Convict slave - continued:

Of course, I was too scared to say anything, so I just sort of nodded, and he walked slowly, menacingly to the front of the van, went through the steel door, and slammed it shut behind him. Obviously, they had some kind of listening device up front. They could hear us but we couldn't hear them. More important, it was obvious that I wasn't the only guy who'd gotten a life sentence. But that didn't make me feel any better. It started to dawn on me that my sentence wasn't some bizarre mistake that would soon be corrected. It was part of a program. I was the one who was going to be corrected. I stood up in my cage, cuffed to the bars. An hour or so passed. I kept my eyes closed most of the time. Every time I opened them, I saw that other guy, first trying to get his wind back and then just silently sobbing and twisting around, like somebody in a nightmare who's trapped and can't wake up. I had never been claustrophobic before, but when you're jammed into a tiny cage that you can't even stand up in all the way, with steel walls touching you on the right side and the left, and what you're looking at, just inches from your face, is cagefuls of other guys jammed in like you, the panic starts and pretty soon you feel like you've gotta SCREAM something out, that you've gotta get OUT of there SOMEHOW. But I couldn't scream, and I couldn't try to get out. I knew I'd be dead if I tried. So I closed my eyes and fought the panic down. It was hot that day, and there was no attempt at air conditioning, at least in our part of the van. The windows were wide open, but nothing much came through those heavy bars. I stood there, passing in and out of consciousness. When I was conscious, I tried not to stare at the guy across the aisle. I looked instead at the cage next to his, the first cage on the right side of the van. The animal who was stuffed in that cage was a young guy with hair down to his shoulders, beautiful hair, long and dark and smooth. He was wearing jeans and one of those tie-dyed tees that nobody wears except kids who drop out of high school to smoke pot and listen to the Grateful Dead. This guy had a gold hoop in his right ear. He wasn't saying anything; he just stood there, looking straight in front of him. But I think he was crying a little bit. About noon, I guess, the back door swung open and three other prisoners were frogmarched into the van and trussed up the way I was, one on each side of the aisle. I couldn't really see any of the guys in the cages on my side of the van, except for their shackled hands sticking out through the bars, but I could see the newest guy across the walkway from me. He was a very slight little Asian kid, wearing a light blue sport shirt and a nice tie and a belt with a little silver clasp. When the cage door slammed and the Officer yelled at him to turn around and stick his hands through the bars, he stuck them out immediately, straight out like it was an exercise he'd been practicing, and the cuffs snapped on. Then he just looked down at the floor, as if he had died. A few minutes later, two more guys were marched in and caged, one of them a tall, muscular black kid who had a lot of trouble fitting into his cage, which was directly over the wheel. He never really did fit into it; he just crouched there with his head bent and his legs twisted at a painful angle. The Officer laughed at him and walked away. The van was now starting to feel less like a zoo and more like a packing case for male bodies. Finally I heard somebody yell, "Lock 'er up, Charley!", and the back door was slammed and bolted. I heard one of the Officers walk past the van on my side and climb into the cab. A couple minutes later, the motor started and the van gave a lurch that would have thrown me onto the floor if I hadn't been chained so securely to the bars. The cuffs bit deep into my wrists. We were on our way to prison. I didn't know if we were on a particularly rough stretch of road or if jail vans don't have any springs, but I spent most of the trip trying to keep my balance and prevent the cuffs from biting even deeper into my flesh. The guy directly across from me, the Junior Exec, was huddled against the bars, so I had a good view of the little strips of landscape that showed through the windows behind him. And once we got going, air started coming in through the bars. My clothes started drying on my skin, and if I could have felt any pleasure, I would have felt it from the sudden coolness spreading slowly over me. You can be grateful for almost anything. On our way out of town, we stopped for a traffic light, and there was a school right there, with