“Ladies I’d like to call you all together because honestly I don’t get a lot of chances like this where I have to talk to all of you.” I said as I sat down behind my computer. One thing I had noticed over the last few days was that I was starting to hear and see them even when I was away from my computer but it was still easiest to call them here at the monitor than any place else.
“I was wondering when you were going to spread the good news.” Nikki purred. She was wearing her orange overalls but the top was undone and tied around her waist as she lounged on the steel bunk of her prison wall. “Well kinda good news.”
“Hush.” I chided her. It was kinda weird, normally I envision entire rooms, disjointed many times but entire rooms still. This was just a wall and next to it was another wall this one dirty plaster with a queen bed pushed up against it. Karen was sprawled out on the bed wearing a pair of blue pajamas with cloud patterns on them. “Hey Karen glad to see you could show up.”
“Of course I’m here.” She smiled and sat up against the wall looking over at Nikki for a moment. “So are you finally going to spill?”
“Yes because honestly it’s kind a good day.” It was a good day something that I’d been sorely missing for the last few months. Granted it had been nothing even remotely comparable to the horror that had been two thousand and eight but it was about time that I had something really to smile about. “Where do you want me to start?”
The two girls looked at each other for a moment before Nikki spoke. “I think we can all agree that my news is only good because its progress and start with me.” She said.
“In about two weeks Nikki gets to know what her sentence is. I know it sounds bad but she’s already been in jail for a year. A year exactly actually and since she chose to take the plea we knew she was going to serve some time it was just a matter of how much time she was going to serve. It’ll be nice to know how long, exactly she’s going to be there.” I said. It felt kind of weird to be smiling about a friend going to prison but there it was. It might not have been the light at the end of the tunnel but at least we were almost out of the cave, at least we knew for sure that there was a tunnel and that counted for something.
“It’s more than just that Sean.” Nikki said standing up from her bunk and pulling her jump suit off to reveal a pair of jeans beneath. “I get to wear clothes again, and shoes. I can have a television, a radio, a typewriter. I can receive care packages. I can take college courses and get time off for good behavior. At the end of the month they are going to let me out of Purgatory.” She smiled. “I’ll know how long it is that we have to go on like this.”
“You’ve always been like this you know. In the soon to be thirteen years that I’ve known you this is all you’ve ever been.” I replied maybe a bit too soberly. It was true though, we’d met on the internet and we’d only met in the flesh on one occasion. It was the weekend before she committed her crime. That weekend had been more awkward than anything else, I mostly remember that I got head butted for grabbing her ass. “It’s probable that this is all we’ll ever be.”
