelled to play the comforter—and just now she wanted to cry, even though she’d done plenty of that already. She wanted some comfort of her own.
Selfish, she thought, glad she had enough freedom of movement to push her glasses back up just now. They had an annoying habit of slipping halfway down her nose. It’s two days. Well, two and a half.
The thing that might have been a speaker crackled. Then, predictably, it spoke.
“We’ve got a bit of a drive ahead of us,” it said as the engine started.
It was Officer Gillis, who’d taken the boys in from Delta House last week. Okay
, he wasn’t so bad.
“Once we get to the highway and the driving’s clear, I’m going to advise you of two sets of rights: ones you do have and ones you don’t. I will pause after each list for questions. Any questions you have at that time will be directed to me. You are not to speak to each other during the transfer.”
He didn’t ask them if they understood. He didn’t invite any questions just then. Instead, he started driving.
There weren’t any windows, only dull ambient light emanating from—and for the benefit of—the cameras. There wasn’t anything to look at except each other or the floor.
Emma Jo felt the belt at her waist, the metal clasp over her belly. She guessed it was locked. With her cuffed hands, she tried it, just to be sure. It was.
“It’s an hour-and-a-half drive,” the unseen Officer Gillis said. “Half an hour to the highway. Feel free to catch a nap if you can.”
A nap? Really?
An hour and a half away, she thought. Like Peter, she actually lived on the Bay. She’d seen Huntington on a digital map. Ms. Gibson had shown them on her phone. It was pretty far inland.
Emma Jo had never been so far from home in her life.
Nevertheless, the silence—broken only by the continuing, somnambulant thrum of the engine—eventually lulled her to a doze. It was like being in a sensory deprivation chamber, the van. The sounds of the outer world were completely shut out.
In that doze, Emma Jo saw herself scuba diving through the wreck of the USS Reliant, lost during the First Uprising when her parents had still been kids themselves. The way the light had shone through the blast holes, the silent schools of fish that swam by the score but moved as one. Her coach was with her, but no one in her family. They didn’t understand her fascination with marine life, although her parents encouraged it. There’d been a scary moment with a rogue barracuda down there, causing Mrs. Burkaki to nearly laugh over her breathing tube, then call an end to things, but…
****
Meanwhile Buddy, in his shallow sleep, went through the backdoor of his own book club website, Alternate Realities—where his name was Alastair Drake and he had followers from everywhere—and came upon a rather distressing find. People were unfollowing him by the dozen. Maybe they’d read the news. His arrest would be in the public record now that he was convicted. He was “sexually deviant.” Who wanted to belong to a book club run by a deviant? Apparently, no one.
****
The problem, Cassidy decided, couldn’t be done with the graphing calculator app on her phone. She had to do it by hand. She brought out pencil and paper. And at first the pencil wouldn’t write. Then it wouldn’t sharpen. Then the sharpener broke. Numbers kept appearing on the paper without her writing them, a problem that grew and grew until the characters were literally spilling off both sides of the page…
****
Behind Peter’s half-lidded eyes, he was playing teacher assistant at his childhood alma mater, Rockledge Elementary School, correcting fifth graders on the trumpet. He’d been so popular those three days, but in the dream the kids were frowning at him. They pointed, telling him he was no good. They were goofing off, out of control. Why didn’t the real teacher step up and stop them? Save him from—
“Okay,” Officer Gillis said over the crackling intercom right next to him. “I’ve let you all conk out a bit longer than originally planned. But we’re almost there now, and there are some things you’ve got to understand before processing. Everybody up? Are you listening? If you are, just nod.”
Peter snapped back to full consciousness right away, and he immediately found it difficult to decide if he was glad of it or not. Weird-ass dream.
He can see us, Peter thought. Must be a monitor up there.
He nodded, saw the others nod. Directly across from him, Cassidy’s yawn could have swallowed meteors—but then, abashed, she covered her mouth with her cuffed hands and rolled her eyes.
“So, here’s the thing,” Officer Gillis said. “I’m the resident softball on the protective custody detail, which is probably why they keep picking me for transport duty. But I am also a big believer in ripping the Band-Aid off fast. I’m not going to bullshit you. You four are in for a bad fucking weekend. Do I have your attention?”
Again, Peter nodded, saw the others do the same. He hadn’t really expected anything else.
“Every part of it is approved under law—laws you don’t even know about, which you’re going to find pretty unfair. And you’ll be right. It isn’t fair. But what you’re about to go through is not an experiment. You will be in the hands of trained professionals who know what they’re doing. As far as I know, there’s only one probationary punishment warden on staff, and that one won’t be in charge of anything. Your discipline was scripted before you went to court. There is no getting out of it, only getting through it. If you let them, they’ll help you get through. But they won’t let you off.”
