Piper's Price

by D. A. Maddox

  The mahogany suspension beam was in the shape of an upside-down “U”, seven feet tall and equally wide, with triangular stabilizer struts at its base. Lowered from the ceiling by wire, it was a perfect fit for Robbie—and its restraints found his ankles and wrists as though by magnetism. As they lifted him, limbs spread as if he were about to be drawn and quartered from a standing position, the outermost circle shifted counterclockwise. Cameras slid up and down on their respective mountings, readjusting for different angle shots.

  Robbie was half a foot off the floor, but there was still no pain. His breath came short and ragged, but he didn’t hurt. Not yet. His body, unlike his mind, seemed ready.

  “Over here, girls,” Officer Thompson said. “Face the prisoner, please.”

  They lined up before him: Heather, Jasmine, and finally Maddy, who took the central position. She was dressed just like them, all black and blue and gray, arms bared after the gloves, legs bared above the boots. Robbie suppressed a gasp.

  Lookin’ good, he thought. God, I’m such a pig.

  “Go ahead, Mads,” Officer Thompson said.

  He looked away as Maddy drew close again. Her eyes stayed on him, though, right on him, as her fingers found his belt buckle and unclasped it. They batted at him as she drew the belt over the mechanical tentacle feelers and through the loops, discarding it on the floor next to his shoes and socks.

  She didn’t have a paddle. On her belt, instead, ensconced in a leather sleeve, was a capped metal cylinder that steamed but emitted no heat. It actually radiated cold. It was easier to look at that mysterious object than it was to meet her terrible, devastating, beautiful gaze.

  From the farthest circle, standing between two camera poles, Nurse Reyes-Garcia called out to him. “It is time, Robbie,” she said without yelling, her voice carrying perfectly across the Arena without effort or exertion. “Say all that you wish to say. When you have finished, you will listen without speaking to their pronouncements of mercy or of judgment.”

  The video walls now showed viewing parties staring right at him, nightclubs and bars and living rooms populated by men and women all older than he was, all older than the women who now stood before him with brass nameplates that read “Volunteer Humiliator”. Some of them held placards or signs, as if they knew Robbie could see them, as if they knew he wouldn’t be able to hear their muted voices.

  You’re almost home, Robbie!

  You can do it, kiddo!

  Stay strong! Praying for you!

  There were phone numbers, too. Hearts and XOXO’s. One anonymous woman somewhere in her thirties lifted her shirt and flashed bare breasts at him—and that shook him so hard, he nearly lost his focus. An older woman, of her own free will, had shown for-real tits, just for him.

  But he had a thing to do, a statement to make. Maddy, and the others, were waiting. Time was short.

  Hanging in the suspension beam, still feeling the metal twitching under his clothes and against his skin, Robbie took a breath and spoke.

  ****

  So far, so good, Maddy thought. I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do. He looks okay.

  He’ll be fine.

  But this, she knew, was going to be murder.

  “I’m … I’m sorry for what I did,” Robbie began, his eyes first on Maddy. But as he continued, he engaged Heather next, and finally Jasmine. “What I … what I tried to do. It was a creepy-ass thing to do, spying on you like that.”

  Jasmine circled him, tapping the business end of her “BAD BOY” paddle against the palm of her free hand. She clucked her tongue at him from behind—“Tchock-tchock”—and ran a finger the length of his spine. “I just bet you are.”

  Robbie noted the words on the paddle weren’t painted on. They were engraved. Deeply. They’d leave impressions.

  “I want to believe you,” Heather said, also circling him but in the other direction. “How can I be sure?” Her voice was curious, sympathetic.

  Maddy remained where she was.

  “I won’t make any excuses,” Robbie said as Heather put her hand through his hair, going from the back of his neck and working up. “I don’t know how I can make you believe me. I’m not asking for anything except for that. Maybe … I mean, if you’ll just hear me out … I wasn’t sorry, really, when I first got here after court. Maybe I was just scared, then—and embarrassed, because I was … on TV—on TV as a criminal—and everyone was talking about me, about what I did. Because my parents were so mad at me… Maybe I didn’t even think about you like I should have until yesterday.”

