Wheelchair Bound & Endlessly Trundling

The pretty and pleasantly plump, teenage girl sat, passively and listlessly in her wheelchair, her striking deep-violet eyes glistening with silently-welling tears. Trundling down near-never-ending featureless white corridors, past countless blank doors and through nameless security grilles, with each passing second she was being taken ever deeper into the enclosed, insular little world that was the St Mary’s Hospital and Private Retreat experimental psychology unit.

This was a hidden place, a private world discreetly embedded deep within the bowels of the hospital’s secure psychiatric wing in a section officially disused, not shown on any plan or record and that was accessible only by way of one particular elevator and the twisting of a key in a discreet slot hidden away at the bottom of a control panel. Here, though superficially clad and revamped in modern materials, the Hospital’s stolid Victorian foundations retained enough of their identity to betray the original incarnation of very edifice as an asylum for the incurable, the dangerous or those just unfortunate enough to have fallen foul of the psychiatric practice of the day. This was a place designed in less enlightened times by the naive - and oft misguided - forefathers of modern psychology, primarily with imprisonment in mind.

This was not a place one could easily leave, even in this day and age, once incarcerated, unless specifically allowed to do so. Indeed, some part of this world had been rehabilitated to actually function as a prison and Victorian workhouse, albeit on a small scale, authentic in every respect right down to the tiny cells, almost inhumanly strict discipline and deliberately drab, restrictive and uncomfortable prison uniforms. But this was not where this girl was destined, although where she would be held was as secure as any prison and every bit as restrictive, perhaps even more so in some respects.

It was not the constant browbeating of the staff that had made her presently so accepting, although that undoubtedly had its part to play. Nor was it the gently-addictive sedative that had been prescribed her from day one, from even before the time of her arrival here in fact, and that permanently lurked in the background softly muffling her thoughts. Neither had it directly to do with the protracted and quite vicious caning she had just received across her bared, plump rear.

No, her docility had more to do with the fact that she was in a state of dumbfounded shock, having apparently been rescued by two female police officers, taken to be interviewed by a panel of psychiatrists and then - having taken the opportunity to make a bid for freedom by rushing out through the door through which the learned professors had entered mere moments before - finding herself not in the main body of the hospital building as she would have expected but rather back here, back within the secure imprisonment of the experimental psychology unit. And Matron’s parting words, those mocking singsong tones of hers, still reverberated around her mind:

“You’re going back-to-school, sweetheart, back-to-school...”

But for the moment, there was something else, another trial to be endured - its inevitability had been set clear enough in the words of the nurse presently charged with transporting her:

“It’ll be off to the salon first, I’d imagine. That’s hardly the regulation hairstyle you have there, my dear - it looks more like somebody’s stuck a pudding bowl on your head.”

The teenager was already familiar enough with the ‘salon’ - it was a blindingly brightly lit stark white room of glass-sided shower cubicles, transparent toilet pedestals set before mirrored walls, barber chairs cum examination couches and hand-basins. It was where they went to have their hair ‘restyled’; it was also where they went to have their ‘hygienic’ intimate shave, internal examinations, enemas, colonic irrigations, vaginal douches and all those trying little procedures the hospital authorities clearly thought so crucial to their physical health - their patient’s mental health was another matter entirely, that was something they seemed almost delighted to see deteriorate.

That was procedural, that was the workaday routine of the hospital - deep down she understood, this visit would be different. After all, her hair had now been rendered far too short to be put up in the regulation ‘style’ - those ridiculous stubby little collar-length pigtails that she hated so much.

She had been shown the wigs they kept here on that first occasion, when she had been reluctant to sit still while her luxuriant waist-length mane had been braided and then reduced to the required length - she had cried then, she would cry now. They were awful things, probably deliberately so, with little effort expended to mimic realism. Fairly obviously of some artificial fibre, the thing she had been shown was a glistening jet-black, centre-parted parody of a woman’s crowning glory, with horrid plaited stubby pigtails permanently fixed in oversized bows of broad, shiny green and white striped nylon so as to match the prison uniform style dress she had been placed in, that all the trial volunteers had apparently been obliged to wear back then.

There it was once again, that word, volunteer - what a misnomer that was. She had never volunteered for this, any of this - and certainly not to have the constant threat of corporal punishment hanging over her. It was not worth any amount of money, not even the rather generous remuneration that had attracted her participation in the first place, that and her buckling under the persuasive pressure of her ‘aunt’ and her psychotherapist friend.

But then they had moved the goal posts; she was still a volunteer, it was just that now, on paper at least, she was a voluntarily admitted psychiatric patient rather than a volunteer experimental clinical psychology trial subject. It still had that term ‘volunteer’ in the descriptor; it was just that the implications were somewhat different.

