23.
Zilawe Penal System Rehabilitation and Re-education Camp #4. December 20, 2017.
Needless to say, I had been a fool to believe that confessing to sending the tweet about President Parambe was going to get me nothing worse than being expelled from the country. Not that denying it would have helped; they would have tortured a confession out of me. Besides, I did post those tweets and I meant every word, too, so what would have been the point in denying it?
As soon as they had my confession, they threw me in a cell. Sure they let Langley, that useless jerk from the Embassy, see me. They even gave me a defense lawyer; he was OK, I guess, but there wasn’t much he could do. They never heard of the Miranda rule here in Zilawe and my confession stood even though I had made it without a lawyer.
The first night in the cells was awful. About an hour after what passed for dinner, three big, black male guards came in and made pretty clear what I had to do and what would happen to me if I didn’t. What could I do, all alone in a foreign country?
I got down on all fours and sucked off two of them, alternating between taking each one’s swollen cock into my mouth while the third took me from behind. The smaller of the two sharing my mouth came first, withdrawing just as he began spurting his foul secretions all over my hair. The one fucking me high-fived his colleague. “Excellent aim!” he cried then sped up his thrusts, shooting all over my ass and back.
The third one soon grunted and exploded in my mouth. “You better swallow it all, you American whore,” he insisted. I suspected that if I didn’t, they would find a way to make me suffer, so I grimaced and swallowed the disgusting, slimy mess. They quickly pulled their pants up and left, laughing loudly about “that white slut”. They didn’t give me any water to wash their filth off of me or even to rinse my mouth.
Only when the reporter, Barbara Moore, came to interview me a couple of days later, did they take me to the shower and give me ten minutes to wash myself in the rust-colored water that trickled out the showerhead. I guess they wanted to make the public back in the States believe they were doing things by the book, though the book they were following wasn’t taken from “Law and Order”.
Barb was really nice and seemed very smart. She promised to write an article that would get public opinion on my side and would help get me out, or at least we hoped it would. But it seemed that Parambe didn’t give a shit what Americans thought about him. My trial was a complete farce and the sentence was just unbelievable.
To be stripped in front of a hundred or so strangers, almost all men, tied to a wooden frame and lashed with a vicious multi-tailed whip was the most degrading thing I could imagine. And the pain was ghastly; the first few lashes felt like a hot knife applied to my flesh and it only got worse as they went on. I begged them to stop, but they kept on. By the halfway point, I would have fucked every man there to escape the remainder. I don’t know how I survived, but I did.
Of course, once I recovered from that ordeal, I still had ten years in a labor camp hell to look forward to. I couldn’t imagine how I would survive as a white foreigner among a bunch of Zilawean criminals. Then, who should end up in my cell, but Barb. They had arrested her for filming my whipping and sending it to her editor. She claims to this day that she hadn’t done it, that her account had been hacked, and that they had tortured her into confessing. From the screams I had heard from nameless prisoners down the hall while they were questioning me, that was easy to believe.
Anyway, things happened between us in the cell. I’m not a lesbian and I don’t really think Barb is either, but I’ve seen “Orange Is the New Black” and I know what goes on in women’s prisons. They gave her thirty lashes, ten more than me. It was horrible to watch her writhing on the frame as they whipped her, just as I had done, but I forced myself, hoping that somehow she would know I was with her and that would help her bear the agony. Besides, even if I had turned my eyes away, I would have had to listen to the thongs of the whip hitting her body and her screams and the cheers of the crowd through the barred window.
When her editor, Jerry, showed up from New York, I hoped maybe he’d be able help us. He’d spoken with my parents. He had sent Barb here, so he sort of owed her and he seemed like a decent guy, but he ended up fucking us, he and that creep Tuma. I didn’t really mind-they gave us the first decent food I’d had in days and they were less rough than those guards. But we still ended up on the bus to the labor camp, which almost got us killed by a rebel attack.
When we finally got there, the first thing they did was stake us out naked, Barb and me and a whole bunch of guards fucked us during the night. It wasn’t the first time, of course, for either of us and I knew it wouldn’t be the last.