a crowd of kids milling around on the sidewalk. All of them turned to look at the big white van with the big black markings. Most of them seemed scared of us, but one kid rolled up on his skateboard, looked in through the bars, and smiled, like curious kids do when they see something and don't understand exactly what it is. He was a little guy with long hair and a cocky grin. "Cool, man!" he said, peering into the van at all these tough guys chained up inside the human zoo. "Cool!!" "Just wait, dude," I thought. "In a few years you'll have your chance to be in here too." Soon we reached the outskirts of town and headed down the interstate. We bumped along at what must have been eighty miles an hour, because cops can do whatever they want to in this state. The view was just flat fields and more flat fields, till after an hour or so we went off at an exit and stopped next to the courthouse in some little town. The back door opened, there was some shuffling and swearing, and some more shackled bodies were shoved inside. Then we were on the road again. We kept to the interstate for a long time, then swung off on a side road that suddenly turned into gravel. We were going really fast, swerving in and out of the ruts and bouncing up and down on every hump in the road. I'm sure this was good entertainment for the Officers, who knew what that road did to guys who were hanging by their chains in tiny cages, hitting their heads on the ceiling and trying desperately to brace themselves against the next bump and roll. It seems ridiculous to say that it's good to see a prison come into view, especially when it's a prison where you're about to become an inmate. But after the ride we were having, I was actually relieved when a tall steel fence, topped by nasty looking razor wire, appeared on the right side of the road. Beyond that fence, I saw a bunch of big, grey, gnarly looking buildings surrounded by an even gnarlier looking wall-- unmistakably our prison. The bus swerved and ground to a halt, throwing me off my feet one last time. There was a guard post there, and a sign that said a lot of things I couldn't make out. The one word I could read was JACKMAN. The gate swung open and we drove through some more flat fields, then stopped again and waited, then pulled forward. A shadow came over the bus. We were inside the prison. Convict Slave, Part 3 There was another one of those waits, and I could feel my stomach jumping up and down. At about this time yesterday I was getting out of my mid-afternoon class and looking for a pay phone so I could call up Troy and make arrangements for our night at the movies. It was incredible. Yesterday, the worst thing I had to worry about was getting a B on some stupid exam. Now I was chained to the bars of a prison bus, like a convict. No, not LIKE a convict: I WAS a convict! Nothing could be worse than this, I thought to myself. Nothing could be worse than this. Wrong again, as it turned out. But--here's a strange thing--I was scared and excited at the same time. I still don't know how to figure it out. I was scared shitless. I was absolutely miserable. But there was some kind of curiosity, some kind of male thing in my blood that made me excited to see what was gonna happen, how I was gonna perform, how much of a male I was gonna be in this ultimate male place. Going to a college isn't exactly a hypermale thing to do, and neither is "having a career" or getting your rocks off with some girl from your home town. Now I was in for some serious stuff, and . . . what can I say? I was more scared and excited than I'd ever been before. I felt the hormones rushing through my body. I also felt something stirring in my crotch. We waited there in the shadows. Looking over the Junior Executive's shoulder, I could see a concrete wall and nothing more. After what seemed like an endless time but was probably about 20 minutes or however long it takes an Officer to grab a cup of coffee and smoke a cigaret, I heard the back door rumble open, the ramp trundle out of its holder, and the heavy tread of the Officer with the baton marching up into the van. "Awright you guys! It's three o'clock in the afternoon and we're gonna move fast. What we're gonna do, I'm gonna take you outta your cage, and when you're outta your cage, you will run-- not walk, RUN--out the rear of this van. You will then turn RIGHT, I said RIGHT, and line up by the LEFT side of the van. Got that? You will RUN and then you will LINE UP by the LEFT side of the van. And remember, this is the first day of the rest of your lives." Three times I heard a cage door open and three times I heard "Move your