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King Diocletian

King Diocletian

Magistrate
A new story - written as I struggle with the ending to State of Emergency....



She had known this day would come but that didn’t mean she was prepared for it.


There had been those who had said the fact her father was American, the fact she was a US citizen, would protect her, but she had known, deep down, that eventually they would come for her. The junta couldn’t allow her to keep condemning them, to keep exposing their abuses, on television and in print. She had known they would come to silence her. What she hadn’t expected was that they would come for her then, at the New Year’s party at the swishest hotel in town.


It made sense, though. Not for her the dawn raid, the mysterious disappearance. The regime wanted people to know she’d been arrested, that nobody was immune: it wanted to make a statement. And what better way to make people believe she was part of a neo-con US conspiracy than by seizing her when she was at a fancy party for foreigners, done up in an expensive ball-gown. Look, they were saying; she’s one of them.


And so she sat now in a cell, dressed preposterously in a sumptuous blue dress that left her right shoulder bare. Her wrists were cuffed painfully behind her, and her feet were bare, her shoes having fallen off as they’d hustled her from the garden of the hotel into the van.


She stood up and paced across the dusty floor again. Keep moving, keep sharp. The cell was perhaps 12 feet long and eight feet wide, bare but for the bench – a thick plank supported by two chains – on the back wall. The only light came from a grimy bulb set into the ceiling, streaked with cobwebs and the flickering bodies of a couple of desultory moths. The door was solid, cased in metal, but she suspected they were watching her through the peephole, waiting to see how she’d react. She was pretty sure knew where she was: the notorious Petra Negra jail in the capital.


She sat down again. They’d hooded her in the van, of course, but the distance made sense. The fact there was no window troubled her. Of course it was possible this was just an interior room on the ground floor, but she feared this was a cell in the basement. She hadn’t been taken down any stairs, but she thought the van may have gone down a ramp before they’d bundled her out. And the basement at Petra Negra meant only one thing: the torture cells. Of course they’d torture her, she told herself: she had to be prepared for that.


The thought of torture, of course, made her blood run cold. She had to be strong. This was one of the reasons she’d kept herself so physically fit with runs and gym sessions. She wasn’t an athlete by any means, but she was healthy and toned, able to drive herself on runs till she was retching with the effort. She just had to steel her mind as well.

*

Colonel Garcia pushed aside the guards, irritated by their ribald laughter, and peered through the eyehole. He didn’t understand why the order had gone out now; he was just delighted that it had. They had the bitch and they could make her suffer. They should have picked her up a year ago. She was pacing back and forth, looking thoughtful and calm. He wished she looked more distressed, that she’d broken down, but there’d be plenty of time for that. He wanted her begging for mercy and was tempted to go in there and start beating her himself, but he knew this had to be done by the book. She’d go before the tribunal and it would decide what was to be done to her.


She sat down again; maybe there was an anxiety about her. He hated her, hated her campaign for democracy and against human rights abuses, hated her absurd naivety about these things, but he recognised her as an astoundingly beautiful woman. The evening gown she wore emphasised what a fine body she had: tall and well-proportioned, her breasts high and generous, her waist narrow and her legs long.


How much longer before they could start? There was so much politicking to be gone through, so many different voices, all wanting a part of the famous Juliette Hartman, all thinking they knew the best way to teach her a lesson. It wasn’t just about that, though: he wanted information. Who were her sources? How did she always seem to know just what they were up to?
 
It was about 6am but that seemed to make little difference to the heat in the basement. Carlos Diaz wiped the sweat from his upper lip. The Minister for Justice had always hated his visits here before, but this was different. Juliette Hartman was different. For months she had tormented him with her articles, her appearances on television, her speeches. She was beautiful, intelligent, articulate, well-informed and – worst of all – half-American. Anybody else they’d have arrested last year, broken in the cells here and then spat out to one of the camps in the interior but they had to be careful with Americans.


He understood torture was necessary to quell dissent in times of emergency but he didn’t much like being near it. Some of his officials seemed almost to relish watching the guards here dealing out beatings, or seeing them hold the picana against subversives, but he’d seen enough battered faces screaming as the electricity pulsed through their flabby testicles to be disgusted by it. But if anybody deserved to suffer, it was her. The way she’d started to name him, to call on him to explain what was going on in Petra Negra and the camps. The way she knew – knew which prisoners were where and what had been done too them. Yes; he’d watch as they started on her, watch them knock that arrogance out of her.


