Behind The Wall: A Novella

  For a second, we gasped together, our breaths loud in the small space. And then he pulled out and I felt the warm stream of his cum, pool then drip down my leg. I didn’t even have time to wipe him from my skin when the alarm cut out ominously. I pulled up my pants, rooting around in the dark for my bra and shirt.

  “Ella?”

  I don’t know what he would have said to me. I never found out.

  Because the door was yanked open.

  Officer Wilson stood there, baton in hand, his stance defensive as his suspicious eyes flicked between us.

  “Garrett? Miss Newsome?”

  My face burned like a beacon of dishonesty, and I gasped for breath, a dying fish.

  “Is it safe?” I asked hoarsely.

  His suspicion receded an inch.

  “All taken care of,” he replied, his frown directed at Garrett. “Nothing to worry about. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I was scared,” I lied, my eyelashes fluttering as more untruths fell from my mouth. “Garrett . . . so I’d be . . . safe.”

  The biggest lie. Garrett was very far from being safe. He was the most dangerous man I’d ever met, because I’d given him the power to reduce me to ashes. My body surged again, wanting him, wanting more.

  I gripped the wall behind me, and when Wilson’s worried face turned toward me, he couldn’t see the anxious possession in Garrett’s eyes.

  “I’m fine,” I lied. “All good here. Nothing happened.”

  Garrett stood slowly, his back pressed against the wall, his fists slammed against his side as his eyes shot to mine.

  “Yeah, nothing at all.”

  Garrett

  I THOUGHT MY heart would explode.

  I’d never been ripped apart by a kiss, by fucking; woken, raised from the dead, killed and risen again. I don’t know who the hell I was, but it wasn’t Prisoner 97813 anymore.

  She let me kiss her, use her like a whore on her knees, and she moaned my name.

  I didn’t believe in miracles. I never had. But now . . . Ella Newsome had wanted me. I tasted it in her kiss, saw it in her eyes, felt it in her body as she shuddered beneath me, my cock inside her. She’d wanted me, come for me.

  I was too undone to feel joy, too scared of the overwhelming, overpowering sensations still vibrating through my body.

  Wilson knew. It was obvious what had happened, even though he hadn’t seen anything directly. And that was a problem.

  I was escorted back to my cell, seeing everywhere the bloodied, bruised faces of other prisoners, surprised but pleased that Hudson was on his bunk waiting for me. Hardly the worse for wear, except for a swollen eye, slowing turning purple.

  He grinned and swung down from his bunk, slouching next to me on my hard mattress.

  “I don’t need to ask, man. You look like you’ve had one o’ them epiphanies, like in the Bible. Congratulations. You got laid in prison by our hot teacher. You’re officially a legend. Now what you going to do next?”

  I shook my head, words tied around my tongue.

  Before I could find my balance, Wilson was standing at the door with Reynolds.

  “You need to come with us, Garrett.”

  Reynolds stroked his right hand over his baton as he leered at me.

  “I always knew you were scum.”

  Ella

  IT WAS A mistake.

  In a lifetime of bad choices, this had to be the worst. And that included the time I let Jason Waters talk me into sharing a blunt and losing my virginity to him in the back of his father’s truck. Even when I found out that he’d given me crabs.

  This was worse.

  I stared up at the barbed wire and tall searchlights that fringed the entrance to Nottoway Correctional Center. Even the bland, blue sky seemed grayer here, heavier, ill at ease.

  Adrenaline was pumping, and my fight or flight response was kicking in: I wanted to run. Fast.

  When I put my car into drive, my hands were still shaking . . .

  I couldn’t believe I’d taken such a stupid risk—not just for me, but for Garrett, too.

  It was sheer, dumb luck that we hadn’t been caught. Five seconds sooner, and Wilson would have found us.

  I closed my eyes, the heat of Garrett still inside me. I must be insane.

  My choices rolled out before me: bleak, gray.

  I could quit my job, or I could dismiss Garrett from the class. What I couldn’t do was continue to teach him. Not after this.

