Meredith’s Care: An Ecclesiastical Affair

(Forced into a submissive role, dominated, spanked and caned in shame clothing, PVC and latex,. enema and diaper discipline, institutional punishment caning and spanking in leg callipers, leg braces and plaster cast bondage by dominant nurses in uniform)

(The scene: A small, scrupulously clean, sterile little hospital ward - and a tale within a tale, set a little over one week previously)

Meredith Hewson lay lost in her thoughts, quite literally petrified and frozen in place, the bondage of her nightmares seemingly mirrored by the immobility of this new reality. This was how it always started nowadays: the dreams, the nightmares, and then the awakening. Always it felt as if a new reality had been built around her while she slept, a false reality, an illusion, a reality in which her helplessness was almost indiscernible from - and as complete as - her nightmare world. Always, as if for the first time, she would glance down and along her prone body - and the shocking understanding of the nature of her hopelessness, the origin of her immobility, would bear down on her like some dead-weight concrete slab.

Arms set in plaster casts, modern soft resin-based casts, could do nothing but disobey her, lying straight and at 30° to her sides. Legs, similarly encumbered, rested spread wide and angled down toward the bed’s lower corners, with knees bent at right angles and her ankles kept elevated in stirrups. Even her fingers were held, each individually wrapped in its own cast and her hand splayed out, fan-like and useless.

Memories spilled and unfurled like discarded spooled celluloid; edited Dadaist highlights of confusion inter-cut with fantastical images of sojourns in some grotesquely abusive world, seemingly plucked from the mind of Poe and realised in the inflamed-red and bruised-blue pallet of chastised flesh.

Meredith Hewson; known as ‘Mushroom’ to friends and acquaintances both, a tiny squeaky little thing - bouncy and bright as a gambolling lamb and with a smile like summer breeze, nature had surely destined her for more than this. Yet, a Shropshire lass, born and bred - and with a less than agreeable home-life to look back on - it was a somewhat hackneyed tail she had to tell. Of course it would be simplest to lay the blame on the faux glamour portrayed in all those television shows; it had drawn her in, spiralling with moth-like lethality. The trends and bright fashions of Camden Market, the bars and bistros of Covent Garden; these were aspirational beacons of irresistible brilliance and far too dazzling for one of her innocence to see the darkness lurking behind, far too beguiling.

To many she had been the welcoming smile behind the horseshoe bar, pulling pints with child-like wide-eyed glee; those tiny hands as pale and as perfect as porcelain - like that of those pub hand-pumps with their country scene decoration, all hunting pinks and running foxes, that her fingers could never quite curl around.

She had brightened the day of many a jaded pen-pusher - her short stature obliging her to stretch for the ale-pumps, the effort causing those pert breasts to be thrust forward, the flesh bouncing, the cleavage distinct to the most bleary drunken eye. Her pretty unworldly features would be moon-mist-lit by the shafts of diffused sunlight filtering through the curling fern-like motifs of the Victorian acid-etched glass - the traditional public house windows and glass partitions had been retained here, along with the worn, once-red, leather seating.

She had been flirtatious, ever-smiling - then she was gone; a lover’s tiff, an ill-advised dalliance with her manager at that, forcing her to flight.

Suddenly the London streets had not seemed quite so welcoming - not without money in her pocket, not without a place to call home; the accommodation had come with the job, you see...

Her mind ran back to the very first time, her first awakening to this new world; it was a birth, or rather a rebirth, at least that was how it seemed now:

“The crash, sweetheart, surely you remember the crash?” The nurse’s, concern had been palpable, her brow furrowing. Yet as insistent as the woman had been it had felt as if she were seeking to convince while, in some way, being unsure of her own sincerity.

Try she might she had been unable to recall anything at the time; her immobility had almost seemed comforting in its familiarity, yet otherwise there was nothing, just nothing. She could remember nothing still, at least of her history as they would insistently outline it - nothing, that is, beyond the abuse, the beating and something about a social worker, a friend, a young woman who had sworn to extract her from that hell.

Yes, the social worker; she had seemed so approachable, a woman who might care, who might believe her, who had seemed to care. The woman with the car, the woman who had promised to take her away, promised to save her from him. There was something else... what was it? A drink, a drink proffered from a flask, warm cocoa... that can’t have been it! What possible significance could that have?

“You remember the crash, surely?” They would say.

In truth, she couldn’t. There were fragments that were haunting her though, fragments of recollection - or what appeared to be recollection. In actuality it was just a jumble of shards, just as likely the constructs of her imagination as bearing any relation to reality - and feeling more like memories of what she had been told than of the actual event.

Feeling as if deceiving herself she would nevertheless nod in the affirmative; to do otherwise, to question it, was to risk being left starkly alone, ignored. This she had experienced many, many times before - being left ignored, isolated and alone in the silence of her curtain-enshrouded bed. Her inability to recall appeared to really irk the staff - and as for her nightmares, her delusions as they referred to them - the merest mention was enough for the nurse or doctor or whoever was attending her to simply up and leave. Many were the times she had found herself missing her next meal or diaper change after that.

And yet it was those dreams, those nightmares, that were the clearest representation of reality to her, her reality; certainly they seem more real to her than her present surroundings and the fuzzy pseudo-memories filling her head. There was a certain vivid and unmistakable clarity to their recollection, the clarity of truth and conviction.

Deranged? Deluded? Well, such were the murmurings and whispered accusations that, on occasion would come to her from beyond the protection of the curtains surrounding her bed - times when they were certain she was asleep and beyond caring; “...such a shame, but quite deluded of course, poor girl”.

Yet it was all so real, so detailed, so, so clear to her: first there would come the probing wiggle of an investigative forefinger, then the thickly-gelling lubricant, ice cold, the digit urging in an out, in an out, twisting and turning, embedded to the knuckle. Then would come the sensation of building warmth, blood-flow stimulated by the mild irritant mixed in with the gel. Finally that podgy finger would be withdrawn and the first taunting rubber-touch of the enema nozzle would announce its imminent violation of her.

Every few weeks there would come the added discomfort of the first use of an increased diameter. In time she would become acclimatised, her sphincter gradually stretching to accommodate it. Then would come another increment, then another and another - each adding to the soapy humiliation of the laxative the piquancy of torment that came from the knowledge that any improvement in her comfiture came only at the cost to be surely levied her in the future by way of the legacy of her stretched and weakened muscles - and that it was all for the benefit of him, for his perverted pleasure.

Every detail was present there. If only in the world of dreams, if only the manifestation of her delusion, then from whence came the design, the knowledge and experiences that could make manifest the physicality of the illusion with such convincing Technicolor realism. What could a girl of her sheltered background know of such things? How could, even in conjecture, she conjure the sensation of her gently rounded belly swollen with foully-cramping fluid, or her youthfully elastic skin stretched paper-thin. And what of the softly-urging latex-covered, podgy, farmer’s-wife fingers massaging, compressing, squeezing as if to exude the decorating icing for some filthily perverted demon-cake or, perhaps, in some exaggerated parody of milking the beasts she had once had the duty to?

Then the was the voiding into the metal pail, the metallic ringing imparted to the initial fluidic-splattering fall of her wastes, the stink in the compact surroundings of the room - the tiny skylight could not be opened to improve the ventilation - and the cramping stomach muscles and twisting agonized bowels.

Finally it was she herself she saw in her mind’s eye carrying the galvanised bucket through the house so that all and sundry might see - and she herself who would have to scrub it back to the pristine sheen of its manufacture in the yard outside in full view of the household.

She remembered how he had absolutely despised the way she had been dressed when they’d found her. He’d said it was the way they were always dressed, her type; young tearaways, young runaways hanging around the city’s stations and bus shelters on cold winter nights.

And it had been the coldest night of the coldest snap that most could remember when he had come across her. She had seemed easily the most desolate amongst the gathering huddle, easily the most destitute, desperate, bedraggled and forlorn.

Then there were her looks; the pretty elfin face, the slight build, the short stature, the childish yet maturely-contoured and well-cushioned frame, small breasted yet with hips and buttocks promisingly fecund and swollen and rounded with chubby resilient youthfulness.

The denim, though, he just hated; women in trousers just left him cold - let alone jeans. He couldn’t abide by anything that suggested other than sheer soft femininity - the slightest hint of boyishness in dress was an anathema to him. It was all to the more curiously contradictory and contrary therefore that the wretch she remembered bent and sobbing before him no longer possessed the wavy cascades of tawny light brown locks she once had to hide her tears behind but rather a short tousled pixie cut. The latter was styled around her ears and tightly tapered into the nape of her neck; the intent most clearly being to enhance that childish elfin look, the side parting, seemingly inadvertently, introducing an element of boyishness beyond anything that might be brought by even the most masculine cut jeans or dungarees.

