Chinese Justice

by Peter Marriner

  When at last the Chairman emerged she was almost ready to be grateful, eager to be driven away. The council members were beaming as they escorted the short stout man in the severe blue tunic down the steps. The villagers cheered with unfeigned enthusiasm, the Chairman acknowledging them with pompous gravity, a ruler to his subjects despite the outward appearance of equality. This was a nightmare Nicola would like to have believed she would wake up from, yet she knew the heat and dust, her harnessed naked state, the clamouring people were all too real.

  Now the Chairman was shaking hands with the village council. Then he was down the steps and Nicola felt the vehicle rock. She took the weight upon the shafts, leaning forward into the harness automatically as she felt him settle his bottom on the seat. She felt him take up the reins, and gripped the bit with her teeth, head up and ready on her toes, trembling with nervous apprehension, knowing very well what to expect next.

  The Widow Feng had already coached the great man in the use of the long carriage whip. Nicola anticipated by the reaction of the crowd, his unfurling of the thong and was already flexing leg and bottom cheek muscles when he laid it neatly enough, for a beginner, across her bottom.

  Her yelp was drowned by the crowd’s fawning applause. Nicola leapt away from the pain, bare feet thrusting hard, white teeth showing on the bit. She got the rickshaw rolling with exemplary speed, sensing the slightly greater weight of her new driver, but not escaping a second supplementary flick of the whip. She drew in air with flared nostrils, expanding her lungs, her breasts bouncing wildly. Her whip-seared bottom cheeks dimpled and filled alternately as her long legs drove strongly. One half of her mind was upon the desire to get away from the humiliating applause of the crowd, the other half upon doing what was necessary to escape the whip. Both combined to produce the effect of total dedication to her animal function.

  This was almost a little monarchy over which Nicola’s new Master presided. The villages that had survived were built just above the flood line and connected by dirt roads that wound round the contours of the hills between them. As active as the Chairman was obliged to be, his new transport was useful as well as ornamental, for the short distances between the villages made a woman-powered carriage perfectly adequate.

  The inhabitants of the other villages had already heard of the red haired white skinned devil captured at Goh Lap. Their ancient traditions accustomed them to the idea of humans performing tasks that in other lands would have been fit only for draught animals. It seemed only natural to them that so gross a creature should be used as one. Until Nicola became too common sight on the roads, they brought their children to see the big she-devil trotting in harness. She towered head and shoulders above the giggling audience, who pointed out the big feet padding in the dust, the enormous, bouncing breasts, the flood of strangely coloured head hair complemented by a thick furry pelt between the legs and warned them of how she ate naughty children.

  As the effects of the Catastrophe were ameliorated by time, the Chairman was busy organising the reclamation of buried fields out on the muddy plain and their allocation between peasants and refugees or for the more energetic and enterprising to share-crop on behalf of widows and orphans. Soon the white canopied rickshaw was to be seen regularly travelling between villages or out along the narrow field divisions, with Nicola harnessed between the shafts, striding or trotting, her red hair streaming, her bare feet hard callused, spurning gravel or mud indifferently.

  She stood mutely stationary in village streets or on windy embankments while her Master directed adjudicated disputes or chatted to field gangs or yoke-laden women. She had no idea if any other world still existed beyond the sea of mud. Above the villages on the bare hilltops, little brick towers still existed, built originally to detect imagined enemy air attacks, but now only used for spotting roosting duck coveys. Once or twice she saw in the distance spidery frameworks of girders or isolated tilted and fragmentary ruins amid the mud. Refugees had ceased to turn up and it seemed her former prison must have been wholly overwhelmed by cave-ins and landslips, since so far as she was aware no-one who knew her there had ever reappeared.

  Her Master drove her out almost daily, leaving the office detail to his wives. Naked and unable to communicate, governed by the mind-numbing tyranny of whip and reins, Nicola’s reduction to the condition of a docile draught animal was inescapable. She had become a feature of the landscape, her Master’s status symbol as useful as she was unique.

