When the lash struck this time, at least for the first few minutes it was sheer bliss, and she writhed like a serpent to catch the next stroke with her body. When the intensity of the flogging increased, and there was nothing but pain, Delila focused on the other side, on Briel’s gift, and her anticipated arousal.
“Cane her!”
The command jarred her from the mindless erotic stupor, the voice of the judge ringing out above the murmurs and gasps of her audience. The flogging was over, but she wasn’t untied this time. Instead, a bar was once again thrust at her hips so that she was awkwardly posed—posed so her crimson bottom could receive another punishment
Not seeing what was happening behind her, Delila’s only clue that the caning had begun came swift, a swoosh through the air, and then a searing pain that instantaneously made her shriek.
The leather lash was gentle compared with his. The administrator did not finish until there were six wicked cuts across her ass.
When she was untied and lifted from the dais, Delila was not as proud as she had been. Although she’d planned to gaze haughtily at Armand and the dark man at his side, there was no haughtiness left in her, so she averted her gaze while she was dragged away.
***
“You’re not going to learn, are you?” Briel said. She stood next to Delila, who was lying face down on the cold metal table in the sterile room. “You don’t act proud, you don’t swagger, and never do you smirk the way you did. Despite what you may be feeling, you must remain contrite, look contrite, act contrite and take your pleasure at another time.”
Delila said nothing.
Briel was not massaging her right off, but attending to two places where the skin on her bottom was broken from the cane. She winced when the disinfectant got inside the cuts.
“You’re lucky that you weren’t permanently marked. I’ve seen that, Delila Armand, and it’s not something you want.”
After the sting had died away, Briel returned to the treatment that she’d given her prisoner twice before, though this time she was more vigorous with her rubbing, her anger coming through her nurturing hands. She kneaded cream into the roughed up behind, and even dropped her hand between Delila’s legs. The humbled prisoner opened them voluntarily, hoping that she still warranted the lovely gift that she’d had the week before. Afraid to pleasure in it too much, however, she allowed herself to orgasm quickly, keeping the moans of pleasure subdued.
“You are a tramp, a fine one, but a tramp,” the matron said slapping her ass with a sharp spank.
Pulled from the table, Delila’s prison dress tossed over her body, she was returned to her cell, with no smiles or further affection from the woman.
Chapter Five
Delila: I was confused by the indecency of my lewd behavior: that I might be as wholly licentious as my judges indicated made me wonder what kind of woman I really was. I’d not been like this before Armand went away. It appeared that Rafferty had only begun to show me the depths of my depravity. Still, I couldn’t stop myself. I lived in the extremes of life now, nothing in-between. There was either incredible emptiness or the wildest rush of physical grief and joy imaginable. Sometimes, it seemed that there was no distinction between the pain and pleasure. It was simply sensation. And I craved that.
To compound my confusion, I couldn’t take my mind off the dark man who seemed so interested in my punishment, having appeared twice at my floggings, looking on with great interest. I confess I was fixed on his presence much more than I was on Armand, who seemed like nothing but a grim reminder of my unspeakable indiscretions, and the guilt that ravaged me. When I did chance to gaze at my husband’s eyes, I was seeing anger as much as grief. From one week to the next there seemed more anger each time, and I worried that Armand was about to change his mind about our reconciliation. Such guilt I bore.
Delila was decidedly more docile and contrite for her fourth flogging. The painful experience went along without incident, and for a flogging, it was the most brief, perhaps owing to the fact that there were several other recently convicted female prisoners that required their first experience with the lash. There was little attention paid to Delila Armand except by the two men, Armand and the one who was always dressed in black leather.
Chapter Six
Briel bound her wrists with cuffs, and then placed the ones on her ankles in preparation for the fifth flogging.
“I can feel your arousal already,” she said. There was the trace of a smile on her face, just a trace, something rare from the efficient matron, though Delila saw it clearly. Perhaps she was melancholy too, as well as kind. It was the last time.
Instead of pulling her charge into the waiting area adjacent to the courtyard as she had done four times before, this time Briel led Delila naked down a hallway and into a stark room. Inside, the matron motioned to a robe hanging on the wall.
“Use it if you get cold. You may have to wait a while.” With nothing more said, the woman was gone.
The time that ticked away wasn’t measured by a clock, but by her anxiety. Each minute gone, her apprehension increased. What more could her jailers do to her than the humiliations that she’d already suffered? Perhaps this new twist had something to do with her fifth flogging, and the two years of hard labor that would complete her atonement.
As cold as the matron suggested, she finally donned the robe. Just as she was settling into her thought again—”Delila Armand!” Jerked from her musing by a shrill female voice, a boorish woman led her from the sterile room into a well lit but small office that was brim full of desks piled high with papers, and a rows of green metal filing cabinets. Through a door on the far side, she was escorted to another office, this one less cluttered.