  He was still holding up, Maddy noted with a tilt of her head. Only in the pauses did she sense the tears he was holding back. He was shivering, too, because Heather’s hand was running up and down his ribcage, and because Jasmine—My God, Maddy thought—was running the paddle back and forth between his legs from behind.

  She looked away when she noticed the strain against his zipper.

  “I’ve been paying for it since Wednesday,” Robbie said. One tear escaped him, and Heather brushed it away with her thumb. “I know what it is to have your pride … taken from you … your dignity … to be treated like … like total shit … like nothing more than the object of someone else’s amusement, or fascination.”

  “Go on,” Jasmine purred into his ear, still working the paddle over his pants. “You’re doing very well.”

  “And everything they’ve done to me here—it … it was showing me how that was what … was what I was trying to do to you … the same…”

  He caught a sob.

  “Say it,” Maddy cut in. “Suck it up and say it.”

  “… lack of … consideration for you as real people, with real feelings … with rights.”

  Heather stepped back, shared a glance with Maddy. Maddy hoped she wasn’t reflecting back the look Heather was giving her, because that look clearly said, I think he does get it. He’s really sorry.

  Maddy hardened herself, adjusted her glasses. “Is that all?”

  Heather took the cue, but she left the invasion of Robbie’s personal space to Jasmine and returned to her place by Maddy.

  Robbie shook his head. “No,” he said, his legs shaking as Jasmine hiked up his underwear to a near wedgie, peering down the back of his pants. “Just … one more thing: I don’t like what I did—what I tried to do. When I leave this place … God! God…”

  The bulge in his pants was huge. Maddy couldn’t help but stare. Was he going to come in his pants?

  “The top of your ass crack looks nice,” Jasmine said. “Anyone ever tell you that?”

  Again, Robbie shook his head, but for the moment, words failed him. Tears dripped from his lowered head.

  Jasmine backed off and returned to her friends.

  “When I leave this place,” Robbie started again between breaths, once his excitement receded enough for him to again face them and form coherent words, “I want it off my conscience. I want it gone.”

  “You want us to forgive you?” Heather asked sweetly. She sounded like she might do it. And that, Maddy knew, would ruin everything.

  Robbie closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Forgiveness, yes, please, but … but not mercy. Not mercy. That’s my escape word, but I’m not using it like that. I don’t want anyone to say I got off easy.”

  Nurse Reyes-Garcia looked up from her palm com.

  “I want you to finish,” Robbie said. “Please. Make it right.”

  Maddy sighed. Better that you feel that way, I guess, she thought. But you have no idea what that means. Not yet.

  Behind her, Officer Jenny chuckled softly. “Well, fuck me sideways. Aren’t you full of surprises?”

  ****

  Am I? Robbie thought.

  He could feel the strain in his arms, which bore most of his weight even with his ankles cuffed tight for support. The metallic insect appendages kept tickling him. The smear of pre-cum in his shorts made his belly itch.

  Officer Thompson, the first to have paddled him two days ago, t
hen came to the fore. “Our peeping Tom is cleverer than I thought,” she said. Addressing the girls, “But you don’t want to take the word of a con, especially not one still on the inside. He’s trying to manipulate you into thinking that the only way to punish him is to pardon him. Smart—never seen that play before—but don’t you believe a word of it. The decision is yours, ladies. Make your decision based on what you want, on what brings closure for you.”

  I’m telling the truth! Robbie wanted to protest. Goddamn it, it wasn’t easy for me to say all that with Jasmine pawing all over me, with her doing … those things with the paddle…

  But his time for speaking was up. Now was the time for judgment.

  Officer Thompson retreated back to the outermost circle, joining Nurse Reyes-Garcia, who never stopped monitoring her palm com.

  Replacing her, brandishing the remote control, was Officer Kersey.

  ****

  “You do not understand Robbie McNeal at all,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia said, once officer Jenny Thompson was close enough for the exchange of whispers.

  “Maybe not,” Officer Thompson replied. “And you don’t understand the girls.”