Now they had moved those goal posts yet again. Given what had just happened, she worried as to whether even that apparent aspect of free will was still present in the terms of her detention. Her incarceration seemed to have been legitimised at the stroke of a pen, at the very moment she looked to be about to be released. Had she not overheard mutterings about her being detained under the “Mental Health Act 1983”, one of the professors reiterating terms under which any individual suffering “severe mental impairment” or “psychopathic disorder” could be admitted to a “suitable” hospital or institution against their will?

But she suffered no such condition, she felt sure. And besides; six months was the maximum period they could hold her for - wasn’t it? She could recall coming across mention of this Act in a newspaper story she had once read, regarding a popstar her mother had been fond of back in the nineteen eighties and who had “gone a little weird” - and he had only been held six months. But then again, she had heard herself branded as a “danger to herself and others”, had heard a panel member suggest dispensing with the usual seventy-two hour hold and six month review and invoking certain “emergency powers” instead.

Whatever the truth or legitimacy of her status, the fact was they now spoke of her as a ‘case’... and one that would be next reviewed in twenty-four months. No, that wasn’t it; they said her case was to be reviewed every twelve months. Yes, but then the professor chairing the committee had added something about there first being an initial ‘adjustment’ period of twenty-four months, to allow her time to ‘settle down’ - that was where that figure of twenty four months had come from.

For a split second she almost fell for it, almost felt gratitude. Then it had hit home; a shuddering breath shook her shoulders and tears fell anew... ...What the hell was happening to her? She was thinking about twelve months almost as if it was acceptable that they should keep her locked up for that long...but it wasn’t twelve months, was it? It wasn’t even twenty-four months; that was when they would start the review period, that was when the would begin the task of monitoring her, gathering and collating the reports that would assessed at the twelve month review... Was that what it meant?... But, that would be thirty-six months in all - three whole years!... Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God... They’d said ‘to be reviewed every twelve months... every twelve months... it had been left open ended, their recommendation! And she could be kept here - she had just been compulsorily admitted. Now no one would pay any attention to anything she said and no one ‘out there’ even new she was still alive, let alone would speak up for her - had she not seen the evidence with her own eyes, in newsprint?

That was the moment she had begun to really panic, shaking, struggling in earnest, tugging hysterically, if in vain, against the Velcro bands and leather straps that held her safely restrained within her transport. She was still wildly twitching and jerking, for that was all the freedom the specially adapted wheel chair allowed, when they pulled up at their destination.

She was dribbling, coughing and blinded by tears. It took a sharp slap of a nurse’s fingers across both tear-streaked cheeks - left, right then back again - to bring her crashing back from the imagined terrors of the future to the more immediate trials of the here and now.

Released from her mobile bondage and ushered into the equally stringent restraint of a waiting barber’s chair she knew exactly what was coming next. They would shave her bald... and she would be kept bald from now on. Worse, well almost worse - if anything could be worse for a teenage girl then to be shorn of her much-cherished locks - she would be made to wear one of those dreadful humiliating wigs, day in, day out.

The preparation of anticipation proved to offer a limited buffer at best once the warm buzz of the clippers began to climb the nape of her neck and the first clippings began to settle like black snow on the semitransparent PVC cape they had draped around her. That buffer gave way completely upon the first appearance at her forehead of the broad furrow left by that first swipe; the cry that rent the air then was as if a pig had been beaten around its hindquarters - a crazed, desperate squealing, something less than human yet possessed of more anguish than any mere animalistic wail might convey.

The slap had been delivered to her left cheek; it was a timely retribution, yet despite the additional physical discomfort it caused her, ironically it silenced her also, as was the intent - she was not to cry out. Nor were her eyes to wander from the mirror set before her. A second, repeated, slap to her face brought that point home clearly enough - and the barked command that accompanied it:

“When will you ever learn? Look straight ahead you stupid girl. And keep those eyes open...and I mean wide open - unless of course you want me to call Matron. Do you actually want to feel another half-dozen strokes of her cane across that fat backside of yours?”

“Pl-please, d,don’t n-n-nurse. I,II-I’m sssorry, n,n,nurse, I-I’ll be a gg,g-good g’g’ggg-girl, n,nurse” The stammer was as crippling and frustrating as it was shaming - and she had once been such an eloquent speaker. In fact she had for a while served as the chair of her high-school’s debating society. Now, though, she was quite loath to as much as open her mouth, even under those rare circumstances that the unit’s regulations permitted talking. But loath to speak or not, it was not permitted to ignore a member of staff when addressed - and like everything else here, there was a protocol to be observed, a tightly prescribed formula that had to be followed.