The tribunal was ready: three colonels sitting behind a desk on the dais at one end of a not overly large room, a space in front for her, with desks for the stenographers just behind. There were seats down either side for the politicians and senior military personnel who wanted to watch and, at the back, a mass of soldiers, supposedly there to guard her but really there for the spectacle. It was stiflingly hot.


The door opened and two soldiers walked in. Then came another two and between them, her. Another two soldiers brought up the rear. A sack covered her head, so it was hard to be sure, but she seemed relatively calm, walking without needing to be dragged as they led her in front of the dais. She was tall, about 1.80m, and slender, the dress she was wearing emphasising the length of her legs. It stopped perhaps 10cm above her knees, exposed toned calves. Diaz was no expert in these things, but the design seemed unusual to him, mid-blue cloth sweeping down from her left shoulder on a diagonal to her waist, leaving just a flimsy navy silken dress – almost a slip - to cover her right breast and her lower back. With her arms chained behind her, her chest was thrust out a little and he admired the swell of her breasts. In fact, was that the vague outline of a nipple he could see beneath the navy silk?


The sack was pulled off. She blinked and shook the hair back from her face. Diaz watched that right breast quiver under the silk. He couldn’t wait to see it for real. She looked composed, her dark eyes taking in the room, focusing mainly on the desk on the low dais. A door opened and the three judges filed in.

*

Juliette looked up at the three men who would determine her fate, although she was hardly in doubt as to what that would be. All three were in the uniform of colonels. She vaguely recognised the one on the left; the one in the centre she knew was Colonel Raul Martinez, a man she had criticised regularly in the past.


A functionary called the court to order. She looked around, taking in three senior politicians, a handful of other bureaucrats, numerous military officers and she guessed around 30 soldiers. Perhaps 60 men in the room, two female secretaries and her. She wished she wasn’t wearing such a revealing outfit, although she doubted she’d be wearing it much longer.


“Can you confirm you are Juliette Hartman?” Martinez asked, peering over his half-moon glasses.


“Yes sir.” Her voice, to her relief, was clear and calm.


“And can you confirm you wrote the articles the clerk is now showing you?”


A thick manila folder full of newspaper cuttings was opened in front of her. Slowly, the clerk turned over clipping after clipping. Some were from underground local publications, most from newspapers in the US and Europe. She saw the headlines: “New disgrace for Diaz”, “Dissident alleges systematic torture”, “Police use live rounds on demonstrators”. And on each there was her byline. She had been so proud of that once.


“Yes. I did, sir.”


“Then we need detain the court no more. Under section four of the emergency penal code you are guilty of sedition. This court passes a provisional sentence of six months detention to be reviewed following further investigation and interrogation.”


It was exactly what she’d expected when they’d arrested her: a military tribunal essentially handing her over to be tortured; and when they’d finished with her they’d extend the sentence on the basis of the new evidence they’d uncovered and send her to the labour camps. Or execute her.


“Take her and process her,” Martinez said.


That was it. The hood was pulled back over her head and she was led away, back to the cell she’d been held in before the trial. How long had it taken? Five minutes? That was enough to condemn her to half a year – minimum – of back-breaking toil in the jungle, probably with beatings and rape thrown in. And before that, torture.


This time she just sat in the cell, her heart thumping.
 
Garcia wished the politicians and hangers-on weren’t there, but there wasn’t much he could do. They crowded round three sides of the room, he sat behind his desk on the other side. She stood before him, tall and beautiful, massaging her wrists. She held his gaze when he looked at her.


Slowly and precisely, he went through her details, checking them off on a form. Her name, date of birth, address, passport number. She answered, clearly and precisely. When he finished, he pushed the form towards her. “Sign at the bottom, please.” She stepped forward and obeyed with a hand that was almost steady.


“OK. Back where you were.”


She returned and faced him, meeting his stare with her dark brown eyes. “You will remove your clothing item by item,” he said and she didn’t flinch. “You will place them on the ground in front of you and an official will describe them. If you are happy with the description, say, ‘Yes’. Then we can be sure of returning all your possessions to you when we’re done. Is that clear?”


