By Joshua Ryan
“Jake,” I said, “aren’t they worried that you might just walk away from here?”
“Naw. Not really. I wouldn’t get very far. Not with my tatts. And not with these clothes! And then there’s this other thing.” He bent down and lifted one leg of his coarse brown trousers. There, on the leg, was an iron shackle! I’d never seen one before. I’d never even seen a pair of handcuffs. But this thing was incredible — wide and thick and as black as death, with a big old hinge on the back and two big rings sticking out on the sides and a thing like a tongue sticking out in front . . .. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This must have been what I would have seen in those leg shots of his, if I hadn’t been rushing through them so fast . . .
“Notice,” he said, like a professor explaining what you see after you’ve dissected a frog, “there’s no lock. There’s just a flange and a rivet. And a couple of D-rings, in case they want to attach me to somethin.” He reached down and patted his iron. “This baby will never come off. It’s here for life. Unless you happen to have a blowtorch and a lot of anesthetic on you. Of course, I could try to escape, if I could just shed these clothes. But . . . ”
I gulped. That thing was monstrous. How guys could actually run across the field in an iron like that . . .
“What do they . . . attach you to?”
