Susan Lashes Out, Rattan Slashes In

(Imprisoned in a nightmare medical fetish clinic world, where straight-jacket bondage, enema punishment, anal suppositories, obstetric internal exams, the speculum, mind control, orgasm denial and hypnosis are the norm, , she is placed in a clinical cell, under the strict discipline and domination of stern uniformed nurses and guards, the expected boarding school uniform gymslip swapped for a humiliating nylon prison uniform dress, corsellete, PVC knickers, handcuff restraints and diapers to undergo the humiliation of spanking, judicial caning or strapping from the domineering mistress, the wardress, wielding the cane, riding switch, tawse, martinet or dressage crop)

Susan Stringer had taken more than enough; the mocking sniggering behind her had been the last straw. Coupled with that, she was pretty certain that the woman had neglected to properly ensure the entry gate had swung shut behind her; she hadn’t heard the telltale clunk of the lock’s resetting. Gripped by a sudden determination she spun around on the spot; sure enough, a little more than a meter and a half behind her smiling tormentor’s back an open, inwardly-angled segment of barred cell frontage beckoned her. It seemed to taunt her as much as, or more than, the approaching nurse’s condescending smile; it challenged her to try, just try, it queried her fortitude, laughed at her so-called courage, spat at the cowardice that had her cringing so.

It didn’t matter that such freedom as she might hope to gain would consist of a mere twenty meters or so of feature-free passageway before she would meet the impasse of one of the security grilles that guarded each end. It didn’t matter that the best she could hope to achieve would be a glimpse into five other identical cells at, potentially, five other identically attired and even more thoroughly crushed souls and that in any case her freedom would be short lived.

And there would be repercussions of course: There would be a further loss of ‘privileges’; there would be further punishments to endure. It defied all logic, but then again her capacity for logical thought had long since flown. She just didn’t care anymore - they had tripped up at last, that was the main thing. The gate had been left slightly ajar, ever so slightly true, but the electrification would have been shut off; that was one thing she could be certain of...and she wanted out!

They had even been short-sighted enough to have left the wrist restraints off her so that they could add to her torment by having her stand with her fingertips to her shoulders; for that they would be punished, it was their turn. And this nurse, in particular, would pay.

Considering the start point with finger tips at her shoulders and her elbows pressed smartly out to the sides she couldn’t help but telegraph the move; even considering the abruptness of her spin she was amazed to have made contact. Blows that she had intended as punches manifested in the event as slaps; left, right then left again, the open palm nevertheless impacting hard with the correspondingly-opposite side of the nurses face with each shot.

Stunned and sent off balance the woman was easily toppled towards the bed as the girl roughly pushed past, the nurse ending breathlessly-slumped across it, her left cheek pressed hard against the wall, with neck awkwardly bent back and her weight taken on both arms, her palms sinking into the soft, yielding, rubber of the mattress. That the nurse appeared not to receive any ill effect from this latter contact served only to further support the girl’s hypothesis; the current was indeed shut off in the presence of staff members.

Heart pounding in her ears Susan Stringer made her grab for freedom, quite literally. The fingers of her right hand curled around the outermost bar of the gate even as, seeking leverage, she reached for one of the bars of the stationary section of the cell front with her left. This was it! This was the moment! This was her closest approach to some modicum of freedom, some morsel of self-determination, since her arrival, since that fateful day that she had made the decision to become a volunteer - as if even that decision had truly been hers to make in the first place.

Unbeknownst to the hapless girl the converse was the reality here. Yet even had she known the truth, that she was merely tightening her own bonds, she would in all probability have seen it through to the end in any case, such was her desperation. Her intention had been to swing back the gate and catapult herself out and away in one. The blinding, jagged lightning flash that now tore across her eyes, sending her muscle fibres into painfully contracting spasms, ensured that any catapulting to be done would be backwards across the cell floor.

Dazed, she shook her head; she was sitting on the floor of her cell, legs spread and outstretched before her and with the white shoes of the now recovered nurse positioned to either side of her hips, the woman standing astride her and towering over her from behind. Ahead of her the open gate still taunted her; being still fractionally ajar, having remained unmoved despite her efforts.

She could have so easily succumbed to defeat in that moment, many would have. But rather than defeat, frustration, mingled with anger, fuelled a sudden and unexpected restoration of strength. Springing to her feet and twirling around on her heel she lunged at the woman with renewed vigour, hatred misting her vision as if a veil of red silk had been thrown over her. With both hands she went for the nurse’s throat, fully meaning to throttle her.

The woman neatly and simply parried the attack with an upward swing of her own arms between those of her would-be assailant. Catching the girl’s right wrist she applied a painful pressure-hold, simultaneously spinning the girl and bringing the girl’s arm up behind her back in an expertly applied hammerlock. Her right foot swept the girl’s legs from under her and her attacker went down heavily, the breath knocked from her; the move, smoothly followed through by a kick to the ribs, terminated in the woman kneeling by her fallen foe with her right knee on the small of her opponents back.

Seemingly in the blink of an eye, two pairs of handcuffs were produced, one from each of the hip pockets of the woman’s uniform dress. The first, a solid all-in-one wrist restraint she slapped on to the girls wrists, locking the latter tightly behind her back. The second pair - differing from the first by being linked by a short length of jangling, stainless steel chain, perhaps of thirty centimetres in length but certainly no more - were slapped in place around each of the girl’s ankles in turn.

All in all it had been as smoothly an executed tae kwon do sequence as would be worthy of any Hollywood action movie. That the woman could have ended the girl’s protestations at any point in the proceedings was beyond doubt - and obvious even to the girl herself. That she could easily have avoided any blow thrown by such an unskilled opponent was also undoubtedly true.

Tears welled and duly fell; the woman had actually wanted her to strike her - and she had been stupid enough to have let herself be goaded her into it. To Susan it felt as if she was no longer really there, no longer taking part in the scene; it was as if she was a bystander somehow. Her own voice came to her distantly, as a wailing baby-cry lament shattering the silence. It was a lament for a wasted chance; she knew she wouldn’t get another. How real that opportunity had indeed been would be left to the girls conjecture. Deep down, though she knew the truth right enough she would refuse to acknowledge it consciously. It was all smoke and mirrors, illusory, it always had been - there had been no oversight, how could there be? They just didn’t make mistakes here, not here not in this institution, not ever.

Where for a fleeting, almost infinitesimal, moment there had been hope there was now vacuum, not even despair, just vacuum. The nurse, for her part, when she finally spoke, seemed calm, collected, gentle and lilting in her intonation, yet certainly calculating, her words, as ever, carefully chosen.

“Well, I’m sure they got all of that on CCTV. You didn’t think about that, did you? Attacking a nurse? Common assault that is, did you know that? Assaults on staff in the medical sector are getting all too prevalent these days, you know. The courts of late have been taking a hard-line over things like this, a very hard-line. And all captured on video too, you stupid, stupid girl.

