I had forgotten I wore clothes. It is just as Terry and Dorinda forget that they are naked. Now I was to be naked too. How clever Mike was! To make me do it in front of him, and that absurd Cuthbert, and drooling Alfred, and lusting Myron. I did not want to do it like this even in front of girls. I feared to lose my courage and my poise along with the bits of cloth I must discard.
It was Mike who compelled me. So I kept my eyes on him alone as I did away with my last defense. The others were not there: just he and I. It was easier. I stepped out of my dress, my poor little slip of a dress that had cost so much.
This time I read the message of the flicker of the cane. Mike was so clever, so cruel. He would more than strip me naked. Obediently I tossed my dress overboard to the hungry sea. I was a girl who had no need of clothes, not the right to wear them. Thus a slave is born.
Certainly now my naked flesh would be caned. How fitting a finale! Would I receive five, or ten? Or would I be broken to a grovelling nothing? As I tossed my last precious possession over the rail I sought the order that would shame me.
"Round here, miss."
It was Myron. How incongruous the respectful, Miss! Yet his voice held no irony. How perfectly natural that a girl guest on the "Quest" be tortured. He held pliers and very thin wire. I held out my hands and pretended interest. But it was not pretence. I was curious, along with the fear. A single loop twisted tight on each wrist. But not so that it cut. After the first securing twists were done a smaller loop was fashioned firmly, the loose ends snipped away. Very neat and tidy. I wore thin wire bracelets with a ring. Mike broke the long silence.
"Still game to climb that rail, honey?" Oh so suave!
So I need not bend down. Bending down suddenly became precious. I relinquished it with sorrow.
"Where would you like me, darling?" I made it sounds as though I could hardly wait to feel the thing between my legs.
"Can?t risc losing you overboard," Mike assured me jovially. "Fixed something special."
It was simple. It was special. It was all mine. Two trestles. Between them a plank, on edge. Three feet from the deck. It would destroy me. I had seem them used. Yet I had gaily promised to climb aboard. I kept my promise. Very gingerly, very cautiously I climbed upon my perch. Once astride my legs clamped tight. I leaned my weight upon my hands. They buckled the anklets. How awful when they stretched my legs to either side! I knew I would split. So far. So tight. Now I could never leave the thing on which I sat. I could not even fall. But, still, I rested my weight upon my hands. When my hands were taken from me I would start to die.
My hands were taken. I did not die. Girls do not die when tortured. The torturer prefers them alive Clips snapped into the loops on my wrists. Up went my hands and arms spread wide and high. Much care was taken. I was to lose all freedom. But my wrists must not be cut. Ropes were made snug, everything shipshape. A talkative young lady was being punished.
I have told you of my knowledge of this that was being done to me. It has many names. Usually the girl?s wrists are tied behind her back so that her hands cannot help her as she sits and longs to die. But Mike?s way was worse. It would be! Ith my hands fastened high I was cruelly exposed. I had to sit straight, my breasts in shaming prominence, my weight where I did not wish it. But the mental torture was the wire upon my wrists. Had it been rope, how gladly I would have tugged on it to ease the pain below. But not the wire! My first tentative tensioning told me to desist if I did not want the blood running down my arms. I would hold my hands high. They would tire. I could not ease them. They could not ease me. I must hold tense. I must sit.
I sat upon the plank that was between my legs.
Everyone had a good look at me. Then, save for the girls, my audience dispersed.
"Mike won?t come near you," Terry told me. "If he did it would give you a chance to plead."
Mike thinks of everything.
"Should we leave you alone, darling?" Dorinda was troubled. "You must be in agony and we can?t help."
They could not help. Their hands were handcuffed behind their backs.
"They let us wander," Terry explained. "We can?t get into mischief. When they feel like it they fuck us."
The hated word! Or the beloved word! It could not be done to me like this. Perhaps it would never be done to me. I hurt too much to live. My four-letter words were consumed by fire. . "If you go, will the others leave me alone?" It was hard to speak. "No, they won?t, Dorinda said miserably. "We won?t kid you. You?re on display. They can do what they like with you the same as they can with us. The way you sit is Mike?s idea of showing you who?s boss. He can whip us anytime, and he will. But he likes special ideas. He calls?em cute notions."
"Oh damn!" said Terry. "Here?s Cuthbert now."
The youth with little chin carried a hammer, a couple of nails, a square of pasteboard and a whip. I was sure all were bad. He was happy with his word. I prayed his acne might be chronic. He showed me the little sign. It read: "Please whip me." He nailed it to the plank on which I sat. On the other side he drove a nail and hung the whip. He reached out and pinched my left nipple. He walked jauntily away, whistling.
"They did it to me," Terry said. "Cept I didn?t have to sit. They whipped me when they felt like it. Not much. Just enough to keep me worried. They did a bit of the other too. But it?s awkward standing up with the girl tied, so Dorinda got most of that business."
Incredible Terry! Forever chaste. The eternal maiden. Could I bear torture? She told me that I could. We were just three girls to whom pain would happen. We would dilute it with our screams. Sometimes in between we would be happy. Was this slavery? It was slavery under Mike Santos. I was alone. They knew what was best. How darling they were. I wondered, glumly, how I looked. Was I still beautiful, or was I stretched so that I was no longer a girl. No longer anything. I could not get a good look at where I hurt. The pain was so enveloping that I was not sure exactly where the plank sliced me. I believed it cut everything we cherish. The sophisticated Miss Rabin knew great shame. Mike had contrived shrewdly this thing that I must suffer. How I hated the threatening wire upon my wrists.
"Bit hard on the cunt, eh, miss?"
It was Alfred the cook. He bent over and examined where I sat, as interested in the mechanics as I was.
"Please let me loose. I can?t stand it."
He nodded sympathetically. "Nobody?s whipped you yet?"
The same thought had entered my mind. "Please take a message to Mr. Sandos. Tell him I?ll do anything. Tell him I?m sorry. Tell him I absolutely must be taken off this thing. It?s injuring me."
He took the whip off the nail. My eyes followed it, hypnotized. "Please don?t whip me. I?m hurting enough already. Please…!"
Without noticeable emotion he cut the thong up under my strained thigh. I screamed. Nothing should hurt so much. It was a nightmare of the unexpected. He cut my other thigh in the same way, the thong curling full circle, its tip finding a speck of blood. I screamed again.
"Makes lovely marks like that, it does," said Alfred conversationally.
"Like you been wearin? your nylons too tight and too long, only better."
He grinned amaibly. "Bet you thought I?d give you a good cut across your back?"
He was right. That is what I had expected. "Please get the captain," I sobbed. I had not been able to keep back the tears. I was in full retreat.
"How come you never been whipped?" Alfred had time on his hands.