Piper's Price

by D. A. Maddox

  This is it, he thought. I have to call mercy. She’s pulling me apart.

  If he could have, he would have breathed in through his eyes to stop the tears. They were close, so close.

  “You’re almost done,” she whispered to him. Her face was earnest. It looked inexplicably terrified—but then it hardened. “Few more seconds. Don’t you punk out on me, you dumb son of a bitch. Don’t say it.”

  The courts will understand, he said to himself. This is too much. I can’t take any more.

  She was at his inner thighs now, rolling the spikes where his testicles met the inside of his legs—

  “Robbie,” she said.

  …and, finally, she let the final weight drop. One quick adjustment at the cock ring caused it to expand over his glans and release him, falling with an echoing thud against the stone. Robbie’s penis hung, still woefully distended. Would it ever be normal again?

  His whole body shuddered with release and relief.

  Maddy dropped the pinwheel rollers, came back around to his front, lowered him a little, and took him by the sides of his face. Looked him in the eyes. “You can cry now,” she said. “Robbie, it’s okay. You can cry.”

  She must have meant it, too, because she was crying.

  “That was it,” she said. “That was all I was supposed to do … all I was—was allowed to do. You’ve made it, Robbie. You’ve paid. I’m not going to hurt you anymore. No one will. Robbie … I’m sorry.”

  She kissed him again, hurling her crown off her head and behind her, where it rolled twenty feet before settling in the shadows of the watching police officers. He kissed her back, and he let the tears come. He wept, even as she lowered him back to the ground and freed him, taking him in a fierce and desperate embrace.

  The police moved in, led by Nurse Reyes-Garcia.

  ****

  And I’ve fulfilled my contract, she thought, holding him. Held by him. We can go our separate ways now, him back to his world, me to mine.

  His eyes were closed, his breathing soft and steady, his face comfortably at rest with a half-smile.

  Except, we do have government class on Monday. We’d have missed some things while we were gone. Our class email’s probably loaded.

  She was going to tell him so, share a laugh with him, but the shadow of Nurse Reyes-Garcia passed over her.

  And Robbie was snoring, his mouth half-open. Little cat snores, nothing obnoxious.

  “You are done,” the nurse said, taking a knee in front of her. “You may go, Miss Piper. I will take it from here.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Recovery

  When his eyes fluttered open, Maddy was gone. The Arena was gone. Robbie was back in the halls of the protective custody building at Huntington Regional Detention Center, and although he wasn’t moving independently, he moved just the same.

  He was on a stretcher. A blanket draped over him and down either side, leaving him bare only from the shoulders up and the ankles down. There was an ice pack under his ass and a separate one over his genitals—and that was what had woken him up. His cock stung from the cold. His testicles felt like rocks, had retreated half up his guts.

  “Maddy,” he tried to say, but his throat might as well have been sandpapered. He wasn’t sure if he’d actually managed it.

  From the handles at his feet, Officer Kersey smiled and winked at him. “186 is alive,” she said to the others. “Robbie McNeal lives to fuck another day.” Then, directly to him, “Probably shouldn’t talk too much right away, kiddo. You screamed yourself ragged back there.”

  She was almost friendly. She’d never winked or smiled at him before. He could not remember if she had ever used his proper name. He’d certainly never heard her tell a joke.

  “Fuck another day”? he thought. Until Wednesday, no grown woman had ever seen my dick before.

  “Maddy’s been shown back to her room,” said another voice, this one from the head of the stretcher. “She declined the post-show interview. Her ride home wasn’t available due to unforeseen scheduling complications. We offered her a car, but she said she wasn’t in any shape to drive tonight. Jasmine and Heather have already left, though.”

  Officer Thompson.

  She leaned over him, seemed to study him. “You’re a pro, Robbie,” she said, her tone one shade short of pure wonderment. “A fucking pro at hardly eighteen years old, without ever having done anything like this before. And a fucking man-cherry, too. God damn.”

  What was that? Respect?

