The Punishment Club

by D. A. Maddox

  The welcome was warm, the applause genuine.

  Nurse Reyes-Garcia adjusted the hat back on properly and nudged him inside.

  It was a fair approximation of Cyber Mike’s, albeit considerably smaller. There were the same deep blue plastic tables shaped like parallelograms, the same speech-to-text screens on the walls—and one where a currently still image of two hands would do sign language. The hands were two-dimensional, empty laser line shapes. The circular stage was in the middle of the room, not the back. Only the tables between Buddy and that stage were occupied, though, perhaps a dozen people in all. They were the ones who had applauded him, all of them young women (including one with a pair of bongos), most of whom he recognized.

  But there was only one he knew, and he only knew her a little.

  There was a glass mic stand onstage with bright white light shining through, projected up from underneath. And there she was, flowers in her hair and patterned into the hips of her jeans skirt: Iris Call, a banner bearer for “La Resistance” but, for today, an instrument of the machine. She grinned at him. Into the mic, she breathed, “Hello, Buddy,” her voice echoing in the room like thunder in an elevator shaft. The speech-to-text screens spelled out her greeting. The laser-lined hands spelled it out in sign.

  Buddy covered up out of instinct.

  From the crowd: “Awwww…” Whether it was an expression of disappointment or sympathy, or a mixture of the two, there was no way to say.

  “Buddy Ray Zimmer,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia said from behind, “uncover yourself at once. And remain uncovered. That will be a punishment, which shall be administered after your performance.” Then she held up a hand and twirled a finger so that the audience could see.

  At each of the four tables, one of the ladies held up a ping pong paddle.

  No one had brought the ping pong table from Cyber Mike’s.

  That, Buddy reasonably deduced, is because no one’s here to play ping pong on anything but my ass.

  Again, he put his hands down, looking right and left at all of the semi-familiar women looking at him, all evidently flown in from Billings. There were girls from prep school, girls he’d seen in the library, and a few who were in his book club but didn’t know who he really was. Mostly he was conscious of her, of Iris, whose eyes dipped for a hot second just as they had when she’d stolen a glance at his poetry without permission. Now those almond-brown eyes were focused on his cock. Was her face flushed, just a little? Hard to tell under the white-hot light…

  The thunder again, echoes in the elevator shaft as Iris breathed into the microphone, “Come closer, Buddy. This is your moment.”

  He looked over his shoulder. Nurse Reyes-Garcia crossed her arms.

  Buddy took his first step toward the stage.

  ****

  “There you go, Emma Jo. There you go.”

  Mr. Hadley again, speaking words of comfort as four men lifted her, straight up from the kneeling position, one man at each upper arm, one man at each knee. They placed her, still kneeling, atop one of the front-row tables. Two of them eased her legs to a spread.

  “Lean back, Emma Jo,” he said. “Support yourself on the palms of your hands, hips thrust out. When you’re stable, I want you to point. Show them where the penis goes.”

  Emma Jo was certain she was about to hyperventilate. She heaved breath. Her face was so heated, doubtless she’d broken blood vessels. He could not be serious.

  She did as she was told. She leaned back, stabilizing herself. She pointed with her right hand to the place labeled “vaginal opening,” on their screens.

  Which none of them were looking at. Instead, they leaned forward to observe the living model herself. Toward the back, most of them stood up, not wanting to miss any part of the lesson.

  “Okay,” Mr. Hadley then said. “That’s good. Excellent, Emma Jo. You always were so courteous and cooperative. Hold position with both hands again. Try to relax.”

  She obeyed. She tried. Her head was back over her shoulders, limp, muscle-less. From this vantage point, she had an upside-down view of her teacher looking fondly down on her.

  Addressing the men again, Mr. Hadley said, “Right. At this point, we’re going to allow each of you a brief, up close exploration of no more than ten seconds—”

  Emma Jo took in another mighty breath and fairly shouted, “What?”

