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Ammelie De Jonquieres: Induction
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Name: Ammélie de Jonquières
Age: 57
Crime: money laundering, first degree murder with aggravating circumstances, administrative corruption
History: Member of minor French nobility, married rising aristocratic politician. Divorced at 34, but subsequently acquired considerable fortune. Suspicions of blackmail. Various business interests that ran into trouble several years ago.
Became involved in a money-laundering scam in attempt to refund her lifestyle. Fell out with partner and hired a hitman to eliminate him. Attempted to bribe the prefect of police and bring political pressure on him to call off the subsequent investigation, but the evidence was too strong.
Induction
The room was about 12’ by 18’, bleakly governmental. The brick walls were painted a dull grey-green to shoulder height and a dingy white above that. The floor was linoed.
In one of the shorter walls was a double door, with each part having a window – that kind of glass that has a grille of wire set inside it in the assumption that sooner or later someone will throw something through it. There were windows in both of the longer walls, each some six foot long but only a foot or so deep, and set high so that one could not see the outside at all. I noticed they were opened, angled at a 45º angle to allow a through breeze of the mild May air.
A depressing place, half old-fashioned school, half bureaucratic institution.
A half dozen officers were standing, waiting. In their 30s and 40s I guessed, trimly dressed in the practical black sweater and trousers of the corrections service. As the governor and I entered they came to attention, not with the crash of a Marine platoon and not servilely, but with the air of competent professionals in a well-run service. I was impressed.
The governor introduced me and I shook hands with each in turn, but I must confess the names went by me.
“Well Congressman,” he said, “If you’ll excuse me I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Warder Bieler. Jonquières should be arriving any minute, and you’ll be able to see our induction procedure.” We shook hands and he left.
Warder Bieler took his place. After all, when you have a US Congressional fact-finding mission on the premises, you don’t leave the Congressman standing like a spare wheel.
“Do you know the history of this Jonquières, Congressman?”
“Oh yes, the governor filled me in.”
In fact I was still more than a little cloudy. A woman of 57, born in the minor nobility of France, divorced in her 30s from a rising politician and then making several fortunes in ways I gathered were pretty dubious. Ran out of luck a few years ago and turned to money laundering, got in above her depth and ended up with a murder charge. I had the feeling she had been doing business as usual but had run out of high-level allies. Anyway, she’d tried to bring political pressure on the Prefect of Police, and when that hadn’t worked had tried to bribe him to shift the investigation sideways. It all seemed pretty obscure to me, but apparently it had been enough to get her a death sentence at the Supreme Court. And not just a death sentence – Jonquières was going to get the cross.
She’d been flown down from the Court, just landed apparently, and was being brought here for ‘induction’. This grim little room was in fact a literal antechamber to Hell.
I was interested in seeing the induction process. My delegation’s primary purpose was to act as observers at a crucifixion, but serependitiously my arrival had coincided with Jonquières’ delivery after trial, and so I was able to observe the start of the process as well as the end.
Fortunately I didn’t have to spend much time chatting with Bieler. A woman in her late 40s with greying hair, very tough looking and impressive, but without much small talk. There was the sound of footsteps in the corridor and the double doors opened. Our criminal was led in between a couple of warders.
It was a slightly incongruous moment. My first thought was: “Hell, she’s one of us.” She was an impressive woman, dressed in a black business suit, her hair slightly greying in places. An excellent silver and amber brooch on the right lapel. A white silk blouse with a high, lace-edged collar. Medium height, a full bosom. An authoritarian, slightly sour face, with a sharp nose – someone who had been used to being in command. A handsome woman, would have been a real looker twenty years before; not a likable one, hard, ungenerous and unforgiving; an air of abrupt efficiency.
Her wrists were fastened at waist level to a stout leather belt. Her suit was a little dishevelled and her face almost haggard. That was hardly surprising; indeed it was remarkable that she was as composed as she was. Less than an hour ago Ammélie de Jonquières had heard the judge sentence her to be crucified.
And she must have known that this was destruction. Oh sure there was an appeals process, but barely a fifth of appeals were granted and the very best she could hope was commutation to life imprisonment – or perhaps, given the conditions in the EU’s ‘Punitive Regime’, a sentence of execution by lethal injection would be preferable. And that was very unlikely; if her sentence were commuted, it would more probably be to burning or skinning alive. But in any case, the odds were that in less than three months Ammélie de Jonquières would be crucified.
And yet, for all that, there was something about her, some air of superiority, of command, that triggered my instinctive thought when first I saw her; “God almighty, she’s one of us.”
Bieler walked unhurriedly over to her and stood, hands on hips, looking her up and down. The woman didn’t like it much but didn’t say anything, just stared back at her as if she were sizing her up in a business deal. The two women, both alpha females though of very different types, were locked in a silent fight for dominance.
“Ammélie de Jonquières?”
“I am.” The voice was firm and rather deep.
“We’re going to search you. Sit over there.” Bieler nodded towards a stoutly build oak armchair.
The woman’s mouth tightened, but after a moment she nodded and walked over to the chair. She turned, looked briefly around the company as if checking all the board were properly present for a meeting, and seated herself.
A warder passed a wide strap around her waist and pulled it tight.
“There will be no need for that,” Jonquières said firmly.
The warder buckled the strap and then unfastened the woman’s right wrist and held her arm firmly to the chair arm while a colleague strapped it down half-way between wrist and elbow, creasing the dark material of her sleeve.
Bieler turned to me as they fastened the woman’s other arm. “As you see Congressman, her hands are under control at all times. She may well have poison capsules or such hidden somewhere, and we make sure she has no chance to get at them. Now we’re going to check.”
She nodded to one of the warders, who took hold of the woman’s hand and began twisting a ring off her finger.
“Stop that. Stop it. I can do that myself.”
“Quiet woman,” Bieler ordered sharply. The woman glared at her but spread her fingers, wincing as the warder twisted the ring off.
“Careful with that … it’s a Metzine original.”
Bieler let the comment pass, I noticed. A good NCO knows when to push.
The ring was tossed into a cardboard box a couple of feet away, followed in due course by two others, the brooch, a silver and pearl necklace and two pearl earrings. Jonquières closed her eyes with a look of weary disgust at the dull sound of the items landing in the cardboard. An expensive wristwatch was removed and discarded with little more care.
Two warders knelt and took off her shoes. Excellent legs and expensive nylons. Stockings or tights, I wondered. Somehow I suspected stockings. I recalled some executive remarking how putting on a suspender belt made her feel she was girding her loins for battle, and I suspected Jonquières went with her loins girded. The woman glared ahead of her, mouth lips pressed tight with anger, as they passed their hands round her ankles and under her feet, carefully probing, and then squeezed the dark nylon between the toes. These people were thorough.
“Search her hair.”
A few pins and clips went into the box as the woman’s tight bun of hair was unravelled. A warder ran a comb through it in brisk strokes that swept from scalp down to where the hair ended a little below her shoulders. Very good hair, by the way, thick and glossy, almost black with a streak of rather becoming grey here and there.
Jonquières flinched intermittently as the comb tugged at knots, pressing her lips together in an angry attempt to keep her self-control.
The warder did a thorough job, scraping the comb firmly against the scalp – and painfully, to judge by Jonquières’ face – and then searching the scalp with her fingers.
By now Jonquières was breathing harshly, her face flushed with anger. The warder pulled each ear in turn forward and unceremoniously checked behind them.
“Clean.”
Bieler nodded and held out her hand to her side, palm upward. A warder stepped forward and handed her an aluminium cylinder with a black beak protruding at the top – one of those gizmos doctors use for inspecting ears.
She stepped to the side of the chair, yanked Jonquières’ head to the side and thrust the nozzle into her ear. Bending, she looked intently into it, moving it slowly before removing it and inspecting the other ear.
She passed the tool back to the waiting warder and was given a wooden spatula. I was impressed by the efficiency of this team. Bieler hardly needed to give an order. Everyone knew what to do.
With her left hand, still standing by the side of the chair, Bieler gripped the woman’s hair and dragged her head back so she was staring at the ceiling. “Open.”
Jonquières glared at her. If looks could have killed! She clenched her jaw.
Bieler nodded to a warder who stepped forward, swagger stick in hand, and rapped it on Jonquières’ left breast. That ample mound was well presented by the woman’s posture. The smack was firm but not brutal – a warning shot over the bows so to speak – but it must have come as quite a shock nevertheless.
