Do you know how sheep get lost?
One nibble at a time.
That's exactly how it happened to me. My name's Janie. I was 24 at the time. I got myself into debt with my credit cards. It was my fault, I'll admit it. I wasn't careful. Before I knew it, I was in over my head.
It's the same, sad song plenty of others have sung in this crazy country. What was different in my case was the change in bankruptcy laws that took effect the year before, in 2028. No more bankruptcies for individuals, the government said. Only for corporations.
With the privatization of prisons, and the re-establishment of debtor's prisons at around that time, it sure looked like I'd run out of choices. I was sure some filthy, scummy prison had to be in my future. I had visions of sharing a cell with some musclebound dyke who would sit on my face every night as she fucked my asshole with her chubby fingers. Not my idea of a good time (though if it's yours, don't worry - I won't judge).
When you're afraid you've got no more choices, and a stranger appears out of the blue to offer you one, what do you do? You take it.
My savior, it seemed, was Mrs. Lockhart. My overworked legal-services lawyer introduced her a few days before I was scheduled to go to trial.
Mrs. Lockhart was all business. She looked like some high-priced corporate lawyer in her tailored gray suit. She was tall, blond-haired and gorgeous. What really stood out about her, though, was her high-heeled designer shoes. I would have called them "fuck me" pumps.
Turns out, it wasn't Mrs. Lockhart who was about to get fucked -- big time. But, how could I have known that?
Mrs. Lockhart told me she was working for a pilot program, an alternative to traditional incarceration. Her company, a government contractor, was looking for females in their twenties and early thirties to volunteer for a new kind of pre-trial intervention program. Young women like me could work off their debt by hiring themselves out as domestic servants to rich people.
No prison. Wow. I'd be willing to push a vacuum cleaner for a couple years to avoid that.
I'm interested, I said. Tell me more.
Just come with me to the information session, said Mrs. Lockhart. She laid a form on the table. Just sign here, it's a standard release. I signed without reading the small print.
Big mistake.
Next thing I knew, I was sitting in a van with tinted windows, along with four other women about my own age. Mrs. Lockhart was in the front seat, along with the driver. They were separated from us by a think, plastic partition like they have in taxicabs. It was only then that I noticed the doors had no handles on the inside.
Not good.
We drove for a couple hours, way out into the country. We pulled up at a gate in a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. The driver flashed some kind of pass at a bar-code reader. The gate slid open automatically, then closed behind us.
Really not good.
We pulled up at a low, cinderblock building with very small windows, way up high. We got out. Another bar-code reader, another automatic door closing behind us.
Next thing I knew, our little group of five had been ushered into a small auditorium, joining about a dozen other women, all in their twenties or early thirties. Unlike the plain, run-down exterior of the building, this room was all rich-looking wood paneling and very comfortable seats.
Mrs. Lockhart walked up on stage in her fuck-you pumps. She pulled out some kind of remote, pushed a button, and a screen rose up from the floor behind her with a soft, whirring sound.
"Welcome, ladies," she said, showing brilliant white teeth behind her tight-lipped smile. It might as well have been a Mary Kay sales meeting. "You are at a corporate retreat center owned by my employer, the Halliburton Corporation. As you may know, we are a government contractor. In 2026, through a series of mergers and acquisitions, we became the largest contractor operating prisons for the government."
Mrs. Lockhart pushed a button on her remote. The lights dimmed and our seats automatically reclined like we were in some amusement-park ride. A video lit the screen.
A Halliburton logo appeared before us, then the words, "Distributed Incarceration: Better Corrections Through Chemistry."
The short video was all about the overcrowding in the prison system. It told how Halliburton had been awarded a government contract to farm out inmates to private citizens, who would pay for the cost of their incarceration in exchange for "personal services." The video showed a silver-haired business-executive type, accepting a glass of whisky off a silver tray, held by a very good-looking young woman dressed sort of like a first-class flight attendant. I did notice she had really big boobs, and was showing a good bit of cleavage.
The lights came back up, and a ditzy blonde in the front row put up her hand. Mrs. Lockhart looked annoyed. "Yes?"
"There's something I don't understand, Mrs. Lockhart. Why are you showing us a video about inmates, when we haven't even gone to trial yet?"
Mrs. Lockhart's voice was all sweetness and light, but the meaning of her words was anything but. "My dear, the release form you signed has the legal force of a guilty plea. As far as the law is concerned, you already are an inmate. Halliburton is certain you will all prefer the choice you have just made, and that you will enter the Distributed Incarceration pilot program. In the event you think otherwise, we are willing to consider your request that the court transfer you to a more traditional prison."
"Shit," I heard the woman next to me whisper under her breath. "We already signed up for this place, and didn't even know it."
My mind raced on to consider the choice that was now before me. Posh auditorium seats and track lighting, on the one hand. Or Spike, the iron-pumping lesbian-linebacker cellmate, on the other. Which one to choose? I had a sudden vision of Spike perched on the edge of the stainless-steel toilet, beckoning me with a tattooed finger: "Aw, come on over here, Sugar, your tongue is so much better at cleaning off my soggy cunt-hairs than toilet paper."
The choice seemed obvious, even if Mrs. Lockhart had been underhanded in getting us to sign that form.
Turned out, when it came to underhandedness, we didn't know the half of it.
I remember sitting in a small, windowless interview room -- no handle on the inside of the door -- waiting for Mrs. Lockhart to come in and "process" me. I felt really, really tired all of a sudden. "What's that strange smell in this room?" I thought to myself, even as I lay my head down on my forearm and drifted off to sleep.
I woke up feeling groggy, in a hospital bed, in another windowless room. No handle on the inside of that door, either, of course.
There was a TV and a remote. I reached out and clicked it. Mrs. Lockhart was on the TV. On every channel.