However, it was the last time for a few of those guys, who were blown to bits by some mortar fire, presumably coming from the rebels. Served those bastards right! But it was damn scary, even for Barb, who’d covered wars for the paper. Another way to die here, in case we survived the back-breaking work, beatings, bad food, diseases and the possibility of being executed on trumped-up charges.
Finally, the attack stopped and I think I dozed off for a while. When I awoke, the sun was just coming up. I could hear the sounds of the guards yelling at the prisoners to get them moving for the work day ahead. Soon they began filing out of their barracks and lining up on the parade ground.
Once they were assembled, Commandant Okereke came out of his office, accompanied by several burly guards. He stood in front of the assembled prisoners and addressed them. “Last evening a busload of new prisoners arrived. As you know, we are very hospitable here. We wish to extend to them a hearty welcome into our little family.”
He continued, “Our new members should know that if they obey our rules their time here will pass smoothly. But they must also know what the consequences are if they fail to obey.” He read off a list of names and I could see the prisoners who had ridden with us on the bus forming a line off to the side of the main assembled group.
Two of the guards were dragging a wooden vaulting horse that looked much like the one I remembered from gym class in high school, though there were restraints attached to the legs which hadn’t been on the ones back there. One of the guards called two names and two of the male prisoners from the bus were ordered to strip. They quickly shucked off their clothes and were escorted to the horse. The guards bent them over the padded top, side by side, so that their buttocks were presented to the assembled audience. Then, their wrists and ankles were secured to the legs.
Two muscular guards approached, each carrying a long and rather thick strap-rhino hide, I later learned- which they gripped by the attached wooden handle. Without further ceremony, they swung the leather at full force smashing the business end into the prisoners’ buttocks. It made a loud “Smack!” as it struck the round, fleshy globes. They delivered nine more strokes, each as ferocious as the first, at approximately ten second intervals.
As soon as they were done, two other guards began undoing the punished prisoners and helping them to their feet. The next two prisoners, now at the head of the line, quickly stripped under the watchful glare of the guards and were ushered to the place of their “welcome” as their predecessors were being escorted to the barracks for whatever “treatment” one got in this hell hole.
The line kept moving inexorably, as each pair of new arrivals was made to strip, taken to the horse and quickly dealt with. While a few of the tougher prisoners managed to remain silent through all ten strokes, most moaned in agony by the end and a quite a few hollered and blubbered, some of the men included. Finally, everyone in the line of new prisoners had received their “welcome”.
It seemed possible that because we were staked out at the side, Okereke had forgotten about me and Barb. But no such luck. “Before you all leave,” he announced, “We have two special guests joining our family. They have come here all the way from America. We cannot neglect to extend our welcome to Meghan Shanahan and Barbara Moore.”
Two guards made their way to where Barb and I were staked out. They untied us and helped us to our feet. We were, of course, already naked, so no stripping was necessary. They escorted us to stand before the assembled prisoners, who looked at us curiously. Many had likely not seen a naked white woman in the flesh.
Okereke spoke. “I have special orders from Molabayo that Ms. Moore, a reporter for a very important newspaper in New York should receive a special welcome in view of the attitude she displayed at the Detention Center. Give her twenty.”
The guards marched us to the horse, bent us over unceremoniously side-by-side, our hips just touching, and quickly bound our wrists and ankles. Despite the early morning cool, the padding on the top of the horse was warm against my groin and belly from the body heat of the prisoners who had preceded us. It was also damp from their sweat and other fluids that I could only imagine. Soon Barb and I would be adding our own secretions to the rank-smelling mix.
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I turned to look at Barb. Her face registered both fear and resignation. She must know, as I did, that this was just a taste of what we could expect during our long sentence here, on top of the brutal whipping we had received back at the Molabayo Detention Center.
We didn’t have time for further thoughts, as the floggers, doubtless eager to complete their duties here and move the prisoners off to their work assignments, launched into their appointed task.
