STONE COLD: Just Out By Merz A woman emerges from prison ready for a new life When I was sent to prison for embezzling from my husband's company I was already stronger than most women. He owned a landscape company with just two employees besides us. With him smooth talking the clients all the time I had to pitch in for hours most evenings after keeping the books so the work would get done. It was hard, manual work that left its mark on every muscle in my body. When I was paroled five years later I was stronger than most men. For five years I lifted weights and worked my body every waking hour of the day, waiting for our reunion. By the time the gavel fell on my sentencing hearing I had most of the story put together. My husband framed me. He robbed his own company blind, doctored the books and planted evidence to make it look like I had cleaned out the company accounts. Then he waited for the auditors to blow the whistle. I have to admit, it was a first class frameup. I didn't suspect he had been cheating on me with the wife of his best customer until I noticed she was showing up every day of my trial, sitting right behind my husband. He came by the prison my second day there to let me know he was divorcing me, and admitted Angela was divorcing her husband at the same time. They'd be married within three months. "How could you do this to me?" I asked him. I'd asked him a lot of stupid questions over the years we'd been married. Even as I asked that one I was wising up, finally recognizing how stupid I'd been and how smart he thought he was. "The how is for me to know, and for nobody to find out," he smirked. "The why is obvious. Angela really is an angel, soft and sweet and young. All the things you aren't. When I hold her she feels delicate as a flower and fragile as a china doll. You don't have a soft curve in your body and your skin looks like leather. You're probably lucky to be locked up here with a bunch of women. There sure aren't any men who would want to look at you. Maybe one of these other dykes will fall for you." Then he had a good laugh and walked out. In five years I never heard from him again. Back in my cell I kept hearing his laughter over and over, feeling his insults like a lash across my back. No, I wasn't soft and my skin hadn't been creamy in so long I didn't even remember when working outside started changing it. I was 32 and looked ten years older. Nobody would ever hold me and tell me I felt delicate or fragile. Helping him build a business had taken its toll on the soft little girl I may have been when he and I met. In her place was a worn out woman who wouldn't be asking any more stupid questions of men. But if he thought I was hard now, this was just a beginning. I swore I'd bury every last trace of softness that might have survived. My heart had turned to stone in the few days since I realized how my husband had set me up. Sitting in my cell I swore the next man who touched my body would find I had turned it to stone as well. When I went inside I was stronger than the average woman, like I said. But there were a lot of tough women locked up there stronger than me. Powerful, sadistic women who knew how much pain a person could take before passing out, and who didn't hesitate to let every new convict know who ran the place when the guards weren't looking. My first year inside I spent establishing myself, earning a place in line to use the exercise equipment and to eat my meals in peace. In the first year I took my share of beatings defending myself in the showers, holding on to the few possessions I had, staking out what little privacy anyone inside could hope to find. In the first year I also learned that feeling pain could be a real turn-on for me. By the end of my second year I was the one who decided who could work out and when. I was the one to teach new inmates that the prison world had no place for soft women, or weak women, or women who needed a man for anything. I learned the skills of fighting well enough, but as my body hardened and my strength grew my fights became infrequent and as swift or slow as I wanted to make them. I craved pain like a drug by then, but there wasn't anybody capable of really giving it to me. So mostly I had to take care of it myself, both the hurting and the release that came afterward. Most nights after my last workout I went to my cell and waited for lights out. Then I stripped in the darkness and admired the body I was creating. I flexed my arm and compared the unyielding biceps with the concrete of the wall. I tensed the great iron bands in my forearms and felt to detect any difference with the bars of my cell door. Then I'd spend some time trying to bend the inch thick steel bars. Maybe with a little more time I could have done it, but I was only in for five years. Women in the cells along the dark corridor would fall asleep listening to me smashing fists like sledgehammers against the concrete walls. For some reason I never heard one complaint about the noise. Sometimes in the dark I would try on the first set of baggy clothes I had been issued, noting the waist fit looser but the pant legs strained to contain my massive thighs. With the least twitch my arms would have exploded the sleeves of the workshirt and there was no hope of buttoning it above the waist. The woman who had been issued those clothes