The Punishment Club

by D. A. Maddox

  This is going to be me soon.

  She jerked in her seat as though she had been struck herself when the third and final swat echoed in the wide-open room.

  ****

  Peter could not help himself. Even with Buddy bent over double, looking right back at him through eyes that dripped total surrender, Peter watched.

  Nurse Reyes-Garcia drew her finger—from two and a half knuckles deep in his asshole—clean out again. It emerged with an audible pop, and Buddy started breathing normally again.

  Peter gulped.

  “Buddy,” she said, “if your anus had teeth, I think it may have bitten my finger off, tight as you are.” She peeled off her glove, gave it a close second of scrutiny, and rested it on his lower back just over his crack. She then patted his left buttock. “Completely clean up there. I am proud of you. Once you got started, you handled everything very well.”

  Buddy’s eyes never left Peter’s, and Peter thought he knew why.

  “Thank you, Matron,” Buddy said.

  “How do you feel?” she asked—as if such a thing could be asked seriously of an eighteen-year-old man bent over double, naked except for a hat—and one who’d taken a finger job up the ass by a middle-aged woman, at that.

  “A little rough, Matron,” he said, his voice oddly serene, his cock still not entirely at rest.

  “New experiences,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia said, nodding.

  Buddy snorted, then sniffled again. He started to rise.

  “Not yet,” she said. “Officer Thompson made her paddle swats count, Buddy Ray Zimmer. I will apply some creams to these hurts—nothing too special, as you are not injured. Some coolant. Try to make that snatch baster of yours settle in the meanwhile for that measurement we did not take earlier. Then you shall serve some corner time while we see to the others.”

  “Yes, Matron.”

  ****

  There he was, still naked but for the hat, nose pressed dutifully to the wall while Officer Kersey took a few more stills of him, ass cheeks pink under white cream liberally applied.

  “Couple minutes just for the live stream?” Veronica asked.

  “No, Ms. Cruz. I promised him there would be no video.”

  “What if I ask him first?”

  “He will feel compelled to say yes. I do not go back on my word, Ms. Cruz. The answer is no.”

  “Yes, boss,” Veronica said, not actually appearing very disgruntled or disappointed. She had more of a couldn’t-hurt-to-ask look on her face.

  “Peter Gravis,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia then said, drying her hands off from a pullout sink and discarding the washcloth in a bin that was probably for laundering later. She pointed a finger to the space in front of the table-desk and went to sit down behind it.

  I am so busted, he thought. Oh, boy, this is going to suck.

  But he did as he was told, went where he’d been told, already feeling the blush rise in his cheeks. “Matron—”

  “I did not ask you to speak, Peter Gravis,” she said, adjusting herself for comfort. “Undress.”

  “Yes, Matron,” he said, glancing left and right as if he expected there to be a nearby bush he could hide behind. He shucked the jumpsuit, peeled off his socks, tried to project his need to—

  “Oh, but I see you have something to say,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia said slowly, somehow catching the brainwave. She sat back. “Very well. I shall hear it after you are naked. Continue, please.”

  Tricky, getting the tank top off without dislodging the hat as well, but he managed it just as Buddy had. Officer Kersey was already taking up position in front of him—and God, she wasn’t exactly a nice person, when it got down to it. He could fake a little courage with a nice person, toss a wink her way. But to her, Peter Gravis and his new friends were to be regarded much as a professional plumber might regard an impending snake job.

  He dropped the briefs, made himself not cover. No shame shot for me, he told himself, even as his blood pressure rose against his will, as his cock stirred under scrutiny. I’m a goddamned good-looking man.

  Veronica glanced between his legs and sniffed. What? Hey—

  “Face Officer Kersey,” said Nurse Reyes-Garcia. “After we have your body in the photographic record, you may briefly speak.”

  Peter turned to her, still resentful—though he couldn’t have said why—about Veronica, who’d turned from him and was now walking away, phone out, to where the girls sat waiting.

  Never mind her, he thought. Bigger fish to fry here. Like Dad always says, get ahead of it.

  The camera flashed, causing his penis to bob a little in place.

