Chapter 4

A week after Jan’s visit, I had a visit from my friend Wayne Childs. You will remember he was the head of MediAid, the firm which had devised and created the tiny capsule which we had implanted onto each of the male prisoners’ testicle (and to the inner clitoral wall of the females).

After our greeting, his usual inspection of the facility and our catching up socially, he grinned as he sipped his coffee and looked at me over my desk.

“What?” I said, knowing he was going to drop a bombshell.

“Well, first off, here it is,” he said, fishing out from his pocket an even smaller, wafer-like card than the testicular implant. He tossed it across to me.

I turned it over in my hand, marvelling at its tiny size and of course remarking on the speed with which he had come up with it. “How much?” I asked tentatively.

“About half the testicular units,” he said, grinning even more widely. “By the way, how are they working on your female prisoners?”

“Perfectly. The gun zaps them through the skin and onto the ultra-sensitive flesh of the clitoral organ. I think it might be even more successful with them.” I paused a moment as I turned over the tiny chip in my fingers. “And this one will sense an incipient erection and zap the males’ cocks?”

“It will, but our researches have suggested that it will work best if inserted near the root of the penis. That way it will sense the flow of blood at the very outset of an erection and since the zap it gives will be very powerful, you don’t need it near the more sensitive head of the penile organ.”

“Thanks, Wayne, I suspect when this takes off, you’re going to be inundated with orders from all over the world - by the way, are you getting orders yet for the testicular zapper?”

“We sure are. Word travels fast in your industry. We’re getting enquiries from as far afield as the UK and the Middle East, not to mention Russia and China. If it wasn’t for your ridiculous ethics, we would be paying you handsomely for your ideas.”

I laughed. “I’m being paid well enough by the department, Wayne, but thanks for the vote of confidence - and I’m glad you’re going to be doing so well out of it.” I paused then, looking at him inquiringly for a few seconds.

Now it was his turn to laugh. “Alright, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. What I’ve just told you could just as easily have been said over the phone. But not this...”

He reached down to his bag and drew out a small plant in one of those cardboard-type pots which are used to grow seedlings and put it on the desk in front of me. “Ever seen one of these before?” but I knew his question was rhetorical. Its stem was smooth, like a round bean although the top of the shoot looked like a little like the mouth of a Venus fly trap or perhaps more like a marine anemone, both of which suck in their prey from the air (or sea).

“What is it?” I asked

“I’ll tell you in a minute, but first, have you ever heard of the Chinese torture where the victim is seated naked over a chair with a hole in it? A fast-growing bamboo is then placed under the hole and its shoot is introduced into the man’s anus. In that warm, foetid atmosphere it then grows even more rapidly swelling and shooting up his intestine until he is in real agony?”

I nodded. “Vaguely, but not for a long time. I don’t think it’s in use these days, is it?”

“I suspect it might be. Who knows what goes on in various parts of Asia and I wouldn’t put it past the CIA either, if they have heard of it... But no, this plant doesn’t do that. Actually its properties are quite remarkable.”

“And they are?”

He grinned. “Unlike the bamboo, whose shoot has to be manually introduced into the anus, this one actually seeks it out and when it is well inside, about thirty centimetres, I believe, it start work.”

“What does it do?”

“It gives them electric shocks, right up inside their bodies. But there’s more. Once it senses it is inside its victim’s rectum, it sends out another shoot that winds around to the front. If it encounters male genitalia, it winds this secondary stem around the balls and cock and then, when it reaches the end, extrudes a thin tentacle from its ‘mouth’ and slides right inside the urethra where it starts to shock him some more, both inside and outside the genitals.”

I was in a daze by now and made as if to speak but he grinned again and held up his hand. “There’s still more, Will. The anal branch is still growing, right on up to the end of the large intestine and sometime up into the small and it continues to shock its victim. So does the second branch and the pain here is even greater for the while the external male genitals are sensitive enough, the inner lining of the urethra is very much so, as you know.