That hated denim and the rest of her outfit of that time had been easily dealt with. His housekeeper, Mrs Veronica Merryweather-Cortez, being possessed of a rather traditional, if old-fashioned, outlook herself pertaining to such matters - and not being exactly enamoured with modern attire and the like - had been of the opinion that the girl’s belongings might simply fail to resurface from the launderette, having become ‘lost in the wash’ as, unfortunately, things all too often were locally. As she’d put it; “one can always blame the gypsies...it’s usually them anyway”.

A remarkable woman of an equally remarkable name, the old man’s housekeeper was a truly redoubtable woman. Herefordshire born and possessing a broadness of the hips and a buxom maturity of frame seemingly completely at odds with her claimed thirty eight years of life, her ruddy apple-cheeked complexion and coarse russet hair - kept, on the main, beneath a plain, ‘sensible’, headscarf - spoke of a country woman far more likely at home on some remote outlying farm as to be found domiciled within the gentile confines of a Surry village parsonage. Yet here she was and here she had been for many a long year, residing happily enough and steeped within parish culture - after all was said and done, the work she helped carry out, the charitable work, the Church’s work, offered something she would have been hard pressed to find under any other circumstances.

Over the years she had come to know the buildings, the grounds and the church itself inside and out; she had explored it all. All the little nooks and crannies, all of those secret, dark little places that the public never see, she had seen them all. She knew her way around better than most, probably as well as she knew the old man himself, probably as well as she understood those peculiar peccadillos of his, perhaps even more so. And she understood his predilections ever so well; his yearnings were her raison d’etre after all, something they could both share on the deepest darkest levels yet neither would ever speak of.

She knew exactly what was required, exactly what would please him...and exactly where to look for it. An ancient carved black oak chest dominated the vestry’s end wall, squatting all but forgotten, despite its substantial bulk, in the dusky shadows beneath the tiny Norman-arched stained-glass window. Strictly speaking an oak coffer, it featured quite beautiful carved and arcaded front panels, each having an intricate inlay detail of flowers picked out in a variety of different woods and rarely appreciated, being near permanently under a thin layer of dust and tinted by the patina of age. The iron banding running around the sides and over the curving hinged lid was pitted and blackened with age and as dark as the wood itself; to the front a typical hand-forged mediaeval tongue clasp was secured by a very modern and substantial padlock.

It was from the latter, rarely visited, cache that Mrs M, as the old man was want to address her, was able to conjure up her singly peculiar solution to the problem of clothing the girl. It presumably had only ever been intended as a temporary stopgap; for with every will in the world even that woman, with her archaic views, could hardly have considered such dress appropriate for - or acceptable to - a modern girl of Meredith’s age and background. It had been extracted and selected from a pile of ecclesiastical vestments dating back to perhaps the 1950s or early 1960s, if not earlier - to more prestigious times for the little parish church, when congregations swelled to the rafters with uplifted voices and on occasion spilled out into the churchyard beyond and when it had even accommodated its own choir.

The princess-line dress she selected, despite Meredith’s obviously small stature, had not appeared to the girl at the time to be the smallest there; she had felt certain she had seen at least two or three of a smaller size that had been glanced at and then rejected while the woman was rummaging. She had stood there shivering in the thin cotton nightdress they had given her, grateful to receive anything that would provide some warmth and - more importantly - cover her embarrassment; even some ugly church dress, just so long as it was to only be a temporary arrangement.

And ugly it surely had been: featuring full length sleeves with overlong cuffs at the wrists, each fastening with three buttons in line, it was ‘easy fit’ in the extreme; indeed, it fairly drowned her small figure in its heavy black fabric. An embroidered metallic gold Latin Cross decorated the region roughly corresponding to her left breast and was one of the few features allowed to alleviate the jet-black severity of the thing - the others being an arc of short stiff white frills around the top of the mandarin collar, the matching sprays of frills around the cuffs that extended down to the upper parts of her hands when she was standing with arms to her sides and a large white button oddly sited to the rear of the collar. The latter’s function, enigmatic at the time, was to become clear enough at a later date and perhaps would have become clear more immediately had she noted the matching buttonhole at the dress’s hem, at the rear where it was picked out in white thread as if some proudly decorative feature of design.

At the sides and from a point approximating her waist, heavy, absolute-black, thickly-draping folds hung, spread out and fell to the hem swinging barely clear of the floor, forming between each a series of vertical, wet-puddled and shadow-lined valleys, each somehow darker still.

To the front, once clear of her bust’s perky overhang, the dress hung straight and true, pulled taut by lead weights sewn into the hem, with barely a hint of any contact with the form beneath, giving scant regard for style or flattery. Seemingly dozens of small, tediously and unnecessarily fiddly, black-satin covered buttons, in reality sixteen in all, fastened it from the slender curve of her throat to her neat little ankles; light shimmering off the skirt’s surface would ripple like moonlight off a night-time sea as she moved, those buttons giving the impression of so many small boats bobbing and weaving at anchor in the dark.

The fabric, while as smooth as heavy black satin should be, concealed an inner lining of another material entirely, this having a texture approaching that of a rather coarse velvet, and therein hung the seed of another problem; not only was the whole loose-fitting ensemble ugly, heavy and hot to wear but the constant prickly-heat sensation of the inner lining quickly came to make its wearing intolerable. To her chagrin the material had seemed particularly coarse in the region running over her nipples and the latter’s hardening in response only served to further augment their constant teasing.

She had winged and whined and bitterly complained; it had felt as if the constant grazing irritation, the prickling and the brushing back and forth, would serve to drive her quite insane, or so it had felt at the time, although she was later to encounter challengers to her sanity that would all but drive such concerns from her recall.

Finally, her patience pushed to the limit, it was Mrs M who was to yet again save the day; it was simple, one of her own old cast-offs, a full-length slip in white nylon and as smooth as the girl’s own skin.

Panelled and darted, with traditional built-up shoulders and a seemingly hopelessly narrow waist and a pronounced tapering beyond that curvature that allowed for the swell of the wearer’s hips, it terminated at knee-length with a delightfully narrow circular hem. The impression received was one of a garment designed sometime in the early 1960s and intended to be worn below the pencil-skirted fashions of the time. It clung to her hips and thighs like a second skin, the tight hem coming to rest tightly girdling her legs just above her knees.

The effect, whether intentional or not she had no idea, was to restrict her once tomboyish stride to a somewhat sedate and femininely-gentile shuffling gait that could not but reinforce the image of docility they were clearly striving to achieve for her.

Then there had been the question of underwear. The best that they had been able to offer in terms of ‘underpinnings’, as Mrs M-Cortez was apt to quaintly describe her more intimate of garments, was a pair of that woman’s own rather elderly cast-offs. These, much to Meredith’s chagrin turned out to be, a pair of overly-substantial white rayon Walker Reid directoire knickers, obviously far to large for her petite frame and in any case possessing a waist-band virtually devoid of any residual elasticity, the venerable garment clearly having been washed and re-washed into submission long before. As first proffered, the baggy garment had hung limply and sadly around the broadening of her hips, dangling lopsidedly on her iliac crest as if slipping from a coat hanger before, slowly but surely submitting to the inevitability of gravity, slithering uncertainly down, slalom-fashion, over the swell of her lower tummy and the curving slopes of her buttocks and thighs. Meredith had been left blushing profusely and obliged in the first instance to clutch at the top of the knickers, scrunching a full fistful of their fabric and gathering the excess material over her belly in a fashion apparently found quite comical by all present - save the girl herself.

Thus it had been for that first week or so. Despite their earnest promises to retrieve Meredith’s own things - and of shopping trips if that should not prove possible - she had been obliged to shuffle awkwardly about the parsonage clutching at her undergarments with one hand or the other through the thick black folds of the heavy, near floor-length ecclesiastical dress.

Then that remarkable woman had a brainwave, the sort of common sense defying shuffle of logic that only she could have been capable of. Her solution, simple; a girdle of buttonholes to be formed around the slip’s circumference and sited somewhat above the latter’s waistband. A matching ring of large white rubber buttons would be sewn around the periphery of the knickers’ waistband to balance the equation and being rubber would survive the kind of weekly boiling up Mrs M would subject them to in a vain attempt to make them look at least part-way hygienic. To most, a simpler and more obvious solution would simply have involved a trip to the nearest mall; but that wouldn’t have appealed to her old-fashioned yet misguided make-do-and-mend mentality - and besides she had other, shall we say...less conventional agenda, to take account of.