  From the front of the room, having never moved an inch since the lesson started, Officer Garcia said, “That will be a punishment, Miss Swanson. Please, do not incur any further discipline. Be silent. Be still.”

  Mr. Hadley patted her shoulder. “All done after this.”

  Lines of young men formed on either side of her.

  Emma Jo closed her eyes. She felt a breath between her legs, the hint of facial hair barely touching nether lips.

  “She’s beautiful,” the anonymous man said. The air of his words tickled her sex. She wanted to cover herself so badly—or touch herself. She wasn’t sure which.

  Nice of him to say, anyway.

  A finger made contact with her clitoris—ever so briefly, a tentative press, testing texture.

  “As you can see,” Mr. Hadley said, “Emma Jo is already juicing. So responsive.”

  She opened her eyes, her head still nearly upside down with her neck craned back, and saw Officer Garcia watching over her very carefully. Clinically. Making sure the program was followed.

  She held position. Oh, but this was mortifying. She’d never cried so much in her life.

  Why the fuck am I so wet?

  ****

  “Roof portal,” Officer Thompson explained, reaching up with a hook pole—her other hand still had the bit cord—and popping the latch. The ceiling door swung down, and Officer Thompson caught the sliding ladder mid-descent. “Try not to be so disoriented when you get up top. Art direction and landscapers have been hard at it to get this right.”

  Landscapers? Peter might have asked, had he the freedom of speech.

  Officer Thompson started up the ladder ahead of him. “Local TV news caught the job in progress by helicopter. It was all the producers could do to keep them from airing it. People would have been trying to guess this scene in advance for days. Good press, but we do like to keep our secrets.” She gave a little tug.

  Peter went to the ladder and started up, thinking it most likely deliberate on Officer Thompson’s part the upskirt view he was afforded. With every tug on the bit, he panicked a little, causing his erection to flag somewhat—but, goddamn, that was quite a view.

  Cool it, he told himself. You’re naked except for a saddle and bridle. What does she care if you can see her underwear? Not exactly an even trade.

  Then she was up, and all Peter could see was the gray-blue of an overcast day and the bit of cord that led—

  Peter stopped. Blinked under the view. That was the outside. Until this moment, he hadn’t yet realized how much he’d missed it, even after only a day. And that air he felt in his hair, on his face and neck and the top of his chest. That was outside air. It was so damned wonderful.

  People out in the world would call this a colorless, gloomy day.

  Only a day in, he reminded himself, yet Peter could almost cry from longing.

  Another tug. He tried to shake his head to clear it, then found he didn’t have the slack in the cord to do so. He finished the ascent, scrambling to do so quickly, shielding his eyes against the dim light of the half-shrouded sun. His feet stood on grass.

  Peter looked all around, stunned. This place, this roof, was an outdoor field. On three sides of it, he could see out over the top of the city of Manassas, true, but in the direction he was facing, they must have put up a fake wall. That way, the field seemed to go on forever, and there was a fucking barn over there, too.

  Not real, he told himself. A film screen or a very lifelike painting. The grass at his feet wasn’t actually real, either, he thought, wriggling his toes in it. AstroTurf? It was an illusion, all of it crafted specifically for him. He shoul
d have seen this coming, he now realized, after the “Ring of Fire” sim in his interview.

  But the women here, standing in a line, each ten feet apart from one another—those were quite real.

  “Hands and feet, stallion,” Officer Thompson said.

  Strange command, hands and feet—not knees. Peter remembered bear crawl races in gym class. He knew the position. He started to bend.

  Then he recognized who, exactly, was up here with him. Behind the bit, he tried to say something, to object.

  Officer Thomson gave him another little tug, and Peter bent over.

  ****

  “This one is called Nature’s Fury,” she said, patting his mane and looking on him with affection as she stroked the ivory patch between his big, black eyes.

  It was summer break. The family had gotten VIP tickets to the Preakness at Pimlico, courtesy of Mom being named On the Scene Journalist of the Year for the Maryland Hot Spots page of Online Omniscience. This “reward” had involved a lot of waiting around, first in the parking lot and then in the stands, all for a race that had started and finished pretty quickly, by Peter’s estimation. And now they were getting in a post-race stable tour, right before the owners and jockeys packed the horses into the backs of trailers and returned them to their real and permanent homes.

