The Punishment Club

by D. A. Maddox

  All normal. All prescribed punitive emotional stresses.

  Silently, all four found each other with their eyes before the boys were even halfway there. Curious, it was only eye contact, compassion and friendship, no ogling each other’s private bits—not even the cursory glances cops often made who regularly saw transitionals in this predicament.

  “You go up one at a time,” she advised her charges, still leading Buddy by the arm. “Different end locations for each on this excursion. Ah, here we are. I think I can take these cuffs off without fear of anything bad happening. Yes, Buddy?”

  Sobbing, Buddy nodded. Two feet away, Emma Jo’s demeanor changed entirely. She bore up a little more in Buddy’s presence. It’s okay, she mouthed to him.

  When his cuffs were off, he went to her and melted into her waiting embrace. Nurse Reyes-Garcia sighed, didn’t stop them. She hoped Buddy wouldn’t poke Emma Jo with his man-rod by accident and explode all over her.

  These four are not guilty of anything so terrible, she thought. I do not think I shall have them in the arena tomorrow after all.

  She couldn’t spare them punishments, and she’d learned some time ago not to bother going to Doctor Cossack for an early discharge from sentence, but she was in charge of what punishments were to take place. She took ideas as well, particularly from her husband (quite creative in his own right), but she had the final say.

  As soon as Peter was free, Cassidy followed Buddy’s example and collapsed into Peter’s arms.

  Moments later, she had to separate them. The elevator bell dinged. The door slid open, and the crew waiting on the ground floor created quite the surprise for the old guy who’d come only to stock the vending machines on the studio level.

  Alejandro led Emma Jo into the elevator, and the door closed them in together.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Familiars

  “You like him,” Sally said knowingly, dumping her cafeteria tray.

  Emma Jo rolled her eyes. Dumped what was left of her own lunch, then followed Sally to the return station. “So what? Everyone likes Mr. Hadley. I’ve got a pulse, same as the rest of you.”

  Passing her tray off, turning, Sally teased, “But you’ve got it bad.”

  “Hardly,” Emma Jo said, dismissing that load of hooey out of hand. “Guy’s got to be five, six years older than us. Probably married, too.”

  From the cafeteria, they took the conversation outside onto the concrete walk that led to the science building.

  “He’s not married,” Sally teased some more.

  “Not that it matters,” Emma Jo challenged in return, “but how would you know that?”

  “Checked his profile page.”

  Emma Jo stopped. After one more step, Sally did, too.

  “Sally, you can’t do that. That’s—”

  “Against the honor code? Violation of the rules?”

  “Yes! You’ll—”

  “Get in trouble?” Sally finished for her again. “Emma Jo, you should try it sometime.”

  “What? Spy on a teacher’s profile page?” Not likely. Not that she was interested, but even if she had been, it wasn’t worth the community service hours, the blemish on her perfect record. “Sally, I do not like him like that.”

  “No,” Sally said, shaking her head. “I mean in general. Getting in trouble. Do you good.”

  ****

  For a moment, Emma Jo was tempted to pray for death. Heart attack, indoor lightning, spontaneous fucking combustion, didn’t matter. Anything to spare her from this.

  “Stand on the floor markers,” Officer Garcia said, pointing. “Remain still and do not speak while we calibrate the laser labeler and set up the special transmission feed. Today, Miss Swanson, this hour, you are a model—an object for use in instruction. Any deviance from this role will be met with immediate and severe discipline. If you understand, give me a thumbs-up, please.”

  Emma Jo, at present, had both hands behind her back, holding the hospital gown together even though there were no students in the classroom seats. Not yet. There was only Officer Garcia, a waiting camera crew of three (all men) and him.

  Mr. Hadley. Emma Jo hadn’t seen him in a year. And she didn’t see him very well right now, either. Her vision, even with her glasses on, was a wet blur.

  She went to the two painted feet on the floor and placed her own feet over them.