Jonquières’ eyes bulged and she gave a sharp gasp; her body jerked against the straps.
“Open,” Bieler said again.
And this time, after a defiant moment of angry hesitation, the woman opened her mouth, and Bieler carefully, thoroughly inspected it.
“Clean,” she said, and stepped back, tossing the spatula into the box alongside the rings and jewellery. I looked back at Jonquières. She was breathing rather sharply. Two tears squeezed from her shut eyes and drizzled down her cheeks. It seemed Bieler was getting the upper hand in that alpha female battle.
Now two warders began to search her jacket, one either side, carefully checking every inch and inspecting the buttons suspiciously.
When they had done, one of them jerked the woman’s jacket down to her elbows, and they examined her blouse as they had the jacket, beginning with her armpits and upper arms.
I guessed it was a long time since Jonquières had lost a domination fight, and she didn’t like it one little bit. She still kept a stubborn silence but her mouth was set in a grimace of disgust and more tears were trickling. As the warders turned in the final step of this phase to her breasts, her head jerked as a horse might jerk at a fly and she shuddered.
“Still!” Bieler’s order was an imperious bark.
Breathing in short gasps that were reflected in the movements of her ample bosoms, she made herself submit to the groping.
But when the warder began to unbutton her collar, her control cracked for the first time and she twisted violently away and barked out “Oh for God’s sake…” Even then her voice was not pleading but arrogant, as if she were exclaiming at a servant’s folly.
Two warders stepped forward and gripped her upper arms, forcing her back in place. As the warder continued to undo the buttons, the blouse opened to reveal a magnificent cleavage. She had excellent breasts, very full, white fleshed with a barely discernible blue tracery of veins, held plumply up by an expensive and well-fitted brassiere. It is a tribute to the prison swagger stick that the rap she had been given, though not of great force and delivered through jacket and blouse, had left a distinct red mark over the left mound.
“There is no need for this,” she exclaimed, her eyes tightly shut. “It is demeaning.”
Down came her blouse. Her lacy slip was checked and down it came as well. A meticulous check of her brassiere – though I could hardly imagine there was anything still to be found after all that groping.
As she felt them undoing the clasp of the bra, she lost it, struggling wildly against the restraining hands and screeching “Nooo … I won’t have it … I forbid it…”
They jerked her back in the chair and “Smack!!!” This time the warder didn’t hold back and the swagger stick half-buried itself in the right breast. For a moment Jonquières seemed paralysed with shock and then she let out a scream, struggling frantically.
Age: 57
Crime: money laundering, first degree murder with aggravating circumstances, administrative corruption
History: Member of minor French nobility, married rising aristocratic politician. Divorced at 34, but subsequently acquired considerable fortune. Suspicions of blackmail. Various business interests that ran into trouble several years ago.
Became involved in a money-laundering scam in attempt to refund her lifestyle. Fell out with partner and hired a hitman to eliminate him. Attempted to bribe the prefect of police and bring political pressure on him to call off the subsequent investigation, but the evidence was too strong.
Induction
The room was about 12’ by 18’, bleakly governmental. The brick walls were painted a dull grey-green to shoulder height and a dingy white above that. The floor was linoed.
In one of the shorter walls was a double door, with each part having a window – that kind of glass that has a grille of wire set inside it in the assumption that sooner or later someone will throw something through it. There were windows in both of the longer walls, each some six foot long but only a foot or so deep, and set high so that one could not see the outside at all. I noticed they were opened, angled at a 45º angle to allow a through breeze of the mild May air.
A depressing place, half old-fashioned school, half bureaucratic institution.
A half dozen officers were standing, waiting. In their 30s and 40s I guessed, trimly dressed in the practical black sweater and trousers of the corrections service. As the governor and I entered they came to attention, not with the crash of a Marine platoon and not servilely, but with the air of competent professionals in a well-run service. I was impressed.
The governor introduced me and I shook hands with each in turn, but I must confess the names went by me.
“Well Congressman,” he said, “If you’ll excuse me I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Warder Bieler. Jonquières should be arriving any minute, and you’ll be able to see our induction procedure.” We shook hands and he left.
Warder Bieler took his place. After all, when you have a US Congressional fact-finding mission on the premises, you don’t leave the Congressman standing like a spare wheel.
“Do you know the history of this Jonquières, Congressman?”
“Oh yes, the governor filled me in.”
In fact I was still more than a little cloudy. A woman of 57, born in the minor nobility of France, divorced in her 30s from a rising politician and then making several fortunes in ways I gathered were pretty dubious. Ran out of luck a few years ago and turned to money laundering, got in above her depth and ended up with a murder charge. I had the feeling she had been doing business as usual but had run out of high-level allies. Anyway, she’d tried to bring political pressure on the Prefect of Police, and when that hadn’t worked had tried to bribe him to shift the investigation sideways. It all seemed pretty obscure to me, but apparently it had been enough to get her a death sentence at the Supreme Court. And not just a death sentence – Jonquières was going to get the cross.
She’d been flown down from the Court, just landed apparently, and was being brought here for ‘induction’. This grim little room was in fact a literal antechamber to Hell.
I was interested in seeing the induction process. My delegation’s primary purpose was to act as observers at a crucifixion, but serependitiously my arrival had coincided with Jonquières’ delivery after trial, and so I was able to observe the start of the process as well as the end.
Fortunately I didn’t have to spend much time chatting with Bieler. A woman in her late 40s with greying hair, very tough looking and impressive, but without much small talk. There was the sound of footsteps in the corridor and the double doors opened. Our criminal was led in between a couple of warders.
It was a slightly incongruous moment. My first thought was: “Hell, she’s one of us.” She was an impressive woman, dressed in a black business suit, her hair slightly greying in places. An excellent silver and amber brooch on the right lapel. A white silk blouse with a high, lace-edged collar. Medium height, a full bosom. An authoritarian, slightly sour face, with a sharp nose – someone who had been used to being in command. A handsome woman, would have been a real looker twenty years before; not a likable one, hard, ungenerous and unforgiving; an air of abrupt efficiency.
Her wrists were fastened at waist level to a stout leather belt. Her suit was a little dishevelled and her face almost haggard. That was hardly surprising; indeed it was remarkable that she was as composed as she was. Less than an hour ago Ammélie de Jonquières had heard the judge sentence her to be crucified.
And she must have known that this was destruction. Oh sure there was an appeals process, but barely a fifth of appeals were granted and the very best she could hope was commutation to life imprisonment – or perhaps, given the conditions in the EU’s ‘Punitive Regime’, a sentence of execution by lethal injection would be preferable. And that was very unlikely; if her sentence were commuted, it would more probably be to burning or skinning alive. But in any case, the odds were that in less than three months Ammélie de Jonquières would be crucified.
And yet, for all that, there was something about her, some air of superiority, of command, that triggered my instinctive thought when first I saw her; “God almighty, she’s one of us.”
Bieler walked unhurriedly over to her and stood, hands on hips, looking her up and down. The woman didn’t like it much but didn’t say anything, just stared back at her as if she were sizing her up in a business deal. The two women, both alpha females though of very different types, were locked in a silent fight for dominance.
“Ammélie de Jonquières?”
“I am.” The voice was firm and rather deep.
“We’re going to search you. Sit over there.” Bieler nodded towards a stoutly build oak armchair.
The woman’s mouth tightened, but after a moment she nodded and walked over to the chair. She turned, looked briefly around the company as if checking all the board were properly present for a meeting, and seated herself.
A warder passed a wide strap around her waist and pulled it tight.
“There will be no need for that,” Jonquières said firmly.
The warder buckled the strap and then unfastened the woman’s right wrist and held her arm firmly to the chair arm while a colleague strapped it down half-way between wrist and elbow, creasing the dark material of her sleeve.
Bieler turned to me as they fastened the woman’s other arm. “As you see Congressman, her hands are under control at all times. She may well have poison capsules or such hidden somewhere, and we make sure she has no chance to get at them. Now we’re going to check.”
She nodded to one of the warders, who took hold of the woman’s hand and began twisting a ring off her finger.
“Stop that. Stop it. I can do that myself.”
“Quiet woman,” Bieler ordered sharply. The woman glared at her but spread her fingers, wincing as the warder twisted the ring off.
“Careful with that … it’s a Metzine original.”
Bieler let the comment pass, I noticed. A good NCO knows when to push.