Have you any idea what you have just done? I don’t mean to me, I mean what you have just done to yourself? Why, a little judicious editing, a slight embellishment here and there and I would think a custodial sentence would be more or less fait accompli; I would be very surprised if you didn’t find yourself put away for a good number of years for this.

Then again, perhaps it would be just as well for all concerned if you were to be sectioned under the mental health act. From what I’ve read in your notes you have displayed ample evidence of psychological instability already during your stay here - and now, with all this...well, I think the conclusion is forgone, don’t you? One look at the video playback of your behaviour just now should be enough to convince any psychiatrist worth his salt to put you away - permanently!”

The implications embodied in the woman’s words bit down hard, cut deep into the girl’s numbly-frozen mind. There came a muffled scream from the still writhing figure on the floor... then the entreaties started... the pathetic begging:

“No, n,no, p,please I, I’m ssorry, I,I’m so s,sorry, please, I, I, I’ll do anything, anything you w,want, please”

The nurse’s voice retained its gently lilting calmness:

“But we’ve all had enough of you, of your constant whining, your refusing to obey even the simplest of rules. For example; twice already you’ve refused to accept a punishment. That’s what has angered the senior wardress most; all the other girls accept their punishments, they expect to be punished if they’re disobedient or if they don’t meet their work quotas. Why do you think things should be any different for you? Why do you think you’re so different? Do you think you’re better than everyone else in some way - is that it? Do you think that you’re somehow superior? Is that what it is with you - daddy’s little princess are we? And now this; assaulting a staff member! I for one am sick of it and I’m sick of you and your haughty, stuck-up attitude.”

Tears gushed and fell like rain at the mention of her being her father’s little princess - that was what he had always called her: “My little princess and the apple of my eye”. She had loved her dad...but he was gone now. The illness and his slow protracted suffering and wasting were still all too fresh in her mind.

That last remark had clearly hit a soft spot, something that would be duly noted for future reference. A smile slowly spread across woman’s face as she continued: “Do you know what, sweetheart? I think I’d really love to see you go to court for this. I’d just love to see you brought up before a judge and then shoved inside a real prison for a few months. But I’ll be just as happy if it’s decided that you be committed to a secure psychiatric ward - happier in fact; you’ll end up spending far longer than a few months in there. Either way, I’m really going to enjoy watching what becomes of you now.”

The girl’s desperately repeated entreaties were bordering on the hysterical now; retching, spluttering, hyperventilating, she clawed at her words, coughing out promises and admissions, surrendering her dignity further with each and every breath. Finally there came something of a breakthrough; some small part of the girl’s desperation had seemed to have gelled with the woman, had plucked some hidden chord of compassion from deep within her - she actually appeared as if she might be relenting.

“Perhaps if you were willing to take the first of your punishments right now, and I mean right now, this instant; then - assuming the senior wardress is still willing to continue to deal with you - I might be willing to see what I can do to help. You have to understand though, it’s up to her in the end - and she has the last word; no one else can intervene.”

“Yes, y,yes a,anything, p,p,please, I, I’ll do a,anything, anything...miss.” Just in time she had remembered to add the woman’s title; it had made her feel ridiculous saying it, like a naughty little schoolgirl of five rather than the young woman that in actuality she was, but she was glad that she had.

“Yes, I daresay you will! Now, up you get, princess - you stupid, ridiculous little girl.”

So saying the nurse placed her hands under the girl’s armpits, aiding the latter’s writhing attempts at rising from her prone position, handicapped as she now was with her hands securely retained behind the small of her back and her ankles hobbled.

“Just as far as the knees will do, no point in you struggling all the way to your feet; I think we’ll have you on your knees for now. Far more appropriate under the circumstances, don’t you think?”

Even with the nurse’s assistance it took no little effort for Susan to rise and bring her knees beneath her. Awkwardly she worked her way round to face the bars of the cell front. The nurse, having seized the opportunity to sidle past, swung open the gate to its fullest extent and - leaving the latter casually thrown back against the interior wall - stepped out into the passageway to await her shuffling charge.

The ease with which the woman had accomplished the latter feat was not lost on the girl. There appeared to be no one else around and although it was true that there was constant CCTV monitoring and thus whoever might have been overseeing the proceedings could easily have turned off the current remotely, the impression she had received from her past observations indicated the likelihood that there was something more to it. She was given to suspect that something secreted about the nurse’s person, perhaps some device sewn into the fabric of her uniform, temporarily deactivated those of the cell’s security features that were immediately within the woman’s vicinity. The same was likely true of the other staff members.

Crushed, her shoulders bowed beneath the weight of defeat and head hanging listlessly, the girl now shuffled reluctantly forward on her knees. Ahead of her waited that darkly-threatening maw she had once mistakenly taken for salvation’s gateway. She now saw it for what it was: a portal to ever darker despair, ever more soul-searing pain and personality-breaking humiliation. What else could there be out there, waiting for her under that starkly-unforgiving, all pervading illumination, than suffering? That was what this so-called experiment was all about, or so it seemed; did it really matter anyway? Whatever it was it she was now thoroughly trapped within it and now more deeply entangled than ever before. It seemed she was becoming more thoroughly ensnared with every passing moment, every action.

With such thoughts of resignation dragging exhaustingly at her like heavy irons holding her back and emotion weighing her down, becoming an encumbrance almost of the equal of the physical hobbling she now endured, she shuffled out of her cell, thankful for the spongy softness of the flooring beneath her knees. Hope had been rendered a meaningless, abstract, affair; it was a word, a sound, nothing more than that. What was defiance worth without the vindication of hope? Defiance had now been banished from her lexicon in its entirety.

Out in the corridor an extra dimension was awaiting to be appended to her shame; they were not quite as alone as she had thought they were. The imposing figure of the senior wardress loomed ahead. Standing hands-on-hips with her back to the bars of the corridor’s far end security grille and looking as immaculate as ever in her tailored navy-blue uniform dress; she was the epitome of the waspwaisted, high-breasted dominatrix.

Cowering before that imposing woman and facing her, five girls stood in single file like the depersonalised dolls they were. Each identical in her green and white striped nylon dress, the institution’s idiosyncratic approximation of a prison uniform, they stood with head bowed and with fingertips on shoulders and elbows held smartly out to the sides.

It was the woman’s cane that really caught the girl’s eye now. Long, thin, sharply tapered and undoubtedly endowed with serpentine flexibility, it hung by its wrist loop from the woman’s white elasticated webbing nurse’s belt; it rested against the flare of her skirt, its glossy white finish vividly juxtaposed against the darkly shadowed polyester fabric. How long would it be now before she felt its searing kiss across the sensitive, plumply-pliant flesh of her buttocks, cutting in, perhaps splitting the skin, perhaps scarring her flesh, perhaps marking her for life? Not long, she would have wagered; had any there cared much for her opinion.

To her even greater chagrin and humiliation she watched through tear-drowned eyes as the senior wardress gestured to the girl at the head of that little queue to step back; as one, the line promptly shuffled rearward one space. She was, she now realised, to take the lead, to head up the group, on her knees before all their eyes. She was to be showcased in her final moment of defeat, put forth as if by way of a demonstration of the institutional efficiency of their system - as if any such demonstration was truly necessary. And yet in its way it was of great necessity, as much for its impact upon the girls as a group as on Susan Stringer as an individual; it was a standard technique to handle would-be dissent and backed up by sound psychological principles.

