Savannah's Chance

by D. A. Maddox

  Now, though—

  “Standard cavity swab,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia said. A squelching sound. Lubricating fingers.

  “Wait,” Veronica protested, her body again testing the restraints. “Madam Reyes-Garcia, this isn’t necessary. I—”

  “All new inmates get one. We cannot have you smuggling contraband into our fine facility, can we, Miss Cruz? Be a big girl. I am an RN, after all. This will take but a moment.”

  “But why would I have anything up there?” she insisted, fresh panic blossoming in her chest. “Please, just listen to me! I didn’t even know I was coming here when my mom brought me to—”

  A finger on her butthole, circling it, then tapping it. “You will want to relax these muscles. I do not wish to cause you pain.”

  Her thighs trembled. Her sphincter clenched and unclenched.

  “Veronica. Relax. Standard protocol. You wish to be done, yes?”

  Veronica stared at the floor.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes,” Veronica bitterly answered. “I just don’t understand why—uuuuuuuug.”

  One knuckle in.

  “Relax.”

  She tried. She felt herself open a little more, and Nurse Reyes-Garcia went to the second knuckle, forcing her to inhale, hard.

  “Do not hold your breath,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia said, pushing this way, gently poking that way.

  “You—you seriously do this to everyone? Ow! God, what—”

  “It is not always me,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia said. “But I do understand how to do this most effectively while causing a minimum of discomfort. You should be grateful.”

  Veronica pressed her lips together, right up against her teeth.

  “There is some wiggle room here,” Reyes-Garcia went on conversationally. “Not much, but some. You have toys at home you sometimes play with while lost in your own thoughts, I see. Yes?”

  “Yes,” she confessed. There was no point in hiding anything anymore. She wanted to explain she didn’t use them in this particular hole terribly often—but she had experimented, from time to time.

  Nurse Reyes withdrew her index finger, changed to a fresh pair of gloves, and performed a much quicker slide up and about the inside of Veronica’s vagina with her middle finger. Then she withdrew that one as well, peeled off the second glove, and laid it over Veronica’s back. From a plastic cylinder she plucked a few baby wipes, one by one, and mopped down the inside of her thighs, then her genitals and anus.

  “This has been difficult for you. You are used to being in control, and I do not think you have been held accountable for much in your life until this evening. How do you feel?”

  Beaten, she thought, in both a figurative and literal way. And … oddly, it wasn’t so bad. She was through the first night. Tomorrow was tomorrow.

  “May I think about that and answer another time, Madam Reyes-Garcia? I want to go to bed. Don’t worry about dinner.”

  “I understand,” said Nurse Reyes-Garcia, pointing to her restraints, gesturing to Thompson. “We shall see that you get extra at breakfast. Thinking—reflecting—will be your most important job while you are a prisoner here. So, yes, Miss Cruz. I think that is a good plan.”

  Officer Thompson stepped forward to release her, hands-first.

  “And sleep as well as you can. You are, perhaps, more prepared for what is coming than most. Always remember, we will not let you come to any lasting or permanent harm.”

  “Thank you, Madam Reyes-Garcia.”

  Shortly, she was able to stand, free of the cuffs. She didn’t protest when they insisted on redressing her without her help, but she cried a little. She didn’t speak as Nurse Reyes-Garcia led her, back in her jumpsuit but uncuffed, into the short protective custody hall that housed the female soft-timers of Huntington.

  She didn’t react when the others called out to her, other than to shake her head at them. She was just too wiped out. She was glad that her cell, less than a quarter of the size of the dorm room she occupied at school, was unoccupied. She was grateful for the desk and for the e-reader to pass the time. She noted the camera and winked at it.

  In bed, after hearing the door shut and lock on her, she shed her final tears of the night—then laughed into her pillow without knowing why.

  And fell dead asleep.

