The Punishment Club

by D. A. Maddox

  ****

  The pain, Cassidy thought, when the young man bent back the flexor rod and let her have it, was more focused than the belting she had received at the hands of Officer Garcia yesterday. Not as canvassing, but twice as bad where it hurt. She bit her lower lip, trying to save the screaming for when it was done.

  The second punisher, also male—but an older one—wasted no time. Cassidy was almost grateful. Again, she could hardly see through the piqued curtain of her agony. And her leg muscles were going to be so darned sore tomorrow. They’d taken none of the abuse, but they struggled mightily against the restraints, useless as she understood the struggle to be.

  Finally, on the last blow, she let it all out and found the resultant wail piteous in her own ears. Too, she found herself grateful for the kiss her final punisher came around front to give her at the end. It was a nice kiss, and from a pretty woman not too much older than her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just had to.”

  Cassidy shook her head.

  “It shall be ladies first,” Officer Garcia had said, choosing her. “We are not savages.”

  Cassidy was grateful for that as well. It was over. She didn’t have to wait for it while listening to Peter suffer.

  She felt so sorry for him, watching six people line up behind him, one with her hand extended for the flexor rod, another holding her camera to get a shot.

  ****

  Emma Jo wanted to look away. She wanted to say something, to protest.

  She wasn’t allowed to.

  She wasn’t even permitted to take her hands out from the back of her own damned head.

  The worst of it, at least as far as the manifest agony that sprang from Peter’s mouth, was in the first three of the six promised blows. Peter, unlike the others—and certainly unlike her—felt no compunction whatsoever about expressing the pain. He was just that kind of guy. If he felt something, whatever it was, people were going to goddamned-good-and-well know about it.

  Three down, Peter, she thought. Three to go. Hold on. Get through.

  Creeeeak—thwap!

  And from Peter: “Ow—ow—ow! Holy Mary, Mother of God!”

  Creeeeak—thwap!

  “GRAAA!”

  Creeeeak—

  “Pray for these buttocks, now and at the hour of—”

  Thwap!

  A final scream. Then Peter’s body went limp.

  “It…” he started with a whimper, then resumed, “…is finished.”

  Nurse Reyes-Garcia came to him, to his sobbing and shuddering form, and patted the back of his head. “Yes, you little sack rascal,” she tenderly said, “it is.”

  Emma Jo put her hands down. Screw this. She knew well enough Cassidy had taken one for the team yesterday—or, well, to be part of the team, anyway. This was not how it was supposed to end.

  “Wow,” she said, putting a thoughtful finger over her lips. “That looked painful.”

  Everywhere, eyes turned to her in disbelief. Peter had been allowed to say words. He had been in punishment. No such permission had been given to Emma Jo, nor to—

  “Yeah,” Buddy said, putting his arms down as well, sniffling, terrified. “It looked … horrible.”

  ****

  Alexander Dumas, he thought, after Emma Jo got hers, feeling himself returned to the marble, then laid flat on his stomach, stretched out for punishment. All for one, and one for all. No one takes it alone. What one of us gets, we all get.

  Help me, God. I’m so scared.

  “Buddy.”

  Nurse Reyes-Garcia sounded positively flummoxed. She closed his left wrist back in steel, moved to his right.

  “Y-yes, Matron?”

  “What are you four up to?”

  To his feet now, his ankles.

  He sniffled again, gathered breath. “Making it,” he said, “the only way we can.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Divisions

  “Don’t sweat it,” Veronica said, leaning in, kissing her ear, nibbling the lobe just hard enough to make her flinch. “Play it like I showed you, and you’ll do great. All in good fun. If you ask me, she’s getting off easy, having you for her first ‘familiar’.”

  “I’ll be happy if she gets off at all,” Toni quipped, feeling that stubborn hint of uncertainty, of guilt, resurface.

  “Oh, she will,” Veronica replied knowingly. “The more damsel-in-distress you make her, the wetter she’ll get. Believe me.”

  Toni looked herself over in the mirror. No worries about wearing the visor cap now. Her hair was a living wreck, anyway. Makeup was a bit of a wash as well.