  “I—I don’t understand,” he managed through the sand in his throat. “Done anything like … what, before? All I did … was … get punished. For being a … creep. All I did was finish, like everyone else. Like … the other creeps. Got … what was coming to me.”

  A hand over his chest, stroking him. Petting him. It was Nurse Reyes-Garcia, walking alongside of him, looking down on him with a face so full of compassion and pride he could have wept anew.

  “You brave, innocent boy,” she said. “Not like everyone else.”

  Robbie reached under the blanket, moved the ice pack off of his penis and testicles. Glancing about, he recognized his wing. They were almost there. Almost home, to his cell. “Help me out, Matron,” he said, his voice strengthening with curiosity. “I don’t understand.”

  “Oh, Robbie,” she said fondly. “You silly thing. No one has ever done it before.”

  ****

  Maddy looked out her window.

  The crowds were still there. They hadn’t thinned the slightest bit. Her window was soundproof. She was glad she couldn’t hear them. What would they say of her?

  That’s the peasant bitch who thought she was too good for him. The bitch who humiliated and tortured our hero.

  She had showered, then managed to scour off most of the black nail polish with a solution that had come with the bottle. She was in her normal clothes: a blue blouse, blue jeans, ankle socks, sneakers. She was struggling a bit, vision-wise, without her glasses or contacts—and because she was crying—but at least she was wearing her own things. At least no one was filming her.

  She checked the room camera. It was inert, dead, as far as she could tell.

  Maddy was glad Counselor Lavallee hadn’t been available to take her back to school. She didn’t know if she could handle dealing with Jasmine and Heather right now. She wasn’t looking forward to her parents’ visit tomorrow, either. And yet…

  She checked her phone again, squinting her eyes, hoping for something from Mom or Dad. Or even from her friends, who’d done their post-show interview and left, all before she’d made it back to the room.

  Nothing. Or, no, wait—an auto-text alert from her bank without a reply option. Her checking account had just gone from $1,112.38 to $101,112.38, courtesy the United States Department of the Treasury. Back home, Mom and Dad would have received an identical text.

  “Holy shit,” she breathed, palming away tears. It was one thing, knowing it was coming, but quite another to see it. For real.

  She dropped the phone on the table. Looked out over the crowds again. None of them looked back up at her. They wouldn’t know which window was hers, and she’d kept the light off. Anyway, they had eyes only for the screen. Was it showing highlights? Was it replaying what she had done?

  She hurt him, they’d be saying, and all he ever did was like her. He didn’t get away with shit. He never saw anything. And she ruined him in front of all of us. Probably fucked him up permanently. For money.

  She could only see the back of the drive-in style movie screen, but the masses were attentive to it. They cheered and laughed. They shouted. The gasped and hollered and cried out in outrage; they shed tears and smiled and stared.

  In the end, she had held onto Robbie until Officer Jenny and Nurse Reyes-Garcia had pried her off him. Then Officer Jenny had taken one arm, Officer Kersey the other, and together they had marched her out of the Arena.

  “I want to talk to him,” she had called back to Nurse Reyes-Garci
a. “When he wakes up. Please let me! I didn’t want to hurt him!”

  But she had hurt him. And she had wanted to, even though she hadn’t wanted to.

  It was after eleven. Where was Robbie? Was he with doctors? Psychiatrists? Physical therapists? Surgeons? Why hadn’t they called an end to it? Why hadn’t they stopped her and saved Robbie? Why hadn’t they saved her?

  They made me do it, she thought. They talked me into it with soft words and bribery, then threatened me with the same punishment I gave to Robbie. They’re the monsters. I kept him from jail. I saved him, when everyone else was ready to let him get thrown away for five years.

  She left the window. Sat down. Lowered her head to the table and sobbed.

  “He’ll see you when and if he wants to see you,” Officer Kersey had said. “You might as well go home. He’ll be in touch, if he wants.”

  All of that was true and fair. And the worst of it was, with Michael’s help—and the eager complicity of her friends—she had set him up in the first place. Or at least set him up to try, only so she could bust him.