The slip, or petticoat, itself had represented a further refinement of Meredith’s torment at the hands of the old bastard’s housekeeper. The woman had even brought her brother in on the act, although Meredith had no way of knowing for sure if he actually knew the function of what he was making. He was a cooper by trade - a barrel maker, and one of a dying breed of traditional country-village craftsmen - but presumably possessed the skills of locksmith, or had access to some other that did, as his work was as remarkable as it was sophisticated.

Through a short exchange of communications Mrs M had procured from that source a narrow spring-steel hoop capable of being be sewn into the under-slip’s pencil-skirted hem and clearly intended to fulfil the function of a hobble. A second such, of somewhat broader dimensions, had been fabricated with the intention of being concealed within the fabric of the slip to form a closely cinching waistband and incorporated a cleverly concealed flat locking clasp at the rear, complete with a remarkably discreet keyhole - for which a suitable key had of course been provided. Once clicked into place, the latter catch efficiently removed from the wearer any temptation to divest herself of her under-slip’s restriction, while the loosely hanging and near shapeless church dress presented to the outside world an image of free and easy flowing movement.

To Meredith it was more than just the tiresome fastening and unfastening of all those buttons - and there were eight in all - whenever nature called that she had found so vexing. Not that she was ever allowed to ‘go’ of her own volition; permission had to be obtained first and she had always to be supervised, of course, so if neither the old man nor his housekeeper were free, as was commonly the case... well, sometimes accidents will happen and nature will take its course.

No, what really got to her, what really drove her to distraction was the positioning of those buttonholes.

Had they been sited a little lower down, then things might not have been quite so unbearable. But as it was, the buttons had to be fastened before stepping into the slip, so attaching the knickers to the latter. The slip’s hoop waistband mechanism could then be pulled into position and locked around her waist before - Meredith having by this point wiggled her shoulders under the broad shoulder straps - Mrs M, habitually smiling at her handiwork, would purposefully draw the zipper up from its starting point just below the waistband to the little lockable clasp, that kept it safe from meddling fingers, high up between the girl’s shoulder blades. Closing the zipper did of course serve to cover the clever little flat clasp lock at the small of her back, but it was at the point of her drawing up the waistband in the first place that her torment would begin and the positioning of that buttoning arrangement became significant.

The gusset of those elderly underpinnings would by that means be pulled snugly up into her crotch, rather too snugly for her comfort. Even more significant was the coarse white velvet double gusset that the housekeeper had retrospectively sewn in; it would prickle, stroke and tease with every step until, becoming sodden with her enforced lust, it merely lapped warmly at her intimacy like some imaginary lover’s tongue. Similar soft pads of velvet enwrapped her breasts and attentively sipped at her nipples and caressed her areole into puckered throbbing hard thimbles that could be made out by the observant even through the thick heavy fabric of her shapeless robe.

Beneath that elegantly-gliding exterior of unconstrained floor-sweeping heavy black fabric, then, had lain a story of tight and unrelenting restriction to anything but the gentlest, daintiest tiny-stepped movement. The result was that to the casual observer she seemed to serenely glide along, the flowing lines of her garb simplified further by her habit of carry her arms at her sides, her black-and-white encircled hands and the long sleeves of the dress disappearing into the depths of its side pockets nearly as far as her elbows and with a somewhat pronounced rearward orientation that tended to give an impression of quite contemplation, almost as if she were strolling with her hands clasped behind her back.

What could not be seen by the casual observer - and would undoubtedly have caused shock and consternation had it been - was that her hands were indeed clasped at the small of her back...but not by choice, or necessarily in contemplation either. Those soft pink palms and nimble digits were kept encased in white kid gloves, their fingers stiffened with inserts and sewn together. Steel manacles closely encircled each wrist and were attached by short lengths of chain to her under-slip’s reinforced steel waistband, or rather to two small ‘D’ rings that protruded through the fabric from it at the rear of the slip.

It was a surreptitious, yet public, bondage - and it was one that that she had been held in for the majority of her waking hours and that had necessitated the attendance on her of the old man’s housekeeper for the slightest function, no matter how personal and intimate it may have been.

Not that her circumstances had been eased at night at all. Sewn directly to the mattress of her little cot and additionally secured by webbing bands running around and across at several points, the sleeping bag she was obliged to use was hooded, narrow and more suited to an alpine or even arctic adventure then the attic of a church outbuilding.

Internally, too, it bore little resemblance to that originally purchased from the town’s camping equipment supplier. The thick quilted sweaty nylon was partitioned off internally into two pockets intended to take the arms and two others, set apart at a fairly acute angle, had been similarly created to contain her legs. At the confluence of the latter two pockets a padded wedge had resulted by way of the alteration which had the unfortunate habit of tending to work its way tightly into her groin region where all night it would impinge on her person - and tempt the devil to her thoughts.

The procedure had been the same every night, the hood would be pulled up over her head and the draw strings would be pulled tight, so leaving only her face uncovered. Then the side zip would be pulled up, the latter being secured in place by tiny padlock, despite the latter being rendered largely superfluous and redundant by the ingenious design of the girl’s sleeping arrangements. And that would be that - she would be left perfectly secure for the night in her comfortably padded, if somewhat humid, little bed-prison. It was a simple enough arrangement, like a quilted nylon sarcophagus, yet it was effective - she could be guaranteed to be found waiting there, hot moist and ready for the intrusion of his stinking fat old blue-veined manhood, first thing in the morning... After first he had done his duty of course - driven Beelzebub from her with a dozen or so swats of that trusty heavy-leather tawse of his...

...”Wha...? Who?... Where am...? What’s happ...? “ Questions, so many questions - a startled, disorientated burst of half-queries, slurred by sleep and medication in almost equal measure.

“...I said; we’ll have to see about getting you up and about today, I’m afraid. We can’t have you lying on your back all the time - now can we?”

The voice was cheery, brisk and breezy. The woman, maturely-plump, her figure somewhat over-enthusiastically filling her white uniform, was bending over the girl’s head almost as if her intention was to kiss her forehead.

Meredith, startled, was dragged from her reverie. Memories, dreams, nightmares, call them what you will; whatever they were, she had been lost in their thrall to the extent that she had not had even the slightest inkling of the nurse’s arrival, not even when the curtains around her bed had been drawn back - and that was a rare thing in itself.

Now, for what was practically the first time, she could see beyond her immediate confines; her first real glimpse of the rest of the ward.

A second woman, attired identically to the first but younger and of more slender build, stood at the foot of the bed; half turned away, she was craning over a clipboard, bent-necked and scribbling away furiously like some demented court stenographer as if to record every occurrence, every nuance and idiom of speech.

Beyond that woman, directly ahead, a bed, the exact twin of her own, lay empty, the white plastic of its mattress catching the light where the coverings had been rolled back - presumably in preparation for the next occupant. Immediately to its left, white curtains were drawn around what she could only assume to be an occupied bed.

Twisting her head to the left as far as her pillow would allow she could see there was another unoccupied bed separated from her own by little more than a couple of metres and then, around three meters beyond that, was the ward’s end wall. The latter was dominated at its centre by a large window. This, occupying fully one third of the width of the wall, had an appearance suggesting it was either steamed-up for some reason or otherwise misted over and lay back recessed into the wall behind a row of vertical steel bars that seemed themselves to be inset flush to the wall.

To her right, some three meters distant, a barrage of thick glistening-white bars, running floor-to-ceiling, bisected the entire room and guarded the double swing doors that, lying two meters beyond them, constituted the ward’s only access. Not that this latter pair did not represent a formidable enough barrier in their own right; their porthole windows, each inscrutably gazing out from behind its own crisscrossed basketwork of curving cylindrical bars, were as reluctant as any other of the ward’s windows to give way to any more than a diffuse luminescent glow at most.

Meredith blinked and then blinked again, as if in double-take, as if her first impression’s failing would yet be exposed; her mouth gaped and her eyes widened -the truth remained the same. Her consternation must have been writ large across that pretty elfin face; for, at that very moment, the second nurse, the one with a clipboard, chanced to look up:

“They had to move you here when you wouldn’t calm down. They had no choice - you were far, far too disturbed to be kept on the intensive care ward any longer”.

“But what is... I, I mean, where am...”

“Shhh, hush child, there’s really nothing to worry about.”

