Savannah's Chance

by D. A. Maddox

  “Undress completely,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia said. “Your guests await their breakfast.”

  ****

  It was worse than being naked—so, so much worse. For Veronica Cruz, who actually had a servant when she was back home, to put on the bonnet and girdle was to mantle herself in a cloak of measureless shame. It’s perfect, she thought, acutely aware of the raw openness of her shaven snatch, of the racing stripe meant to honor Tabitha in full view of her “guests”, and the world.

  The view counter, mounted just behind the steaming breakfast buffet, had topped seven million. The cameras were at all four corners of the room, all of them on auto-track. The guests numbered only two.

  Tabitha wore a long, formal white dress that Veronica had to admit was quite lovely, her hair bound up behind her head in a pattern of braids and ringlets that must have taken hours to get right. She wore her skull—formerly Malcolm’s skull, the Second’s skull, without the fangs—on its right shoulder strap.

  “Oh, Malcolm, look. The help has arrived! Come, come, Ronnie. We’re fuckin’ starved. Aren’t we, dear?”

  Malcolm was in a smart suit jacket with a tie that perfectly matched Tabitha’s hair, his own new skull—formerly Veronica’s skull, and her mother’s skull—on the lapel, biting the fabric. “We are,” he said, “in a plethora of ways.”

  Their eyes were all over her, but it must be said that Tabitha’s lingered rather much on her privates—which had never been so exposed, after getting the new “do”. Neither Malcolm nor Tabitha had ever seen her nude before. Even though this should have been no different from her exploitation in the presence of Melody, and her two nameless blond furniture subs, and Rusty, and Zeke—and the goddamned United States of Fucking America—it was. There was no comparing the experiences.

  Malcolm and Tabitha were … Veronica didn’t know what. Special to her in some way?

  They were your friends, even though you never treated them like friends.

  This is awful. This is unimaginable, unbearable.

  Run!

  Veronica stepped forward, came closer to the table, arms at her side as instructed.

  “Come on,” Tabitha said. “Get your ass over here.”

  Veronica made herself close the distance. She stood between them at the side of the table, aflame with the transcendent indignity of this ridiculous situation. “Sir,” she said with a nod to Malcolm, then, “Ma’am,” she said to Tabitha, “exactly what the fuck can I get you two poseurs?”

  “That is another punishment,” Nurse Reyes-Garcia called out from behind her, afterwards muttering to herself, “Madre de Dios, dame fuerza.”

  “Strawberries,” Tabitha said, cupping Veronica’s breast, teasing the nipple to almost painful attention. “I crave strawberries.” Her other hand went to the stripe, then down it, then under it. “Cinnamon toast and apple cider. Perhaps more. I’m not sure yet.”

  “Bend,” Malcolm said. “Let me see that ass. You know how I like a good, tight ass.”

  Veronica bent, so that she was eye level with Tabitha, even seated.

  “Keep looking at me,” Tabitha said. “I like looking at your face with you like this, all embarrassed and stuff.”

  Veronica held position as Malcolm kneaded her ass cheeks. “Ham and eggs,” he said, V-splitting her lips with his fingers. “Sausage links. Milk.”

  Tabitha mopped her face with a napkin, patted the cheek of her face. “What are you waiting for?” she asked “Get our fucking food and fucking stand here while we eat it.”

  Then punishments, Veronica thought, leaving to get it. She’d remember each item—for the rest of her life, even if she never died.

  There had been a birch rod set against the side of Malcolm’s chair, a black wooden paddle with studs by Tabitha’s.

  Oh, you motherfuckers are getting me good, she thought, fighting down dizziness.

  She would fill this order. She would do everything they said. Anything. Even if she felt like she couldn’t, she’d do it. That would show them who had the true power here. That would show them—

  …how sorry I am.

  ****

  She screamed. She cried. She swore, over and over and over again.

  The birch, then the paddle. Then the paddle again, then the birch.

  She turned to face first one, then the other. She took Malcolm’s hands and bent over when Tabitha paddled her. She took Tabitha’s hands and bent over when Malcolm birched her.

  “Pansy-ass man-whore fuckstick,” she sobbed to Malcolm.

  He turned her and swatted her again.

  “Fucking frustrated psycho Venus flytrap,” she wept to Tabitha.

  Who turned her and paddle-slapped her ass again.

  Eventually, as Veronica topped out on punishments, Nurse Reyes-Garcia called an end to it by hitting the shock button—zapping her by surprise at the neck and both ankles. But Malcolm and Tabitha were ready for it. They caught her.

  Then they hugged her, both at the same time. They stroked her, soothed her.

  “Will you … forgive me?”

  “We will,” Malcolm said. “I’m sure of it.”

  “Soon,” said Tabitha, kissing her forehead. “Not yet.”

  ****

  I swear, Savannah thought, darting around the side of a large, blue dorm house at the end of Bridgemont Residential Annex #3, every crazy thing I get myself into happens behind a damned building.

  It was three o’clock on the nose. She wasn’t ten minutes early. She was right on time.

  Scott’s time.

  And there he was, three floors up, leaning lazily out of his window on an elbow and waving down to her. He seemed so self-satisfied, as if her gaining access to that window wasn’t 100% impossible. She stopped right under him—a couple dozen feet right under him, but still—and shrugged up at him, too jittery to talk.

