by D. A. Maddox
At the head of that line was Officer Kersey, and at the back, a second camera operator whom Buddy had just learned went by the name Officer Grant. It was Veronica who, guiding him by the arm, eased his stretcher forward. She did absolutely nothing to spare Emma Jo the view Buddy had of her nether lips. The girls, unlike the guys, were faceup—and the front of Buddy’s rolling X-shaped stretcher was right between her legs, his nose almost touching her.
Behind him, Cassidy’s quick, intermittent breaths tickled his eardrums. It would have made him hard all over again, but his penis was bent down under him. Meanwhile, there was enough of Emma Jo’s pubic hair for Buddy to see small tufts of it rise and fall with his own breathing, which he made as shallow as possible.
I’m sorry, Emma Jo, he thought, hearing her whimper every time his breath fluffed her and made the muscles in her legs clench. I don’t want to suffocate.
But he didn’t close his eyes, either.
“We have refitted this room as well, as you will see,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia said from the front, urging Peter’s ride forward with one hand on his middle back, the second at a wrist. “For convenience, we have two of you down and two up, as my dear Alejandro will be handling backsides and I shall be handling fronts—which are more delicate and would benefit by the handling of a nurse, as I am sure he would agree.”
“He would indeed,” Officer Garcia said from behind Buddy, guiding Cassidy forward by God-only-knew what part of her body. She was crying freely, and moaning on the regular, just as he was. Garcia continued, “I have a job ahead of me with Buddy’s back, but I do not envy you the work you have in front of you with Emma Jo’s haystack, which is much in need of baling.”
“Hey—” Emma Jo started.
“Careful, Emma Jo. That is your warning. Do not misunderstand. You have a lovely clam, bearded though it may be. My wife shall improve its appearance for the benefit of our viewers and make you more comfortable in the long run, as you shall learn after a day or two.”
Inside the wide shower stall, where every partition had been removed, making the place fairly enormous, the stretchers fanned out. Then they reformed from a vertical to a horizontal line, same order. To his right, now, Cassidy, her streaming eyes fixed on the ceiling. Why? Buddy supposed he’d find out soon enough.
Looking left, Emma Jo, pink-faced and bloodshot but silent.
And, from the next one over that way, Peter, who Buddy supposed just could not help himself, “Just a little off the sides and around the ears, please. Thanks.”
Much to Buddy’s surprise, he got a general laugh—cops and prisoners alike, even from Buddy himself.
Nurse Reyes-Garcia, still chuckling, said, “Officer Thompson, a stiffer reminder for Peter, please. He is being funny.”
“Right away, boss.”
When had she arrived?
Buddy didn’t consider the question for long. Within seconds, a cut through the air, a resounding and echoing thwap—and howling, pure misery, from Peter. Half a minute later, “Ow, ow, ow…” between hoarse sobs.
Nurse Reyes-Garcia left him, came to Emma Jo. Patted an arm, leaned close for an inspection. “Oh. Oh, my. Young lady, were you trying to make the Guinness Book of Records?”
She put a hand over her mouth, muffling the indignant response. She spoke over it, addressing everyone. “This morning, we are going to offer the home audience an education in the removal of body hair. You shall be providing a valuable service, and you will not be required to do a thing.”
Buddy watched with mounting trepidation as Veronica wheeled in a smaller aluminum table, draped over with white cloth and replete with cutters, tools, shavers, tape, and oils that were totally unfamiliar to him. One of the bottles was on a hot plate. Buddy could smell it, like coconut oil, and feel the heat in a continuous wave not far from his middle.
“Are you done squeaking, my Nordic young vagina Viking?”
Emma Jo desisted, hands clenching and unclenching.
Nurse Reyes-Garcia removed her hand from Emma Jo’s mouth. “We shall begin with electric razors where necessary, then proceed to straight razors and cream. But we shall then be taking the hair out at the roots, preventing a regrow during your stay. Parts of this will be quite uncomfortable, but do not be too alarmed. Your body hair will begin regrowing normally within a month or two.”