  “That is fair.”

  “Doesn’t really matter, does it?” Officer Thompson insisted. “We have only one concern, and understanding isn’t it.”

  “I can think of two,” said Nurse Reyes-Garcia. “I suppose you are referring to justice?”

  The other was prisoner safety, but there was no time to get into that now.

  “Pfft,” said Officer Thompson, waving at the video walls, where the masses gawked and hooted, their voices muted. “I’m referring to the show, boss.”

  ****

  As usual, Officer Kersey didn’t even look at him. Robbie wasn’t surprised. Nor did he care.

  Let’s do this, he thought. Let’s get it over with.

  “You have two choices,” Officer Kersey said to the young women. “The first choice is ‘Pardon with time served’. If any one of you takes that choice, it’s over, and the prisoner will be released. I understand Senator and Mrs. McNeal are at Visitors’ Intake watching via closed circuit right now.”

  Robbie didn’t believe that, particularly as it pertained to his father. His jailors would have them on TV if they were here, probably on the video screens for him to see. He had no doubt that they were watching—his mother for sure, “cataloguing” all of the abuses he was made to endure—but they’d be far away, fuming in secret. Not because of what Robbie was going through, but because of the disrespect to them, to their position.

  Thinking these things, the tent in his pants went down. Flaccid, he waited, meditating on the word “strength”, gathering himself for the whatever came next.

  “The second choice is simpler,” Officer Kersey said. “Mr. McNeal has three items of clothing left on his person. For each of you who gives the command, ‘Strip him,’ one of those articles will be removed. In the end, he will either be free, or he will be naked and awaiting final punishments—with release reverting to tomorrow morning for post-discipline monitoring and recovery.”

  Now she turned to him, remote in hand. Robbie gave her nothing—no words, no tears, no lip.

  “Oh, boy,” Jasmine said, clipping the paddle back to her belt. “Let’s see… Perverted rich kid tries to see me naked and now I have the chance to see him naked. Decisions, decisions.” She pointed at him, wagging her finger, tossing her hair back over her shoulder in theatrical disdain. “Strip him, please.”

  Officer Kersey pushed a button, and the tentacle feelers at Robbie’s collar and the back of his neck pulled—hard. Buttons went flying, and his shirt came apart down both the front and the back. Then it split down either arm and fell in shredded tatters between the support struts of the suspension beam.

  I was supposed to get that back tomorrow, Robbie thought, bared from the waist up before his victims. Was that my real shirt? Kinda fell apart pretty easily.

  “Woot, woot!” Jasmine crowed, still pointing at him. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m feeling a little nippy in here!”

  “One down,” Officer Kersey said, nodding to Heather.

  Heather bit her lip. She glanced over his arms, his chest, his navel. Finally, she looked him in the face. She seemed so unsure.

  She didn’t say anything. Her cheeks went pink. She inhaled, caught her breath. Let it out.

  Still, she said nothing.

  “Your turn,” Officer Kersey reminded her. “Haven’t got all night, sweetheart.”

  “I think he’s really sorry,” she quietly said.

  Jasmine was about to cut in. Much to Robbie’s confusion, so was Maddy.

  “But I do want to see his body,” Heather said at last. “Fair is fair. Sorry, Robbie.”

  Robbie nodded, numb with acceptance.

  “Strip him,” she regretfully said.

  The tentacle feelers hooked in his pants yanked from the front and behind, tearing past the zipper and between his back pockets, splitting down the sides and coming free, leaving him with just his underwear and a single insectile appendage gripping the waistband under his belly button. Minutes ago, his cockhead had been poking over the top of that, drooling with unspent need. But it had since retreated, cowering like a small child hoping his form would not be noticed curled under a blanket.

  Robbie watched the blush blossom over his shoulders, and chest.

  Turnabout is fair play, he said to himself, finding Heather’s words both just and right. You earned this, Robbie. This is the one part you definitely, one-hundred-percent earned. Don’t forget that.

  Robbie’s gaze met Maddy’s.

  “Two down,” said Officer Kersey, thumb hovering over Button Number Three. “It’s all up to—”

  “Strip him,” Maddy said, cutting her off.