“Yes, sir.”


“OK. Strip.”


“Sir. Is it really necessary to have quite so many men here to see me strip?”


Garcia smiled. “This is a prison,” he said. “You are a prisoner. You obey orders or you are punished.”


She swallowed, and took off her belt, throwing it down on the floor in front of her. A soldier picked it up. “One belt, black, fabric,” he said.


She nodded.


“Speak, Miss Hartman,” Garcia snapped. “Do you confirm the description?”


“Yes, sir.” Why were they doing this? Did they always drag out the process, or were they doing this deliberately to unnerve her?


The guard placed the belt in a black canvas bag. A secretary wrote on a form. And the eyes of everybody else in the room turned on her.


She unhooked the outer part of her dress and let it fall to the ground, pooling at her feet. She stepped out of it and tossed it forwards.


Diaz licked his lips unconsciously; he took off his glasses and polished them on his tie. She wore now just a navy silken slip. Her toned shoulders were bare but for the spaghetti straps, her legs uncovered from mid-thigh down. “Dress, blue, fabric,” the guard called.


“Yes, sir,” she said, a slight tremor to her voice.


The air was electric with anticipation. “Carry on,” said Garcia, smiling as she lowered her eyes, unable at last to hold his gaze.


She could feel their eyes on her. All of them, 40 or 50 men staring at her. It was a futile gesture she knew, but she decided to put off the moment of nudity as long as possible. She squatted a little, reached under the dress and, with as much dignity as she could muster, took off her panties.


Garcia could barely repress a laugh. He liked this one; she was going to be fun. “Panties, black, lace,” called the guard.


“Yes, sir.” It was almost a squeak. She saw one of the politicians take a pair of glasses from his inside pocket and put them on, peering at her intently. She hated them. Hated this process, the way they’d formalised a way of humiliating prisoners. She knew looking at them was probably a bad idea but she couldn’t help herself. She saw their leers, their lascivious faces. She saw Diaz, a slight smirk on his face as he relished her humiliation.


So this was it. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She took another one. She looked up to the corner of the room and then reached for the straps: right hand to left shoulder; left hand to right. Diaz noted, oddly, how graceful her fingers were as she peeled the strings over down to her biceps. There was a moment when the swell of her breasts prevented gravity taking its course, but then the silk slid over the curve. Slowly, her nipples were exposed and then, in a flash, the dress fell and she was naked. Deliberately, doing everything she could to appear calm, she reached down, lifted the dress from around her feet and threw it in front of her. She stood, head lowered, shoulders slightly rounded, her arms hanging limp by her sides. There was no point covering herself, she reasoned; they would see whatever parts of her they wanted.


She was as spectacular as promised. Garcia admired the smooth skin, the full, round breasts high on her chest, that slender waist, the long thin legs. “Dress, dark blue, silk,” came the shout.


“Yes, sir,” she said in a croak. She was shaking inside but did her best to hide it.


The secretary passed the form to Garcia. He read it slowly then signed it. “Come forward and check this,” he said.


She swallowed and walked the three paces to the desk. They were the hardest steps she’d ever taken. She was horribly conscious of her breasts, the way they quivered on her chest. She bent forward to check the form and felt them just lifting from her chest. She flushed – and then saw his smile and felt the humiliation. She knew his smile was matched by every man in the room, that she was now their toy. Her hand shook as she signed the form.


Garcia watched her walk back, the slim legs, the firm thighs, pert high buttocks and a back like a sculpture, smooth and lightly-muscled. Physically she was tough; she’d take a pounding. The question really was how she was mentally. She turned back to face him, keeping her arms down. Her head was lowered and she wouldn’t meet his gaze but she wasn’t cowering in her nudity.


“Head up, please.”


Shifted lifted her head, and with what seemed like an effort looked at him. “Run your fingers through your hair.”


There was something almost erotic in the gesture as she swept her glossy black mane back from her face with those long fingers. She looked calm, but Garcia knew the signs. Her breathing was shallow, he face just a little flushed. “Hands behind your neck; lock your fingers,” he said.


She obeyed, looking at him balefully with those large dark eyes. “Squat.”