  But he’d done nothing wrong. He’d asked my permission. I was the one at fault. And it wasn’t fair for him to lose the chance of working for his GED or even losing his parole because of me.

  I wasn’t sure that my bank would think much of me being unemployed, and I knew I couldn’t make more than two mortgage payments without a job.

  I wondered how easy it would be to get work as a substitute teacher. It certainly wouldn’t pay as well as teaching in a prison.

  God, I was a mess, and it was my own stupid fault. Was it like Becky said, that getting involved with a convict would drag me down?

  Sick with self-inflicted misery, I sat in my apartment, a bottle of wine in front of me. I gulped down two glasses without pausing.

  Then to rub salt into gaping wounds, I pulled out the men’s latest assignments, searching until I found Garrett’s.

  Our assignment is to say why the caracter in Hunger does the things he does. It’s because he’s starving, and a man will do pretty much anything if he’s desperet for something to eat.

  I was born in McDowell County, WV. It’s not a city or anything, but it’s still like Christiana where the story is set. But if you went there you’d see broken windows on shuttered businesses and homes crumbling into dirt. Nothing new has been built in years, decades may be.

  My father died of an overdose in 2007, and my mama is gone. My neighbors lived on disability payments.

  John F. Kennedy came here in 1960 and his first order as President was to give us the food stamp program. When President Lyndon B. Johnson came four years later, we got federal programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and free school lunches.

  Old folk say those was good times because now the mines are closed and there are no jobs. If you’ve gotten a roof over your head, your probably in prison, like me.

  So I know what that guy in Hunger went through. People say he’s crazy, but when you’re starving, stealing a car isn’t crazy, it’s survival.

  PS I’ve got a big question to ask you and I know I have no right. But I’m going to ask it anyway, because I haven’t felt like a man in a long time, but thats how you make me feel. So even if this is goodby, I want to thank you first.

  Sinceerly,

  Dane Garrett, Prisoner 97813

  I laid the paper down, tears blurring my vision and dripping onto the cheap paper with its looping, penciled scrawl.

  He’d planned today, I saw that now. His friend, Hudson, had started the riot just to give him a chance to ask me his ‘big question’. It had turned into so much more than that.

  So much more.

  I’d resign tomorrow, because a man like Garrett deserved a chance to make something of his life. He needed to take his GED, but I wasn’t the teacher for him. Not anymore.

  I couldn’t be in a class with him and not show everyone what he meant to me. We’d stepped over the line and there was no going back. For either of us.

  I didn’t sleep that night.

  Although I’d made my decision, I wasn’t certain what the consequences would be of a sudden resignation. I could quite possibly be putting my whole career in jeopardy.

  My intention was to lie, and say that I found the prison system too frightening. After yesterday’s near riot, they were sure to believe me. It wasn’t even untrue.

  I dressed carefully the next morning, flouting the rules by wearing makeup, applying a small amount of concealer under my eyes to hide the dark circles.

  As I drove up to the visitors’ parking lot, my palms began to sweat, feeling slick as
I held the steering wheel.

  And as I submitted to the usual body search, I felt guilt in every stuttering breath.

  But when it came to resign my job, the words died in my throat.

  Because Garrett was leaving—already awaiting transfer to another prison.

  Because of me.

  I saw it in Wilson’s frown. And I saw it Reynolds’s repugnant grin.

  They knew.

  And when I told them I was sick and had to go to the bathroom, I locked myself inside and cried. Tears of guilt and hurt and frustration.

  And then I went to my classroom and taught the rest of my students to the best of my ability, because they deserved that chance.

  Hudson didn’t speak a word to me. And for that, I was grateful.

  Garrett

  FALL WAS FADING, and the air was crisper and colder. But my heart was ice, and it was Winter every day.

  Another prison, but just the same.

  The same walls, the same cells, the same concrete in every direction that you looked. The same tiny patch of sky overhead—a rectangle of blue that mocked me every day.

  At Thanksgiving we got turkey.

  At Christmas we got beef.