The first stroke dispelled any idea that they might be fatigued from their previous exertions. I felt the brutal rhino hide smash into my poor ass, driving my crotch into the padding. The pain was intense-I hesitate to say which was worse, the strap or the multi-tailed whip that they had used back at the Detention Center. The heavy strap seemed, perhaps, to produce a duller, deeper pain than the lighter cords of the whip, which produced a sharper, more acute agony. But both were hell on earth.
The awful punishment continued, stroke after stroke, each one at maximum force. My ass was a sea of pain. I was gasping for breath in between moans and shrieks of despair as the agony mounted with every stroke.
Each time it struck, the strap drove my pussy into the padding on the horse. The pressure against my clit wasn’t enough to overcome the pain, but it provided at least a little bit of relief.
I glanced over at Barb, though I could barely see through tear-clouded eyes. She was grimacing and mumbling to herself, tears and sweat running down her face, as they ran down mine. “Be strong, Barb,” I managed to whisper through clenched teeth.
“You too, Meghan,” she groaned back.
Finally, just when I didn’t think I could stand any more, the strokes stopped. I had lost count in my agony, but I realized that must have been ten. I drew in a deep breath and slumped against the padding. It was finally over.
Then, I heard the smack of leather against ass flesh once again. Yet, I felt nothing. Then I remembered-Barb was due a second ten lashes for what she had said to her boss after our “party” at the Detention Center! How would she stand it? But then what could she do other than stand it?
I watched Barb flinch and grit her teeth each time the strap connected with her badly bruised ass flesh. My hands were tied, so I could not block my ears against her heart-wrenching howls of pain as the full measure of lashes she had earned by her defiance was delivered.
In order to distract myself from watching my companion, someone who had come here to Zilawe because of me, suffer, I rubbed my pussy against the padding. I didn’t have enough freedom of movement to come, nor did I want to do so in front of these disgusting guards, but I did feel a tingling pleasure in my groin.
Finally, the twenty lashes Barb was due had been delivered. She lay across the horse, panting. As the guards untied us, a young woman, quite tall and dark-skinned, clad in a black and white striped prison dress, approached. “It’s over; you can get up now,” she told us. I pushed myself off the horse with my arms, the sudden movement causing daggers of pain to shoot through my buttocks.
Barb was in worse shape, and the young woman took her arm and helped her stand. “My name is Yvette,” she said. “You have been assigned to our barracks. Come with me.” She led us off the parade grounds past several barracks.
We followed Yvette into one of them. “Lie down,” she said, indicating two cots of the dozen or so that were arrayed against the wall. “Mama Juba asked me to take care of you. You will not work today, but you will have to be ready to work hard tomorrow.”
Barb groaned as she lay down. “Who is Mama Juba?” she asked.
Yvette shook her head. “I thought everyone knew of Mama Juba. She ran a very famous house in Molabayo. Everyone went there, even President Parambe sometimes. I worked for her and many of the other girls did too.”
“What is she doing here?” I asked.
“She hid some money that she was supposed to pay to some important men,” Yvette replied, kneeling beside my cot and rubbing some ointment into my ass. It felt cool and the pain lessened almost immediately.
“Thank you, Yvette, that feels much better,” I sighed.
“You don’t have to thank me, but tonight, you must be very sure to thank Mama Juba. If you please her, she can make your stay here bearable, but if you displease her, she can make it very bad.” I resolved that I would do whatever was necessary to satisfy Mama Juba and that I would make sure Barb did the same.
***
As it turned out, the task of satisfying Mama Juba fell to Barb, whether just by chance or some kind of arrangement involving exchanges of money and favors, I’m not sure. At some point during the day-I couldn’t be sure of the time, but it was hot, so it must have been around midday-I felt my bladder was full.
“I think a man should give his girlfriend chocolates sometimes, don’t you?” he said. I nodded. “You treat Barto good and he will treat you good. And no one else will touch you. OK?”
I knew what my women friends back in the US would say. I was prostituting myself for a better assignment and some chocolate. I wasn’t just a whore but like the cheapest of cheap whores. But they weren’t locked in a Zilawean labor camp for the next ten years, were they? “OK,” I replied.