Slowly she lowered herself. He saw the muscles in her thighs stand out as she went down; gym toned, as he’d thought. He saw the crinkled lips of her cunt as he legs parted. She closed her eyes and swallowed. “Jump,” he said. There was almost a snigger from some of the soldiers in the room, but she obeyed. Her breasts leapt, trembling as they came to rest. “Again.” She had no defence; she was exposed to the stares of every man in the room. “Again.”
 
Juliette knew what was coming next, but it was still a sickening moment when she heard the snap of surgical gloves. A slightly plump, balding man, a white coat over his white shirt and dark trousers had appeared beside the colonel. The doctor pulled on the other glove calmly, making sure it was tight over his fingers. He took a small torch from his pocket and flicked it on and off as though checking it. “Bend over please,” he said. “Hold your legs just above the ankles.”


The doctor approached. “Keep your legs as straight as you can,” he said. She gave a deep breath and bent over, gripping her shins, grateful she was flexible from regular yoga sessions but equally horribly aware of the view she was giving to the men behind her. Making her squat and jump had been gratuitous, done for no reason other than to humiliate her – although they’d say it was to shake loose anything she was hiding in her cavities; but this, justifiable as it was to a point, was worse.


He stood for what seemed like an age behind her then, placing the end of the torch in his mouth, spread her ass-cheeks, pulling her anus painfully open. He used two fingers on his left hand to hold the cheeks apart, then used the right to shine in the torch. She tried to stay calm, not to resist, but instinctively she clenched. Unfazed, he simply returned the torch to his mouth and thrust a finger inside her. She squirmed as they went deeper and deeper, her whole body tensing, but she stayed down, even when he began prying and wriggling his finger.


How long was he staying in there? Twenty, thirty seconds before he finally withdrew his finger. She could hear sniggers and laughter, but immediately he was pushing he legs apart and then spreading her labia. She jammed her legs shut; she couldn’t help it. She regretted it as soon as she’d done it, but he just kept going, squatting down and shining in the torch and then poking in his fingers – first two and then three. He probed and prodded and twisted and she whimpered. And then, at last, it was over and she could stand up. She was flushed, her chest heaving and she bit her lower lip, her chin on her chest.


“Head up,” the doctor ordered and she obeyed. He stood in front of her, a leer on his face that somehow made her feel her nakedness all the more. “Open wide,” he said, and she obediently opened her mouth. He shone in the torch. “Tongue up,” he said. “Good. Now, Tongue down.” She obeyed, and then he put his fingers in her mouth, the same fingers that had been in her anus and her vagina. The main taste was merely of latex, but she gagged instinctively, and only just stopped her jaws snapping shut. Her teeth made contact with the glove though and he withdrew his hand. “Now then, let’s be sensible,” he said. “You have lovely teeth; let’s not have to take any of them out, eh?” His fingers went back into her mouth and he poked them round her gums, round her tongue and it seemed almost down her throat.


“Good,” he said. “She’s clean.” He walked to a leather bag that lay by the desk. She stood, trying to calm her breath, but she could hear the tremor in it. She stared at the floor, trying to ignore the reality of 40 men starting at her naked body, 40 men starting at her as her own shit was smeared in her mouth.


The doctor returned with a stethoscope around his neck. He lay the bag down beside her and stood in front of her. He reached out with his right hand and, with thumb and middle finger, squeezed her left breast. “Don’t!” she squawked. “Please... don’t.” She sounded pathetic, she knew, and he squeezed again. “Lovely and firm,” he said. She bit the inside of her lower lip hating him and his snide smile. Still holding her breast, he pressed the stethoscope against her chest. It was cold and she gasped.


“Good,” he said. “Good and strong.” His hand moved to her arm and he squeezed her toned bicep. “You work out?”


“Yes, sir.”


He let his hand fall and caress her firm buttock. “Impressive,” he said. “You’ll take a lot.” He patted her flat belly and went again to his bag. He took out two syringes and dropped them in the top pocket of his coat, then bent again and withdrew a brown glass bottle and a small ball of cotton wool. She smelt antiseptic as he unstoppered the bottle. He tipped a little onto the cotton wool then swabbed it on her upper arm. “We don’t want you getting infected now, do we?” he said mockingly.


He took the syringes from his top pocket and filled them both with her blood. “Just to make sure you’re as tough as you seem,” he said. “So we know just how much treatment to give you.”


