What I Did to Survive Five Years Behind Bars

Five years. That was the sentence that came crashing down on me when I crossed the border with a suitcase that wasn’t even mine. Esteban, my boss and my lover, had given it to me with one of those smiles I still believed in back then. “Take it to a contact in Bolivia; I’ll pay for the trip and throw in extra,” he told me. At the checkpoint they held me, and hours later the judge ordered the suitcase opened by force. Inside was almost a million and a half dollars.

I’d been used as a mule to get dirty money out of the country. Esteban sang like a canary when they leaned on him, but his lawyer made sure I didn’t get off completely clean. So there I was, Carla, locked up in Las Acacias women’s prison, in a wing for economic crimes.

The lawyer kept telling me the same thing every time he came to see me: keep my head down, sign up for some workshop, and with good behavior I might get out early in two or three years. I nodded. But the truth is that inside there’s another economy, another currency, and nobody explains it to you on the first day.

***

The wing wasn’t so bad, if you knew how to move. You had to make friends, trade favors, return kindness. And among the guards and the riot squad that came in whenever there was a mess, there was always some uniform with an itch. If one of them took a liking to you, things changed: a while in the guard room could be traded for cigarettes, for candy, for life inside being a little less gray.

Damián had his eye on me, one of the riot squad guys. Tall, dark, with a three-day beard that scraped like sandpaper. Those men were more bored than we were, pacing the yard like dogs looking for a lead. I’d roll up the sleeves of my gray uniform so the tattoo on my thigh would show, a snake winding upward, and I knew perfectly well what looks it drew.

One afternoon in November the sun was beating down on the cracked concrete of the yard like a hot iron. I was leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette I’d lifted off fat Susana, who always had extras. Damián appeared out of nowhere, vest pulling tight across his chest and that air of owning the place.

“Come on,” he said softly, grabbing my arm where nobody could see. “Today’s your turn.”

It wasn’t a question. I already knew what was coming, and I’m not going to lie: my body was ahead of my head. In that hole, a little real desire was a luxury.

***

He took me to the old guard room, one from before the renovation, tucked behind the wing. A broken table, a cot, a fan that cooled nothing. He locked the door and turned to look at me like a man sizing up what he was about to eat.

“Take your clothes off,” he said, unzipping his pants.

I obeyed. If I didn’t, goodbye cigarettes, goodbye candy, and goodbye to that one hour a week when I felt like something more than a number. I pulled off my T-shirt, then my pants, and was left in a red pair of panties Nélida had given me when she was released.

He already had everything out, hard, watching me with that half smile.

“Look at what you do to me,” he muttered.

I knelt on the dirty floor because I knew the ritual by heart. I took him into my mouth, slowly at first, feeling the weight, the heat, the salty taste. He grabbed my hair, not roughly, more like setting the rhythm, and he let out hoarse words between his teeth. I closed my eyes and let myself go, licking, sucking, gradually losing track of the little room and the smell of damp. I ran my tongue over the tip, over the shaft, until he was wet with saliva and my hot breath. When he wanted more, he pushed my head a little lower, and I obeyed with my mouth open, swallowing the choking and the need as if there were nothing else in the world but that hard cock beating against my tongue.

“That’s it, damn it,” he growled. “Don’t stop.”

His whole belly tightened when I took a little more than fit comfortably, and I noticed his breathing change, the slight tremble of his fingers on my nape. He liked seeing me handle him with hollowed cheeks and a tired jaw, like a bitch who knows exactly what she’s doing. I licked his base, sucked the head, spat just enough to polish him again with my tongue, and he started letting out those low curses that turned me on more than any caress.

He yanked me up and threw me onto the cot.

“Open up,” he said, and crouched between my legs.

His fingers hooked my panties to the side and opened me with two knuckles, pressing, probing, slicking up with my heat. His beard scraped the inner part of my thighs when he buried his face between my legs and started eating my cunt slowly, hungrily. He licked me from top to bottom, parting my lips with his tongue, working the exact place where I was already coming apart. He held my hips so I wouldn’t move, but I still arched, pushing into his mouth, looking for more friction, more pressure, more tongue.

“That’s it,” he said against me, not stopping licking. “Come on, soak me.”