  I didn’t expect this! her brain screamed. I thought it would just be trouble at school!

  Would have served him right, she’d thought at the time. But then, step by step, in a coordinated sabotage propped up by adults of the age of full citizenship, by people who knew everything while she had known nothing, she’d been led down this course every step of the way until she could not have turned back even if she had wanted to.

  All of this, she understood at an intellectual level. And she had said she was sorry.

  What’s the matter with me, then? she wondered. But she knew the answer.

  I liked it.

  And she liked him. And she had done it anyway.

  “Stop it,” she scolded herself, opening her purse and fishing out a tissue. “Just stop. God.”

  But she couldn’t stop it. The truth would not leave her alone. In the end, the choice—all of the choices—had been hers. She had done it. And as much as she truly had wanted to spare Robbie five years in prison, she had also done it for money.

  She checked the door. The “open” light was on. She was a free woman, her movements unrestricted by contract or even informal agreement. She could walk through that door any time she felt like it.

  Not to leave, though. She knew the way of the place, now, or most of it. And there was a framed schematic of the entire complex, minus the secure parts, in the hall outside of her room.

  If any of Robbie’s punishment wardens were still here, it would not be difficult to track them down.

  ****

  “You were not supposed to know,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia explained, as though this were the simplest thing in the world. “You were sentenced to three days’ Controlled Judicial Humiliations. Young convicts who are given between three to five days always finish in the Arena.”

  Robbie watched the ceiling tiles glide past. He listened.

  “Had you been given only one day, or even two, we would never have brought you there. You would never have been given an escape word. You would have been punished, then released. End of story.”

  Nope, he thought. Still makes no sense, Matron.

  “Miss Piper and her friends didn’t know either. Most likely, they still do not know. I think it likely Maddy would have tipped you off, had she any idea you were never supposed to make it.”

  “But,” Robbie started, “what if—”

  “Do you not yet see?” she asked him tenderly. “It is the final breaking, the ultimate humiliation. Our penitents are not hardened criminals, Robbie. They are never meant to do real time, and they have limited practical knowledge in sexual matters at best—or else they would never be approved for Controlled Judicial Humiliations. For many grown men and women, none of this would have qualified as punishment.” After a pause, she added, “For some, it would be wish fulfillment.”

  “And here we are,” Officer Thompson said, stopping.

  Robbie waited as Nurse Reyes-Garcia went around him and keyed open his cell door. “They never make it to the end, Robbie,” she then said. “The audience knows this. They are used to it. That’s why they were muted when you saw them on the video screen walls, why the recording was on a delay—so they could not tip you off. Several of them tried. The people love you so.”

  Everything she said made Robbie’s head spin faster, awash with fresh questions. He was about to try another one, but his Matron put two fingers over his lips, gently but firmly shushing him.

  “The end of it goes like this: when a prisoner breaks on his final day in the Arena, he then spends his last night in protective custody fretting over his own weakness, contemplating prison. When the reprieve comes the next morning, he is quite grateful—absolutely beside himself with relief. I’m sure you understand. We do not have repeat offenders in this program, Robbie. At least, none so far.”

  “To be clear,” Officer Kersey chipped in. “That would be ‘he’ or ‘she’. We’re equal opportunity here, both with mercy and with punishment.”

  If Nurse Reyes-Garcia heard that, she didn’t acknowledge it. “But you, Robbie,” she said. “You made it. Not only that, but you are the first who never begged his victims for mercy. Had you done so much as that, I might have called an early end to things, myself, after Misses Heather and Jasmine. You were in so much distress. But you wanted to finish. The others—everyone we have ever had here, young men and women—just wanted to be let off the hook. You could have ended it any time, just as they did.”

  Should I have? Robbie wondered. Would that have been the right thing to do?

  Would have been the smart thing, that’s for sure.

  “But you could never have been happy, after that,” she said, once again seeming to read his thoughts. “We do not wish to do anyone permanent harm here, Robbie. You must believe me.”