A Tale of Tissues and Chessmen

Half a pace behind, nurse Annabel Barclay, allowing full range to smug satisfaction, beamed across at her superior through vivaciously-flashing deep dark eyes. In that fleeting contact - brief though it was - enough was said, the whole tale shared and known between them: This was a different approach to be sure, but in its own right it had been as successful as that tissue chess-set gambit had been with that other girl, the last truly defiant case they’d had to handle. That one had created her own anvil, had forged the hammer with her own hands that they might craft the perfect vessel of malleable submission with it.

Under such close surveillance, with so little scope for caching or disguising contraband, how that particular girl could ever have expected to escape detection was beyond the imagination of either woman. She had begun by collecting toilet paper, gradually purloining sheet after sheet after sheet and secreting them about her person. Those tourist-bamboozling sleight-of-hand skills of hers, honed through years spent living on the edge in the city grime, had been eminently transferable to the problem of surreptitiously slipping away tissues.

One by one and day by day, individual sheets disappeared beneath one cuff or other of her dress - right from under the supervising gaze of her nurse. Of course her little plot had been doomed from the start, even from before its true nature had become clear; everything was carefully inventoried, even such an apparently insignificant thing as toilet tissue. Besides, her every move was being monitored by CCTV and from multiple angles; experts were following her behaviour, studying her reactions, examining and teasing apart every nuance of her motivation.

Quite some jubilation had broken out in the experimental unit’s control room once the motivation behind her singularly curious kleptomania had become clear - but no more so than upon the observation of her first completed chess piece.

In all truth, on that day the impetus behind the celebratory atmosphere had not been so much due to the girl’s fabrication per se, rather that she had invested so much in crafting the piece, that she had put so much effort into its detailing, honing her already considerable grasp of the art of origami as she had progressed. It was a measure of what its construction meant to her. The corollary had been of even more interest to the researchers: What might its loss mean to her?

The girl had gone on to fabricate an entire chess set in this manner, stashing the pieces as she went in a tiny nook formed between the end of her bed platform and the end wall of her cell.

The fitting or refitting of a blanking plate to fill in that gap had apparently been neglected at that point in time. Such blindness to detail, particularly where such detail had implications that might compromise security, was virtually unheard of in the institution and made this case all the more remarkable. Indeed, hers was the only cell in which there had ever occurred such a lack of diligence and secondly, that plate had been in situ right up until just prior to her occupation. A third consideration was how she had been able to slip the pieces in and out of their narrow home while avoiding an electric shock from either the end of the bed-platform or the rear wall; it suggested some failing of the electrification system had also occurred. From an outsider’s perspective it is tempting to speculate as to just how serendipitous all these apparent failings had truly been.

Then there had been the staff’s strangely lackadaisical attitude in that girl’s case; she had rarely, if ever, been subjected to corner standing nor often had her wrists placed in restraint. Even on the rare occasions that they did cuff her it was always with her hands in front of her, never restrained behind her back. Whatever the reason, she had always seemed to somehow find ample time to play with her miniature chessmen, rerunning old games she had seen or read about, playing imaginary opponents.

From childhood, from long before she had made her bid for the city lights, chess had been her life, her passion beyond passions. At that point in her life, alone in that cell, that passion had become manic obsession - it had developed a life all of its own. She became fixated on that chess set, the pieces gradually coming to dominate their creator. Indeed, the girl had gradually come to a point where she could think of little else, a point at which it had seemed to her that she could barely remember her life outside the bars, the walls, the restrictions, the discipline of the institution other than through those imaginary tournaments she immersed herself in. For near on three months they had observed her surreptitious gaming, watched her lovingly cradle her precious pieces, her precious chessmen...Then she had been ‘discovered’, ‘caught in the act’ as it were.

Of course there had been repercussions; she had ruined the study, after all. She was duly informed that she would have to be re-entered into the experiment and that she would have to restart the three-month study period from scratch, despite being only a few days shy of the completion of her obligation to the clinic and its researchers. Furthermore, it goes without saying that her chess set had to be confiscated, although after due consideration it was decided that under the circumstances it would be best if the latter was to be destroyed outright; it brought a suitably punitive element into play.

This latter task they had set the chess piece’s creator herself; under close supervision she had had to chew each piece in turn then spit the resultant pulp into her bedpan to mingle with her waste.

The missing blanking plate had been quickly refitted of course and the privilege of bedpan usage taken from her; she had been put in diapers and had been kept that way ever since. From that day forth she had taken to bouts of uncontrollable weeping and to squatting on the cell floor with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them, continuously rocking to and fro in soiled diapers and rubber pants; when not stood in the corner or slaving in the workroom that is.

All in all it had finished her as a disruptive influence; a full three years on and she had yet to demonstrate any further sign of dissent. She was quiet, submissive, obedient and, above all, servile. In short, she had been tamed, domesticated, for want of a better word. In its way her long-term confinement in the workhouse was something of a mercy; after all, it was questionable whether after so long in institutionalised care she could ever function as a free living individual in society at large.

Susan Takes the Lead (on Her Knees)

Susan Stringer was as encumbered by the brevity of the chain linking her ankles as to be reduced to an arthritic, slow and awkward shuffle, despite being on her knees. Gradually she edged her way alongside the file of anxiously waiting young women, the nylon fabric of each of their dresses brushing softly yet coldly against her upper arm wherever the flare of the skirt brought its hem to encroach into her path. Each and every such contact, however fleeting, had the power to induce a fresh shiver of dread. Each pair of those ugly sweaty-plastic bottle-green Mary-Janes grazing past the side of her knee gave notice: She was one girl nearer to those bars. She was one girl nearer to the disciplinary embrace of that soft white couch, waiting for her, crouching beyond that unyielding plastic-coated steel barrage. She was one girl nearer to that couch’s ‘humane’ restraints and the versatility of its ‘infinitely adjustable posture settings’. Most of all, she was one girl closer to the soul-breaking slash of the senior wardress’ cane.

How like nervously-cringing, broken fillies the were, they all were; once she would have sneered, now she only wondered exactly how long it would be before she too would be standing there like that, dressed like that. And yet she hoped that day wouldn’t be too long in coming now. Medical research, be damned: it was slave, labour, nothing more than that! It was exploitation masquerading as scientific endeavour, it was a culture of brutality and sadism hidden behind sham-experimental psycho-babble credentials...and yet still she wondered; how long would it be before they allowed her that, before they allowed her to slave away in that sweatshop of theirs?

Despite the blinkering effect of their bonnets, with their heads bowed as they were she knew all eyes would follow as she passed by, even if only catching an oblique side and rear view of her shame.