She gave him a look of disgust. She wanted to ask how he could put his medical art to the service of torture, but she didn’t dare. What was the point? It would only bring a beating or more humiliation.
 
Diaz followed the crowd. They’d hooded her again, then led her out through the door and down the corridor, soldiers in front of her, soldiers behind her and two soldiers holding each arm as though she were somehow about to mount an escape. He couldn’t help but stare at her buttocks – high and round and smooth and perfect; he wondered how much time it took in the gym to get them looking like that. He’d never seen a body like that before, so obviously physically fit, so lean, and yet so rounded in the right areas.


With the other officials he went through a door and up some stairs into what was effectively a viewing gallery, looking down on what they called the tank. It was a tiled room with a fence of thick wire mesh running all the way round about a metre in from the wall – a square cage essentially, about 4m by 4m. In one side was set a gate and in that, as the centre of the other three sides, was a small window through which they would fit hosepipes. In theory the tank was to sober drunks or to calm rowdy prisoners, but it could also be used for torture or, as today, as an alternative to the shower-block for a new arrival.


The door opened and she was pushed through, the guards slamming her against the mesh. Diaz stared at the way the rusting iron pressed into the soft flesh of her breasts. They locked the door and opened the gate, then pulled her hood off and shoved her into the cage, slamming the gate shut as she stumbled into the centre. She stood, uncertainly, and this time her shame led her to try to cover herself. Her right arm went across her breasts, her left hand over her pudenda and she huddled against their gaze, her shoulders hunched, her head bowed. She’d been naked for almost half an hour and he wondered why then: had her humiliation reached a critical point, or was it that standing alone, away from soldiers who might restrain her, an instinct for modesty kicked in – if she’d stood exposed before them here, it wouldn’t be because she was being forced into nudity but because she accepted it?


She fascinated him, standing there, not just because of her beauty. What must it feel like, knowing what they were about to do, waiting, naked, for pain? Knowing all these men were staring at your nakedness? Knowing you were alone, about to go through hell?

*

Juliette couldn’t face the taunting faces, this crowd that had turned up to watch her suffer. She stared at the tiled floor, vaguely aware of them fitting the hoses through the openings. She should have known they wouldn’t be satisfied with giving her a cold shower, but would inflict maximum pain and discomfort on her by putting her in the tank.


She heard the order and braced herself. A jet of icy water stuck her in the stomach, winding her. Instinctively she brought her hands down to try to deflect it, stumbling backwards as she did so. Immediately another jet struck the small of her back, then another her ribs on the right hand side. A moment later the fourth jet hit her left thigh. There was nothing she could do to protect herself. The water was so cold, so powerful, that it stung and she brought her hands back to defend her breasts, her thighs pressed tight together, body hunched against the assault.


A jet dropped lower, striking the back of her right thigh and then her knee. It knocked her off balance and she fell, slipping on the wet tiles. The water continued to pound her as she lay, curled up, knees to chin. They worked up and down her back and legs, seeming to delight in targeting her genitals and face. Finally, they turned the hoses off. She relaxed, but still lay, exhausted and cold, her whole body feeling bruised. She was shivering, teeth chattering slightly.


“Stand up, Miss Hartmann,” came a voice. She pushed herself up onto her knees, and rested for a moment on all fours, water dripping off her nose. Slowly she got to her feet until she stood, shaking. Four soldiers came in, locking the cage door behind them. Two took her arms, holding them out as though she were being crucified. The other two held plastic bottles and flannels. One walked behind her, the other stood in front of her, a mocking smile on his face. He squirted some blue gel out of the bottle onto the flannel, bent down and started rubbing it on her feet and ankles. The one behind started with her arms.


They took their time, working up a lather on her goosepimpled skin. First her legs and arms and then, as she’d known they must, her ass and her genitals. As their hands got closer, she desperately tried to relax, to pretend it didn’t matter to her, but of course it did.


