A Brief Exercise Yard Sojourn

The incident with the photograph album had been so distressing Lavinia now tried to blot it from her mind. That part of her ‘treatment’ was ongoing, though, and she knew she would be returned to the task again and again, photograph by photograph and memento by memento, cane stroke by searing cane stroke, until it would all be gone. Indeed, having been freed from what she now thought of as her cell once more that was exactly the form of ‘therapy’ she had thought she was going to be in for. The last thing she had expected was to be taken outside the immediate environment of the doctor’s office itself.

To Lavinia the sojourn seemed surprisingly brief, even taking into account the manner in which she was harried and hurried along - disturbingly brief, considering her pre-perception of just how deep within the bowels of the place she was now incarcerated. The passageway, off which the doctor’s so-called ‘interview room’ lay, was perhaps twenty-five to thirty meters in length, certainly no more. In both directions it was bisected just before its end by a locked floor-to-ceiling security grille or gate such as might be encountered in any high security prison and equally worthy in terms of sturdiness of construction.

Had they turned right Lavinia would have known exactly what to expect; just beyond the barricade of white painted steel bars at that end of the passage there was a door, immediately behind which lay another security gate and the soul-crippling doldrums of the schoolroom. As it was they had turned left. The sense of the impending unknown added to the girl’s trepidation - after all, the only thing she had been told was that she was to be shown “the error of her ways “ and to have demonstrated to her “the irrationality of your thinking “, as the doctor had so succinctly put it.

From the start she had been led to believe that the schoolroom section was entirely self-contained, consisting of the hospital-ward-like dormitory, the schoolroom itself, the sinister and claustrophobic closet-sized punishment room and this short length of corridor that apparently led only to the interview room and the medical exam suite. Now, having reached the far end and having been ushered past the unlocked gate, the doctor brandishing a dull iron key, one of several she had bunched hanging from a chain attached to a metal clip on her belt, Lavinia saw for the first time that the passage continued around to the right before again doglegging, this time to the left, a few meters further on. But that was not to be their route; they had already reached their destination. Set back into the wall immediately to their left was a white-painted iron door; Lavinia could see the telltale red-orange staining trailing like veins from where the hinges were mounted and around its edges, where it was set into what appeared to be a rather aged concrete-reinforced surround.

Clearly, whatever lay beyond this point had not justified the kind of conspicuous effort that had been expended elsewhere in the complex - the paint was very obviously old and the door an original fixture. As if in evidence of the latter, the raised outline of an old painted sign could just be made out beneath the more modern layer - the typeface, typically nineteenth century, would not have looked amiss on an American Wild-West movie poster. Stimulation-starved senses and a parched mind, dulled from disuse, grappled with the vagaries of the lighting and the layering camouflage of repeatedly applied paint - there were two words, one above the other, and she could just make out and up of each: Exercise Yard.

As if reading the young girl’s thoughts the doctor spoke for the first time since leading her out of the consultation room:

“These twisting, turning, corridors used to get me hopelessly lost when I first arrived - and I had been given a diagram to guide me round. The building was designed that way, you see, way back in the 19th century when it formed part of an insane asylum; it was intended to confuse any would-be escapee if she had somehow gotten past all the other security precautions they had in place back then. None ever did get free, according to the records, so as it turned out; it was all largely superfluous. You’ll have noticed I said she: It was an all-female inmate section - just as it is now - and part of the most secure wing of what was an already very secure mental hospital; although I guess we shouldn’t use that term nowadays.” The statuesque psychiatrist stifled a surprisingly girlish little giggle, belying her stern bearing, and went on; chatting brightly, as if out for a Sunday afternoon constitutional, while simultaneously fumbling with a key-chain that dangled from her belt:

“There was a larger all-male counterpart at one time, and a second much larger female wing - both long gone now, along with the majority of the original Victorian structure; besides the hospital’s exterior façade, that is. Strangely enough those other wings, though just as secure, were, by all accounts, of a far more conventional design. This is all that remains, now from that era - a small self-contained doubly-secure unit discreetly buried away in the building’s underbelly.

This warren of passageways was actually stumbled upon by accident; it does not appear on any of the original building plans or diagrams, nor is it listed in any inventory or mentioned anywhere in the hospital archives. It seems to have been constructed under the auspices of some sort of private initiative to house a small number of female inmates in accommodation that was extraordinarily secure and restrictive - even by the standards of the time - and presumably for an indefinite period, since there is no record of any patient ever mentioning having been detained here.

We know it was an all-female facility as there are, built-in, a number of intriguingly innovative features clearly specifically geared towards dealing with, and holding, young women - all of which have been retained and some of which have even been expanded upon. We also know just how effective the facility was in keeping its inmates under detention, for the reasons I’ve just given - and we have since added to and augmented those original precautions with a layer of modern security devices.”

An old key rattled in an equally aged lock, dislodging what looked like soot and flakes of rust. An iron handle, roughened by granules of paint and corrosion, was turned and moments later - to the discordant accompaniment of grating metal and painfully squealing hinges - a shaft of dirty greyish-yellow daylight burst in, instantly surrounding them both, doctor and patient alike, in pools of deep shadow.

Key in hand, the doctor turned towards the plainly stunned young girl waiting quietly behind her, temporarily blocking the way:

“The reason I’m telling you all this is just so as you can begin to come to grips with just how pointless it is you trying run away from here. Those nameless faceless unfortunate young women that came or were sent here, all those years ago, stayed here - it was as simple as that. I don’t doubt there were some that deluded themselves that they could simply run away or that some shining knight on a white charger would come to whisk them off, or who perhaps thought they might write letters appealing to a higher authority or gain their freedom through stirring-up public outrage in the press. But the truth of the matter was that as far as Victorian society at large was concerned, the young women sent here simply ceased to exist.

There seems to have been no record kept of their whereabouts on paper, I’m sure that no visitors would have been given access to the place nor would the inmates have been allowed access to writing materials, let alone have the facility to send letters. You have to remember that these were young women condemned as ‘feebleminded’, ‘given to hysteria’ or ‘delusional’ in a time when, even more so than today, mental illness was associated with social stigma. As such they would likely have had no contact whatsoever with the outside world - and besides; who would take any notice of the ranting of a mental patient. That is something you would do well to remember, young lady, before you go making any further allegations.

Remember that you only have yourself to blame for your predicament. You had three well-renowned and well-respected professors of psychiatry sitting in front of you. Had you sat quietly throughout the interview, answered their questions politely, stayed calm, they would most likely have returned you to us under your registered designation as a ‘voluntarily admitted patient’ and who knows - we might well have decided to release you. Saying that, you have undergone two long stints, each of several months duration, living under the discipline of the ‘schoolroom’ regime and previous to that there were the three months when we had you living in isolation waiting to join the experiment - yes, that was indeed three months in of itself. In addition you have undergone several months’ confinement in the ‘seclusion room’ by way of punishment - an environment fully intended to induce psychological stress. It is only to be expected that under such circumstances certain unfortunate and detrimental, how shall we say... psychological changes, will have taken place.

In my opinion you are displaying signs of having already become a little too institutionalised to have been allowed straight back out and expected to fend for yourself in society, whatever the outcome of your appraisal might have been. I think we might have opted to keep you here a little longer to allow for some form of rehabilitation - perhaps an additional six months to a year - but at least you would still have been officially registered as ‘voluntarily admitted’. Of course you would have had to have signed the necessary declaration - and the waiver that goes with it - extending your residency. But you’ve signed several of those in the past and I think you know only too well how persuasive a few strokes of the cane from one of my nurses or myself can be - don’t you?... I said: don’t you?”