The ring was tossed into a cardboard box a couple of feet away, followed in due course by two others, the brooch, a silver and pearl necklace and two pearl earrings. Jonquières closed her eyes with a look of weary disgust at the dull sound of the items landing in the cardboard. An expensive wristwatch was removed and discarded with little more care.
Two warders knelt and took off her shoes. Excellent legs and expensive nylons. Stockings or tights, I wondered. Somehow I suspected stockings. I recalled some executive remarking how putting on a suspender belt made her feel she was girding her loins for battle, and I suspected Jonquières went with her loins girded. The woman glared ahead of her, mouth lips pressed tight with anger, as they passed their hands round her ankles and under her feet, carefully probing, and then squeezed the dark nylon between the toes. These people were thorough.
“Search her hair.”
A few pins and clips went into the box as the woman’s tight bun of hair was unravelled. A warder ran a comb through it in brisk strokes that swept from scalp down to where the hair ended a little below her shoulders. Very good hair, by the way, thick and glossy, almost black with a streak of rather becoming grey here and there.
Jonquières flinched intermittently as the comb tugged at knots, pressing her lips together in an angry attempt to keep her self-control.
The warder did a thorough job, scraping the comb firmly against the scalp – and painfully, to judge by Jonquières’ face – and then searching the scalp with her fingers.
By now Jonquières was breathing harshly, her face flushed with anger. The warder pulled each ear in turn forward and unceremoniously checked behind them.
“Clean.”
Bieler nodded and held out her hand to her side, palm upward. A warder stepped forward and handed her an aluminium cylinder with a black beak protruding at the top – one of those gizmos doctors use for inspecting ears.
She stepped to the side of the chair, yanked Jonquières’ head to the side and thrust the nozzle into her ear. Bending, she looked intently into it, moving it slowly before removing it and inspecting the other ear.
She passed the tool back to the waiting warder and was given a wooden spatula. I was impressed by the efficiency of this team. Bieler hardly needed to give an order. Everyone knew what to do.
With her left hand, still standing by the side of the chair, Bieler gripped the woman’s hair and dragged her head back so she was staring at the ceiling. “Open.”
Jonquières glared at her. If looks could have killed! She clenched her jaw.
Bieler nodded to a warder who stepped forward, swagger stick in hand, and rapped it on Jonquières’ left breast. That ample mound was well presented by the woman’s posture. The smack was firm but not brutal – a warning shot over the bows so to speak – but it must have come as quite a shock nevertheless.
Jonquières’ eyes bulged and she gave a sharp gasp; her body jerked against the straps.
“Open,” Bieler said again.
And this time, after a defiant moment of angry hesitation, the woman opened her mouth, and Bieler carefully, thoroughly inspected it.
“Clean,” she said, and stepped back, tossing the spatula into the box alongside the rings and jewellery. I looked back at Jonquières. She was breathing rather sharply. Two tears squeezed from her shut eyes and drizzled down her cheeks. It seemed Bieler was getting the upper hand in that alpha female battle.
Now two warders began to search her jacket, one either side, carefully checking every inch and inspecting the buttons suspiciously.
When they had done, one of them jerked the woman’s jacket down to her elbows, and they examined her blouse as they had the jacket, beginning with her armpits and upper arms.
I guessed it was a long time since Jonquières had lost a domination fight, and she didn’t like it one little bit. She still kept a stubborn silence but her mouth was set in a grimace of disgust and more tears were trickling. As the warders turned in the final step of this phase to her breasts, her head jerked as a horse might jerk at a fly and she shuddered.
“Still!” Bieler’s order was an imperious bark.
Breathing in short gasps that were reflected in the movements of her ample bosoms, she made herself submit to the groping.
But when the warder began to unbutton her collar, her control cracked for the first time and she twisted violently away and barked out “Oh for God’s sake…” Even then her voice was not pleading but arrogant, as if she were exclaiming at a servant’s folly.
Two warders stepped forward and gripped her upper arms, forcing her back in place. As the warder continued to undo the buttons, the blouse opened to reveal a magnificent cleavage. She had excellent breasts, very full, white fleshed with a barely discernible blue tracery of veins, held plumply up by an expensive and well-fitted brassiere. It is a tribute to the prison swagger stick that the rap she had been given, though not of great force and delivered through jacket and blouse, had left a distinct red mark over the left mound.
“There is no need for this,” she exclaimed, her eyes tightly shut. “It is demeaning.”
Down came her blouse. Her lacy slip was checked and down it came as well. A meticulous check of her brassiere – though I could hardly imagine there was anything still to be found after all that groping.
As she felt them undoing the clasp of the bra, she lost it, struggling wildly against the restraining hands and screeching “Nooo … I won’t have it … I forbid it…”
They jerked her back in the chair and “Smack!!!” This time the warder didn’t hold back and the swagger stick half-buried itself in the right breast. For a moment Jonquières seemed paralysed with shock and then she let out a scream, struggling frantically.
“Behave yourself!” Bieler’s voice cut through her noise. “There’s plenty more where that came from. Do you want another one?”
The woman glared up at him, eyes wild, and violently shook her head, gasping and with tears pouring down. Off came the brassiere and, despite her age, those magnificent breasts didn’t sag much at all. Wide aureolae, brownish pink, and small nubbly nipples. Bouncing like blancmanges as she panted.
She blubbered as the search resumed, this time on her naked flesh, beginning with her back then pulling her up to again go over her armpits. With her arms strapped to the chair I couldn’t get a clear look at them, but there was no obvious sign of underarm hair. Maybe what they said about French women was not always true.
A warder took each breast in turn by the nipple and felt underneath and between, then palpated her belly – a little overweight and flabby – even thrusting a finger into the belly button and probing.
At length she stood up and turned to Bieler.
“Clean.”
“Very well.”
They refastened the brassiere clip, pulled up the straps and adjusted her breasts into the cups. Then with brusque efficiency they replaced her slip, blouse and jacket and her sobbing subsided as they did so. The restoration of her clothes seemed to comfort her. As her jacket was drawn back up, she even muttered a tearful “Thankyou”.
Clearly a great deal of the arrogance had been taken out of her. But I got the impression that she thought the ordeal was over, and the muffled thanks were for calling an end to it.
“Well, nothing there, Jonquières. All clean it seems.”
Again the snuffling thankyou, ground out almost against her will this time. She was aware it was another loss of domination, but she was too weak to resist for the moment.
“Now let’s have a look at the bottom part.”
Jonquières stared up at her as the news sank in, and the tears started pouring down. “Oh no,” she moaned, “Oh dear God nooo…”
A warder snapped a cuff on her wrist before unstrapping her arm, then cuffed that wrist to the other before freeing it. The woman buried her face in her cuffed hands, moaning softly as they unbuckled the waist strap. Her hair hung down, obscuring her face.
“Up.”
She didn’t respond.
“On your feet woman.”
Still she sat, moaning, swaying slightly in her chair.
“Oh for goodness sake, get the cow on her feet. I’ve got work to do even if none of you lot have.”
I was a little shocked at Bieler’s speaking so harshly to the warders, given the smooth efficiency they’d displayed, but she turned and gave me a brief, almost indiscernible wink, and I guessed the remark was more to degrade the prisoner than to blame her staff.
Two of them seized her arms and lifted her to her stockinged feet, head still hanging, still moaning in misery, walked her round to the back of the chair and bent her over it. A warder pulled her hands forward and fastened the cuffs to a short chain attached under the front of the chair seat. Instinctively she gripped the edge.
I walked round behind her. The jacket had ridden up, showing her blouse tail hanging down. The dark material of her skirt was stretched tautly over a broad, shapely rump. Two warders knelt and pulled her stockinged legs to the chair supports on either side, and fastened them apart with straps attached to the outside of the chair legs, spreading them wide. Her feet were outside the chair legs. Even with her skirt still in place she looked utterly vulnerable.
A warder stepped up and checked the skirt, probing meticulously. The legs, outlined against the stretched skirt as the probing hands pressed it in, were excellently shaped. The spectacle was one that delighted me. Fortunately all eyes were elsewhere as I surreptitiously adjusted my underwear.
I had to adjust it again a moment later as the warder began tugging the skirt upwards, finally rolling it in a bundle around the woman’s waist and leaving her yet more displayed in just the thin slip. I saw that I had won my bet with myself about the stockings.