She could emphasise with their frustration; their senses screamed out for fulfilment, for some respite, however slight, from the tedium of the place. And there she was, a figure shuffling on her knees, a tantalising distraction, a confection out of reach yet so easily devoured with but a turn of a head or the twist of a neck -such a little thing and yet an action none would dare take. She knew now, she understood; it was a moment of revelation, quite literally life changing. She could actually feel the tension running through that line, building as she passed; those personalities lying buried, their curiosity curbed, their instincts held in check. She understood now, really understood; this was what they had meant by discipline, real discipline, all along. And this was to be her fate, too.

This was imprisonment beyond the physical, beyond walls, bars and locks. It was inescapable, as inescapable as was the conclusion: she was part of it now, as much part of it as these five other poor crushed wretches. What was more, she would remain so for as long as it might amuse those in charge to keep her there - there was nothing she could do about it, she would have no say in the matter whatsoever.

She would soon be secured and immobilised over that bench of theirs and caned and caned and caned, until she was broken. And then it would all be repeated; had she not now earned two subsequent punishments after all? In between there would be two strokes of the cane across her bare buttocks to be endured twice a day while standing and grasping her ankles, whatever her behaviour. That latter so-called ‘scheduled caning’ was set to be continued well into the ‘foreseeable future’, whatever that implied.

Soon she would be as pliable as the rest, obediently bent over her needlework in their sweatshop, then quietly and uncomplainingly returning to her cell, day after day - as if such drudgery and confinement had ever been her life.

Before her, the senior wardress raised her right hand, a clear indication that Susan, having at long last reached the head of the queue, should halt. She gestured to the nurse bringing up the rear, smilingly pointing down at Susan’s legs, to where the stretchy latex crotch of her baggy, bloomer-styled knickers hung down heavily between them, swinging as she moved:

“I think we’ll have those down before we proceed any further, if you don’t mind nurse”.

“Yes of course, madam.”

“We might as well let some air get to her, for our benefit if not hers. It’ll give the smell time to dissipate; she looks to have done something quite unsavoury there in her knickers”.

“Quite so, madam, I’ll deal with it at once” The nurse, nodding in agreement, was already squatting behind the kneeling girl and turning a small silver key that she had just that moment succeeded in wiggling into a keyhole, the latter discreetly mounted in a thickening of the rubber at the rear of the waistband of the girl’s knickers.

There came a barely discernible sound, a faintly elastic-band twang, as the broad waistband released its grip, spring-like, freeing the previously tightly compressed flesh above her hips.

A reddened imprint of some two centimetres width, encircling the narrowest point of her torso, was left as a reminder of that band’s enforcement of this new - to Susan anyway - cruel and peculiarly institutional form of discipline that they termed ‘toilet training’.

It was a horrible mess, the smell atrocious; Susan couldn’t help but retch. The woman known as ‘the senior wardress’ raised her eyebrows in mock surprise:

“Yes, quite disgusting isn’t it”

It was a rhetorical question, surely? Surely... But, no; not content with one-way verbal humiliation the woman desired to ‘rub her nose in it’ as it were:

“I said it’s quite disgusting isn’t it?” The woman’s eyes scanned up and down the line of girls as she spoke before again settling, with undisguised relish, on her kneeling victim, their lively sparkle contrasting starkly with the latter’s dully-despairing dead-fish matte. “It is quite, quite filthy. Quite foul, actually”, she insisted, the senior wardress pressing on with her verbal battering and clearly expecting some sort of response from the girl, despite the latter’s very obvious mortification. “Well, don’t you find it disgusting?” There could be no denying that it was, though Susan was loath to verbalise the revulsion she naturally felt in the form she knew by instinct was required of her and in front of others that, in other circumstances, she might have regarded as her peers.

The diaper lay open to the air now and encircled by a pool of loosely fallen white latex folds, the rubber piling around each knee in a series of undulating terraces where the bloomers legs lay folded back and crumpled against the flooring. Susan, being closest to her own mess, was particularly affected by what lay there revealed; it was far, far more then the yellow tinged heavy-drenched mush of wetted terry-cloth, though that would have been bad enough. A spreading, thickly-twirled, pat lay sputtered there; the legacy of the soft, pulpy, part-liquid diet they had her on and of the efficacy of the stool-softening suppositories that had been prescribed her. Its offensive slurry-like consistency couldn’t fail but engender revulsion, even in those possessed of the strongest of stomachs.

She had to answer finally, she always had to in the end:

“Y,yes m,m,ma, madam”. It was not enough; clearly it had lacked that essential element of self-denigration they were after. The senior wardress glared down at her:

“Yes madam? Yes madam? Yes what, you stupid girl? What are you trying to say, you stammering imbecile? “

Deep down, she bristled at that last remark. It was unnecessarily cruel and, furthermore, downright damaging; that she did have a stammer was largely their doing, she felt sure now. Every such run-in seemed to leave her less able to elucidate confidently without fumbling her words, sputtering and stumbling like some...well, yes, imbecile. But that impediment had been one of the things they had said she would be receiving treatment for while she was here; it was part of the package linked to her volunteering for the ‘study’. It had been only a mild affliction in the first instance, having developed during her father’s illness and even then it had only made major inroads once he had passed away and she came under her aunt’s care.

She wondered now whether the two of them, her aunt and her psychotherapist acquaintance, had known what they were about when they had persuaded her to volunteer for the project; surly they could have had no idea of the nature of the research undertaken here.

As so often before, that dark seed called doubt began to germinate somewhere at the back of her mind; why hadn’t her aunt been in contact, especially since her committal had been so arbitrarily extended - surely that hadn’t been anticipated? Why hadn’t her doctor visited her? She had said she would; she was her aunt’s friend; she at least, could be trusted. What the hell was her stepmother up to while she was stuck in here, what was happening about her inheritance, the house, the family business? Her aunt was supposed to be sorting all of that out for her. Volunteering for the project was supposed to give her a break from all of that while others dealt with it on her behalf, not to mention providing her with substantial funds, certainly enough to support her at university and to pay for legal action, if such became necessary at some later stage. University!...There was a thought: What was happening about her university place? Were they keeping a place open for her? Did they have any idea what she was doing, had they even been told that she still intended to register for her course?

She could feel the familiar pounding of her heart, the tightening, frightening, strangulating sensation about her throat and the beads of sweat breaking out on her forehead: she was entering an episode of panic. She knew what to do, it was instinctive now; she had to disconnect from that quizzical pathway, curtail those thoughts of considerations that were so obviously beyond her power to control, leave such decisions to others, accept their judgement, and accept it without question. Most of all, she was to focus on her surroundings, the reality of this world, this secure world, wait to be told what to do. That other world, that world outside those padded walls and steel bars...well, it had nothing to do with her.

For now, though, she had been told what to do; she had to answer...and quickly: “Y,y,yes m,m,madam I,I,I m,me, mean y,yes it, it’s d, di, disgusting m,m,madam”

“Right, well, now that we all agree, you can get in line and perhaps we can get on at last.”