Officer Garcia’s rough hands on Buddy’s shins, working in warm shaving cream…
“Today, we shall explain the particulars of safely removing hair from even the most sensitive of places, so that our prisoners may feel buffed and smoothed for their first sessions later this morning and early this afternoon. The common term for this, mostly applied to women, is ‘Brazilian wax.’ But we shall not leave the young men in our care unattended in this regard…”
****
Voiceover, Buck Horndog:
“…but Cassidy Lee Harper didn’t go to school just to be a beauty queen. Here she is receiving the Senior STEM award for Outstanding Achievement in Mathematics and Logistical Modeling, presented by Governor Renee Coltraine on the afternoon before her prep school graduation. Aw, there’s her sister in the front row, cheering her on. Mom looks so proud, doesn’t she? And Dad dutifully immortalizing the moment on video, too. Somebody get that guy a better camera. Cassidy, by all accounts, never even had a steady boyfriend at school. But, wow, she was quite a gorgeous young lady even then…
Leather straps on her ankles, on her wrists. Splayed. Wheeled in naked at the back of the line with a camera following between her legs. Cameras on the walls, too. They were everywhere. And now she was lined up to be waxed as a live instructional video for the early risers at home.
There were mirrors on the ceiling, just so she could watch it happen to her, too.
Nurse Reyes-Garcia took a dampened cloth in hand and mopped her labia and opening, eliciting a small gasp. “So responsive,” she said, smiling down at her, patting her pubis. “You are going to lose this neat little triangle, I am afraid. It will come back in time.”
Next to her, on the other side of the tray, the sound of Officer Garcia polishing a razor over a canvas strop. Buddy’s legs. She could see the two of them, warden and prisoner, in the ceiling mirror. She watched as Officer Garcia held his left leg straight and still by the bottom of his calf and started shaving him, down the back of the thigh, the back of his knee, then scraping the razor clean on the end of a bowl of warm water. Buddy buried his face in the pillow. Cassidy wished she could, too, and supposed she would be able to, soon enough.
Nurse Reyes-Garcia picked up an electric razor, clicked it on. “Be still,” she said. “This is the easy part, but practice being dead weight right now, and you shall make the more complicated bits less complicated when we come to them.”
Cassidy had every intention of obeying, but first she craned her head forward, looked down on herself.
“Say goodbye to it, Cassidy.”
She leaned back, dead weight, as the buzzing razor slid over her mons, tickling her, shearing away hair. Through the ceiling mirror, stroke by stroke, she watched it disappear.
****
Voiceover, Gloria Wholesome:
“Peter Gravis—aka, ‘The Incredible Hunk’ on our website chat—is quite the music man, isn’t he? Here we see him, first row on the oboe when he was still a junior in high school, just blowing his cute little cheeks out. His instrument of choice, as we now see here, courtesy of his local Stand Up and Shout, is the saxophone. Hey, Peter, there are four guys in that band—you’re hogging the stage and having a full-blown sax-gasm! But he’s not all bad, America. In this clip, we see him at Farmer Hill Elementary School, helping out with the little-uns just starting out in music. Isn’t that sweet? Peter, you see, is an education major. Deep down, he’s willing to set aside time from his own dreams to help younger kids realize theirs. Almost makes you feel bad for him, doesn’t it?
“No? Me neither, I guess…”
Peter heard it all happen to Buddy before any of it happened to him. E
xcept when he’d come up for air, Buddy had kept his face in the pillow throughout the entire ordeal, alternately moaning or yelling into it. Or so Peter surmised by the sound. Hard to tell with Emma Jo’s heaving bosom in the way.
It had taken half an hour. When it was over, Officers Garcia and Thompson had helped him to his feet, stripped the X-frame, and put on new blankets and pillows. Then they had strapped him back onto it, this time facing up to await Nurse Reyes-Garcia when she was done with Cassidy.
Peter’s hair was sparser than Buddy’s. He hadn’t thought it would be so bad. While Officer Garcia was still washing his hands, getting new gloves, Veronica started working in the oil from the hot plate—which had been uncomfortable at first, then heavenly.
No preliminary shave for him. There wasn’t enough hair on his back or legs to merit it. Officer Garcia went right for the tape as Veronica finished oiling him. She’d saved his buttocks for last, and now she ran a lubed finger straight down the crease and finished with a slow, strong, two-handed squeeze, one to either cheek.
