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Tuesdays and Fridays in Changi Women's Prison, Singapore

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windar

Teller of Tales
This story was commissioned by a member from Singapore, KelvinB. I thank him for helping with a number of details about the geography and culture of that interesting city.

Kelvin had previously commissioned a story in a similar vein from our late friend Praefectus Praetorio, to whose memory I dedicate this short, two-part piece.




Tuesday and Fridays were the days that court ordered canings were carried out at the Changi Women’s Prison in Singapore. Janet Tan knew that even after only a few days as an inmate. Everyone in the prison knew it, whether they were one of the unfortunate souls, like Janet, who had been sentenced to receive that most dreaded punishment or not.

She remembered her conversation with one of the veteran inmates, Sunita Das, as they had walked their circuit of the exercise yard yesterday. “I got my six on a Tuesday not long after coming in here,” she had confided to Janet. “They like to do it fairly soon, to get it over with,” she had continued. “But they don’t tell you ahead of time. They just show up some time after breakfast and take you for your medical exam. That’s when you’ll know.”

“Medical exam?” Janet had asked.

“Yeah, they want you to suffer, but they don’t want you dying. That would make trouble. But don’t worry; a healthy girl like you, slim, in good shape. You’ll pass with flying colors, lucky you!”

Janet had always prided herself on keeping in shape; even when things were terribly busy at work or she was travelling, she set time aside to run in the park or on a treadmill. At 33, she could easily pass for five or even ten years younger.

“So, did it, you know, hurt a lot?”

Sunita laughed. “Oh, my dear, you can’t even imagine. If hell is half that bad, I’m gonna be good, so I don’t go there. How many are you getting?”

“Eight,” Janet replied.

Sunita shook her head. “My sympathies. Six was bad enough, thank you very much. And how many years?”

“Ten,” Janet replied.

“What did you do? Don’t worry, the rules in here say you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, though somehow everyone finds out pretty quickly. There are inmates who work in the Admin offices and get to glance at paperwork. There aren’t a lot of secrets in here.”

“That’s OK,” Janet replied. “I don’t mind talking about it because I’m innocent.”

Sunita pointed at the other prisoners walking the circuit. “Ask ten of them and nine will tell you they’re innocent. Not me though; I did it. I was a bookkeeper and I embezzled from my employer; I set up a phony company and submitted fake invoices and wrote checks to pay them. It served them right for paying me so little. What about you?”

“They said I defrauded my investors by making false claims about a device we were working on that people could wear to monitor their vitals. But they weren’t really false; the device would have worked, we just needed more time to develop it. Now, of course, they put us out of business so it won’t happen. Someone in Silicon Valley will do it and too bad for Singapore. Like those guys there never exaggerate.”

“Well maybe the judges in America are more willing to forgive a little white lie,” Sunita replied. “And of course, no caning there. But you’ll get through it; everyone does. And you’ll get through your ten years, too. I’m halfway through my six and I can do the rest, no problem. Just keep your head down; some of these girls are mean.”

Janet looked around at her fellow inmates. She had no reason to doubt what Sunita had said; quite a few looked like she would be well advised not to piss them off. One of the guards banged her truncheon on the metal bars of the gate that led to the exercise yard. “Alright, ladies, time’s up! Back inside! Let’s go!”

The prisoners began heading for the gate. “Thanks for cluing me in, Sunita. I think I can face it if I know what to expect. I guess I’ll be seeing you around,” Janet said.

“Yeah, you will. Like where else am I gonna go, right?” Sunita replied.

***​

Among the inmates who looked to Janet like someone she should avoid was a fellow recent arrival, Lucy Yee. Lucy was in her early twenties and about fifteen cm taller and at least ten kg heavier than Janet. Unfortunately, Janet wasn’t really able to avoid her because they had been assigned to the same two person cell.

Lucy had arrived a couple of days before Janet, convicted of assault on another girl, who, Lucy believed was sleeping with her boyfriend. Lucy had waylaid her in a club and broken the girl’s nose and a couple of ribs, earning her the same sentence as Janet-ten years and eight strokes of the cane. Well, now Lucy’s boyfriend would be free to screw whomever he wanted now that she was out of circulation.

Like Sunita, Lucy didn’t deny her guilt. “You’re fuckin’ right I smashed her up; the bitch deserved it!” she had boasted to Janet shortly after Janet was deposited in her cell following her intake. Janet had to hope that she wouldn’t inadvertently do something that would render her deserving of some broken bones in Lucy’s eyes.

‘This is what the next ten years of my life are going to be,’ Janet thought. Nothing in her previous experience had prepared her to share a prison cell with a tough girl from Yishun, a neighborhood where wanna-be gangsters (no doubt Lucy’s boyfriend was one) did their criminal deeds.

No, the last dozen or so years of her life had been spent first at Harvard on a full scholarship, where the idea for her biosensor had come to her during her lab rotation, then, following in the footsteps of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, dropping out to found a company to develop the product. She could have gone to Silicon Valley like many a budding entrepreneur, but family and cultural ties had brought her back to Singapore, a decision she now deeply regretted, in view of the caning she was facing.

There, her days were spent with scientists and engineers, when she wasn’t flying business class to New York, San Francisco, Shanghai or London raising money to pay for the HQ in Raffles Place, furnished in high-end techno-chic to impress prospective investors, and the development costs which always seemed higher and the time frames longer than even her most conservative estimates.

So, of course, she had sometimes fudged a few numbers and exaggerated a bit. What prospective tycoon doesn’t? It was all in the service of buying more time to develop a product that would help people stay healthy.

The foreigners expected you to do that. Unfortunately, her local investors, including some government big-wigs, didn’t.

And that was how she came to be lying on a cot late on a Monday night, in a cell with a snoring gangsterette like Lucy Yee, unable to sleep, wondering if tomorrow, Tuesday, was to be the day that they would come to take her to have her ass shredded into a pulp. Everything she had worked for was being sold at auction to compensate her investors-the big, beautiful house in Cairnhill, the vacation villa in France, the Mercedes, the Italian designer clothes and shoes- all gone, along with her bank accounts and shares in companies that were actually worth something, unlike the shares in her own company.

It took quite a while, but eventually, using some of the yoga techniques she had studied a few years before, she was able to drift off to a restless sleep, to be awakened around 6 AM by the guard coming down the hallway, banging her truncheon on the bars of each of the cells, shouting’ “Wake up you lazy sluts! Time to get your asses out of bed and down to the mess hall for breakfast!”

‘Breakfast?’ Janet thought. She didn’t feel hungry; all she felt was the gnawing fear in her stomach knowing that sometime after breakfast they might come to take her to her flogging. Putting her fear aside for the moment, she rolled out of bed and went to sit on the tiny seatless metal toilet to empty her bladder.

No sooner had she sat on the toilet then her cellmate jumped out of bed and came to loom over her. “Hurry up, bitch!” Lucy ordered. “I have to piss, too.” Janet quickly finished her business and got up, slipping her rubber sandals on and standing next to the barred door, waiting for the guard to open it as Lucy took her sweet time before finally joining her, scowling at Janet as though she begrudged her the air she was consuming.