Sensing her young patient’s increasing confusion and impending panic the plump woman, the more experienced of the two nurses, had interjected; it was best in a case like this to be candid, to explain things quickly. She went on:

“This is a secure psychiatric unit, a locked ward as it is sometimes called - nothing to worry about, really. You’ll be just fine here until you feel better. As soon as you show signs of recovery - that is, you can satisfy us that you recognise those fears and nightmares of yours as just that, your imagination - we’ll do everything we can to get you out of here and back onto a normal ward as quickly as possible. For now, though, I’m afraid this is going to be home for you, for the foreseeable future.”

There was much more here then she could ever have seen, even the rare moments - and they had been precious few - that the curtains had been parted to any degree. For one thing there had never been more than a few degrees of viewing angle opened up between the flaps of that heavily-hanging and sound-deadening fabric. For another; such rifts, even when they had opened up, had been exceedingly fleeting; a nurse might come or go, perhaps a trolley might be pushed through, but that would be about it.

And then there was that cushion, and the strap that went with it. The former was of white foam rubber, the softest imaginable - being U-shaped it wrapped around and cradled her head with a surprising, and initially disconcerting, firmness, covering her ears and all but rendering her completely devoid of hearing.

The associated strap consisted of a broad band of PVC, padded out with a softly quilted lining, running across her forehead and covering it in its entirety other than that at its very centre whereat a circular cut-out of perhaps three centimetres in diameter lay. The latter’s functionality, if any, remained a mystery to her at this point; its existence being known to her only from the rare occasions she had been released from that bands grip so that she might be moved. That it was aligned so perfectly with the fine-bore nozzle that emerged at the very centre of the glittering child’s mobile that hung over the head of her bed - and every other on the ward - was completely lost on her; whether it would remain so would depend solely on the whim of others - any endowed with sufficient pity and wisdom might pray for the continuation of that innocence.

The rational behind that particular form of immobilisation had been explained to her so many times, all too often in fact; it was a precaution against the possibility that her neck had been injured in the crash, although they continually assured her that she was fine. Additionally, on those occasions, as now, that she was released from its unrelenting clamping grip her neck seemed fine, if stiff from the prolonged inactivity. It must be said, though, that even when released her neck’s freedom of movement was somewhat limited by the latex-lined plastic neck-brace they kept her in - so she could never be that certain.

Even now - her head having been freshly released from that cushion’s grasp - much lay beyond her field of vision. The wall-mounted colonic irrigation apparatus to the right of her bed head of course remained out of sight, its associated plastic pipe work left coiled on the shelf below. She had experienced that device’s attention many, many times, yet never once had she laid eyes on it. The patient sling and hoist, too, remained for the most part out of sight, having been pushed up against the wall immediately to the girl’s right; this, of course, would not ordinarily have been present, having been drafted in for the sole purpose of moving her.

The wheelchair she had a fair, if oblique, view of now - the angle sparing her the details of its restraints for now. To any outside of this very singular establishment, not privy to its detailed machinations and agenda, such precautions, even in the most disturbed and demented of cases, might have appeared at the very least somewhat excessive, if not downright oppressive. This would have seemed particularly so considering the degree of hindrance already inflicted by the plaster casts encasing both the girl’s upper and lower arms and those encasing her above and below her knees. The hinged callipers fitted on her legs, presently locked out in the straight position, did at least allow for some degree of freedom in moving her around - these being positionable and lockable in a multitude of orientations, not all of which were ‘usual’ or necessarily comfortable for the patient.

The gynaecological examination stirrups, presently residing at the bed’s far end, she knew only too well of course. These could be moved up along practically the entire length the bed, if necessary, by means of a simple adjustment of wheel, adorned with a convenient handle, mounted at the foot of the bed - a worm-drive, running along a slot mounted in the bed frame and duplicated at both sides, carried the supports back and forth as required.

Those hideous callipers - or leg braces as the staff were more apt to term them - provided more then enough freedom of adjustment to allow for even the most open and exposed display of her person and the most intimate of examinations.

On many such occasions her knees would be drawn back practically parallel with her ears, stretching the sinews of her crotch and forcing those once private coral lips to gape. This would particularly be the case on those occasions when was it was required that she be shaved ‘down there’; it gave unimpeded access of the razor to that region and around her anus too. Regular depilation was a must, it was hospital regulations.

It was all about hygiene at the end of the day and it seemed that hardly a day would go by when she wouldn’t overhear one staff member or other commenting that she was not a particularly ‘clean’ girl ‘down there’, not particularly ‘fragrant’ and complaining about her ‘odour’. At such times her cheeks would burn crimson with shame at the mere thought. It was something she felt must be untrue - she had always prided herself on her cleanliness. But then again she could not fathom any reason for such remarks to be passed otherwise - even though to have allowed a patient to overhear such personal and downright insulting remarks patently smacked of unprofessional conduct. Whatever the truth of the matter, those unguarded, thoughtless remarks often served to amplify the trauma the girl suffered during those examinations out of all proportion.

At other times - and always the level of her sedation would be increased beforehand - a small plastic box would be placed on the mattress in a suitable position, close to her most sensitive and intimate regions. Two arms emerging from either side of this device carried a small wheel on a little axle slung between them, this being not unlike cotton spool in appearance and festooned all around with the softest of hand-selected eiderdown and possessing, in addition, a row of slightly longer feathers running around its centre. The positioning and speed of this infernal device being virtually infinitely adjustable - spinning madly and maddeningly, thousands of gentle feather strokes would then kiss - then later, once soaked and lathered with her arousal - slaver, lick, and suck at her person, softly caressing around and across her sensitive inner lips and clitoris.

A nurse, sitting by the girl’s bedside, would read from a script in lullaby tones, a teeny condenser-microphone pinned to her uniform relaying her voice to the speakers built into that U-shaped cushion pinning her patient’s head. Sometimes these words ran true and ever more so in more recent times. At other times - most others in those early days - her mind would rebel; the ideas coming being just too alien to her. Swamped with strangely perverted images and drowning in dreams she couldn’t possibly comprehend, she would strike out the safety of the shore - she would struggle against the sleepy tide of the sedation, fight to wake herself. She never could of course; the sedative they used was just too heavy.

Nor could she hope to go against those ideas and suggestions upon waking. The sedative they used, when given in those higher doses, universally left the patient with fogged thoughts and near total short-term amnesia and how could she struggle against something she had no recollection of? That wonderful amnesiatic effect, albeit temporary, saw to it that there really was nothing to remember; there would just be those missing hours - and even those went unnoticed in the 24-hour-lit temporal distortion of that place euphemistically known as ‘the ward’.

It could be addictive too, that sedative; it was not medically recognised as suitable for long-term use. They undoubtedly knew that - and yet they kept her on it continuously, day in, day out, albeit at a much lower dosage than might ordinarily have been prescribed. It kept her relaxed and her mind soothingly foggy - she was beginning to quite like that feeling, beginning to wonder how she could ever live without it. She would have grabbed at those little blue and gold capsules when they were brought to her, had she been able - she would have snatched at them now, given half the chance. It was a deeply humbling little addiction - and one that in truth was being encouraged by those softly whispered suggestions she knew nothing of.

The patient sling having been worked under her, a button was pushed and the hoist sprang into life, albeit remarkably gently. There was an almost supernatural element to the smoothness of its operation that was suggestive of levitation rather than lifting. Pulleys of nylon and of PTFE, a Dacron rope standing-in where a chain might ordinarily once have been expected - these advances had ushered in with them a new standard in terms of quietness of operation which belied the work done. Little more than an electric hum emanated from the crane-like structure; and even that was apt to vanish below the swish of the nurses’ dresses - that soft polyester rasp she had become so accustomed to and was now somehow comforted by.

The wing-nuts on the ratcheted mechanism at her knees, sited between the upper and lower sections of her leg-braces, had been loosened off before initiating the lift, allowing the adoption of a seated configuration as it progressed. On being satisfactory seated that adjustment would be reversed, locking the girl’s callipers in the new conformation, all safe and sound.

The wheelchair’s seat gave way markedly under her weight despite her slightness, the white leatherette proving to have an unexpectedly spongy, resilient character. The clinical chill of the plastic came to her straight away, even through the rubber of those awful, sweaty hospital issue bloomers they kept her in - or at least it chilled those fleshy regions lay to either side of the thick incontinence towel that resided therein.

This latter feature of her hospital-issue underwear was a particular bane, given the present realities of her existence. The towel was affixed internally by four straps designed and provided for that purpose - these being positioned two fore and two aft of the gusset region with the most distal of the rear pair being positioned just short of the waistband while the other sat just clear of the gusset area itself, an arrangement that was repeated to the front. The pad thus ran through the entirety of the crotch area from the rear to the front of the knickers and was kept constantly in the most intimate feminine contact with her flesh, where it tended to irritate, tantalise and tease in equal measure.