What was coming was going to suck, but that had felt pretty nice, the fresh stripe there notwithstanding. And at least she’d put her phone away.
“This one will not take so long,” Officer Garcia said, applying a long strip of white tape across both shoulder blades. It had a cloth-like texture, apart from the adhesive. Officer Garcia patted it in…
Not gonna scream, not gonna scream…
—then ripped it off with one quick, searing yank.
“Whoa, there, Torquemada! Holy shit! Fuck!”
Oh, God, I just yelled that out loud, didn’t I?
Officer Garcia addressed Officer Kersey’s camera, now placed over Peter’s legs, catching the contact points and the back of his head. “Do not fear, my friends,” he said, peeling another strip from the roll, cutting it with a sterile pair of surgical scissors, and pressing it down. “We do not generally punish our charges for outbursts made under duress. I am sure that was a shock. You shall behave much better this time, won’t you, Peter? Show our audience it is not as bad as all that, once you know what’s coming, yes?”
Peter had been holding his breath in, bracing himself. He let it out to say, “Yes … sir, not so bad. Kind of enjoyed it, actu—”
Officer Garcia sheared away the second strip, and Peter bit some pillow, following Buddy’s lead.
“It is healthier for the skin than shaving with a razor,” Officer Garcia said to the camera, taking in hand a bottle of baby powder and patting it onto reddened flesh. “It is a physical exfoliant and removes lifeless surface cells. Now, I think it best we get this part over with…” At that, he laid tape over the belt stripe on Peter’s buttocks. “Count down from three, Resident Two-oh-One.”
Peter lifted his face. Between clenched teeth, he counted, “Three—”
And felt it like a whip stroke when Garcia ripped off the tape. He screamed, feeling like his bulging eyes would pop. Breathless, he panted, “Dude … who the fuck does anything on three?”
“For your own good, dude, the answer is me,” Officer Garcia replied, applying baby powder to the stinging skin. “And now we are finished with that unpleasant business.”
You might be, Peter thought, but it still hurts.
He returned his face to the pillow, rested on his cheek just in time to see Emma Jo’s stretcher roll out of sight. “This way for you, hon,” Officer Thompson said. “Going to put that bush to a weed whacker over here before giving you over to the boss and her Popsicle sticks.”
Popsicle sticks? Peter thought.
Weed whacker?
Emma Jo apparently didn’t much like the sound of it, either, because from her lips there arose a wordless sound of such distress that Peter’s heart caught in his throat.
“Silly,” Officer Thompson said. “Just a metaphor. But it is a men’s beard trimmer. You’ve really let it go down there. Don’t worry. Totally painless.”
With you people, Peter thought, you never know.
Then he saw what Nurse Reyes-Garcia was getting ready to do to Buddy.
****
Buddy was faceup, spread-eagled, dick at half-mast in spite of his discomfort and bobbing every now and again like it was trying to get out of bed and failing. Strangely comforting, seeing himself so helpless in the ceiling mirrors. It was almost like he was in for some kind of surgery, surrounded by doctors who would make him better from some horrible malady.
Nurse Reyes-Garcia stood squarely between his legs. Over him from the front, Officer Grant filmed him from the head down. Veronica ran hither and yon, taking things from one side table tray and bringing them to another. Just now, she set a clear glass bottle filled with tongue depressors next to his head. How many of those could she possibly need?
Veronica blew him a kiss, then departed. Buddy went hard again.
“Miss Cruz,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia gently scolded her retreating back. “You have cast a spell on this boy’s broomstick like Mickey Mouse in Fantasia.”
Veronica cackled gaily.
Nurse Reyes-Garcia leaned down, took his ankle, and guided his left leg straight up so that it was at a ninety-degree angle with the rest of his body. The leg of the X-frame moved with it, locked in position, and supported it. She did the other leg, then parted them again to a V, feet in the air.
Buddy’s breath quickened. He wanted to ask. He didn’t dare.
She knelt at the side of the stretcher and told him anyway, seeming to have read the desperate curiosity in his eyes with only a second’s glance at them. “Before I denude your genitals, belly, chest, and armpits, Buddy, I am going to see to the hair on the ring of your anus. Be a big boy and don’t fuss. The sensation is not so horrible, but it will be surprising.”