***​

They came after breakfast, the regular duty guard for their cell block, accompanied by two very stern looking comrades, the metal grate of the cell door clanging against the wall as they threw it open. Janet looked up from the book from the prison library that she had been reading. Her heart was pounding. Was this the moment she had been dreading ever since she’d heard the judge pronounce his sentence, “And eight strokes of the cane on your bare buttocks.”?

Lucy didn’t even bother looking up from her magazine, which delved into the romances and break-ups of K-Pop stars in exhaustive detail. The block guard looked from one inmate to the other and back again. Finally, she spoke, “Yee, on your feet, time to go see the doctor.”

“I’m not sick,” Lucy replied, her face still buried in the magazine.

One of the auxiliary guards grabbed the magazine out of Lucy’s hands and threw it across the cell. “You think this is a joke, Yee?” Then she grabbed Lucy’s arm and pulled her to her feet, twisting the arm behind her.

“Oww!” Lucy protested. “That hurts, bitch.

The other auxiliary guard grabbed Lucy’s other arm. “You think you’re so tough, Yee, don’t you?” she spat. “Don’t worry, you’ll be crying like a baby soon when that rotan bites into your fat ass.” They marched her out quickly, barefoot, not even bothering to let her put on her rubber sandals. The block guard slammed the cell door shut behind them.

Janet was left feeling mixed emotions. On the one hand, she was relieved that it was Lucy they had come for Lucy, not her, though she knew her time would come. She was however, shocked by the violence of Lucy’s words and the actions of the guards. She resolved to behave in a more dignified way when they came for her.

About half an hour later, she got a bit of a scare when the block guard threw the door open and strode into the cell. ‘Had they decided they might as well cane the two cellmates in one session?’ she wondered.

The guard looked around the cell, then spoke in a not too harsh voice. “Tan, go get a mop and a bucket with some soapy water from the closet down the hall and clean the floor in here. And get a brush and some bleach for the toilet, too. ”

“Yes, ma’am,” Janet replied as she went out into the hall. Before her arrest, she had had a maid, a Bangladeshi named Yasmina, to take care of that sort of thing, but those days were in the past now.

Later, after the guard had pronounced the cell sufficiently clean, she was allowed to go to the exercise yard. There, she saw Sunita walking with another Indian inmate. Janet hurried to catch up with them. “Sunita,” she called.

Sunita turned to look at her, then turned back to her companion and said something in what Janet thought might be Hindi. The other woman nodded and continued on her circuit. “What is it, Janet?” Sunita asked.

“They took my cellmate, Lucy, today.”

“Well, that’s good for you. They take all the prisoners who are getting the cane at once, so you’re in the clear for today. Your ass gets to look nice and soft for a few more days at least.”

“Do you think they’ll do me on Friday?” Janet asked.

Sunita shrugged. “Maybe. Who knows? Look, my dear, you need to stop worrying about it. They’ll do it when they do it. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

Janet knew that was good advice. Still, she’d always been a worrier, obsessing over small details. “Will it leave scars?”

Sunita looked at Janet. “What did I just say?” she asked, looking a bit exasperated.

“I’m sorry,” Janet said. “It’s just the way I am. I need to know.”

“OK,” Sunita said. “Tell the guard you need to take a dump. Hold your stomach like you’re having cramps. Go into the bathroom right near the gate. I’ll meet you in there in a couple of minutes.”

Janet nodded and went to the gate that led out of the exercise yard. She approached the guard stationed there. “Ma’am I need to go to the bathroom, please,” she asked, trying to sound desperate.

“You’re supposed to go before exercise period,” the woman replied.

Janet clutched her belly, “Please, ma’am, it’s the food in here, I’m not used to it. I’m afraid I won’t be able to hold it.”

“Next time you decide to bilk your investors, Tan, maybe you should ask the judge to send you to The Raffles or The Hilton. Make it quick, OK?” she said, opening the gate. Janet hurried into the bathroom.

A minute or so later Sunita came in and beckoned Janet over to the far wall, under a barred window. “There’s more light here,” she said. She pulled down her prison shorts and underpants. “Here, have a look.”

Janet bent down to inspect. There were some faint lines across the middle of the brown skin. “It’s been a few years,” Sunita said. “They looked worse right after. Also on a light-skinned girl like you, they might show more. Maybe when I get out I’ll go see a cosmetic surgeon and see what he can do about them.”

Janet stood up. “I’m sorry, Sunita. I shouldn’t have asked. “

“No problem. It’s just a little souvenir of Changi. They want you to be able to look at it and remember not to break the law.”

Janet nodded. “I better get back out there,” she said, turning to leave.

***​

It was later that afternoon, near dinner time, when they brought Lucy Yee back. She was naked, walking between the two guards, defeated, not putting up any resistance as they led her into the cell she shared with Janet. Her hair was disheveled, matted on her face and it was clear that she had been crying.

The guards maneuvered her onto her cot, face down. Janet stared open mouthed at Lucy’s ass, which was mess of gouges and wheals, the worst spots daubed with some sort of disinfectant that gave them a purplish tinge.

The block guard came in carrying a plastic bag that contained Lucy’s prison uniform, which she dropped on the floor and kicked under the bed. “You won’t need these for a while, Yee” she said, “But here they are.” Then the guards filed out leaving the two prisoners alone.

“I’m so sorry, Lucy,” Janet said, kneeling beside her cellmate’s cot and reaching out to stroke her sodden hair.

“It’s my fault, not yours,” Lucy replied.

Janet desperately wanted Lucy to describe the whole experience so she would know what to expect when her time came, but decided against it. “The worst part was that bitch was smiling through the whole thing,” Lucy volunteered.

“That guard?” Janet asked.

“No, her, the one who’s fucking my boyfriend.”

“They let her watch?” Janet asked, incredulous.

“Yes, the victims of your crimes are invited to attend,” Lucy replied, her voice shaking with emotion. “They say it’s so they can have closure, but I think it’s just so you suffer more.”

Janet was shaken by this news, something she hadn’t heard before. Did that mean that her investors might be present to watch her suffer, gleefully enjoying the spectacle as a payback for the money they had lost? She blushed just thinking about them staring at her naked body, smiling as she howled in pain.

Before Janet could say anything, the block guard came down the hall announcing dinner. Janet stood. “Would you like me to bring you back some food?” she asked.

“I’m not hungry,” Lucy replied.

“You should eat to keep your strength up so you can heal,” Janet said. She thought it would be a good think to try to be kind to her cellmate. After all, she was in pain. Also, Janet might need some help after her own ordeal which might be coming as soon as this coming Friday. “Maybe some noodle soup?”

“OK, sure, whatever. Thanks,” Lucy replied.

After she had eaten, Janet did bring back some noodle soup, helping her naked cellmate stand-sitting wasn’t going to be in the picture for a while-and she managed to get down most of the bowl, before she gingerly laid back down, groaning as the movements seemed to cause her distress, and quickly fell asleep.

Janet read for a while, then, finding herself tired from her previous sleepless night, fell asleep herself. She slept peacefully. After all, tomorrow was Wednesday and they wouldn’t be flogging anyone that day.

TBC​
 
This story was commissioned by a member from Singapore, KelvinB. I thank him for helping with a number of details about the geography and culture of that interesting city.

Kelvin had previously commissioned a story in a similar vein from our late friend Praefectus Praetorio, to whose memory I dedicate this short, two-part piece.