She was obliged to sit staring into that mirror, watching as each humming swipe of the clippers opened up another three-centimetre-wide tract of scalp, bringing with it a shower of soot-black hair to settle like a dark blizzard over her PVC covered lap. Again and again ploughed furrows of pink opened up like ugly rutted and deforested desert tracks across her head, each one next the last.

Increasingly sparsely covered, the ‘swan’ was beginning to resemble more a gawky baby pigeon, the sort of offspring only a mother could love. In her eyes - and those of most others with any sense of the aesthetic - she was being rendered increasingly ugly, simply that; and becoming uglier still with every successive swipe of those clippers.

It was an observation not helped by her hollow eyes, reddened and swollen still and the aftermath of the viciously spirit-crushing caning she had so recently received. The legacy of the latter correction burned across the full width of her buttocks and the rear of her thighs as if she had been seated in a puddle of acid rather than the yielding leatherette of a well padded barber’s chair. Nor was that impression discouraged by her pallor. The girl’s face, having been for so long removed from the warming rays of the sun, had lost most, if not all, of the healthily glowing porcelain clarity that had once so notably and pettily graced it. Where once there had been an attractive, intriguing, paleness to her features, there was now a sicklier, almost ghostly cast. In all truth, Lavinia Vitesse possessed now the consumptive complexion one might expect of someone having been kept locked away for some considerable time - in short; the complexion of a prisoner.

Then, with the angry buzz of the electric clippers now mercifully curtailed, came the lathering; the soap, with its supported load of stubble, being swept with slow deliberate strokes of the razor from front to back, the nurse flicking the mess with some disdain from the cut-throat’s blade onto the girl’s PVC-covered lap at the culmination of each sweep.

Then came a second lathering: Lavinia could only sit numbly watching as, helplessly, she was shorn of the remains of that once so beauteous mane, deprived of that one thing she had been so proud of all her life, her crowning glory. As twisted and tortured, psychologically, as one suffering the torment of the rack or some godforsaken penitent writhing under the inquisition’s lash, she was being forced to witness the vestiges of those wondrous, once breathtaking raven waves, reduced first to stubble, then shaved to a glossed-pink satin smoothness - the last remnants of hair and lather being washed off the razor at every stroke in a bid to achieve as close a shave as possible.

Two more slaps landed, first one to her left cheek, then one to her right. Yet again she forced her eyes back to the mirror, to that pink bald shining pate - it was the psychological aspect to the punishment, an aspect that all punishments in the unit had to accommodate. This was something she really should have learnt by now: mirrors were rarely encountered in the unit and where they were it had very little to do with vanity - quite the opposite in fact.

Now she would welcome the horrid little black wig when they offered it, with its awful, artificial nylon sheen and its ungainly pair of outward-curving, collar-length braided pigtails, each tied in a ridiculously-oversized green and white striped nylon bow. They’d have her beg for it - and of course she would.

The Device

Seemingly seconds later and Matron was back. A nurse to each side of her and each taking her by an elbow, Lavinia found herself manoeuvred to the far side of the room and moments later secured in an obstetric examination chair with legs spread. For a moment Matron stood with hands on hips, observing the girl’s embarrassed squirming with disdain - then finally she spoke, softly, carefully, as if each syllable held some secret power over her helpless charge:

“The new schoolroom dormitory mistress is somewhat concerned about your masturbatory habits.

We’ll have to do something about that - it shouldn’t be a problem. It’s nothing to worry about, just a short procedure...quite painless I assure you.”

It had only required a local anaesthetic. The device had been designed to be anchored by a series of surgical platinum wire sutures while being held in position by way of a pair of expanders, the latter something of a misnomer since the tool’s sole function here was in keeping the prophylactic device compressed until the retaining sutures were in place. Matron had carried out the work personally, qualified as she was on two levels; as the prophylactic’s principle designer and by dint of her surgical gynaecological prophylaxis experience.

In overall profile the device itself conformed much to the expected shape of the female genitalia. Constructed of pink rubber and reinforced internally with surgical-grade spring-steel, the thing basically consisted of three concentric rings, each supported one within the another. The two outermost rings were spaced around one centimetre apart and were roughly ovoid in shape, the central ring was somewhat smaller and of circular cross-section.

The outer ovoid ring was intended to act, once fitted, to part the outer-labia much in the way the standard vaginal grommet did. As with the latter, inset and evenly spaced around the periphery were small platinum-lined eyelets: they had glittered like so many stars under the surgery lights as Matron, delicately cradling it between her hands as if a newborn, had proudly held the thing up before the terrified girl’s face - these were to ultimately take the platinum-wire sutures that would anchor it in place. Where this new device differed, however, was that, positioned centrally and running front to back, from apex to apex, it was bisected by a narrow bar, the latter having a parabolic upward-curving profile - this had been Matron’s own innovation and one that she at least considered to be the fruit of sheer genius.