  Physically she found her jaws becoming stiff, callused at the corners, her mouth drawn wider showing more of her white teeth. Her body, still pale under the cloudy skies, was as firmly muscled and proportioned as any athlete’s. There was no problem of fleshiness of hip or bottom in her present life; the remedy was displayed by the faint pink of old whip wheals and occasional red ones more recent. Her lung capacity had been perforce enhanced by the need for staying power at the trot and she now thrust out her chest to display two bouncing globes that Hollywood might have envied. Only her feet, once slender by European standards, were now two or three sizes larger and equipped with soles as unfeeling as boot leather. With such a regular routine she was usually able to avoid accidents of evacuation in the public street. She could not entirely avoid the need, however, and she learnt to take advantage of any halt to manoeuvre over to a roadside ditch, spreading her legs and thrusting out her rear without shame.

  Insensibly, for want of better treatment, she had been brought to appreciate the pleasures of an animal, sun on naked skin, cool breeze on heated limbs, a splash in canal or pond, washing off the road dust. Food too, of which her Master’s wives never stinted her, affecting to treat her as carefully as any thoroughbred filly and bringing her tit-bits. Even the business of trotting down a smooth track under shade trees and being let go flat out in a hard run, had a certain physical pleasure.

  In any case she could no more have resisted such a fate than a horse or donkey. Laziness or sulkiness her Master punished with punctilious accuracy so that Nicola in harness trembled with eagerness to please. The sound of a warning whip crack was enough to bring her to obedience and it was seldom necessary to do more. She was most of what a carriage pony would have been with the added edge of intelligent anticipation.

  She had almost forgotten how to speak and still understood little of what was said about her, for the only sounds that she needed to attend to were those of command and even those became less frequent as she grew clever in obedience to the reins.

  The Chairman was a short thickset muscular man with a brush of greying hair over a round bland face. He had originally been sent with a company of militia to sort out an outbreak of faction fighting in the district before the Catastrophe. He was capable and energetic. Despite the disabling of military weapons and mechanical aids by the promiscuous dissemination of the bugs originally designed to be Peace weapons, he kept control of the militia force and rearmed it with more primitive but effective weapons. With this power he became the indispensable arbiter between village factions, refugees and militia and thenceforth no one ventured to challenge his rule over this unofficial kingdom.

  His weakness was his taste for collecting women. His prestige was high enough to encompass the possession of three wives, while the villages competed to place pretty concubines in his way. His wives, however, were officially employed as his secretarial staff, while the pleasure garden attached to his house was respectably designated as a public park and opened on public holidays, filled with entertainments. Goh Lap village’s gift had taken his fancy at once, satisfying his taste for exotic females while at the same time being made to serve a useful function.

  The Chairman’s wives were not so receptive at first. However, once they decided that the strange creature was not to be a rival, they became keenly interested and took charge of her management and training, using her for transport for themselves and their children with much enthusiasm.

  One day they drove her
to one of the villages near the waterside where the local militia were celebrating a victory over a gang of marauding river pirates who had tried to raid the rice barns. She was left tethered there in an earth-walled compound while her mistresses were treated to rice wine by the village council and they and their children watched a display of fireworks and the traditional burning in effigy of an Imperialist demon.

  The elders of the village returned to their convivial gathering. The night was dark but warm, the glow of the bonfire in the village square giving only a little light where Nicola stood with eyes wide and body tense with horrified apprehension before a tittering juvenile audience.

  She had been stripped of her little G-string and between her thighs, lit ruddily by the distant firelight, there stuck out prominently the blue-fused end of a large, round, gaudily coloured firework. It had been worked firmly butt first, up into Nicola’s unveiled sex. The cuffs at her wrists had been fastened together behind her back, rendering her helpless to remove the intrusion, nor did she have the option of screaming for help, for in place of her wooden bit her jaws were straining to accommodate the intruded cylinder of an even larger firework.