  On her other side and just slightly behind her, Mr. Hadley regarded her with his head cocked to the side. “Oh, Emma Jo,” he said, his voice tender, soft, and mildly disapproving. “This is so disappointing. I never would have thought you, of all people, could be involved in something like this.”

  She opened her mouth to answer, to explain that—

  “One word,” Officer Garcia reminded her, “and you will be punished, Emma Jo, and right here where your former teacher may observe. I do not wish to do so. You will accept, in silence, all judgments made about you without retort. If you understand, give me a thumbs-up. You may weep. That is both understandable and acceptable.”

  She let the gown go at the back, put one hand over her eyes and mouth to muffle her crying, and used the other to give the thumbs-up. She endured the appraising stare of Mr. Hadley over her bared back and buttocks.

  Officer Garcia stepped up, took her glasses, and offered her a handkerchief. Emma Jo made use of it. This is awful, her mind raced. This is unimaginable, horrific…

  —kind of hot…

  No!

  Mr. Hadley looked up from her, past her, to Officer Garcia. “May I?”

  “You may, Mr. Hadley,” Officer Garcia said. “Miss Swanson, we will now have your hands at your sides, please.”

  Emma Jo put her hands down, arms rigid at her sides, still gripping the handkerchief. She gave Mr. Hadley the most pleading look she had in her when she felt his fingers in the knot at the top of the gown.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You brought this on yourself.”

  Slowly, gently, he pulled the string. Emma Jo felt the loops shrink, then come undone. With both hands, he eased the gown off her shoulders. Her hand with the handkerchief went to her chest, desperately pressing the gown against her body, praying for a reprieve.

  Officer Garcia plucked away the handkerchief and forced her arm back down. The gown fell to her feet. She blinked, disbelieving. She forced herself to keep her hands by her sides, even when Mr. Hadley stepped right in front of her, chin in his hand, examining her top to bottom.

  “You’re very pretty, Emma Jo,” he said. “Try to calm down, all right?”

  I’ll try, she thought, deliberately slowing her breathing. Kind of hard to be okay with this. Why was she so warm down there?

  One of the cameramen slid his rig right up in front of her, between the front two tables of black stone, each of which had three metal stools on either side. The head of that camera, she saw, had twelve lenses arranged in a circle like a Gatling gun and also a larger lens at the center. Then she noticed the back one did as well. The third camera, just off to her right, was much like the ones Officers Kersey and Grant used.

  That’ll be the one for TV, she thought. What are the other ones for?

  Turned out, there was a fourth camera. This last Mr. Hadley took off his desk from the front of the classroom. It was only a small tripod, half a foot in height, conical in shape. The “camera” part was a rod at the top, a lens pointing straight up.

  “Keep your feet on the markers,” Mr. Hadley said as he placed the upward-pointing tripod between her legs. A small, electric whiz suggested the lens down there was autofocusing, dilating like an eyeball.

  “Be still, Emma Jo Swanson,” Officer Garcia said. “You are handling your punishment well. Please continue to do so.”

  Then the dozen lenses of the cameras before her and behind her started to twitch. Red dots of light flickered over her body, stuttering, blinking on and off, adjusting until they found the correct place: a hip, a shoulder, a nipple, her belly button, her clit…

  Und
er her, the light from the tripod fanned to a thin wave, reading between her legs as though her sex were a barcode. Mr. Hadley went to the classroom door while the machines calibrated. While they read her.

  “The students who have come here today,” Officer Garcia said, “are transitional male seniors from George Mason University. You will be helping them in the current module of their Making the Transition class: Functional Anatomy of the Opposite Sex. We are often called upon to do this when we have a subject whose corrective needs line up with a given set of curriculum schedules.”

  I am a living diagram. Her tears ebbed to a steady trickle. I am going to be studied.

  “We are also sharing the Consequences feed to thirty-six other schools who have scheduled this module for today. It is an important service to the community. Many will have never seen a female nude before in their lives. It is an important moment for them.”

  Hooray for public service, she thought as the students began to file in. This is so degrading.