“This the one you want?” the woman barked her question to one of the State officials that Delila had often seen attending her, inspecting her, and no doubt making certain that the details of her sentence were meticulously carried out.
“Sit down, sit down,” the man said graciously. A wide smile appeared on his face, which shocked her.
Following his instructions, Delila sat down in a broad wooden chair, while the official sat for a minute and did nothing but stare at her.
He opened a file on his desk.
“This is your last flogging,” he announced as if she didn’t already know.
“Yes, sir,” she agreed with him to be polite.
“Yes, well … . you’ll be out my jurisdiction. I like to have some personal contact with the prisoners before they leave. Your file seems in order. Except for one unfortunate mutiny on your second flogging, you seemed to accord yourself properly for a prisoner of your station.” He smiled again, though this one had an unctuous quality about it, as if there was a great deal more that he hadn’t said and couldn’t wait to disclose. After a long pause, unnerving her with an evil looking gaze, he began again. “You’re to be assigned to your labor duties and shipped off tonight. I have here in your records that the General Initiator has recommended you to a re-training program in the Mining facility at The Far Ends Ridge.”
Delila shuddered—Far Ends an unhealthy place where the bitter earth was continuously ransacked for valuable materials and then left barren. The assignment was the worst she could imagine, but not unexpected. Tales of other convicted sex crimes offenders suggested it was a favorite place to send healthy young woman in the prime of life. The climate and work made them harrowing shrews before their sentence was complete. She’d heard that many never came back, though that was just a rumor.
“I have, however,” the official went on, “an opening in another re-training facility. However, since this is an independent company that contracts with the State, you’re required to be interviewed by the Overseer of this program before any decision can be made. We’re waiting for Degas now.”
“Degas?” For reasons Delila didn’t know, the name sounded familiar.
“Yes. He should be here in a second.”
How right the man was, as seconds later there
was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” the official called.
From the moment the door opened behind her, Delila felt a prickly sensation on her neck, as if whoever had crossed into the room was staring down at her with eyes the intensity of arrows. As he moved around her chair, Delila was shocked to find herself staring into the face of the dark man who’d attended her last floggings standing shoulder to shoulder with Armand, distracting her vision from her husband’s face.
“Ah, at last we meet,” he said, extending a welcoming hand.
“Formalities are not required here,” the official informed the polite man in black.
“I know that, but she has such lovely hands, I wanted to touch them myself,” he said.
In another life, Delila might have thought the man was flirting with her. In any event, he took her completely off guard with his courteous remarks, as well as the thundering effect his close proximity had on her. She was affected deep in the core of her body.
“This is Degas,” the official introduced her.
The man bowed just slightly as if being presented to royalty.
“Degas runs a garment factory in the north. The work would be as grueling as any such assignment should be, though I imagine it would be an improvement over the Far Ends.”
“I’ll have to inspect her,” Degas said.
“Remove the cloak,” the official instructed her.
“Shall I stand?” she asked timidly.
“By all means,” Degas replied.
While Delila stood, Degas leaned back against the heat register against the wall, his arms crossed in front of him, his eyes in the same dark stare she knew so well from her most painful moments with the lash.
Removing the cloak, she was naked again, all her personal assets exposed—and now in what seemed like a startling moment of intimacy.
“Turn around,” Degas instructed.
Beginning a slow three-hundred and sixty degree turn, she was stopped when her back was facing him.
“Bend over,” he ordered.
Complying with his instruction, Delila bared more of her private parts, and though Degas didn’t touch her, his stare was enough to send her shivering—a vicious sexual heat claiming her in mere seconds.
“That’s enough,” Degas informed her. He bade her don the cloak again and sit down.
When she was settled again in the wooden chair, the dark eyes that had captured her before were working their wicked ways with her, and so close now, she could hardly breathe for the fear and thrills that were taking control. “The work in my factory is indeed grueling, much will be demanded of you; though unlike other positions, there’s the opportunity to progress in my company into jobs that might be less strenuous. I offer hope, when there is none in other places.”
Even though Degas spoke as if he was truly interviewing her, Delila knew that he and he alone would make the decision on her assignment. No one would cross him, not even the State.
“Like all other re-training assignments, if you fail to live up to the quotas that are set, if you fail to comply with the rules, there are severe punishments. It might not surprise you that I liberally flog my incorrigible employees.”
No, that didn’t surprise her, but why was he telling her this, as if she had a choice where she’d spend her next two years?
“But,” he continued, “the factory does have its rewards.” The sound of his voice when he talked of rewards had a sly ring to it, volumes undisclosed—somewhere under the surface where Delila would never know how to find it.
For a moment, it was completely quiet, then Degas rose to his full towering height, and looked at the State official behind his desk waiting. “Have her collared and shipped on the train out tonight.” He nodded at Delila, all graciousness dispensed with, and he left the room without another word.