Now obliged to drag this extra hobble between her knees, the bulky, saturated terry-cloth diaper sliding across the floor on its raft of distending latex, Susan shuffled into position, kneeling with her nose mere centimetres from the bars of the security grille to the fore while five uniformed girls stood stiffly to her rear. With the latter, well tamed and with heads bowed, dressed in their green and white striped prison dresses and identical in every way, right down to their hairstyle, a tidier, more tightly disciplined, line it would be hard to imagine. All were silent save for the weeping girl kneeling at the head and all knew, only too well, how that soft, gentle snivelling would soon be displaced by earnest begging, all-out throat-shredding screams of mercy and for clemency and tears that would flow in floods and torrents until no more were left to come.

That she had retained any kind of emphatic viewpoint in the shadow of such a prophetically grim vision and with her young heart made now so leaden with dread, while all too easy to dismiss as naiveté, surely stood as much as a commemoration of her strength of character, even if that fortitude was fast failing.

But if she imagined she sensed some reciprocation in their gaze, in the eyes of those poor unfortunates, of which, in truth, she was now one, that she felt boring into the back of her head, she was much mistaken. In such belief lay true naïveté. They did not feel pity; how could one expect any, this side of sainthood, in their situation to pity another. They felt no sorrow in the toppling of this rebel, nor horror in seeing her on her knees, nor even in the certain knowledge of what was to befall her; it was an experience they all knew and remembered only too well.

Nor would they have welcomed her empathy; not that there was hatred in their hearts but there was blame, they did blame her. They blamed her for her stubbornness, for the times they had been punished for her disobedience. But most of all they blamed her for bringing it on herself, for being so ridiculous as to have believed that there might be tolerated here disobedience in any form. In that kneeling girl’s inner strength they saw nothing other than stupidity; indiscipline was ridiculous, disobedience, beyond consideration. In one way or another they had all been freed of such misguided stupidity, every last one of them, and cleansed of every last drop.

After all, had they not all witnessed the girl’s histrionics? Had they not all displayed similar recalcitrance when first they had been confronted by the punishment couch and had not that rebellious reluctance been crushed in every instance? It was understandable; no matter how often one had suffered the cane, no matter how many strokes one had received while traditionally bent across a school desk or standing and grasping one’s ankles, it did not, it could not, engender the fear realised by being strapped down, of being helplessly restrained throughout as long and as harsh a punishment as they might care to administer.

It was all so ridiculous, quite pointless; the security was peerless and their control, absolute in its scope. They were quite expert in quenching a young woman’s spirit; from toilet privileges to sleep, food and even water, if necessary all could, and would, be withdrawn in turn until submission was ensured. Any transgression, any sense of non-compliance - and even obedience if reluctant and hesitant - on behalf of one girl ensured that all suffered as one. The possibility that they might shortly witness such rebellion filled them, one and all, with dread.

The emotional conflagration of the girl’s previous refusal had come to them through the workroom’s bars, the scene accompanied by the repeated jabbing and jolting of electric charge through the silvery linkages retaining their ankles and through the work-bench’s seat, the latter’s up-swelling saddle-like profile ensuring a good electrical contact with its occupant’s conductive-plastic gusseted knickers. That girl had been to blame, for their suffering then - and was culpable for her own suffering now. They could only hope that her suffering would continue now upon that couch, through her willing bondage and throughout the caning to follow - the possibility of her refusal was not something to be contemplated.

Moving Off - Moving On

From her left and close to eye level, there came a series of flickering silvery lightning flashes as mirror-finished keys, brightly-strobing under the stark all-pervading lighting, were twirled about, swinging from a jailer’s ring of equally burnished perfection. Rattling and ringing discordantly like some satanic wind-chime in the woman’s hands, having now been released from the spring-clip on her belt, the latter drew the girl’s eyes as might the mesmerist’s pendulum, yet equally invited punishment should she turn to face it.

In the section in which she had previously resided such things as keys and key rings would have been muffled, as a matter of procedure, by a thin protective coating of a plasticized lacquer; the preservation of mind-numbing silence was the priority there. Here the exact opposite was de rigueur: gates slammed and hammered shut with unmistakable finality, locks clunked and clicked with menacingly-mediaeval intent, their mechanisms crunching and grinding as if to deny the electronic smoothness of their true functioning - and, of course, keys jangled. There was a trade-off at play here, between the wearily wearing starvation of the senses and the stifling psychology of confinement.

Before her, the security gate swung back and away to her right, its movement accompanied by a faint hiss, something she had not previously noticed but that was, perhaps, audible to her now because of her position. With the kneeling and shuffling figure of Susan Stringer to the fore, leading the way, the short green and white crocodile of girls was ushered through, shepherded from the rear by the same young nurse who, only minutes earlier, Susan had assorted and who, in her turn, had so decisively conquered the would-be rebel. The senior wardress, having been obliged to step aside in order both to unlock the gate and make clear the girls’ path, now turned so as to face the passing file side on, presenting something of a regal aspect as she inspected and appraised her handiwork.

As for Susan, to be in such close proximity to this powerful woman was as if to have her nerves drawn inexorably through a shredder. And she was being forced to pass with the woman as close on her left as to have the front of the latter’s skirt actually stroke her cheek as she went, the girl involuntarily shivering as its soft polyester caress was interrupted by the smooth chill of one of the dress’s icily-transparent buttons. She passed close enough to make out the finely woven nylon-glossed texture of the woman’s stockings; dark-tan, seamed, ‘fully-fashioned’ and of a somewhat impractical ten denier, their vintage styling nonetheless perfectly befitted her uniform’s classical lines. She passed close enough to fancy that she glimpsed her own reflection in the dark-pooled patent-leather gloss of the court shoes the woman favoured, medium-heeled yet bestowing an imposing stature nonetheless. Was that scent on the air? Was that some residue of perfume, some trace of the woman’s life beyond these walls? There had been something there, just fleetingly, hanging on the air, she was sure - just fleetingly there had definitely been something, something flowery, and then it was gone. Imagination? She couldn’t be sure; she was numb with fear now, unable to think straight.

Up ahead the punishment bench loomed large, its straps and fastenings and restraints hanging like the sticky fragments of some terrible web.

Sinister slivers of pierced white leather and bands of padded soft plastic hung, each pared with others of their ilk and adorned with the heavy dewy silver globules that were the buckles and the fastenings...and all of it waiting patiently to ensnare, waiting so quietly, so, so patiently... it waited as it always had done, as if it had been waiting for her all her life, as if it had always been waiting for her, specifically for her.

As bidden they snaked across the hall, the green and white file flowing along something of a flattened diagonal until encountering the nearside of the punishment couch, whereupon they passed along the length of its squat plinth towards the wall of vertical floor-to-ceiling white steel bars that cut across the width of the hall at that end. The latter served to set aside the intense industrially-claustrophobic environment of the ‘workroom’ from this, more airy, space.