  God, Dad, they’re making me do a nude photo shoot. Like, bare ass. Bare everything. It’s right the hell out there.

  Focus, Peter.

  “Hold that,” said Officer Kersey, again with the five-count.

  Peter sighed. Endured. Stopped fighting the blush, which he could see on his own breastbone.

  “Head up. Eyes here, Two-oh-One.”

  He raised his head.

  “All right, that’s you done,” Officer Kersey finally said.

  Peter turned back to the nurse. “Matron?”

  “Yes, Peter. What is it? Your vitals have been spiking since I had my finger up your friend’s ass.”

  That stopped Peter cold. And his half-aroused penis suddenly up and died. He found it difficult to speak.

  Nurse Reyes-Garcia set her palm com in front of her, scrolled around with her finger. “Yes, right here. There is a time marker for every significant change. I might have guessed, given a different spike, a pique of empathy for your friend—or an emotional stimulus, if you were attracted to him. I do not think that is what I am reading here. Is it, Peter?”

  Peter shook his head. And, for the first time since the prison van, the threat of tears. Damn it, Matron, I was going to confess.

  Why didn’t he ever get to do that?

  The phantom voice of Officer Gillis, arresting him last week: “Too late, son.”

  “Step forward, Peter,” she said when he didn’t answer. “Lean across the desk, facing me.”

  Numbly, shaking his head but obeying, he came to the desk and bent at the waist, leaning forward at the elbows. With one hand, Nurse Reyes-Garcia drew open the drawer just in front of her. With the other, she pulled Peter in by the right wrist, stretching his arm out, stretching him flat.

  “Matron, hey, what—”

  “Silence, you naughty thing,” she said. “Officer Thompson?”

  Without a word, she was there, her shadow falling over his back in seconds flat.

  “Cuff his ankles to the table legs.”

  Peter felt his feet yanked apart. There was no fighting it. Officer Thompson was alarmingly strong. And her face, right now, was practically all up and in his ass cheeks.

  Opening a drawer, Nurse Reyes-Garcia produced a handcuff that was attached by steel links to the desk’s interior. She cinched his wrist, went for the other. Produced the second cuff and closed it over him. At the same time, Officer Thompson cuffed his legs spread-eagled. The divide was wide enough that he could feel the air on his exposed anus.

  I clean myself, he thought, cheek flat on the desk, eyes wide. I’m not dirty.

  “Since you no longer wish to speak,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia said, fishing though a side drawer, setting things out on the desk Peter could not see without turning his head, “I will see for myself if you have followed instructions.”

  Just like that, as Nurse Reyes-Garcia rose from her chair and came around to his backside, Peter let the tears come.

  At his side now, having had a good look of her own, Peter supposed, Officer Thompson stood over him. Shook her head, arms crossed. “Wow,” she said.

  Hands on the insides of his thighs. “Oh, dear,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia said. “Well, this looks fairly clean. You take good care of yourself, Peter, in your normal life. But do you know what I do not see?”

  “No, Matron,” he managed, trying not to allow her words to actually give h
im hope.

  “I see no trace of soap around the outer ring here. It would be a bright pink color. Too, it has a scent. Officer Thompson?”

  Peter watched her pluck the box of gloves off the desk, not touching the gloves herself. Seconds later, he heard them snap on, one at a time. “I’m sorry,” he said, catching breaths.

  “Thank you, Peter,” she said. “You are forgiven. You may spare me some unpleasantness right now, though, if you would. I do not wish to go in there until you are clean. You tell me right now so that there is no further doubt: You are sorry because you did not use the soap, yes?”

  “Yes … Matron,” he managed through labored breath. And again. “I’m sorry.”

  “We are past that point,” she said, patting a cheek with a latex-covered hand. “I have that from you already, and I am not angry. But we will have that inside of you properly done so that we may proceed over the next couple of days without fear of cross-contamination. I prefer not to do it this way, but do not feel guilty on my account. Still, you will soon wish you had followed instructions earlier.”

  “I’ll do it now,” Peter tried. “Just let me go back, and I’ll—”

  “No, Peter,” she said, and against his ass she pressed something that seemed to have the texture of a dishwashing pod. “We are past that point, too. Loosen up. Relax.”