Placed in the wheelchair, her useless hands now dangled over the ends of the armrests, plaster-enwrapped fingers splayed fan-like. It was true that the resin-based nature of the casts tended to make them softer and more resilient than had they been fabricated in the more traditional plaster, but they were still not flexible enough to do much to ameliorate, in any real sense, the totality of the girl’s immobilisation.

Analogous to the mechanism surrounding and supporting her knees and that allowed angular adjustment to her leg braces - a plastic hinge arrangement linked the casts fitted around her upper and lower arms, this providing stability to her elbows. The similarity ran to the wing-nut and ratchet adjustment of each limb’s conformation and by this means the required right-angle bend at the elbow so as to allow for a seated posture had been introduced. Again this just involved a simple re-tightening of a wing-nut each side by finger and thumb in order to relock each limb in the required new attitude.

Having secured an entire plethora of straps and bands around the limbs and torso of their patient - some of Velcro and some secured by buckles and all seemingly unnecessary, considering the circumstances - she was deemed ‘ready for transfer’.

This ‘transfer’, when it finally came about, turned out to be somewhat disappointing; it was not quite the lengthy excursion that all those preparations, precautions and fuss might have suggested. Indeed, this sojourn consisted of little more than the length of the ward - a decidedly limited dimension - then the negotiation of a substantial, securely locked door and a fairly narrow passageway stretching all of ten metres or so, the latter requiring traversing in single file, one nurse leading the way, the other pushing the wheelchair and bringing up the rear. If she had harboured hopes of some glimpse beyond the confines of the hospital, then the frosted glass of the two windows that they had passed in the ward and then the windowless passage had dashed them in their entirety.

In that way, their destination was, if anything, even more of a let-down; four bare white walls stared back at her as she was pushed across the threshold, unadorned in any way and notably uninterrupted by any window.

They had set out in the opposite direction to the ward’s security-grille-guarded exit and she had guessed from the outset that they were not actually going to be leaving the unit as such - but she had expected something more, somehow, than this near empty box of a room. Being of perhaps four metres on a side, its only occupant stood bang slap in the centre; a padded examination couch or table of around waist height and having a most singularly sinister appearance glowed there as if spot-lit, its white plastic top dazzling to the eye.

This latter furnishing, noticeably bolted to the floor, was arranged longitudinally within the space. Hinged at its centre, it had been left with the end closest to the party folded down in a manner not unlike a drop-leaf table, the extreme edge reaching down close to the floor and the whole having the form of a horizontal ‘L’.

Releasing her from the imprisonment of her wheelchair, they stood her up against the contraption, her legs once again straitened, knee joints locked and with her calliper-encased legs pressed firmly up against the folded-down vertical section of the table. A short explanation followed, delivered in a hurried flurry and giving the impression of some fast approaching dead line. It flowed past her largely without comprehension; she felt muddled, foggy, as she so often did these days.

It was something to do with their needing to have an X-ray of her back in a particular orientation and - as she was overdue for an anal exam - ‘killing two birds with one stone’.

She was placed in a standing position, bent at the waist with arms stretched above her head, her elbow joints having been locked out now as had been her knees, the latter by way of the callipers. A broad Velcro-fastening band was then drawn tightly across the small of her back and another pulled across her shoulders and upper back, the latter being of some thirty centimetres in breadth and seeming superfluous considering the enforced rigidity of her extremities.

Her chin rested in a raised U-section cushion, provided for that purpose. A cap of criss-crossed leather or plastic straps was fitted over the top and back of her head and firmly secured by way of buckles at its sides - this, stabilising her head, allowed the neck brace to be released at the rear and in turn allowed her head to be tilted back such that she would then face forward.

Despite their apparent redundancy, leather straps were then fastidiously buckled at her wrists, elbows and again close to her shoulders, the fastenings struggling to accommodate the plaster casts at those points. Her legs were similarly restrained, drawn out into an embarrassingly exposed exaggerated inverted ‘V’ conformation by straps positioned around her ankles, knees and upper-thighs.

There was something disturbingly familiar about it all; all that attention to detail, all that complexity of preparation and restraint while so obviously unnecessary. It was something she thought she recognised from somewhere, something she felt she had experienced before, in some other place, long, long ago. There was something ritualistic, even fetishistic about it all - the notion near instantly froze her blood, petrified her heart and near unhinged her mind.

Finally, as if in answer to an unasked question, she felt fingers toying with the broad elastic waistband of her knickers. With a concerted smoothly sweeping action a pair of hands was dragging the tacky latex from her bottom - peeling the clinging fabric free of the latter’s fleshy overhang with a sound not unlike a young girl’s breath drawn softly through lips pursed with uncertainty - then away from, and down, her thighs, to end stretched wide between her knees.

Meredith Hewson’s mortification was tangible; in her mind’s eye she could see clearly the heavily saturated towel at the crotch dragging down the gusset, revealing its loathsome and embarrassing contents to all. Why did it always have to be this way? Why couldn’t they clean her up first, at least change the towel if not the knickers? Would it be so difficult? Didn’t they care at all about her feelings?

That these concerns remained internalised was probably just as well: Yes, they certainly did care. Indeed, her feelings were of paramount consideration and no, it would not have been difficult to have cleaned her up beforehand. Beyond these answers she would not have appreciated, liked, nor necessarily have understood the responses - it was best she be spared the fruits of her curiosity for the time being...

Suddenly they were gone - just like that. She was alone, abandoned in silent vulnerable isolation; no words had been spoken in explanation, no light-hearted inter-colleague banter had been heard, the only clue to their departure being the softly-padded thud of the door closing behind them.

She was alone - open and secured, helpless...and waiting.

How long it had been she had no way of reckoning, yet her feeling was it hadn’t been very long; though what such a relative term might actually mean to one confined as she was, is debatable.

Strangely, she hadn’t heard the door open, nor its muffled re-closing - yet somehow, for some reason, she sensed she was no longer alone. For a while she couldn’t be certain; there was something there, a slight muffled shuffling perhaps - then her very bowels twisted, mangled in fear, in utmost dread...

It was the wheezing that came to her first - dry, like old parchment, like the rustle of drought-fallen leaves. Then the cough came; not quite a death rattle, although she had so often prayed it was. Decidedly masculine, it came in excited staccato bursts, the nervous asthmatic constriction of elderly bronchi.

Then it came closer, that unseen, uncertain presence, the breathing, laboured and heavy; moist foetid breath lapped around her neck and hung there like rotting strands of seaweed, then dangled down her back, then sniffed and snuffled between and around her buttocks, bony fingers, the nails ridged with time, easing the globes apart.

Her mind had become as frozen in terror as her body had been immobilised by more physical means, her last cogent thought being one of utter disbelieve. How could it be him, here, in this place, in this hospital? How could he have gotten to her even here? She knew it couldn’t be him of course, not really - how could it? It had to be some sort of hallucination, the sort they were always warning her of, that she always denied yet they insisted she suffered. Had they been right all along? Yes, that was it - it was just another of her delusions, it had to be, just had to...

She waited, what else could she do; even that scream of hers wouldn’t come, it froze somewhere along her throat. That scream had always torn through the air before, rang deafeningly in her ears. But that had only been in her nightmares. That’s what they told her they were - and they would punish her if she ever said otherwise.

They had so many ways of punishing her - and all for her own good: They could withhold her meals or not let her sleep. They might simply ignore her for days or even weeks on end - and that was by far the worst. No one speaking to her, not smiling, not even acknowledging her own smile; it was subtle but effective and in so very many ways. No, she could only wait - the scream wouldn’t come anymore, those punishments had been too effective. And what if it was all just another of her nightmares?

But this was no nightmare, they were never in the here and now, never in this setting - yet how could she be certain? No, it had to be a nightmare, another derangement. That is what they said they were, derangements, figments of a sick mind - and she was not allowed to object, she was not allowed to question that fact. That was what was stifling her scream, slowly dismantling her reason thought by thought, belief by belief...

Gnarled arthritis-clawed fingers kneaded and prodded the flesh around her most intimate regions as so often they had before, exploring, teasing.

Then a hesitation - the pause she knew from experience would be the calm before the storm, an uncertain meandering countdown, time itself seemingly hanging pendulous in space and quivering before the coming tempest; a most agonising prospect for any woman. And then... AND THEN...

The hiss filling her ears barely registered before the sharp firecracker-retort pierced the air, momentarily dulling her hearing. There was a brief moment filled with that odd contrary numbness that does sometimes precede the first lick of flame. Then came the first of the hornet-stings, angry, simultaneously spreading and evolving along a single red pencil-width line drawn neatly across the centre of both buttocks and wrapping around to their sides, where the whippy plastic cane’s almost supernatural deformation had allowed the stroke to extend.