  At New Year we got ham.

  But it all tasted like dust to me.

  They wouldn’t let me write her, because you can’t send letters to staff. That’s what they told me. I don’t know if it’s true. So I wrote to Hudson instead. He probably got a big laugh out of that, me sending him a letter.

  Six weeks later, he wrote back. He said it would have been sooner, but he’d gotten into it with Fisher again, and had spent a week in solitary and a month without privileges—like getting mail.

  Ella still taught at Nottoway. I was pleased about that. I was afraid she’d gotten canned.

  I told Hudson that if he got the chance he should tell her not to write me. I didn’t even know if she was thinking that, but she’d dodged one bullet because of me, and I didn’t want her in the firing line again.

  I missed her.

  I missed her lessons. I missed our conversations. I missed the way she looked at me, like I wasn’t filth, like I was worth something. I dreamed about the way she’d kissed me, the way her body had pressed against mine.

  And in the long, bitter nights, when the screams and moans of other prisoners echoed in the air, I’d take my swollen dick in my hand, the veins standing out on the stiff column of flesh, and I’d imagine it was her small hand stroking the crown, tempting, teasing, tasting. And I’d come on my stomach with a quiet sigh, because it was never enough.

  And the lonely ache felt as if someone had ripped off a limb and forgotten to tell me. I hurt all the time, walking with my shoulders slumped like some old man. At first, the other sinners thought they could make me their bitch because I was so quiet, my mind always elsewhere. After I’d proved that I wasn’t a new fish, they left me alone pretty much.

  I was alone in a prison that suffered from overcrowding.

  I sent one more letter to Hudson, giving him the time and date of my parole, and a promise that when he got out, if I had a place to stay by then, he could share it with me—even though felons are supposed to stay away from other felons.

  He didn’t write back.

  It was Tuesday, February 7, and there was snow on the ground, making the world look fresh and new. I wasn’t the man who’d been put away five years ago, but I wasn’t fresh and new either.

  I was wearing the same clothes that I’d been arrested in, my jeans still baggy, but my t-shirt tighter than it had been because I’d bulked up some in prison. All those reps with Hudson, I guess.

  I shivered, because I’d been picked up in the summer so right now I didn’t have a coat or even a sweater. Leaving prison was like being reborn, they said. You came into the world exactly as you left it. Big fucking joke.

  My parole officer had given me the address of the halfway house, a bus ticket, and $63 plus some change that I’d earned in prison. Five years wages—the wages of sin, my grandma would have said.

  I was free, but I didn’t think that made me a rich man. And being free wasn’t like I imagined or hoped. It was easier inside because it was familiar. No wonder so many of us went back again and again.

  I shoved my hands deep in my pockets, shoulders hunched from cold, eyes squinting as the snow glinted in the sun.

  I decided against freezing my ass off at the bus stop, so I started to walk, enjoying the way my footsteps crunched in the fresh snow, awed by the ice crystals clinging to the bare branches of trees, watching my breath frost in the frigid air.

  Man, it was cold.

  I shivered, wondering how long it would take me to get to the halfway house and claim my shitty room that was probably the same size as my old cell, just not as homey.

  But as a car pulled up beside me, and the window rolled down, I was instantly wary.

  “Garrett!”

  I stared, certain I was having an out-of-body experience. And I didn’t move.

  “It’s me . . . Ella . . . from Nottoway.”

  As if I could forget.

  This was every dream, every fantasy, every stupid hope rolled up into this moment, this woman. And it was wrong. All wrong. She shouldn’t be here.

  My body unlocked, and I took a step forward. She blinked rapidly, her expression fearful and hopeful.

  Her hair had grown and brushed her shoulders, thick and shiny. And she was wearing makeup, her eyes sultry, her lips redder. I breathed in deeply, the familiar scent lighting fires under my skin.

  “Ella.”

  I must have sounded as stupid as I looked, because she gave a soft smile.

  “Yes, it’s me. Oh my gosh! I was so afraid that I’d missed you! Stupid traffic! How are you?”