***
Delila: My last flogging was the worst, not because of the pain— that I was getting used to, and almost welcomed. My floggings were a relief from the endless monotony of everything that was in-between my sessions with the administrator and his lash. I was being purged, and the justice of that I accepted at face value. Perhaps with this ending, the dreaded guilt would fall way. What was more difficult for me to make sense of was the abiding arousal that followed, that allowed me to find pleasure at Briel’s hand.
Yet, it was not the pain or the justice or the resulting pleasure that was so horrifying about the fifth flogging. It was the loneliness. Degas wasn’t there at all, and Armand, when he’d stayed to the bitter crying end before, this time, he left just after the first lashes struck my backside, and I didn’t see him again. I have no idea why he left so brusquely, and of course there could be no explanations. I wouldn’t be seeing him again for three months, and I felt utterly alone.
Chapter Seven
Collared and in chains, Delila arrived on a midnight train at a northern most colony of the State where Degas’s factory was located. After a short journey overland to a dock beside gently lapping water, she was pulled down into the stinking hold of a scow and then transported across some body of water to an island, where Degas’s factory stood, half ancient monolith to older worlds, and half a result of the haphazard concoction of bricks, motor and boards common from such architecture in the less advanced North.
There was a mysterious quality about the Island, for its lushness defied the region’s otherwise bleak aspect. However, Delila saw none of this, since she was briskly spirited away from the boat to the factory before her eyes could adjust to the odd pre-dawn light about her.
Allowed to sleep for a few hours, she was awakened at the first light of dawn and led to a communal shower where she and other Sex Crimes offenders were massed together in the tiled enclosure and virtually hosed down by sharp blasts of water and soap and then water again. Factory issue clothes were knee-length muslin underwear, a plain brown dress and sturdy shoes with thick cotton stocks. Prior to beginning her assigned duties in the garment factory, she was inspected once more, this time by a young man that could have been no more than twenty though his age gave him no more charm than if he’d been sixty years.
After having already dressed for the day, she was made to strip naked. Becoming used to officious men playing too long with her genitals to be simply inspection, it was something she tried to ignore as she was laid out on tables, or made to bend over in precarious positions while her private orifices were examined with latex gloved fingers and metal probes. On this occasion however, the quality of the inspection was far less invading, the young man’s hands were almost caressing as he intruded on her private stores. He was tentative as a new lover might be. Though his demeanor remained detached and bureaucratic, she appreciated his gentleness.
From the inspection room she was taken to her workstation by an efficient overseer. Her job was to sew simple seams of pants on an ancient machine, and then transfer the bulky garments to the next workstation and another woman like herself, clothed in brown, with straight, stringy hair and a lifeless look on her face.
The requirements of her job were stringent. What seemed like unreasonable quotas made every woman bend over their machines with a diligent fervor. Apparently, Degas’s threats of punishment were real. Though there was no real conversation between the women in her unit, there were murmurings, faint smiles occasionally, and many raised eyebrows, especially when a girl would be led off by a matron or task master, only to come back later with a face swollen from crying.
“She’s been beaten,” Delila whispered to herself as much as anything, when she saw one woman return from a punishment.
“Beaten, no. But re-trained,” she heard the sarcastic reply in her ear. “Likely caned on the ass.”
Two days later, Delila noticed the caned woman’s buttocks while they were showering. Indeed, there were stripes, painful looking ones that would etch her skin for days before they would finally fade away. Delila treated the sight with an odd longing, again that bizarre lust ignited by the idea of having her flesh
so tormented.
One day as the inmates were exercised in the open-air yard, Delila watched as two matrons entered and took one prisoner to a wood beamed sawhorse in a corner of the enclosure. Thrusting her over the thick rough wood, they held her hands and legs on either side of the sawhorse while a third matron appeared with a flat wood stick. After baring the woman’s behind, the matron smacked her ass dozens of times until it turned bright red and the woman was howling.
“An example,” some woman whispered to no one special. Perhaps it was a warning, even her brief explanation a deliberately placed message to others that might violate the compound rules. A threat for Delila too, perhaps. However, she could not mistake that rush of sexual expectancy that made her almost pant with need. Was her guilt so strong that she yearned for more? Or was it simply pleasure exciting her?
***
Despite the few odd moments of stolen pleasure, which occasionally traversed Delila’s body at such provocative sights, there was little else to find stimulating in the new environment. Life in the garment factory was bleak at best. There’d be no happiness, no sweet songs, no camaraderie between inmates, not even a melancholy wistfulness allowed in this treacherous place.
Why Degas had lured her into this seething lair of emptiness made little sense. Indeed, for all his attentiveness to her during her floggings and at the interview, she didn’t see him once during the first weeks of her re-training.
Chapter Eight
Delila giggled.
It was verboten such levity, but there were other giggling women at their machines. The small break in the eternal tension caused by the flip remark of a new offender—so out of character with the serious atmosphere of the workhouse—everyone who heard it was amused. Except for the overseer.
Outer Island Page 3