“Yes doctor.” In response the girl’s voice sounded sullen, leaden; her eyes, downcast, her cheeks rouged by humiliation and her shoulders hunched by the weight of defeat, the loosely hanging green striped flannelette of the ill-fitting pyjama jacket hiding from view the white knuckled grip that was the only thing keeping up her pyjama bottoms. It was exactly the effect the haughty young psychiatrist wanted and expected to see. If all went well, by the time she got the girl back to her room she would have made significant inroads into bringing the girl properly under the hospital’s control.

“As it was, you were silly enough to try and ‘whistle-blow’; as if anybody would have listened to such an obviously disturbed, distraught and delusional young woman as you appeared to be. So now here you are, saddled with the stigma of having been sectioned under the mental health act and compulsorily admitted to a secure psychiatric hospital. This is where they have unwittingly incarcerated you - here under my care, under my control. And make no mistake; this is where you’re going to stay - just like those young women back in the Victorian era - at least for the next few years. As for what will happen then - well, who knows? I just have to see what I can do to persuade our learned friends to let us have you here a little longer, perhaps a few more years.

What you have to understand is that this is not a prison sentence. There is no Court of Appeal and there is no definite sentence, just a minimum. Beyond that - and I intend to ensure that it takes the full three years before your case comes under review - it all comes down to what is in your patient dossier and in the reports I feedback to the panel. So you see, how long you stay here depends solely on me - and unfortunately I get the feeling that my report is unlikely to be that favourable. To be fair it is not just me; there are certain parties out there with real genuine concerns over your being released too soon.

Talking of which; one privilege you are going to be granted that those poor 19th-century wretches didn’t have is to be allowed a couple of visitors. Apparently your guardian and her solicitor will want to visit - isn’t that nice of them to be so concerned? It’s going to have to wait until we have you safely ensconced in a proper secure psychiatric ward and I am afraid there will be a little paperwork for you to sign. But I’ll see to it that you receive a good hard caning just prior to their visit to keep your mind focused, and the promise of a second after their departure - or perhaps even in front of them - if I see so much as a moment’s hesitation once the pen is placed in your hand. Mind you; I don’t think they are in any particular hurry - it is not as if you are going anywhere. I’m sure they won’t mind returning several times and repeating the process should you prove a little reluctant.”

The doctor having now stood aside, the vista confronting the astonished girl’s saucer-wide eyes was one of soulless drab slate-grey stone, streaked here and there by rust-red cataracts that meandered down from the corners and sills of sinister, prison-like, iron window frames pitted and blistered with age. Set solidly in rock-hard time-darkened mortar, many had been in-filled with old red brick; others cowered darkly behind thumb-thick bars of blackened iron. In the stark glare, a rectangular tarmac courtyard had opened up, perhaps covering the area of a small tennis court - a bleak, grubby dismaying space in a state of considerable dereliction and surrounded on all sides by a grim edifice, the last legacy of the institution’s Victorian asylum origins. Purple buddleia, pinkish rosebay willowherb, golden-yellow dandelions and tufts of hardy ryegrass scrabbled and wrestled together with woody bramble coils, pushing up through irregular fissures and fractures testament to decades of neglect and disrepair.

Above, a network of rusted steel cables were suspended between the walls, strung out on all sides from just beneath the level of the first story windows and forming a close-mesh cage-like latticework - a seemingly superfluous security feature, but one presumably felt necessary by the building’s Victorian designers to dissuade those lunatics who might otherwise be tempted to climb. Up at gutter height, just above the second story windows, a similar basket-weave of suspended steel cabling stretched across the sky, the rusty reddish-brown strands standing out darkly against the lapis-blue heavens. The sun’s warm-gold face furtively peered over the opposite block as if over a garden wall, mocking voyeuristically and casting trapezoid shadows down the end walls while clouds, scuttling between the acutely-sloping slate rooftops, caused the light to flicker like a silent movie.

From somewhere in the distance came the raucous calls of black-headed gulls and the rhythmic rumbling throb of something that sounded like it might have been a far-off helicopter, while from closer at hand came the aggressive squabbling of house sparrows. A hand gently, yet firmly pressed, between Lavinia shoulder blades and she was out.

She was out...OUT! She was outdoors, out in the sun! Out in the open air! All at once she wanted to sing and to scream and to laugh and cry and to dance, yet, at the same time, curl up and sleep. It was exhilarating and it was exhausting and it felt so... and it felt so, so... it felt so...what, exactly? Triumphant? It was hardly that. It was not as if she had been set free - she was clearly as walled-in as ever she had been - other for the narrow sky-lined aperture above. Jubilant, excited? Any jubilation had been short-lived and tempered by the grim mood that seemed to infuse every stone and every granule of rust. There was excitement, though - embodied in that infinitely-azure ceiling - just to glance up was to set to wing a host of anxious butterflies.

For a moment, she wasn’t sure quite how she felt; her heart pounded, she was light-headed, giddy. Excited? Perhaps...certainly...but it was more like anxiety than excitement. Her palms felt sweaty, clammy... the pounding of her heart had now become a hammering... The light-headed giddiness was something more akin to a faint... Frightening... No... Worse... Terrifying, dreadfully terrifying... That was it... Dread. A cold clammy dread - the sort of dread an arachnophobe might feel confronted by some particularly loathsome eight-legged horror, the sort of dread she herself would feel, that she had felt before. She recognized it now; it was that sense of panic that had so often set in if ever she was asked to make a snap decision, the dread she had been tormented by, more than once, when she had felt trapped in a crowd or, conversely, vulnerable and conspicuous in an open space.

It was the same crippling mental paralysis that Aunt Julia had first identified in her, that her aunt’s psychotherapist friend said she could help her with, that they both assured her she would receive help for as part of the behavioural psychology trial they had eventually persuaded her to volunteer for. But she could not remember the attacks ever having been this severe, this acute - she could not recall ever being this desperate, just to get back indoors, to get back inside, even if it was to return to the cramped claustrophobic cell-like room the doctor kept her locked up in, even if it was to return to the clutches of a secure psychiatric hospital wherein she was subject to the strictest discipline, to corporal punishment, to being stripped of her rights and her identity, to being socially isolated and kept in near total seclusion.

Turning to flee the scene, arms flailing, she ran blindly back the way she had just come, back towards the still open doorway and smack bang into the waiting arms of the sympathetically smiling psychiatrist. Overbalancing at the last moment, her pyjama bottoms finally succumbing to gravity, she ended with her arms wrapped around the doctor, finding herself, in turn, held softly within the woman’s embrace. In the blink of an eye she found herself spun back around and facing out into the relative freedom of the exercise yard. But this was now an unrequited freedom - it took a more determined shove this time to send her waddling out into the narrow swath of sunlight, pyjama bottoms tangling comically around her ankles, her close-fitting, tamper proof, transparent plastic pants taking on suspiciously yellowish tinge down through the crotch and the light glinting off the gold lettering that served to say it all - “Psychiatric Dept; Incontinence pants, tamper proof, short leg”. Behind her, as she tumbled forward, frantically scrabbling to pull up her pyjama trousers, she could hear the doctor’s voice, the tone typically patronising while at the same time infused with a note of concern:

“How odd! Are you all right, dear - whatever is the matter? I would have thought you would welcome the chance to have a little outdoor exercise time, stretch your legs out in the fresh air. This was the old exercise yard, back when the hospital was built as an asylum. One hundred and twenty years ago - way back in the Victorian era - several young women, dressed pretty much as you are right now funnily enough, though minus the plastic pants of course, would have been traipsing round and round this yard. It is rarely used nowadays, although occasionally we might bring out one or two of the more disturbed characters that we have staying here, trundle them around - safely restrained in their wheelchairs of course - just to give them a break from the tedium of the ward. It’s surprising how being locked up twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week can cause the mind to deteriorate otherwise...Mental atrophy, we call it. But other than that...well, I’d agree; it’s not exactly inspiring, is it?”

