by D. A. Maddox
“Where’s Officer Kersey?” she blurted, swinging her head to dislodge hair from her face.
“This is Officer Theodore Grant,” he said by way of half-answering. “You may call him Officer Theo, or sir—if you have occasion to say anything to him, which I doubt will occur. He will be documenting your correction and discomfiture, nothing more. Pay him no mind.”
“Please, Officer Alejandro, sir … you’re hurting me. Can I have a towel?”
“You are to be led from the shower stall as you are. We shall be going through the inmate wing of protective custody to Preparation and Grooming. There is a relay escort waiting for you in the hall.”
Veronica gasped. “But I’m naked!”
And my hair’s soaked. And I don’t have any makeup.
“That is as intended. Get on your hands and knees.”
“Th-the floor’s wet …”
“Another hesitation. Do not test me, puppy cunt. It is time for your leashing. Drop.”
He let her go. She went to her knees. Officer Grant bent at the knees in front of her, catching her every movement and twitch as she stretched out her arms and assumed position to be leashed and led.
“I’m not a sub,” she wept, feeling the collar buckle over her neck.
“You should not even know what that is, under law,” Officer Alejandro chided her, testing the fit and security of the collar by giving it a light tug, which made her gag. “But you are right in this self-assessment. Typically, I expect you are the opposite. Nevertheless, for two days, you will do all that a ‘sub’ must do. I will see to it. No more talking. Keep your head up and your eyes open.”
Veronica brought her head up, her hands and knees nearly slipping. She kept her eyes open through the water dripping from her hair, indistinguishable—even to her—from her own tears.
“Come in,” Officer Alejandro called into the hall.
And into the shower room stepped a young blond man Veronica usually saw with no clothes on. Today, he wore tan khakis, a short-sleeved Bridgemont polo, but no shoes or socks. He looked full upon her with eyes of soft slate and said, “Hello, Mistress.”
Officer Alejandro handed him the leash.
She didn’t even know his name—but he was one of her two personal subs. His body was, quite often, her furniture. He held a tawse in his left hand.
“When he smacks you,” said Officer Alejandro, “you will crawl where he leads you. When he smacks you a second time, you will stop so that he may hand you off to your next dog-walker. These would have been commands, not strokes—but you were disrespectful, puppy cunt. This is punishment. Bark once if you understand.”
Veronica lowered her head, heaving breath, just trying to get her head around the breadth and depth of the reduction being imposed upon her.
“Remind the bitch to obey,” said Officer Alejandro.
Officer Grant moved the camera to her side to catch the blow as it fell, this time over her back. Veronica yelped, more from surprise than pain. Her blond bit of furniture had struck her.
“You have to do what I tell you,” he said. “Bark for Officer Alejandro.”
Veronica raised her head. She forced the sound from her lips: “Ruff!”
“That is a good dog,” said Officer Alejandro.
Veronica’s sub let the tawse fall over her shoulder and the back of her neck—not too hard, she noted with relief, wincing and cringing under the lash.
She crawled, out into the hallway, under the swiveling wall cameras, where her second sub awaited twenty feet away—and where her fellow jailbirds were at their own plastic cell windows, peering down at her with delight. She’d just had breakfast with these lowlifes, these criminals. She had talked to them, given them the basics of her circumstances, to the extent she knew them herself. Some of her fellow inmates had even seemed friendly, like big sisters in a strange new dorm. But now they were transformed—they were the Dominant, even from within their cages, and Veronica was their pig-slut, or worse.
“Check her out! College girl’s all drippy!”
“After getting cleaned up, too. Oh—you meant with water.”
“That bitch has some nipples. You could cut glass with those babies.”
“How ya like the plea bargain now, high society? That a good deal? How’s it workin’ out for ya?”
“Make her bark again! So fucking cute!”
From her sub: “Bark again, Mistress.”
Veronica barked.
I’m lower than all of them, she thought. I don’t know if I can take this, Mom.