“But then a third branch emerges from the stem and this finds its way up the body to the nipples where it divides in two. If the victim is a male, it merely clamps on to them and shocks him some more; if female, it will already have induced lactation (by means of a secretion from the mouth of the first branch immediately it entered her anus). It is apparently a secondary thing but the plant likes human milk.

“If the victim is female, the second branch goes into her vagina and starts work there...”

“But what is that work?” I cried, dazed but astonished.

He grinned again. “The shocks, together with the various secretions from the three branches cause the human (and some other animals, too, apparently) body to secrete various hormones which are essential to the plant’s continued existence. It continues to feed on them for a couple of hours that exhausts the victim but gives it life for about a month. As soon as it is replete, it retracts out of its victim’s body, shrinks back to an innocuous-looking cactus and waits for another suitable victim to come along.”

“How does it trap him or her?”

“It’s smart. It can grow a beautiful flower in seconds and when the victim bends over to look at it, it paralyses him with a shock. It then starts by boring through his clothing at the crotch, using chemicals and teeth to penetrate the cloth and starts burrowing. As this happens, the chemical begins to work on the victim’s remaining clothing and in only a few minutes, he is naked - stark naked. Don’t ask me what the chemical is; I haven’t got that far yet. Anyway, as soon as his clothing is gone, the other two tentacles or branches start to grow and do their work...”

“Wayne, this is all very interesting but what’s it got to do with me or this unit?”

Again he grinned and now I knew I was going to get to the crux of the matter.

“It seems that each victim, male or female, once the torture (for what else can you call it) is over, becomes a model citizen. If they were aggressive, they become mild-mannered and pleasant. If greedy, they become generous; if lazy, industrious, and so on.

“The plant comes from the high Andes. It came to our notice by means of an explorer who spent some years living with the Indians in the high mountains. They trusted him enough to show him the plant and also showed him how they used it to tame their criminals... Is it starting to mean something now?”

“Good God. You’re suggesting we use it on our cons?”

“I am. I suspect the authorities will jump at it for, according to that explorer, the tribe has no need of prisons or any other form of punishment. If a tribesman or woman errs sufficiently, he or she is subjected to the rigours of the plant. The pain is apparently extraordinarily intense and that instils fear into the tribes-people for each ‘treatment’ or punishment is carried out in front of them all, even the children, as a deterrent to aberrant behaviour.

“As soon as I heard of it, I thought of you and this unit. Laws, local and international have been changed to accommodate what you are doing here, Will; don’t you think this could be an even more salutary means of correction than what you are doing - or perhaps at the end of it.

“Believe me, I had some doubts about bringing it to you for if it proves to be as efficacious as I have described, it will render this second implant superfluous.”

“Oh no it won’t. Even if it works as well as you intimate and the government went along with testing it, I doubt they would forego your units, at least not until it was very well tried and tested and that would take years. But do you seriously suggest that it will do all you claim?”

“To be honest, I have no idea. All I have told you is from the explorer’s report. He brought this plant back with him and showed us how to grow it. I’ve brought it to you. You can do with it as you will.”

He paused a moment but then grinned again. “Even if it only shocks the victims though, it would be a marvellous punishment, wouldn’t it? Imagine setting the criminal up in front of his victim and then subjecting him to its rigours. It’d be better by a mile than merely raping him, wouldn’t it?”

I laughed. “You’re impossible, Wayne, but yes, I agree. Are the instructions with it?”

“Here they are. They’re simple enough and it’s a very hardy plant. Let me know how you get on with the DG.”

“Sure will, and thanks, friend.”

I was somewhat surprised at the DG’s reaction to Wayne’s plant. He was actually enthusiastic and said he’d be down that afternoon as he wanted to check it out himself. I suspected he had heard of it elsewhere but I wasn’t prepared for his orders after he had looked it over and read the details Wayne had left with me.

“I want you to contact Jan O’Connor again, Will. Tell her briefly of the plant and invite her to come and see its tender mercies inflicted on young Sandy Blake. I take it he has recovered from the demonstration of our new treatment?”

