Angels in the Big House (part One)

Chapter 1

Ch. 1

“So, you like to eat, do you?”

She was a massive mountain of a woman; she was so big and round, the fact that she was able to stand and walk at all seemed to defy the very laws of gravity. She had a stern looking face, with cold icy eyes and a pointed nose that seemed to twitch when she spoke. Her lips were thin and were always positioned into this menacing looking grin, exposing a grill of long wolf-like teeth.

“I asked you a question,” she said again, her voice in a low monotone. “Answer me.”

“Umm, yeah,” I said as I sat in the cold metal chair nervously. “I guess so. Doesn’t everyone, Miss Angie?”

“Not everyone gets caught stealing candy from the commissary,” she snapped back. She was wobbling about, making circles around me as she conducted her interrogation. She caught me red handed - what was she going to do to me? What was she waiting for?

“I - I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I just saw them there and I couldn’t help myself.”

After two years of good conduct, I’d gotten a job unloading the trucks and stocking the store room in back of the commissary. That’s how long I’d been in lock up at Lawrence State Corrections House for Women. I was grateful to get the job and I didn’t want to lose it, but when I saw that big open box of candy bars just sitting there, waiting to be loaded into the candy machine in the C.O.’s break room - something inside me just snapped.

I grabbed a handful of the bars and unwrapped them, frantically stuffing them in my mouth as if I hadn’t eaten in days. I’ve always been on the chunky side, and resisting temptation has never been one of my strong points. The food in this place was barely edible anyway, so it was so good to have something so sweet and sticky in my mouth again.


“Oh, I see,” she said mockingly. “You couldn’t help yourself?”

Miss Angie flipped back her thick coif of reddish blonde hair, her spherical body still wobbling from side to side as she made her circles around me. Her pale skin shone bright under the harsh fluorescent bulbs just above us, showing the redness of her chubby cheeks. “Gosh,” I thought to myself, “Miss Angie would be really pretty if she weren’t so damn mean!”

“Well I guess that’s how you ended up here,” she said, turning sharply to face me, almost looking for a moment like she might tip over and start bouncing around the room. “You just can’t seem to keep your sticky little fingers off of things that don’t belong to you!”

As you could probably have guessed by now, I was in jail for stealing. Embezzlement to be exact. I’d skimmed almost half a million off the top of my company’s bankroll before anyone caught on. I guess you could say that what Miss Angie was saying was correct: I had a real penchant for thievery.

“I guess I’m really in a lot of trouble now,” I said, looking and sounding as wide-eyed and innocent as I could, hoping maybe she would spare me and let me go.

“Hmm,” she said, coming to a full stop right in front of me, her big belly jiggling up and down beneath her tight light-blue guards uniform top. “Well I could bring you straight to the warden. You’d lose your job and probably go into solitary for a few weeks.”

“Oh, please no!” I said.

“But I think I have a better idea,” and then she scooted off into the darkness of the storeroom shelves, while I sat there helplessly handcuffed to the chair. She returned a short while later holding a giant box that she could barely get her chunky arms around.

“What’s that?” I asked, my voice filled with fear as she plopped the box down on the floor in front of me.

“Why it’s a box of candy bars of course,” she replied gleefully. “The ones that you love so much. The ones that you just can’t get enough of.”

“Oh, I’ve had enough,” I said to her. “I don’t think I could eat another one for as long as I live.”

“Oh, you’re going to eat one,” she said to me. “In fact, you’re going to eat all of them!”