The doctor strolled unhurriedly towards the frantically scrambling girl as she went on:

“But what it is, of course, is secure - very secure. And that is one of the points I wanted to make. You see now why I brought you here? You can see also, I imagine, just how futile it would be if ever you tried to overpower me physically. For a start; as you have already discovered, the interview room door is kept locked from the outside whenever I have a patient in for a session - and that includes whenever I bring you out from your room. I myself have explicitly to give a signal in order to be let out.

But even if you did somehow get out into the corridor, even if you did somehow snatch my keys - and I sure you have thought of that -you would quickly find that they only opened the first two security grilles, the ones at either end of the passage. Beyond that and you would find that a separate member of staff controls access from the far side of each grille. And even if you could get past every single security precaution the unit has in place, where would that get you? The only way in or out of the unit is via the one single elevator - which in itself requires a special key to operate and which, in any case, can only take you as far as the main hospital’s secure psychiatric wing. I don’t ordinarily carry a key to this area, but as I am sure you can see; there is nowhere you can get to from here.”

Bending she helped the shaking girl to her feet, then squatted to retrieve the girl’s pyjama bottoms, her tailored black leather skirt tightening around her hips and reflecting the sun’s rays as her white medical coat flapped open. Hoisting the baggy green-striped trousers briskly up the girl’s quivering, rubbery limbs she bunched up the waistband, taking up the slack and pressing the wad of fabric into the girl’s hand. Looking deep into the girl’s reddened, tear-filled eyes she paused, waiting for the humiliation of the situation to sink in before continuing:

“But all that is missing the point, surely. Even you must realise by now that there is far more to your incarceration here than these thick stone walls, barred windows, medical restraints and security gates. Today is not the first time you have experienced feeling the way you do at the moment, is it? We call it agoraphobia, my dear - an irrational fear of open spaces - and it would seem that, sadly, you appear to be afflicted by a particularly acute form. As I understand it from your notes, you were displaying symptoms well before you ever came here. Why, you seem to have been receiving treatment for veritable panoply of conditions, a cornucopia of problems. But I am willing to wager that the symptoms that you experienced at that point in your life were never as severe, nor as debilitating, as those I can plainly see you are suffering at this moment in time. You know, it really upsets me to see you suffering like this - shall we get you back inside, safely under lock and key as it were?”

It was something of a rhetorical question and the point about being ‘under lock and key’, cruelly superfluous and designed to press home the lesson. Miserably the girl dumbly nodded as, with an arm wrapped protectively around her hunched shoulders, the doctor led her docilely back into the building.

The iron door slamming behind her back, followed in quick succession by the ringing clang of the security grille swinging back and locking made Lavinia jump, as if waking from a dream or snapping out of a trance. She had been hustled through the latter’s ironwork portal while barely noticing, as if sleepwalking, her mind was in a turmoil - why had she been taken outside, just to be taunted, just to be shown the sun and then be locked away again? What was this woman trying to do to her?

Behind her, the doctor was still speaking, guiding her patient, with one hand on the girl’s shoulder, back towards the locked safety of the interview room and the girl’s private little chamber of solitude.

“The deterioration seems to have started while you were still under Dr Ecclestone’s care. To be honest, phobias are not my speciality; but I would have thought that encouraging a patient to avoid the situations that they dread - as she apparently advised you to do - would only exacerbate matters. I am sure she knew what she was doing and whatever she did was for your benefit, as she saw it, but I have to say that, as I understand it, the result was your virtual imprisonment in your bedroom at your aunt’s house. Similarly, I am afraid to say that the even greater degree of seclusion that you have experienced while residing here, in this institution, seems to have exacerbated your problems still further. We have been monitoring these changes, of course, mapping the deterioration in your condition, but then again, whatever my opinion might be; the powers-that-be are traditionally loath to go against the opinion of such an esteemed authority as Dr Ecclestone.”

Watching the girl shuffling along - shoulders hunched, one hand employed hitching up her pyjama bottoms, the other hanging listlessly by her side and occasional tugging an overlong trouser leg out from under a foot - the thought occurred that the best way to proceed now might be to place the girl in total seclusion for a couple of days. Mind made up - and having arrived at the interview room - she gave the girl a hard slap across the back of her thigh with her open palm, producing a yelp and propelling her patient towards the open doorway.

“Keep moving right along now, back into the consultation room you go, - that’s it, like a good little girl - then let’s get you back in your cosy little home.”

Smiling pleasantly and having crossed the consultation room the doctor waited, one hand on her hip, the other holding back the heavy quilt-lined iron door, as Lavinia stumbled into the room ahead of her. The sense of triumph in the doctor’s breast was almost palpable yet, sadly, she knew her elation could not be shared - indeed it was something she would have to take great care to conceal from her patient. Perhaps if she had never seen footage of the girl in a previous existence - as a self assured, self-confident young woman just coming up to her final exams, an Oxbridge place already predicted by most and a prestigious classical dance scholarship in the pipeline should she prefer - her pulse might not have been racing so, the flush less obvious around her cheeks and her breathing more measured. As it was, the stark contrast between the girl she had seen up on that screen - laughing and cavorting carelessly in her Donna Karan summer dress, her waist-length raven hair splaying out around her as she twirled - and the childishly-dependent cowed figure with boyishly-short side-parted hair shuffling unsteadily along in striped mental patient pyjamas and weeping gently, had a piquancy the effect of which she found difficult to disguise.

At one level it worried her - as a mental health professional it troubled her that she did not feel at least a modicum of compassion, let alone that she should view the scene through contemptuous eyes. She sometimes wondered if she were not, in some ways, as much a caged animal as were her charges - and equally as manipulated. But then there was that other side to her; the side that had led her to study psychology in the first place, to take up psychiatry, in a quest to rationalise her own undeniable predilections, to understand that part of her that she denied still and that was out-and-out dominant lesbian.

The irony was that her denial in itself was the key to understanding her own personality, if only she could see it. That which roused her passion was the subjugation of her own sex and - being in denial - the guilt she laid squarely on the shoulders of the subject of that passion - especially if particularly fair of face and pleasing to the eye. The more attractive she found a young woman, the more she would seek to apportion blame and the more that attractive personality had to be curbed. This invariably resulted in still greater arousal and a burning guilt, which of course she would happily transfer to the object of her desire and which could only be assuaged by further spitefulness in retaliation. Luckily there were others who could see it, who had seen it, who had realised that here was something that might be utilised - a talent, one might say. Without the invisible guiding hand of these unknown individuals she might well have been destined herself to one day stumble around on a locked ward somewhere. Yet here she had been given free rein and thus stripped of the fear of consequence - even if not the guilt of a staunch, repressive Roman Catholic upbringing - and contrary to expectations the result had been stability and a flowering of her intellect.