She wished she had a pendant, such as Savannah had—but, no. Such a thing would bring her no comfort. Veronica’s mother would not be concerned with her feelings. She would never come to her rescue or succor, not even in her mind. She would only demand that Veronica get through, and then they would work at the restoration of the only thing that mattered: her status.
Veronica crawled to blond sub number two and bit her lip against the incoming stroke. It came, and she could not swallow the cry in her throat. The leash was handed off.
Oh, but there were so many things she wanted to say to her pets—only, she was the pet now.
“Turn right,” her new dog-walker said. “That hall over there, Mistress.”
She turned. She crawled. Don’t talk to me, she thought. Just get me to the next nightmare so I can get this fucking done.
Melody, twenty feet away. Melody of the big, bouncing, cheerleader-innocent freshman tits under a university sweater. She also wore cargo shorts with a belt, from which there dangled a wooden hairbrush. Under her arm, she cradled a towel. She waved Veronica forward, smiling encouragement. “Come on. Who’s my good doggy? You are. You are. Come on. Oh, look at you. You’re all wet. Come to Mommy. Mommy will dry you off and brush you.”
Did Melody actually own a dog back home? Veronica was suddenly certain that she did, and that she missed that dog, and spoke to it just like this every time they were reunited.
Veronica crawled forward to her, and her world crumbled a little more.
****
In the white, sterile Preparation and Grooming room, Nurse Reyes-Garcia patiently awaited her arrival. Veronica’s vitals—which she constantly monitored—had so far never come close to anything dangerous. Nurse Reyes-Garcia could see shock in the bouncing and trailing lines that represented heartbeat and blood flow. She could interpret embarrassment beyond belief in the patterns. The monitor tracked her secretions as well.
And she could see the young lady via video cam whenever she felt the need to confirm that her comportment and color matched the signals from within her body. Mostly, though, Nurse Reyes-Garcia got the room ready. The video feed, at least in here, was hopelessly marred by the running commentary of two immature full-grown adults who would probably benefit from a couple long sessions with the nurse, themselves.
Never mind that, she said to herself. There is enough work to do as it is, and you must be vigilant. If Veronica’s system rebels, it will happen fast. There is only so much correction that is good for a penitent when the punishment is counterintuitive to their nature. She need only suffer enough to temper her future adventures with a measure of empathy.
She did not agree with Officer Thompson. There was much that certain among the Volunteer Humiliators could learn in the ways of justice with restraint—of discipline over the blinding lust for revenge.
What the hell do they teach in that school of theirs?
It was inescapable, the suspicion that her carefully constructed, government-sanctioned punishment and behavioral therapy system was being deliberately manipulated and used—and by the same university that had, in fact, created the monster Veronica Cruz had become.
She turned to the volunteers currently sharing the room with her. “You listen to me,” she said to them. “You listen well. All that I have seen so far from your fellow students in the handling of my prisoner—and make no mistake, she is mine right now, not yours—has been in-bounds and appropriate for her disciplin
e. Alejandro has coached them up most effectively. I would see that continue. We must discuss limits.”
They waited, listening. No one argued.
The young, dark haired man named Rusty said, “Go ahead. This is like a fuckin’ master’s class at school. You’re the pro. Teach us the ways.”
“We don’t want to wreck her,” the young man with the retro metal shirt and the curly blond hair added. Zeke, he’d called himself. “But Malcolm and Tabby do want us to give her a hell of a ride. She pissed us off—big time—but we still want to … bring her back, Officer, if that makes sense. She could be cool, back in the day.”
All right, Nurse Reyes-Garcia thought. That is actually encouraging.
Quickly, she laid out the parameters, parsing out the essentials because of time. They only had a few minutes before their part of the show would begin.
****
Looks like my place won’t work, Scott had texted her. Not today, anyway.
