donnylaja heroine, Special Operations edition

      After breakfast they were, as always, marched out to the bus.  They were driven maybe ten miles, to what looked like a series of gravel pits.  She stepped out with the others, under the watchful eye of a heavy-set guard with a machine gun.  They walked up a stony hill.  She felt the warm stones under her toughened bare feet.  It was a warm day.  She would be sweating but she did not mind that.  She slowed down to keep in line with the others as they trudged up in their clothes and heavy boots.  She looked down at the tight abdominals of her concave tummy.  There were no mirrors in her life but she knew that she was in excellent physical condition and the labor was not as hard for her as it was for most of the others.

        In her undercover role as a visiting Polish fashion model she had known makeup, styled hair, painted nails, and of course a wide selection of exquisite clothes.  Now she had none of these.  The prison barber periodically hacked her black hair short and clipped her fingernails and toenails.  Her pubic hair, formerly trimmed to a “landing strip”, had grown lush and abundant in the open air.  Her armpit hair grew too.  She didn’t mind; in fact her body hair kept her arms and legs from chafing as she toiled and sweated in the hot sun.

        When they got to the top of the stony hill they found a flat plain of dirt with piles all over.  Today’s task was to move the dirt piles into a waiting truck.  She braced her widely-spread toes against the dry clods and thrust the shovel in.  In a few moments she was well ahead of the inmates to her left and right.  One can get used to almost anything, she mused.  I’ve gotten used to being naked, to going barefoot over rough gravel, to not talking all day. . . I’ve even gotten used to sleeping on that bare bench, without pillows or sheets or even a soft pad.  As long as she kept her wits about her, she would survive.  Her unit must know she was here, and must know that she was being kept naked.  A Geneva Convention violation.  They could find a way to get her out of here.  She would be released. Though she wished they would get on with it already.