ass, motherfucker!" and three times I saw somebody shuffling as fast as he could shuffle down the aisle. Once I heard a heavy thump and a rattle of chains from the back of the bus and a voice yelling, "Get up, you piece of shit! I thought I told you to run!" and the solid sound of an Officer's boot pounding into a prisoner's body, and then some more rattling of chains as the prisoner pulled himself to his feet. I figured that was the Junior Exec, trying to exit the van. Then the Officer got to my cage. He grabbed my cuffs and pulled them through the door, dragging my face into the bars along with them. He unlocked the cuffs; then he unlocked the cage, and I stood there waiting for orders. "Good boy," he said, as he locked the cuffs back on, pinioning my arms behind my back. "You'll go far in this outfit. Now move your ass, motherfucker!" I shuffled as hard as I could down the narrow little aisle and plunged down the ramp, almost falling the way the other guy did, then turning to the right and joining the line of guys at the left side of the bus. As the line formed up, I glanced furtively around at the others. They were all young guys, maybe 18, 19, no more than 22, 23. A couple of them were wearing suits, though the suits were looking very limp by now. Some of them were dressed like me, in levis and sports shirts and tennis shoes. Others were just wearing jeans and tees. There were two or three longhairs and a couple of guys with buzzcuts, but most of the prisoners were what I would call moderates like me--you know, medium length hair, not quite over the collar, polo shirts, preppy. It was a pretty cleancut bunch; didn't look like hardened criminals. There was the one black guy and the one little Asian guy, and a couple of Hispanics, one of them sort of dark and stocky and one of them a lightish-brown-skinned guy with freckles around his nose who was standing second in line. I was fourth, behind the Junior Exec. I looked around at where we were. We were standing in a giant concrete room where four or five buses could park side by side. One wall was pierced by a set of enormous steel mesh gates through which we could see the driveway leading out through the fields and the fence and the road. That was where we came from, but the bright light of the outside world barely struggled through the mesh of those giant doors. In front of us was an empty prison bus, parked next to ours; beyond it, across the other bays of the loading zone, was a concrete wall. High up on the wall was a control room, glowing brightly behind thick yellowish glass. Green- uniformed men were moving around in there, giving orders, I supposed. There was a smell of oil and gas and that smell you get with new concrete. This part of the prison was new, hard-edged, and obviously meant for business. I was starting to sweat again, but it wasn't the heat anymore. The two transport Officers came around in front of us, one holding his baton and one holding a clipboard. The second one started shouting: "Eyes front, motherfuckers! Roll call! Now listen up. This is the list and I'm gonna check you off. Enjoy it while it lasts, motherfuckers, because this is the last time you're gonna hear the name your mama gave you. And don't try anything smart. What we're doing here is what they call a mere formality, required by regulations. We already know who you are; you're not gonna fool anybody. Get fresh, and you're gonna get your asses whipped." He went over to the first guy in line, the tie-dye kid, and looked him up and down. Then he read from something on his clipboard. "Mortensen, Aaron. 19 years of age. Shoplifting, three convictions. Life with penal servitude." He looked down at the clipboard, then he looked up sarcastically. "You take a good picture, Aaron. Looks just like you." Aaron gulped and nodded. Then the Officer came over to the second guy. "Martinez, Frank. 18 years of age. Burglary, grand theft auto, driving under the influence. Life with penal servitude." Frank was the light-brown guy with freckles. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him standing tense and straight, like a soldier. There was a little quiver around his mouth, but he was obviously determined not to weaken. "Fucking beaner!" the Officer said, and gave Frank a sneering look, daring him to react. Frank's face stiffened, but he kept looking ahead. Then the Officer went on to the next guy, the Junior Executive. "Andrews, Christian. 22 years of age. Three charges of embezzlement. Life with penal servitude." So that's what Mr. Perfect had been doing-- embezzlement. How appropriate, I thought. I could see a tear still dripping down his face. I was next. "Morgan, Jeremy. 