Chinese Justice

by Peter Marriner

  Head downwards, staring at the wood block floor, helplessly immobilised with her wrists manacled and her arms stretched backwards so that she was held in the posture of a diver about to go off the high board, she repeated the words again, parrot-fashion, without needing to think. The two young girls whose hands had delivered the admonitory slap were small and slight but the well-reddened cheeks of Nicola’s behind, bared and backward-thrust, were now so sensitive that even so childish a punishment could draw a yelp out of her.

  She had spent most of the past week learning this rigmarole of confession, in between spells of imprisonment in a former store cupboard, along with a number of other female victims of this revolution. Four middle aged women, teachers she suspected, were packed in with her, all of whom regarded Nicola with evident terror, even more so when she tried to communicate with them.

  Eventually one had whispered. “Please don’t... They hate... Foreign things,” before lapsing again into terrified silence. But that much Nicola had worked out for herself.

  The roof skylight through which she had arrived was one of a row lighting the school gymnasium in which some sort of political rally was being held at the time. It had been hung with home made banners decorated with large red characters, stretched from side to side by means of ropes secured to the wall bars. It had been one of these which broke Nicola’s fall and she came down entangled in the cotton sheeting, all naked legs and arms, in a shower of nuggets of glass, on the heads of a mass of startled schoolgirls below.

  She was extricated from the ensuing heap with a great deal of hysterical screeching but quite effective organisation. The leader and director of this efficiency seemed to be a small stocky girl quite undistinguished by any outward mark, wearing the seeming identical blue cotton uniform as the others. All of the girls, in fact, seemed very much alike in shapeless jacket and pants, like a lot of sexless dolls, with coarse black hair in short straight bob.

  Directed by the pint-sized commissar, a swarm of blue clad pygmies submerged Nicola before she could recover. Nicola was a well-built young woman, but the apparent fragility of her opponents was deceptive and they hugely outnumbered her. She emerged shortly from the press, red-faced, hair over her eyes, dress ripped to her waist, one breast exposed, firmly in her captors’ clutches with a dozen girls hanging onto her wherever they could grip, arms, legs and hair, even her ears, forcing her to her knees before their commander.

  “What is your name?”

  Nicola was surprised and at first relieved. She could make herself understood! Xeng had conducted her over the school, of course, in the character of distinguished visitor. She had thought that she would be easily recognised, though her arrival might be unexpected. She began eagerly to explain, but that it seemed broke the rules.

  “Answer questions only!” The little brute stepped forward and slapped Nicola deliberately hard across the cheek. “What is your name?” she shouted.

  Nicola felt silly, as if she was taking part in some hackneyed piece of film screen-play. Nevertheless the slap hurt. Her face flaming, she answered in the manner prescribed, noting at the same time that another girl was solemnly writing down her answer, frowning in concentration, no doubt at the difficult foreign sounds. Heaven knew what sort of a jumble she was making of it. Looking at the solemn faces of the teenagers Nicola suddenly realised this was serious. She was aware that the school was some kind of corrective facility, the inmates having been sentenced for minor criminal activities, mainly petty theft and drug dealing, but some for more political offences. Xeng had been reticent about his posting here. It seemed so out of line with his London studies that she wondered if it was really promotion or a subtle sort of sidelining by the retrogressive elements he had talked about.

  “What is your name? Why are you here? You have destroyed the people’s property!” Nicola took this assertion for her cue to explain about the archaeology project; but this was a disaster, apparently taken for an evasion. The diminutive commissar screamed orders.

  The girls holding Nicola were instantly electrified. She was lifted off her feet and rushed, struggling feebly, towards another group of girls who were dragging a vaulting horse out into the centre of the floor. She was hoist bodily aloft and thumped into place on top of the leather cushion, face down her head projecting, her breasts squashed flat under her, short dress riding up her thighs, several hands seized on each extremity splaying her apart. Orders flew. Skipping ropes appeared, with which Nicola’s wrists and ankles were fastened down tightly one by one to the stout legs of the horse.

  “Why are you here?” The round expressionless face, black eyes glinting like wet pebbles, was on a level with Nicola’s, who dropped her gaze in confusion, not knowing what was expected of her. Instantly the grip on her hair forced her to attend to her interrogator, who was now displaying in one hand, a rubber-soled slipper, which she slapped meaningfully into the other palm.

  “Why are you here?”

  Nicola stuttered helplessly, puzzled how to answer, her brain reeling.

  The slipper passed quickly out of sight, but she quickly found out where it had disappeared to when it smacked hard, with a stinging impact on her thinly clad seat. Nicola squealed. The girls giggled.

  Thus stimulated, Nicola collected her wits. “What you do here?”

  “I came to see Mr Xeng!” she squealed. “Ahhh!”

  This it seemed was the direction required of her! “What you do with Xeng?”

  Nicola bogged down in trying to frame a discreet reply. Amid another burst of giggles, nimble fingers whipped her dress up past her hips. Nicola began a protest, but then the same fingers hooked into the waistband of her knickers and yanked them quickly over her bottom as far as they would go. She jerked this way and that on the horse, aghast and alarmed, feeling the chill draft from the broken skylight on her sudden nakedness. Her bottom had been laid bare, with her carefully chosen lace knickers now only a twisted black band stretched taut across the tops of her parted thighs. Some sense of what was coming rendered her protests even more urgent.