“He has, David,” I said, but I was shocked that he was implying that we were going to use it on the young punk without referring it to the government. He caught my look and smiled briefly. “You’re wrong, Will. The minister is well aware of this plant and of Wayne’s visit to you; in fact he suggested it. He is very keen to see if it works. If so, we believe a combination of your methods and the plant’s, er, treatment, will quickly spell the end of the vast majority of major crime.”

“How are we going to test the one if we’re still using my methods?” I asked, but I already knew the answer and I was right.

“As soon as he has been ‘raped’ by the plant, you will house him by himself in a proper cell with a bed and bedding equivalent to that he had in his old prison. He can eat your food. With you, if you like, while you, as a trained psychiatrist will observe and determine if it really works. Did Wayne say how many treatments were recommended?”

“He didn’t, but the implication was one only.”

Right, then let’s leave it at that. Any objections?”

“No, sir - David.”

I didn’t, either. My system had been based on existing knowledge. If the plant did indeed ‘cure’ criminals and aberrants of their antisocial behaviour, I would be more than happy to use it but somehow I doubted it would be. It was just too good to be true; the powers attributed to a simple plant just too incredible. But I was more than willing to test it out and who better than Sandy Blake.

Jan was ecstatic about the invitation, at least according to Arthur Franks, her psychiatrist. What Sandy thought about it we didn’t enquire. She even agreed that Wayne and the DG could come along to watch.

I would have liked to test it according to Wayne’s advice - that the plant could beguile people into bending over to examine its beautiful flower and then suffer its ministrations - but reason told me it would be better for Jan’s treatment if he was secured already naked. Accordingly we suspended him in a long ‘X’ between two uprights we built in between the floor and ceiling.

Once Jan and the other visitors were in place, Carl brought in the plant and placed it below Sandy’s widely outstretched thighs. We hadn’t told him anything and he now stared down at the plant in its pot in some mystification.

The plant didn’t waste any time. Don’t ask me how it sensed his presence above him but it did, for the primary shoot immediately began to extend upwards towards his buttocks and its (at the moment) pointed tip (like that of an asparagus shoot) to delve in between them. Sandy cried out and started to struggle but the plant was resourceful and soon wormed its way into his anus.

As soon as it was inside, the second shoot began to grow up towards his genitals. I glanced at Jan and was pleased to see her looking almost ecstatic at the plant’s two shoots now working on his body; the first already inside it and presumably doing nasty things to his anus and rectum, while the second was clearly headed towards his genitals.

Before it did, however, the first shock cut in and we watched in varying degrees of glee as Sandy screamed and his beautifully muscled body squirmed and twisted in near-agony, its muscles cording and straining as he tried to come to grips with the electric shocks inside his rectum.

It was only a few minutes after that, that the second stem reached his testicles and began to wind itself around them and then right around the shaft of his penis. As it reached the crown the tendril-like shoot appeared out of the stem, curled back on itself and sought out his urethral meatus, then, finding it without hesitation, simply inserted itself up his penis.

If his contortions before had been delicious, now they really took off, every one of his quite splendid muscles straining to their limit, standing out in great cords, quivering, sweating and straining and sending my cock into an instant hard-on. As I glanced around at the other visitors, I was relieved to see each of them seemed to be in the same boat as I was.

But most of all, I was really pleased to see Jan revelling in Sandy’s distress. Oh yes, this was very clearly the right treatment for her.

We all moved closer to him now, watching with interest as the third stem emerged from the plant and wound its way up his body to his nipples, dividing on cue and firmly attaching its sucker-like heads to his nipples.

The plant now seemed really alive, its three stems waving and, where it wound around a part of his body, tightening and loosening in waves. I could see the whole thing seemed to be electrified and while I know this all sounds weird, Sandy was truly behaving as if he was in the throes of very painful shocks to various parts of his muscular body.

Strangely, though, his penis, although it must have been in severe straits from the pressure of the stem coiling around its girth and, even more, from the electrified tendril right up his urethra, was now violently erect and even throbbing.

As Jan moved up close to him, she asked if she could touch it. I tried it first and then smiled. “Of course, be my guest.”