Tuesday and Fridays were the days that court ordered canings were carried out at the Changi Women’s Prison in Singapore. Janet Tan knew that even after only a few days as an inmate. Everyone in the prison knew it, whether they were one of the unfortunate souls, like Janet, who had been sentenced to receive that most dreaded punishment or not.

She remembered her conversation with one of the veteran inmates, Sunita Das, as they had walked their circuit of the exercise yard yesterday. “I got my six on a Tuesday not long after coming in here,” she had confided to Janet. “They like to do it fairly soon, to get it over with,” she had continued. “But they don’t tell you ahead of time. They just show up some time after breakfast and take you for your medical exam. That’s when you’ll know.”

“Medical exam?” Janet had asked.

“Yeah, they want you to suffer, but they don’t want you dying. That would make trouble. But don’t worry; a healthy girl like you, slim, in good shape. You’ll pass with flying colors, lucky you!”

Janet had always prided herself on keeping in shape; even when things were terribly busy at work or she was travelling, she set time aside to run in the park or on a treadmill. At 33, she could easily pass for five or even ten years younger.

“So, did it, you know, hurt a lot?”

Sunita laughed. “Oh, my dear, you can’t even imagine. If hell is half that bad, I’m gonna be good, so I don’t go there. How many are you getting?”

“Eight,” Janet replied.

Sunita shook her head. “My sympathies. Six was bad enough, thank you very much. And how many years?”

“Ten,” Janet replied.

“What did you do? Don’t worry, the rules in here say you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, though somehow everyone finds out pretty quickly. There are inmates who work in the Admin offices and get to glance at paperwork. There aren’t a lot of secrets in here.”

“That’s OK,” Janet replied. “I don’t mind talking about it because I’m innocent.”

Sunita pointed at the other prisoners walking the circuit. “Ask ten of them and nine will tell you they’re innocent. Not me though; I did it. I was a bookkeeper and I embezzled from my employer; I set up a phony company and submitted fake invoices and wrote checks to pay them. It served them right for paying me so little. What about you?”

“They said I defrauded my investors by making false claims about a device we were working on that people could wear to monitor their vitals. But they weren’t really false; the device would have worked, we just needed more time to develop it. Now, of course, they put us out of business so it won’t happen. Someone in Silicon Valley will do it and too bad for Singapore. Like those guys there never exaggerate.”

“Well maybe the judges in America are more willing to forgive a little white lie,” Sunita replied. “And of course, no caning there. But you’ll get through it; everyone does. And you’ll get through your ten years, too. I’m halfway through my six and I can do the rest, no problem. Just keep your head down; some of these girls are mean.”

Janet looked around at her fellow inmates. She had no reason to doubt what Sunita had said; quite a few looked like she would be well advised not to piss them off. One of the guards banged her truncheon on the metal bars of the gate that led to the exercise yard. “Alright, ladies, time’s up! Back inside! Let’s go!”

The prisoners began heading for the gate. “Thanks for cluing me in, Sunita. I think I can face it if I know what to expect. I guess I’ll be seeing you around,” Janet said.

“Yeah, you will. Like where else am I gonna go, right?” Sunita replied.

***​

Among the inmates who looked to Janet like someone she should avoid was a fellow recent arrival, Lucy Yee. Lucy was in her early twenties and about fifteen cm taller and at least ten kg heavier than Janet. Unfortunately, Janet wasn’t really able to avoid her because they had been assigned to the same two person cell.

Lucy had arrived a couple of days before Janet, convicted of assault on another girl, who, Lucy believed was sleeping with her boyfriend. Lucy had waylaid her in a club and broken the girl’s nose and a couple of ribs, earning her the same sentence as Janet-ten years and eight strokes of the cane. Well, now Lucy’s boyfriend would be free to screw whomever he wanted now that she was out of circulation.

Like Sunita, Lucy didn’t deny her guilt. “You’re fuckin’ right I smashed her up; the bitch deserved it!” she had boasted to Janet shortly after Janet was deposited in her cell following her intake. Janet had to hope that she wouldn’t inadvertently do something that would render her deserving of some broken bones in Lucy’s eyes.

‘This is what the next ten years of my life are going to be,’ Janet thought. Nothing in her previous experience had prepared her to share a prison cell with a tough girl from Yishun, a neighborhood where wanna-be gangsters (no doubt Lucy’s boyfriend was one) did their criminal deeds.

No, the last dozen or so years of her life had been spent first at Harvard on a full scholarship, where the idea for her biosensor had come to her during her lab rotation, then, following in the footsteps of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, dropping out to found a company to develop the product. She could have gone to Silicon Valley like many a budding entrepreneur, but family and cultural ties had brought her back to Singapore, a decision she now deeply regretted, in view of the caning she was facing.

There, her days were spent with scientists and engineers, when she wasn’t flying business class to New York, San Francisco, Shanghai or London raising money to pay for the HQ in Raffles Place, furnished in high-end techno-chic to impress prospective investors, and the development costs which always seemed higher and the time frames longer than even her most conservative estimates.

So, of course, she had sometimes fudged a few numbers and exaggerated a bit. What prospective tycoon doesn’t? It was all in the service of buying more time to develop a product that would help people stay healthy.

The foreigners expected you to do that. Unfortunately, her local investors, including some government big-wigs, didn’t.

And that was how she came to be lying on a cot late on a Monday night, in a cell with a snoring gangsterette like Lucy Yee, unable to sleep, wondering if tomorrow, Tuesday, was to be the day that they would come to take her to have her ass shredded into a pulp. Everything she had worked for was being sold at auction to compensate her investors-the big, beautiful house in Cairnhill, the vacation villa in France, the Mercedes, the Italian designer clothes and shoes- all gone, along with her bank accounts and shares in companies that were actually worth something, unlike the shares in her own company.

It took quite a while, but eventually, using some of the yoga techniques she had studied a few years before, she was able to drift off to a restless sleep, to be awakened around 6 AM by the guard coming down the hallway, banging her truncheon on the bars of each of the cells, shouting’ “Wake up you lazy sluts! Time to get your asses out of bed and down to the mess hall for breakfast!”

‘Breakfast?’ Janet thought. She didn’t feel hungry; all she felt was the gnawing fear in her stomach knowing that sometime after breakfast they might come to take her to her flogging. Putting her fear aside for the moment, she rolled out of bed and went to sit on the tiny seatless metal toilet to empty her bladder.

No sooner had she sat on the toilet then her cellmate jumped out of bed and came to loom over her. “Hurry up, bitch!” Lucy ordered. “I have to piss, too.” Janet quickly finished her business and got up, slipping her rubber sandals on and standing next to the barred door, waiting for the guard to open it as Lucy took her sweet time before finally joining her, scowling at Janet as though she begrudged her the air she was consuming.

***​

They came after breakfast, the regular duty guard for their cell block, accompanied by two very stern looking comrades, the metal grate of the cell door clanging against the wall as they threw it open. Janet looked up from the book from the prison library that she had been reading. Her heart was pounding. Was this the moment she had been dreading ever since she’d heard the judge pronounce his sentence, “And eight strokes of the cane on your bare buttocks.”?

Lucy didn’t even bother looking up from her magazine, which delved into the romances and break-ups of K-Pop stars in exhaustive detail. The block guard looked from one inmate to the other and back again. Finally, she spoke, “Yee, on your feet, time to go see the doctor.”