The latter’s official medicalized appellation, being the ‘Exercise and Physical Education Hall’, somehow was endowed with a certain legitimacy by the apparent retention of its aseptic medical heritage. Indeed, despite the somewhat farcical notion of the caning of softly-rounded fecund, ripe feminine buttocks as being a definition of exercise, it must be pointed out that, more often than not, the hall resounded to the drill mistress’s shrill voice, her whistle blasts and her clapping hands rather then the whistling-crack of the cane across taut flesh. However, it must also be said that the rustling of her desperately perspiring leotard-clad young ladies as they star jumped, knee-thrusted and jack-knifed to exhaustion at her command was not infrequently interrupted by the encouraging swish of rattan and the yelp of a lazy miscreant.

Passing now across the foot of that dreaded couch the crocodile discarded its tragic pinkish-white head; the sad squat figure with head hanging low and heavy and dragging her soiled diaper between her knees was left behind, muttering and gently weeping, fervently wishing that the attendant humiliation might yet prove fatal - preferably imminently.

The gentle, three-fingered taping, coming as it did upon her right shoulder, had been well enough anticipated: the woman’s follow-up gesturing, her impatiently flicked-open palm, thrice repeated, was rendered largely obsolescent, the performance more for effect than anything else. She turned a quarter-circle on the spot, carefully, stiffly, the manoeuvre terminating with her nose a few precious centimetres from the couch’s foot and finding herself eyeing along its strap-crossed length from a viewpoint close on parallel to its glossed-white plastic surface. The latter lay stretched out before her, a trick of perspective, her eye-level exaggerating and elongating its apparent length; being festooned with languidly-flopping restraints, in one strangely surreal moment it brought to her mind the dream-scene notion of a sun scorched highway, and of so many collapsed bridges - albeit ones comprising of soft nylon webbing.

The disinfected and aseptic sterility of the couch’s PVC surface filled her nostrils, even in such close proximity to her own open diaper; she understood now it is cradling soft resilience, could feel the pain of those that had come before, that had suffered in its embrace.

Mostly she could taste her own fear, her own dread. It was no longer limited to that reserved for the receipt of physical chastisement in itself but extended now to the horror of being restrained for that punishment, of being rendered helpless in her agony, of being held in bondage. It brought an unfamiliar metallic taste with it infecting her saliva, it brought a useless tremor to her limbs, it robbed her of her breath - it stole the very air from her lungs.

On her right her five anonymous compatriots, having drawn up alongside the couch’s far edge and having been turned so as to face the upcoming spectacle, now stood near shoulder-to-shoulder; their dresses’ oddly-outmoded ‘lamb chop’ puffed sleeves partially compressing at the shoulders at their contact. Skirts hissed and shuffled and rustled together, nylon slithering against nylon. The cold, heavy-gauge, green and white striped fabric of their uniforms, overlapping and rolling together at the extreme of their skirts’ flare, added an almost musical contribution above and beyond the more usual gentle hiss of nylon slipping and sliding frictionlessly over tan-stockinged thighs.

Unwilling witnesses, all, they would nevertheless be obliged to watch the desecration of this miscreants tight and pristinely-white globes. All would be forced to examine the furrowed corrugations developing in red and then blue, courtesy of the senior wardress’s cane, all would have to watch the splitting of that fine silk-like skin and the tanning of that so, so tender flesh - and with the sure and certain knowledge that the girl would never be the same again. All would be obliged to endure the girl’s screams and to relive their own pain through the unbidden reignited recollections that would surely come, and without recourse to covering their ears; despite the discipline that undoubtedly would have prevailed to keep their hands by their sides, each girl’s wrists were quite tightly cuffed behind her.

No ‘medically humane’ restraints these, no pretence here - these were real judicial handcuffs as was only proper for a judicial punishment. These were single-piece high-security manacles formed in machined stainless steel from a single solid block; the hinged closure was the only moving part and their security and reliability were second to none. The wrist-holes had been formed at a ninety degree angle to each other such that the wearer’s wrists, when secured, where held crossed-over behind her, further limiting movement; the result was to instil an unsettling sense of extreme vulnerability into the detained subject.

Nervously Susan glanced up. Before her, the brisk figure of the senior wardress was pacing up and down the length of the couch, tugging here, twisting there, checking the security of its bonds, testing the adjustability of its varied attachments. The channelled and contoured leg and arm rests, the lockable foot stirrups, the cushioned toroidal head support - all had to be inspected and pre-adjusted where necessary. The head support, in particular, seemed to command the woman’s attention to an inordinately disproportionate extent. It’s toroidal design was a modification more often seen adorning an aromatherapy table; here it allowed for subject to be secured facedown with her head restrained while leaving the face and, most importantly, the eyes unobstructed and framed within its doughnut shaped lumen.

A tradition had evolved whereby the miscreant would initially be restrained prone and stretched out flat, with her arms together and drawn above the head and her legs stretched out straight to the rear. Only then would the necessary postural adjustments be made.

The leg rests and restraints would be adjusted first; drawing apart and then, hinging at the knee joint, coming forward while bringing the subject’s knees up and alongside her torso and enforcing a posture not entirely unlike an extreme and tightened duplication of a jockey’s stance. Similarly, the arms would then be drawn back, bending at the elbows, morphing the unhappy miscreant into something of a crouching posture.

The couch top or at least that region forward of the girl’s waist, would then be tilted quite sharply downwards. Being of a segmented construction this could be accomplished so as to induce an extreme arcing curvature along the subject’s back between her waist and shoulders, while simultaneously tilting the pelvis slightly downwards towards the rear, the latter adjustment ensuring a pleasant rounding of the buttocks and producing an aspect more pleasing to the eye then nature unaided might have provided for.

Usually at this point one of the wardress’s nurse-assistants would further tweak the leg rests, drawing the girl’s knees still further forward thus augmenting and perfecting the enticing rounding and tautening of the buttocks and at the same time drawing apart the latter, often to the point where upon the coral rosebud of the subject’s anus would be placed most prominently on display, let alone the fig lying below.

Finally there would come an upturning of the headrest, the latter action bending back the miscreants neck to its utmost extent and forcing her to face forward despite the downward tilt of her torso - all the better to catch the image, or rather images, presented her on the floor-standing flat-screen video display that would then be wheeled up before her. Usually a split-screen presentation would be on offer, the girls tear-streaked and pale pain-racked countenance to the left and the rearward view to the right, so that she might watch the cane wheals develop and her skin split. The latter shot would on occasion be pulled back so as to highlight to the miscreant the finer points of the technique being used to correct her; perhaps the expert wielding of the rattan or the precision of the tawse’s swing or even the splaying of the birch rods.

There would be little to differentiate the upcoming scene from this habitual approach: The senior wardress having judged the time to be right to begin the last act - her charge’s nerves having been suitably thoroughly stretched, drawn and twisted - accordingly now brought her arms up beneath the girl’s armpits, harrying her charge to her feet while simultaneously gesturing with her head for the aid of her two nurses - the manoeuvre long perfected. Together they bundled the girl forwards until the couch’s rounded edge bit deep into the flesh of her soft yielding abdomen, her fate now securely in the hands of her deity - and those of the Senior Wardress; they were much the same here.