Then, like jacking up a car—Buddy couldn’t see all the way down to her hands to be exactly sure—she ratcheted up only the portion of the X-frame where his buttocks (powdered but still sore) were at rest by forty-five degrees. Officer Garcia rolled the camera around and positioned it so it would have an utterly mortifying view of Buddy’s scrotum, his elevated asshole, and everything in between.
“Before and after taint shots, bucko,” he said. “Smile for the ceiling cams.”
Buddy blinked at him, disbelieving.
“Go ahead, Buddy,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia said. “Do not be the frowning family member in the holiday photo.”
Buddy made himself smile, and the camera withdrew. Again, Nurse Reyes-Garcia took up position between his legs, dabbed one of the tongue depressors into the bottle on the hot plate, and knelt. In her free hand, she took his cock and hefted it up. In its current state of full erection, that hefted his ball sack with it and allowed his puckered asshole to breathe a little.
“Hooooo-boy,” Buddy said, the tears at full flow again, feeling he was fit to blast off at any second—until the depressor smeared hot wax over his exposed sphincter.
“Easy, Buddy,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia said, still holding his wilting penis firmly, his legs shaking the restraints like aluminum bleachers at a football game. She set down the depressor and went for a brown square of what looked like flypaper. “Are you ready for the surprise?” she asked with an arched eyebrow, setting the paper down over the wax. Poking it in a little with her finger. “Are you ready?”
He looked over to the side, locked eyes with Peter.
What. The. Fuck, Peter mouthed.
All Buddy could think was, I know, right?
The paper was torn away. Buddy yelped, mostly from surprise—as promised—then released a deep exhalation when the pain hadn’t been … that bad.
Nurse Reyes-Garcia powdered the bare patch, flashed the adhesive with Buddy’s anal hairs to the camera. “Good job,” she commended him. “Excellent composure. Just three more down here, I think, and we can focus on the rest of you.”
****
Voiceover, Buck Horndog:
“Waterskiing comes naturally to our resident fish-out-of-water, Emma Jo Swanson. Seems to be having the time of her lif
e there, doesn’t she? This footage was taken from her own profile page, which she kindly didn’t take down after her arrest, like her accomplices did. You see, Emma Jo doesn’t believe she did anything wrong, and leaving her social media active is only one of several examples of advice she ignored from her own attorney. Don’t get me wrong—she’s not a rebel at heart. In fact, Emma Jo has spent her entire life with nothing but the highest possible conduct marks in all of her classes in every school she’s ever attended. Here she is receiving her twelfth consecutive outstanding conduct award at her own graduation, which got her picture in the paper. The waterskiing fun was part of her reward for that—as was this brave adventure, where we see Emma Jo in an actual shark tank, photographing the undersea wildlife. Sadly—I guess—no sharks made an appearance that day. It wouldn’t be until two months later that Emma Jo would find herself in danger of a much different sort…
Near the end of it, when Cassidy was facedown for the attentions of Officer Garcia, and Peter was finally wheeled off to wait for the girls with Buddy, Officer Thompson brought Emma Jo to the nurse. The guys have it easier, she thought bitterly, looking up at the mirrors with mild despair to find herself almost completely bare between her legs. Only one hole to wax.
Yep, there I am, pussy lips out for—
She checked the view count reader on the wall.
…296,000 households of post-transitional adults to gawk at. God, please, don’t let Mom, Dad, Matt, and Carly see me like this.
Back to Nurse Reyes-Garcia’s station Officer Thompson rolled her, having given her the once-over with the men’s beard trimmer, then used a strategically placed hand mirror to show her the results. Her eyes had been too blurry and wet to see what had been done to her very well—awkward angle, too—but Thompson had been delighted. “Got some of the best tits in the world, too,” she’d said, meaning well, hefting them one at a time, teasing her nipples to full protrusion and smiling at her.
Veronica had wheeled away one tray of waxing supplies and was putting another in place. She had both camera operators as well as the ceiling cams focused only on her now, too, above her and at either side. All she could do was lie there, cry like a baby, and shake like an earthquake while Nurse Reyes-Garcia emerged from between her legs like a biblical angel of degradation, a punishment sent from God.