Now the scream came - now not even the discipline of the nurses, of this place, could hold it back.

That hissing sigh came again and again and again: a top-register hiss, as softly-sighing as the lightest, finest gentle drizzle falling on still waters - and on the most breathlessly beautiful of summer evenings. So inoffensive in itself, a sound of little relevance to most - and, quite frankly, new to this girl - each such sigh nevertheless heralded a full-blooded spit of acid as if from the mouth of some foul blaspheming demon - acrid and incendiary enough to sear the flesh and mortify the soul both.

She had once been all too familiar with the leather kiss of the strap and the fiery spitting-tongues of the tawse - whether in truth or in imagination. But this, this...This was unimaginable, indescribable and utterly unbearable. This was not like the heavy slap of leather - there was hardly any discernible impact at all in fact. No these were cuts, like untold thousands of razor slashes or myriad fine paper-cuts infused with bee venom. It stole away her breath, was destroying her reason.

That scream grew now louder still, more and more shrill, more and more heart-rending: it became monumental, reverberated off the walls and around her mind. Then slowly, oh, so terribly slowly, it began to diminish, fading down to a horsed and broken whisper, then further still, until just sobs, shuddering and heartbroken, filled the silences still punctuated by that unrelenting hiss-crack, hiss-crack, hiss-crack rhythm.

It had taken a final hacking fit of coughing to end it; moist, choking with phlegm - the congestive payback of his exertions.

An unseen hand reached across her and a cane, as long and as thin, if not thinner, than her own little finger, was unceremoniously discarded mere tens of centimetres from her distraught features. Near perfectly white and with the unmistakable sheen of glass-fibre or of some durable plastic, only the fine longitudinal threadlike traces of red close to its tip, where its gentle taper brought its diameter to something less than a half centimetre, marred its finish. Testament to the splitting of skin, the marking of her flesh, those latter blemishes, she knew, she was intended to see - this was part of the nightmare, for her to be indelibly marked this way, to evermore bear the marks of her shame on her body.

From behind the barely conscious girl came now a new sound, a soft boggy squelching, like fingertips plunged into thick mud - or a pot of cold medicated cream. She felt twisted yet soft fingers on her flesh, felt the burning cheeks of her bottom parted with a gentility at odds with the tortuous beating those hands had so recently delivered.

A cold, gel-coated digit tarried for a while, playfully stroking around the sensitive puckered flesh of her anus - describing a deliciously-teasing and tormenting little pattern of ever-decreasing circles that left her feeling as helpless as rabbit in the headlights. Almost hypnotised, she felt the gentle yet insistent pressure and then the surrender of her muscles as her sphincter gave access - the latter stretched and weakened by the endless parade of treatments given her, the enemas, the irrigations, the suppositories, the anal dilator that was seemingly kept almost permanently in situ.

Having been granted access that finger now withdrew in its near-frictionless goo of lubricant jelly, as if having proved a point there was no desire to linger. Then that urging pressure came again - and again access was granted. Then again and yet again the action was repeated - the cycle repeating in full, over and over. Those little teasing circles would be drawn softly around and around her little puckered rose bud, a little gentle pressure would be brought to bear, notably less each time - and she would be again penetrated there. A rhythm gradually built up, in and out, in and out, in and out.

Then something far larger was offered up, was lodged there. It was shocking yet not unanticipated - she had experienced it so many times before. So often in the past it had dominated those dreams and nightmares of hers, those delusions - it had come to rule her psyche as much as it now dominated her physical person. The rhythm built again, the cyclic violation now punctuated by coughs and gasps and modulated by accelerating, heavily-laboured panting excitement...

She was being fucked up the arse...There; she’d said it, admitted to it - if only through the private medium of her own internal dialogue. Crude, yes, but what other term could there be that might sum it up quite so succinctly. Fucked-up-the-arse: It was the perfect term for it, one that carried with it the full force of the traumatic damage, both physical and psychological - and particularly the latter - that this act, this rape, was inflicting on her.

Faster and faster, in and out, in and out, the grunting louder and growing increasingly deep-throated, the coughing, the gasping, rising in frequency in concert with that of his thrusts...rising...RISING...

There came one final gasp... She could feel his filthy slime trickling, warm within her bowels, filling her belly - or so it seemed to her dread-distorted, near-phobic perspective: He’d come... The old bastard had come in her, as he had so many times before. He’d come in her ass, contaminated her, made her as filthy as he was.

This was the kind of filth and scum that soap wouldn’t wash away, this was sin - and sin had to be expunged, purged not rinsed away with the bathwater. She knew only too well how such absolution might be brought about - she didn’t have to be clairvoyant to know what was likely coming next.

A few moments respite, the refractory period; time enough for remorse, then guilt, then the translocation of that guilt. A precious few moments, perhaps a minute, perhaps five then the repercussions would start: the swearing, the cursing and the accusations of wanton, blasphemous sin. Next would come the threats of chastisement - faux-biblical ranting, all fire and brimstone and the casting out of Satan and his minions...Yet no such outpouring came; instead there remained merely the wheezing and panting, albeit falling now in tempo.

Her relief, such as it was, proved short lived: A vein-knotted hand snatched the cane from in front of her fear-filled traumatised eyes, whisking it past her nose and causing her to flinch in alarm.

The caning had begun anew before she had even time enough to process the thought. That high-end swiping and swooping and swishing hiss, hisss, hissss of sterile atmosphere displaced and rended, again filled the room - the first renewal of her screams, entreaties and sobs wouldn’t be far behind. Freshly-lit lines of fire again branded sweet flesh, but now in opposition to the old and layered superimposed upon them in beauteous symmetrical precision, raising a fine diamond-grid of wheals. Here was agony artistically sculpted and as intense as if it was a physical entity in its own right. In his way he was an artist - a sculptor of the soul and saviour of the spirit - and this would be his masterpiece. Indeed it would be one of very many he was now given leave to create and recreate upon the same canvas ad infinitum in his search for perfection and absolution, by dint of this place she was held in.

***

All around her the room seemed to fold in on itself; the wall before her faded to the purple then swirled into darkness. The black velvet whirlpool closed mercifully in around her, claimed her as its own - what human mind could’ve taken such insult without withdrawing so?

Time passed, how long can only be conjecture. Something was rousing her; there was a hand upon her shoulder, a soft hand, unmistakably a woman’s hand. A voice spoke in the soft singsong tones of an angel. Gentle, sweet and filled to the brim with concern, more importantly - and much to her relief - it was a feminine voice. The doctor’s voice had come to her as a mother’s might to her nightmare-ridden still slumbering infant:

“Are you all right, sweetheart, is something the matter? Only, it looks like... have you been crying?”

In response the girl could only blubber, her breath shuddering with emotion and her lips slobbering, drooling with saliva as might some asylum inmate.

The doctor continued on as if totally unaware that the girl was even trying to say something in reply. In fact, if anything, her voice hardened to some degree, as if irked by the young woman’s incoherent mumbling:

“I’m sure the nurse must have told you that I wasn’t going to be long - and I’ve only been away a few minutes. I’m well aware that it can be a little bit disconcerting at first, being immobilised like that, but we have to be absolutely certain that the patient is kept stationary while we’re taking the X-ray in a case like this one. Besides, it’s not as if you’ve been left here alone very long; there was absolutely no need for you to go and get yourself worked up so. I’m sure you know how these things work by now - the nurses have to leave the room while the machine is in operation - it’s a fact of life.” The fact that there was no actual recognisable X-ray equipment in evidence anywhere in the room didn’t seem to faze the woman one iota. In actuality, other than the bench itself and a circular array of spotlights approximating to the type of illumination source one might be confronted by in a dentist’s surgery, the room was bare.

Again the girl could only incoherently slather and mumble and drool in response. Then slowly, ever so slowly, those lines, burning as if etched by acid into the flesh of her backside, began again to slice into her consciousness, clarifying and crystallising her thoughts:

A nightmare, it had to have been nightmare, she was all safely and securely locked up in a hospital, a psychiatric hospital, confined in a secure ward - how could he have possibly got to her here? It had to have all been in her mind - didn’t it?

But that aching in her belly, that torn-flesh-burning in her anus kept telling her otherwise. They screamed their objection - they knew of her abuse, they couldn’t be ignored - they hollered at her of her dumb denial, screamed at her.

The shriek, when it came, penetrated the very fabric of the walls. It caused all present to bring their hands to their ears - the doctor, her two assisting nurses - all present except one. Only one there experienced that unearthly soul-tearing wail un-attenuated, its source, their patient...