“I’m not sick,” Lucy replied, her face still buried in the magazine.

One of the auxiliary guards grabbed the magazine out of Lucy’s hands and threw it across the cell. “You think this is a joke, Yee?” Then she grabbed Lucy’s arm and pulled her to her feet, twisting the arm behind her.

“Oww!” Lucy protested. “That hurts, bitch.

The other auxiliary guard grabbed Lucy’s other arm. “You think you’re so tough, Yee, don’t you?” she spat. “Don’t worry, you’ll be crying like a baby soon when that rotan bites into your fat ass.” They marched her out quickly, barefoot, not even bothering to let her put on her rubber sandals. The block guard slammed the cell door shut behind them.

Janet was left feeling mixed emotions. On the one hand, she was relieved that it was Lucy they had come for Lucy, not her, though she knew her time would come. She was however, shocked by the violence of Lucy’s words and the actions of the guards. She resolved to behave in a more dignified way when they came for her.

About half an hour later, she got a bit of a scare when the block guard threw the door open and strode into the cell. ‘Had they decided they might as well cane the two cellmates in one session?’ she wondered.

The guard looked around the cell, then spoke in a not too harsh voice. “Tan, go get a mop and a bucket with some soapy water from the closet down the hall and clean the floor in here. And get a brush and some bleach for the toilet, too. ”

“Yes, ma’am,” Janet replied as she went out into the hall. Before her arrest, she had had a maid, a Bangladeshi named Yasmina, to take care of that sort of thing, but those days were in the past now.

Later, after the guard had pronounced the cell sufficiently clean, she was allowed to go to the exercise yard. There, she saw Sunita walking with another Indian inmate. Janet hurried to catch up with them. “Sunita,” she called.

Sunita turned to look at her, then turned back to her companion and said something in what Janet thought might be Hindi. The other woman nodded and continued on her circuit. “What is it, Janet?” Sunita asked.

“They took my cellmate, Lucy, today.”

“Well, that’s good for you. They take all the prisoners who are getting the cane at once, so you’re in the clear for today. Your ass gets to look nice and soft for a few more days at least.”

“Do you think they’ll do me on Friday?” Janet asked.

Sunita shrugged. “Maybe. Who knows? Look, my dear, you need to stop worrying about it. They’ll do it when they do it. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

Janet knew that was good advice. Still, she’d always been a worrier, obsessing over small details. “Will it leave scars?”

Sunita looked at Janet. “What did I just say?” she asked, looking a bit exasperated.

“I’m sorry,” Janet said. “It’s just the way I am. I need to know.”

“OK,” Sunita said. “Tell the guard you need to take a dump. Hold your stomach like you’re having cramps. Go into the bathroom right near the gate. I’ll meet you in there in a couple of minutes.”

Janet nodded and went to the gate that led out of the exercise yard. She approached the guard stationed there. “Ma’am I need to go to the bathroom, please,” she asked, trying to sound desperate.

“You’re supposed to go before exercise period,” the woman replied.

Janet clutched her belly, “Please, ma’am, it’s the food in here, I’m not used to it. I’m afraid I won’t be able to hold it.”

“Next time you decide to bilk your investors, Tan, maybe you should ask the judge to send you to The Raffles or The Hilton. Make it quick, OK?” she said, opening the gate. Janet hurried into the bathroom.

A minute or so later Sunita came in and beckoned Janet over to the far wall, under a barred window. “There’s more light here,” she said. She pulled down her prison shorts and underpants. “Here, have a look.”

Janet bent down to inspect. There were some faint lines across the middle of the brown skin. “It’s been a few years,” Sunita said. “They looked worse right after. Also on a light-skinned girl like you, they might show more. Maybe when I get out I’ll go see a cosmetic surgeon and see what he can do about them.”

Janet stood up. “I’m sorry, Sunita. I shouldn’t have asked. “

“No problem. It’s just a little souvenir of Changi. They want you to be able to look at it and remember not to break the law.”

Janet nodded. “I better get back out there,” she said, turning to leave.

***​

It was later that afternoon, near dinner time, when they brought Lucy Yee back. She was naked, walking between the two guards, defeated, not putting up any resistance as they led her into the cell she shared with Janet. Her hair was disheveled, matted on her face and it was clear that she had been crying.

The guards maneuvered her onto her cot, face down. Janet stared open mouthed at Lucy’s ass, which was mess of gouges and wheals, the worst spots daubed with some sort of disinfectant that gave them a purplish tinge.

The block guard came in carrying a plastic bag that contained Lucy’s prison uniform, which she dropped on the floor and kicked under the bed. “You won’t need these for a while, Yee” she said, “But here they are.” Then the guards filed out leaving the two prisoners alone.

“I’m so sorry, Lucy,” Janet said, kneeling beside her cellmate’s cot and reaching out to stroke her sodden hair.

“It’s my fault, not yours,” Lucy replied.

Janet desperately wanted Lucy to describe the whole experience so she would know what to expect when her time came, but decided against it. “The worst part was that bitch was smiling through the whole thing,” Lucy volunteered.

“That guard?” Janet asked.

“No, her, the one who’s fucking my boyfriend.”

“They let her watch?” Janet asked, incredulous.

“Yes, the victims of your crimes are invited to attend,” Lucy replied, her voice shaking with emotion. “They say it’s so they can have closure, but I think it’s just so you suffer more.”

Janet was shaken by this news, something she hadn’t heard before. Did that mean that her investors might be present to watch her suffer, gleefully enjoying the spectacle as a payback for the money they had lost? She blushed just thinking about them staring at her naked body, smiling as she howled in pain.

Before Janet could say anything, the block guard came down the hall announcing dinner. Janet stood. “Would you like me to bring you back some food?” she asked.

“I’m not hungry,” Lucy replied.

“You should eat to keep your strength up so you can heal,” Janet said. She thought it would be a good think to try to be kind to her cellmate. After all, she was in pain. Also, Janet might need some help after her own ordeal which might be coming as soon as this coming Friday. “Maybe some noodle soup?”

“OK, sure, whatever. Thanks,” Lucy replied.

After she had eaten, Janet did bring back some noodle soup, helping her naked cellmate stand-sitting wasn’t going to be in the picture for a while-and she managed to get down most of the bowl, before she gingerly laid back down, groaning as the movements seemed to cause her distress, and quickly fell asleep.

Janet read for a while, then, finding herself tired from her previous sleepless night, fell asleep herself. She slept peacefully. After all, tomorrow was Wednesday and they wouldn’t be flogging anyone that day.

TBC​
Well done!!!!
 
This story was commissioned by a member from Singapore, KelvinB. I thank him for helping with a number of details about the geography and culture of that interesting city.

Kelvin had previously commissioned a story in a similar vein from our late friend Praefectus Praetorio, to whose memory I dedicate this short, two-part piece.




Tuesday and Fridays were the days that court ordered canings were carried out at the Changi Women’s Prison in Singapore. Janet Tan knew that even after only a few days as an inmate. Everyone in the prison knew it, whether they were one of the unfortunate souls, like Janet, who had been sentenced to receive that most dreaded punishment or not.