18 years of age. Car theft, DUI, evasion, unjust holding. Life with penal servitude." That was it. Horrible, final; your whole life reduced to a few short words. I think that right then, I was crying too. The Officer moved on. The next guy was the little Asian kid. "Wang, Justin. 19 years of age. Driving while intoxicated, consumption of illegal substances, accident with injury. Life with penal servitude." So Justin got life, too. All of us got life. When the Officer finally got to the end of the line, he stood in front of us and made some marks on his papers. Then he waited for a minute and looked at us. We looked back. On one side, there were two middle-aged Officers. On the other side, there were twelve fit young guys. But the fit young guys were wearing handcuffs and shackles, and the two middle-aged Officers not only were wearing weapons but were probably a lot fitter than most of us young guys were. You could see the muscles bulging under their uniforms, the cloth stretching at the shoulders, around the pecs, in the thighs. Besides, they could call on any amount of force from the Officers in the control booth. One false move, and we would all be dead. "Now," said the Officer, "we're through with names. It's time to get naked. You're going to kneel down on the floor while Officer Roberts, here, passes among you to unlock your irons. Then you're going to stand up while I unlock your cuffs. When I've done that, I want you to IMMEDIATELY take off ALL your clothes--that means EVERYTHING, gentlemen, from your watches and rings and earrings and eyebrow rings to your jockey shorts, if you were thoughtful enough to put on jockey shorts for your day in court and not just stand there dripping into your jeans. You will drop all that shit in a pile in front of you, and that will be it for your civilian clothes. You will never see them again. From now on, for the rest of your life, you will wear the convict uniform. "Now when you've shed your civvies, you're gonna form up into two lines, side by side, and you're gonna face the front of the bus. Now move it! On your knees!" We all flopped down on the concrete, and Officer Roberts came up behind each of us and unlocked our leg irons. Then we stood up and the other Officer sprang our cuffs. Some of us started rubbing our wrists, but all that got us was a lot of yelling--"MOTHERFUCKERS! Who told you to do ANYTHING but STRIP those jeans OFF!!!" So we started getting naked, some guys looking dazed and worried, like they thought they were gonna get fucked any minute, and others just doing it the way you do in gym class, trusting and innocent and automatic. From time to time, the Officer in charge shouted things like, "When I said EVERYTHING I meant those SHOES, ASSHOLE!!!" and some poor guy bent down and struggled to obey while an Officer came up behind and gave him a kick in the butt that sent him sprawling. That was a big motivator to me. I got my shirt off in about two seconds, and I grabbed my belt and tore it open, tore open the buttons on my levis and shucked them off with my shorts still inside them, and bent over to untie my tennis shoes. I threw them off and pulled off my socks and right then the concrete floor hit my feet, cold and clammy. I felt like I'd felt in my first swim class, only now I was diving into something much colder than the pool in my junior high school gym. I was standing there shaking and shivering. I looked down the line and saw that Aaron, after several nervous tries, had finally gotten his earring out and had stripped off his pants. Confused, he kept his tee on while he hopped on one foot, trying to pull his boot off. He hadn't been wearing underwear, so his dick was bouncing all over the place. One of the Officers came up and grabbed him hard by the balls. "ARRRHHHH!!" Aaron screamed out, but the Officer just squeezed harder and harder till he "learned to shut the fuck up!" Sweat was streaming down Aaron's face. "What's that, pretty boy?" the Officer asked. "Nothing!" Aaron gasped. "Nothing . . . what?" Aaron's eyes were rolling, and spit was dripping down his chin. "Nothing . . . Sir!!" "All right . . . for now," the Officer said, and he took his hand off Aaron's balls. Aaron looked like he was gonna puke, but he controlled it. "Now I suggest you get those boots off immediately, motherfucker!" The boots and socks came off in a microsecond, then the t-shirt, and Aaron stood there like the rest of us, shivering on the concrete, buck naked. Our clothes lay in front of us in a long snakelike pile, and for some reason, I thought that was the saddest thing I'd seen all day. So long to my faded