She reached out and grasped it and then grinned as she felt the shocks passing through her hand. To her they were mere tingles, but to him, they must have felt like mains power and inside his body, they would have seemed to be of an even higher voltage.

But he felt her holding him there and as I watched his eyes, I noted a change. To that point he had been a braggart, scornful of everyone around him and even of us who had been tormenting him unmercifully. Even through the whip and other tortures we had inflicted on him, he had seemed to scorn us and what we were doing to him.

Now though, the scorn was gone. In its place there seemed to be a softening in his brown eyes and then, as his face turned towards Jan, there was a definite expression of contrition - even though he was still under severe pain from the shocks and whatever else the plant was doing to him in the way of chemical secretions to his body.

I realised then that it was working. That the symbiosis between it and him was very real: it was deriving its sustenance from what it was doing to his body and in turn was changing his outlook on life and on those around him.

I whispered as much to Dave Peters who whispered back that he too had noted the change. So had Wayne. As for Jan, she was far too engrossed in his comeuppance to have observed any change in his demeanour. That was alright, however. I was concerned with her cure, not her clinical understanding of what was happening to him.

Her cure was very real. Arthur Franks said as much to me and I had to agree. She was positively bubbling with excitement now as she stared at his fine body undergoing perhaps the worst pain he had ever felt in his short life. I think his unattractive face had also improved, even if only a little. He was still no matinee idol but he definitely looked a lot better than the scowling thug he had before this treatment.

It was now an hour or so after the plant had started work on his body and it had apparently taken its fill from him for the stems began to withdraw and to wither as they did so, eventually shrinking back to three straggly remnants of the former strong stems which had worked their magic on his body.

He felt them leaving and now ceased his so erotic struggles and actually smiled down at us as we stared up at his now almost good-looking face. The only part of him that evidenced what he had just gone through was his cock. It was still rampantly erect but even it now began to wilt and he hung there in the St Andrew’s Cross position, staring down at Jan.

“Miss, I am truly sorry for what I done. If it would help you, I’d be very willing for you to cane and whip me - every day if you like...”

I stared from him to her; to Dave and Wayne and then back to Sandy. I was about to speak but she forestalled me. “Yes, I think it will be very appropriate for me to both cane and whip you, Sandy, but I feel that once for each will be sufficient.”

She turned to me. “Would that be alright, Dr Chalmers?” she said innocently.

I grinned. “Very much alright, Miss Connors. Perhaps tomorrow and a week after that? We will have him ready for you...”

It was all very satisfactory, as Dave announced to me in my office a few minutes later. “Now, I think you said this, er, ceremony, can’t be repeated for a month. Is that right?”

“So I’m led to believe and glanced at Wayne.”

“That’s my understanding, too.”

“In that case, we will need to acquire or grow some more plants...?”

And that’s where it all came undone.

Wayne contacted his friend who said no more could be had from South America. It seemed they grew only in the one location and worse still were very hard to raise at all. They couldn’t be grown from cuttings and they issued one seed every year (and sometimes at greater intervals). This seed could only be propagated in the high country of the Andes (don’t ask me why, I’m not a horticulturist) and most failed to grow at all.

When I passed this message on to Dave Peters he said he had been talking to the State’s Chief Scientist who had informed him their knowledge of the plant was the same and that research to find how it worked: the electrical stimulation of its victim’s body, for example, and the chemicals it secreted which in turn triggered him to secrete other chemicals in turn, was so complex, it would take many, many years for them to discover the whole process so synthetic drugs were not on, either.

It seemed we had just the one plant. We could process a dozen criminals in a year and the life of the plant was projected to be only ten to twenty years, a maximum of two hundred-plus, so we were, for practical purposes, back to my implants and the rigid discipline I had created at our facility.

Research into the plant both medical and horticultural would continue for it truly was miraculous. Sandy’s behaviour from the moment we let him down was nothing short of that. He was clearly a changed young man and I am an expert at uncovering guile.

His conduct at the subsequent caning and whipping was good evidence of that.