Behind the reflective disguise of her black-rimmed glasses the doctor’s eyes, though lacking none of their usual shrewdness, smouldered with dewy-eyed passion. The urge to upend the girl over her lap, to tug down those pyjama bottoms, to run her palms over the girl’s polythene knickers, was all but irresistible. But then again; what need was there to resist? After all, she had complete and utter carte blanche over this girl. She could draw a fingertip along the deep, sharply-defined declivity between those resilient globes, where the softly rounded elastic back seam dipped alarmingly as if seeking to rend the girl’s buttock cheeks, one from the other. She could trace around the circular outline of the cotton reel-sized rubber bung that distended and stretched the girl’s sphincter - locked in place by an internal mushroom-shaped flange, its central cylindrical opening equally perfectly proportioned to facilitate the rapid insertion of all manner of suppositories or to accept the colonic irrigation nozzle. She could cup the swollen lips, clearly visible through the air-brush thin transparent polythene, feel around the coiled protrusion of the catheter and the little protruding thimble-like nubbin of the stiffened rubber clitoral hood that was there to prevent masturbation - except that it didn’t, not fully.

What the latter prophylactic did do, though, was prevent culmination - it was a devilish little device, its platinum wire framework sutured into place with threaded fine wires of the same material, its internal surface lined with thousands upon thousands of fine threadlike latex strands that continually teased and tickled with the slightest movement but could do little else. She could keep the girl bent across her knee, spanking her with one hand and twiddling and rocking that little torture of Tantalus with the other, feeling the core heat of the girl’s body, that young buoyant bottom, tight yet plump, desperately pressing back against her palm, the girl’s hips pivoting in a psychologically damaging combination of frustration and pain. She could bring the girl close, so, so close; she would keep her there, teetering on the precipice, her mind tied in a writhing, conflicted turmoil of yearning and abhorrence, confused and suggestible in equal measure and soaking up the ideas she would whisper like a sponge. She would bring the girl right to the edge, have her begging, without ever having to fear inadvertently providing the relief she craved.

Then, when the girl was sobbing as much in frustration as is in pain, she would push her, weeping to the floor, make her crawl to her room and have her kneel there with her hands on her head, or perhaps she might stand over her watching her frantically masturbate, soaking up the girl’s humiliation and berating her failure to satisfy herself.

Alternatively she could bend the girl across her desk, peel back the perspiration-tacky plastic of her knickers, tug them down around her knees and take the edge off her passion with half a dozen cuts or so of a nice pliant bamboo rod or, better still, a thin plaited leather riding crop. Yes, a riding crop, why not? She could almost feel it in her hands, hear it slashing through the air again and again and again, hear the girl’s plaintive screams bouncing harmlessly off soundproofed walls. And she could repeat the procedure day after day, week after week, month after month; she could fixate the girl on her own bottom and on being dominated and spanked by her psychiatrist.

Indicating the girl’s usual place - the hard, straight-backed wooden chair set in front of the doctor’s desk - she gestured for the girl to take a seat. The girl sat and the woman was pleased to see her place her hands on her head without being instructed - the girl was coming along quite nicely now, she thought.

“I am so sorry to have had to put you through that but it was all for your own good. Of course, I could have simply explained this all to you verbally, but I thought the best way for you to gain a real appreciation of the situation was through first-hand experience - it is all very much part of the psychological readjustment that you need to go through. The lesson I want you to take away with you is this: I could take you, right now, to the main entrance. I could set you down on the driveway - dressed in your own clothing and with all your personal belongings handed back to you - and you would simply turn tail and scamper back inside. In fact I’m willing to bet that if you were to be shut out, within a few minutes you would be begging to be allowed to wear that boarding-school uniform, you claimed you found so humiliating, just to be let back in. I’d wager that in time you’d even be prepared to grovel on your hands and knees to be allowed to wear those smelly old pyjamas you are presently dressed in, if that was what it took - and they are beginning to really whiff now, you know; quite disgusting!

You have to understand; in a straight line, it is around two-thirds of a mile across the hospital grounds to the perimeter gate and the road beyond. That’s two thirds of a mile of open gardens, lawns and fields, two thirds of a mile of sheer ice-cold dread... Now do you understand the sheer ludicrous futility of your earlier scrabbling to get out of this room, the futility of you even considering the possibility of running away? All you have succeeded in doing is to provide yet another example of irrational behaviour - and I’m afraid I have no choice other than to record it in your notes...”

“Th, the, they... they did this to me... They did this to me deliberately. They...”

“Who did, dear?”

“Aunt Julia, or my guardian... or...”

“Dr Ecclestone?”

“Yes, yes... yes, her too, Dr Ecclestone.”

“So you are saying that Dr Anne Ecclestone, an internationally renowned authority on phobias and their evolution - an esteemed colleague of mine, incidentally - has been working against you, perhaps colluding with others?”

“Yes, yes... she... they...”

“And the panel of doctors who committed you? Am I to suppose that they, too, are mixed up in this... conspiracy of yours?”

“I don’t... I’m not... yes, yes, that must be it, they are all against me - there’s nothing wrong with me. They were just making it up, just looking for an excuse.”

“Three external university professors, all respected experts in their field and all totally independent of this institution - you’re saying that some how, for some reason, these eminent gentlemen have ganged up on you? Just to get at poor little you, just to put you away, the poor little rich girl? You really think three such learned men would risk their reputations, just to get at you? It must be quite some conspiracy - and you must think you are somebody very special indeed - that’s all I can say. But the question remains: Why? Why would all these people be working against you? What do you think it’s all about?

“It’s all my guardian’s doing, Madison Bartlett, she hates me. She’s always hated me. She wants the house, my allowance, my trust fund...everything. It must be her - it has to be her”

“Madison Daisy Bartlett, the women’s magazine editor? What was that show she used to present...‘Daisy: The Thinking Woman’s Fashionista’ wasn’t it? So now you are telling me that she is all part of this conspiracy? And what about me - have you considered whether I might be involved in some way or other? Well, have you?”

“I,I,I...I’m...I’m not sure”

“You’re not sure? What is it you are not sure of - whether or not you have ever considered I might be part of this conspiracy of yours, or whether you actually think that I am involved? Which is it?”

Lavinia slumped forward, dropping her head heavily and cradling it in hands, twisting this way and that. Her voice sounded dull and her speech - muffled by her hands, the words mumbled, the ever-present stammer tripping her frustratingly - lacked coherence: “Does... d,d,does....does it real...d,does it really m,m,m...does it, it...”

“Does it really matter? Well, yes it does, rather. It’s actually quite an important distinction, from a diagnostic standpoint” The doctor would not ordinarily have allowed her tone to betray her impatience in so blatant a manner and certainly not if dealing with a patient afflicted by a stammer - interrupting the patient’s flow would be almost guaranteed to make matters worse. But then, though the seed might have been planted elsewhere, the girl had the doctor to thank for having lovingly nurtured those early green shoots into the luxuriant affliction she presently experienced.

“No, no, I,I don’t...I,I mean; I didn’t”

“So you have never considered that I might be part of the conspiracy - is that right?”

“No...I,I mean, I did, but...but...”

“But not now? And speak up, you are mumbling and muttering to such an extent that I can hardly understand a word you are saying.

Now, sit up straight and get those hands back on your head and your shoulders back or I’ll put you over my lap right now and take my tawse to that chubby bottom.”

“No, not...not...not now.”

“So you trust me?”

“Yes, Yes.”

“But you didn’t before?”

“No...I mean yes...I mean no...I,I m,mean...I’m not sure what I mean...you’re confusing me...please, please don’t. Why are you doing this to me?”

“Doing what to you, dear? I thought you just said you trust me - isn’t that so?”

“Yes, yes...but...but....you’re confusing m,m,m...”