...”He’s been here again, he’s whipped me, fucked me up the arse, he...”

The girl’s outburst had clearly taken the doctor by surprise, startling both she and her accompanying nurses. As one they the shot her a disapproving, disgusted look, their faces registering the same unvoiced distaste. The sharp slap she was awarded stole away Meredith’s breath mid-sentence, truncating what would surely otherwise have been a long drawn out and distraught tirade - yet the nurse’s palm had merely slapped playfully the girl’s left buttock, landing with little more impact than was sufficient to ripple the flesh.

“Now, now! Language, sweetheart - language! We certainly don’t say the ‘F’ word here. Nor do we say ‘arse’. What do we say here when we mean to refer to our bottom?”

There came a bitter sucking-in of breath through clenched teeth - then a hesitation of a duration close enough to endangering her of receiving another such swipe that the nurse had actually drawn back her hand to shoulder height in preperation.

“B,BB, Botty, nurse; I meant my b,botty.” The girl fairly bristled at the childish terminology they demanded she use; the words seemingly sticking in her throat and causing her to splutter near incoherently.

“That’s much better! Now, I’m sure that if there is anything at all amiss the doctor will be able to see it when she examines you in a moment.”

Behind her she heard the unmistakable elastic-snap of examination gloves being pulled on and seconds later cold nitrile-covered fingers were slipping and sliding across the tender flesh of her bottom, feeling, testing, prodding and probing and gliding to and fro across each cheek in turn. She could feel the doctor’s slender fingertips running along, tracing and exploring the corrugated furrows and wheals she thought sure - that she knew - lay raised, swollen, throbbing and inflamed and crisscrossing the once blemish-free satin-soft white flesh. She could feel every nuance, every detail, of that throbbing red meshwork she knew must surely now decorate her backside - she gasped with pain whenever and wherever a finely manicured fingernail was drawn across the intersection between overlaying ruts and ridges or when a pinch of flesh was rolled, however gently, between finger and thumb.

Then she gasped anew, more in shock than in pain; this was a new sensation, a ghastly sensation to one of her sensitivity - a gentle feminine digit explored first her intimacy, then probed the softly puckered entrance above. Behind her, the doctor’s gently-considerate tones could be heard as noncommittal “hmmms” and “aahhs”...

The verdict, when it came, left her nonplussed, reeling - not least by the blatant way she was kept ‘out of the loop’, as if she were not capable of rational thought or discussion.

“Well, can you see anything here that we should be concerned about?”

“No. Not really, doctor. Although, there is this, here; some sort of deposit around her anus. Could it be some sort of anal discharge, perhaps? That would certainly explain her discomfort.”

“Well, yes. Although I’d say that it’s more likely that she’s simply had a rather unfortunate ‘accident’, so to speak - perhaps something related to her having had an adverse reaction to the suppositories I prescribed last time. Either way; she does look a little sore there. It’s something we will have to keep an eye on; but other than that, there doesn’t seem to be anything else we need be overly concerned about occurring here.

Other than for that discharge or whatever it is, would you concur with me, nurse, that there is nothing in evidence here that might support these allegations of abuse she continually insists on makings?”

“Pretty much; certainly I can’t see any evidence to the contrary. She seems disturbed right enough but there is no physical evidence that I can see to corroborate her story”

The doctor turned to the other nurse, so far watching in reserved, professionally detached silence: “And what about you, nurse?”

“I think I’d concur, doctor; I really can’t see anything out of the ordinary here at all, at least not physically. But as for her mental state; well, I guess that’s a different issue entirely - some sort of psychotic episode perhaps?”

“And the way she reacts to tactile stimulation - what would you say about that?”

“Simply a psychosomatic response, I’d say. It is something that is obviously real enough to her - but it’s symptomatic of her psychological condition, no more than that”

“Very well diagnosed, I’d say, nurse; that’s exactly how I read it: What we have here is a pseudo-physical manifestation of the patient’s delusionary condition. There is little more than that at work here - and in a way I’m quite relieved to be able to say that. To be honest with you, I would hate to have to think that such a sweet girl had actually undergone the sort of ordeals she has related to us in the past. Delusion, hallucination; call it what you will - it’s sad but that’s the truth of the matter...You know, it must be awful not to be able to trust one’s own senses.”

Behind her Meredith Hewson could sense the two nurses rustling and bustling about. She felt her bonds slacken and then her chin gently lifted by lily-white and scented soft hand - the white-coated doctor, all kindness itself, while refastening the neck brace now took the opportunity to draw the distraught girl’s attention to the flashing red light high up on the wall before her.

“Closed-circuit television; there’s always someone keeping an eye on you here, you silly thing. Don’t you think someone would have seen if there really had been anything untoward going on in here? Either I or one of my nurses would have been in here like a shot.”

Helping the girl up into a standing position the doctor couldn’t resist landing a final playful slap on the plump ripe swelling of her patient’s right buttock cheek - a parting shot, leaving the flesh rippling in its wake. The girls yelp was met with a warm, if condescending, smile and a derisory: “silly pudding”.

Gentle and playful that slap might have been but it had flared instantly into a blaze of pain - as if to confirm her delusion, if such it had truly been, to be in truth reality, no matter how improbable that might seem. Yet, in the absence of mirrors, her neck immobilised in that support and her hands rendered useless, the words still ringing in her ears would likely be the only rendition of truth she would have access to for quite some time to come. Besides, these were health professionals, after all; doctors, nurses. A lifetime of social conditioning would not be denied so easily: these were trustworthy people - surely it was her judgment that was questionable here, her judgment that was at fault.

Yet, for it to have seemed so real - surely that was delusion indeed. Surely they had every right to keep her locked up in here; she was surely going out of her mind - she was going stark raving mad. And to have even imagined such disgusting acts in the first place; how could such vile filth be conjured by her own mind, such foul and perverted thoughts? What did that say about her?

What if it was some sort of suppressed desire, something she had subconsciously yearned for? She had heard of such things; what if all those perverted desires were actually part of her - part of her true personality - what then? Surely she would then be judged insane by anyone - what right-minded person could think otherwise? They’d keep her locked up in here or, worse, on the psychiatric ward with all the other poor damaged souls - those poor fools rocking back and forth, gibbering, slobbering and drooling.

In that moment the die was cast: she would say no more of the incident nor of that old rector or parson or whatever the old bastard had been. Nor would she ever again speak of the abuse she had suffered at his hands and that she seemed to recall so clearly - the months, or was it years, she’d been kept under his lock and key. She would say nothing more about any of it - she would deny it all. After all, she had no wish to find that she had merely exchanged one form of incarceration for another.

His had been a jail from which there had at least always been some hope of escape. This captivity, she instinctively knew, would be different - this confinement would have legitimacy, would be all perfectly legal, above board and justified.

Once they had someone locked up in one of these places - properly and legally ‘put away’ - the appropriate documentation signed and the legal niceties tidied...well, that would be that as far as her future life was concerned.

There’d be no escape from this establishment. Had she not already seen the bars on the windows, mounted both inside and out? Had she not already shivered before the cold steel of the security grilles that guarded every passageway and corridor, no matter how minor, with their stolid implacable locks and their sturdy immovable iron slide-bolts - and all rendered in the same hygienic white as the walls, as if in disguise, as if to blend in seamlessly with the other, seemingly more legitimate, accoutrements of psychiatric bondage that lay all about her?

Why, they would be able to keep here as long as they liked... And even if she wasn’t already insane - and she couldn’t be sure she wasn’t - she would eventually become so. They wouldn’t have to lift a finger, this place, this... clinic, would see to it.

The wheelchair was trundled forward and the doctor, her smile never wavering, never failing to engender trust, gestured for the girl to be seated:

“Come along, in you get. Be a good girl.”

Stiffly, hesitantly, Meredith Hewson worked her way towards her waiting transport, her legs slow to respond and heavy in their callipers. The latter’s hinged knee joints, although not having been relocked, were nevertheless quite reluctant to bend without some effort. And it was an effort to which Meredith had grown unaccustomed - her muscle-tone had suffered through the ravages of immobilisation; at least such was her assumption.

Before her the chair waited, its overly-thorough and extensive network of restraints rendering it, to her mind, more approximating something akin to a mobile prison than an object of rest and comfort, however utilitarian. Indeed, she was initially quite reluctant to take her seat, despite the unaccustomed effort of walking in leg-braces. Yet, despite her most vehement protests a few words of explanation from the doctor were enough to warn her off from any further thought of objection:

“For the time being we’re going to be leaving your leg-support knee-joints unlocked - other then when you are in bed of course. You will have to take it slowly, but you’ll soon find you’ll be able to get around on foot, at least to a limited extent. But to and from the ward you must use the wheelchair; it is hospital policy and I’m afraid the restraints go with it - we can’t risk you falling out. Of course, should we encounter any problems, and I mean any problems, we will have no option other than to relock your leg callipers - after all, we can’t have you undoing all the good work we’ve done.