For the caning, I decided that a Singapore-type frame would be the best way to secure him although there was no centre bar to stop his middle sagging inwards as Jan applied the strokes; nor was there going to be the pillow-type protection for his back. I would make sure Jan applied the cane only to his buttocks but I wanted her to savour to the fullest her personal punishment of the young criminal.

This time there was just the pair of them and me there. I escorted her into the room which had just the frame in it and seated her, then went to fetch Sandy. As Dave had suggested, we were now treating him as ‘normal’ criminals were - except for one thing: he remained naked - strangely at his own request.

Anyway, as we walked along to the room, he told me he was actually looking forward to this punishment. “Not that I won’t scream or that the pain won’t be bad. But I feel that being punished by the girl I so brutally raped will help me atone for my dreadful act, as well as her, of course.”

I looked at him carefully. “You really mean that, don’t you, boy?”

“Yes, Dr Chalmers, I do. I feel I actually need to suffer pain to make up for that awful pain, mental pain mostly, I suppose, that I inflicted on her.”

“Well, you’re going to get it now, boy. The cane hurts a lot and you’re going to get the full twenty strokes, you know?”

“I know. I hope I won’t scream too bad, but perhaps if I do, she will feel some relief...?”

“Perhaps,” I said noncommittally.

We reached the room then and he walked in first, went straight up to Jan and knelt before her. “Please make them very hard, Miss,” he said softly, his eyes on the floor in front of him.

But she raised them to hers and smiled sweetly at him. “Oh I will, Sandy, you can be sure of that.”

With that he rose and moved straight over to the frame, raising his hands so I could lock his wrists to the manacles, then knelt down to pull his feet wide apart and lock his ankles to the base of the A-frame and then finally to pull on the rope (reeved through a pulley system) to stretch him up taut.

I rose, moved over to the rack on which was displayed a dozen or so canes, all of them rattan and about a metre long, selected one and brought it over to Jan. “Make them all count, Miss O’Connor,” I said, quite unnecessarily.

She smiled and nodded as she took the cane from me and then took up her position behind and to the left of his curvaceous buttocks. As I watched the scene, I felt that familiar hardening in my pants. I had taken precautions this time, however, and it didn’t show.

She had obviously been practising, for her fore-swing and the delivery itself were both most professional, the tip of the cane making a banshee whistle as it accelerated through the air - and landed right on the crown of both buttock cheeks. Even her end play was perfect: she snapped the cane back, rather than continuing it through like the Singaporean caners do for I had discovered that it is this action that causes the dreadful wounds which result from their canings when more than a half-dozen strokes are involved.

Snapping the cane back hurts dreadfully but it doesn’t lacerate the skin.

His reaction was predictable. His torso arched in to a bow in response to the blow and at the same time, he uttered a grunt which is fairly normal from what I had read and seen of Singaporean canings. That grunt would develop into a scream with further strokes, but we could wait.

She strolled around the frame now, standing in front of him with the cane held out in front of her in her hands, but then she took it in her right and reached out with its tip to the underside of his genitals, tapping it up, fairly gently against his testicles. “Perhaps, Dr Chalmers, the remaining strokes ought to be applied to these,” she mused. I didn’t reply. I knew her question was rhetorical and that she had no intention of really asking for this.

I moved round to stand beside her though and grinned as I looked up at Sandy’s face. It was a picture. I think he was trying to imagine the appalling pain a smart blow of that cane to his balls would bring about.

But she removed the cane from them and moved back behind him, now applying stroke number two even harder, at which his grunt became a small scream, which over each successive blow became louder and more strident. By then tenth stroke he was struggling equally as much as he had under the plant’s ministrations and his screams were full-blown cries of very real agony.

And yet he never once pleaded with her (or me) to stop, even for a respite. She applied each stroke with a five minute break, not for his benefit but to allow the pain of each to properly sink in and so that the pain of each was cumulative. I watched with her as she applied each stroke in a pattern of tramlines and then crossed them in diagonals (which would add significantly to his agony).