“But nothing; you either trust me or you don’t - which is it to be? I want you to state it one way or the other; for your own sanity, dear. I’m just trying to help you adjust.”

“I,I,I trust you.”

“But you implied that didn’t at some earlier time - why was that, do you think?”

“I.I,I’m not sure...I didn’t understand”

“What was it that you didn’t understand? What has changed? Could it be simply that you hadn’t yet accepted me as your doctor?” For a moment the doctor looked pensive, as if considering where to go next with this: “Lets put that another way: would it be correct to say that you trust me as a doctor.”

“I, I’m not sure”

“But you say you trust me - why? Who am I?”

“You’re a doctor”

“And you trust me - but do you trust me as your doctor?”

“Yes, yes, I suppose...but...”

“If you trust me as your doctor, doesn’t that imply that you are my patient?”

“I, I, I’m not sure...I don’t want to be a patient,”

“But... Am I or am I not your doctor? You just told me that the reason you trust me is because I’m your doctor - is that not so?...or is it that you were lying? Or perhaps you just don’t know what you are saying - is that it? After all; it does say in your notes that you are prone to delusion.”

“No, no, not that, I, I mean...I trust you, I know what I’m saying.”

“Why. Why should you trust me? Surely it’s because I’m your doctor”

“Because you are my doctor, yes”

“Which means that you must be my patient - doesn’t it?”

“Yes, yes... I,I,I suppose so.”

“So, do you think that is what has changed?”

“Uh, uh... I suppose.... Yes, yes.”

“So you see yourself now as my patient - would that be fair to say?”

“I... I’m not... I’m... not sure.”

“You say you are not sure, but why else would you trust me - given all that you’ve said - if not because I am your doctor?”

“I’I’ I’m not sure”

“Then you must trust me because I am your doctor - do you agree?”

I, I...well...Yes I guess so.”

“You guess s, you guess so...don’t you know?

“Yes, yes”

“Then say it; say: ‘I trust you because you are my doctor’.”

“I, I...I,I trust you because you are my doctor.”

“There’s a good girl! So that means, quite obviously, that you are my patient - yes or no?”

“Y, yes”

“Yes, what, child?”

“Yes, doctor.”

“Good girl! And what are you?”

“I, I don’t understand...”

“Doctor!”

“I d; don’t understand... doctor.”

“Well, f I am your doctor, then you must be my...”

“Patient... doctor”

“There’s a good little girl. Now say it: ‘I am your....”

“I am your patient, doctor.”

Lovely, sweetheart, you’re coming along ever so well now. Was that really so difficult - on a scale of one to ten?”

“No, doctor.”

“Good girl”

“Now; what sort of doctor am I?”

“A psychiatrist”

“Which makes you what sort of patient exactly...a...a... psychiatric patient...say it”

“A,a,a psy, psy, psychiatric patient...doctor.””

Oh my! What a good girl! What a good little girl you are becoming!”

In Quiet and Seclusion

Inside the close confines of the doctor’s so-called ‘seclusion room’ the establishment’s central wake-up bell pealed imperiously, the shrill tone slicing through the lulling monotonous waterfall of bubbling white noise. The girl drowsily arose, the thick flannelette of her hospital-issue pyjamas damp with perspiration from where she had been lying, foetal-curled, directly on the impermeable rubber of the mattress, a faint greasy stain and a little irregular puddle of drool remaining behind on the soft latex pillow cover to show where her head had rested so heavily mere moments before. Awkwardly she swung her legs over the side of the hospital bed, the side-rails having been removed along with the humane restraints and their attachment points as an expedient to the doctor’s so-called total seclusion therapy. The nylon-fleece lined leather ankle restraints of course remained, each fastened by a small brass padlock - the latter painted white so as not to disturb the monotony of her surroundings - and linked together by a cruelly-short leather strap that allowed at best only a sedate shuffle. In straightening to her feet her hands were of little help.

Her wrists were each encircled by the scaled-down siblings of her ankle restraints and each was linked by way of a short length of extremely strong nylon-link chain to a leather band, as broad as to encompass her entire abdomen, that encircled her waist beneath her pyjama jacket and that was very firmly buckled behind her back. There was enough slack allowed in the design of the wrist restraints to enable her to work sitting at the minuscule school desk that represented the claustrophobic room’s only other furnishing, but little else - and even then it was only by stooping uncomfortably over the desktop, a task made all the harder by the fact that the pen was attached to the rear of the desk by a length of chain.

Painfully slowly she struggled to her feet in the space between the bed in the opposite side wall, a space no wider than necessary to accommodate the desk and chair combination that stood against the end wall and that was only little wider than the doorway. Both hands clutching the hopelessly loose waistband of her pyjama bottoms and all too aware of the stale smell she now emitted from every pore and that permeated every thread of the fabric she shuffled the few steps to the door - a prison cell-like construction of floor-to-ceiling bars, immediately beyond which and directly abutting the metalwork stood the thick heavily padded soundproof outer door that insured her total seclusion and that was now kept permanently locked twenty four hours a day, every day, day after day. If she knelt properly, smartly upright with shoulders back, she knew that a narrow panel in the base of the outer door, lining up with a matching slot in the metalwork of the inner, would slide open and the bowl of the tasteless, texture-free slop that the institution jokingly called food would be slipped through. If she had been good, very good, then a fresh bedpan would be pushed through in response to her pushing out her filled one - if not, then the used, soiled, one would be returned with contents intact. If she had been particularly disobedient then her bedpan privilege could be revoked altogether.

Today, though, was not a good day; the bell had pealed again before the girl reached the door and dropped to her knees. Watching the scene unfolding on her computer screen the doctor frowned, pressing the key that would start the punishment routine. The girl was growing increasingly lethargic. It was no real surprise given the restricted sleep pattern regimen she had now placed her hapless patient on, but nonetheless the girl would have to be sharpened up. There would be no first meal for her again today - the girl would just have to go without.

The doctor pressed her fingers together in thought for a moment: In many ways hunger was an ideal punishment for this almost obsessively active young woman now in her care. It helped impress upon her mind how powerless she had become to help herself, reinforce how dependent she was on those with authority over her. In addition the characteristic light-headedness that would accompany the girl’s low blood glucose would leave her feeling increasingly less energetic, less able to continue with her defiant attempts at keeping limber.

When the girl had been part of the ‘schoolroom unit’ study they were conducting back in the department of experimental behavioural psychology they would make her kneel facing the corner while the other girls were put through their paces. She had of course been there to observe on many occasions.

The so-called PE class - for ‘Physical Education’ - had developed over time under the unfettered hands of the staff into a purgatory of sweating, exhausting exertion designed to push a girl to breaking point and beyond each and every session under the constant spur of the rubber-soled gym-shoe or thin pliant cane across buttocks left bared by the deliberately high-cut leotards they had the girls wear.

Depending on the routine sometimes they’d have the girls in so-called gym suits - old-fashioned one-piece button-through short sleeved blouse-and-shorts garments based on nineteen-thirties styling. Of cotton and in the green and white vertical stripe that had been adopted by the institution for blouses, pyjamas, nylon work dresses and the like the suit incorporated the ‘school’ crest on its breast pocket, but there the parallels with the bygone age ended. The cotton was rubberised and while the blouse-styled upper portion was loose enough to allow a girl’s breasts to tumble freely - sports bras or any other such support being considered superfluous - the lower section incorporated Lycra, clung closely and the seat at the rear had been reduced to little more than a thong-like strap that insinuated itself deep into the cleft between the buttocks. Whichever the outfit of the day this particular girl now in her care had always been made to change into the bottle-green Lycra school dance leotard as if she were to be allowed to join in. She remembered how on one occasion she had looked in they had had her kneeling up on her knees in the corner with a stiff ruffled tutu extending horizontally from her waist and a child’s plastic ballerina’s tiara perched on her head.