  ****

  By ten-thirty, it had grown breezy outside. There was a distinct chill in the air as Savannah and Scott left Finney’s to call it a night. The odd mix of electric guitar, heavy percussion, and flute that characterized the local band, Stingy Jack and the Jamesons, faded as they passed onto the campus grounds proper.

  Scott put his arm around her shoulder. They walked close, keeping each other warm, staying on the lamplit sidewalks of the Commons, heady with beer and weighed down from more than their fair share of “Monday Unlimited Wings”. So weird, Savannah thought. Friday night, I’m stripped in public by Lorna the Waitress’s girlfriend, and tonight, I’m asking Lorna for celery sticks and ranch dressing and Killians like none of it ever happened.

  Lorna had been totally not-awkward about it. “Thought I might see you two together,” was all she’d said. She’d been as nice as nice could be the whole time they were there. And, of course, she’d never brought up the Fete once.

  Worse would be Thursday. Making the Transition class with Professor Shusterman.

  That would be awkward no matter how the old man behaved—and Savannah would never take any of his so-called teaching seriously ever again.

  Still, she couldn’t go through the rest of her life on campus without expecting to run into these people. There had been close to a hundred of them at Origins, all told, and she had more than a year before her undergrad would be complete.

  “You all right?” Scott asked. “You’re very pensive.”

  “That’s a nice word for ‘tired’,” she said with a soft smile.

  There weren’t many people out, not even students, at this hour on a school night. There was, however, the occasional campus security Rover cruising the grounds, making their rounds. Their presence—on every night other than the Origins Fete, apparently—served as a reminder that all transitionals remained, however comfortably, under guard until graduation.

  “Want me to hail one of the heavies for a ride?” Scott asked.

  That thought would never have occurred to Savannah. Until recently, she hadn’t been one to get out much, especially after nine o’ clock. “Really? We can do that?”

  “Sure. I’ve done it a bunch of times. Even on a first name basis with that one.” He pointed. “That’s Brian Hollaran. They canvass this whole place all freakin’ night. What difference is it to them if they give a couple of half-drunk kids a safe ride back to their dorms? I usually tip him a few bucks on the sly. Everybody does it.”

  “Nah,” Savannah said. “We have time.”

  “Feeling the need to walk? Get some exercise?”

  She’d had four beers and twelve wings in hot sauce, all in the past hour. Think six wings and two beers is more my speed, she thought with a yawn and a touch of self-reproach.

  “Like a sinner needs confession,” she said.

  “I didn’t think you were religious.”

  “Shut it—” Savannah started.

  “Although you did say ‘Oh, God,’ several different times tonight. Couple different languages, too.”

  “I’m starting to think you want me to spank you.”

  “I’ll try anything once.”

  Then, it happened. Their phones dinged—Savannah’s in her back pocket, Scott’s from his inside jacket pocket—at precisely the same second. They stopped walking, right under one of the sidewalk streetlamps. They looked at each other.

  It was too much to be a coincidence. They’d shared everything about their separate encounters with Paige Lavallee. They were relieved that they had both, again, made the same choice. And both had believed—and again, expressed their relief—that Savannah’s interview and Scott’s email would have been the end of it. />
  And it was, for all practical purposes. But Lavallee had sent them both an identical text with a hyperlink at the bottom: If you are receiving this, you have been added to our temporary pay per view subscription of Consequences, Live! for the duration of the punishment of one Veronica Selena Jada Cruz, age 22, Special Penitent Series. Her pre-approval interview is now accessible in the archive window, and the camera in her cell has been activated ahead of her First Major Humiliation, approx. 9 AM EST. [This is a usage-termination link. Your access grants you one viewing. Any copying or distribution is punishable by a fine of up to $200,000 and 10 years imprisonment.] Please enjoy, and God bless America.

  “My reward,” Savannah said. “That was fast.”

  “I didn’t even answer her,” Scott said. “Well, no more than to text the word ‘decline’. Weird.”

  “We’ll probably get a new link every day,” she said. “Maybe more than one. Wow.”

  “Are we going to watch it?” Scott asked with a slight smirk.