A hand pressed smartly down between her shoulder blades, two more gripped her wrists, irresistibly drawing the same out ahead of her; still two more tightened around her ankles, simultaneously lifting her feet clear of the floor and stretching out her legs.

A broad band - thickly padded and covering perhaps some fifteen centimetres of flesh - was pulled tight across the small of her back. Simultaneously she felt similar bands, although of less breadth, encircle each wrist and ankle; struggle was now pointless, quite without hope.

A thickly-padded band of a breadth the equal of that crossing her lower back now tightened across her upper back - just shy of her shoulders - and was quickly joined in its task by straps running around the top of each thigh - just below that pert little bottom’s overhang - and still others running across the back of each knee and behind each elbow. Lastly a band of thick tough latex, spanning the majority of the back of her head, was tightened by way of a couple of nylon straps and buckles, pressing her forehead and lower jaw deep into the resilient padded doughnut surround of the head support.

She was bound, fully bound - and a more stringent bondage one would be hard-pressed to imagine. Seemingly all about her were at work at once; ratcheted wheels were being twirled, locking wing-nuts tightened and adjustments tweaked. Slowly, irresistibly, her limbs were being dragged into position, her posture moulded so as to best suit her vindictive and implacable tormentor’s ends - to best facilitate the delicious kiss of the wardress’s cane.

And all too soon that woman was drawing back her arm, the cane quivering and drooping slightly under its own weight; the extreme flexibility, inherent in its plastic fabrication, was now well evidenced in the natural curvature of that downward swoop. Then it was in motion, curving back through the air, a whiplash of a cane stroke, running around and across both buttocks, right across the resilient plumpness of their centre.

On the video cruelly streaming before young Susan Stringer’s eyes, the girl’s mouth gaped wide, violating an intimacy of past dentistry, even as the scream came as a disproportionately acute assault on her hearing; this was a new type of pain, a newly-added form of pain but real pain nonetheless, and self explanatory in its nature. The tiny microphone they had hung beneath her chin, the headphones they had clamped so tightly to her head, these things were no longer a source of puzzlement; they were a source of chastisement. There was no mystique here, their function was now only all too clear - she would have to remain silent throughout or risk damaging her own hearing, perhaps permanently. In reality, though, no such risk existed - the level had been set just shy of that threshold. The psychological damage inflicted through the girl’s belief in her impending deafness was another matter entirely - that was something to be strived for.

Nor could she expect to escape the imagery presented her, not any more than the line of witnessing girls might avoid the painful tableau they were being forced to view. Any attempt at closing the eyes, on behalf of any one of them, herself included, if observed - and it would be - would cause the same punishment to be visited upon all of them equally; along with a repeat of the chastisement for the miscreant herself. And they were being very closely scrutinised... very closely.

Again and again and again, the cane slashed down across her buttocks, the angle always varying; straight across their middle, slanting upwards, slanting downwards, crisscrossing at various angles. The cuts came from first one side and then the other, the woman alternately switching from one side of the couch to the other and changing hands accordingly.

The announced tariff had been six strokes, but that line had been crossed long ago - and, anyway, who was counting? The answer to that particular rhetorical question, of course, was that nobody was; a caning meant a caning here, exactly that - particularly when a caning was one such as this, a special caning, the type of caning given when a rebellious spirit needed curbing. It would end when it ended, it was simple as that. In turn that could usually be taken to mean, whenever the senior wardress’s arm - or arms in actuality, the woman being famously ambidextrous - tired or her interest waned. Mostly it would be the former of course.

Then at last there came a pause in the proceedings. For a brief moment some vestigial shard of the girl’s shattered hopes caught a sliver of sunlight; perhaps here was an ending to it...Then even that glimmer dulled and faded; what if it was merely some subtle enhancement of the punishment, to further shred her nerves? It was a question that in the event was answered far sooner than she would have liked; the low whooshing sweeping whistle was picked up by the microphone and fed in its amplified form to her like everything else, the sharp crack terminating it coming to her through the headphones like a rifle’s report and accompanied by a sizzling white-hot lick of flame as if a long thin branding iron had been dragged across the back of both thighs.

Her instinct was to screw up her eyes, to squeeze them shut as much against the physical pain as the psychological pain of seeing her once so beautiful and perfect bottom now finely crisscrossed with a tattooed patchwork of thin swollen reddish-purple wheals, some of them actually dotted with little blood-red beads where the skin had been split, and so damaged that her punisher had been obliged to work her way down the back of her thighs in order to inflict further suffering. Somehow she forced her eyes open, as she had managed throughout, adopting a strangely doll-like and unnatural wide eyed stare as a result. She also tried, desperately tried, to suppress the scream on her lips, as she had managed to on occasion. But those occasions on which she was spared that dreadful aural aspect of her punishment were becoming decidedly rarer; now that nerve shattering scream, her own scream, stabbed into her as if a stiletto blade were being plunged into her eardrums, threatening to elicit a new scream all of its own making in response.

Then came something new; stepping back from her target, so as to place more distance between herself and that inviting peach, the woman took careful aim, very careful and considered aim. Some moments drifted past before, finally, she brought the implement scything-in, the finely tapered cane curling across and around the centre of a single cheek. She was expertly now bringing the cane’s tapered tip whipping into the sensitive flesh between those now throbbing and swollen globes, the rounded tip catching the girl’s tender pink rosebud dead centre. Again the pain of the punishment was emphasised and enhanced by the girl’s own scream returning to her amplified and tearing through her ears as a result.

Then the wardress returned her attention to the back of the girl’s thighs, slowly working her way down to the young woman’s knees but alternating each such stroke with one that again brought the cane’s tip across the girl’s anus, continuing, throughout, her practice of alternating sides, left then right then left again. All the time she was watching the girl’s eyes on the video display, knowing that her assistants would be doing the same for the others; if any eyelid fell or a gaze was averted, even for an instant, then there would be a repeat performance earned, and not only for this one, but for all of them.

And this one had another such session to look forward to in any case, whatever the outcome; it was harsh, practically inescapable, but it was that very inevitability, the hopelessness of the situation, which ultimately would be responsible for breaking her. She looked down to where the soiled diaper now swung in its latex hammock, hovering ready between the girl’s ankles where the latter protruded just proud of the couch’s end: that and the constant humiliation, she thought. She made a mental note to make more stringent still the girl’s ‘toilet training’ - such a sensitive soul, a better therapeutic candidate she could hardly have wished for.

Pausing now and turning, she passed the cane across the girl’s back for one of the waiting nurses to hold, receiving from the second, almost in the same movement, a small white plastic tray in return.

For one insanely ecstatic moment, to Susan it appeared that that the game was concluded; it was the cruellest of delusions...The warm up had concluded, the game was barely beginning. The respite was of course welcomed, but came with a price: behind the prone and helpless girl’s back her tormentor was now busying herself with a small screw-topped tube, squeezing out a lengthy pearl-grey snake of gel. A thickly oozing glob of lubricant remaining curled on her latex protected palm and held in reserve, she went to work, having first transferred a satisfyingly large dollop of the gel onto the index finger of her other hand.