She remembered her conversation with one of the veteran inmates, Sunita Das, as they had walked their circuit of the exercise yard yesterday. “I got my six on a Tuesday not long after coming in here,” she had confided to Janet. “They like to do it fairly soon, to get it over with,” she had continued. “But they don’t tell you ahead of time. They just show up some time after breakfast and take you for your medical exam. That’s when you’ll know.”

“Medical exam?” Janet had asked.

“Yeah, they want you to suffer, but they don’t want you dying. That would make trouble. But don’t worry; a healthy girl like you, slim, in good shape. You’ll pass with flying colors, lucky you!”

Janet had always prided herself on keeping in shape; even when things were terribly busy at work or she was travelling, she set time aside to run in the park or on a treadmill. At 33, she could easily pass for five or even ten years younger.

“So, did it, you know, hurt a lot?”

Sunita laughed. “Oh, my dear, you can’t even imagine. If hell is half that bad, I’m gonna be good, so I don’t go there. How many are you getting?”

“Eight,” Janet replied.

Sunita shook her head. “My sympathies. Six was bad enough, thank you very much. And how many years?”

“Ten,” Janet replied.

“What did you do? Don’t worry, the rules in here say you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, though somehow everyone finds out pretty quickly. There are inmates who work in the Admin offices and get to glance at paperwork. There aren’t a lot of secrets in here.”

“That’s OK,” Janet replied. “I don’t mind talking about it because I’m innocent.”

Sunita pointed at the other prisoners walking the circuit. “Ask ten of them and nine will tell you they’re innocent. Not me though; I did it. I was a bookkeeper and I embezzled from my employer; I set up a phony company and submitted fake invoices and wrote checks to pay them. It served them right for paying me so little. What about you?”

“They said I defrauded my investors by making false claims about a device we were working on that people could wear to monitor their vitals. But they weren’t really false; the device would have worked, we just needed more time to develop it. Now, of course, they put us out of business so it won’t happen. Someone in Silicon Valley will do it and too bad for Singapore. Like those guys there never exaggerate.”

“Well maybe the judges in America are more willing to forgive a little white lie,” Sunita replied. “And of course, no caning there. But you’ll get through it; everyone does. And you’ll get through your ten years, too. I’m halfway through my six and I can do the rest, no problem. Just keep your head down; some of these girls are mean.”

Janet looked around at her fellow inmates. She had no reason to doubt what Sunita had said; quite a few looked like she would be well advised not to piss them off. One of the guards banged her truncheon on the metal bars of the gate that led to the exercise yard. “Alright, ladies, time’s up! Back inside! Let’s go!”

The prisoners began heading for the gate. “Thanks for cluing me in, Sunita. I think I can face it if I know what to expect. I guess I’ll be seeing you around,” Janet said.

“Yeah, you will. Like where else am I gonna go, right?” Sunita replied.

***​

Among the inmates who looked to Janet like someone she should avoid was a fellow recent arrival, Lucy Yee. Lucy was in her early twenties and about fifteen cm taller and at least ten kg heavier than Janet. Unfortunately, Janet wasn’t really able to avoid her because they had been assigned to the same two person cell.

Lucy had arrived a couple of days before Janet, convicted of assault on another girl, who, Lucy believed was sleeping with her boyfriend. Lucy had waylaid her in a club and broken the girl’s nose and a couple of ribs, earning her the same sentence as Janet-ten years and eight strokes of the cane. Well, now Lucy’s boyfriend would be free to screw whomever he wanted now that she was out of circulation.

Like Sunita, Lucy didn’t deny her guilt. “You’re fuckin’ right I smashed her up; the bitch deserved it!” she had boasted to Janet shortly after Janet was deposited in her cell following her intake. Janet had to hope that she wouldn’t inadvertently do something that would render her deserving of some broken bones in Lucy’s eyes.

‘This is what the next ten years of my life are going to be,’ Janet thought. Nothing in her previous experience had prepared her to share a prison cell with a tough girl from Yishun, a neighborhood where wanna-be gangsters (no doubt Lucy’s boyfriend was one) did their criminal deeds.

No, the last dozen or so years of her life had been spent first at Harvard on a full scholarship, where the idea for her biosensor had come to her during her lab rotation, then, following in the footsteps of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, dropping out to found a company to develop the product. She could have gone to Silicon Valley like many a budding entrepreneur, but family and cultural ties had brought her back to Singapore, a decision she now deeply regretted, in view of the caning she was facing.

There, her days were spent with scientists and engineers, when she wasn’t flying business class to New York, San Francisco, Shanghai or London raising money to pay for the HQ in Raffles Place, furnished in high-end techno-chic to impress prospective investors, and the development costs which always seemed higher and the time frames longer than even her most conservative estimates.

So, of course, she had sometimes fudged a few numbers and exaggerated a bit. What prospective tycoon doesn’t? It was all in the service of buying more time to develop a product that would help people stay healthy.

The foreigners expected you to do that. Unfortunately, her local investors, including some government big-wigs, didn’t.

And that was how she came to be lying on a cot late on a Monday night, in a cell with a snoring gangsterette like Lucy Yee, unable to sleep, wondering if tomorrow, Tuesday, was to be the day that they would come to take her to have her ass shredded into a pulp. Everything she had worked for was being sold at auction to compensate her investors-the big, beautiful house in Cairnhill, the vacation villa in France, the Mercedes, the Italian designer clothes and shoes- all gone, along with her bank accounts and shares in companies that were actually worth something, unlike the shares in her own company.

It took quite a while, but eventually, using some of the yoga techniques she had studied a few years before, she was able to drift off to a restless sleep, to be awakened around 6 AM by the guard coming down the hallway, banging her truncheon on the bars of each of the cells, shouting’ “Wake up you lazy sluts! Time to get your asses out of bed and down to the mess hall for breakfast!”

‘Breakfast?’ Janet thought. She didn’t feel hungry; all she felt was the gnawing fear in her stomach knowing that sometime after breakfast they might come to take her to her flogging. Putting her fear aside for the moment, she rolled out of bed and went to sit on the tiny seatless metal toilet to empty her bladder.

No sooner had she sat on the toilet then her cellmate jumped out of bed and came to loom over her. “Hurry up, bitch!” Lucy ordered. “I have to piss, too.” Janet quickly finished her business and got up, slipping her rubber sandals on and standing next to the barred door, waiting for the guard to open it as Lucy took her sweet time before finally joining her, scowling at Janet as though she begrudged her the air she was consuming.

***​

They came after breakfast, the regular duty guard for their cell block, accompanied by two very stern looking comrades, the metal grate of the cell door clanging against the wall as they threw it open. Janet looked up from the book from the prison library that she had been reading. Her heart was pounding. Was this the moment she had been dreading ever since she’d heard the judge pronounce his sentence, “And eight strokes of the cane on your bare buttocks.”?

Lucy didn’t even bother looking up from her magazine, which delved into the romances and break-ups of K-Pop stars in exhaustive detail. The block guard looked from one inmate to the other and back again. Finally, she spoke, “Yee, on your feet, time to go see the doctor.”

“I’m not sick,” Lucy replied, her face still buried in the magazine.

One of the auxiliary guards grabbed the magazine out of Lucy’s hands and threw it across the cell. “You think this is a joke, Yee?” Then she grabbed Lucy’s arm and pulled her to her feet, twisting the arm behind her.

“Oww!” Lucy protested. “That hurts, bitch.