  The horse he was looking at right now, Nature’s Fury, was a black stallion with a white mane. Today had been his last race before being “put out to stud.” He’d placed third, which was evidently a big deal.

  “What’s ‘put out to stud’ mean?” Peter asked, bewildered. He was only fourteen, just starting prep school this fall, and had never heard of such a thing in his life.

  Dad laughed. Mom put her hand over her mouth to conceal her amusement and shrugged at him. So, Dad continued, “Best way to retire, son. All this big horse has to do now is stay healthy and help the lady horses make little horses.”

  Peter’s eyes widened. “You mean, the horse’s job is to have sex all the time?” he blurted before he could help himself. No big deal, in the end. Mom and Dad both were pretty easy in the matter of such questions, although they often declined to answer them.

  Helplessly, Dad looked to Ms. Anders, the handler who had told Peter the horse’s name.

  “Not so lucky as that, usually,” she said. “Almost all of it’s from artificial insemination. Most buyers actually get theirs in freezer packs through special mail orders.”

  Mom turned away, her shoulders aquiver with mirth and scandal.

  Insemination? Freezer packs? Baby horses through the mail? Peter was lost.

  Ms. Anders looked to Peter’s father as though for permission.

  “Go ahead,” Dad told her. “You tell him. I’m not saying a thing.”

  She only had to stoop a little to get Peter’s ear. “It’s somebody’s job,” she said, her voice low but easily heard, “to jerk them off.”

  Peter turned to look at her dead-on. “Miss,” he said, “you are underpaid.”

  ****

  He’d never forgotten about that day, although he hadn’t thought about it in quite a while. He hadn’t connected the saddle and bridle he was now wearing to it, either, until he saw her. Even from more than thirty feet away, he recognized her pale skin, her shimmering red hair. He remembered her cool, mint-green eyes. He recognized her ponytail with its two white ribbons, one at the base of the tail, one halfway down it. He only knew her last name.

  Of the three waiting for him at ten-foot intervals, she was the first. The other two handlers were vaguely familiar as well, as though he’d seen them that day but may or may not have talked to them. How had the prison staff known to get in touch with them?

  He knew the answer, even as he “walked”—or perhaps “cantered” was a better word—forward to them on his hands and feet, ass in the air, feeling the afternoon wind on the back of his testicles.

  The award. The whole thing had been published, of course. And there was probably a record of everyone who had attended the Preakness.

  Officer Thompson still had the bit cord, keeping him from going too fast. But she also had a riding crop, and if he went too slow, she tapped his balls and the base of his erect cock with it from behind. Alongside him, camera over the shoulder, Officer Grant caught the action for the home audience.

  “Whoa, stallion,” Officer Thompson said abruptly, reining him in gently, bringing his head up so he could see Ms. Anders looking at him from ten feet away, having a right good belly laugh at his expense. At least, bent over this way, his perpetual hard-on was hidden.

  At Miss Anders’ feet—at the feet of all three of the handlers—was a wide blue blanket. In the center of each, an open plastic box with foam on the inside. From here, they seemed to steam… But, no.

  Freezer packs.

  Peter whimpered. He tried telling himself he shouldn’t be so upset after having his man cherry already blown in front of a live television audience. But this was different.

  These weren’t strangers. Well, at least not totally. They knew him just enough so that part of the appeal was not only in performing this act, but specifically that they would perform it upon him, on Peter Gravis, the chatty teenage wiseass from the Preakness. Then, he’d been only a high school freshman. Now he was a freshman in college, and he was in trouble with the law. He was fair game.

  And they were going to jerk him off like they jerked off their horses.

  Ms. Anders and the others all had on blouses with short sleeves high up on the arm. Miss Anders drew on long, white plastic gloves. She then set to working cream from a small glass jar through her fingers.