  It was one o’ clock. According to Veronica, that gave her two hours—but the schedule, in her case, could be made flexible. They wanted to be sure her session with Cassidy went exactly right.

  Funny, standing around stark naked with this strange, fully clothed woman who was essentially her own age. Veronica hadn’t taken off a scrap of clothing throughout the entire “lesson,” not even the hat. “Command,” she had said. “Control. Give nothing. She gives everything. She’ll be petrified, and she’ll love it.”

  Toni felt more than well-educated from having had the experience. It was the first time she’d allowed someone to touch her so intimately in her life. She felt good. But…

  “You know,” she said, turning from the mirror, picking her things up off the floor, “not that I’m complaining…”

  “But you’re about to complain?” Veronica supplied with a winsome tilt of the head.

  “It’s just,” Toni dithered. “I mean, okay, I’ve had the coaching. I know what to do. But I haven’t really practiced yet. As me, I mean.”

  Veronica, watching her bend to pick things up, enjoying herself thoroughly, said, “What, pray tell, are you suggesting, you vixen?”

  Toni pulled on her panties, shook her hair over her shoulder. Put her hands on her hips. Made an effort to sound authoritative. “It’s your turn, Veronica. I need to be me. I need you to be Cassidy.”

  Veronica laughed with her head thrown back. She went for the door, shaking her head, still chuckling. “Toni, you fuckin’ card,” she said, adopting the New York accent again, mocking her. She opened the door, heedless of whether there might be someone in the hall who would see Toni in her semi-nude state. “Not in this life. Get your pretty ass cleaned up, hm? I’ll send for a fresh uniform.”

  “But—”

  “Girlfriend,” Veronica said, turning to face her from the open doorway, “you really don’t know me very well, do you?”

  ****

  “Up against the wall,” Officer Garcia said, “palms flat against it, feet slightly apart.”

  Already been arrested, Peter thought, restraining himself from saying so. What gives?

  But he didn’t ask the question aloud. After giving up his cherry to the anonymous Amazon and then being beaten again, he wasn’t much afraid of what might follow. He complied.

  They all did, and they found themselves, due to the shape of the room, in a tight semi-circle: Peter, Buddy, Cassidy, Emma Jo.

  “On the outside,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia said, setting another surgical-style tray behind them, upon which she arranged several small objects Peter couldn’t make out from his position, “people have taken to calling you the ‘Punishment Club.’ It is as good a name as any, I think, although I had something different in mind. And now, after this last bit of foolishness, I have no doubt that name will stick. How many viewers, Officer Kersey?”

  Before she answered, Peter stole a sidelong look at Buddy, whose head was downturned (as usual) but wore a satisfied smile. I belong, that smile seemed to say. I am one of the gang.

  Bet your striped ass, you are, Peter thought, you goddamned lunatic. Throwing yourself under the bus like that—and for nothing, really. But right now, if called upon to do so, Peter would have taken a bullet for him.

  “Whoa, boss,” Officer Kersey said, “we’re at twenty-five mil with a steady uptick. Lots of new subscribers, too. That is
not bad for a first session.”

  “Yes,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia said. “That will be that, then. I was going to call you my Horses of the Apocalypse, and I had these custom labeled last night after meeting you, all based on first impressions.”

  And now, Officer Garcia was giving over a jar of that ass cream to one of the raffle winners—the older woman, in fact—and had quietly started giving her instructions on its application.

  “I see that you are all still suffering,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia said, coming to Peter first, holding in her hand four bits of thick, pink rubber.

  Peter looked down the line. Again, yep. Not a dry eye in the house.

  “You shall each need to bite down on one of these. Yes. You, too, Emma Jo. This stuff is more intense than what I applied to your lovely bottom yesterday, but its healing power is also proportionately greater. I would not send that perfect plum home with any unsightly lines on it.”

  The old woman had the jar now. She knelt, eye level with Peter’s bare backside.

  Nurse Reyes-Garcia stood right in front of him. “Open,” she commanded simply.