  Whackkk!!! The stinging impact of the slipper, upon her bare flesh this time, redoubled the volume of her squeals.

  “What you do with Xeng?” But Nicola still shied away from the question, dismayed by the direction of enquiry it implied.

  More orders flew. With a great deal of confused giggling and squeaking, the back end of the horse was lifted under her and its hind legs propped a foot or so higher than the front pair. It left Nicola apprehensively tipped up with her bare bottom raised prominently to the summit, small hands patting and pinching as if to emphasise its vulnerability.

  “Attention!” Whackkk!!! The slipper adequately compelled that! “What you do with Xeng?”

  Nicola groaned in exasperation and then changed it to a squeal as hesitation earned her another smack. She tried her best to wriggle off the horse.

  “What you do with Xeng!” The slipper smacked inexorably left and right, first one cheek then its twin, the girls to her rear engaging in audible competition to wield it and to deliver their strokes hard and accurately. The questioner produced a sheaf of photographs and spread them under Nicola’s nose. With shame Nicola

  recognised the pictures of herself cavorting naked in Xeng’s hotel bedroom, on Xeng’s bed on the night of her college May ball. They must have come from him. They must have rifled his private office and found them among his possessions. Humiliated in the most painful fashion, Nicola surrendered.

  “We... we... were lovers!” she groaned in excuse.

  “Ahhh... !” and there was a lot of giggling. “What you do with him?” Smackkk!!! “What you do with him?” they repeated. Smackkk!!! Smackkk!!!

  Writhing and gasping under the slipper, Nicola guessed she could expect no mercy until they heard what they wanted. She had heard all the awful stories of the old Red Guard times. Day by day, humiliating, relentles
s torment, until their victim was ready to say anything that was suggested, just to make an end to it.

  “We... we made... love,” she panted. Smackkk!!! “You were fucked by him?” “Uhhh... yes... yes!”

  “Say it so!” the voice insisted amid a gust of shrieks and titters. Nicola was all too conscious of the raised slipper, poised over her throbbing behind!

  “I... I was... f-fucked by him...” she repeated, flushing until she was scarlet at both ends.

  “Good! So you are accomplice of evil Xeng?” Smackkk!!! Smackkk!!! Smackkk!!!

  “Yes! Yes!” Nicola squealed. Her bottom cheeks burned and stung. What Xeng had done for her to be his accomplice, she had no idea. Her one desire now was to be allowed to dismount from the horse.

  “Good! We question you more. You will be taught good behaviour. You must learn and desire to be truthful!” She was hauled off her perch. She could hardly stand upright, nor even bear to pull her knickers back up over her painfully tender bottom cheeks, but they marched her away after a fashion, propelled and half carried by multiple hands and sped off by humiliating jeers.

  Later that day a bowl of lukewarm watery rice and soggy vegetables was thrust in to the prisoners in the store cupboard, which they had to eat with their fingers, sharing the bowl. As if emboldened by the co-operative process, one of her fellow prisoners ventured to whisper to their new companion.

  “Milly Soong hates you... Did you not know? She was Mr Xeng’s favourite before you came.” She hesitated. “Mr Xeng was a very passionate man... If you confess it will be better.”

  “Where is Xeng?” Nicola instinctively whispered too. “Confess what?” But the woman only looked at her in terror and retired into terrified silence again.

  Next morning the teachers and Nicola were taken to a classroom to be faced by a crowd of excited girls armed with sticks. Nicola sat uncomfortably upon a chair too small for her, while she and the teachers were lectured by a serious be- spectacled girl, the meaning of what was being said was entirely not understood by Nicola. Evidently they were expected to memorize the lesson, the teachers anxiously repeating sentences over and over, one by one. The plump middle-aged headmistress made a mistake and was made to come out to the front and kneel upon a tall stool. The stool was just wide enough to take the woman’s hands and knees close together, with her broad backside out-thrust, tightly clad in blue cotton. The spectacled girl shouted angrily at her, while the woman, old enough to be her mother, wailed apologies, the girl walloping her with a big desk-ruler in between.

  Predictably Nicola failed to pass the test and was made to replace the plump woman on the stool. Since her own bottom had hardly recovered from the smacking it had got with the slipper the day before, the impact of the ruler had an even more drastic effect upon her thinly clad rump. Nicola wailed as loudly as her precursor, trying to concentrate her brain to reproduce the sounds parrot-fashion.

  They were returned to their prison and fed. This time when the deliverer of the meal returned to collect the empty bowls, she was accompanied by a blue clad junior squad, come to collect Nicola alone.

  Milly Soong, if the pint-sized commissar were she, received her prisoner in the same gymnasium. The broken glass and woodwork had been cleared away and the hole in the skylight covered over, but the dread shape of the horse still stood ominously to the fore. Brisk orders from the girl brought a willing response from the rest who hustled Nicola forward despite her reluctance, with every sign of anticipating entertainment.

