Letters Home: I Wrote Them In My Dreams
She chewed a little on the end of the pencil where the eraser should have been. That pencil, the only sharp implement of any kind they allowed her to have. And even that for only the shortest time, supervised--so that she didn't decided to jam it into the hands, or other soft-tissue body parts of one of her incarcerated "sisters."
That pencil, though a thin, octagonal No.2, was enough like a stake to feel at home in her grip. Or maybe she was just getting used to the yellow legal pad in front of her, and the hour twice a week she was allowed, as a reward for good behavior, to write letters.
Letters, plural, except she only re-wrote a version of the same letter over and over each session, the lines echoing each other from week to week like church bells she remembered as a child in Boston.
The letters were like her days, carbon copies of the same temptations, the same food, thesame people--from inmates to guards to the characters on Big Crazy Lucy's TV stories. She wondered if the guard who was assigned to read her letters for clues to escape plans, alleged mis-treatment—whatever it was they looked for and censored before allowing inmate mail out of the facility--was the same, letter to letter, and if so if they stopped to wonder that inmate 2684 held so tenaciously to cataloging her monotone life for her mother.
That was who she wrote to, again and again, never expecting a reply. She had no address to send to, so she scrawled on the envelope, Stacie Peters, General Delivery, Boston, and began each letter, "Dear Ma" and signed off, "your little girl, Faith."
She would think, every once in awhile, about writing to Angel. She could have asked him what the address of his new place was one of the times when he came to visit. It was not so much the embarrassment of having to ask and letting him know that she had no one else to write to, no one else in the world that wished to hear from her. She could handle that. It was only that if she had began her letter, "Dear Angel" she couldn't be sure—didn't trust herself with--what she'd say, what she'd cop to beyond the salutation. And though her pride was perhaps somewhat necessarily diminished by both incarceration and her own actions leading up to her jail sentence, she was still proud. And just as she found the guts not to ask at each of his visits when he thought he might come back, she found the strength of will to avoid putting into her high school mixture of printing and longhand the many interior things that she would have liked to have told him—told someone--who cared.
Whatever, she tossed back her head defiantly at the thought. She was only here to get out of her cell, that's all the dead letter office-bound essays were, nothing more. An exercise in penmanship, at being a regular, letter-writing person. Same as the time she had worked toward to be allowed to take GED classes while she was here on the inside. It wasn't like she cared about school—or normal life, regular people. She was the Slayer and normal life stopped there.
But that was the old Faith talking, fronting. She had been the Slayer, past tense. Sometimes she did not know what she had turned herself into now. There weren't many vampires to slay here in the Bighouse. But still, she had been the—a--Chosen One, and her old destiny still had a siren song quality to it, now matter that it might be no more than a dream deferred at the moment.
She turned to look over at Big Crazy Lucy across the table from her.
"The Slayer," she said under her breath, to see if she could get a reaction, any reaction. But the 350-pound Black woman, who ruled the cell block like an angry, unpredictable mama didn't look up from where she was writing yet another letter to her lawyer on the eternal, unending process of appeal.
"You, there, two-six-eight-four!" one of the new guards shouted.
Must've seen my mouth move, Faith thought, anticipating a reprimand, blanking her face of the sour expression being caught gave her so she could face her punishment.
"Somebody here to see you."
Faith stood up, then hesitated. She was not expecting anyone and though she couldn't see the sky in the windowless room where they were allowed to write, she knew it was day and whoever the visitor was it would not be Angel.
Thinking 2684's hesitance was brought on by fear of losing her letter writing period for the week, the guard encouraged her roughly with a, "you can finish up after they're done with ya--with the afternoon group."
Good, Faith's interior sarcasm snarked, because I'd hate to miss the chance to write to my non-existent mother. She gets so worried when she doesn't hear from me.
Faith was taken down a hall to a room—not the long, two-way phone-equipped area where she met Angel through glass when he came by on visiting day, but a smaller room, equipped with a table and a two-way mirror. This was where inmates met with their lawyers sometimes, and where once, when she was first brought in, Kate, the detective, had spoken with her.
She was brought into the room, handcuffed to a chair which was bolted to the floor. Directly in front of her was a long table and beyond that a mirror. The kind of mirror that anyone who had ever seen a cop show knows is two-way, with a not-so-secret little room behind it where people could watch or listen. The light was on in this room, though, and the glass, instead of reflecting, stood transparent as a picture window. No one was in the room revealed. She turned her head to see the surveillance camera she remembered from her earlier encounter with Kate. The connections were visible in the wall's concrete but the camera was missing, like it had been unplugged and then removed, deliberately.
Her visitors had gone to a lot of trouble to illustrate their trust of her—or perhaps it was not she whom they wished to remain undocumented, unobserved, the encounter unknown, but rather them. She could barely remember the last time she had not sat, ate, slept, showered and crapped without being monitored.
Whoever wanted to see her, this was certainly turning out to be a red-letter day.
...to be continued...
DISCLAIMER: Characters and concept of Faith, Buffy, Angel, et al, are not mine.