In between each stroke we wandered around to face him, staring up at his splendid naked body now enduring the ravages of an old-fashioned caning at the hands of his victim.

He did indeed look splendid. His body had always been erotically attractive in its athleticism but his face, with its scornful expression had taken away any charm he might have had. Over the last week that had changed. I have already reported the almost instant change which occurred during the plant’s ‘treatment’, well that had continued on, softening its hard lines, making his eyes softer and his expression very much more amenable. Right now, although it was showing his agony, beneath that, we could both see a very much more appealing young man.

Jan remarked on it. “He looks almost human, Will,” she said softly. (I had asked her to call me Will and I now called her Jan, except in Sandy’s hearing, anyway).

“He does, Jan,” I whispered back. “That plant really is quite remarkable.”

“What a pity it’s not going to be of general use to you, eh?”

“Indeed.”

She carried the punishment through to the end, the twentieth stroke being as powerful as the first and he was a right mess at the end of it. He had just enough strength though to thank her for his punishment and then he passed out.

She was instantly solicitous and I stared at her in amazement. “You’re not falling for him, are you?” I asked incredulously.

She laughed. “Heavens, no, but he has changed, hasn’t he? And no, don’t ask. I still want to whip him next week if that’s still okay?”

“Of course,” I said, very relieved at her response. “Had you wondered how you are going to whip him?”

“I had. I assume it will be his back?”

“No, it won’t. We are going to suspend him upside down and with his legs stretched out wide and tight. You are going to whip his genitals with a special whip which will hurt them horribly - but not damage them. Sound okay?”

She grinned. “You better believe it. And now I’ll have something even better to look forward to.”

That whipping was utterly magnificent.

Even Sandy said so. Once he had recovered from the caning, he told me he was now waiting with dread, but also with a weird excitement for his whipping.

I eyed him carefully. “Are you saying you have become masochistic, boy?”

“Oh no, Dr Chalmers. Not at all. I still feel the pain but when it is her giving it to me, it seems to wash away this new guilt I feel every time I think of what I done to her.”

“When did that guilt show itself?”

“When I was being attacked by that awful plant.” I already knew that but it was good to have him confirm it. Now he looked at me again. “D’you think she’d consent to keep punishing me until I feel good again, sir?”

“No,” I said sternly. “This isn’t about you, boy. If she feels sufficiently cured when she has whipped you and doesn’t want to ever to see you again, that’s what will be. On the other hand, if she wishes to continue on with your punishments then that’s what will happen, too.”

He subsided then and hung his head. I marvelled yet again at the transformation in him.

Once more he submitted more than willingly to be suspended upside down as I had intimated to Jan and once more she watched in glee as his body was prepared for the punishment.

Then with his genitals now dangling down his so muscly stomach, I handed her the whip. Once more we used a signal whip. As already described, it tapers from the fairly thick handle to the tip. The handle is rigid but the remaining metre-length is oily rather than loose, if one moves the handle forward, say, the tail follows it rather languidly. It is perfect for this job but I told her it wasn’t necessary to apply it hard.

“It will hurt him agonisingly by quite gentle strokes, Jan.”

She nodded, took the whip and moved up close to him. His hands were free but he let then dangle towards the floor. She pulled the tail back over her shoulder and then brought it smartly forward, laying the last ten centimetres right over his well-displayed testicles - at which he screamed, arched his body up (and she stepped back to avoid him), twisting his torso back and forth and crying out in his pain.

He put on a wonderful display for us but then he relaxed and let his body down again. There were to be only ten strokes this time and I think she softened them after that first blow. However each elicited a new scream of agony from him together with a wonderful display of his so athletically muscular body and thighs into the bargain.

He didn’t pass out or even near that condition this time but when we let him down, he thanked her and begged her to continue with his punishments.

“You want me to punish you, boy?”

“Yes, please, Miss. But harder. I need to feel real agony each time if I am to feel a proper, what is it, er, atonement, for my sin against you.”

She looked at me in astonishment but then smiled and shrugged. “Well if he wants it, who am I to say no...”