Concentrically mounted and supported at the very centre of this bar was the second ovoid ring, the supporting bar opening up to contain it at this point. Being of a slightly smaller diameter the intention was that this ring should, upon fitting, penetrate and hold dilated a girl’s inner labia; the latter having to be manually teased and distended through the narrow void formed between the inner and outer rings at that time.

In its turn this latter ring, carried at its centre the circular ring; this being of a far deeper section as compared to the two ovoid outer rings formed what should more properly be described as a sleeve.

When in situ this tubular sleeve was designed to project some two centimetres upward, thus penetrating and invading, albeit to the slightest degree, the wearer’s person, while externally it would project some three centimetres downwards. On the outside of the wearer’s body then, this tubular device would terminate proud of the longitudinal supporting bar and yet, because of the latter’s upward curving profile, it would finish up, once in place, flush with her outer labia. The final centimetre or so of this outward projecting section was both internally and externally threaded so as to allow for the later addition and retention of a variety of prophylactic accessories. Indeed, the sole purpose of this sleeve was to act as a supporting guide for such accessories.

In the absence of any such addition, its modest internal penetration had been calculated, taking into account the achievable labial dilation, to ensure a degree of clearance be maintained between the said sleeve and the vaginal walls.

From an aesthetic point of view the result was likely to be unfortunate; It had been considered likely that during the fitting process the inner labia would have to be manually manipulated through the guiding voids between the ovoid rings and taken with the expected outer labia dilation it was likely that the former lips would culminate distended beyond the natural confines of the latter.

To Matron’s viewpoint; that even the neatest and sweetest fig would likely be thus rendered quite hideous in the gynaecological detail of its exposure was merely a regrettable consequence of a measure designed to be of benefit to both the health and moral welfare of her charges. The hospital had rigorous standards of feminine hygiene and prophylactic care and it was her duty to ensure the upkeep of those standards. Besides, the privately-lewd behaviour she had observed, or imagined she had, in some of the young women placed in her care had to be curtailed for their own good - such behaviour could be injurious to health.

Sometimes discipline, even if enforced with the cane, tawse, birch rod or martinet, was not enough in itself. Sometimes there was no option other than to remove the object of temptation, lock it away from slender exploring fingers. Then there were the haughty, vain attitudes that some of them when they first arrived; a little loss of self-respect never did that type any harm.

It had not been a hurried process, nor could it be; not that Matron would unnecessarily prolong a procedure no matter how sensorially savoury. The greater complexity of this device as compared to the standard vaginal grommet demanded, in turn, a far more elaborate arrangement of sutures. In addition the integral catheter support could only be utilised during the fitting procedure, a restriction that forced a decision be made as to whether the girl was to be catheterised; retrospective catheterisation would entail the removal and refitting of the entire prophylactic device and was to be avoided if at all possible.

There had been a brief exchange of views between the two doctors present; as with any procedure a consensus of medical opinion had to be reached, anything less would have been unethical and more importantly illegal. The affirmative decision had been a foregone conclusion, the discussion largely academic; in the absence of catheterisation some obstruction to urine flow was an inevitable consequence of the device’s comprehensive design. The choice of catheter had been an easy one, based on the constraints of the device’s catheter support and the requirement to remain in situ for up to six months at a time, the latter being the longest time period between inspections, for which the entire device would by necessity have to be removed and the procedure repeated.

The catheter had been duly fitted, the girl experiencing only the merest of sensations and certainly no discomfort although, momentarily, she had had a faint perception of needing to pee. That the latter sensation would resurface in the fullness of time; that it was to be her constant companion despite the continuous draining of her bladder, was beyond doubt. Matron’s expert hand had manoeuvred the tubing up through the girl’s urethra as far as her bladder, leaving it in contact in such a way that it would continue to apply a gentle unrelenting pressure on that organ.

The short length left protruding externally broadened at its extremity whereupon it was designed specifically to couple with an extension integral to the prophylactic device, or grommet as they referred to it. The latter extension emerged from the device, once fitted, to drain into the girl’s knickers in the form of a six centimetre length of pink ribbed rubber tubing of around 1½ centimetres external diameter and with all the appearance of a diminutive, shrivelled, piglet’s tail of a penis. This visualisation was encouraged somewhat by the protrusion’s thickened terminus whereupon the utility was provided of seamless and leak proof docking to the hanging bladder-reservoir of what, institutionally, were referred to as ‘ sample collection knickers’ but are more colloquially known as ‘piss pants’.