The lather came to the tops of her thighs and her arms were fully soaped. They paused. They added more soap to the flannel and she smelled the disinfectant. She saw the soldier in front of her smile mockingly and then he moved in. She knew up above they were staring at her, waiting to see her reaction. First came the touch on her buttocks, the soldier behind soaping the firm cheeks, kneading and stroking and then, joining in, the one in front. He soaped her hips and the shallow depressions at the top of the thigh muscles. Then his hands drifted more central. He soaped the trimmed strip of hair and then reached down, the flannel chafing on her outer lips and then, as she stood so tense she thought she might burst, inside, his fingers prying and rubbing through the cloth as the soldier behind ran the flannel over her anus. She closed her eyes as they rubbed and rubbed, biting her lower lip as she felt waves of shame crash upon her.

*

Diaz watched the soaping with undisguised interest. The girl deserved this humiliation – but she was coping with it remarkably well. Other women, he knew from the tapes, broke down completely even being made to shower themselves naked in front of male guards – and this had to be a thousand times worse, designed to emphasise her helplessness and subjection.


They moved up, washing that flat stomach and the toned back, before the soldier in front had the delight of soaping those firm round breasts. Diaz saw him tweaking the nipples, caressing the underside of each breast, squeezing them as she, eyes closed, teeth gritted, forced herself not to react. Then it was up to the lightly muscled shoulders, and her graceful neck. The one in front added more soap to his flannel; the one behind emptied his bottle straight into her hair. One scrubbed her face, forcing soap into her mouth and nose and even, as much as he could as she held her eyelids tight shut, into her eyes. The other, pulling her hair in occasional painful yanks, washed her scalp.


Finally they were done and they backed away, leaving her covered in foam. She stood uncertainly for a few seconds, her eyes closed, and then carefully began to wipe some of the soap from around her eyes. Even as she was doing so, though, the water struck her again. She shrieked. It seemed more powerful than before and, as the first jet struck her back she was driven, her back arching, a couple of paces until she met the blast from the hosepipe in front of her. That hit her in the stomach and she doubled over and then fell, lying on the tiles as water pounded her from all sides.


On and on it went, the soldiers clearly taunting her with their aim, deliberately directing the jets into her face and genitals. She squirmed hopelessly until finally, six or seven minutes after it had begun, they turned the water off. Hartmann lay still for a moment and then began coughing, rolling onto her knees as she rasped up water that had got into her lungs. She was shivering, kneeling with her hands on the tiles in front of her, her smooth back parallel with the floor. Diaz watched the water pour from the tendrils of hair that shielded her face, saw it dripping from her breasts, which hung alluringly. Then the soldiers were on her again.


“Get up! Up!” one shouted as six of them entered the cage. She looked dazed as she got to her feet, shaking and crossing her arms across her chest: the great Juliette Hartmann, writer, campaigner, beauty, naked and trembling with cold and fear. Two of them grabbed her arms and shoved her towards the other four. She stumbled towards them, still hugging herself, and they surrounded her, pulling the hood over her head and dragging her off down the corridor.
 
The details just flow and so enrich the description... like the water dripping from her nose, for example. Very well written!
 
Once the hoses had been turned off, it took only a few minutes for warmth to return, but that wasn’t really the issue. She felt tender, bruised and sore, and she felt a sense of shame stronger than anything she’d imagined possible. Standing in that room stripping and being examined by the doctor had been bad enough, but what had happened in the tank had been far worse. That had been systematic cruelty, hurting her for the sake of hurting her, degrading her for the sake of degrading her. Even if they’d put her in the tank rather than giving her a shower, there was no reason for them to have scrubbed her. That, she knew, had been done to show her that if they wanted to put their hands in her most private places, they could: that however popular or eloquent she was, she was defenceless before them.


She tried to compose herself, to put that behind her, to regain her equilibrium before what was to come, but it was difficult when you were being marched naked down a corridor with a hood over your head. The wetness from her hair seemed to have permeated the bag and breathing was hard. She hated the constant touch of their hands on her arms, the reminder she was under guard. Finally they stopped. She heard a door open and she was pushed through.


The door slammed, she heard key turn in the lock and the hood was removed. Apart from the six soldiers, there were just three other men in the room: the one who’d ordered her to strip before and two others, one of whom sat behind a camera. She ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it back from her forehead, then she brought up an arm to cover her breasts, the other hooked over her pubis.