When he slipped in his fingers and curled his hand until he hit that exact spot, I stopped pretending to have any composure left. He went deep, finding my nerve with filthy patience, and I started shaking all over, my legs spread wide and my panties bunched up to my knee. I came hard, with a hot spasm climbing through my belly and leaving my breasts heavy, my body trembling and my head banging against the cot’s hard mattress. I bit my arm to keep from crying out and letting half the wing hear, but a broken moan still escaped me, the kind you can’t swallow down.

“Now that’s more like it,” he said, laughing, wiping himself off with his sleeve.

He climbed on top of me and went in all at once. I hooked my legs around his waist and dug my nails into his back while the cot creaked with every thrust. I felt him opening me from the inside, his cock filling me in one shot, hard and hot, driving all the way in with sharp pushes that slammed our bodies together brutally. Each forward stroke knocked my breath a little more out of me, and he spoke in my ear with his mouth full of saliva, telling me I liked it, that I loved being fucked like that, that I was a grateful little whore. And the truth was, I did like it; I liked the fine pain of the friction, the weight of his torso crushing me, the sound of our skin slapping together, the certainty that for that little while I wasn’t a prisoner but a woman unleashed beneath a horny man.

He flipped me over without pulling out and arranged me face down on the cot. He grabbed my hips, lifted my ass a little, and shoved back into me from behind, even deeper this time. I braced my hands on the mattress and breathed in the smell of sweat, old fabric, and semen, all of it hanging in the air. With every thrust he hit the exact spot inside me, and my body grew softer and hotter, as if it was about to come apart completely. He grabbed one breast over my cotton bra and squeezed hard, tugging the nipple until I let out a little yelp. Then he put two fingers in my mouth and I sucked them without thinking, knowing what was coming, knowing he was about to come too.

“Come on, Carla,” he said, gasping. “I want to cum inside you.”

I answered with a roll of my hips, offering myself more, tightening around him, feeling the blow of his pelvis turn rougher, more urgent. The end took him with a shiver in his throat and an animal groan. He stayed buried inside me for a second and then started emptying himself in pulses, hot and thick, filling me from within while I kept moving to milk him for the last drop. He clamped a hand hard on my waist, driving himself in as deep as he could, and when he was done he stayed there breathing on my back, heavy, sweaty, like the whole world had dropped on him at once.

Afterward he gave me my usual cigarette, and I went back to the cell with weak legs and a strange calm, the kind a storm leaves behind when it finally lets go.

***

Rita was waiting for me. She was my cellmate, a dark-haired, big-breasted woman who’d landed here for a credit-card scam and had a sharp nose for gossip and fresh sex.

“They really wrecked you, huh,” she said, without looking up from the half-rolled cigarette in her hands.

That night, after the usual dinner, we climbed into the bottom bunk. Rita had hands that knew what they were doing and an even better mouth. There were no cameras in the cells, only the distant noise of the guards and the hum of the sleeping wing. We found each other slowly, knowing every corner by heart, muffling our moans against the pillow so we wouldn’t draw attention. With her it was different than with Damián: no orders, no exchange, just two women keeping each other company in confinement in the only way they had left. Rita unbuttoned my shirt, licked my nipples patiently, and made me open my legs until her tongue found the hot center of my cunt, already sensitive from everything Damián had left me with. She ate me slowly, rolling her tongue, parting me with her fingers, and I tugged her hair, breathing in her skin, her cheap soap, the salty taste of our two bodies mixing together in that narrow bunk.

“Like that, don’t stop,” I whispered, my voice broken.

She laughed against me and kept going, slipping two fingers in while she licked me, taking me back to the edge until my body started kicking on its own. Then we turned over, groped each other’s tits, brushed ass against ass, made room for ourselves between rough sheets and human heat. Rita settled on top of me and rode me slowly, moving her hips with a dirty rhythm that made the metal frame creak. I sank my fingers into her back and bit her shoulder so I wouldn’t moan too loudly, feeling that animal need fill me again, the kind that leaves you thinking about nothing else inside but the next time. With her it was pure release, pure comfort turned into flesh.

“Rest,” she told me afterward, hugging me from behind. “Tomorrow is another day just like this one.”