  He tried, eyes closed. He wanted to do this right. He’d fucked up so bad already. He—

  “Arck!” he suddenly squawked, as the small square cleaner passed his outer wall and slid inside.

  Buddy, are you getting this? Looks like you were the smart one.

  “Matron, I—but … God!”

  A tube now. A filling sound. Water in his ass, just a little.

  Peter felt the pod dissolve inside him. Expanding fizz.

  The tube came out. “Listen to me, Peter,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia said, patting his back. “This next will be the last bit of real unpleasantness until you receive your disobedience correction later.”

  “You’re going to do this to me and then paddle me?” he said, aghast.

  “This is only your cleaning, which you should have seen to on your own like a big boy,” she said. Peter heard a click. A buzzing, like metal rattling inside plastic. “It does not count as discipline. You’re going to need to relax again, Peter.”

  “Wait—what… Matron, what the hell is that?”

  “It is not a dildo, if you know enough to fear such a thing in your bum,” she said. “Relax, Peter. These things are made specifically for cleaning. It is thin like a wand from Harry Potter, and the brush bristles are soft. I will thank you not to swear in conversation with me, Peter.”

  “I’m sorry!”

  “Forgiven. Peter, relax.”

  Peter tried. He did his best.

  And squawked again when Nurse Reyes-Garcia slid the bristle end of an electric toothbrush into his ass.

  She left it there. She stood back from Peter as he wailed into the desktop, as he foamed pink soap from the back end. As Nurse Reyes-Garcia saw to his personal hygiene without dirtying herself.

  She peeled off the gloves, discarded them, then came around to the front of the desk and patted Peter on the shoulder. “Few minutes, hon,” she said, and his whole body seemed to vibrate in time with the brush under her touch. “Alejandro?”

  “Yes, Helena?”

  “Feel free to get started with the others.”

  ****

  “Your turn,” Veronica said, sounding like she was inviting them onto her favorite ride at an amusement park.

  Probably not too far off the mark there, Cassidy thought.

  Veronica held both of Cassidy’s hands in hers. She now gave a gentle pull, urging Cassidy to rise.

  Officer Garcia, too, beckoned. “Without delay, please,” he said. “Take it as an opportunity to show your friends how all of this is properly done. Such drama.”

  Cassidy still resisted rising from the chair, even though Emma Jo was already on her feet.

  “But—” she started, then stopped herself.

  “Go ahead. You may speak your mind at present. What troubles you?”

  “They’re naked!” she blurted. “I’ll see them.”

  And they’ll see me, she thought, her soul quailing. Bad enough it has to be you, Officer Garcia. I can almost pretend you’re a doctor, but—

  “Such observations are not to be avoided all the way to Monday, Miss Harper. Come, now. Get it over with.”

  Emma Jo turned. Blinked. Her jaw hung open. “Oh—my—shit.”

  Officer Garcia chuckled.

  Veronica, somehow, had managed to get Cassidy out of her chair with her hardly even realizing it. She now had her by the elbow.

  Cassidy allowed herself to be turned.

  ****

  Within five minutes, Emma Jo was looking up between her own legs at Officer Garcia, tears dripping past her hair onto concrete. The “swab” he had warned her about was over. And that was good, because that had been unpleasant, invasive, embarrassing, shocking—pretty much an insert-traumatic-adjective-here kind of thing. But no worse than the boys had gotten.

  Peripherally, she could see Cassidy waiting her turn—not far from Peter, in fact, who was still bent over the desk, just bubbling away, groaning occasionally. But Cassidy was still fully dressed, crying freely nevertheless. Buddy, facing the wall, was more difficult to read, although even his back was blushing.

  “Keep holding,” Officer Garcia said. “Almost done. Veronica?”

  “Here!” Veronica called, just so damned chipper about it.

  These people are having conversations, Emma Jo thought. Shooting the shit, passing the time…

  She gripped her calves tighter.

  “Do you recall the smaller A-frame we have?”