  ****

  The clerical offices were practically deserted. All that remained was a skeleton crew: two men, one woman. All three looked tired. Bored.

  But the woman, a forty-ish cop manning a desk of surveillance monitors, turned her head up and smiled at her. “You’re Madison Piper,” she said. “How did it go?”

  “Just Maddy, please,” she said absently, distractedly. She scanned the room again, hoping for a familiar face. Officer Jenny would be good—even Officer Kersey would do, in a pinch—but she was especially hoping to track down Robbie’s nurse. “It went okay, I guess.”

  He’s not dead, after all.

  “I didn’t get to see any of it,” the cop said. “Going to try to catch the last rerun in the morning before they take the whole thing off the grid. But you’ve become quite the star, from what I’ve heard.”

  “Cool,” Maddy said, turning another circle, peering down hallways. “Listen, I—”

  But she found herself unable to finish. She didn’t know what she meant to say.

  “Oh, you poor thing. You’ve been through it. You almost look like you were on the other end of it all. Did you change your mind about the ride back? Want me to check if we can arrange some wheels for you?”

  “No,” Maddy said, and found herself stomping her foot in childish frustration. “That’s not it. Thanks for asking, though.”

  “Well,” the cop said, raising an eyebrow, “if you don’t tell me what it is, I definitely can’t help you.”

  ****

  The first thing Robbie noticed once they passed over the threshold of his cell was that the camera in his room was gone. After they laid him down, stretcher and all, on top of his cot, Officers Thompson and Kersey left—but not before Kersey gave a playful ruffle to his hair and blew him a kiss.

  You, he thought without saying anything, are one crazy and incomprehensible bitch.

  “Robbie,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia said, pulling up a chair, “I hate to bring this up so soon after you have finished—but it really would be best if you received another treatment to the back of your legs and your buttocks. I am sorry.”

  “May I speak?�
�� he timidly asked.

  “Of course,” she said. “Whenever and however much you like. Even though you still owe the state seven hours and fifteen minutes of confinement, you are no longer a part of the CJH program. You may refuse the treatment. You may request a male nurse if you wish to avoid further embarrassment.”

  “You’re kidding,” he said, wholeheartedly incredulous, peeling the blanket from his body and rolling over, presenting his backside to her. Coming off the icepack, his thighs and butt cheeks were quite numb, but he knew that wouldn’t last. “No. If I have to do it, I’d rather it be you.”

  “As I have said, the choice is yours. You don’t have to do anything. These are legal matters, Robbie. Your account with the law is square.”

  “But you think I should.”

  “I know you should.”

  “That’s all there is to it, then,” he said, steadying his breathing. “You know best. Please, Matron—do you have something for me to bite down on?”

  “Naturally,” she said, passing him a thick pink bit for his mouth, this one without any lettering. “And you no longer need to call me Matron, Robbie. You may call me Nurse Reyes-Garcia—or even Helena, if you wish.”

  Robbie heard the cork come off, heard the bottle tipped to a washcloth. He pressed his eyes shut, bracing himself. But he couldn’t keep back a small laugh when he said, “Oh, no. That’s not happening. Not ever. Do your worst, Matron.”

  He put the bit in his mouth and clenched his jaws over it hard.

  ****

  Minutes later, after she was certain the pain had subsided completely and the chemicals had done their work, Nurse Reyes-Garcia left Robbie’s side and—with a resigned sigh—locked him in his cell one final time.

  He will sleep off the rest of his sentence, she told herself, yawning, checking her palm com. And in the morning…

  What? There had been no call from his home, no promise of a pickup. All efforts at reaching Senator and Mrs. McNeal had thus far been in vain. And that was highly unusual. Typically, parents of cases like Robbie’s called all the time—and they tended to show up hours before they’d be permitted to claim their wayward progeny. They were generally hysterical, very often more emotionally overwrought than their perfectly safe but well-punished offspring.