  Most of Nicola’s horror was directed at this, right beneath her nose, where she could both smell with flared nostrils the sulphurous odour of its combustion and actually see the worm-like spark creeping through the touch paper. But even as she crossed her eyes to keep its progress within view, there came a heart-stopping hiss from further below and the invisible but tangible firework between her thighs went off with a fizzing sound.

  A roaring upside-down Roman candle scorching her thighs forced Nicola to caper wildly, straddle legged as a succession of whooshing fiery balls bounced about her ankles and parted the yelping, skittering crowd.

  Nicola was hardly aware of them. The village boys had done their cruel work thoroughly. Swinging in a wild circle she revealed yet another beginning eruption. Like a mongrel dog with a firework tied to its tail she had been the victim of fiendish juvenile tormentors. A whooshing fountain of golden fire shot from between the cheeks of her behind as the eruption from another firework, buried deep in her anus, shot her forward like a human rocket propelled by a flailing tail of fire.

  Last of all to go off was the coloured incendiary cylinder gagging Nicola’s aching jaws. This time her it was her head that was jerked back and she was driven into reverse. She staggered blindly back and forth like a creature demented, with fiery golden streams of fire swirling and lashing in incandescent arcs from three different orifices.

  At last they faltered and one by one they petered out, first from between her thighs, then from her anus and last of all from her jaws, leaving her half collapsed, sweating and trembling with reaction in the midst of a ring of giggling juveniles.

  The Chairman’s wives were very annoyed when they saw her condition. The hollow reeking cases of the burnt out fireworks had to be extracted from their powder-blackened fleshy sockets. The firework stub between Nicola’s legs was now ringed by the frizzled stubble of what had once been a luxuriant pubic bush and her face was comically blackened with a halo of singed hair. Their husband hastened to satisfy their complaints and the village was heavily fined as a communal punishment for the mischief that their children had got up to. Nicola did not escape unscathed, since clearly a dumb beast could not be expected to do other than suffer abuse and steps were taken to secure her.

  Behind the Chairman’s big house on the outskirts of Lui Feng village ran a lane littered with useless pieces of mechanical equipment, now devoted to small workshops where broken tools and weapons were repaired or put together with considerable ingenuity. Nicola had been down there once when repairs were needed to the harness. She expected something of the kind when the senior wife drove her round during her husband’s absence.

  The other two were already there waiting by one of the workshops where Nicola was unhitched from the shafts and let inside. It was not much more than a booth with mud walls and a ladder in the corner leading to living quarters on the upper floor. The walls were lined with shelves and benches racks of tools and coils of rope, rawhide and leather. The craftsman in attendance, a skinny wrinkled old man in a ragged singlet and loose knee length trousers, was blowing life into a small charcoal brazier that glowed in the rear.

  This man and the three wives engaged in a brief discussion. Two giggling young girls came down the interior stairs to join them and took charge of Nicola like girl grooms with a filly. A small knot of infants of under school age gathered to watch as the pair backed Nicola up against the pillar that supported the upper floor across the open street front. With some difficulty, due to the disparity in stature, they hooked her reins so that she was forced to stand on tiptoe with her back to the pillar. Cords fastened her wrist cuffs and elbows behind the pillar, while long leather straps held her belly in and prevented her from lifting her knees. A roll of grass matting was thrust between Nicola and the stone across her shoulder blades, forcing her to arch her chest right out.

  Panic filled Nicola’s brain as she realised that all the focus was upon her breasts that the two girls were prodding and tweaking with a lot of giggling. She was well aware that they regarded her as ridiculously proportioned. Urged on by the old man now busy at a bench, the girls stilled their giggles and set to work employing soft fingers and feminine dexterity to tease their helpless captive. At first, Nicola wriggled and hissed behind her gag, her eyes wide and her chest heaving in panic making the russet-tipped globes wobble and jiggle in the two small pairs of hands. The girls murmured soothingly, keeping Nicola under pressure, dropping their hands to her belly and down between her thighs.