The intrusion, when it came, barely registered; Susan gasped at the contrasting sensation of the chill counterpointed against her fire-ant-kissed flesh but, initially at least, that was the full extent of her reaction. The woman’s finger was like slickly-oiled velvet, wriggling and insinuating and easing its way past the tightly puckered musculature of her anus. Then the motion changed: in and out, in and out, in and out, - an anal imitation of full intercourse, the woman’s thumb now replicating that act, at least in part, at the more conventional site below. At both sites the gel’s irritant properties were soon coming to the fore, causing the girl to squirm more and more urgently in her bonds as the ‘treatment’ progressed.

Finally, as abruptly as it had begun, it ceased. Another short respite followed before Susan gasped anew; sharper, more urgently now. The three thick suppositories slipped in quite effortlessly, one after the other in quick succession; the laxative, the stool-softener and the muscle relaxant in turn. And, new to their formulation, it would be the exquisitely-intense irritant component that would be the hardest for her to bear; a synergistic enhancement, in trials its addition had transformed the medication’s efficacy, as a whole, out of all recognition.

To Susan’s horror their motive was all too apparent, if numbly unbelievable: they were hoping for her to add to the contents of that loosely hanging diaper between her knees before her time was up!

That they would undoubtedly succeed, that was the really terrible thing, the sheer hopeless inevitability of it all; after all, how was she to clamp down on that urging, that cramping ache already growing in the depth of her bowels, with that woman’s cane continuingly sizzling across her bottom? She was going to be made to humiliate herself beyond bearing...

The time was up. Behind her the swish of the cane scything back and forth through the air signalled the coming storm; practice strokes, the woman switching hands with each impotent stroke, flexing her wrists and re-warming her sinews. Then she stopped and all fell silent. The woman stood quietly now, sliding her fingers up and down the unusual and peculiarly sensual smoothness of her favoured implement, reflecting: Rattan, plastic or glass-fibre - what did it matter? It was flexibility that really mattered, after all, suppleness; and this thing was far more supple than the finest traditional rattan cane she’d ever come upon, even if pickled in brine beforehand.

Then, yet again switching hands, her choice made, she raised the cane with renewed purpose, way back behind her right shoulder and fairly quivering with pent-up tension. The thought ran through her mind, a mind long corrupted by the unbridled power handed her in this place, as had always been their intention: “just a few more strokes now, just to make the point. A few more strokes and she’ll be finished, broken for good”. For a moment she paused, holding her stance and watching the video screen as it mirrored her subject’s anticipatory nervous flinching, the facial ticks magnified and detailed in their rendering. Having allowed herself those scant few luxurious seconds spent savouring the delicious juxtaposition of her charge’s angst-animated features against her lithe body’s enforced docile acceptance; she slashed in the first stroke of this new phase. The final stroke? Decidedly not! The penultimate stroke? She would see...perhaps, if she got the result she was looking for - but more likely it would take five or six more.

One more time a scream tore through the air, seemingly reverberating around the chamber despite the latter’s anechoic properties. It was ear-splitting - and no more so than to the young woman who’s once perfectly flawless buttocks now wore more than one permanent reminder of this correction...

The shameful conclusion had been inescapable from the outset of course; nothing short of her total and utter degradation would have slaked that woman’s thirst sufficiently.

A second brief intermission had been introduced into the proceedings wherein the five other young women had been led away to the workroom, the iron clang of the door shattering the sobbing tear-filled near-silence behind them - and ringing painfully in the restrained miscreant’s tortured ears. Once seated at their stations they had been readied for their day’s work, their wrist restraints replaced by the manacles that waited hanging and tethered by short lengths of light stainless-steel chain from the worktop - links of sufficient length so as to provide leeway enough for the needs of their work, yet sufficiently restrictive as to help cultivate the requisite atmosphere of control and incarceration.

Brief the delay might have been, but sufficient it had been, nonetheless, for the medicinal qualities of those suppositories to make their effects known; three or four more cuts of the cane brought skilfully up and under her buttocks’ overhang and it was over - ended in the only way it could have.

Jumbled thoughts ran through Susan’s head, some compassionate, some less so and all hopelessly illogical: The poor things; their day’s labour stretched out before them, as endless as it would be both arduous and monotonous. Yet those others had in effect been granted one boon at least; they had been spared the full revulsion of proximity, the analytical detail of the video-screen’s close-up. Their view of that singularly unsanitary grand finale had come from behind their confinement of steel bars - close enough for the majority, she would have wagered.

Yet even in that final surrender there had been absolution, of a sort. There had been shame, such deep shame, unimaginably deep. There had been humiliation, and of a magnitude that had left no corner of her soul un-illuminated, no nook unexplored. There had been all these things, of course there had been, but then that mortification had been cut through by relief, lightened almost to the point of elation - it was over! Over!

Now, back in her cell, she could distinctly recall her body shaking in ecstasy, insanely devout in its intensity, the darling embrace of a pseudo-religious near orgasmic state, her eyes fluttering closed in relief. Head shaking in numbly naive incomprehension questions formed, then fell silent upon her lips - talking was forbidden in the cells. Why, for God’s sake, had she let that happen? Why had she been so stupid? Why? Oh for God’s sake why...oh why, oh why?

The tears burst through again, as they had sporadically ever since that caning, exploding between her fingers, her hands cupped to her face, her wrists for once left unrestrained... why was that? Was it so that she might more fully express her emotional collapse for their benefit, for their voyeuristic delight? Could it really be for their entertainment or perhaps that they might better assess and gloat over the trauma they had caused her? Or was it merely to grant her greater scope for potential disobedience, that they might punish her again and again; were those metal bindings merely to be replaced by the less tangible bonds of ever stricter discipline?

What was she to do? What were any of them to do? What could they do - what could anybody do? And it was all her fault! She had no one else to blame for it but herself. She was alone again, alone and guilty, as guilty as sin itself. Alone and isolated in her circle of penance - and the world, her white-cell-corner world, was spinning, whirling and spinning insanely around her...

It was worse now, far worse: she was huddled in sobbing dispair, arms wrapped around her knees, crying uncontrollably, inconsolably and staring at the thick black circle embossed upon the floor before her. Where by rights she knew her feet should be that inky perimeter enclosed nothing now but white empty space. Already the alarm had sounded; the warning pip-pip-pip had been and gone long ago.

And now the nursery rhyme had begun, that gentle ice-cream-vendor-like glockenspiel chiming; the same few notes going round and round and round. Already she could make out the distant cries and entreaties of the other inmates coming through the soft blanket of white noise round her - she understood their distress, she could not yet understand its cause. But one thing she did know with absolute certainty; retribution, correction, would be following on close behind. Punishment was on its way, another punishment! Oh God no!... No more!... No more!

She had to do something, anything; for a moment she tried to think, to concentrate, to consider. Then she sobbed some more, a shuddering lung-stretching sobbing, a soul-wracking staccato sobbing, shoulders shrugging in time - it was the one thing she knew she could do, the only thing - and she had to do something, anything...