In her mind’s eye the doctor could still vividly see the other girls all star-jumping in time to a strident metronome-like click, breasts tossing around under green-striped blouse tops like kittens jumping around in a bag. She could clearly see their buttocks bouncing up and down like rubber beachballs, the resilient flesh dewy and liberally splashed with the red patterning of the gym slipper and protruding obscenely from the rear of insanely closefitting shorts that were deliberately - and quite enticingly - designed to outline a girl’s most intimate anatomy. The thought left her breathless and her hand drifted absentmindedly down to the inside of her thigh where the hem of her skirt had ridden up, her fingers trailing and trickling up and down over the nylon of her stockings and only the tight hem of her leather skirt saving her from temptation. Her mind wandered further forward, fast winding time to the end of that session, to the point at which each and every one of them had been left lying exhausted and weeping openly on the floor. Then the whistle blowing and five still-weeping girls reluctantly and stiffly unbuttoning and peeling off their sticky gym suits - joined by a sixth as her present charge had been obliged to follow suit - before lining up to attention before the sole shower cubical. One full minute each, they had had, under a spray chilled just shy of freezing point, obliged to lift their breasts to let play the jets on the undersides then bend with forehead to knees while holding apart their buttock cheeks with both hands to let the icy water run flow over intimacy laid shamefully bare by the attentions of the razor, their every move scrutinised through the transparent Plexiglas sides by a uniformed nurse.

Reluctantly she disengaged herself from the seduction of that image, returning instead to that picture she had in her mind of her present charge kneeling humiliated and frustrated in the corner in leotard, tutu and tiara, the only exercise allowed her, the twitching of the muscles in and around her bottom under the ministrations of the gym mistress’s cane. It was an approach she knew well she could put to advantage: inactivity enforced by punishment or even by the use of restraints.

It was true that she did have the girl’s wrists and ankles in restraints in any case, but she had ensured that there was plenty of slack left between the cuffs - the effect at this stage intended to be largely psychological, to instil a feeling of being under control while doing little to actually restrict the girl physically. No, she wanted exercise - well strenuous exercise anyway, the sort a dancer might want to put herself through - to become at first tiresome and then, through more gentle encouragement, to be abandoned altogether.

The decision to stop had to be the girl’s own; or at least be perceived to have been. The most permanent outcome would not be reached through any blatant attempt to kill the girl’s ambition - along that path lay the risk of strengthening her resolve and the likelihood of her recovering some modicum of drive, of picking up the loose threads of her life, should it become necessary to release her. The way forward was through encouragement, by encouraging the girl to let her sense of ambition wither away within her, to die a natural death - done correctly and she would be left devoid even of the desire to resurrect it; an empty husk left totally compliant to the wishes of others.

Rising from her desk, having scribbled a quick note in her charge’s file, the doctor gathered up her white coat from over the back of her chair and left, locking the consultation room’s door behind her, the key rattling in the thick iron lock. Behind the thick side wall of the institution’s now empty psychiatric consultation room the girl, the doctor’s young ‘charge’, now knelt with growing trepidation, the hunger gnawing at her belly and already fearing the worst.

Four hours had passed by the time the unit psychiatrist returned, wearily slipping out of her doctor’s coat and smoothing down her tight black skirt before slumping down heavily at her desk. Not that the occupant of her ‘seclusion room’ would have had any inkling of that, or even that the woman had ever left: the first she knew of the doctor’s return was a muffled scrabbling and a vague sucking sound as a narrow horizontal panel set low down in the outer door slid back, giving the appearance of a sort of broad grinning letterbox. For a moment her hopes rose, only to be dashed to pieces as a thin sheath of A4 paper was pushed through. She knew immediately what it meant - a punishment imposition - and her blood ran cold.

She was so hungry, so tired and so dirty - how could she possibly deal with it, whatever it would be? But she knew that she would, somehow - she would have to. She considered eating the paper itself, she considered it before, but she was afraid of the repercussions. Besides, the record of her eating paper would go down in her dossier - of course without any mention of the reason and the situation she was in - and taken out of context would constitute yet more evidence of her mental illness... “Oh my God!” she thought suddenly, hoping that it hadn’t been out loud but suddenly realising that she had been thinking of their finding evidence of ‘her’ mental illness as if it were... well, her mental illness. But she wasn’t ill, she wasn’t, she wasn’t. She had to keep telling herself that, even if she wasn’t allowed to say it to anyone else, even though she knew the doctor would cane her long and hard across her bare bottom if she heard her saying it to herself.

The doctor’s voice interrupted her thoughts, speaking softly and calmly over the intercom yet seemingly filling the entire room:

“Meals today are forfeit. In addition you will have to be punished - it is all part of the protocol; punishment will commence shortly. However; punishment will cease upon your acceptably completing an essay based on the pamphlet I have provided you and which I expect you both to read thoroughly and learn. At the same time you can also earn the reinstatement of the next meal.

The pamphlet, you will find, outlines symptoms common to various forms of delusionary psychiatric disorders and the essay you shall write shall be entitled ‘The Delusionary Aspects Running Through My Life and the Basis of My Treatment’. I expect you to think carefully about - and provide examples of - each symptom that you will find listed, with each symptom used to illustrate and explain one of the chapters in your life that we have previously identified together and discussed in therapy. Please remember that I have full transcripts of everything you have talked with me about in our past sessions or have written about - and, of course, I have access to your personal journal. Everything can and will be cross-referenced for both truthfulness and sincerity.

With grim resignation Lavinia Vitesse, pamphlets and papers in one hand, pyjama bottoms hitched in the other, shuffled towards the waiting desk. A piercing little bleep intruded her thoughts and she groaned deeply, from somewhere in the depths of her soul There would be many, many more intrusive thought-derailing little interruptions, going on and on and on, sounding out at a irregular intervals - it was punishment, but she couldn’t complain. It was only what she deserved; after all, she only had herself to blame.

A Reluctantly Trained Student Nurse

Elsewhere in the building a young nurse checked herself in a mirror - a tall, full-figured young woman with honey-blonde hair, and an angelic heart-shaped, generously wide-mouthed, face. She was perfection itself - and she knew it; her smile utterly captivating, her eyes a bottomless heart-melting cornflower blue that matched the dress to a tee and were set off prettily by the high starched cap perched so primly on her head. The uniform was a delight of vintage styling; perfectly suited to the fuller, more voluptuous figure typical of the young woman of the 1950s - fortuitously, exactly the sort of maturely-curvaceous figure that she possessed.

The dress was in a rustling, heavyweight, polyester-cotton blend, fastening down the front with six large buttons and possessing a pin-tuck pleated bodice with a pointed collar and a fitted waist that was further cinched by a front-buttoning belt of the same fabric. The three-quarter length sleeves were button-cuffed and worked perfectly with the additional elasticated puff-ball nurse’s cuffs provided by the institution and the fitted, calf-length skirt hugged her hips and bottom seductively as she moved, a cleverly tailored kick-pleat at the rear providing the requisite functionality.

