THIS STORY IS NOT SUITABLE FOR READERS UNDER 12
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Velma the Vegan Vampire Chapter 19 continues from yesterday:
It was half past one when Muriel got home and she was exhausted. All of her curtains were still closed, her bed covers were still pulled back and she was still wearing her pyjamas. She kicked off her slippers, flopped onto the bed and pulled the duvet over her head. She was asleep almost as soon as she closed her eyes.
At ten past five she was rudely awakened by the harsh buzz of her front door bell. She looked at the clock. For a moment she didn’t know what day it was, nor did she remember why she was in bed at five in the afternoon. The buzzer sounded again. Twice. Then she remembered.
She lifted the intercom handset. “Hello?”
“Electronic Monitoring.”
Muriel pushed the door-release button and, when she heard him open the street door, rushed back to the bedroom to change into some less embarrassing clothes. Then she heard a firm knock on her flat door.
“Coming!” she called while still rummaging through the laundry bin in her vest and pants. The knock came again as she grabbed some jeans, pulled them out and stepped into them. “Coming!” she called again, and walked back to her front door putting her pyjama top back on.
She opened the door.
“Muriel Gedding?” the man asked. He showed her his ID. “I am your Field Monitoring Officer. I will set everything up for you and if you have any problems, you call me. He handed her a card with his name and contact number on it.
Muriel took it from him. “Okay.”
“Take a seat,” he told her, “and I’ll attach the monitor to your ankle.” She sat down while he took the gadget out of its box and unwrapped it. “This is your electronic tag,” he said as he attached it to her ankle. “Is that comfortable? Not too tight?”
“No, that’s okay.”
“You must not take it off – it is waterproof – any tampering will result in you being sent back to prison.” He took another device out of another box. “Where can I plug this in?”
Muriel cleared a spot on the bookcase and unplugged the lamp from the socket below it. As he set up the device he continued to explain. “This is your base unit. It must remain plugged in and switched on at all times. Also,” he said, “your ankle monitor must be charged once a day for at least an hour.” He handed her a charger.
She took it. “Okay, where does it go?”
He showed her how to connect the charger to the ankle monitor and explained that she needed to sit still for an hour or two each day while it charged. “Don’t be tempted to charge it while you’re asleep,” he warned, “it might come accidentally unplugged so that the battery dies which would trigger an alert. Or you might get your feet tangled in it which could cause an accident.”
“Okay,” she nodded.
“You must be home overnight, every night, between 7pm and 7am.”
“I thought I couldn’t leave at all.”
“You can go to work, you can go grocery shopping – wherever you go will be tracked by the GPS in your ankle monitor. But you cannot go out before 7am and you must be home by 7pm. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Muriel told him, a little relieved. “But are you sure? Because I thought the magistrate said I have to stay home all the time.”
The man shook his head and showed her a piece of paper. “This is your curfew order, see – it has your name and address on it. The order is for night time curfew and limited freedom during the day for necessary local outings like going to work, walking the dog, getting your shopping.”
“Okay. Good. That’s better than I thought. I can still go to work,” she said with mixed feelings. “Yay?”
“I’ll leave this copy with you,” he handed her the court order, “do you understand what’s required of you?”
Muriel skimmed the printout. “I think so.”
“If you tamper with either device, it will send an alert to the monitoring centre and you will go back to prison; if you try to take the ankle monitor off, it will send an alert; if you leave home before 7am, it will send an alert; if you’re not home by 7pm, it will send an alert; if the battery dies, it will send an alert. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“If you have any problem at all – like an emergency that makes you late home, or the monitor’s battery dying – call me right away to explain, otherwise they’ll take you back to prison.”
“Got it.”
“Good. Don’t lose my number,” he said as he opened her flat door. “Put it in your phone right now.” And he left.
Muriel went to the kitchen and put the kettle on. She put a teaspoon of instant coffee in a mug and took a couple of digestives from the biscuit tin. Then she sat down, hunched over, rested her head on the table and closed her eyes.
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Come back Monday for the first instalment of Chapter 20, unless you’d rather read it now 😀
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Violet’s Vegan Comics – creating funny and exciting vegan fiction since 2012
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