As I sit alone in my cell I slowly realise I have another enemy. Time. There is so much of it and I have absolutely nothing to fill it with except thinking, and I don’t seem to have anything good to think about. I think about Sarah and how somewhere she too is alone and probably being welded into her chains. And I feel I have let her down. I appointed myself into the big sister role and I promised to be there for her, but I’m not. I don’t know why I thought I could look after her, I’m no more equipped to deal with any of this than she is, perhaps even less so. At least she can get off on it if she wants to. It seems so stupid that I was so wary and awkward with her for so much of the time she was here, and now that she’s gone it’s like my entire world has been taken away.

 

It’s not first time my world has been taken from me. I had a different life once. In that life I was going to be someone big. The world was going to be a different and better place because of Jemima Melstrom. But that all seems such a long time ago and I’ve closed the door on it all. You have to let bitterness go otherwise it eats away at you from inside until there’s nothing else left. And now I’ve built a new life for myself, a simple and unimportant one. I just teach music. Perhaps the world will be a slightly better place because of that, but I doubt I’ll be remembered for it. It’s ordinary and unpretentious, and it suits me fine. But this life too seems under threat because I got myself into that stupid protest. Once again I tried to change the world and once again it seems it’s going to cost me dear. I don’t know if I can survive having everything taken away again.

 

I lie down on the bed and try to catch up with my missing sleep. The bed is actually quite comfortable now that there’s only me on it, but I’d give anything to be perched painfully on its edge again while Sarah occupies the prime real estate of the thin, narrow mattress.

 

Time. It drags by and nothing changes.

 

Or at least almost nothing. I’m aware of the daily cycle of this place moving into its next phase. The sporadic rattling of cell doors and footsteps wind down as the courts stop work for the day and it seems that evening might have returned. Confirmation arrives in the form of a bottle of brown gloop being delivered through the bars. It’s exactly the same as last night’s gloop and it seems to tell me I’m here for another night. And that lowers my spirits to a new depth. It’s not the thought of another night in here that lays me low, it’s that tomorrow Sarah, newly chained and collared might be facing her first day back at work, something else I promised to be there to help her get through, and won’t be. Some big sister I turned out to be.

 

Time. It drags by and nothing changes.

 

Another long night of disturbed and insufficient sleep passes, and another bottle of watered down milk appears through the bars. But finally it seems like something is going to happen. I’m once again locked to the ring in the floor and standing in front of that table and its chair companion. It seems my assessor’s return is imminent and I am telling myself to be respectful, contrite and to help her to punish me. Yes I’m sure I can manage the violin wearing a collar and yes I could conduct with my ankles hobbled and even with one hand chained behind my back if that’s what it takes to get me out here.

 

The she-devil turns up looking even more like a Gestapo officer than yesterday. Now she’s wearing black knee-length boots, a short skirt and a leather coat, which she takes off and drapes over the chair’s back. She has her accursed laptop which she puts on the table and sits down to fiddle with. I know she’s not really doing anything, she’s just making me wait, demonstrating her power over me and trying to intimidate me. Well it is working.

 

“So, Jemima Melstrom,” she says eventually. “I suppose with a name like Melstrom you feel you have a right to cause chaos in our libraries.”

 

Well she just blew it big time. Stupid bitch. If you’re going to try to intimidate someone the last thing you should do is try to make a joke about their name. I’ve had my name for my entire thirty five years on this planet and I reckon I’ve heard every possible joke there is about its resemblance to the name of a bit of particularly stormy Norwegian sea with a reputation for devouring ships. Does she really think she’s so fucking clever that she’s come up with a joke that no one else has ever seen? Stupid bitch. Why should I be scared of you? Oh yes, I remember. Put a lid on it Jem.

 

“That’s very good Ma’am. Maelstrom, chaos. But I think after this my name should remind me of the damage that was done to the library.”

 

“Don’t try to suck up to me Melstrom. I can see straight through you. Now, as you no doubt already know, I am supposed to find a way to restrain and punish you while still allowing you to continue in your job. And that appears to be rather difficult given the nature of your job. So perhaps we should say fuck the restraint, and fuck the job and I just send you off to prison for a year. What say you to that?”

 

“Prison Ma’am? Please, no”

 

“Yeah, not so fucking cocky today are we. You do realise I can ask to have you locked up for the next year don’t you?”

 

“Yes Ma’am, but…”

 

“Or perhaps I could give you timed restraint. Allow you to be free during your working hours so you can do your job, but then have you in chains when you go home. How does that sound?”

 

“Oh, yes, Ma’am. That sounds very fair.”