Just like the skirt, the slip was efficiently searched, though with the thin material the process was swifter. Then it too went up and was bunched under the skirt. By now the woman was sobbing, her shoulders shaking and her head swaying from side to side.
Her expensive but very conservative knickers – creamy white in colour – covered almost all of her big bottom, but I didn’t mind. I was getting to know the process and was confident that I would see that spread of plump white flesh denuded pretty soon.
The warder checked the stockinged legs as carefully as she had everything else. It hardly seemed necessary when the material was so sheer, but I later learned that criminals might tape a sliver of razor blade or a pill little bigger than a pinhead flat against the skin, using a little piece of skin-coloured tape. Then she began on the knickers, first the lace at the waist and legs, then the front – bending to delve into the groin and between the legs – then the back, carefully probing over and between the fleshy buttocks.
“Clean.”
“Carry on.”
There was a snapping sound, strangely loud in the room where the only sound was the woman’s crying. I think she understood what it was for she raised her head and stared up to where a warder stood with her right hand raised, smoothing the surgical glove she had just put on.
The warder who had been doing the searching took hold of the waistband of the woman’s knickers at each hip and drew it down, the flesh bulging out over it, until it could go no further over her straddled thighs. The garment was stretched inside out, but was nevertheless carefully assessed by hand as well as eye. And Ammélie de Jonquières sobbed and moaned, begging again and again “Oh noo … please God don’t do this … don’t do this.”
The gloved warder took the place of the searcher and began carefully probing through the woman’s pubic hair. With Jonquières bent with legs spraddled, from where I stood a little to the side I could see her fleshy sex lips. As the warder’s search progressed I saw the searching fingers coming under her legs. The search of the front was done, and now the warder knelt and explored the thick hair around the woman’s clitoris. That done she parted the labia and gazed intently at the pink tissues inside, even pulling the clitoris hood down to inspect beneath it. Then, keeping the woman spread with the fingers of one hand, with the other she explored slowly and carefully, before spreading the buttocks and inspecting between them.
She placed her finger against the vagina and pushed smoothly in, twisting her hand to explore before removing it. Then two fingers.
The woman’s sobs were rising, but it was when the probing finger was placed against her anus that she shrieked and twisted. With her legs spread as they were she could barely move her bottom an inch, but nevertheless two warders seized her shoulders and forced them down. The finger went slowly in up to the knuckle.
“Well?” Beiler enquired.
The warder looked up at her with a little smile, and shook her head slightly.
It seemed a strange change from the usual calm declaration of “clean”, and besides Bieler had never needed to ask for the result before. It occurred to me that in fact the question related not to the content but the response of Jonquières’ bottom – to whether she was used to anal sex. I rather suspected that someone had just won a bet.
Surely there was nothing left to find I thought, but the warder took a proffered speculum and thrust it first into the vagina and then the anus, scrutinising deep and careful. The woman squealed.
Two wheeled stainless-steel stands were move up behind the chair. A fat bag swayed greasily from each, and a long plastic tube hung down, each with a collar a few inches from its end. One was thrust into the vagina, the other into the anus, right up to the collar (it went easily enough into the vagina, but took some twisting to get it up her bottom). A little valve protruded from each collar, and a warder attached a hand pump to each in turn and inflated it. A tap at the base of each bag was turned.
The woman sobbed in utter misery, her shoulders still pressed down, the floor in front of the chair soaking with tears and drool. Her big buttocks shook as the greasy fluid seeped into her. It took all of ten minutes before the bags hung flaccidly empty and the last of the liquid seeped down the tubes.
There was an inconspicuous joint about a foot from the end of each tube, and they broke the tubes there so that a foot-long tube dangled from each orifice, like two incongruous tails. They looped the main part of the tubes back up on the stands and wheeled them back against the wall. Then they released her from the chair.
The woman was too shocked and miserable to resist as two warders seized her by the arms and frog-marched her a few paces backwards, squealing with shock and fear of the unknown, to where a toilet stood against the back wall. Two others came over and took hold of the little valves protruding from the collars.
“One, two, three…”
On the count of three, each turned the valve and there was a brief hiss of air as the collars deflated. With a swift tug they whisked the tubes out and the warders holding her pressed her down to sit on the toilet. Soon gurgling squirting sounds augmented her retching sobs. She sat bent over, hands pressed to her sobbing face, hair matted and hanging down, shoulders shaking as her bowels noisily emptied in full view of the warders who would be her rulers from now on.
We moved away to the far side of the room, for obvious reasons. Someone switched on a device that set two fans in the wall beside the toilet to work sucking air out into the open courtyard outside to keep the odour down.
Bieler spoke to me for almost the first time since the condemned woman had been brought in.
“There’s a good reason for all this, Congressman. As well as searching her properly, I mean. She’s learning about her human rights.”
“Her rights?” The statement seemed incongruous.
“Yes. That she doesn’t have any now.”
The woman glared up at him, eyes wild, and violently shook her head, gasping and with tears pouring down. Off came the brassiere and, despite her age, those magnificent breasts didn’t sag much at all. Wide aureolae, brownish pink, and small nubbly nipples. Bouncing like blancmanges as she panted.
She blubbered as the search resumed, this time on her naked flesh, beginning with her back then pulling her up to again go over her armpits. With her arms strapped to the chair I couldn’t get a clear look at them, but there was no obvious sign of underarm hair. Maybe what they said about French women was not always true.
A warder took each breast in turn by the nipple and felt underneath and between, then palpated her belly – a little overweight and flabby – even thrusting a finger into the belly button and probing.
At length she stood up and turned to Bieler.
“Clean.”
“Very well.”
They refastened the brassiere clip, pulled up the straps and adjusted her breasts into the cups. Then with brusque efficiency they replaced her slip, blouse and jacket and her sobbing subsided as they did so. The restoration of her clothes seemed to comfort her. As her jacket was drawn back up, she even muttered a tearful “Thankyou”.
Clearly a great deal of the arrogance had been taken out of her. But I got the impression that she thought the ordeal was over, and the muffled thanks were for calling an end to it.
“Well, nothing there, Jonquières. All clean it seems.”
Again the snuffling thankyou, ground out almost against her will this time. She was aware it was another loss of domination, but she was too weak to resist for the moment.
“Now let’s have a look at the bottom part.”
Jonquières stared up at her as the news sank in, and the tears started pouring down. “Oh no,” she moaned, “Oh dear God nooo…”
A warder snapped a cuff on her wrist before unstrapping her arm, then cuffed that wrist to the other before freeing it. The woman buried her face in her cuffed hands, moaning softly as they unbuckled the waist strap. Her hair hung down, obscuring her face.
“Up.”
She didn’t respond.
“On your feet woman.”
Still she sat, moaning, swaying slightly in her chair.
“Oh for goodness sake, get the cow on her feet. I’ve got work to do even if none of you lot have.”
I was a little shocked at Bieler’s speaking so harshly to the warders, given the smooth efficiency they’d displayed, but she turned and gave me a brief, almost indiscernible wink, and I guessed the remark was more to degrade the prisoner than to blame her staff.
Two of them seized her arms and lifted her to her stockinged feet, head still hanging, still moaning in misery, walked her round to the back of the chair and bent her over it. A warder pulled her hands forward and fastened the cuffs to a short chain attached under the front of the chair seat. Instinctively she gripped the edge.
I walked round behind her. The jacket had ridden up, showing her blouse tail hanging down. The dark material of her skirt was stretched tautly over a broad, shapely rump. Two warders knelt and pulled her stockinged legs to the chair supports on either side, and fastened them apart with straps attached to the outside of the chair legs, spreading them wide. Her feet were outside the chair legs. Even with her skirt still in place she looked utterly vulnerable.
A warder stepped up and checked the skirt, probing meticulously. The legs, outlined against the stretched skirt as the probing hands pressed it in, were excellently shaped. The spectacle was one that delighted me. Fortunately all eyes were elsewhere as I surreptitiously adjusted my underwear.
I had to adjust it again a moment later as the warder began tugging the skirt upwards, finally rolling it in a bundle around the woman’s waist and leaving her yet more displayed in just the thin slip. I saw that I had won my bet with myself about the stockings.
Just like the skirt, the slip was efficiently searched, though with the thin material the process was swifter. Then it too went up and was bunched under the skirt. By now the woman was sobbing, her shoulders shaking and her head swaying from side to side.
