In a small, stone room of San Quentin Correctional Facility, five people sat at a long table. They were facing a man in chains and an orange jumpsuit, who looked up at the council with a penitent pout. Behind him stood a guard, shoulders squared, staring stoically off into nothing. Papers ruffled as the five flipped through his dossier, going over his criminal record. Sitting up straight, an old, rotund man in the middle finally spoke up.
"Paul Ellis Cunningham, by our count you've served 25 years of a 40 year sentence. Do you feel you've been rehabilitated?"
The man who looked up at them was not Paul Ellis Cunningham. He had, in fact, murdered Paul Ellis Cunningham by strangulation only a few weeks into his own sentence. He did this upon realizing that the two looked alike, and Mr. Cunningham was due to be released. The guards, as had everyone else, mistook the body for that of the identity he was leaving behind: The Kiss Her; Kill Her Murderer. The man who was not Paul Ellis Cunningham gave them a guilty smile.
"I know I shouldn't have done what I did. I pray everyday for forgiveness and the Lord Almighty, he done told me to be true to you folks. He said youse is good people, and that I should come clean. I knows what I did and I knows that I shouldn't have done it." Paul Ellis Cunningham's neck had been thick and muscled, his skin coarse and worn. His fingers fidgeted nervously in his lap at the thought of hos disgusting it had been to touch a neck so masculine. "I'm might sorry, y'hear? Mighty, mighty sorry."
Glances were changed at the table as the man who was not Paul Ellis Cunningham began to weep pitifully. It wasn't until the man spoke again that the weeping stopped.
"Paul Ellis Cunningham, we hereby approve your release from the San Quentin Correctional Facility and deem you fit for return to society."
"Oh, lordy lord, good God above, I knew this day would come. I said, I KNEW this day would come!" The man who was not Paul Ellis Cunningham knew this day would come, too. He had planned it, after all.
Several years later
Renton Trias, for what was the name he was going by now, drizzled his fingers down the leather folds and ripples of his girlfriend's jacket. He could feel every groove in the leather, ride every stitch sewn into the seam. Downward his fingers slipped until they left the jacket, exchanging the leather of her jacket for the thin denim of her cut-off shorts. Pulling thin one of the the frayed strips of fabric, he pulled his fingers back and whipped them hard against her firm, round buttock.
Tasha Elestri jumped, squeaking at the sudden strike. "You brute!" Laughing, she tugged him by the tie and walked him into the elevator after her. This was all foreplay, it always was, for what was to come once they reached his penthouse suite. What she didn't know, however, was the special treat Renton had in store for her. He'd waited many long weeks for this, and he was finally ready. "C'mere, you..." she began, tugging him in close for a kiss, her hand riding around the curve of his belt.
Renton leaned in for the kiss, savoring the sweetness of her playful innocence. Smiling softly against her lips, he wondered whether her screams of terror were anything like her screams of ecstasy. The elevator doors closed as his hands trailed back up, across the denim, over the leather, and to the warm, soft and slender line of her neck. So delightfully feminine beneath his fingertips. "Mmn... easy, girl. Save some for the bedroom." Trust me, he thought. You're going to want to save your energy.