levis and my favorite shirt and those great running shoes I'd shopped so hard to find. Farewell to my father's watch and my high-school ring. Farewell to my wallet with $25 inside it. And farewell to any form of privacy. Most of the guys had their hands cupped around their dicks, like they were embarrased to show them, and I felt that way too. This wasn't gym class, where guys get naked while they're moving around and getting into showers and so on. This was something different. This was a prison. And I knew what's supposed to happen in prison. But just when I started moving my hands to cover myself, the Officer with the baton came over and stuck it hard into Frank's crotch and levered his hands away from his dick. "No time to act like a little girl, motherfucker! Arms at your sides!" Frank blushed dark red under his light-brown skin, but his hands moved to his sides and hung there, rigid, leaving his cock standing out like a firehose from his thick black bush. He was getting a hardon. Why? I thought. Then I realized that I was getting a hardon too. "Line up by twos, assholes! That's right, everybody gets a partner in this dance. By twos, I said! Fall in and face the front of the bus." Since I was number 4 in line and Chris was number 3, Chris was my "partner." I was surprised to see that once Chris got his clothes off he looked like a pretty muscular, buff little guy. Mr. Junior Executive with gym muscles, I guessed. He wasn't bad looking. But he was shaking like a leaf. Chris and I stood there side by side, facing the front of the bus, looking past Aaron and Frank, the number 1 and number 2 guys, at the blank steel door in the distance. That was obviously where we were about to go. "On your knees, again, cocksuckers!" We knelt down on the floor, now side by side, and Officer Roberts shackled the ankles of each guy together. Then he cuffed each pair of guys together by the wrists. Chris was now very definitely my partner. "Stand up, cocksuckers!" Chris and I stood up together. We both stared ahead like soldiers, embarrassed to be naked and to be standing together like that, side by side, with our dicks sticking out. By now, even Chris was sporting a hardon. "OK, Roberts," the Officer said. "Let's get these cons on the chain."

The Officer signaled to the control room, and the steel door at the end of the dock started to rise, very slowly, stopping at the top with a loud clash of metal gears. We shuffled up the ramp. In front of us was a concrete corridor stretching far into the distance, like the picture of infinite regress in a book I read in high school. A blast of A/C hit our naked skins. Looking down the corridor, I could see a pair of steel doors every fifty feet or so, right left, right left. Robot TV cameras hung from the high ceiling. There was nothing else in that hallway except a massive steel chain running all the way down the center, revolving around vertical wheels that supported it, a little less than waist high. The first thing you came to when you passed under that giant door was the drivewheel that propelled the chain. Steel spikes protruded from the wheel. When the wheel turned, the chain ran over those spikes and moved on down the line, passing over smaller wheels stationed at intervals to keep the chain taut. When it reached the end of the corridor, the chain circled the last wheel and came back to its starting place. It was an endless chain. "All right, assholes, shuffle up to the black line and stop. One of you pair of cocksuckers on each side of the chain. Move!" Chris took the right side of the chain and I took the left. We were cuffed so close together that we must have looked like a pair of queers holding hands. Our legs were shackled so close that we dragged along like cripples. Finally Aaron and Frank, the guys in front, reached a thick black line painted across the floor, and we all came to a halt. Behind us, the steel gate came down with a crash. I looked at the chain running, about waist high, between Chris and me. The thing was huge, like a logging chain. When that thing started to move, you'd wish you were someplace else. But this must be the chain that us cons were supposed to be "on." I didn't know what that meant. This thing was almost as thick as my cock! And it was meant for me! I'd never thought of myself as a guy who needed to be restrained, but this was how much of a restraint they thought I should have. Looking down, I noticed that there was a strange metal object in the middle of the pair of cuffs that connected my wrist to Chris's. The thing looked like some kind of a clamp, with its jaw hanging loose in the "open" position. While I was