by Mark Andrews
He now called a halt and released one of the girls from a spoke, gesturing to Angela to take her place. He locked her wrists in the cuffs, gave her welted bottom a sharp pat, and ordered them to resume while the other guard took the freed girl away. She would be employed weeding the gardens for the rest of the day.
The labour was hard. The weight of the waterwheel and the water each bucket contained was a massive load and it took the eight girls all they had to make each painful step. In Angela’s case, it was doubly hard as her buttocks were so badly welted, her legs wouldn’t seem to obey her instructions to assist in pushing the spoke...
But worse - far, far worse, was the circle of men who stood around the low fence just outside the track on which they trudged, eyeing the eight nude girls, admiring their firm glistening flesh, their beautiful breasts and their so totally naked vulvas. The men’s eyes clearly indicated their sexual lust for the sweating girls. Their hands obviously ached to reach up and feel the firm breasts, the naked mound between their legs and the soft buttocks. They didn’t because it wasn’t permitted and the guard, while encouraging them to look and to talk of their desires, would not permit anything further.
He didn’t stop them fondling their own middles though, most of which displayed even more clearly the desires of the men. Angela had seen it all before, but only as a spectator and she hadn’t stayed long. She had been so horrified at what the world had come to with these inhuman punishments for women that she had gone home and cried. Now she was a participant. She knew of course she would be given other duties and she even knew what most of them were. Not all were as bad as this but they were bad enough and each involved a public display of their naked bodies.
She applied herself. She always had. No matter what she was doing, she tried to do it to her utmost. This was no different. She pushed hard against the hateful bar, her body shuddering with each step, the sweat quickly forming on her skin and gilding it just as it had the other seven girls. Step after step, while the sun beat down on their flesh, she strained against the dead weight of the bar.
The burning rays of the sun were bad. She was already in pain... She knew in a few days she would be tanned all over but in the meantime she would burn. But that was no excuse to slack.
‘Crack,’ went the whip on the back of some poor girl who had allowed her attention to wander. The girl screamed, “Oooowwwaaagghhhh.”
The men around her cheered the guard. “Go on, guard! Whip her again! She’s still not trying hard enough...”
But the guard was fair. He whipped when it was necessary but only then.
The water was lifted up and poured out at the top into the beginning of the little stream that culminated in the tinkling waterfall and thence into the ornamental pool at the base. It looked cool and it sounded lovely and the cries of the children who played on its edges were pleasing. But the sweating, straining muscles of the eight naked girls who provided the power for the waterfall bore testimony to the agony they were suffering. Second followed painful second and turned into minutes. On the hour they were permitted to stop for five minutes and swallow a few mouthfuls of water. This was not a humanitarian act. If they had not been watered, they would have dropped from dehydration. The water in the stream slowed to a trickle and so, therefore, did the waterfall. The children cried as it fell silent and the overseer cracked his whip once more. It was time to begin another agonising hour.
One hour followed the next, the only break being the watering spell and of course the male audience who stood around, staring silently - or not so silently, at the eight girls straining at the bars.
“This one’s not pushing as hard as she might, guard,” said a man.
The guard agreed and ‘craaaaaack’ went the whip over the miscreant’s buttocks. She yowled and jumped into the air a little but then she really laid into the bar - as did her companions. A lash to the back of one was a fillip to each and all of them strained just that little bit harder.
By the end of the first hour, Angela was just about all in. Even her superb athleticism, her dedication to training and her iron will, were not enough to prepare her for this dreadful mindless slog; the utter exhaustion she found herself in. Every step was a nightmare that seemed to take hours to complete. Every hour, when the signal came to begin again, she just knew her muscles would not respond...
But respond they did, especially when they were tickled by the crack of the whip against her now reddened flesh. Her mind became numbed to the pain. She stepped almost automatically. Her cheek came down against the bar - until the guard noticed and lashed at her already well-striped buttocks.
And still the children played, oblivious to the girls’ agony since they were kept away from the capstan by their parents.
And still the men stayed and watched, delighting in their pain and suffering. Delighting in their svelte bodies; so naked - so utterly and totally nude, now that their natural body hair had been permanently removed, exposing their sexual organs to all and sundry. All part of the shame and humiliation...
She didn’t want to look at these men. But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from theirs as they stood around the circular path worn smooth by countless feet trudging round, hour after terrible hour during daylight hours. She knew they were ogling her body. But she couldn’t help looking up into their eyes, seeking a spark of compassion for her plight.
There was none. These men wouldn’t have been here if they had felt even a shred of sympathy for their predicament. No, they were here because it was sexually titillating to watch the naked females working to the nth of their physical capacity. There were plenty of other gangs they could go and watch - and many of them did, moving to a different activity each day for variety, but none beat this one for sheer drudgery. Even the road repair gang where some of the girls had to push the huge cart laden with boiling tar wasn’t as hard as this, for this toil just went on, hour after hour, step after dreadful step from dawn until dusk.