Her expensive but very conservative knickers – creamy white in colour – covered almost all of her big bottom, but I didn’t mind. I was getting to know the process and was confident that I would see that spread of plump white flesh denuded pretty soon.
The warder checked the stockinged legs as carefully as she had everything else. It hardly seemed necessary when the material was so sheer, but I later learned that criminals might tape a sliver of razor blade or a pill little bigger than a pinhead flat against the skin, using a little piece of skin-coloured tape. Then she began on the knickers, first the lace at the waist and legs, then the front – bending to delve into the groin and between the legs – then the back, carefully probing over and between the fleshy buttocks.
“Clean.”
“Carry on.”
There was a snapping sound, strangely loud in the room where the only sound was the woman’s crying. I think she understood what it was for she raised her head and stared up to where a warder stood with her right hand raised, smoothing the surgical glove she had just put on.
The warder who had been doing the searching took hold of the waistband of the woman’s knickers at each hip and drew it down, the flesh bulging out over it, until it could go no further over her straddled thighs. The garment was stretched inside out, but was nevertheless carefully assessed by hand as well as eye. And Ammélie de Jonquières sobbed and moaned, begging again and again “Oh noo … please God don’t do this … don’t do this.”
The gloved warder took the place of the searcher and began carefully probing through the woman’s pubic hair. With Jonquières bent with legs spraddled, from where I stood a little to the side I could see her fleshy sex lips. As the warder’s search progressed I saw the searching fingers coming under her legs. The search of the front was done, and now the warder knelt and explored the thick hair around the woman’s clitoris. That done she parted the labia and gazed intently at the pink tissues inside, even pulling the clitoris hood down to inspect beneath it. Then, keeping the woman spread with the fingers of one hand, with the other she explored slowly and carefully, before spreading the buttocks and inspecting between them.
She placed her finger against the vagina and pushed smoothly in, twisting her hand to explore before removing it. Then two fingers.
The woman’s sobs were rising, but it was when the probing finger was placed against her anus that she shrieked and twisted. With her legs spread as they were she could barely move her bottom an inch, but nevertheless two warders seized her shoulders and forced them down. The finger went slowly in up to the knuckle.
“Well?” Beiler enquired.
The warder looked up at her with a little smile, and shook her head slightly.
It seemed a strange change from the usual calm declaration of “clean”, and besides Bieler had never needed to ask for the result before. It occurred to me that in fact the question related not to the content but the response of Jonquières’ bottom – to whether she was used to anal sex. I rather suspected that someone had just won a bet.
Surely there was nothing left to find I thought, but the warder took a proffered speculum and thrust it first into the vagina and then the anus, scrutinising deep and careful. The woman squealed.
Two wheeled stainless-steel stands were move up behind the chair. A fat bag swayed greasily from each, and a long plastic tube hung down, each with a collar a few inches from its end. One was thrust into the vagina, the other into the anus, right up to the collar (it went easily enough into the vagina, but took some twisting to get it up her bottom). A little valve protruded from each collar, and a warder attached a hand pump to each in turn and inflated it. A tap at the base of each bag was turned.
The woman sobbed in utter misery, her shoulders still pressed down, the floor in front of the chair soaking with tears and drool. Her big buttocks shook as the greasy fluid seeped into her. It took all of ten minutes before the bags hung flaccidly empty and the last of the liquid seeped down the tubes.
There was an inconspicuous joint about a foot from the end of each tube, and they broke the tubes there so that a foot-long tube dangled from each orifice, like two incongruous tails. They looped the main part of the tubes back up on the stands and wheeled them back against the wall. Then they released her from the chair.
The woman was too shocked and miserable to resist as two warders seized her by the arms and frog-marched her a few paces backwards, squealing with shock and fear of the unknown, to where a toilet stood against the back wall. Two others came over and took hold of the little valves protruding from the collars.
“One, two, three…”
On the count of three, each turned the valve and there was a brief hiss of air as the collars deflated. With a swift tug they whisked the tubes out and the warders holding her pressed her down to sit on the toilet. Soon gurgling squirting sounds augmented her retching sobs. She sat bent over, hands pressed to her sobbing face, hair matted and hanging down, shoulders shaking as her bowels noisily emptied in full view of the warders who would be her rulers from now on.
We moved away to the far side of the room, for obvious reasons. Someone switched on a device that set two fans in the wall beside the toilet to work sucking air out into the open courtyard outside to keep the odour down.
Bieler spoke to me for almost the first time since the condemned woman had been brought in.
“There’s a good reason for all this, Congressman. As well as searching her properly, I mean. She’s learning about her human rights.”
“Her rights?” The statement seemed incongruous.
“Yes. That she doesn’t have any now.”
Only for demostrating and example I repost the story on standard way.
Member please like only the first post with the doc and docx!
andy01
Magistrate
Thanks. That seems to work well.
andy01
Magistrate
Ammélie de Jonquières 2: First day
I’d only meant to make a single visit to FemMain Prison, heading a delegation to observe an execution and then report back to the subcommittee. By chance, however, at the time of my visit another woman had been condemned and I was able to witness the induction to EJMain of a striking, arrogant businesswoman in her 50s, Ammélie de Jonquières. Thinking herself above the law, she had tried to revive her failing fortunes by money laundering and fraud, tried to arrange the murder of a business associate and attempted to use her political contacts to close down the subsequent police investigation.
When I first saw her she had been brought directly from the court where she had been condemned to crucifixion and was brought in manacles to the Induction Room. Even then her arrogance and her contempt for the ‘little people’ were evident in every look and gesture. Though by the time she had been stripped and body-searched she lost much of her composure.
Clearly this offered a chance to undertake a much fuller investigation of the EU Justice system, observing not only the final execution but the stages the criminal went through during her long incarceration at EJMain as the appeals process was undertaken and preparations made. It would have been neglect of duty if I had turned down an opportunity so fortunately offered; there was much to learn here that would be of huge value in our discussions of reform of the criminal justice system.
Besides, I must confess that I was fascinated by that extraordinary woman de Jonquières and the thought of how she would respond to a prison regime explicitly designed to break her spirit with relentless, even savage discipline.
I therefore e-conned my office in Washington who re-arranged my schedule so that I could extend my stay somewhat longer than originally planned, and spent the afternoon on a pleasant tour of the countryside and an art gallery, accompanied by a most helpful and informative official from the EJ Ministry, rounded off with an excellent meal.
I made an early night of it, for I had to be up early the next morning for the limo to take me in good time to the VIP Lounge at EJMain for the crucifixion I was there to observe. As for that, suffice to say that the facilities are excellent, the drinks generous and the food delightful, while the execution process I witnessed was – what can I say? – I had assumed it would be terrible and was prepared for horror, but the reality of your first crucifixion is something you can never prepare for. At the end, I was determined that I would not only watch the process of de Jonquières’ prison routine but also that she would be my second crucifixion.
Over lunch the Governor filled me in on Jonquières’ “career” so far. Her afternoon had been less pleasant than mine. After she’d been made to undress herself she’d been taken down the corridor to the stores room, where she’d finally been given her prison uniform – orange trousers and a short-sleeved top, both labelled “FEMME CONDENMÉE A CROIX” and with a stylised cross stencilled between the shoulder blades and at her bottom, and taken to her cell on Death Row for her first meal of prison mash. The afternoon had been taken up with a long series of medical tests and examinations, beginning with a series of blood samples (she had been tested for AIDS when arrested of course; these were to check for liver and kidney condition, cholesterol levels, potential diabetes and so on), x-rays of shoulders, back, arms, legs and in particular, for obvious reasons, wrists and feet. She had then been put through a long set of pilates and aerobic exercises with her blood pressure and pulse being measured at regular intervals, and blood samples taken again half way through and at the end.
She had then been racked for three hours, the tension increasing gradually from low to medium tension – less than she would experience on the cross – to compare the stress and flexibility of her tendons at different strain levels, and x-rays were taken of her joints to assess their response to being stretched.
Over coffee, the woman who had supervised the racking joined us: Dr Rachel Miller, Racking Officer at EJ Main, a stocky, motherly but obviously efficient woman in her fifties. She gave us a most interesting explanation of the use and process of the rack.
“The rack is an invaluable diagnostic tool in our work. Nothing else can give us such controlled and detailed information about the effect of strain on each felon’s body. Now you must understand that we are not looking at the muscles yet – Jonquières’ muscle tone will change quite a lot with our exercise programme over the next few months. But we want initial data on her tendons and her ligaments, which hold her body together. These data are tremendously useful when we come to consider exactly how far apart to nail her arms on the cross.
