"Much whip," her charge agreed. The in mischief: "Much bad girl."
Her servant viewed her with a new respect.
"I knew what was to happen to me the next day. Had I not written it in the letter? I stood with my arms tied high and wide. They took great care that the bands of cord round my wrists were very tight. They even took close ups to show how securely my hands were held."
Thalia chuckled. "I have learnt since that such pictures are sold at good prices all over the world. No doubt my kidnappers saw this as a small extra perquisite of their operation."
"They did not raise my feet from the floor. Just made me stand well stretched. Then they got down to business: on the second day I was to be whipped. It was the second day! My whipping called for much care with the camera and the lights. They desired a sequence. First my nice back and bottom. Click – click! Then I screamed and leaped into wild and foolish motion as my little round bottom received a truly awful cut with a cane given me with all the force of a man’s arm. Such pain could not be! I knew I would die. But a girl does not die. I stood and quivered while my tormentors watched and waited for the stripe across my bottom to ‘ripen’. They wanted the weal to stand up well and become as scarlet as my blood could make it. Then, once mere, click – click -click."
"Actually I was lucky that they were so concerned with excellence. It gave me time to gather up my courage and avoid hysteria. They wanted good close pictures in glorious technicolor of each wound they placed upon my skin. They contrived a cumulative series with little Thalia’s marked rear view showing her first one, then two, then three, and so on… Lovely scarlet stripes on golden flesh. Some had started to go purple before they were finished with the last of them. The camera faithfully recorded my martyrdom. Those awful lights made me cringe. I felt five times naked they sought out every curve and crevice."
"By now, of course, I was very much one qui vive. Looking back over one shoulder I saw the whip. The cane for my bottom, a whip for the rest of me. They explained they could get better camera effects if I bore two kinds of wounds. I also saw that whip raised and swung in a truly terrible slashing swipe. I turned away at the very last moment and bit my lip and tensed against the blow. When I came back from the pain they were admiring my wound very technically, even tracing it with a rough finger so that I cried out again. Click – click."
"These men were former competitors who were jealous of my superior business acumen," Mr. Rabin explained helpfully.
"They click-clicked away until they had me beautifully latticed with a total of ten wounds. Had my flesh not been so young, I would have borne them for years, perhaps for life. They had spaced the bars across my skin with neat effect so that each stood out to be counted. The rest of my day was a repetition of the first:"
"The agenda for day number three had me set wondering. Whilst never having experienced one of the two, they were of a nature so frequently dealt with in fiction and history that I had an awareness of such things. Number three was different. First, my hands we tied behind my back: this way, by the way. I thought they never would get through with all the trails and errors and experiments. The click-clicking became frantic. The method they finally settled on was the worst of the lot. My hands palm to palm, wrists tightly corded together and a leather strip round my elbows drawing them together so they touched. It hurt horribly. It also stuck my chest out front. Next they made me spread my legs and tied my ankles down to rings in the floor. Tight, tight! Click, click… It was the most shaming posture yet. What they did then shamed me even more. Each man sucked at one of my nipples."
Thalia shrugged in recognition of something done that could not be undone. With a wry grin she continued her story. "I was at the age where a girl becomes very much aware of the assets, bestowed upon her by nature. Giggling explorations with the girls and with myself – ever since puberty – had indicated the quite remarkable possibilities of friction and suction on the female breast. We were intrigued to discover how hard and erect the little dears could pop up with a bit of help. Mine got that bit of help now. When the men were through with them they were larger and harder than I had ever known or believed possible. A moment later I screamed my head off with a metal clip firmly biting into each nipple. Rapidly my abductors got busy."
"The clips were the kind you use to hold wads of paper. You squeeze on one side and the jaws open on the other. The come in different sizes and tensions. Those attached to me were not the biggest. But they hurt so much and stood out so rigidly from my breasts that I was quite sure they were slowly cutting off the two things I had so recently learned to treasure. My, how I screamed and begged! It did not seem possible that anyone would want to hurt so intimate a part of me. I expect that, in its way, the wearing of those metal horrors on my nipples was one of my first realisations of what it is to become a woman."
"I realised afterwards that the ensuing speed with which my tortured breasts were clicked at from all the usual angles resulted from a shared anxiety that my nipples should not mortify or sustain damage. They got them off as quickly as they could. They even massaged the scalded spots. I’m still not sure of their motives, but it made me howl some more. I spent the rest of the day looking down at myself to verify that my little rosebuds were still there."
"The villains led me to believe my little girl was wearing those wicked things all through the day. I much longed to kill them," said Mr. Rabin.
"The fourth day was the most shameful I have ever known. Perhaps the worst I will ever know, or any girl can know. By that time we were all looking for the ransom. It was explained to me that my letter and the daily pictures were being delivered by an airline employee so that there was no great space of hours between taking them and my father receiving them. Twelve to fifteen hours if all went well. So I was always filled with hope." The teller of the story shook her head and grimaced. "It was my first knowledge that hope can be worse than no hope. Hope is very cruel. It will not let you rest."
"I was tied in exactly the same way as the day before. I wept – even when they were tugging at the cords and strap. I had discovered that to have the elbows held like that all day is a very terrible torture too, even though it seems so harmless. Besides, I was fearful of the clips again… my letter had not gone into detail beyond the third day…"
"The produced a leek. You know what a leek is. Like a very large spring union but with more stem and flat green leaves. Even when I saw it I did not guess it’s purpose. I was very inexperienced in such matters."
"I could see they were very amused. They took much care shaving off the root bits to make it smooth and round so that it cam to look much like the pestle used by apothecaries in pounding out their prescriptions. They then anointed it with Vaseline… Well, you know what they did with it." Thalia made a gesture of infinite disgust. "I was deflowered by a leek. I lost my maidenhood to a vegetable! They were gentle enough with their merchandise. But it hurt me terribly and I was deathly afraid. I made a lot of noise and tried to struggle, but could hardly move. I was held beautifully for their purpose. They pushed it in as far as they dared. I was quite sure it had gone right into my tummy. So there I was. You can make your own mental picture of what I looked like with my feet spread wide and those green leaves sprouting out of my sex. I took one long fascinated look at myself and then refused to lower my eyes again. I turned my eyes this way and that while they clicked away with camera and lights. They were still busy when a very English voice said gruffly: "Yer can’t that there ‘ere, y’know."
"He was one of the largest policemen I have ever seen. Had I been able to, I would have flung myself into his ample arms."
"My kidnappers had other ideas. They dived at him and the doorway he barred. One of them drew a knife. I was shocked when the constable stepped to one side and let them through. There ensued a considerable commotion and shortly they were marched in again by two even bigger members of the law. They were now both handcuffed. I had never seen felons handcuffed before. They looked so absolutely right."