‘’’__Shortshank Redemption__’’’
‘’Part One: What Did You Do?’’

Airstrip One, 20XX. A quiet café on a street littered with detritus. In the middle distance, the dull roar of fires and angry crowds can be heard, punctuated with barks and screams.
I’m sitting outside finishing a continental breakfast, the only customer. The waitress is hovering nearby, ready to take the service away. With a shy smile she asks,
“Um… Are you going to finish that ‘’quason’’?”
Putting on my best ‘’Sherlock’’ air (the Doyle classic, not the Bendy-dick Cunt-batch rendition), I stare at her for a few seconds. She’s shortish, around five five, with greenish skin betraying demi-human ancestry. Her hair was a mess, a base mix of blacks and greys with multi-coloured strands of dye, left over from a botched naturalisation job. Sometime previously it had been cut short save for a long straight fringe covering her forehead, the whole left to regrow. Her roots and thick eyebrows revealed that she should have deep, black hair. Her eyes are dark brown, large and placid, set into a wide face – an upturned nose and thick, pouting lips in-between puffy cheeks and a slight double-chin. Her nose and her ears (not quite covered by the wild hair) betray healing piercings. Below, bursting around the sides of a large black apron hanging proudly from the front is a chest fit for a holstaur which still can’t quite manage to hide her thick flanks and paunch. Her arms are padded and straining her white waitress’ shirt, holding the cruet stand and coffee pot in surprisingly dainty hands.
“...Knock yourself out.”
I pick up the croissant and throw it, she catches it half in her mouth and sucks it down before turning around and moving off with the rest of the crockery, her wide behind and meaty thighs swinging and rubbing together in a pair of tight black jeans. Really quite attractive, in a piggish way.

The late morning sun shines weakly onto the cobbles, outshone on the horizon by the ruddy glow of burning warehouses. Wind blows scattered refuse and papers against walls in-between boarded up storefronts, plastered with propaganda; Secure Beneath the Watchful Eyes, TV License warnings and police recruitment posters. This last poster, featuring a tall, strong, smiling negro in the traditional bobby’s uniform, is next to an alleyway and in direct contrast to that happy picture a slight, weedy form clad in tactical riot gear with a large assault rifle on his back runs into the street before turning around and pointing a Taser into the darkness, followed by the slavering, baying cries of upstanding citizens who didn’t do anything exercising their right to free speech, barely visible in the alley’s gloom.
“Stay back! This is your final warning!”
The pathetic Taser drops a single wog, the rest boiling out around the spasming entity, Officer Soy flees toward the café in fear, pushing past the waitress, exiting with a rolling pin in hand as I stand up, opening my pocketknife.
“The protest march wasn’t scheduled to come through here…” she says in a small, disappointed voice. Of course, she’d have experience of these things before, although never in quite such a dire situation.
The gang of youths has drawn up a respectable distance away from the sight of two armed people, but the leader steps forward, a confident, shit-eating grin on his swarthy face.
“Ay yo nigguhs, bes’ be backin’ awf an’ maybe we’s go easy on yas. Jus’ a li’l fun time with the lady, knamsayin’?”
The waitress tenses up as he walks forward, his gang lieutenant sidling up against the wall, trying to get behind me. As they get close, she lashes out in great force with the rolling pin, braining him instantly. Her fringe flies upward and for a split second I can see what looks like two large grey discs on her forehead. There isn’t time to ponder, though, as the second groid lunges for my throat, earning gashes on his forearms for his trouble.
Chastised, the crowd flees and for a few moments there is silence, save for the waitress’ panting, great chest heaving up and down, until a confident shout sounds from within the café.
“Freeze! Get on the ground, hands behind your back! Arms forward where I can see them! Don’t move, crawl towards me! I said freeze, hands flat on the ground, now now now!”
It’s Officer Soy, crazed eyes staring from behind shooting glasses, his enormous assault rifle unslung and pointed at us, now prone. He’s close enough that I can see it’s bedecked in tactical gear, up to and including a chainsaw bayonet. The ejector port cover is engraved, bearing the word “JUSTICE”.
There’s nothing to be done and we’re both arrested on the spot.

-

A courtroom, quiet save for rustling paper and the susurration of hoarse whispers.
We’re on trial, in the dock. The “Jury of our peers” is a suspiciously familiar gang of inner-city foreigners. The judge has a large, hooked nose and rubbing hands. The back benches are crowded with propagandists, it’s a lucky day for them. Instead of reporting on the “exuberant protest” staged earlier, they have a juicy case of xenophobia. I can see the headlines now – “Ethnic youths refused service, beaten by evil racists!”.
We are convicted of assault, battery and attempted murder, with the waitress getting an additional charge of illegal un-inclusiveness. In short order we’re off to prison, there to stay “until sufficiently rehabilitated”…

‘’Part Two:  Living Arrangements’’

The prison bus is crowded with similar cases, a few real psychos sprinkled here and there to keep everyone on their toes. We’re shackled together, after being processed as a duo, a trend that will continue – easier on the paperwork for the underpaid drones that keep the bleeding machine running. To pass the time, we got to talking.
The waitress, named Mimi, is an immigrant from the Other world, having had the bad luck to fall in with a group of feminists on arrival – she had tried to fit in, but collapsed under pressure as she was made to perform ever more violent acts and destroy her physique with consumption and body modification. Under her arm fat was a serious amount of muscle; she had been employed as a bull-dyke against the “maleocracy”. She blushed deeply when I squeezed it and found out.
After escaping their clutches, she had rented a cheap place in the dangerous city and found work at the café, determined to reform herself. Apparently, when I had my breakfast with her, she was in the best condition since she had first arrived on Earth, which wasn’t saying much; she was considered a dwarfish runt amongst her people and consequently exhibited none of their commonly aggressive nature.
Although outwardly a mere greenish human, Mimi was an ogre, her race’s musculature hidden beneath the consequences of the modern woman’s responsibility-free diet and her horns hidden under her fringe. One of the first things she did when she managed to escape the progressives’ clutches was file her horns flat, for they had been inexpertly chipped and carved into phallus shapes, the better to emasculate the “patriarchy”.
I moved to comfort her, holding her in my arms as we approached the prison.

Populated by malcontents, misfits, those driven past the edge, the truly dangerous and those few minorities (now in the majority country-wide) who were guilty beyond all attempts at salvage, the prison is a veritable gulag. A large open space ringed with consecutive fenced in patrol paths, guard towers and concrete infill, the only entrance a processing office, in the centre a single great building. The cells are housed in several enormous wings, each connected to a central dining hall & assembly. CCTV is ubiquitous; no out-of-the-way corner goes unwatched by electronic eyes.
We’re processed and let loose into the grounds, newcomers quickly swallowed up by a crowd of inmates jockeying for position.