  Peter opened, and she showed him the bit before placing it. She read the label aloud:

  “Cheeky.”

  Before he could object, in went the bit, forcing an interrupted, “Hey—arff,” from him.

  Behind each of the prisoners now knelt one of the tour guests: men behind female prisoners, women behind male. All worked cream into their latex-gloved hands, each from a separate jar of healing accelerant.

  One by one, in went the bits. And so, Buddy became “Bashful,” Cassidy got “Precious,” and Emma Jo, without objection, bit down on “Feisty.”

  “This will hurt,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia said, “but the relief that follows will be greater than the first pain, and it will come swiftly. Hold on, please. This will be the first application of three, so that all of our guests may have a turn.”

  General whimpering. Peter found himself, quite surprised, contributing to it.

  Then the hands.

  Then—muffled screaming. Peter’s hands clenched into fists. The burning was unbelievable, akin to what he imagined actual fire would have felt like, and it sought out his every pore, lighting him with a thousand or more tiny flames. But he did as he was told. He held on. He bit like he wanted to tear the rubber in half. They all held position, howling behind the bits.

  And the pain simply … melted away.

  Peter huffed, drooling, eyes still wide from the shock.

  “Very good,” Officer Garcia said. Then, calling to the crowd, “Next four.”

  ****

  “And aren’t you a pretty little bitch?” Tamara said to her computer screen.

  On it, the prep school senior picture of Sierra Evelyn Lavallee, taken eighteen months ago, smiled happily at her. Her short, bob-cut black hair was parted in the middle, her eyes of deepest blue suggesting the possibility of colored contact lenses. Fake, like her innocent appearance.

  Next to it, Counselor Paige Jaqueline Lavallee, her public record badge photo. In it, she wore a stiff gray pantsuit and an expression of such icy indifference that her face might have been cut from glass and painted over. Nevertheless, there was no doubt that she looked very much the older version of the girl. An aunt, mother—something. Probably.

  The defense lawyer in her spoke up automatically. Doesn’t make anyone guilty of anything.

  From downstairs, the spawn called up to her. Needed help with his math homework.

  “Down in a minute,” she answered back distractedly, projecting her voice without taking her eyes off the screen. What kind of a jackass for a teacher gave homework to third graders on a weekend?

  Then, answering the defense lawyer half of herself, Yeah. Right. This is it, Tammy. Just have to lock it down.

  Tamara also had several others she could check out, in fact. Vince had said to ignore all of the matches on common names like Johnson, Brown, Smith, etcetera—there were just too many of them—but Tamara had asked for them anyway. But this name, Lavallee, had to be checked out first, and not only for the relative uncommonness of the name.

  Tamara was willing to bet a recruiter for the Office of Behavior Reformation would have access to all kinds of government encryption software. She might even be able to lay her hands on, say, a high-end scrambler, a decoder-proof voice modulator, perhaps a digital cloaker for IP addresses.

  But the critical evidence—the “Dare Dungeon” chat screen transcript and the video of the meeting itself, taken from all four of the defendants’ devices—was controlled by the investigative branch of the Office of Behavior Reformation. Paige Lavallee’s branch.

  The four versions of that video had been made available to her via a link and a password to the OBR’s evidence archive server. It was impossible to download; it could only be accessed. Tamara scrolled down her bookmarks, praying that the link and the password would still work for her. If it didn’t, she’d have to request a copy of it from the authorities, and in order to get to the right people there, she’d have to get on the phone with…

  Abigail McCreedy and Stuart Knowles. The prosecutors. The assholes who’d done in the kids—her kids—in the first place, and who remained at the head of the “ongoing investigation.” The two people responsible for getting more transitionals condemned to ritualized public shaming than anyone else. If she wanted information, they’d demand to know why.

  Or she could get more help from Vince, who’d offered his continuing services.

  The link wasn’t in her bookmarks anymore. It wasn’t that it didn’t work. It wasn’t even there.

  I didn’t delete that, she thought, frowning.