  “Like the last time I saw it was last spring,” Veronica answered, her words tinged with a flavor of irony that was wholly lost on Emma Jo.

  “Yes, that one. Drawer three-G. It unfolds, then just lay the pad over it. It clips shut at the bottom.”

  “Convenient!” Veronica again chirped, dashing to the desk. Metal rattles. Keys.

  Emma Jo gasped, released a small squeal. Officer Garcia had tapped his latex-shielded finger against her freakin’ vagina, no warning at all. “I am not going to go inside here, Emma Jo,” he said. “Not unless I have to. I am going to simply spread your pussy lips, and you are going to cough for me—deep down, like you have a wad in your lungs that needs dislodging. Wait until I tell you, until you see the light from my pen. Do this correctly to avoid a digital exam.”

  Emma Jo gritted her teeth, but said between them, “Digital, sir?” She’d prefer a digital exam.

  He held up a finger. “With this digit,” he said.

  More tears. Funny, she thought. Oh, you’re hilarious.

  In the background, a wide metal drawer opening. Something wooden being put down. Clacking as it unfolded. Giggles.

  More stills from Officer Kersey. Why would anyone want to see this? What kind of people thought of this as entertainment?

  Anyone over the age of twenty-two who’s graduated college and has cable, apparently.

  What the hell was wrong with people?

  Fuck you! Go away!

  And Officer Garcia’s finger, sliding up and down, up and down, never penetrating.

  “Let yourself moisten if you can, Emma Jo,” he said. “It will help with the dilation.”

  She couldn’t restrain the little gasps that kept escaping her. She’d never been explored this intimately by someone not-a-doctor in her entire life. Certainly not by a man. And he was so deliberate about it. His fingers knew just where she was most vulnerable. Her nether lips seemed to swell under his ministrations, even though his eyes remained clinical, focused, businesslike.

  As over and over, he fingered her clit, turning circles.

  “Take it easy,” he said. “I will not penetrate you, Emma Jo. Help me.”

  Little wet sounds, and not just from her face, though sh
e wept from the shame of it.

  “Excellent,” he said. He took a penlight from his belt and put it in his teeth. Positioned himself so that its tip was an inch away from her opening.

  He spread her, thumbs on either side of her labia. Over the penlight, he was still able to say, “Cough.”

  Emma Jo drew in her breath like she was leaning back over the rail of a boat to drop into the water. Through her tears, she still produced a cough that, had she been sick with anything in her lungs, probably would have instantly cured her.

  Officer Garcia blinked surprise, winked at her, and stood, taking off his gloves. “Well done,” he said. “And now we shall see to your punishment.”

  She was dimly aware, when Veronica and Officer Thompson turned to her and started her way, of Nurse Reyes-Garcia first relieving Peter of the electric toothbrush, then giving him a quick spray-down with water from what looked like a plastic bottle of Windex. She hardly noted Officer Kersey going to Buddy and informing him he could come back from the wall and get dressed again. It did afford Emma Jo a chance to see his cock, as well as the words SILENCE is GOLDEN emblazoned under the cream on his ass. And for him to see her.

  She supposed, deep in the recesses of her mind, that on another day she’d find him cute. More than that.

  All of that, though, was a half-second flash in a strange, easily distracted part of her brain that was quickly shouted down by the rest of it. Because she had Veronica at one arm now and Officer Thompson at the other. And they were leading her to a cushioned wooden triangle with leather restraints up front and in back. Though it was smaller than the horse, those restraints would hold a person in place, bent over at the middle, completely off the ground at all fours.

  It had only one purpose—to restrain a human being so that she could be beaten.

  The she is me, she thought. The time is now.

  It hardly fazed her at all when, having finished with her, Officer Garcia had gone on to Cassidy Harper and given her the dreaded command: “Strip.”

  Or Cassidy’s tearful choking of the words, “Y-yes, sir.”

  It had been high in mind, ever since Nurse Reyes-Garcia had cleverly challenged her to take her medicine like the grown-ass woman she really was, that she would not pitch a fit over this. The nurse had gotten her right where she could be had, using those words. She must not be a whiny little child about this. She wouldn’t be a brat.