There was no need for words. This was the entertainment. A dozen houris might have danced unnoticed in the room. Hulda Cohen held the stage. The watching faces were rapt….
Reba had left the vanquished girl kneeling on centre stage. Dorinda reluctantly recognised the carnality of the picture. It was cruelly beautiful. Hulda sobbed, her face buried in her hands. Why the hands? To hide her shame… to mask her tears? To seek the darkness of the womb? Whatever their comfort, the whipped girl remained within its embrace a long time, her bowed body jerking with her sobs. When the gasping admissions of agony came to an end, the fingers widened and an anxious eye peered forth. Seeing no immediate threat, their owner let her hands fall and rest upon her thighs. She shifted so that she faced those who watched. She did not speak.
Dorinda was sure the wounded girl had nothing to say that she dared voice. She was obviously very ashamed of her condition and her capitulation. She would wait without hope.
Reba came forward. She held handcuffs, at sight of which the bowed girl winced.
"Give me your wrists and ask me to lock them in handcuffs," Reba wasted no words.
It was a tense moment. Those watching saw the battle wage within the whipped girl’s mind. Slowly she got to her feet and stood before the girl who held the whip. As though forcing some irretractable object into conformity she that part of herself to be prisoned.
"Please lock the handcuffs on my wrists." Her face was a mask of misery.
She visibly quivered under the bite of the steel. She had relinquished her small freedom. She could still resist, but uselessly. She look piteously and questioningly at her youthful mistress. She knew her ordeal was not done.
"Stick your bottom on display in any pose your wish. Then ask me politely to cane it." Reba was enjoying her power.
Dorinda cringed in sympathy. To ask for that you want least is a terrible thing for a girl to do. She invites not only pain, but shame.
Hulda Cohen was still examining the bands upon her wrists. Her hands were high before her. Her eyes almost mesmerised by that what linked them. The fresh demand struck her like a blow. For only a few seconds did she consider what she must do. Slowly, hating every moment, she bent and grasped her ankles with her captive hands.
"Please cane my bottom." Each word was laved with tears and hatred.
"After each stroke you will say ‘thank you’"
"I will say ‘thank you’" A dull monotone.
It was beautiful. It was pure artistry. It was cruel.
Reba was a mistress of her art. Dorinda wondered where the girl had picked up her skill and her grace. To watch her deliver each stroke was a study in flowing motion, a delight. Hulda suffered and delivered her thanks. But her writings and sounds of distress intensified with each blow so that the end was inevitable. She fell writhing and crying to the floor. "I can’t…. I can’t. It’s no good." She crawled to Hakim’s feet. "Please kill me," she asked flatly. "I cannot do these things you demand."
He pushed her sideways with his foot as one does a dog. Reba grasped the hair of the bent head and dragged its owner back to the center of the floor. She was offered brandy which she drank avidly.
"Stay here."
When Reba returned she led by the hand a man. He was clearly the village idiot. A huge beaming vacant smile. Dorinda guessed he had played this part before. His roving gaze settled upon the naked girl who would find her deepest shame in servicing him. He stood gawping.
"You know what to do, bitch."
Hulda knew. In wild despair she buried her face in her shackled hands. Her head shook negatively. "No… No… oh no!"
The whip played upon her already straited nakedness. Reba cared not where she struck, but applied her aim to whatever part of the naked body and legs its agonised squirmings presented. The half-wit watched the proceedings with satisfaction. To him it may have been a familiar prelude. His chin became moistened with saliva. He knew himself an object to which victory was assured.
When Hulda had salved her honour with the whip, she thrust out her fettered hands in surrender. Reba immediately stepped away and joined the audience.
The shamed girl looked at no one, but immured herself and her vision in the task before her eyes. Disdainfully she pulled at the nondescript garment and dragged into site the rigid thing that was to be the instrument of her abasement. The idiot grunted and grinned at all present as though inviting them to share his good fortune. Hulda Cohen took the ugly thing within her mouth.
She did what she had to do with great competence, even coping adequately with the grand finale. Expelling the now clean penis from her lips, she looked at Reba. But the creature she had pleasured was engrossed with her. His idiot hands fondled her breasts, played with her hair and traced the contours of her face as though to familiarise himself with the source of such ecstasy as she had given him. Reba smiled knowingly at a scene wellplayed.
"Again," she instructed.
Perhaps it was no more than Hulda had expected. She took a quick glance at the whip, then resignedly resumed her humiliation. Her subject gasped with joy and clapped his hands.
When he was, at last led away Hulda Cohen remained kneeling, her eyes focused on the rug before her. She was a girl to whom too much had happened. She was numb with despair. If hope had germinated in her mind it was soon shattered.
"You will stand with your legs spread very wide. You will clasp your hands at the back of your neck. You will stand thus, while I whip your cunt," Reba directed pleasantly.
The kneeling girl got stiffly to her feet. Her eyes mirrored her disbelief at what she had heard. In mute appeal she sought the faces of Hakim and the girl whose function to her still was an enigma. In Dorinda’s she saw infinite sympathy. In Hakim’s only implacability and satisfaction with Reba’s competence. She shook herself as though dazed. Then obeyed her instructions.
Again the eroticism was overwhelming. The pose itself provocative enough. But the handcuffs and the marks of the whip and the cane endowed the exposed nudity with a quality deserving of immortality on canvas. After a lingering look at those who held her in their power, the victim lifted her gaze above their heads and waited.
Dorinda need not have wondered aghast at how female flesh could be expected to stand for further slashing. Reba had the matter will in hand. The curving strokes with the full force of an arm were set aside. The arc of a downward cut was discarded for more subtle employment of the thong. Standing at the requisite distance from the target Hakim’s servant brought the leather flickering up from the floor to bite with its tip and snap in small licks at the open sex and loins.
Hulda had courage. She winced, she cringed, she twisted her body. But she held her pose. Shaming and hurtful as the new infliction was, it was probably less awful than her expectation. It was also a test of Reba’s skill and accuracy. They stood the test. Before long she gave another command. "Turn your back to us. Same pose."
The victim obeyed. Dorinda shrank in her own knowledge of what would come. Now the last sought out the topmost crevice of the ‘V’ and spent itself within. Hulda yelped and cried, but once again endured.
"Do what you like. Stand or hold yourself in whatever way you please. I shall whip you as I choose."
In it’s way the cruellest of all. Now there was decision. Now each move would invoke the fear of revealing an unsuspected vulnerability. Each movement would enhance shame. A cat and mouse which ended before the general’s chair: a weeping crouched girl across whose bent back the lashes still fell in rhythmic cadence.
"Please… Kill me. I do not want to live." Without theatre. A cry in truth from the heart.
"You will live a long time, my dear," said general Hakim.
That night it was Hulda Cohen who slept in Dorinda’s cell.
Corporal Kahdin was apologetic. No handcuffs. They were too much of the West. Today was of the East. The saboteur maiden was to be executed without comfort. She must be bound with rope, as painfully as possible. Dorinda shrugged. "I’m all yours," she said playfully. "Do what you please with me. I’m paid for."