And she was right. The days at Las Acacias were all the same: workshops, monitored visits, the lawyer’s countdown, and the stolen encounters in the corners I knew like the back of my hand.

***

It wasn’t all Damián. In the sewing workshop, where they made us stitch uniforms to kill the hours, there was the Sergeant, a burly guard with short hair and eyes that pinned you in place. Everybody knew what she liked.

“Stay. I need to check you,” she said one afternoon, when the others had already left.

She closed the door. Her “checkup” started with my hands, moved to my neck, and ended exactly where we both knew it would. The Sergeant was direct, no nonsense, and in exchange she’d let cigarettes and the occasional pass slip through that other women would have killed for. What I had with her became routine on Tuesdays, after the workshop, over the table still covered in gray fabric scraps. She’d have me put my palms flat on the wood, raise my skirt to my waist, and run her fingers over my ass and between my legs, poking without delicacy, testing my wetness like she was inspecting a shipment. Then she’d make me turn around, pry my mouth open with two fingers, and order me to suck on her breast over her uniform, clamping a hand around the back of my neck with a force that admitted no argument. If she was in a good mood, she’d let me down on the floor and I’d eat her cunt between rolls of fabric; if she was dry on patience, she’d make that clear with a slap across the face and a short command: “Watch and learn.” Then I’d stand in front of her with my legs spread, watching her touch herself slowly while she made me think power could come in the form of sweat, black leather, and fingers smelling of tobacco.

Sometimes I think about what becomes normal when you’re inside. Outside, all of that would have seemed like another world. Inside, it was just the way to keep breathing, to feel that my body was still mine even if they had locked it up.

***

The months passed, because time is the one thing inside that never fails: it passes, for better or for worse. The lawyer came one day with a different smile.

“In three months, before the holidays, you’ll be out on parole if you keep this up,” he told me.

I nodded without much emotion. Five years harden your skin and something deeper too. Freedom no longer felt like a dream, more like another cell change, a bigger one, with sky above instead of a ceiling.

One of those visiting afternoons my sister came, looking as worn out as she had since I’d landed in here. We talked about the usual stupid things—how Mom was doing, how my nephew was already walking—and then she lowered her voice and let out what she’d been keeping to herself.

“Carla... that son of a bitch, your ex-boss. They transferred him to Cruz del Sur prison. They say he’s having a really rough time, that he got seriously sick, that they’re going to take him to the prison hospital. He’s a shadow of himself.”

I stayed quiet for a long while, looking at the scratched glass between us. I waited to feel something: joy, fresh anger, the urge to celebrate. I felt none of that. Not even pity. Just a cold calm, like when you crush a cigarette against the wall and there’s no smoke left at all.

“Trash goes in the bin,” I said at last, without raising my voice. “Let him sort himself out.”

My sister stared at me, as if waiting for me to explode or cry. But there was nothing else to say. I hung up, got to my feet, and went back to the wing with the same slow step I always had.

***

That night, in the bunk, Rita asked me what had happened. I told her just enough: that the bastard who’d sent me inside was worse off than I was, much worse, and that fate had its own ways of collecting.

“Shitty karma,” she said with a dry little laugh. “And you?”

“I get out soon. And when I do, I’m going to live. Without looking back.”

She kissed the back of my neck and ran her hand slowly over my body, not urgently this time, more like she was reminding me I was still alive, that I still felt, that beneath all that filth I was still whole.

“Then enjoy what’s left,” she whispered. “Out there, a new life is waiting for you. And this place will be left with its ghosts.”

I closed my eyes and let her fingers take me wherever they wanted, thinking how strange everything turns around. The man who sent me to hell ended up buried deeper than I was. And I was going to walk out, my body worn from so many nights, but whole—and that was the only thing that mattered.

***

I got out on a Tuesday in December, with a plastic bag and the clothes I’d entered in, now hanging loose on me. At the prison gate the sun hit just as hard as it had that November afternoon, like a hot iron, but now it wasn’t pinning me against any wall.

I don’t regret what I did to survive. Everyone endures confinement however they can, and I endured it like this: trading desire for air, heat for a little stolen dignity. This is my confession, told without makeup. Trash ends up in the bin in the end. And I, against all odds, walked out forward.