  Savannah sighed. “Not here. And … not tonight. Scott, I can’t help it—I’d feel guilty.”

  “Tomorrow, then? Your place or mine?”

  Campus rules forbade either of them setting so much as a toe under the threshold of the other’s living quarters.

  “Yours,” Savannah said. “Definitely yours.”

  And didn’t add, Good luck figuring out how.

  They started walking again. They took their time. They still had twenty minutes.

  Lorna hadn’t gotten invited to take part in Veronica’s punishment, from the look of it. By Scott’s account, Corky was still on campus, too. And Savannah could have sworn she caught a glimpse of Huey in the halls earlier today.

  “I wonder how many people they tried to recruit,” she mused, solemnly. Sadly. Expectantly.

  “Yeah,” said Scott. “And I wonder how many of them said ‘yes’.”

  ****

  The Select—those who made the trip to Huntington, anyway—traveled in a caravan of sorts. Most of them were in cars typical of transitional students: used Fords and Toyotas, most of them conserving battery power by carpooling. There were six vehicles, all told, and only one of them cool enough to bear the senior Skull, Malcolm. And he rode on the back half of the seat.

  Tabitha’s chopper was obnoxiously loud—still used actual gasoline—and her wild mane of crimson hair fluttered under her helmet and behind her and into Malcolm’s visor like fire. And although she was his second-in-command among their newly reborn and rejuvenated society, Malcolm didn’t mind being the passenger, holding her around the waist.

  Tabitha was—always had been—a badass. And she had done her part. Getting to lead this parade meant everything to her. How could Malcolm deny her moment under the proverbial sun even as they traveled by night?

  He and Tabitha were in “normal” clothes—which, for motorcycle riders, was mostly leather anyway. The whole entourage was careful to wear gear that suggested Bridgemont University pride and nothing else. Except for the skulls. Malcolm and Tabitha would not be denied wearing those.

  Distantly, the shadow of the prison loomed over the darkened road, a silhouette buried under a sky of midnight blue.

  You’ll think I’ve come to destroy you, Ronnie, Malcolm thought, as though praying to a goddess condemned to die. But that isn’t true. I don’t want that. None of us does, not even Tabitha.

  This is your chance. The Select will be fine, one way or another.

  But you, Ronnie—this is your chance for you to save yourself.

  Chapter Twenty-Five:

  Tribulation

  Tuesday morning, 8 AM.

  The feed was up to 85,000 viewers—this at the start of work hours on a weekday—and the show hadn’t even properly started yet.

  Gloria Wholesome could hardly be happier. From wardrobe, she had ordered an alteration on an attractive devastator dress, worn only once a few months back by a young, inexperienced woman who had turned out to be the show’s most popular Volunteer Humiliator ever. It was radiant black, low cut with split sleeves, and bedecked with any number of steel, finger-sized implements of teasing and torture. With arms spread, they hung from the sleeves like glittering wings.

  The audience would recognize the dress. The audience would love it.

  Her counterpart, Buck Horndog, would be the lead anchor for Veronica’s two-day chastisement. It was general practice in the less common occurrence when the penitent was female. He’d gone for the bare-chested body paint tuxedo look again, but that was fine. It almost went with the Devastator.

  “Can’t really see how this one’s gaining traction with the crowd so quickly,” he muttered as they fitted his ear with a plastic, transparent audio receiver wired to the cover coaches backstage.

  “No,” Gloria said. “I’m sure you don’t.”

  She rarely missed an opportunity to belittle him, especially when he invited it—and he often did. In the case of Veronica Cruz, the appeal wasn’t only in her looks, although she had been blessed with a sultry poutiness, a stubborn cuteness, that was impossible to deny. Her rebellious spirit was rare, too. Most of their penitents came to them remorseful and frightened, quick to obey. Veronica was combative.

  More than that, the appeal was her story—and her lack of a story.