There were two hip pockets in the skirt and from a tab sewn in the interior of one emerged a loop of silver chain that tinkled rather than rattled as she moved, glinting in the light like a string of diamonds, the keys at its far end tucked well down in the pocket. Twisting and turning this way and that admiringly before her reflection, the dress hem swishing around her stockinged legs, the caress of the black rayon knickers she had on beneath and the unrelenting wasp-waisted grip of the longline elastic-panelled corselette, seemed to conspire together to induce a frame of mind somehow out of kilter with that which she would have considered to be her innate personality.

The belt that came with the dress was perfectly serviceable as it stood, but the broad elasticated Petersham ribbon belt the hospital supplied had the advantage that it could be worn over the crisp linen apron she had on over it, a bib-fronted affair with broad shoulder straps that crossed at the back and a skirt that followed the lines of the dress and that came to just above the knees. The belt also seemed to add a certain authoritative air of its own that might otherwise have been missing - there was definitely something about that ornate filigree silverwork ball-clasp buckle it had, styled almost like a pair of butterfly wings.

If anything the uniform felt like a mask - no it was more than that. It was less like a masquerade disguise and far more like an entire borrowed personality, an avatar, something that she could don or discard at will and that she could...well...yes... hide behind. And she did harbour a heart-felt need to hide behind something. It was not something she could discuss outside the confinement of the hospital’s walls, not even with her nearest and dearest. It was not so much that it would be a breach of confidence and lead to instant dismissal - no it was something far more... restraining... than that. It was more closely bound up with how deeply embroiled she had become in the whole thing herself. Her involvement could no longer be fobbed-off as ‘obedience to authority’, it appealed to some secret inner drive within her own personality, something this uniform gave her full rein to express. It was she who was the figure of authority insofar as the ‘subjects’ were concerned and it was this uniform she wore that gave her the confidence she had to carry that off.

She absentmindedly ran her fingers over the leather punishment strap that hung from a tab sewn in at the waist of her dress beneath her apron and a shiver ran down her twenty year old spine: In the hospital per se, the public face of the institution, she’d be just a rather junior nurse. Once down in the old network of passages beneath and behind it, she was part gaoler, part governess, part task mistress - and she made a damn good one too.

She had entered quietly. The girl heard the snap of the rubber gloves close behind her and, visibly startled, glanced back nervously over her shoulder, her glassy, crestfallen expression and gorgeous saucer-wide violet eyes combining to make the young nurse’s heart miss a beat.

The girl was breathtaking, an angel without wings; even in those awful institutional pyjamas. It was little wonder that someone, somewhere, would want her kept in this place - who wouldn’t? Looks like those so often brought out the worst in a person; whether that flaw be lust, jealousy or some exotic mix of the two.

It was a little akin to pulling the wings off a butterfly or, having netted it, pinning out the rare, beautiful, thing in a display case; to be kept locked in a drawer where only the privileged few might set eyes upon it. Stir in the well-observed effect of having been granted or of seizing - it matters not which - absolute control over such an otherwise unobtainable creature, and the recipe for suffering was complete.

The nurse stood back a moment, appraising her charge, wishing she could question her but knowing full well she was under strict instructions the girl was not to be spoken to. Apparently this pretty young thing was considered academically gifted, somewhat talented in the performing arts, financially astute and business-minded beyond her years - or rather she had been. It was undoubtedly a threatening combination in the eyes of someone out there. Well, then, it was back to that thing about pulling off a butterfly’s wings again.

She could well imagine that whoever had engineered this girl’s detention would also have reached an agreement to be kept up to date with her progress. Perhaps he or she was receiving regular pictorial or video evidence - after all who could resist watching a young woman like that being made to bend for the cane. Certainly they would want to be privy to the young thing’s psychiatric evaluations. Whoever it was behind this young thing’s incarceration would undoubtedly be following the day to day deterioration in the girl’s mental health with unbridled satisfaction. The thought was horrifying yet somehow strangely, disconcertingly, thrilling, all at the same time.

Unusually, she had been given the patient’s notes to read ahead of her introduction - what that might indicate, she wasn’t yet certain, but then, the thrill was in the anticipation. It was interesting that, although while the girl had been resident in the experimental ‘schoolroom’ unit there had been a recorded fall in her IQ of several points and a noted reduction in her ability to recall from her previous education, it was since being moved directly under the doctor’s care that there had been by far the greatest deterioration in her mental state. It was telling that the move had been ordered by some authority acting externally to the hospital, presumably the same party or parties that had been behind the girl’s residency in the first place. How whoever it was had manipulated the poor young thing into effectively committing herself, she had no idea, but he or she certainly knew what they were doing in placing her in the doctor’s hands - by the time the doctor was finished with her the girl would be fit for little more than selling matches on the street corner, as the saying went.

“Lie back on your bed for the nurse, please, young lady. Take a hold of the bars of the bed’s backrest... that’s the way... good girl.” The doctor’s voice sounded almost parental, yet lost none of its authority in the softening of the tone.

Deftly the nurse unclipped the chain linking the girl’s padded wrist restraints’, guiding the pretty teenage girl’s arms down by her sides and settling her head back on the foam-filled latex pillow. Moving down the bed, she pulled across the broad soft band of the bed’s uppermost restraint, lifting each of the girl’s arms out of the way in turn as she went, so as to leave them unrestrained as instructed, and securing the strap tightly across the patient’s chest, flattening the girl’s bust in the process.

In so doing she couldn’t help but notice just how full the girl’s bust had become in comparison with the photographs she had seen that had been taken during the girl’s admittance procedure - what with the dietary intervention and the enforced inactivity, the girl really was beginning to fill-out those ridiculously baggy pyjamas the doctor kept her in.

Silently she moved down to the girl’s ankles, removing the padlock from one side of the stainless-steel chain that linked her ankle cuffs and slackening of the restraint; all the time mindful to acknowledge the patient as little as possible, careful not to make eye-contact, let alone directly address her.

“Legs spread wide!” The doctor, now standing at the bed-head briskly ordered while still maintaining her ‘motherly’ coaxing tone. “Now swing your ankles up and behind your head - the nurse will help you....That’s it...What a good girl you are?” She glanced at the nurse, smiling, as the young woman clipped the silvery stainless steel ‘D’ ring mounted at the front of each of the girl’s ankle cuffs to the corresponding catch that was mounted to each side of the top rail of the bed frame, the brown leather restraints contrasting sharply with the white-painted bars of the bed-head. “I did say you would have no trouble; she’s a nice quiet patient, this one. She used to be quite a handful; screaming, shouting, trying to escape, assaulting staff...”

“Assaulting staff, doctor - surely not? She seems so, so... docile.” The young nurse’s voice was a beautiful soft contralto; it made for the perfect foil for the doctor’s brusque commanding tones.

“Oh, yes...I’m afraid so, nurse. She even assaulted me - and not so long ago! She is quite delusional, comes out with the most appalling rubbish at times; stuff about some conspiracy or other; how her therapist had been trying to make her mentally ill and how she had been put up to it by her legal guardian who was after her inheritance - and all this, well before she came here..” The doctor laughed mockingly and continued: “...And get this... Her Guardian is none other than Madison Daisy Bartlett - yes the fashion guru, that woman off the television. Well I ask you...”

Dutifully the pretty young nurse laughed back: “Really? What nonsense! The woman is not exactly poor - she runs a whole string of glossy fashion magazines, including one that is considered the ‘industry Bible’.” The doctor raised her eyebrows quizzically as the nurse continued “...I have a friend who is a model, you see, doctor.”