But you have to be patient. It takes time to gather these data. Just a very little tension at first, because the felon’s response is always to fight the rack, to tense her muscles and resist the pull. Too much pull and she will strain her muscles and maybe even dislocate her joints, and that ruins the chance of getting accurate data.
You have to have a settling-in period, up to an hour or more. She fights the rack, but slowly she loses the battle. Fibre by fibre her muscles cramp and lose the ability to resist. They weaken, and the strain begins to come onto the ligaments and tendons.
So we can begin to gather our data. We increase the tension a very little, just a fraction of an inch every ten minutes or so, and because the muscles are not resisting all that strain comes onto the ligaments and tendons. The ligaments are the tissues that hold the joints together, and nature has not designed them to take stress. And we can measure their response and feed that information into the design of her crucifixion.
It hurts of course. In the Middle Ages the rack was used as a torture to gain information and confession, and it was very effective. Even the moderate tension we use sends a burning pain in the joints and down the tendons that spreads through the shoulders and back and so through the body, and increases minute by minute. By the time we are finished and relax the tension – again slowly so as to let the joints fit together without damage – the felon is crippled and unable to stand or move without intense pain in those stretched tissues. And as the bones come back together, the pain changes and is in some ways even more intense. We monitor everything as she recovers, and again get very useful information.”
“That’s fascinating,” I said. “How did Jonquières take it?”
“Remarkably well. She is a very strong-willed woman. For a very long time she hardly made a sound, clenching her jaw and sometimes giving a sort of hissing sound. But towards the end of the first hour, as her muscles gave way and the strain came on the ligaments she was moaning. It wasn’t till we began to put the pressure on that she screamed, and even then not often. But the pain was clearly getting to her. Tears were pouring down.”
“And what did you conclude.”
“Well, she’s very strong for her age. Good heavy bones, good musculature and strong ligaments. They recovered more quickly after her racking than most women in their fifties, which is a very good sign. And as I say, she has a strong will and a burning rage inside her. Which is important too. All the signs point to a very successful crucifixion.”
All of which gave me food for thought. When I started this investigation I had not imagined how many aspects there were to crucifixion or the detail of the preparations EJ Main put into it. And I was more intrigued than ever to see the rest of Jonquières’ career.
As we returned to the VIP lounge, I felt I knew much more about what was happening, and watched the frantic contortions of the crucified woman with new eyes. When she fell and hung at full stretch on the cross, the doctor’s words about the tendons and ligaments came back to me, and I could better appreciate what the pains were. But I had begun to realise how much more I had to learn before I became a true connoisseur.
TBC
I’d only meant to make a single visit to FemMain Prison, heading a delegation to observe an execution and then report back to the subcommittee. By chance, however, at the time of my visit another woman had been condemned and I was able to witness the induction to EJMain of a striking, arrogant businesswoman in her 50s, Ammélie de Jonquières. Thinking herself above the law, she had tried to revive her failing fortunes by money laundering and fraud, tried to arrange the murder of a business associate and attempted to use her political contacts to close down the subsequent police investigation.
When I first saw her she had been brought directly from the court where she had been condemned to crucifixion and was brought in manacles to the Induction Room. Even then her arrogance and her contempt for the ‘little people’ were evident in every look and gesture. Though by the time she had been stripped and body-searched she lost much of her composure.
Clearly this offered a chance to undertake a much fuller investigation of the EU Justice system, observing not only the final execution but the stages the criminal went through during her long incarceration at EJMain as the appeals process was undertaken and preparations made. It would have been neglect of duty if I had turned down an opportunity so fortunately offered; there was much to learn here that would be of huge value in our discussions of reform of the criminal justice system.
Besides, I must confess that I was fascinated by that extraordinary woman de Jonquières and the thought of how she would respond to a prison regime explicitly designed to break her spirit with relentless, even savage discipline.
I therefore e-conned my office in Washington who re-arranged my schedule so that I could extend my stay somewhat longer than originally planned, and spent the afternoon on a pleasant tour of the countryside and an art gallery, accompanied by a most helpful and informative official from the EJ Ministry, rounded off with an excellent meal.
I made an early night of it, for I had to be up early the next morning for the limo to take me in good time to the VIP Lounge at EJMain for the crucifixion I was there to observe. As for that, suffice to say that the facilities are excellent, the drinks generous and the food delightful, while the execution process I witnessed was – what can I say? – I had assumed it would be terrible and was prepared for horror, but the reality of your first crucifixion is something you can never prepare for. At the end, I was determined that I would not only watch the process of de Jonquières’ prison routine but also that she would be my second crucifixion.
Over lunch the Governor filled me in on Jonquières’ “career” so far. Her afternoon had been less pleasant than mine. After she’d been made to undress herself she’d been taken down the corridor to the stores room, where she’d finally been given her prison uniform – orange trousers and a short-sleeved top, both labelled “FEMME CONDENMÉE A CROIX” and with a stylised cross stencilled between the shoulder blades and at her bottom, and taken to her cell on Death Row for her first meal of prison mash. The afternoon had been taken up with a long series of medical tests and examinations, beginning with a series of blood samples (she had been tested for AIDS when arrested of course; these were to check for liver and kidney condition, cholesterol levels, potential diabetes and so on), x-rays of shoulders, back, arms, legs and in particular, for obvious reasons, wrists and feet. She had then been put through a long set of pilates and aerobic exercises with her blood pressure and pulse being measured at regular intervals, and blood samples taken again half way through and at the end.
She had then been racked for three hours, the tension increasing gradually from low to medium tension – less than she would experience on the cross – to compare the stress and flexibility of her tendons at different strain levels, and x-rays were taken of her joints to assess their response to being stretched.
Over coffee, the woman who had supervised the racking joined us: Dr Rachel Miller, Racking Officer at EJ Main, a stocky, motherly but obviously efficient woman in her fifties. She gave us a most interesting explanation of the use and process of the rack.
“The rack is an invaluable diagnostic tool in our work. Nothing else can give us such controlled and detailed information about the effect of strain on each felon’s body. Now you must understand that we are not looking at the muscles yet – Jonquières’ muscle tone will change quite a lot with our exercise programme over the next few months. But we want initial data on her tendons and her ligaments, which hold her body together. These data are tremendously useful when we come to consider exactly how far apart to nail her arms on the cross.
But you have to be patient. It takes time to gather these data. Just a very little tension at first, because the felon’s response is always to fight the rack, to tense her muscles and resist the pull. Too much pull and she will strain her muscles and maybe even dislocate her joints, and that ruins the chance of getting accurate data.
You have to have a settling-in period, up to an hour or more. She fights the rack, but slowly she loses the battle. Fibre by fibre her muscles cramp and lose the ability to resist. They weaken, and the strain begins to come onto the ligaments and tendons.
So we can begin to gather our data. We increase the tension a very little, just a fraction of an inch every ten minutes or so, and because the muscles are not resisting all that strain comes onto the ligaments and tendons. The ligaments are the tissues that hold the joints together, and nature has not designed them to take stress. And we can measure their response and feed that information into the design of her crucifixion.
It hurts of course. In the Middle Ages the rack was used as a torture to gain information and confession, and it was very effective. Even the moderate tension we use sends a burning pain in the joints and down the tendons that spreads through the shoulders and back and so through the body, and increases minute by minute. By the time we are finished and relax the tension – again slowly so as to let the joints fit together without damage – the felon is crippled and unable to stand or move without intense pain in those stretched tissues. And as the bones come back together, the pain changes and is in some ways even more intense. We monitor everything as she recovers, and again get very useful information.”
“That’s fascinating,” I said. “How did Jonquières take it?”
“Remarkably well. She is a very strong-willed woman. For a very long time she hardly made a sound, clenching her jaw and sometimes giving a sort of hissing sound. But towards the end of the first hour, as her muscles gave way and the strain came on the ligaments she was moaning. It wasn’t till we began to put the pressure on that she screamed, and even then not often. But the pain was clearly getting to her. Tears were pouring down.”
“And what did you conclude.”
“Well, she’s very strong for her age. Good heavy bones, good musculature and strong ligaments. They recovered more quickly after her racking than most women in their fifties, which is a very good sign. And as I say, she has a strong will and a burning rage inside her. Which is important too. All the signs point to a very successful crucifixion.”