He was more hopeful about tomorrow. Back at the dorm, the window just below his belonged to a sophomore named Elie Schultz, and the window below that to a senior named Chris Tovold. He’d spoken to both of them, casually inquiring about their class schedules and openly admitting he had a girlfriend to smuggle in. When he divulged the plan to them, they’d agreed to stay absconded for a few extra hours in the mid to late afternoon tomorrow. Elie had been nothing short of awe-stricken by the boldness of the venture, and Chris had been amused enough to play along. “You owe me a favor,” he’d said.
It wasn’t just the video. Scott had a much better reason for smuggling Savannah into his dorm room—and it was a reason she wholeheartedly endorsed. His bed wasn’t much, just a queen-sized, but it was still one hell of an upgrade from the top of a desk.
It hadn’t escaped either of them that they could grab some shade under an isolated tree on the Commons and watch the mysterious, restricted video on one of their phones any time they wanted. But a proper TV screen with good sound would be better. A computer would do, in a pinch.
And so, today, it had been up to Savannah to procure a private theater for their special screening. Scott arrived at the university library promptly at 9:15 and found her waiting outside. Savannah had remembered her bookbag, for appearances—which made him feel mildly like an idiot for not thinking of bringing his, but so what—and she was just the vision of academic loveliness in her felt boots and jeans and her smart button-up school shirt. She had her hair up in a tail again, first time he’d seen it that way since before Origins, and she looked every bit the part of a serious scholar ready for some serious goddamned research.
“There you are,” she started, but Scott cut her off with a kiss, running his hands over her arms.
“What?” he said afterward. “I’m right on time.”
“Dad says if you’re not ten minutes early you’re five minutes late,” she said.
“Your dad scares the shit out of me every time you talk about him, and I haven’t even met the guy yet.”
She chuckled. “Come on, you. Follow me.” And led him by the hand.
****
Savannah’s status as an archeology major didn’t grant her hours with the whole basement floor of any building on campus, but it did allow her 180 minutes per week in the private viewing cubicles of the general media lab on Floor Four. Taking one of the two-seaters meant that each minute spent with the widescreen counted for two, but that didn’t trouble her. She doubted that whatever “punishments” Veronica Cruz was subject to under law would take anything close to an hour and a half—particularly since the email indicated there’d be more than one of them. She rather expected them to be a few minutes long each, fifteen on the outside. It wasn’t like they lived in a country where people had to worry about their government torturing them. In Savannah’s experience, only college kids did that.
“Between the two of us,” Scott said, stepping back so she could exit the elevator ahead of him, “we could actually watch whatever this is twice.”
“You perv,” she whispered, leading him through aisles where the walls of actual paper books rose fifteen feet on either side of them. “For the record—not that I expect it—but if this is … you know, like, really excessive or hurtful or gross, I’m done right away.”
They were still holding hands. Scott stopped, which stopped her.
“Yeah,” he said. “Me, too. One hundred percent.”
She kissed him, then led him the rest of the way.
The two-person booths were generally used for tutoring sessions or partner study. Nobody batted an eye when Savannah keyed in her code at Unit 2K and ushered Scott in ahead of her. She closed the door behind him, automatically dimming the interior of the booth, lighting the widescreen, and activating the soundproofing. The computer drive, invisible behind the blue wall that housed the screen, could be dialed up like a phone contact, and it could run attachments. The seating wasn’t exactly a loveseat, but it was a single bench, amply cushioned and long enough for both of them.
“Tempted to offer to share my earbuds with you,” Scott said, clearly wary of the thin housing the walls provided.
“We’re fine,” Savannah said, and dialed in. But when she opened the message link, the screen showed two options: first, under the unlocked archived tab, “Interview: Penitent V. Cruz / Officer Helena Reyes-Garcia, R.N.”; and second…
“Veronica Selena Jada Cruz, Incarceration Day 2 / 3, Humiliation Session 1 / 4: LIVE NOW.”
“Oh, my gosh,” she said. Did they mean, like, right now?
“Catch up?” Scott asked, “Or…”
Savannah clicked Option #2.