  I stared at her silently, watching as she frowned and pressed her lips into a flat line at my silence.

  “Can I . . . give you a ride somewhere? You must be freezing.”

  I was still staring.

  “Hudson told you?”

  She nodded, her cheeks pink.

  “I’ve been arguing with myself ever since . . . but here I am. If you want me?”

  Did a drowning man want to breathe? But just to be sure . . .

  “You want to give me a ride? You okay being seen with a con?”

  “An ex-con,” she said softly. “Yes, I am.”

  I pulled open the door and slid into the small seat, sighing as warmth from the car’s heaters brushed my bare arms.

  “Don’t you have a coat? Sorry, stupid question. If you had a coat, you’d be wearing it.”

  She threw me an anguished glance as I studied a loose thread in the knee of my jeans.

  Our second time alone together, and things had never been more awkward.

  “Thanks for stopping by.”

  She bit her lip.

  “Sure. Where can I take you?”

  I pulled out the address of the halfway house, and she programmed it into her GPS.

  We rode in silence, the tension spiraling almost out of control. Almost. Because anything that happened had to come from her. Yeah, she was here now, but I needed to know if this was just guilt or pity. It hurt too much to hope for something else. And besides, I didn’t deserve it. So I stayed silent.

  Finally, she pulled up at the curb of a crumbling townhouse, the cracked paving slabs that made up the tiny yard filled with weeds.

  I didn’t want to get out of the car, but she wasn’t giving me anything. Nothing.

  I turned to open the door, taking one last look at her beautiful face.

  “Thanks for the ride.”

  Ella

  THE CAR JOURNEY was so stressful, my anxiety levels went shooting upwards. There was no desk between us, no guard watching over us, no noise of riot masking our moans as we fucked in the dark. Garrett was here, filling the car with his large body, a scent of soap and man. His face was pinched with cold, but even as the warmth from my car’s heater blew across him, he still wouldn’t look
at me.

  My pulse was racing and I felt sure he must hear my heart pounding. My body reacted as if just seconds had passed since he’d been inside me, not four, long, lonely months.

  But he was so closed and withdrawn—more like the man I’d met on my first day at Nottoway, rather than the one who’d kissed me like he needed it more than breathing, fucked me like the world was ending.

  And now we were parked outside the ugly, soulless halfway house in a rundown part of the city. It wasn’t one of the more modern, specially designed buildings that I’d read about. Instead, it was an old townhouse, once adapted into apartments and now used to house and rehabilitate men who’d just left prison.

  His hand fastened around the door handle, and he didn’t look at me as he spoke.

  “Thanks for the ride.”

  His voice was low and harsh, and I didn’t know what it meant.

  “Wait!”

  His hand tightened on the door handle, but his dark, shuttered eyes slid to mine.

  “Um . . . I . . .”

  He sighed and looked away.

  “It’s okay, Ella. You were my teacher and I was your student. I don’t expect anything from you.”

  And there it was. A man who’d been let down so many times, he expected to be rejected at every turn as if there was no alternative.

  “Garrett, I mean, Dane . . . I don’t want this to be goodbye. I think . . . I think we have something. Something special.”

  His cold eyes stared at me, and he didn’t speak.

  “If it’s all in my head, tell me, please. If you just wanted to . . . fuck a teacher, you’d have told everyone, been the big man. But you didn’t. So I think . . . I think . . .”

  I swear I could see the ice melting in his eyes.

  And he didn’t need to speak.

  He reached toward me, tentatively taking a lock of my hair between his fingers and rubbing it, feeling the texture. Then he tucked it behind my ear and leaned closer.

  His lips pressed softly against mine, and I sank forward into the safe circle of his arms.

  Yes, this was where I wanted to be. And soon, not today, but soon, we’d visit the ocean. We’d stand on the beach, staring out at the Atlantic, at all that space, the wide horizon with all its possibilities. And we’d watch the sun sink and the long shadows stretch across the sand. And we’d plan our future.