  Against so many, Nicola could make no useful resistance and her pleas went unheeded. She was swiftly horsed as before, this time with the addition of a great thick leather strap such as might have secured some traveller’s luggage, drawn across the small of her back to fasten her firmly in place, helpless now even to wriggle. Milly Soong retreated to take up a place somewhere off to Nicola’s flank and instead the self-important little clerk placed herself in front armed with her notebook and pencil. Meanwhile, out of the corner of her eye, the unhappy captive saw with anticipatory dread, a wooden table tennis bat that had been passing from hand to hand with much giggling, had now been passed back somewhere to her rear.

  Almost immediately Nicola felt its peremptory tap on her bared rump. The still throbbing curves quivered at its touch and she squealed in miserable anticipation, no doubt to the satisfaction of her diminutive interrogators. She was certainly called to anxious attention.

  “What you do with Xeng?” The questioner’s tone was casual. She let the flat of the bat rest upon the lower curve of Nicola’s bottom, athwart the soft cleavage between the cheeks and just above the dark twist of her knickers where they lay stretched tautly across a deep dark cleavage. If it had ever been a genuine sports model it didn’t feel as if the face still had its rubber surface, more like hard leather. Tremulously, Nicola began the humiliating response that had been beaten into her earlier with the slipper.

  “You do not tell us all!”

  Behind her conveniently postured victim, Milly Soong took a step back, measured the distance with her eye and went up on her toes, the bat hissing audibly as it swept up and down.

  Splattt!!! The hard round bat impacted smartly upon its tender target and Nicola, just about to voice her bewilderment, let go a howl in its place. A helpless target, she convulsed every muscle, jerking against her bonds, eyes wide, mouth agape, bottom cheeks quaking and jumping as if to throw off the deep red splotch that had appeared across their thoroughly well prepared rounds. “Confess! You are criminal and thief!”

  Nicola hissed through clenched teeth, her brain not functioning well, being fully engrossed in absorbing the effects of the hard bat on her well-prepared bottom. Swishhh Splattt!!! Swishhh Splattt!!! Swishhh Splattt!!! What could the little beast mean? Again and again the bat swished and cracked, Nicola hissing and squealing each time, unable to get her mind in focus.

  “What you have in truck?”

  The truck? The bronzes! They had found the bronzes! Comprehension dawned. Absurdly she felt grateful, but comprehension had dawned too late to save her from another quick half dozen of the bat, delivered with as much vehemence as the juvenile questioner could muster, alternating between the madly flexing bottom cheeks and adding to the vivid spread of discoloured flesh.

  Nicola snorted and whinnied wildly, with unladylike noises of pain and desperation rendering her efforts to respond quite incomprehensible. The shrill vituperation continued inexorably.

  “You are wicked criminal! You are mistress of evil Xeng! You are enemy of people!”

  Between the mounting agony of the repeated applications of the bat, Nicola at last gathered her wits. She tried to get together a coherent account of how she came to have the truck and its contents. It did her no good. Through her tears she could see that the recorder’s notebook and pencil remained poised but unused.

  “Confess! You are... criminal!” Milly Soong chanted mercilessly, breathing hard as she laid on the smacks to an already sizzling target. Clearly they merely intended Nicola to confess to their version of events. Nothing else would be accepted. The red flush deepened with each succeeding swing of the blue-clad arm, covering the full width of Nicola’s haplessly presented bottom, the smacks beginning now to overlay one another on the quivering curves.

  “I’ll confess...!” she wailed at last. “I’ll confess...!” She had given up trying to make them see sense. At first she thought her young tormentor hadn’t heard her. She shrieked again and again, ever louder as the round bat descended. “I want to confess...! I want to confess...!”

  At last a small cool hand succeeded the wooden impacts on her throbbing behind. “You will confess sure!” Milly Soong merrily assured her, giving her a familiar hand spank, while Nicola jerked and squealed even at that light impact.

  “You are coward! Cry like baby! Just with little toy thing!” Through her tears, Nicola saw Milly Soong now standin
g in front of her, brandishing the thing right under her victim’s nose.

  “You will be given trial! Then you will confess even more! We see how much you will be made to tell next time, Miss darling Nicky!”

  It was back to the store cupboard again. She spent the night trying to anticipate what was to come. What she would be charged with; how she could minimise her punishment; which was no doubt exactly what had been intended.

  Next day, in the morning she was brought out for another session, ready to confess anything her tormentors desired.

  Up on the horse again, this time with Milly Soong as the recorder, pen and notebook in hand, ready to drill the trembling captive in her confession. This time she left the necessary reminders to her satellites, in whom Nicola’s expressive howls and quickly abject obedience to the cane seemed to have engendered a spirit of bullying scorn. The formerly impressive, distinguished foreign visitor had now become in her humiliating position, merely a source of cruel amusement to the girls who danced eagerly about their commander. The juvenile commissar retained the dreaded bat in her own keeping, however. It was hardly necessary for their purpose. Nicola knew it was readily available and meanwhile her well-thrashed bottom was tender enough for a firmly applied hand to have a salutary enough effect.

  Slowly she learned what they required word-by-word, nerves constantly stretched to pick up clues.