  “Down to your knees, stallion,” said Officer Kersey.

  Peter dropped. It was a true physical relief. But the relief was short-lived because Officer Thompson then said, “Going to need every fiber in those ultra-hunky back muscles of yours, stallion. I’m going to ride you the final bit of distance there. Get yourself ready.”

  Peter readied himself. He tensed his muscles to stone rigidity. And it wasn’t too bad—maybe a bit awkward—when she settled onto his back and straddled him. He was a little afraid she would slide off by accident and yank half of his face off when she lifted her feet from the ground to secure her knees in the leather stirrups, her legs bent so that her ankles met the backs of her inner thighs. But in this (as in many such things, Peter was sure), Officer Thompson seemed to be a woman of experience. She balanced herself perfectly and did not hurt him.

  But she did reach back to give him a medium-intensity thwap with the riding crop, just to get him started. “Hi-yo, Silver,” she said, settling herself in good and snugly.

  Peter got going, turning his head to the side, crying deliberately for the camera. His message: Somebody. Stop. This.

  Officer Grant gave him a thumbs-up. “Yep. Just like that. Doing great!”

  Another thwap, making him tear up some more, blink, and grunt. And pick up his pace.

  ****

  Buddy stopped at the first table, just as he had been told, hands at his sides.

  The four women there craned their heads for a good look. Two of them, Marcy and Jill, he knew by name even though he hadn’t spoken to them before.

  “It’s so … veiny,” Marcy said, head bent practically to the shoulder. “God, that’s funny lookin’.”

  Tentatively, she touched the tip. Buddy stared straight ahead, mostly at Iris, hands shaking at his sides. Why are you doing this to me? he wanted to ask her.

  He recalled Nurse Reyes-Garcia explaining that none of the volunteer humiliators bore any of the prisoners ill will. They had, rather, put themselves forward for “personal reasons.”

  Were you talked into it?

  “God, Marcy, you’re actually touching that thing? Holy shit.”

  “This part is like rubber. Come here and see. Try it.”

  Two fingers at once on him now, from two different girls. Buddy breathed through his open mouth. Looked down at what they were doing to him.

  “Is it true
this thing squirts at the end? You know, when you … climax?”

  You’re about to find out if you don’t watch it, he thought. But he only nodded. He didn’t speak.

  “Edgar Allen Poe,” Jill said. “Go.”

  Buddy picked “The Raven.” It was so easy to remember with all of those rhyming cues. He could give the first three stanzas by memory.

  Her fist closed around his swollen cock, coaxing a drop of precum from the tip before he even got to “weak and weary.” And as heated as his whole body felt at her touch, the shock stopped him cold.

  “Keep going,” she said, then slid her chair off to the side, clearing a path that would be safe from his jizz should he explode right there.

  Buddy kept going. So did Jill. And again, in front of everyone, before he made it to “each separate dying ember,” Buddy flamed out in three long shots of thick, white ejaculate that made it halfway to the next table.

  Only as he was recovering, moments later, did their cries and outbursts of wonder (or merriment or disgust) register in his ears. His eyes had rolled all the way back. He had quite forgotten his place.

  From not far behind him, Nurse Reyes-Garcia said, “Buddy, you are doing well. Proceed to the next table, please. With your current medication, I shall not be satisfied that you are sufficiently purged until you have made your man milk at least three times.”

  At the next table in question, four more young women were eagerly waving him over. At the current table, Jill was now accepting wipes from Nurse Reyes-Garcia and giving her hands (especially her fingers) a thorough scrubbing.

  Between his legs, his conquered soldier twitched, then stirred, then slowly stood up again—a boxer who had been knocked down, then blearily made it back to his feet, pleading with the ref to not stop the fight.

  Treacherous bastard, he thought.

  One swat from the ping pong paddle, wielded suddenly and out of the blue by Marcy, got him moving. On wobbly legs, Buddy proceeded to table number two, just as the final lines he had quoted from “The Raven” disappeared from the screens on the wall.