In the winter that might only amount to eight hours but in the summer it went to fifteen. It made no difference to the guards. The girls were roused from their cages an hour before dawn, fed, hosed down and then made to run in a coffle linked by chains attached to their neck collars to the park so that as the sun rose, they were already trudging around the path. And there they stayed until the sun had gone down.
The afternoon wore on and finally the sun began to set and the guard signalled for them to cease their labour. The huge wheel stopped, the water in the brook dried up and the waterfall fell silent. The guard locked their collars together with heavy chains and then they waited for the electric cart to arrive. When it did, the leading girl’s chain was attached to it, their guards climbed on behind the rider and off they went, returning to the depot to be hosed down and fed the bland but healthy mush that was their daily fare.
After that it was show time.
Men had come to gloat as they were hosed down and had to wash their own bodies and those of their companions with the coarse soap that was issued to them. They also stood around and watched as the girls hoed into the mush and some relieved themselves, in full view of the watching men, into the trough near the back of the cage. Then it was time for them to display themselves.
This was the ultimate in shameful punishment. None of the girls or women in this place were wanton. Prostitutes were now municipal employees - sentenced to that fate for other misdemeanour’s. No woman would dare to offer her body to a man for money these days. Indeed, women were taught to be as demure and chaste as they had been in the Nineteenth Century.
And so now, as they were made to stand and display the charms of their flesh wantonly, each felt it was an even worse fate than the hard labour during the day. And the guards walking up and down behind them made sure their displays were as lewd and prurient as they could get them or crack went the whip against their naked backs. There were no rules as to how they showed off
their naked charms, as long as it was salacious. They could wriggle their bodies like an eastern harem dancer. They could spread their legs and show off their nude pussies or they could pretend to be in the act of lovemaking - anything at all as long as it was suggestive.
Angela was appalled. Could she really display herself in so indecent a manner? She thought not, until the whip cracked out and caught her already striped buttocks and then she thought again. She spread her legs like some of the other girls were and undulated her middle while the men outside the cages wolf-whistled and egged them on to even more salacious acts.
This lasted for an hour and then, at eight p.m., the head guard ordered them to move up closer to the bars and masturbate themselves. Now Angela really cried. Surely this could not be real? Surely she was in a bad dream? Again the whip told her otherwise and she stuck her finger into her vagina as the other women were doing. Some even seemed to be enjoying it, she thought, as she glanced up and down the line but most just looked resigned. Well, she’d be damned if she was going to be resigned. Make the best of it had been her mother and father’s advice to her all her life. She worked herself up to a sexual climax, fondling her breasts and her belly and eyeing off the men on the outside of the bars as suggestively as she knew how. Soon she had a crowd watching her and for the next hour, until the gallery was closed, all eyes were on her. But when they were gone and she had settled down into the straw she cried and her body shook in her misery.
The older hands gathered around her. “What are you crying for, girl? you put on a real display just now - just like a real slut!”
She sat up and looked around at them, telling them of her Mum and Dad’s advice and of her determination to succeed in everything she did. “Not here, girl,” said one of the older women kindly. “Here you just meld in and do your time then try to forget all about this place.”
She shook her head. “I can’t do that. I’d die. I’ve got to try, it’s the only way I’ll get through this year.”
The other women shook their heads and left her, all snuggling down into the straw to get as much sleep as they could before they were roused an hour before dawn to be hosed down, eat and then file off to their respective work places.
Angela now found that each duty lasted a week and so she had two more days on the capstan. She sighed but submitted to being chained into the coffle, ran with the other seven girls down to the park and was chained to the bar. At dawn, the whip cracked and off they went, round and round. Quite uselessly now for no-one ever ventured into the park before nine in the morning. But they were being punished. Even if no-one was there to enjoy the tinkling brook and the waterfall, they had to provide the power to operate it.
Once more she applied herself diligently and the guards noted to each other that not once did they have reason to whip her. All day for the fifty-five minutes each hour she had to work, she did, straining her body to help the others force the huge capstan round and round and round.
She closed her ears to the ribald comments of the men once they arrived to watch their naked toil. Her eyes were now on the back of the girl in front, to the exclusion of all else. She had three hundred and sixty-three days to go and she was going to survive it and come out better at the end!
The guards talked amongst themselves and their bosses heard. Their supervisor came down on the Friday to see this strange girl who worked so hard without the whip. He watched her for an hour then went back to his office. He in turn told his boss, and eventually it came to the ears of the mayor, the man who had ultimate control over the whole works program. He made a note to go and have a look. Not today, he was too busy, today, but he would, in time.