was gone now, buried inside the stone tomb of my new body. So then it was time for them to let me out, a new woman. A woman who had paid her debt to society. Well, I'd paid plenty, paid somebody's debt and was ready to start collecting. I was given a few bucks, a cheap dress, a cheap coat, and a bus ticket into town. That was enough of a stake to start building on. When I came out of the ladies room at the bus station I had the dress hitched up a couple inches to show some leg, but not so much that the shape of the leg would scare off my prey. I walked a couple laps around the dark parts of the station until the inevitable sucker came up to hit on me. He led me to an alley across the street where he pushed me against the wall and grabbed my crotch. "What about the money?" I asked trying to sound scared but businesslike. "You'll get it when you earn it," he says and starts fumbling with his pants. "Too late," and I gave him just enough of a tap to knock him cold. He had seventy-five bucks on him, which was a start. An hour later I was on a corner where my next victim picked me up in his car. He was packing two hundred, and the car had enough gas to get me across the state line before I dropped it. I bought some better clothes with that, including a long trench coat in a second hand store, and a straight razor. That night I won enough for my hotel room by arm wrestling in a couple of bars. Not bad. First day out and I was paying my way. Time to redecorate. In the dingy little hotel room I undressed and stood in front of the closet mirror. For the first time in five years I got to see more than a one foot square reflection of myself. Five years inside, out of the sun, turning flesh into stone. Pure white stone, with thick blue veins running down my arms and pulsing just under the white surface across my body. White stone that glowed pink when I worked out, and turned a dull red like hot bricks when I really poured on the power. When I went in I was thirty-two and my face looked ten years older. Five years later I'd stripped off all the soft lines of that face, but it looked younger. The cheekbones showed better, the worry lines in my forehead were gone, the brown leather skin had turned pale and smooth. With soap and water in front of the mirror I started to shave with my new straight razor. First my legs and under my arms. Then the fine hairs on my forearms. Then my pussy. I liked feeling the steel run across my tight flesh. I admired my handywork for a minute, then started on my head. I shaved it up to a wide Mohawk band. When I wet it, it stood straight up and when I combed it down it covered my ears and brow like any citizen's hair might. I stared at the eyebrows for a while, remembering how much emotion they express, before shaving them off as well. The next day I caught a bus for the city I was planning to set up in. At a rest stop on the way I got lucky and spotted a drug deal happening in the alley around back. The pusher had five hundred on him, and wasn't likely to squeal on me even if he came around before my bus took off again. First day in my new town I dyed my hair black as night and got some mousse to make it stand up like I pictured wearing it while I worked. I wanted to make an impression. Then it was time to go hunting before hitting up this Marlowe guy for a job. I prowled around the haunts my friend from inside, Marietta, had told me about until I found her guy. I ended up following him into the pisser and leaned the trashcan against the door to keep out intrusion. "Hey Zoot, Marietta sends her love." "Shit for a second I thought you were a woman," he said as he zipped up. "Who's Marietta?" "The woman you tipped the cops to so you wouldn't have to carry your own weight, asshole." I stepped right up against him, almost eye to eye but he had a couple inches on me. He looked away and I noticed an earring with a little bell on it hanging from his ear lobe. "Pay attention," I said, and jerked it right out through his flesh. He already had his knife in his hand by then, like Marietta warned me about. I caught his wrist on the first sweep and broke his wrist. Then I turned him around and shoved the switchblade right up his ass, all the way, and kept a hand clamped over his mouth so he couldn't scream until he passed out on the floor. I snapped his neck just to be sure and almost left it at that. A favor repaid to a friend of, but what the hell. I took his roll while I was at it and then admired this diamond pinky ring he had on. Looked like a real diamond. His finger broke when I was getting it off him but he didn't complain. I had a nice idea where that ring would look good on me, once I modified it. I went out the window and back to the dump where I had spent the night. In my room I sterilized things with alcohol, letting it all soak for ten minutes while I did pushups. No reason to take a chance with germs. Then I pushed the needle slowly into my nipple and on out the other side. I didn't even let the hole heal up before sticking in that little earring with the bell. That hurt so much I had to spend the next fifteen minutes fucking my fist until I was slick with sweat and my breath came in gasps. Then it was time to make the hole for the diamond clit ring and the fun really started. Next day I bought some new work clothes, and got ready to go to a job interview.