The other auxiliary guard grabbed Lucy’s other arm. “You think you’re so tough, Yee, don’t you?” she spat. “Don’t worry, you’ll be crying like a baby soon when that rotan bites into your fat ass.” They marched her out quickly, barefoot, not even bothering to let her put on her rubber sandals. The block guard slammed the cell door shut behind them.

Janet was left feeling mixed emotions. On the one hand, she was relieved that it was Lucy they had come for Lucy, not her, though she knew her time would come. She was however, shocked by the violence of Lucy’s words and the actions of the guards. She resolved to behave in a more dignified way when they came for her.

About half an hour later, she got a bit of a scare when the block guard threw the door open and strode into the cell. ‘Had they decided they might as well cane the two cellmates in one session?’ she wondered.

The guard looked around the cell, then spoke in a not too harsh voice. “Tan, go get a mop and a bucket with some soapy water from the closet down the hall and clean the floor in here. And get a brush and some bleach for the toilet, too. ”

“Yes, ma’am,” Janet replied as she went out into the hall. Before her arrest, she had had a maid, a Bangladeshi named Yasmina, to take care of that sort of thing, but those days were in the past now.

Later, after the guard had pronounced the cell sufficiently clean, she was allowed to go to the exercise yard. There, she saw Sunita walking with another Indian inmate. Janet hurried to catch up with them. “Sunita,” she called.

Sunita turned to look at her, then turned back to her companion and said something in what Janet thought might be Hindi. The other woman nodded and continued on her circuit. “What is it, Janet?” Sunita asked.

“They took my cellmate, Lucy, today.”

“Well, that’s good for you. They take all the prisoners who are getting the cane at once, so you’re in the clear for today. Your ass gets to look nice and soft for a few more days at least.”

“Do you think they’ll do me on Friday?” Janet asked.

Sunita shrugged. “Maybe. Who knows? Look, my dear, you need to stop worrying about it. They’ll do it when they do it. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

Janet knew that was good advice. Still, she’d always been a worrier, obsessing over small details. “Will it leave scars?”

Sunita looked at Janet. “What did I just say?” she asked, looking a bit exasperated.

“I’m sorry,” Janet said. “It’s just the way I am. I need to know.”

“OK,” Sunita said. “Tell the guard you need to take a dump. Hold your stomach like you’re having cramps. Go into the bathroom right near the gate. I’ll meet you in there in a couple of minutes.”

Janet nodded and went to the gate that led out of the exercise yard. She approached the guard stationed there. “Ma’am I need to go to the bathroom, please,” she asked, trying to sound desperate.

“You’re supposed to go before exercise period,” the woman replied.

Janet clutched her belly, “Please, ma’am, it’s the food in here, I’m not used to it. I’m afraid I won’t be able to hold it.”

“Next time you decide to bilk your investors, Tan, maybe you should ask the judge to send you to The Raffles or The Hilton. Make it quick, OK?” she said, opening the gate. Janet hurried into the bathroom.

A minute or so later Sunita came in and beckoned Janet over to the far wall, under a barred window. “There’s more light here,” she said. She pulled down her prison shorts and underpants. “Here, have a look.”

Janet bent down to inspect. There were some faint lines across the middle of the brown skin. “It’s been a few years,” Sunita said. “They looked worse right after. Also on a light-skinned girl like you, they might show more. Maybe when I get out I’ll go see a cosmetic surgeon and see what he can do about them.”

Janet stood up. “I’m sorry, Sunita. I shouldn’t have asked. “

“No problem. It’s just a little souvenir of Changi. They want you to be able to look at it and remember not to break the law.”

Janet nodded. “I better get back out there,” she said, turning to leave.

***​

It was later that afternoon, near dinner time, when they brought Lucy Yee back. She was naked, walking between the two guards, defeated, not putting up any resistance as they led her into the cell she shared with Janet. Her hair was disheveled, matted on her face and it was clear that she had been crying.

The guards maneuvered her onto her cot, face down. Janet stared open mouthed at Lucy’s ass, which was mess of gouges and wheals, the worst spots daubed with some sort of disinfectant that gave them a purplish tinge.

The block guard came in carrying a plastic bag that contained Lucy’s prison uniform, which she dropped on the floor and kicked under the bed. “You won’t need these for a while, Yee” she said, “But here they are.” Then the guards filed out leaving the two prisoners alone.

“I’m so sorry, Lucy,” Janet said, kneeling beside her cellmate’s cot and reaching out to stroke her sodden hair.

“It’s my fault, not yours,” Lucy replied.

Janet desperately wanted Lucy to describe the whole experience so she would know what to expect when her time came, but decided against it. “The worst part was that bitch was smiling through the whole thing,” Lucy volunteered.

“That guard?” Janet asked.

“No, her, the one who’s fucking my boyfriend.”

“They let her watch?” Janet asked, incredulous.

“Yes, the victims of your crimes are invited to attend,” Lucy replied, her voice shaking with emotion. “They say it’s so they can have closure, but I think it’s just so you suffer more.”

Janet was shaken by this news, something she hadn’t heard before. Did that mean that her investors might be present to watch her suffer, gleefully enjoying the spectacle as a payback for the money they had lost? She blushed just thinking about them staring at her naked body, smiling as she howled in pain.

Before Janet could say anything, the block guard came down the hall announcing dinner. Janet stood. “Would you like me to bring you back some food?” she asked.

“I’m not hungry,” Lucy replied.

“You should eat to keep your strength up so you can heal,” Janet said. She thought it would be a good think to try to be kind to her cellmate. After all, she was in pain. Also, Janet might need some help after her own ordeal which might be coming as soon as this coming Friday. “Maybe some noodle soup?”

“OK, sure, whatever. Thanks,” Lucy replied.

After she had eaten, Janet did bring back some noodle soup, helping her naked cellmate stand-sitting wasn’t going to be in the picture for a while-and she managed to get down most of the bowl, before she gingerly laid back down, groaning as the movements seemed to cause her distress, and quickly fell asleep.

Janet read for a while, then, finding herself tired from her previous sleepless night, fell asleep herself. She slept peacefully. After all, tomorrow was Wednesday and they wouldn’t be flogging anyone that day.

TBC​
Great story , really enjoyed reading it .
it had so much of the ring of truth about it to make so so real .
i await Friday with great anticipation to see what happens.
Fantastic work
 
Janet spent the next two days quietly, mostly in her cell, helping Lucy get on and off the toilet, bringing her food from the mess hall, and trying not to think about her own upcoming ordeal. Lucy’s ass was quite swollen on Wednesday, but, by Thursday, the inflammation had decreased considerably and the cheeks were more normal in size, though still plumper than Janet’s, as they had been even before the caning. The cuts were scabbed over and healing and she was able to move more freely.

Lucy seemed much more subdued, politely thanking Janet for her help. The aggressiveness she had displayed earlier was gone, at least for the moment.

Thursday night, after lights out, though, Janet lay on her cot unable to sleep soundly as she had the two previous nights. Tomorrow, of course, would be Friday, and that meant it might be the day she would receive her court-ordered punishment. Part of her hoped that it would be done, to get it over with and let her get on with serving her sentence. Part of her wished it could be put off in the forlorn hope that her case might slip through the bureaucratic cracks, something she doubted would happen.