  In they came, quiet but eager. More than one stopped, bug-eyed and stunned, at the doorway until their fellows urged them in. Stifled laughter. Whispers.

  There were six tables in all, two rows of three each. The front two filled up right away, a couple of the young men almost wrestling over a seat until Officer Garcia pointed one to this chair and another—disgruntled—to that one. In the end, there wasn’t an empty stool in the room. Tall boys, short boys, smiling boys, shocked boys, one who seemed embarrassed and could not, at first, stare at her directly.

  On the tabletops, mechanical clacking as triangulated screens rose up and anchored themselves into position. Each had a detachable stylus in a plastic slide holder, which the more zealous academics withdrew at once. The screens that Emma Jo could see from her vantage point were all the same, divided in three parts: Bar right, Emma Jo from the back; bar left, Emma Jo from the front; and the bottom bar, her undercarriage, shiny with the dew of her reduction and debasement.

  Where the laser dots appeared on her person, on the screen they were lines for fill-in-the-blank. Emma Jo could not help but wonder, as there were four separate blanks with arrows indicating the different parts of her vagina, if the boys had been given a word bank.

  Mr. Hadley came back to the front of the room and stood at her left, opposite Officer Garcia. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get started,” he said, giving her a squeeze that Emma Jo supposed was meant to be comforting. “So, for those of you here in the room from GMU, I’m standing in for Doctor Macklin today. My name is Mr. Hadley. Generally, I teach advanced chemistry and physics, but I do know enough on this subject to be going on with. And this is Emma Jo Swanson, a freshman at—”

  “A convicted criminal, for our purposes,” Officer Garcia cut in, forcing Emma Jo to catch a surprise sob in her throat, but just barely. “The reason you do not have a paid volunteer as a model today is that this session is part of her prescribed discipline for sexual mischief and misdemeanor criminal deviance. Do not spend your pity on her, for she shall be returned to the world soon enough with her debt to society paid and with a clear conscience. Also, unlike certain of her accomplices, Emma Jo is not being humbled in the presence of any of her classmates from her own school. So, young man in the front, do not waste the seat you have been given for your instruction. Eyes front, please. Your scrutiny will not kill her, for heaven’s sake.”

  The young man who had evidently sympathized with her plight now turned his head up with a sigh and beheld her. From you, it’s okay. At least you’re not being a creep about it.

  Like the man sitting next to him, who clapped him on the shoulder and laughed before redirecting his all-consuming gaze on Emma Jo.

  “So,” Mr. Hadley went on, pointing to this dot and then that one on Emma Jo’s body, poking her only slightly, touching her nonetheless, “we begin with a quick diagnostic of prior knowledge to determine how much ground we have to cover.”

  His finger appeared on screen, poking her shoulder, a breast. A quick finger dusting of the nipple, drawing it out, making it hard.

  Mr. Hadley, please—stop.

  He smiled at her. Did the other one as she stood there, shivering with exposure and surrender.

  “See how many of these you can correctly label on your own,” he went on to the class, “and remember, this is independent work, so no talking.”

  The students, styluses in hand, commenced to labeling.

  ****

  She was, in all probability, nineteen years old. She’d graduated the year before him. Her name was Iris Call. She had long blonde hair, almond-brown eyes, and a perfect figure—a sylvan elf on loan from Tolkien’s Lothlorien, come to Earth as an ambassador of poetry and song. She always had a flower with her, somewhere, at least at the poetry readings: Tucked behind her ear one day, poking out of a vest lapel on another, or maybe just a floral print shirt over her traditional denim skirt.

  Like Buddy, she was a regular at Cyber Mike’s Café. If it wasn’t poetry readings, it was singing and playing her acoustic guitar—almost always something old, like Simon and Garfunkel or Peter, Paul, and Mary. Every now and again, she’d play something she wasn’t supposed to, which was a virtual confession to the ownership of forbidden entertainment contraband. But no one ever reported her. At least, no one had yet. And at the readings, unlike Buddy, she always participated.