trying to figure it out, I heard a series of sharp little clanks behind me, and the heavy sound of bodies being pushed together. Something was going on in the back of the line. I was scared to turn around, but it didn't take long to find out what it was. In no time at all, Officer Roberts came up to Chris and me, grabbed the chain between our cuffs, pointed the open clamp toward the logging chain, and clamped us to the chain. Soon all twelve of us were attached--at intervals of about one foot! A foot isn't much, and the Officers shoved us together until it was practically nothing. We were jammed so close that each us had to fit his body INTO the body of the guy in front of him. I had never felt any guy's cock crawling into my crack before, but that was what I felt now: "Isaacson, David. 21 years of age. Three charges, illegal drugs. Life with penal servitude." David was a guy about my height, but slighter, thinner; he had black, curly hair, and he looked like he should be wearing glasses. Now this guy had his cock up my buttcrack, and it wasn't small. I could feel it, warm and sort of wet, crawling up inside my ass; and it wasn't just wobbling around in there--it was getting hard. The more he tried to pull out and back off, even an inch, the more the press of bodies kept forcing him into me. "Toe that LINE, motherfuckers!" yelled one of the Officers, and the gang jammed up even closer. I could feel David's chest heaving in and out, warm and sweaty against my back, and his legs rubbing back and forth on my legs, like he was nervous or maybe just trying to keep his balance. I could hear his breath coming heavier and heavier as he tried to back off and failed and tried again, and his dick got harder and harder inside my crack. I felt his muscles clench in embarrassment, but he couldn't help himself. I was praying that he didn't cum in my ass. But I was more concerned with what my own cock was doing. Frank was the guy standing ahead of me. I felt my dick fitting easily, much too easily, into his crack, and again I felt that combination of excitement and fear rushing up inside me. I thought I was gonna puke, and I also felt my prick hardening like steel in the heat of Frank's crack. My chest was a millimeter from his back; I could feel the heat passing from his body into mine. It was clammy cold in that corridor--they kept the A/C blasting like they wanted to freeze us solid--but now we were sweating like crazy. I was scared out of my mind that I was gonna cum in Frank's ass. The lawyer had said I was a homosexual, and that would be proof. Even though I wasn't homosexual; it wasn't my idea to be here. I wondered if Frank was hard, too. I tried to look over his shoulder or around his back, but when I did that I rubbed against him and my dick got even harder. I never knew that a guy's ass curved together, smooth and firm like that, with the coarse hairs in the crack rubbing along your shaft like a warm sandy beach, and some warm sweat running over it, like lubricant . . . I wondered what Frank was feeling, and I wondered what it would be like to see another guy cum, especially if he couldn't keep his hands cupped over his nuts. Kids in school had always talked about jerking each other off, but I'd never done it; I didn't want to be a queer. Now here it was, I was about to shoot my wad in public, on my first day in prison, with all these convicts to see it and mistake me for a queer. . . . I tried to think of something, anything, to keep myself from cumming. I thought, "Life in PRISON! Life in PRISON!" but somehow that just made me harder. What saved me--and maybe David, too--was a sudden shout from one of the Officers: "Start the chain!" No sooner had he yelled out those words than the chain began moving, moving fast, faster than you'd ever expect such an enormous thing to move. We were propelled down the hallway, our shackled feet fighting to keep up with the speed of the chain, our bodies falling into each other with our cocks sticking up each others' asses like we were all running forward in a huge rush to fuck each other. We were carried down the hallway about 100 feet, I guess; then the chain suddenly stopped. We lurched into each other and if it wasn't for the clamps that locked us so close to the chain, we would probably have fallen on the floor in a heap. "Shit man!" Frank said, under his breath. Frank and Aaron were at the head of the line, so they had to fight just to keep standing, with the momentum of all the rest of us coming down on them. I had to admire the way they just stood there and took it. Frank didn't even flinch when my dick made a sudden lunge deep into his crack.