Either way, it wasn’t up to her, unlike most of the choices she had made in her previous life. Accepting that she was no longer in charge was maybe even harder for Janet than getting through the agony that lay just ahead.

Finally, Friday dawned; the block guard came down the row of cells, banging on the bars with her truncheon, shouting at the inmates to get their lazy asses out of bed. Lucy’s buttocks were healed enough to finally, after almost three days of nakedness, get her prison shorts on and go down to breakfast, though she ate standing up at the table, ignoring the jibes of her fellow inmates about how her ass was too sore to sit.

Janet sat, but ate sparingly, her stomach churning at the thought of her possible upcoming ordeal. All too soon, they were back in their cell and all she could do was wait. From the experience of Lucy’s caning, she knew that if today was her day it wouldn’t be too long.

And it wasn’t, probably less than half an hour, when she saw them standing in front of the barred cell door. It was the same two guards that had taken Lucy, accompanied by the block guard. “Let’s go, Tan. Time for your medical exam,” one of the caning detail guards said, opening the door.

Janet’s stomach sank, but she had resolved to face her ordeal with dignity. No pointless resistance like Lucy had shown. She rose to her feet, each of the guards took hold of an arm and they walked, down the row of cells.

In each cell, as they passed, the occupants stopped what they were doing and watched the procession make its way down the hall, paying silent tribute to a ritual that many of them had faced or were about to face.

They passed into the administrative wing of the prison, stopping before a door with a big red cross painted on it. Inside was a clinic that looked much like any that Janet had visited in the outside world. She took a seat in the waiting area, beside a fellow inmate who looked just as scared as Janet felt.

One by one, the guards brought in three more inmates, then took their places at the back of the room as the doctor called the inmate whom Janet had sat next to.

‘So there are five of us getting it today,’ Janet thought. She didn’t know how many each of the women were due, but she figured she’d find out soon enough.

The medical exam was perfunctory. The doctor, an older ethnic Chinese man with greying hair and metal-frame glasses took their blood pressures-Janet was sure hers was elevated from the fear of what lay ahead, but that didn’t seem to matter-and listened to their hearts. Then, he had them stand and lower their shorts and underpants and knelt to examine their buttocks, taking plenty of time to squeeze each of the cheeks.

They waited as he wrote in each of the five folders on his desk, signing a paper in each one with a flourish. Janet supposed that he was attesting to their fitness to receive their punishment, something which didn’t surprise her, but, nevertheless, took away her last hope of escaping her fate.

Finally, he stood, and without saying a word, disappeared through a door at the far end of the clinic behind his desk.

The prisoners waited anxiously. After a few minutes, one of the guards ordered, “On your feet, prisoners! Form a line.” Reluctantly, Janet stood and got into line with the others. The guard led them out of the clinic by the door through which they had entered and a short distance down the hallway, stopping in front of a door marked, “Punishment Room”.

“All right,” the guard announced, “Sit down now while you can.” There were no chairs, so the women sat on the floor, their backs against the wall. The guard who had spoken disappeared inside, while the other stood watch over the prisoners.

It wasn’t long before the guard who had gone inside re-appeared accompanied by a second guard. “Stephanie Chao, you have the honor of being first,” she announced. A young woman, shorter than Janet but a bit larger on top, got to her feet. The two guards each took one arm and led her through the door.

Janet had tried to see into the room where her fate awaited, but couldn’t. She heard the buzz of voices, guests talking softly amongst themselves, but then the door shut.

For a few moments, Janet heard nothing. Then she heard a voice call “ Stroke one!” and, immediately after, she heard a sound like a muffled gunshot. Then, there was a pause that seemed to last about thirty seconds, before the call of “Stroke two!” and the sound of a second impact.

After the third there was something that might have been a shout, a sound which was more definitive after the fourth. The prisoners sitting outside the door looked at each other. Janet’s stomach was churning and she imagined the others were feeling similarly.

Janet heard two more impacts. After the second, she counted to thirty, but there was only silence. ‘Six strokes,” she thought. ‘I’m due two more than that.’

She wondered if they’d bring Stephanie out by the door next to them, but there was obviously another door to take the prisoners out after their flogging, because after a while the two guards appeared and summoned Alice Chen to stand. Janet counted silently in her head the six strokes that Alice got.

‘Now the odds are one in three that they take me next,’ Janet thought. She’d always been good with numbers. The door opened. "Tan, you’re next,” the guard announced.

Janet started to stand, but felt her knees almost giving way. She put her hand on the shoulder of the inmate next to her for support, then slowly got up.

“That’s right, Tan, you don’t want to go in there. I don’t blame you. But, you should have thought of that before scamming people,” one of the guards said, taking hold of Janet’s left arm as the other guard took hold of her right and led her through the door.

The room was about the size of a basketball court, high-ceilinged, but Janet’s eyes weren’t taking in the whole scene. No, they were fixed straight ahead on the object that was the reason the room existed-The Frame.

It stood in the center of the room, a contraption shaped somewhat like a letter H with four solid uprights connected by crossbars. It was made of solid wood, painted a dull institutional blue, and bolted to the concrete floor. Janet didn’t want to look at it but she couldn’t help herself.

Finally, she tore her eyes away from it to take in the full scene. To the left of the Frame was a table where a few men in dress uniforms, with many more badges and medals than the average guards-obviously high level administrators of the prison-sat along with the doctor who had examined her. That, she supposed was normal procedure that they would be in attendance.

What was much more disturbing was to the right of the Frame-a cordoned off area with approximately fifty folding chairs, almost all of which were occupied. But, it wasn’t the chairs that made Janet feel sick to her stomach, it was who was occupying them-her investors, bankers, some government officials, some wealthy local businessmen, even someone from a venture capital firm in California, who’d flown across the Pacific just to see her punished for losing his money.

A murmur broke out among the assembled crowd as Janet passed by. “Please, dear guests, let me remind you that this is an official proceeding” one of the officials at the head table cautioned. “You are here to observe, but not to speak.” The crowd quieted.

The guards escorted Janet to stand in front of the seated officials. “You are Janet Tan?” the head officer asked.

“Yes,” Janet replied. Seeing his displeased look, she quickly added, “Sir.”

“And you have been sentenced to receive eight strokes of the cane?”

“Yes, sir,” she replied, her voice catching in her throat.

The man nodded. “The prisoner will strip to receive her punishment.”

Janet looked around helplessly at the fully-clothed officials, guards and guests. She was deeply ashamed at the prospect of standing naked before them. However, she had resolved to behave in a dignified fashion, following orders and not creating a scene. She knew that the end result if she did resist would be the same-the guards would forcibly strip her, because the rules were that prisoners must be naked for their caning.

So, resigned to her fate, she kicked off her sandals. The concrete floor felt rough and cold against her bare soles.

A guard approached with a plastic bag. “In here,” she ordered. Janet bent, picked up the sandals and placed them in the bag. Then, she pulled her T shirt over her head. The prison did not allow bras, because they could be used to hang oneself, so she was naked from the waist up now. Her nipples stood erect from the shame and the cool air.

Janet placed her T shirt in the bag. Then, seeing no point in delaying the process, Janet reached down to her waist and lowered her shorts and underpants, stepped out of them and placed them in the bag. She was naked now.

“The prisoner will place her hands behind her head,” the head officer ordered. Janet complied.