  Tonight, she’d floored the audience with a recitation of the proscribed “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”—or, rather, her version of it. In the final quatrain, she’d made a mistake—if mistake it was:

  “Then be not coy, but use your time.

  Live life. Be bold, not wary.

  For having lost but once your prime,

  Forever you may tarry.”

  She’d finished by flashing her bra to the audience before taking a bow to a mix of thunderstruck applause and laughter. She was so fearless.

  And she was coming his way.

  Buddy was seated, as was his habit, near the back at a table by himself, just enjoying the readings and the Wi-Fi and his gingerbread latte. He was bothering no one, checking the book club chat, answering anything interesting that popped up. As was also his habit (and a little sad, even to himself), he had some of his own poems in a small stack next to his laptop. He looked at them, between the others doing their thing on stage, often asking himself when he would take his turn. But he never did.

  Now Iris Call—who often came to him at night, but only in his dreams—pulled up a seat at his table and smiled. “Buddy Zimmer,” she said. “Junior. Tech-lit. Future programmer and,” she added with finger quotes at the end, “the guy who can quote just about any classic book or movie that’s ‘fit for public consumption’.”

  Iris Call, he answered in his mind. Goddess. All shall love you and despair.

  What he said was, “Ah, um, senior this year, actually. You’re … going to get caught sometime. You should be careful.”

  For a hot second, her gaze flitted down to his papers. He was about to reach for them, hide them, but then she returned her gaze safely to lock with his. “Here? Nah. No one here’s going to rat me out. Vive la Resistance. Anyway, you’ll get caught for something before I do, amount of time you spend online where Big Brother’s watching.”

  He snorted. He fumbled around in his mind for something to say. As usual, he came up short.

  “And if I do get caught, so what? I’m in the safety bracket till twenty-two. Be kind of fun to be caught, see what actually happens.”

  Buddy shook his head. “Are you serious?”

  She made a small air kiss at him from across the table. Then, quick as Houdini, she swiped up his papers and fled—back for the stage.

  ****

  When the elevator stopped, floor two, Buddy again moved his hands over his crotch. Matron hadn’t said he couldn’t, and she didn’t say so now. She gave the back of his neck a gentle squeeze.

  The door opened. Buddy caught his breath.

  “Breathe normally, Buddy
,” she said. “I swear, what is it with young people and the holding of breath?”

  The hall was empty. Doors all down it on either side, but empty. Buddy let his breath go.

  “How do you feel?” she asked, urging him forward.

  “Like … like a fool,” he haltingly replied, studying the floor in front of him, allowing himself to be guided, perhaps rather too aware of the presence of Officer Kersey following close behind with her rolling camera. “I feel silly, Matron. How do I look?”

  “Silly, yes, that is all in the plan,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia agreed. “Penitent. Handsome. You look exactly the part you should look, Buddy. Come, come, quick march.”

  She didn’t need to tell him twice. Both of his hands together were just shy of sufficient to cover his boner, which was so pronounced as to be uncomfortable. If he could just have two, three minutes to himself in a bathroom…

  And his ass, the backs of his legs. None of it, since getting the duct tape and wax treatment, had ever felt so exposed.

  She stopped in front of the third closed door to the right, turned him by the shoulders to face it. Behind it, Buddy could hear murmuring, the hint of voices distantly familiar—a drum being tested, a few tentative raps, nothing actually played.

  “Matron,” he said, his voice again nearly a wail. “No. No, please. Please.”

  “Put your hands down, Buddy. Expose your genitals.”

  He stared at the knob. He’d heard her, but he was paralyzed. Moments passed.

  “You have twenty seconds, Buddy. Do as I have told you, or I shall have you bent over the knee of the bongo player and request a performance of Babaloo.”

  Buddy let go of his erection, his organ blushing as deeply as the rest of him. Then he pulled the hat down over the front of his face as Nurse Reyes-Garcia opened the door.