The bar of soap shook in my hands as I ran it over my pathetically underdeveloped body in the communal prison shower.
I wasn't supposed to be here. This was all wrong. As much as I hoped everything I had seen in movies was a farce, the cynical realist in me was convinced it was only a matter of time before I was raped. Five years with the possibility of parole in two, they'd said. No way I would make it that long.
My appearance was the first problem. Short and skinny, I had the misfortune of carrying almost all the fat on my frame in my buttocks. In addition to my mother's fine, elfin facial features, I had also inherited her head-turning rear. It was not subtle. I was teased endlessly in school about my fat ass. As an adult, I had been mistaken for a woman on numerous occasions by people approaching me from behind. Gay men hit on me regularly. Unfortunately for me, I didn't have a homosexual bone in my body, and most women were not attracted to my shape.
Besides my body, I also felt...softer than all the men around me. Even the other white collar convicts seemed to have more of an edge, in the way they carried themselves, in the hardness of their glares. Their bodies somehow seemed to contain barely restrained force, like coiled springs. I didn't feel any of that, and I knew they could all sense it.
So my eyes darted around warily, like a small herbivore out in the open, knowing I wouldn't be able to do anything anyway if one of them made a move, but unable to put it out of my mind.
Maybe half the men seemed not to notice me, just going about their daily bathing, efficiently routine. I noticed the hungry looks in the eyes of the other men, staring at my soft plump behind.
Suddenly one stepped forward with a determined look in his eye. Older judging by the gray stubble on his face, with a bit of a belly, but solid, unable to hide the power in his musculature if he tried. His cock stood out straight in front of him as he moved towards me.
I froze. Before I could decide what to do, a younger man, taller but equally muscular, cut him off. The first guy looked surprised, but the younger one just shook his head and said something I didn't catch. The older guy reluctantly moved back to his shower head with a disappointed expression on his face, his big dick swinging.
What just happened?
The question ate away at me over the next few days. The optimist in me tried to reassure me that this was a good thing. Those prison movies aren't reality; they sensationalize to make money. We may all be convicts, but most of us still have a moral compass. We look out for one another.
But the cynic in my head has always been the dominant voice. Something is going on, it told me. Everyone acts in their own best interest. Something is coming. Be ready.
A few days later, something did come. I was transferred to a new cell.
As I followed the guard through the prison carrying my kit, the cynic screamed in my head. This is it! You're about to get fucked! I gulped, trying to calm myself down. There was nothing to do besides put one foot in front of the other.
The guard led me to a wing of the prison I hadn't seen before. It seemed to be almost deserted. There were a few occupied cells near the entrance, but after that they were all empty until we reached the last cell at the end.
"Your new mate's here, Duane," the guard announced as he ushered me inside. 'Shouldn't he have said cell mate?' my paranoia asked as I stepped in.
Duane looked to be a heavyset 50-something guy with a beer belly. He took his time rising from his bunk. He nodded to the guard like he was dismissing him, leaving us alone in the cell.
It looked like Duane had been living here a long time. So much stuff. He had a shelf of books, plastic storage tubs of various sizes, and a blanket and pillow that did not look prison-issued.
"Hi I'm Will," I offered, trying to will normalcy into the situation.
"Duane."
He wasn't hostile, but he wasn't talkative. I told him how I was actually innocent, how I'd been framed. He didn't respond, which I took to mean he either didn't believe me or didn't care. He didn't offer any information about what he was in for either. There were a lot of silences.
The few things he did say were asking about my background, what I did for a living, whether I had a girlfriend. I could tell by the way he spoke that he was intelligent but hadn't had much education.
The conversation was strained by more than the newness of our acquaintance and the awkward circumstances of incarceration. There was also the matter of my anxiety. I was too scared to ask the questions that burned most brightly in my mind: So...are you a rapist? Why are we in this cell by ourselves at the end of a mostly deserted cell block? Do you know why I haven't been raped in the showers yet? How did you get that cool pillow?
Still, by lights out I had calmed down considerably. I had determined that Duane might not be the friendliest inmate in the prison, but he didn't seem like a psychopath. And he seemed too disinterested in me to be plotting some elaborate rape.
*************************
I was wrong.
I woke up suddenly in the darkness of the cell and immediately knew something was wrong. My mouth was open and it felt like something, maybe the corner of my pillow, had gotten pushed inside. I instinctively reached to pull it out of my mouth with my hands, but they were stuck. I was on my stomach, and it felt like the bedsheet had gotten twisted around my wrists at the head of the bed.
My groggy consciousness was just starting to put all this together when a hand grabbed me by the hair and jerked my head up. There in the dark, a foot in front on me, were Duane's eyes.
So I did what all tied and gagged people do. I started screaming. I struggled and kicked. The socks stuffed in my mouth and tied around my head muffled most of the sound, and I knew our cell block was virtually deserted, but screaming into the gag seemed like the thing to do.
Duane watched me for a spell and then slapped my face, not hard but enough to make me hush for a moment.
"Calm the fuck down," he said.
I immediately started thrashing and yelling again. Another slap, this time to the other cheek.
"You wanna talk or you just want me to rape you?"
That shut me up. He watched me in terrifying silence as I worked to calm myself down, slowing my breathing down with difficulty. The two of us alone in the dark.
"Just breathe. You know what's about to happen. Ain't nothin gonna change it. It is what it is."
I started struggling again.
*Smack!* "MRrrrmrmrmrr!!!" My right butt cheek howled from the blow over my boxer shorts.
Duane continued, "C'mon now, you knew this was coming, smart boy. Even without that stripper booty you carrying around, you're a natural bitch."
I whimpered into my gag in desperation. I thought to tell him I wasn't gay. I knew it was stupid, like a skewered pig gagged with an apple in its mouth, struggling to tell the cook its a vegetarian. But I had to say it.
"Mrmmmm hhhottt aaaaayyyyy!"