“The prisoner will turn and face the honored guests.” This was difficult. These were her investors for whom Janet had given presentations dressed in expensive suits. Now she was being asked to face them naked. But what choice did she have?

She turned to face them. She could see every eye fixed on her. She blushed in shame, though they were probably too far away to notice.

The head official let the investors have a good look at the naked body of the woman who had fleeced them. Finally, he ordered, “Secure the prisoner for punishment.”

Two guards came forward. They each took hold of one of Janet’s arms and moved her to the Frame, neither gently nor roughly, but professionally and efficiently, pressing her pelvis against the padded crossbar, which was still warm from the two women who had already suffered there.

Working quickly, they knelt, pulled her feet apart and buckled heavy leather straps around Janet’s ankles. Then, one went around to the front. The other pushed on Janet’s lower back, causing her to bend at waist and reach her hands out for the front crossbar.

The guard in front attached Janet’s wrists to the front crossbar while the one in back wrapped a heavy padded belt around Janet’s waist. “Prisoner secured!” one of the guards exclaimed.

Janet tested the straps that held her, pulling hard with her arms and legs. She was indeed secured, virtually immobilized against the Frame. Moreover, her position, bent over with her legs apart, left her most intimate areas, her pussy and her butthole completely exposed to the eyes of the crowd. ‘My investors are certainly getting their money’s worth,’ she thought.

Out of the corner of her eye, Janet saw movement. A figure who had been standing in the far corner of the room, whom she hadn’t noticed before, a large man, his muscles showing in an athletic T shirt, was approaching.

More than his appearance, it was what he carried that made Janet’s heart skip a beat. It was the rotan, over a meter long and as thick as the middle finger on Janet’s hand. He was swishing it as he approached. The sound of the instrument cutting through the air sent chills down her spine. It was clear that the business end, the part that would be contacting Janet’s butt flesh was highly flexible.

He passed behind the Frame and took his position behind Janet. She felt the cane tapping lightly against her lower cheeks as he adjusted his aim. Janet wanted desperately to look behind her and see what was happening, but the guard in front of her held her head immobile.

Soon, the tapping stopped. All was silent. Then a guard shouted, “Eight stroke punishment! Stroke one!”

Almost immediately, Janet heard the “Whoosh!” of the rotan cutting through the air and felt the impact against her butt cheeks, driving her pelvis forward into the padded crossbar. But, other than that, she felt…nothing. ‘Could it be that all the talk, my worst fears, were for nothing?’ she thought.

Then, just as that comforting idea flashed through her mind, it began-a burning sensation in her ass cheeks that grew and grew like a balloon inflating. All of Janet’s muscles tensed as she rode the rising wave of fire. She pulled hard at the straps that held her wrists and ankles, desperate to escape, but they held her fast.

Slowly, far too slowly, the pain ebbed. Janet took three deep breaths and then waited, helpless, unable to do anything to protect her exposed rear from the next assault that would inevitably come her way.

All too soon, she heard the call, “Stroke two!” and felt the next blow, cutting like a knife. Now, with the tissue already inflamed, the pain was immediate, rising high, higher than on the first one and barely ebbing at all as the seconds passed. Janet felt sweat welling out from every pore, dampening her hair which was sticking to her forehead.

Much too soon, Janet heard the third stroke called. She had told herself that she would retain her dignity and wouldn’t cry out, but even someone as strong-willed as Janet couldn’t keep that vow in the face of such unbearable agony. “Oh, God!” she wailed. And she wasn’t even halfway through!

“Stroke four!” and the implacable cane struck again, at full force, always as hard as the caner could strike. No mercy for criminals. Janet howled. The room spun around her and she felt sick.

“Halfway through, Janet,” the guard holding her head advised her; small comfort with four more to go and each one hurting more than the previous one.

‘Why didn’t I stay at Harvard and take a job in the States or with a company here in Singapore?’ Janet asked herself. But it was much too late for that.

The fifth stroke broke Janet’s will. “Please stop!” she begged through tear-clouded eyes. “I can’t stand it!” She imagined her investors smiling at her pitiful submission.

Of course they wouldn’t stop, she knew that. This was a legal punishment that would be carried out as ordered no matter how much she begged. The only answer to her plea was the call of ”Stroke Six!” and the cruel rotan stripping more skin from her poor battered ass.

Janet barely had the strength to moan her distress. “Only two more, Janet,” the guard informed her.

The seventh lash struck lower than the others in a very sensitive spot. The pain was unbearable, but what choice did Janet have but to bear it?

Finally, the eighth stroke was called and delivered. Janet howled her distress, but also her relief, as the words she had desperately longed to hear, “Punishment complete!”, were announced. Janet lay limp against the frame, her body in agony, her will completely broken.

The guard who had called the strokes began unbuckling the belt that had held Janet’s waist against the padded crossbar, while the guard who had held Janet’s head undid the wrist straps. Once the ankle straps were undone, each guard took an arm and helped Janet to her feet. She felt dizzy and her ass felt like she was sitting on a red hot stove.

Janet turned to look at her investors. They were staring at her, smiling broadly at the idea that justice had been done. Perhaps some of them considered the money they had lost well spent in view of the spectacle they had just witnessed. Then the guards guided her slowly through the Punishment Room to a door at the far end. As they passed the caner, Janet saw that the cane, which he was about to place in a bucket filled with disinfectant was tinged pink with her blood.

The door led Janet and her accompaniers back into the clinic. She noticed Stephanie Chao and Alice Chen lying face down on a cot, naked, their butts scored with bright red inflamed-looking wheals. Janet knew that hers was similarly decorated.

The guards helped Janet lie face down on a cot. The bending motions sent lightning bolts of pain shooting through Janet’s buttocks. Once Janet was lying down, the nurse began cleansing her wheals with cotton swabs soaked in alcohol. The liquid burned intensely as it worked its way into the abraded skin. Then, she daubed on a purple disinfectant, which also stung, though a bit less than the alcohol. Finally, she applied a soothing cream, which eased the burning a bit, though not as much as Janet would have wished.

Soon, she heard the sound of the cane impacting female butt flesh as the first of the two prisoners who had been left outside the Punishment Room when they took Janet in suffered her designated flogging. Janet counted eight strokes. The victim soon appeared in the clinic, looking dazed and subdued and received the same care that Janet had.

The final prisoner received her six and joined the other four in the clinic, where they spent much of the day under observation by the nurse. Eventually, the doctor arrived. He had a quick glance at each of the women and then sat down at his desk and signed some papers. Janet presumed that these were medical release forms, because, shortly afterwards, the guards took the first woman out.

Soon they came for Janet. The walk back to her cell, naked, the bag with her prison uniform in her hands, was much harder than the walk to the Punishment Room earlier that day. Everything hurt. The prisoners along the hall whistled and catcalled. The floor felt cold and sticky against her bare feet.

But finally they arrived at the cell. Lucy looked up from her magazine as they brought Janet in and laid her down on her cot. She had the good sense to leave Janet alone until the call for dinner came. Then she leaned down and said, softly, “I’ll bring you some soup, OK?”

“Thank you,” Janet replied. “You’re very kind.” And she meant it. While Lucy was at dinner, Janet cried from the pain and shame of her ordeal. But she made herself stop before her cellmate returned. She knew she would have to be strong to get through the rest of her sentence.



THE END​
 
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