Lady Midnight

Prologue

A man walked down a prison corridor, flanked by two corrections officers, or as the prisoners called them, “screws.”

“Take it easy out there, Big Daddy,” an inmate shouted from along the corridor in Cell Block Three.

The man who strode along between the guards nodded, but did not look back. The screws escorted their prisoner down the flat gray corridor until they came to two heavy metal doors. They had to wait a few seconds at each door while one of the guards radioed the controller, who sat in a big metal cubicle in the center of the prison, surrounded on all sides by bullet-proof glass. This unseen gatekeeper then visually checked them on the appropriate security camera screen, before opening each door remotely.

After five long years inside, Big Daddy found each little wait maddening, because he knew he was getting out of here today, and those little stops were eating into his freedom, what was left of his life, and he wanted to get on with it. He had things to do.
After what seemed an eternity, Big Daddy listened to the heavy metallic sound of the last door shutting behind him, and he smiled.

He stopped with his little entourage at the property desk, where a uniformed clerk disappeared into a labyrinth of shelves that lay behind his desk. After another long wait, the man brought out a box containing Big Daddy’s belongings, which had been taken from him when he signed in five years before. Big Daddy signed for them, then went over to a small side room and got dressed while one of the screws watched.

He’d been inside so long it didn’t bother him. Privacy was impossible to maintain in a place where you were crowded in with hundreds of others, and your every move scrutinized.

Almost nothing bothered Big Daddy much anymore. You learned to talk to people while taking a shit in prison. You learned to pretend your bunkmate wasn’t beating off to a skin magazine a couple of feet from you. Prison was a place where you grew thick skin, if you wanted to stay sane. Big Daddy’s skin had been pretty thick when they first showed him to his cell and closed the door behind him; it was a hell of a lot thicker now. But though his skin had grown thicker, the body was markedly thinner. The clothes he slipped into now fit loosely, and they were probably out of style, too, Big Daddy mused. He’d lost a lot of weight in the joint. Between prison food and so much time spent working out from sheer boredom, he was a much leaner, fitter version of his former self. The old sobriquet “Big Daddy” would take on a new, ironic meaning on the street, for sure.