 

“Of course, you are aware of what I gave to your partner in crime yesterday and she will be in those restraints continually. If you were to have your working hours free, then to keep your punishments equal I would have to impose something rather more burdensome on you for your time at home, would I not?”

 

And now I realise she is playing with me. This is not a discussion or a debate. She knows what she has decided and she is manoeuvring me into making it worse for myself. But what can I do other than agree with her? There’s nowhere else to go.

 

“I suppose you would Ma’am.”

 

“Perhaps I should put you in a collar so tall it will effectively fuse your head to your shoulders, have your hands fastened behind your back and your ankles hobbled so tightly that you can’t walk, only shuffle slowly about. That would keep you at home and stop you ruining any more public buildings would it not?”

 

I can’t answer. The lump is back in my throat. Surely she doesn’t mean that.

 

“And of course there’d be a denial belt too, and there are accessories I can add to that you know. Are you into bondage? Would you like all that?” she asks smugly.

 

“N, no Ma’am.”

 

“Would you like an alternative then?”

 

Even in my terror I can see what she’s doing. It’s as obvious as the half-ton of make-up this bitch has got covering her face. She must be truly ugly underneath it all. A witch perhaps. Oh how I’d love to burn her at the stake. Perhaps that’s the alternative she’s offering me, to be burned at the stake. I wish she’d just get on with it though, she obviously knows what she’s going to give me. All this pseudo-bargaining is just her toying with me.

 

“Is there an alternative Ma’am?”

 

“Well there might be. Have you heard of SDC?”

 

“No Ma’am.”

 

“I didn’t think you would have. It’s a new thing we’ve only just been authorised to use. Would you like to be one of the first to try it?”

 

“I… I don’t know Ma’am. I don’t know what it is.”

 

“You don’t know what it is? No clue from the initials, S D C?”

 

“Err, no Ma’am.”

 

“Well there’s a thing. Now I don’t usually give convicts a choice in their punishments. I am here to assess and impose, and not to negotiate, but I’m in a playful mood this morning and we have a little bet going in the office on this, and so I am going to let you choose. Now you’ll be getting a belt and a collar regardless, but outside your working hours you can either be restrained as I described, hands behind and tightly hobbled, or you can opt for SDC. Which is it to be?”

 

“But please Ma’am, how can I choose if I don’t know what one of them is?”

 

“Oh feminists, you really aren’t a very bright bunch are you. Can’t you see that’s the whole point? Now choose, or I will choose for you and I will make it much worse for you if you force me do that, in fact, fuck it, I’ll have you sent to prison if you don’t choose.”

 

My mind is racing. It’s clear that someone is taking their revenge on me, and I have to say, they’re taking it well. She’s set me up with something too terrible to even contemplate and then offered me a mystery alternative, an alternative she obviously wants me to take and which will probably be much worse. And then she will have the pleasure of knowing that I chose it myself. I made it worse for myself than it had to be. I wrack my brains trying to think what SDC could stand for, but it’s hopeless. It could stand for anything. I should take the chains, I know I should. Spoil her little game and probably get away with a lesser punishment, but to be chained up like that, with hands behind my back and hobbled to the point of not being able to walk? For six fucking months? What could possibly be worse than that? Maybe I should just ask for prison. No, fuck that. I’d rather be in a straitjacket at home than locked up in a cell. Perhaps that what SDC is, a straitjacket. Strait, something Clothing?

 

“I’m not going wait forever,” says the she-devil. “You have ten more seconds and then I will choose prison for you.”

 

“But Ma’am, if you could just tell me what SDC is…”

 

“Now where would be the fun in that? Six seconds left.”

 

“Please Ma’am!”

 

“Four seconds.”

 

“Oh God.”

 

“Two seconds.”

 

“SDC! I… I choose SDC!”

 

The she-devil smiles smugly at me and then turns to the guard standing behind her. The guard mutters something and takes out a wallet. She removes a twenty pound note and offers it to my tormentor who takes it with exaggerated grandeur.

 

“I’ve got a few of these to collect,” she says as she pockets the money. “No one believed I could make you choose SDC for yourself.”

 

She closes her laptop and gets up to leave.

 

“Please Ma’am,” I stammer. “Tell me what SDC is.”

 

“Oh I’m sure you’ll be finding out soon enough. I’ll give you a little clue though. It will be better than prison, but not much better.”

 

And with that she leaves. I look pleadingly at the guard as she releases me from the floor, gathers up the table and chair and locks the door but she obviously has no intention of telling me.

 

“Cost me fucking twenty quid, Bitch,” is all she has to say on the subject.

Continued in The Accidental Feminist, Part Six