****
Being toweled and brushed by Melody hadn’t been so bad. She’d been a little rough getting her hair dry—“Bad doggy doesn’t shake off the water and brings it slopping into the house,” she’d complained—and the tangles had been kind of a bitch to work through, but overall, not so bad.
But now Melody was on her knees behind Veronica, after forcing her legs wide apart, working the brush over her pubic hair like a fucking back scratcher. “Going to get this mess to stand up nice and frizzy for the doggy barber,” she said, scrubbing her. Two minutes of this and—
“Fucking stop, already!” Veronica screamed, trying to stand.
Her blond subs were on her in moments, forcing her back down by the arms, holding her still at the ankles.
Melody swatted her with the brush, then solicitously massaged her sore and abraded clit with two fingers. And, oddly, broke character just then, speaking just as she had when playing the role of a sub. But she leaned in and spoke the words directly into Veronica’s ear, so quietly that Veronica doubted the cameras could pick them up.
“Will Mistress bring punishment on herself at every humiliation? Master Malcolm and Mistress Tabby think she will.” But she swatted her again—and afterwards worked her again. “Master Malcolm and Mistress Tabby think Mistress Veronica will never stop fighting, that she will endure all of it. She will ask for it as a Mistress, and she will then understand. She will command from a position of understanding. She will know for the first time we—what I—endure out of choice at her hands, at any hands.”
Veronica felt, and heard, Melody’s two fingers squelching inside of her now. She was face flat. She breathed the floor, cheeks puffing and deflating like a blowfish.
Had Melody really been Select for only four days?
“Does Mistress beg me to stop?”
Understanding, Veronica thought. What did that have to do with anything? And who were Malcolm and Tabby to fucking talk, anyway? What did they know? But then it occurred to her. She’d even thought about it as recently as the Fete. But only now did she connect the proverbial dots.
Malcolm and Tabby understood better than anyone else currently counted among the Dominant. The lottery was sacred to them, and they respected the caste of Submissive over the neutrals and the pig-slut initiates. Because…
Because they both won the fucking lottery, each in th
eir turn, she recalled. They won fair and square, and through it, they triumphed—and then you ruined it, Veronica, or tried to. You made them your enemy. They didn’t want you as their enemy. And through Melody, they just gave you a way back home when they didn’t have to.
She screamed without being hit. Her conscience collided with her brain like the final dynamite in an impossibly stubborn rock quarry, one that at last had given way. “I’m sorry!” she wailed, and wondered at the strangeness of her own voice.
Melody’s fingers froze, half in and half out of her cunt. “Does Mistress—”
“Don’t … you … fucking stop, my … precious little newbie. Not for anything. Give me everything you got … fucking amateur. I will … show you how to suffer.”
“Yes, Mistress,” Melody said, pulling her fingers back out—and struck her with the hairbrush again.
This is my lottery, Veronica thought. I earned it—and I will win this son of a bitch.
****
Savannah’s shirt was half open, and her left tit was out. Scott’s dick rocked back and forth like a metronome—but Savannah had taken her hand away. “Holy crap,” she said. “Did you hear that?”
“Are you kidding?” Scott said, drawing back a little, himself. “I’ll never unhear this shit as long as I live. That was a hell of a good swat—”
“No, you perv—you hopeless man—I mean Veronica. What she said.”
Scott tried to return to thinking mode, something his cock was currently, wholeheartedly against. But he tried. “I—I didn’t hear a thing Melody whispered to her, so I didn’t pay much…”
“No,” Savannah insisted. “After. When she said she was sorry. That was real, Scott. She meant it.”
“Veronica?” he said. “Our Veronica? Is that even possible?”
“I wouldn’t call her ours,” Savannah said, sheathing his cock in her fist again. “Bad word choice. But the Veronica of our experience, yeah.”
“Fascinating,” he said, going back in, lips-first for the nipple, his hand working the buckle of her belt. “That ten-million-dollar brain of yours … won’t … ever quit, will it?”