All of which gave me food for thought. When I started this investigation I had not imagined how many aspects there were to crucifixion or the detail of the preparations EJ Main put into it. And I was more intrigued than ever to see the rest of Jonquières’ career.
As we returned to the VIP lounge, I felt I knew much more about what was happening, and watched the frantic contortions of the crucified woman with new eyes. When she fell and hung at full stretch on the cross, the doctor’s words about the tendons and ligaments came back to me, and I could better appreciate what the pains were. But I had begun to realise how much more I had to learn before I became a true connoisseur.
TBC
This is a brilliant story, Andy! I love it, the subject, the details, the way you tell it. So many wonderful touches in there already, I feel sure we are in for a treat as this strong mature woman meets her fate. Nice to have an older woman as the subject, too, they can be every bit as strong, beautiful and sexy as their younger sisters, and this one seems to be the cream of the crop. It also gives us a chance to see the experience from the point of view of an older body for a change.
I like the idea you have of using the rack as a crucifixion diagnostic tool, the wonders of medical technology. No torture, no. Just dispassionate data gathering.
She had then been racked for three hours, the tension increasing gradually from low to medium tension – less than she would experience on the cross – to compare the stress and flexibility of her tendons at different strain levels, and x-rays were taken of her joints to assess their response to being stretched.
Awful, and fascinating. Please continue.
I like the idea you have of using the rack as a crucifixion diagnostic tool, the wonders of medical technology. No torture, no. Just dispassionate data gathering.
She had then been racked for three hours, the tension increasing gradually from low to medium tension – less than she would experience on the cross – to compare the stress and flexibility of her tendons at different strain levels, and x-rays were taken of her joints to assess their response to being stretched.
Awful, and fascinating. Please continue.
old slave
FELIS RESPICIENS
phlebas gave my thoughts exactly.
I never thought I'd say this, but if we can look forward to this EU’s ‘Punitive Regime’ may be it's a good thing the UK is leaving the EU....................No, on second thoughts, merging the thorough efficiency of EJMain with the ceremonial flair of the Brits, and the business acumen of the US media, we have The Ultimate Show on Earth.
I never thought I'd say this, but if we can look forward to this EU’s ‘Punitive Regime’ may be it's a good thing the UK is leaving the EU....................No, on second thoughts, merging the thorough efficiency of EJMain with the ceremonial flair of the Brits, and the business acumen of the US media, we have The Ultimate Show on Earth.
John Delves Richardson
Governor
Fantastic description of her progressive humiliation. One of the best things I've read in years.
I thought I knew a fair bit about crucifixion, but with Andy's help I'm becoming more of a connoisseur! Thanks Andy!
andy01
Magistrate
Ammélie de Jonquières 3: First day
The drug dealer had tumbled, was hanging at full length on her arms which, by some trick of perspective as we watched from the heights of the VIP gallery, seemed to have elongated, stretched thinner than their scrawniness. Yet her thin body was never still for a moment, jerking and twitching. And her face – they had bound her mousey hair in a pigtail behind her so that her face was clearly seen – stared up at us, eyes bulging in terror, screaming for mercy.
“Astonishing,” I murmured. “Quite astonishing, Doctor. I see what you meant about the tendons. Just look at them.”
“Mmmm,” Dr Miller replied. “She’s only been up four hours and already they’re having to pump in adrenaline to keep her moving; we can’t do that much longer. It’d finish her off.”
I turned to look at her and noticed that as she studied the dealer her face was far from satisfied.
“You don’t seem …”
“Oh that’s the way with a lot of these junkies. Lister’s a wreck. We’ve done our best to get her fit, but her lungs are shot so we never really managed to exercise her enough to build real muscle. She’s had a lifetime of cocktailing drugs and they’ve weakened her heart. She’s not going to last. She’ll be finished by Monday.”
“But … earlier … before lunch she was …”
It was difficult to find words to describe what I’d seen, the way she howled on the cross when they raised her.
“Oh look at her. See her arms; we had to nail them no wider than her shoulders. If we’d nailed them out, she’d be finished already. This isn’t a crucifixion, it’s just putting an animal down.”
I gawped at her.
“Now Jonquières, there we’ll have something worth seeing I think.”
“Jonquières? But she must be, what, thirty years, more than thirty years …”
“Older? Yes, but those thirty years she’s been living off the fat of the land, living in satin sheets, not out on the streets. Heart’s sound as a bell. Sedentary lifestyle, but she’s exercised fairly regularly, had a place in the country where she went horse riding. A bit overweight perhaps, but not seriously obese, and that gives her enough fat to provide energy once she’s up. We’ll get some of it off her in the next few months of course. She’s mildly diabetic, but nothing to cause problems. Slight stiffness in some joints. We can improve that; younger felons we put on heavy exercise, but with her we’ll add some loosening work – our Sergeant Viselle is an advisor to the German athletics team at the EU games; she’ll know what to do.”
She turned towards another officer, younger than most. On her shoulders she wore the little V of a sergeant’s stripes in the same black as the rest of her garb. I realized that insignia of rank were worn very discreetly in the CQ team; they were an elite, professionals with common expertise and a common purpose, not a rigid hierarchy.
“Viselle, have you met the Congressman?”
We shook hands.
“Do you think there is much more to see here?” the Doctor continued.
Viselle briefly shook her head. “We managed to keep her going during the broadcast, but we can’t go on with the adrenaline. There’ll be bits of action of course, as she starts to cramp and suffocate, but mostly she’ll just be dangling and twitching. She’ll last till Monday maybe, but she was never going to be a real spectacle.”
“That’s what I thought. I’d like the Congressman to have a look at the cells, the training facilities, all that. I know you’ve been looking at the results on Jonquières and you’re going to help with training her. I wonder if you might show him round? Where is she just now?”
“She’ll be starting on the treadmill pretty soon. I think the medics have been doing more tests this morning. Yes, I’ll be happy to show you round sir.”
TBC
The drug dealer had tumbled, was hanging at full length on her arms which, by some trick of perspective as we watched from the heights of the VIP gallery, seemed to have elongated, stretched thinner than their scrawniness. Yet her thin body was never still for a moment, jerking and twitching. And her face – they had bound her mousey hair in a pigtail behind her so that her face was clearly seen – stared up at us, eyes bulging in terror, screaming for mercy.
“Astonishing,” I murmured. “Quite astonishing, Doctor. I see what you meant about the tendons. Just look at them.”
“Mmmm,” Dr Miller replied. “She’s only been up four hours and already they’re having to pump in adrenaline to keep her moving; we can’t do that much longer. It’d finish her off.”
I turned to look at her and noticed that as she studied the dealer her face was far from satisfied.
“You don’t seem …”
“Oh that’s the way with a lot of these junkies. Lister’s a wreck. We’ve done our best to get her fit, but her lungs are shot so we never really managed to exercise her enough to build real muscle. She’s had a lifetime of cocktailing drugs and they’ve weakened her heart. She’s not going to last. She’ll be finished by Monday.”
“But … earlier … before lunch she was …”
It was difficult to find words to describe what I’d seen, the way she howled on the cross when they raised her.
“Oh look at her. See her arms; we had to nail them no wider than her shoulders. If we’d nailed them out, she’d be finished already. This isn’t a crucifixion, it’s just putting an animal down.”
I gawped at her.
“Now Jonquières, there we’ll have something worth seeing I think.”
“Jonquières? But she must be, what, thirty years, more than thirty years …”
“Older? Yes, but those thirty years she’s been living off the fat of the land, living in satin sheets, not out on the streets. Heart’s sound as a bell. Sedentary lifestyle, but she’s exercised fairly regularly, had a place in the country where she went horse riding. A bit overweight perhaps, but not seriously obese, and that gives her enough fat to provide energy once she’s up. We’ll get some of it off her in the next few months of course. She’s mildly diabetic, but nothing to cause problems. Slight stiffness in some joints. We can improve that; younger felons we put on heavy exercise, but with her we’ll add some loosening work – our Sergeant Viselle is an advisor to the German athletics team at the EU games; she’ll know what to do.”
She turned towards another officer, younger than most. On her shoulders she wore the little V of a sergeant’s stripes in the same black as the rest of her garb. I realized that insignia of rank were worn very discreetly in the CQ team; they were an elite, professionals with common expertise and a common purpose, not a rigid hierarchy.