In the meantime, Angela was allocated to other duties. These were many and varied but all were designed to humiliate the women and to extract every last ounce of shame from them while making them perform tasks that were less than useful. The electric motor that had previously ran the brook, for example, was a lot cheaper than the wages of the guards who had to supervise the female prisoners. And the road-making detail. It too could be performed much better by machine than by the girls. But it was all so shameful.
But what is more important, it worked. Since this program had been in place, not a single female had erred again. Nor was it likely they would for a second offence meant a life term.
Angela was allocated to road repair duties for her second week. She joined the group of five other girls who had to move into the depot proper and take charge of the old-fashioned tar trolley, complete with oil fire under the pot, and push it out onto the road and along to the suburban streets they were to repair. The trolley was cast iron and equally as heavy as the capstan had been. Furthermore, it was dangerous work. Hot tar has to be handled with extreme care and never without protective clothing. These girls were naked. Stark naked. No shoes and no aprons to protect the fronts of their slender female bodies.
They pushed it with great care, aware of the molten tar in the pot and that one false move could have it all over them. Tarring and feathering indeed! The guards were considerate, as long as the girls kept the trolley moving but when they reached the first pot hole, out came the whips and the girls had to slog to dig out the muck in the hole and then fill it with the mixture of tar and aggregate then tamp it down with the heavy tamping tool. Then it was on to the next hole. All day, from dawn to dusk, just as with the waterfall at the park.
Now too, men came to watch and stare and call out to the guards to lash them into harder effort. There seemed to be a preponderance of sadists amongst those who came to watch the girls slave just as the men who came at night would have been those who in former times, attended strip shows and the more salacious cinemas on the strip.
Angela worked hard once more. She pushed the trolley as hard as she could and the other girls and women appreciated she was trying hard. They formed a liking for the shy girl who seemed so out of place amongst them.
Her body quickly responded to her efforts. As an athlete she had pushed it hard at training and at meets but now that she was a full-time labourer and the demands being made on her muscles were much harder than those placed on any male labourer in the past, they reacted as muscles always do when demands are made on them. They grew and they became toned to the nth degree.
The stories about her spread once more and again the mayor got to hear about her. He had forgotten his resolve to go and check on this young girl but now he made a note on his electronic diary to do so. The next day he went down in his gig to see for himself.
The gig is a new development that is used by high-ranking men in the public domain. So far, since females are only allowed out naked as a punishment by the state, no private person has been able to use one for his personal transport but municipal and state officers who so desire it (who qualify for it and who have the time to indulge in the relatively slow perambulation it affords) may avail themselves of its obvious delights.
The gig is drawn by a pony-girl. One of the prisoners is allocated to each official entitled to the privilege and she is harnessed to her gig for the whole day - and night if he needs her services then. She then has to walk, trot and gallop him around the city while he sits in the beautifully upholstered seat and stares forward at her naked back and buttocks and legs as she moves.
Now he mounted his gig and curtly ordered his steed, a beautiful black girl to an address in the suburbs. It would be a four mile journey and it would tax her body but he didn’t mind. He liked to see a bit of sweat on her beautiful black skin. Off she went and he quickly ordered her to get up to a fast trot. He would make her gallop for a while later on but for now the trot was enough.
He sat back and admired her svelte flesh. He knew it intimately as he used her as and when he wished. This too was his privilege. Women no longer had the right to expect fidelity from their husbands and he could even demand they stay and watch as he enjoyed the body of a female servant or, if he had one a
llocated to him, a prisoner. James Swift, mayor of the city, had this privilege. He had this girl attached to his household so she was always available when he needed her. She was also available for his bed and he used her often. He delighted in her black flesh and satin skin. He loved her long black hair and flashing black eyes and he liked her fiery spirit for it then allowed him to put her across his knees for a sound spanking before she finally submitted to his advances. He didn’t make his wife watch. Indeed he usually sent her out of the house on some pretext. He didn’t have to do this but he loved her and if he enjoyed the black wench, well, that was just a little fling.
Now, though, he stopped the gig, admiring as he always did the sweat-streaked naked flesh of his pony-girl for a few moments before hopping down to join the guard supervising the road repair gang. He greeted the guard by name and then watched the four girls for a minute or so. “That her?” he asked, pointing to Angela.
“That’s her, Mr Mayor,” replied the guard. Angela was already something of a legend. No other girl prisoner had hoed into her work, been so uncomplaining and retained her dignity as well as this girl who was still only nineteen years old.
James stood and watched, his eyes taking in the dirty, sweaty body and particularly its lithe slender curves, her fine silver-blonde hair (also dirty now but he could see the fineness beneath the filth), her violet eyes and above all her apparent dedication to her work. She was digging out the muck from a pot hole as if her life depended on it. The pick was flying, her muscles cording and flexing wonderfully and her breasts wobbling beautifully as she raised her body at each stroke. She wasn’t even aware the city’s first citizen was standing there, watching her intently.