  She was used to being handled like an animal by the Chairman’s wives, washed combed and petted, but this was a new thing, both alarming and confusing. She didn’t want to react but at last she began as the soft palms and gently circling fingers both soothed and excited her. Her first emotions of fear and panic melted insensibly, first into trembling submission and then into erotic reaction. Her panting became tumultuous. Her breasts seemed to swell willingly into the soft cupping palms, her nipples stiffening against the little tantalizing finger-flicks so that she arched a little more against her bonds.

  Flushed with heat and emotion she let her eyelids droop wet lashed on hot cheeks, making little helpless mewing sounds round the gagging bit. She looked down upon two dark haired heads, the diminutive girls hardly needing to bend to reach her breasts. Lips closed around both nipples, warm, soft and moist, nuzzling and sucking, sharp little teeth nibbling like nursing puppies. Nicola mewed frantically, eyes closed, aware that her nipples were as swollen and stiff as two rubber nozzles. Unable to stop herself she arched and thrust after those tormenting tongues as they withdrew and the sudden chill made the nipples prickle even as they throbbed.

  There was a quick hiss from the old craftsman and both girls fell back out of his way though continuing to support Nicola’s breasts with cupped hands, presenting them like two round white fruit with the nipples standing up proudly red and glistening with saliva.

  In that instant the old man seized, pierced and released her nipple, shifting to its twin and piercing that before the first had even completed its bounce or Nicola had collected breath for a whinny. Sweat ran down to mingle with her tears. She could smell her own flesh, both nipples throbbing and burning. The two girl assistants captured them and swiftly applied cooling soothing cream, the wives, meanwhile, clapping in approval of their elder’s skill. The red-hot needle had passed through both swollen nipples in quick succession and the cauterized passage was now swiftly followed by the insertion of a large silver-gilt ring through each. Nicola squealed as the two girls bounced the ringed breasts on their small palms.

  Nicola’s ears were already pierced and now she had large plain rings, similar to those in her nipples, and now a similar adornment brought fresh tears, a hole pierced through her septum, the ring dangling on her upper li
p.

  There proved to be more important parts that her mistresses felt could be

  improved by metal additions. Her legs were pulled apart and fastened by the ankles behind the pillar to prevent her from closing them. Kneeling before her, one of the girls nipped Nicola’s labia in four places, stretching the fleshy flap between sharply nailed fingertips. The old artisan slid in beside her and again Nicola felt the piercing needle drive between the nipping fingers, left then right, each of her labia penetrated twice in turn. The man left and then returned with four more silver gilt rings, smaller and finer than those in the rest of her. The rings were threaded through the pink flesh and long silk threads passed through them, fastened round Nicola’s thighs, held her labia spread open.

  The worst was still to come. The nimble fingers of the female handlers sought out Nicola’s clitoris where it lay exposed to view. Nicola whimpered and jerked, quite realizing that the needle was now to pierce the most intimate part of her flesh and striving not to let it protrude. As if in warning of what was to come, her nipples and labis throbbed stiff and sensitive, seeming to have swollen to twice their normal size. Deftly the two girls manipulated the little bud, taking turns until in Nicola’s disordered and defeated state, she lost track of what she was trying to achieve. The clitoris began to respond despite her first intent, enlarging until the short gold cylinder that the old man extended could be slipped over it to form a collar.

  The cylinder was supplied with two holes ready prepared. The sharp needle passed through the holes, piercing right through the intervening flesh. Nicola wailed, or rather whinnied behind her bit. The path it had pioneered was followed inexorably by a slender rod of gold, which was secured by two gilt balls screwed onto the projecting ends. The silken threads that held Nicola’s labia outspread were now released, but the lips could no longer close completely and left Nicola’s gold-sheathed clitoris plainly exposed to view.