  Nevertheless, it was gone.

  Jesus Christ. They did it—whoever “they” are.

  Downstairs, more complaining from the spawn. She sighed, answered the call. She could spend her whole Saturday trying to get justice for these kids. Not a moment of it would feel wasted, even if she failed.

  Or she could take half an hour and help her actual child with his homework.

  ****

  At one fifteen, Ernie Morse excused himself from his friends’ company—truthfully claiming class at one thirty—and ambled as casually as he could out of the Chesapeake Brew and Chew. He’d hardly touched his crab legs. He’d finished less than half of his beer.

  Kevin Carter hadn’t said who’d given him access. He hadn’t offered up any real information of any kind. He hadn’t even confessed that he’d been half of the face in the Dare Dungeon, even though, right about now, it was obvious that he was.

  All he had done was show Ernie and five other of their closest, most trusted friends the video.

  The truth about what happened to transitionals who ran afoul of the law.

  That fate had included his new roommate, Buddy Zimmer, who’d only been at school for a day. Who had been (sort of) his responsibility ever since Ernie had stuck up for him during the pledge vote.

  Kevin (and one of the Alpha Chi sisters, probably) had deliberately set all four of them up, then knocked them down like bowling pins. Then he’d bragged about it in the open, like the fool he was.

  Ernie picked up his pace across the quad. He hadn’t yet made up his mind where he was going.

  At twenty-two years old, a senior of no small standing at a prestigious university, Ernie was not one given to calling on Mommy and Daddy for help—but the thought was strong in his mind right now. They had the rights, and the secrets, of full citizenship. Among those who lived in the world of the majority, who could a guy trust more than his own folks?

  This secret, the one Kevin had tossed around so casually, would never keep. The others, even under all that laughing and beer drinking at the CBC, had to be thinking the same as him. If I don’t tell, I become guilty of viewing forbidden materials. I become a part of the crime.

  Ernie didn’t fancy himself a snitch. But, damn it, why had Kevin Carter put him in this position? He hadn’t asked for this.

  And you are still
responsible for Buddy. He’ll be back on Monday. You’ve got to live together.

  Plus, Buddy was one of the good guys. Ernie liked him. That goof, Peter, too. And those poor girls, Cassidy and Emma Jo, whose names might have eluded him if they hadn’t been plastered all over Kevin’s phone screen. What kind of a prick did that to innocent women he didn’t even know?

  Ernie stopped, rubbed his temples. At lunch, like the others, he’d laughed. He’d been taken so far off his guard, he hadn’t known what else to do. Now, if someone else were to spill the beans, in court, they’d testify that he, Ernie, had laughed about what had happened to his fellow students.

  If he were to go to class right now, he’d have to swing by the frat house first. All of his business administration notes were on the flip screen. He’d have a few minutes to think, going to get that. It wasn’t like anyone would be in the room with him, either, if he decided to call home. It was that or go straight to Dean Turner.

  Not yet, he thought, bringing his pace back up to a jog.

  He was due to call his mom, anyway. Only jerks forgot to do that when they were away from home. Ernie liked to think of himself as a good son, a good person.

  He held his stomach as he ran and prayed he wouldn’t puke out in the open where people could see.

  ****

  Lunch was had back in their cells. For Cassidy, whose now-rumpled jumpsuit was positively itchy, that was tuna salad on white; for Emma Jo (who got to sit this time), PB&J on white. Both got a bag of chips from the cafeteria vending machine as well. Fancy, Cassidy thought, dutifully standing, finishing up and tossing the chip bag and wax paper into the one trash basket she and Emma Jo shared.

  Emma Jo, meanwhile, took her time. She was eating one-handed. Her other hand was busy giving a continuous middle finger to the camera in the corner of the ceiling.

  “Emma Jo,” Cassidy said at length, when her friend showed no sign whatsoever of relenting from the gesture—not until her arm wore out at the shoulder. And she was a swimmer.

  “Yes?” Emma Jo answered innocently. Then, “You should try it. Helps with morale.”

  “Wouldn’t help with my morale.”