“Oh, I see.” The doctor laughed gleefully, warming to her task and encouraged to see the growing grimace of frustration on her patient’s face. Good, she thought, the girl is dying to speak, yet is biting her tongue, too inhibited to do so - this is really getting to her. If I can just get her to crack and speak out, so much the better - a good hard caning as punishment will break her down still further. Turning to the nurse she continued: “Yes, well, you can imagine how ridiculous it all sounds. It was partly what got her compulsorily committed - and it is a major part of what will eventually keep her here. It is why I do not allow her to talk and why I don’t allow members of staff, other than myself of course, to speak to her - it’s for her own good. These delusional patients can be very convincing - don’t pay her any attention; if she tries to speak to you, let me know.

I have my ways; a few strokes of my cane across her bare behind will soon clip her tongue... as she well knows.”

“Yes, of course, doctor. But, it must be terrible for a girl of that age to have to bend for the cane with her knickers down and grasping her ankles like a small child. After all, she is not so much younger than me - how humiliating for her, poor little dear. I mean; she’s mentally ill...isn’t there any other way.” The conviction in the nurse’s voice surprised even the doctor - this young woman was remarkable, a natural.

“I wish there were other methods but what this girl needs is strict discipline - she has to learn to do as she’s told and, eventually, think as she’s told to think - and nothing, but nothing, can instil strict discipline like the cane and the strap. I mean...The results speak for themselves - don’t you think? Since she has been in my hands she has been coming on swimmingly - she is going nowhere and she accepts that now, I am sure. She is becoming a good little patient for her doctor and with a little help from me - aided by your good self - I am sure she will become quite the docile little mental patient we would all like to see.”

Waxing and Waning

Despite being strictly speaking a trainee, the nurse made quick work of applying the wax and was soon slapping on the linen strips with gay abandon. Having completed her task with suitably brisk efficiency - her competence being acknowledged by a smiling nod from the overseeing doctor - she straightened up, placing her hands on her hips and smiling down at her handiwork with poorly disguised satisfaction. Turning towards her superior - the uncompromising and ordinarily stern section psychiatrist - the student nurse grinned sheepishly. In return the self-assured confident woman beamed back at her, a pleasantly reassuring smile playing across her face.

The ice having been well and truly broken, and with the uncompromising female psychiatrist very much taking the lead, the two women began casually discussing their young patient in such embarrassingly intimate terms as to suggest the girl herself was no longer present. Lying trussed open-legged and intimately exposed - with her ankles restrained behind her head and her knees pulled back to either side, near parallel with her ears - the humiliated girl found herself spiralling down toward a level of degradation she had never imagined; not even in her worse nightmares. She could do little but listen, mortified, as her two tormentors commented on her body, the trainee nurse, taking her supervisor’s lead, playfully mocking the girl’s plight, her softly-lilting voice, tinged with a hint of the green fields of Eire, gently taunting, her flow punctuated here and there with a childish tinkling little giggle that would not have sounded out of place in an infant school playground.

Just how many minutes of this psychological torment Lavinia suffered was a matter of painful conjecture to her - it seemed an eternity, but might well have been seconds. The doctor strolled leisurely back out into the consulting room as if no longer needed, the nurse trailing close behind, her uniform dress swishing noisily around her stockinged legs as she went.

A while later - how long Lavinia could have no inkling - and they were back. Without so much as a word the implacable woman doctor bent across her young patient, glaring into the girl’s innocently-haunted eyes as she placed a hand on the girl’s gently-distended lower abdomen, stretching drum-tight the skin around Lavinia’s most private regions.

Simultaneously the young nurse, taking her place alongside her supervisor, firmly took hold of one of the linen strips and yanked down hard.

“Arghhh!” Gripped by the sudden acute pain Lavinia yelled out, unable to stop herself. Instinct momentarily overriding near on eighteen months of psychological manipulation, conditioning and institutional discipline, the girl’s hands flew from her sides to protect that most intimate and sensitive of regions. Quick as a flash the doctor grabbed at Lavinia’s hands mid-flight, gripping tightly the girl’s slender wrists and pulling them back over the girl’s head.

“Oh no you don’t, my girl - you lie there passively, like a nice sleepy girl. It just caught you by surprise, that’s all. There’s nothing to worry about, you’re just a nice sleepy girl - that’s it; you just be a nice sleepy girl for your doctor. There really isn’t anything different about this than when the nurse here buttons your pyjamas for you or pulls down your pyjama bottoms for you when you need to use the commode in my office. Remember, we have spoken about it; there’s no need to concern yourself with what is going on around you. You are being cared for, that is what matters - there is no need for you to worry about doing any of these things for yourself, you should just relax, just let your mind wander, just let yourself drift from day to day, just let yourself be cared for and let the time pass you by - you will find it much better for you that way.” The attractive psychiatrist’s satin-soft fingers rhythmically stroked the girl’s cheek as she cooed, her voice having softened immediately after the initial harshness of the rebuke, the juxtaposition seemingly amplifying the soothingly hypnotic quality somehow embodied in her speech.

For a brief moment Lavinia had struggled, then, the futility of the situation sinking in and the doctor’s gentle voice working its sing-song magic, her resistance had begun to subside, the doctor’s words drifting through her mind urging, coaxing and leaving her dumb and glassy-eyed. It had taken just seconds and, satisfied with the girl’s response, the young psychiatrist had released her grip, pleased to see her patient’s arms and hands flop down by her sides with all the conscious intention of a flaccid rag doll.

With the doctor continuing with her softly-spoken diatribe, her fingertips gently stroking the girl’s cheek in time with the cadence of a speech, the work recommenced: The nurse, continuing with her task where she had left off, wrenched one by one the remaining wax-impregnated strips from the girl’s body, slowly working her way from the girl’s pubis deep into the cleft between her buttocks and determined to perform the most thorough depilation humanly possible. Each clinging strip came away with a soft tearing sound reminiscent of sticky tape being pulled from a roll and accompanied by a little near-silent mouse-like little shriek from the patient, the girl’s lips parting prettily, her arms lying passively by her sides and her eyes glazed over.

Gradually tears began to fill the glassy violet pools of Lavinia’s eyes, then, overflowing, trickled from the corners down both cheeks.

Whether from the nettle-sting infusing her pubic area and the tender flesh surrounding her anus or the overwhelming sense of helplessness that now filled her heart she couldn’t tell; all she knew was that she had become dimly aware of involuntarily squirting small jets of urine out through the fine-bore coiled PTFE tube of the catheter that had been left resting on the rubber mattress cover, its end tucked back between her bottom cheeks. Now, the process having come to the end, she could feel the hot fluid trickling under her, the pungency rising to the nostrils and bringing shame-fanned licks of flame to her cheeks.

Having been rudely snapped out of her spell it was all she could do to combat her natural revulsion. The instinct to wipe away the offending yellowish puddle was so strong that several times she began to lift her arms and went as if to sweep aside the tormenting rivulet that ran from it. Each time she caught sight of the nurse as she bumbled around packing away her depilation equipment or sensed the psychiatrist moving around somewhere behind her - perhaps catching the all too familiar creaking of the woman’s tight leather skirt, the swish of her stockings or rustle of the white doctor’s coat she wore - and institutional discipline would take over, forcing her arms back to rest at her sides as if by the power of her own will.

The cool draft, brushing across her stretched buttocks and the puckered sensitive flesh of her anus felt like a thousand downy feathers all falling like snow. The sensation told of the totality of her shamed exposure: juxtaposed with the flaming wasp-stung, purple and red wheals left behind from the earlier caning the doctor had given her, it made for a poignant reminder indeed of how she was supposed to behave. Somehow the thought of the sheer passivity increasingly being demanded of her brought an even greater sense of shame to settle on her.