Generally a girl’s catheter would simply drain into her knickers to be dealt with by her incontinence towel, initially that would be the case with this girl, but the problems matron had encountered with urine sample collection had led her to pursue other, alternative, avenues. One of these had led to her trialling of the aforementioned ‘ sample collection knickers’ and her more recent decision, with the doctor’s approval, to eventually introduce them as standard in the schoolroom.

The word ‘eventually’ was apt in this situation, summarising Matron’s long procrastination in this matter. To many people, the sight of a girl bedecked of ‘sample collection knickers’ would be the absolute epitome of humiliation - and so it was for Matron, for whom humiliation was a quality seen in a most positive light.

However, to matron the pendulous yellow shadowed appendage disrupted the aesthetics of the female form, the flow of the girl’s curves, and the waddling gait it dictated and inspired she found unsightly. Yet the utility was beyond question, the psychological impact would be profound. On the other hand, no matter how efficient the absorbency there was a certain lewdness associated with the concept of a catheter’s unrelenting draining into a girl’s knickers.

There was a piquancy of a similar magnitude to the enforced passive anal leakage associated with the anal grommet when fitted. The subject had imposed on her in that way so many dependencies - she was made dependent on her incontinence pants, dependent on the absorbency of her towel; most of all there was that deliciously humiliating and childlike dependency on her nurse she would experience once the inevitable soiling occurred.

The girls wore incontinence knickers, they all did - was it not only right, therefore, that they should in actuality be incontinent? But beyond that, and most importantly, was it not right that they should feel incontinent, that they should be constantly reminded of that fact?

For this girl, from now on her ‘examination pants’ would indeed live up to their name. Her vagina was going to gape through the transparent crotch window, the outer lips distended, darkly shadowed beyond the confines of the gusset, the inner labia squeezed smearing and smudging up against the steamy-moist polythene gusset panel.

As for the girl, herself; she would soon learn to appreciate the futility of guilty fumbling. True those sensitive lips would protrude, would ache for attention unbearably, but that all important release button, the clitoris, might as well have been excised. The protective rubber clitoris hood, with its internal stiff coiled-wire reinforcement, would always separate her fingers from her release.

And yet fingers of another sort were to be granted access, would not be denied in fact; internally, a fine soft latex fringe would tantalise and brush gently with the slightest of movements.

In the coming months, even years, Matron and the section psychiatrist would decide, Lavinia would learn to rock back and forth like the imbecile she was one day destined to become. Deliciously subtle sensations, sometimes even wonderful, heavenly sensations, would pursue her toward a quest without end, towards an all consuming and never ending obsession with unobtainable perfection. Forever in the foot-hills, the highest slopes might just be attainable if the girl were to apply the utmost concentration but always the final ascent would be just too steep, the summit forever out of reach, but only just, tantalisingly just the wrong side of normality.

As for 30C, this treatment was going to do her the world of good. Dress her in her ‘examination pants’ with this dilating grommet in place like some permanent speculum; why, it was going to work wonders for her, no doubt about it. Pride was, after all, a sin and sin must be punished, it must be exorcised and expunged.

Externally the health-professional exuded detached efficiency, her expression, passive, inscrutable; simmering below, Matron, the woman, was breathless, floating in an untouchable, dreamlike reality. Here was a reality lying beyond mere rules, ethics and imposed limitations - a reality that owed its substance, the possibility, truth and probability to the carte-blanch freedom so uniquely afforded by this oh so very special institution.

Now trundling the hapless young thing strapped helplessly in her wheelchair onward towards the locked, steel-gated security of the unit they called the ‘schoolroom’, or more precisely the dormitory appended to it, the woman could feel the beads of sweat breaking out on her forehead. She’d have the girl across her knees while seated on the bedside; knickers down and then a good hard strapping across her bare behind with the Scottish tawse she carried. Then it would be off to bed with the girl, nice and early and ready for the new ‘school’ day in the morning.

The girl was going to have much to get used to. Much had changed in her absence and the plans that had now been put in place for the girl’s future were far reaching and now led to a place the girl could have no concept of. Suffice it to say that her residency in the ‘schoolroom’ might well be a brief one, but if the section psychiatrist and the girl’s guardian had their way, it might well prove the least of her troubles; and by far the preferable fate. Certainly preferable to being lovingly guided into a world of mental illness and derangement, terminating in indefinite confinement or at best being placed ‘in service’ - perhaps under the control of the girl’s own guardian... Placed as a servant in her own home; how galling for her!