“Viselle, have you met the Congressman?”
We shook hands.
“Do you think there is much more to see here?” the Doctor continued.
Viselle briefly shook her head. “We managed to keep her going during the broadcast, but we can’t go on with the adrenaline. There’ll be bits of action of course, as she starts to cramp and suffocate, but mostly she’ll just be dangling and twitching. She’ll last till Monday maybe, but she was never going to be a real spectacle.”
“That’s what I thought. I’d like the Congressman to have a look at the cells, the training facilities, all that. I know you’ve been looking at the results on Jonquières and you’re going to help with training her. I wonder if you might show him round? Where is she just now?”
“She’ll be starting on the treadmill pretty soon. I think the medics have been doing more tests this morning. Yes, I’ll be happy to show you round sir.”
TBC
This is excellent...
A medical officer keeping victims alive on the cross as long as possible - the only drugs not being administered being pain killers!
old slave
FELIS RESPICIENS
What a deceptively simple title to give this medic.
Andy01, you've managed to convey the suffering of the drug dealer without any of the usual descriptions, well done for portraying this scene in a clinically dispasionate manner yet with the horror clearly there.
andy01
Magistrate
The cells
I had read the statistics about FemMain of course, but it was as we walked the corridor towards the Crux compound that the sheer size of the place sank in. The corridor was a good twelve feet wide; you would have thought out footsteps would have echoed in such a space, but they were swallowed up, completely silenced, which gave our passing an unreal, almost dream-like air.
The floor, Viselle had explained, had an inch-deep rubber coating, as did the walls. For safety, so that even if a prisoner struggled and fell she could not injure herself. Of course the warders were highly trained in prisoner control, and the wide corridor was designed so they would have ample room, but the FemMain designers had taken no chances.
It was illuminated from above by rectangular panels at 10-foot intervals whose reflections in the shiny green of the floor made the corridor seem endless.
At length we turned off to our right, into another wide corridor. “The Crux compound is this way,” the young sergeant told me.
Beside the turn-off to the corridor was a large notice, headed by a red “No Entry” sign, and below, in inch-high lettering:
Women condemned to crucifixion
Absolutely no unauthorized passage beyond this point
(Criminal penalties apply to violations)
Femmes condamnées à la crucifixion
Absolument aucun passage non autorisé au delà de ce point
(Les pénalités criminelles s'appliquent aux violations)
Frauen verurteilt zur Kreuzigung
Absolut kein nicht autorisierter Durchgang über diesem Punkt hinaus
(Kriminelle Strafen Treffen auf Verletzungen)
This corridor was only some fifteen feet long, sealed at the end with a green steel door almost as wide as the passage itself. Beside it was a metal panel to which magnetic strips had been attached.
Cage 3, Jonquières, Ammélie
Cage 10, Patterson, Helen
Cage 5, Lister, Joanna
The sergeant put her hand to a sensor beside it, frowning as she noticed Lister’s name. “That should have been removed,” she said.
I had read the statistics about FemMain of course, but it was as we walked the corridor towards the Crux compound that the sheer size of the place sank in. The corridor was a good twelve feet wide; you would have thought out footsteps would have echoed in such a space, but they were swallowed up, completely silenced, which gave our passing an unreal, almost dream-like air.
The floor, Viselle had explained, had an inch-deep rubber coating, as did the walls. For safety, so that even if a prisoner struggled and fell she could not injure herself. Of course the warders were highly trained in prisoner control, and the wide corridor was designed so they would have ample room, but the FemMain designers had taken no chances.
It was illuminated from above by rectangular panels at 10-foot intervals whose reflections in the shiny green of the floor made the corridor seem endless.
At length we turned off to our right, into another wide corridor. “The Crux compound is this way,” the young sergeant told me.
Beside the turn-off to the corridor was a large notice, headed by a red “No Entry” sign, and below, in inch-high lettering:
Women condemned to crucifixion
Absolutely no unauthorized passage beyond this point
(Criminal penalties apply to violations)
Femmes condamnées à la crucifixion
Absolument aucun passage non autorisé au delà de ce point
(Les pénalités criminelles s'appliquent aux violations)
Frauen verurteilt zur Kreuzigung
Absolut kein nicht autorisierter Durchgang über diesem Punkt hinaus
(Kriminelle Strafen Treffen auf Verletzungen)
This corridor was only some fifteen feet long, sealed at the end with a green steel door almost as wide as the passage itself. Beside it was a metal panel to which magnetic strips had been attached.
Cage 3, Jonquières, Ammélie
Cage 10, Patterson, Helen
Cage 5, Lister, Joanna
The sergeant put her hand to a sensor beside it, frowning as she noticed Lister’s name. “That should have been removed,” she said.
andy01
Magistrate
The cells II
The door was sliding soundlessly open. To our right was another wall, interrupted by openings, a low cupboard beside each. To our left were cubicles, one facing each door.
“These are the cages where the Hurfs are held when not at work,” Viselle said.
She noticed my puzzled look. “High-Risk Female Felons,” she explained. “HRFFs, or Hurfs.”
She pressed a plate beside a door and a fine-mesh frame hissed across to close it. It was almost completely transparent. Behind it was a cell some eight feet long. To one side was a solid block around two feet high, two wide and six long. Between the bed and the door was a hole in the floor, a funnel-shaped hole. Everything was coated in the same shiny rubber.
“She sleeps and eats here … Again it is rubber lined so she cannot harm herself. Also it is easier to keep disinfected. Oh, that hole is for her to relieve herself.”
There was a strong smell of cheap disinfectant.
“And that,” she pointed to the cubicle opposite the door, “Is where she showers. After each exercise, after work, every morning. And changes her uniform for a clean one from the cupboard. To avoid infection, and also because there is no reason why the warders should put up with handling Hurfs who are unclean.”
“The door at the end leads to the working areas – exercise rooms, medical, work areas and so on. If you have seen all you need, perhaps we might take a look. We should find Jonquières there.”
TBC
The door was sliding soundlessly open. To our right was another wall, interrupted by openings, a low cupboard beside each. To our left were cubicles, one facing each door.
“These are the cages where the Hurfs are held when not at work,” Viselle said.
She noticed my puzzled look. “High-Risk Female Felons,” she explained. “HRFFs, or Hurfs.”
She pressed a plate beside a door and a fine-mesh frame hissed across to close it. It was almost completely transparent. Behind it was a cell some eight feet long. To one side was a solid block around two feet high, two wide and six long. Between the bed and the door was a hole in the floor, a funnel-shaped hole. Everything was coated in the same shiny rubber.
“She sleeps and eats here … Again it is rubber lined so she cannot harm herself. Also it is easier to keep disinfected. Oh, that hole is for her to relieve herself.”
There was a strong smell of cheap disinfectant.
“And that,” she pointed to the cubicle opposite the door, “Is where she showers. After each exercise, after work, every morning. And changes her uniform for a clean one from the cupboard. To avoid infection, and also because there is no reason why the warders should put up with handling Hurfs who are unclean.”
“The door at the end leads to the working areas – exercise rooms, medical, work areas and so on. If you have seen all you need, perhaps we might take a look. We should find Jonquières there.”
TBC
malins
Stumbling Seeker
Apart from the risk of suicide,
for some at least there's going to be the risk of a retreat into insanity after a few months of these padded cells... they'll certainly have measures to ensure that doesn't happen either because well we can be sure they want the delinquents to go to their punishment with the full capability to consciously comprheend what's being done ...
andy01
Magistrate
Thanks Malins. Good point. Any thoughts on what measures might be applied?
Frank Petrexa
Tribune
Anticipating what is going to happen to you is probably worse than the cell itself. I think people get into a routine, and should be OK for a while. A life sentence in prison in the United States, often in solitary confinement or in a special block like the one described, doesn't generally lead to screaming, oblivious insanity. The Unibomber, Ted Kascinski, is not going to get out. I also think that he's isolated for his own protection--one of the priests in Boston who was serving time for molesting boys was killed by another inmate (rapists in particular are not popular in prisons--inmates probably like to feel there's someone more despicable than they are and want to act like a hero). Kascinski is very intelligent, is allowed to read. As long as one is not tortured every day, the mind can probably last a while. People tend to block out a bleak future until it becomes a bleak present. (I'm starting to sound like a touchy-feely therapist, which I am decidedly not, so I'll stop here). This is an interesting story. The psychology is primarily what interests the author, I think.