untouchable - part one
(present carol denning/reader)
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about the main chara—you. you’re 34, stubborn, and a dumbass. your name is celia bird. have fun falling in love with carol denning. dumbass. (same)
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Obviously, your first night in prison was going to be hard. You just didn’t expect for it to be this fucking hard.
Before you’ve even been an inmate for 24 hours, you get shanked.
You’re still not sure exactly what you did. You know you have a habit of testing people’s boundaries, but you really thought that you‘d successfully kept to yourself all day. Apparently not. You’d retired to your lumpy bed early, hoping to avoid trouble, and you were just beginning to drift off to sleep when you were jolted into awareness by a firm hand over your mouth, and then a splitting pain in your side. The shadow over your body chuckled, then disappeared, and you scrambled out of bed, clutching your bleeding stomach.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” your bunkie had complained when she saw you. Her name was Smith, and she was a large, square-jawed woman in her forties, with minimal belongings. “I thought I told you, no mess.”
The infirmary is even more minimal than Smith’s cell. A few beds and chairs in a single room, with one nurse supervising, until the doctor appears for several minutes, then leaves again.
You‘re given a bandage, some Vicodin, and a sedative. After that, you’re too sleepy to pay attention to your surroundings, so you close your eyes.
—
You wake up from a rough night’s sleep. Your side aches like the time you had appendicitis, and without opening your eyes, you reach down and press lightly on your wound, as if to staunch the pain. When you try to roll over and go back to sleep, you are kept awake by unfamiliar sounds: monitors beeping and other people snoring. Reluctantly, you open your eyes.
Of course. Prison. Somehow you had forgotten.
You glance around at the patients in the infirmary with you. Most of those who are awake glance back, then return to looking down, but one woman stares, hard. You frown at her sceptically. She’s middle aged, with dry, auburn hair, and round glasses. Her eyes are dark, and they burn into you, clearly trying to convey the message that you ought not be staring back at this woman.
You ignore the message, and meet the woman’s temperamental glare as if you’re untouchable and weren’t just shanked. You watch her, and she watches you. The longer you stare, the more you realise that this was a horrible mistake, and you should have just fucking gone back to sleep.
But you don’t stop. And neither does she.
—
Carol Denning. The woman with the round glasses is called Carol Denning.
She’s the highest of the high in C-block, and when you return to Gen Pop, your bunkie tells you that she’s probably going to kill you for looking at her. Lucky for you, for some undisclosed reason, she doesn’t. You do catch her and her crew shooting you glances every now and then, though, and sometimes that’s almost as scary as the thought of being murdered. These women know how to throw a fucking glare. Carol‘s looks in particular always manage to make your heart freeze with fear. When she stares at you, it feels as if you’re the only thing she can see. You are the world—and she wants to destroy you.
Occasionally, when she’s absorbed in her bridge game, or talking to her gang in the yard, you find yourself looking at her too—but only when you’re sure she won’t notice.
This woman seems to draw the attention of everyone around her, like she’s the light in a room of little moths, but most are well-trained enough to resist looking at her as best they can. But you’re different: you’re a foolhardy risk-taker (in other words, a moron), and although sometimes that‘s a liability, sometimes it serves you well. How it will serve you this time is still up in the air, but you’re ready to find out.
—
You’re coming back from the showers when you see Carol at her bridge table unwrapping a red lollipop. This time, you don’t stare, although you do take a second to question why such an allegedly tough woman is so into candy. This is the fourth time you’ve seen her with some kind of sucker or sweet. Before she can finish unwrapping the lollipop though, Reiner, in a fit of chuckles, shoves her in the shoulder, and the sucker clatters to the floor and rolls towards you.
After giving Reiner an unfavourable look, Carol’s gaze follows the candy, then drags from your feet to your eyes. “New girl,” she says, nodding at you. “Pass that back to me.”
You know you shouldn’t rock the boat. You know you were shivved a week and a half ago. But you just can’t see why this woman is so untouchable. “Why should I?” you ask.
Carol’s lips turn to a thin line, and she tilts her head to the side. “Do you want to find out?”
All the women at her bridge table are staring at you. Some look a little impressed, but most look thoroughly disapproving.
“What if I do?” you ask.
A couple of women at the table chuckle, clearly eager to see you get hurt.
“You’re insane,” Carol says, incredulous. You wait for the threat. It doesn’t come. Instead, Carol pats the table. “Come sit with us.”
You’re not an idiot. You know what this means, being allowed to sit at this table. It’s a move that could thoroughly backfire.
That’s never stopped you before, though.
—
You don’t get to sit at Carol’s table often. That makes it all the more special when you do—you’re the only person who isn’t part of the inner circle who gets to sit there, and you’re grateful to have been allowed even once, let alone every couple of weeks.
Some of the women at the table mock you for being a newbie. You sass them. After a while, you start to get the feeling that you have a free pass for backchat. Every time you mouth off at someone, you know Carol could shut you up in a second, but she never does. Even when you sass her.
It’s hardly the happiest situation you’ve been in, but you feel indescribably lucky. This is far less gruelling than you thought prison would be.
—
CO Hellmann wakes you up at 5am on Wednesday morning. You don’t know what’s happening.
“Inmate Bird. You’re switching cells,” he tells you. “Get your shit.”
Confused, you load your belongings and your bedding into your laundry bag, then let Hellmann lead you across the empty common area. There is only one other cell door open. It’s Carol’s.
She’s sitting up in her bed when you come in. “Bottom bunk, Birdie,” she says.
Cautiously, you put your bag down, and sit on the edge of the bed. “Did I do something?” you ask. You don’t even know if you’ve done something right or wrong.
“I was getting sick of Brock,” Carol says, climbing out of her bunk. “Bitch snores like a sledgehammer.”
“What makes you think I’ll be any better?”
Carol folds her arms, and shrugs. “You’re funny. You’re not a pussy. I can live with that.”
Hm. You just wonder if you can live with her.
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thank you to @caroldenningimagines! your amazing works inspired me to start this fic :)