They shoved her against the whitewashed wall in front of the camera, forcing her hands down. “Shoulders back, head up, look straight in to the lens,” came a voice from one of the officers. She had little option but to obey. There was a flash and then a series of smaller ones. She realised, to her horror, that the soldiers were taking pictures themselves on their phones, for their own amusement. The big flash went again and then she was forced to turn to her right and to her left.


A solider came forward and handed her a prison gown. She seized it gratefully and put it on. It was a shirt really, a very pale grey and not especially clean. It had loose, elbow-length sleeves and came down to mid-thigh, six buttons down the front the only fastening, but it was at least something. She put it on hurriedly, realising only three of the buttons were actually there, and then they photographed her again. These, it occurred to her, were the official prison photos; what they were going to do with the shots of her naked she didn’t want to think about.

*

Garcia peered over the top of his glasses at her. She clasped her left hand over her right wrist and stood at a slight angle to him, her right leg in front of her left, enticingly bare from mid-thigh down. She seemed calm and he admired her courage. Her hair was almost dry and hung loose, framing her face, which was angled towards the floor, the only real sign of shame. Her eyes peered up, though, and she held his gaze.


“Miss Hartmann,” he said. “As you probably know, it’s customary for new arrivals at the jail to be beaten, to give you an idea of what will happen if you make trouble.”


She didn’t flinch. She really was an impressive woman. “Now, personally, I’d rather get on with questioning you, but your case has raised a deal of interest and there are a number of people wish to see you punished. So, later on this morning, you will be taken to the correction room and flogged.”


She swallowed and he saw the muscles of her jaw tighten. “You know what a palmatoria is, I assume?” She nodded. He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a dark brown leather paddle. It was perhaps 40cm long and 15cm wide, with a round handle about half that length. The business end was half a centimetre thick and stiff, dotted with three rows of six holes. “The holes stop a cushion of air forming between the paddle and your buttocks,” he said, mildly. He raised the palmatoria and, with a flick of his wrist, brought it down on the desk. There wasn’t a huge amount of power in the stroke, but the leather struck the desk with a crash that seemed to reverberate around the room.


She flinched. He smiled at her, and crashed it down with greater force. She turned slightly away, biting her lower lip. “You’ll take 100 strokes,” he said. She looked up at him, her mouth open with horror. She obviously knew 100 was a dreadfully harsh sentence. Most new arrivals were given a dozen, maybe two, but he’d been told the politicians wanted to see her really suffer before he got to work on her in private. He would rather have treated her like a normal prisoner – give her a taste of pain and leave her strong for torture; then let them take their revenge on her when he was finished. Not that 100 ‘was too big a deal, although held never seen that many administered to a woman before. It would be agony for her, because blows on bruised flesh were terribly painful, but the damage wouldn’t be too bad. And he understood that they wanted to watch her howling with pain, to see this girl who’d caused them so much trouble humiliated and screaming. And after seeing her buttocks, pert and muscled, he was quite keen to see them flaming red. And then he’d get on with the more sophisticated methods.
 
100 seems like a lot, compared to the usual dozen or so meted out to new prisoners! She won't be in good shape after that. I think he should defy the wishes of the politicians. After all he is the professional here. Just saying.
 
Juliette sat anxiously in the cell, almost unconsciously pulling down on the shirt to hide herself. She suspected they’d be watching through the peep-hole to see how’d she reacted to the news of her flogging. After the colonel had told her what they had lined up, she’d been hooded again, her wrists shackled behind her and led into this cell. The guards’ glee had been clear. They’d kept repeating the figure. “100 strokes, 100,” and patting her buttocks, mostly on the outside of the shirt but occasionally reaching under to touch the skin.


She shuddered to think of their hands on her. She’d thought when they’d first made her strip that the first moment would be the worst and that if she could get through that she would get used to nudity, but she still felt shame now. She thought of the doctor’s fingers inside her, of the soldiers washing her, of them photographing her naked and it was all she could do not to weep. And in a few minutes she’d be naked again, strapped to a frame and given a severe beating.


The door opened and she stood. Six soldiers walked in; another two stood in the doorway. They approached her, turned her round and cuffed her hands behind her. “100 strokes,” one said, running his hand over her buttocks, his hand thankfully outside her shirt. “That’s going to sting.” The hood was pulled over her and a hand patted her ass. “In an hour that little pat will have you howling,” another said. Another made the noise of a whip in the air and clapped his hands. She tried to stay calm; she didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing how terrified she felt but the truth was she felt sick. As they led her out of the cell she wondered if they could see how hard her heart was beating.