  Fresh silence—soon broken by a quick click, and then a shredding sound as the last of Robbie’s clothing was torn away.

  ****

  She’d said it without thinking. Thinking was bad. Only action would get them through this.

  Maddy grimaced as Jasmine’s cackling laughter reverberated to the far walls. The outermost circle rotated again, cameras shimmying up and down the poles like dancers Maddy had read about in old, forbidden books as others slid to and fro overhead. Heather stood stock-still, hand over her open mouth, as Robbie stood before the three of them as nude as a freshly shucked ear of corn.

  And he was so good-looking. Much better in person than in the five-second video .gif she’d gotten a peek at in Dr. Cossack’s office. His boyish features—rendered all the more so in his current position, his helplessness on parade—were nicely offset by a mature body honed and tempered with exercise. There wasn’t a defect or a blemish to be seen, either, at least not up front, and the glistening sweat that beaded over his furiously blushing body gave it a sheen that made him appear newly-minted, buffed and polished.

  And if that was the size of his penis when it was still soft … how much would a thing like that hurt, going inside … especially if it was a girl’s first time, if she still had her hymen?

  No! her mind suddenly screamed. You will not do this to yourself, Maddy. You will not.

  Robbie’s mouth opened and closed, uttering nothing. He regarded each of them in turn, then the cameras, then the far walls with the ever-changing audience footage. He whimpered. He moaned. He must feel like every eye on Earth was ogling him, drawing pleasure from his public ruination like some kind of massive, collective societal vampire. And he’d be almost right.

  That’s what you need to think about, Maddy. This could be you. You let yourself get talked into this, and now you’ll be in a world of trouble if you don’t follow through.

  How would she fare in such a situation?

  I wouldn’t be able to take it, she thought. I’d die.

  Maddy stepped forward, glanced to Officer Kersey—who tapped out another sequence of buttons on the remote. The first circle ground out another quarter rotation, the pillars shifting color
from golden to pink, the stripper cables hissing back to their moorings. A third set of cables shot out, four in total, taking hold of the mahogany suspension beam at the corners even as the wires that had lowered it let go. It wobbled in place, leaning first back, then forward, then back again.

  This time it kept going, hanging in mid-air three feet from the ground, Robbie’s head facing away from her now, his legs spread in front of her like a wishbone at Thanksgiving. Underneath him, a T-shaped lumbar support strut cut from stone unclicked from the floor and rose to Robbie’s lower back, allowing him to rest against it.

  There seemed to be no one in the world but the two of them, suddenly, as Maddy once again stepped into Robbie’s circle and stood upright between his splayed knees, his twitching but still flaccid cock within easy reach.

  She knelt, eye-level with his penis and testicles.

  Robbie tried to be quiet as she opened her mouth and breathed on them without blowing. He kept his lips shut so tight there were no lips to be seen—but he could not quell his rising and falling chest, the involuntary vibration of his vocal cords.

  “Mmm-umm…”

  It wasn’t pleasure, exactly, what Maddy was listening to. It was the sound of a pained animal escaping a cage too small to twist through without discomfort. It was involuntary release and agony.

  Officer Jenny called all of this. How did she know it would be just like this?

  She stretched her bare arms under his knees, bringing her gloved forearms around to the under-inside of his thighs, spreading him a little more. She puckered her lips. Eyes half-lidded, softly, ever-so-gently, she blew on his exposed genitals.

  Robbie’s mouth opened.

  “Ah-arrg…”

  Like a time-lapse camera capturing the blooming of a long-stemmed mushroom, Robbie’s penis rose up and extended over his lower belly right to the button. The tip expanded as though taking breath. The wrinkles of the “frenulum” stretched and smoothed with unrestrained arousal.

  Maddy straightened up. With her left hand, she took her phone from her back pocket. With her right, she reached over Robbie’s body and took his hair in a fist. She brought his head forward so that she could get his tortured face and his engorged member in the same shot. She took the shot, blinking against the flash. The burn lingered in the lenses of her glasses.