  The highlight reel, currently running while Nurse Reyes-Garcia briefly led Veronica off-camera, began with the young woman’s college application video, shot nearly four years ago. Veronica Cruz had looked almost innocent back then, but Gloria suspected that was a well calculated ruse from a Bridgemont legacy who had been virtually guaranteed admittance before she’d even applied.

  There, she had belonged to nothing and nobody, and yet she had a following—so devoted and so passionate that twenty-four of them had volunteered, without compensation, to drive two hours south of their safe haven just to take place in her comeuppance. How had she betrayed them? What had she done to them? No one knew.

  It was a new angle for the show—and it was hotter than hell.

  The highlight reel then proceeded from that narrative to the admission of her band of Volunteer Humiliators to the facility—where each of them had told a weary and cantankerous Officer Thomson that they need only be told what to do, not how.

  At three in the morning, after quizzing them and cloistering them in various guest rooms in the protective wing, Officer Thompson had shaken her head at the camera eye and said, “I know we were told this was an expedited case, like Maddy’s was, but … it’s like I don’t even have to be here. We don’t even have to wait ‘til the second day to put them into the action. Fucking bizarre.”

  Buck stared at Gloria, uncharacteristically hurt by her words. As the highlight reel wound through the half hour, with thirty minutes until the fun began, he asked, “Why do you have to be this way?”

  The reflexive answer would have been, I don’t. I enjoy it.

  But they did have to work together, and the truth was, she really did like the simpleton goof who had worked with her behind the anchor desk for two and a half years. She’d thought he liked the occasional verbal smack-around. Thought he was a closet sub who craved it.

  “Oh, Bucky, I’m sorry. I’m a bitch. Forget it, okay? We’re going live soon.”

  He nodded, seeming to accept that. “You ever feel sorry for any of them?”

  Gloria thought about it. It was probably the most interesting question he had ever asked her. “Why?”

  “They’re only transitionals. They don’t know the penalties before they commit the crime. And in this case, we don’t even know what the crime is.”

  “Get your head in the game, Bucky,” she said, suddenly concerned. “We have a job to do.”

  As the countdown ticked down and the mysterious pre-show highlight reel wound on, viewership grew to ninety thousand. Ninety-three.

  “Answer the question first.”

  “Yes,” she said at length. “Sometimes I do. Not for this one, though. From what little we’ve seen o
f her—in the interview and the sketchy backstory—I actually feel sorrier for whoever pisses her off.”

  ****

  Veronica was still behind the shower curtain when the sound of boots cut her reverie. Someone was in here. Two someones.

  She’d been thinking of what she might do to get back in The Select’s favor, once this trial was behind her. Unless she became part of an educational clip, such as she’d seen herself, there was no way any of them would witness whatever it was the two Garcias had planned for her. That was something. She’d be able to spin the experience her way, give them what they wanted as part of the inevitable peace offering and acceptance of demotion, and never reveal the full truth, whatever it turned out to be.

  That truth began at nine o’clock sharp, with Officer Alejandro drawing the curtain back from her.

  “Hey!” she yelled, reaching for the top of it. “Watch it, asshole!”

  He caught her wrist and held it, water slicked as it was. And he wasn’t the only asshole. The second was another black-uniformed officer, older and portly, his thin hair receded to a white ring around the back of his head. There was a running video cam propped on his shoulder.

  She was soaked. She’d only just turned the water off. She couldn’t see the towel anywhere—nor her jail uniform. Even the hat was gone. And she couldn’t very well cover with only one free hand.

  “What did you call me?” Alejandro asked, his voice low with calm menace. “I do not recall giving you permission to speak.”

  In his other hand, he held a dog collar and a leash.

  “I’m—I’m sorry, Officer Alejandro,” she said, looking around wildly. “Please, let me go.”

  “The time for your first major humiliation is at hand, young puppy cunt,” he said, tightening his grip. “There will be a punishment as well. You are to say nothing once we have the leash on, but I want you to perform exactly as I tell you. For now, you may speak—respectfully, puppy cunt.”