In the corridor their mocking stopped. It was only a few seconds before she heard another door being unlocked and she was taken through. Even before they’d removed her hood she knew it was packed. She could hear their breath, smell their sweat. The room was much larger than the cell she’d come from. In the centre, beneath a lightbulb that seemed to serve as a spotlight, was a slatted table perhaps ten feet long and four feet wide, the top three feet or so from the ground. Only the leather bolster across the middle and straps fixed to its surface gave an indication of what it was for. She’d heard of the flogging bench, of course, had taken testimony from prisoners lashed upon it but she’d never actually seen it. At one end was a desk behind which the colonel sat, the doctor alongside him. Next to that was a video-camera, presumably set up to record her punishment. That made her all the more determined not to give them a show. On the wall the colonel was facing was a rack from which hung a range of whips, canes and paddles. She realised there was another camera facing that end of the bench; they wanted to record her face as they flogged her. And all around the table and behind the desk there were people: the ranks of politicians and soldiers who watched her stripped and hosed swelled by even more officials and even, she saw, a couple of journalists.


She was taken in front of the colonel and her handcuffs removed. “Juliette Hartman,” he said softly, a thin smile on his face, “you have been sentenced to 100 strokes of the palmatoria.” There was a ripple through the audience; clearly not all of them had heard how severely she was to be beaten. She started at the colonel, trying to shame him, but he just looked back at her. “Strip,” he said.


Juliette closed her eyes and looked down at the floor. She wasn’t going to let them defeat her. She was going to retain her dignity. Her fingers felt as though they were made of rubber and she struggled to focus, but she unfastened the top button – or rather the top button that was still stitched on, which was at breast height.

*

Diaz stared at the girl. It was only three hours since he’d seen her naked, being hosed down, but he was desperate to see her naked again. He had thought he’d be dispassionate, but the desire to watch her suffer had overwhelmed him. Her legs were so long there must have been 20cm of thigh showing below the dress – and not just long but smooth and toned. She seemed remarkably composed at least until you looked closely and saw her fingers were trembling as they undid the buttons.


The shirt hung open and, in one sudden movement, she slipped it off to reveal that long, golden body. Diaz could hear the intakes of breath from those who hadn’t been there before as she stepped forward and lay the dress on the desk. Four soldiers advanced. They turned her round to face the bench and he saw again those marvellously firm, round breasts. They led her up to it. She stared straight ahead, at a point on the wall above the spectators. Two soldiers took her arms and the other two knelt down in a practised movement. Simultaneously they lifted her legs and so she was held by her limbs at waist height, parallel to the ground, breasts hanging from her chest. She remained limp, unresisting, as, with almost casual efficiency, they tossed her onto the bench, shucking her up so her hips rested on the bolster, her buttocks raised for the palmatorias. A long strap, perhaps 10 cm wide, was fastened over her lower back and they then moved with great coordination to her legs and arms, fastening her elbows so her arms were angled at 45 degrees up from her shoulders, the wrists then strapped so her forearms were parallel to the edges of the bench. Her legs, similarly, were pulled out, the thighs splayed so her knees were buckled perhaps 50cm apart then the shins pulled straight down and the ankles fastened.


When they’d checked the bonds, they tightened the band across her back so her buttocks seemed to stand even higher on the bolster, which was probably 20 cm in height. A wheel at the bench’s centre was turned, tipping the slatted surface until she was at about 30 degrees from the horizontal. The effect was rather as though she were doing breast stroke, or was a frog pinned out for dissection. Aside from her buttocks, that was: forced out by the bolster they looked taut and muscular, even more alluring than before.
 
She shuddered to think of their hands on her. She’d thought when they’d first made her strip that the first moment would be the worst and that if she could get through that she would get used to nudity, but she still felt shame now. She thought of the doctor’s fingers inside her, of the soldiers washing her, of them photographing her naked and it was all she could do not to weep. And in a few minutes she’d be naked again, strapped to a frame and given a severe beating.

Catches her thoughts of humiliations past and fear of what is yet to come ... thinking backwards and forward in time ... nice passage.

:popcorn:
 
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