More Neftzer fiction at The OutBack Fiction Shack at http://www.royaltoby.com/shack
She chewed a little on the end of the pencil where the eraser should have been. That pencil, the only sharp implement of any kind they allowed her to have. And even that for only the shortest time, supervised--so that she didn't decided to jam it into the hands, or other soft-tissue body parts of one of her incarcerated "sisters."
That pencil, though a thin, octagonal No.2, was enough like a stake to feel at home in her grip. Or maybe she was just getting used to the yellow legal pad in front of her, and the hour twice a week she was allowed, as a reward for good behavior, to write letters.
Letters, plural, except she only re-wrote a version of the same letter over and over each session, the lines echoing each other from week to week like church bells she remembered as a child in Boston.
The letters were like her days, carbon copies of the same temptations, the same food, thesame people--from inmates to guards to the characters on Big Crazy Lucy's TV stories. She wondered if the guard who was assigned to read her letters for clues to escape plans, alleged mis-treatment—whatever it was they looked for and censored before allowing inmate mail out of the facility--was the same, letter to letter, and if so if they stopped to wonder that inmate 2684 held so tenaciously to cataloging her monotone life for her mother.
That was who she wrote to, again and again, never expecting a reply. She had no address to send to, so she scrawled on the envelope, Stacie Peters, General Delivery, Boston, and began each letter, "Dear Ma" and signed off, "your little girl, Faith."
She would think, every once in awhile, about writing to Angel. She could have asked him what the address of his new place was one of the times when he came to visit. It was not so much the embarrassment of having to ask and letting him know that she had no one else to write to, no one else in the world that wished to hear from her. She could handle that. It was only that if she had began her letter, "Dear Angel" she couldn't be sure—didn't trust herself with--what she'd say, what she'd cop to beyond the salutation. And though her pride was perhaps somewhat necessarily diminished by both incarceration and her own actions leading up to her jail sentence, she was still proud. And just as she found the guts not to ask at each of his visits when he thought he might come back, she found the strength of will to avoid putting into her high school mixture of printing and longhand the many interior things that she would have liked to have told him—told someone--who cared.
Whatever, she tossed back her head defiantly at the thought. She was only here to get out of her cell, that's all the dead letter office-bound essays were, nothing more. An exercise in penmanship, at being a regular, letter-writing person. Same as the time she had worked toward to be allowed to take GED classes while she was here on the inside. It wasn't like she cared about school—or normal life, regular people. She was the Slayer and normal life stopped there.
But that was the old Faith talking, fronting. She had been the Slayer, past tense. Sometimes she did not know what she had turned herself into now. There weren't many vampires to slay here in the Bighouse. But still, she had been the—a--Chosen One, and her old destiny still had a siren song quality to it, now matter that it might be no more than a dream deferred at the moment.
She turned to look over at Big Crazy Lucy across the table from her.
"The Slayer," she said under her breath, to see if she could get a reaction, any reaction. But the 350-pound Black woman, who ruled the cell block like an angry, unpredictable mama didn't look up from where she was writing yet another letter to her lawyer on the eternal, unending process of appeal.
"You, there, two-six-eight-four!" one of the new guards shouted.
Must've seen my mouth move, Faith thought, anticipating a reprimand, blanking her face of the sour expression being caught gave her so she could face her punishment.
"Somebody here to see you."
Faith stood up, then hesitated. She was not expecting anyone and though she couldn't see the sky in the windowless room where they were allowed to write, she knew it was day and whoever the visitor was it would not be Angel.
Thinking 2684's hesitance was brought on by fear of losing her letter writing period for the week, the guard encouraged her roughly with a, "you can finish up after they're done with ya--with the afternoon group."
Good, Faith's interior sarcasm snarked, because I'd hate to miss the chance to write to my non-existent mother. She gets so worried when she doesn't hear from me.
Faith was taken down a hall to a room—not the long, two-way phone-equipped area where she met Angel through glass when he came by on visiting day, but a smaller room, equipped with a table and a two-way mirror. This was where inmates met with their lawyers sometimes, and where once, when she was first brought in, Kate, the detective, had spoken with her.
She was brought into the room, handcuffed to a chair which was bolted to the floor. Directly in front of her was a long table and beyond that a mirror. The kind of mirror that anyone who had ever seen a cop show knows is two-way, with a not-so-secret little room behind it where people could watch or listen. The light was on in this room, though, and the glass, instead of reflecting, stood transparent as a picture window. No one was in the room revealed. She turned her head to see the surveillance camera she remembered from her earlier encounter with Kate. The connections were visible in the wall's concrete but the camera was missing, like it had been unplugged and then removed, deliberately.
Her visitors had gone to a lot of trouble to illustrate their trust of her—or perhaps it was not she whom they wished to remain undocumented, unobserved, the encounter unknown, but rather them. She could barely remember the last time she had not sat, ate, slept, showered and crapped without being monitored.
Whoever wanted to see her, this was certainly turning out to be a red-letter day.
...to be continued...
DISCLAIMER: Characters and concept of Faith, Buffy, Angel, et al, are not mine.
More Neftzer fiction at The OutBack Fiction Shack at http://www.royaltoby.com/shack