Also no surprise, although the words punishment warden were disconcerting. Peter looked over to Buddy, hoping for a bro-moment, a silent and shared “oh shit” just between dudes. But Buddy stared straight ahead, his lips pressed tight. His hands shook in his lap.
“You have the right to personal safety, hygiene, and adequate housing. That right includes three meals a day, vegetarian option available, and a minimum of seven hours rest and recovery time every night. After dinner and before lights-out, you have the option of in-house psychiatric counseling with your choice of a male or female therapist. And do consider taking advantage of that. Lately, Dr. Cossack and Dr. White haven’t had much to do, as our transitional inmates have an odd habit of developing something like Stockholm Syndrome with our head punishment warden.”
Peter felt his eyebrows scrunch out of confusion reflex. What the hell was Stockholm Syndrome?
A sigh over the intercom. “Most importantly, nothing that happens to you in there will cause you permanent harm, lasting injury, or scarring. That’ll become very easy for you to forget once the ball’s rolling, so take it to heart right now.”
But that, more than anything, made Peter uneasy. He thought of the officer smacking the back of his head out in the parking lot. He’d wondered if she’d be out of a job if someone videoed the breach of duty and put it on the Web.
So, what does that mean? he thought. Does it mean they can cause us temporary harm and injury?
“I have paused,” Officer Gillis said. “Each of you may ask me up to one question.”
Peter considered asking his, but then he thought better of it.
Buddy spoke up. “They’re going to hurt us, aren’t they, Officer Gillis?”
“I’ll cover that in the next list of rights—the ones you don’t have. Questions on the rights you retain, please.”
From Emma Jo: “What about exercise? I—I swim every day.”
“No, you don’t,” Officer Gillis answered simply. “Please come to grips with the fact that you are going to prison, Miss Swanson. But you’ll get plenty of exercise. I’m afraid I can’t be specific. Anyone else?”
There wasn’t.
“Excellent. Okay, then. The following rights are under suspension until your release: the right to privacy, the right to speak without permission, the right to lie. Any question asked of you by anyone in authority is to be answered honestly and completely, or you will be punished. Any running of the mouth when silence is expected of you, and you will be punished. Any failure to comply with a command or instruction, no matter how upsetting you find it, will also be met with punishment. For the next two and a half days, you can pretty much forget anything you ever learned about human dignity, at least as it applies to you. Not a fan of it, personally, but that’s what it is—and you do have a right to know it going in.”
“Hold on,” Emma Jo cut in. “Do you mean—”
Don’t, Peter thought. Just let him say what he’s got to say, Emma Jo. He won’t be the one we’ll have to reason with. He won’t be doing any of it.
Officer Gillis continued.
“Yes, Miss Swanson. Chances are, whatever you were about to say, that’s exactly what I meant. The idea, from their point of view, is that by losing these rights for a time, in the long run you’ll appreciate them more. Personally, I don’t know. Never been through it. Never even watched it.”
Emma Jo shook her head, fuming. Cassidy had her face in her hands.
“Until recently, there used to be a right to opt out of the alternative punishment plan at any time during an inmate’s correction. Some of our older inmates in protective custody might even mention it at mealtimes or whenever. If they do, you have it from me—that right no longer exists. It was removed from the program last year when an exceptionally tenacious young hooligan became the first to actually go the distance and not opt out. Things are different now. TV’s already seen that angle. The program adjusts.”
TV? Peter thought. People are going to watch this? Why?
“Now everyone goes the distance, including you. There. I have paused again. Any questions?”
“If you don’t agree with this,” Cassidy asked, still hiding her face, “then why do you do it?”
He didn’t answer that. The van slowed. Peter could feel it.
From Buddy: “They’re going to hurt us, aren’t they?”
Suddenly, the van stopped. The engine died.
“I don’t know, son. How much of a good boy can you be?”
****
The first shock was the inrush of noise. It hit Cassidy like a blast of wind from a thunderstorm, and it struck as soon as the automatic door slid back open. Beyond that door—though it was Emma Jo who had the best view—Cassidy could make out the electrified fencing and razor wire. And that should have been the worst thing. It made everything real. She was about to be caged like an animal, one that couldn’t be trusted at that. But the noise was worse.
There were people out there. They were yelling, cheering. She could even make out what some of them said. She heard her name.
“Bring her out! She’s fucking hot!”
“Cassidy! Cass-i-deeee!”
“Welcome home, Cassidy! Love you already!”