On the other hand, if you’re good girl, take it easy, do as you’re told, then we can slacken off those elbow supports as well. But as I said, any problems and you will quickly find yourself back confined to bed; sometimes we have to be a little strict with patients, simply to protect them from themselves. For now though, it’s back in that chair, I’m afraid; then it’s off to bed with you - I think there has been upset enough for one day, don’t you, my girl?”

Wincing, yet trying her hardest to disguise the sharp intake of breath, lest she be quizzed further as to the origin of her discomfort, the girl gingerly took her seat, an air of resignation and defeat coming over her as she did so.

The implication of the doctor’s little speech had been clarity itself: if she wanted a change of scenery other than the inside of her hospital cubicle with its white-curtained surrounds and heavily-draped silence, however bland the alternative might be, she would have to be the absolute personification of compliance.

Already all about her buckles were being fastened, straps tensioned and restraints tightened. That particular battle of wills was over - for now...

An Interlude

...Intermittently and nervously puffing at his pipe, he surveys the room through guilt-ridden, whisky-stained eyes and from behind wire rimmed half-moon spectacles perched halfway down his beak-like nose. Wheezing as if from haste or exertion and stifling a cough the old man shambles up to the massive room-spanning mahogany table. The attractive, bespectacled raven haired woman seated already at its centre shoots a faintly disapproving sideways glance at the new arrival as he takes his seat at her right hand. Here they sit side-by-side, uncomfortable yet familiar bedfellows, the man of faith and the woman of science - the latter, eschewing her more publicly familiar title for that earned through scholarship rather than inheritance and insisting on being addressed as doctor throughout. Here sit together, science, faith and finance; strange bed partners locked together in a singularly unholy mutual patronage.

But there is something else lurking here too. It is something shared equally amongst the others seated along the flanks of the groaning banqueting table:

There is the young man with the shock of golden-blonde hair seated immediately to the chairwoman’s left; good-looking, gifted and undoubtedly destined to one day become the foremost psychologist of his generation. Then there is the other old man seated to the woman’s extreme left, the Queen’s Counsel, rosy-cheeked, shuffling uncomfortably and with beads of sweat glistening on his forehead and bald pate.

Together they share something unseen and formally un-stated, something they have all brought to the table and must all shoulder responsibility for. Lacking the physicality of the silver platters of sliced beef and terrines piled to over-toppling with an avalanche of Brussels sprouts and carrots and golden, sizzling, roasted potatoes, it is there nonetheless, waiting to be read in the glint of an eye, a twitch around the lips, an awkward shifting of weight perhaps.

It is something that rapidly coalesces to become every bit as tangible as the rising steam and the delectable hues and aromas of the spread before them as the latest arrival, a plump woman of a no-nonsense bearing and unmistakably garbed in the navy-blue uniform dress of a hospital matron, ritualistically lays the crook-handled cane, she carries so reverently, lengthwise between the table settings - a smoothly-tapered, glossy white plastic promise of chastisement.

At one singularly isolated place-setting the seat remains unoccupied, the full course already served and steaming upon the plate. Close behind the vacant high-backed ornately-carved dining chair and kneeling upright, stiff-backed, upon the floor, a young girl waits quivering, with her fingertips to her shoulders and her elbows smartly out to the sides.

Though in her late teens, her true chronological age seems at odds with both her dress and bearing.

That undoubted maturity of ripe feminine development, demonstrated to such acute effect - and seemingly exaggeratedly so - in the high-slung swelling of her bosom, the narrow tightly-sculptured in-curving at her waist and the broad flaring of her hips and buttocks, seemingly conflicts with the ugly but childish green and white striped button-through nylon dress that she wears. The latter’s hem, lifted by her posture, swings bewitchingly high, revealing broad, tight elasticated leg-cuffs of white short-legged bloomer-style knickers that catch and reflect the light in glistening puddles suggestive of PVC or some other soft plastic. The bonnet, covering her head and prettily framing her face, matches her dress both in its green striped patterning and in its fabric covering - the thick stubby glossy-black plaited pigtailed braids emerging ungainly from each side have their ends tied and neatened in broad ribbon bows of the same green striped rustling nylon fabric.

The poor thing looks on, teary eyed: One eye, locked immovably on that waiting cane, elicits the anxiety wrinkling her brow and the shaking that suffuses her rubbery limbs. The other hovers between the documents she knows await her signature and the luscious steaming feast, eliciting in turns dark dreading consternation on the one hand and drooling Pavlovian salivation on the other. Of the later she knows she can’t have one without the other. As for the former, that viciously supple cane, she knows, now, there will be no choice whatever the outcome; she should have signed earlier, when they had first instructed her to.

So her signature waits still in the pen, the food cools, threatening to go to waste upon the plate, the hunger gnaws at her and drool drips from the corners of her mouth as it might from some slavering hound - yet still she hesitates. It is only her fear of the caning to come that is holding her back now; she is resigned to everything else - it’s only a matter of time in any case. Yet still she hesitates; her will has been defeated, but it is that fear that keeps her there - and it will be costing her one extra stroke for each half minute she holds off. They have her kneeling there punishing herself now, albeit psychologically: the satisfaction of that knowledge shines in the faces of all those present around the table, those who even now are tucking in with gusto, their smiles broadening further with every succulent mouthful.

If there are any misgivings circulating around the table as to form of the upcoming entertainment there is little evidence overtly displayed, either by way of facial expression or body language. Only the dark haired woman apparently chairing the meeting, the doctor, possesses even the slightest of qualms. She cannot help but glance from time to time to the old rector on her right; even within her distorted value system she finds his predictions somewhat odious.

The thoughts run through her head in quick succession, the yin and yang balancing awkwardly in her inward quest for absolution - though what deity would absolve her is questionable. “The old bugger’s still breathless, red-faced with exertion; one day it’s going to kill him for sure”. Momentarily the hypocrisy of that thought near brings tears of hilarity to her eyes. “Look at him, sweating profusely, still desperately trying to stifle that betraying dust-dry asthmatic cough of his, acknowledging all around him with a nod here and a lust-filled grin there.

A dirty old pervert this man might well be, but the doctor knows only too well to what extent his support is paramount to the continuation of her work - and in how many ways.

Long revered for his charitable works, his had never been a conscience overly troubled by the diversion of a proportion of that charity to such other good works as he might see fit - such as were famously carried out by his present hosts. In return, as a major publicly-recognised patron to the good reverend’s church-run foundation, she could hardly do other than benefit from the warmth of the human aspect it provided her corporation’s identity.

The more cynical might well cite the undoubted tax efficiency of such bestowals, but then again the old man’s work in providing shelter for young women in moral danger was of real enough benefit, and highly visible too. Then, of course there was the benefit to science to consider, that gained from those, who having passed through his hands, had been persuaded to volunteer for the various studies undertaken here. How could she begrudge him his occasional indulgence when so much of her endowment was, in fact, returned as payment in kind - and so many of their subjects were vouchsafed under the auspices of the church through him.

Indeed, the reality was even more polarised than at first sight: many found they gained a certain kudos by way of their donations to that particular ecclesiastical cause - the incomings from that source far exceeded her corporation’s donations to it.

Then, of course, there were those ‘privately funded’ cases, as he was oft fond of putting it - those more intractable cases. And here kneeling before them, soon to put pen to paper - and to feel the loving fire-tongued kiss of that patiently waiting cane for her reward - was just such a case, if unknowingly so. And a very lucrative case at that... It would not come all at once of course; there were papers to be signed at age eighteen, other documents to be signed at age twenty-one - but they had the facilities to provide for such long-term secure care here, longer if required; and besides there were other benefits to be reaped from having had a girl placed in their hands so completely, to having been given total carte blanche over her. There were so many benefits, delicious benefits - and accruing to all concerned - to be had from placing a girl such as this under long-term secure care...

The meal has come to an end: both of the elder gentlemen have started fidgeting awkwardly in their seats, one breaking into an excited staccato burst of parchment-dry coughing. The girl is standing now, pen still in her shaking hand, tears raining down freely and threatening to smudge the nest of freshly scrawled signatures. The doctor licks her lips lasciviously and reaches for the cane... Susan Stringer merely cringes.