  “Do you trust me?” he asked.

  Dangerous question, without knowing what’s coming, she thought. But she nodded. She did trust him, and she was also as curious as the proverbial doomed cat.

  But she wasn’t ready when he tossed the swing seat over. It stopped three feet off the ground, supported on either side by woven metal cable cords instead of chain links. He’d plastered a strip of duct tape over the leather, over which he had written in marker, Savannah’s ass goes here.

  You’re the thief everyone’s posting about on Profile, she thought, stunned—and also deeply impressed.

  She put her ass in the seat—facing toward the wall instead of away from it. But she quickly realized that wouldn’t work. She’d be completely scrunched up against the building, going up that way. So, she switched and faced out from it, bringing the seat up to the crook of her knees for maximum anchoring and holding the cables like lifelines.

  Oh, this is stupid, she thought, and gave one of her lifelines a tug.

  If she had expected Scott to manually haul her up by his own strength—and she guessed that maybe he could—she was more impressed, still, to hear the distinctly mechanical pull and grind of a machine hauling her up. Wasn’t this eating his windowsill to shit?

  She got her answers after he—finally, following the slow, harrowing haul upward along the wall of his dorm building—took her under the arms and neatly lifted her into his chambers. Before her feet ever felt the carpeting on the floor, he’d laid her right over the covers of his soft but firm queen-sized and kissed her, squeezing her shoulders.

  “What?” she panted under him. “Now you’re an engineer, too?”

  “Only by necessity,” he smiled back at her. “Check it out.”

  She sat up. As for the windowsill, he’d nailed two stainless steel sliders over them. A bar with rings at either end held the cables apart. On the other side of it, they came together at the opposite wall, where an electric winch wound the cables back. The winch was tied in place with several circuits of thick rope against a cardboard box that was stuffed fat with every free weight and dumbbell Scott probably owned, with a big, circular fifty pou
nder on top.

  “For pickup trucks,” he said, pointing to the winch. “Stump removal, tow capability—”

  She nodded sagely. “Girlfriend elevator.”

  “Yeah. That, too. I just rented it.”

  “Better bring that swing inside,” she said. “Whether you know it or not, you’re kind of infamous, Scott.”

  Scott got off the bed and brought it in as far as it would come. “You don’t say.”

  “I do say. You’re … ‘The Nicest Swing Set Thief Ever’. The sign you put out there went viral. There’s, like, a million comments under the original post.” That was hyperbole, but there really were a lot. She took out her phone. “Want me to show you?”

  “Later,” he said, taking her hand, leading her to her feet. Leaning into her and kissing her neck, intertwining fingers with her. “I have a promise to keep first.” He peeled one end of the bed covers aside. “Take your clothes off,” he said, nibbling at her ear.

  Savannah looked around herself, around the dorm, suddenly nervous. “Right here?” she asked with a tentative little laugh. “I mean, maybe check to make sure the door’s locked first?”

  “All of them,” he said, stepping back, crossing his arms. “Get naked. Now.”

  This shouldn’t be so difficult, she told herself, after all we’ve already done.

  But her fingers trembled as they went to the buttons of her blouse.

  ****

  Nurse Reyes-Garcia took back the girdle, the bonnet, the collar, and the ankle rings, but she never allowed Veronica to get her jail clothes back. She remained naked the rest of the day. She was led to her brunch that way. She was left in her cell that way. She was brought to the PT trainer for limbering and flexibility measurements sans clothing. Her schedule brought her through the clerical offices of the prison, where everyone could see, including a few new arrests who were being processed and fingerprinted themselves. In the main entryway hall, she was marched past the open door to the visitor’s lobby and got to listen to everyone in there raise a collective gasp, got to see a few of them pointing at her.

  By 6 PM, the Arena was fitted, and filled, and ready.

  In the outermost retractable bleachers sat real media from all of the major news outlets, both cable TV and regular TV, and online reporters as well. Dozens of the squatters outside in the parking lot by the drive-in theater screen had been invited inside. Along the outermost ring of marble flooring stood photographers, videographers—and a stenographer. Regular TV and the open Internet could never show the uncensored footage—and if they legally could, Consequences, Live! would never have allowed them in here. But even cropped and cut to pieces, the images would make for some damned good advertising. They would also, it was to be hoped, be an effective deterrent for the young people who saw them. One thing was beyond doubt or question—the news world would blow its top over this.

  Just inside the ring, at right, was the jury box. Seated there were representatives from the Submissive, including Melody Collins, Dawn Covington, Courtney Strecker, Missy Dorner, Phil Mattias, and Ritchie “the Fainter” Manning. Representing the Dominant were Rusty Darter, Zeke Chambers, Freddy Chester, Brandy Brisbane, and Colt Stevens. Only one Neutral sat with the actives in the front two rows of the box, an eager young man named Amir Talib, but several were included in the alternates in the third row—twenty-two in total.

  At the bench at the head of the ring, elevated on a wooden pedestal, holding a gavel in one hand and wearing a bright white wig, presided His Honor Malcolm H. Wiley, whose stern countenance brooked no foolishness. In his court, justice would be served.

  At stage left stood the lead (and only) prosecutor, attired in a black business suit and tie, Ms. Tabitha Tipton.

  There was no attorney for the defense. Veronica was all alone.

  Officer Alejandro Garcia brought her in, still nude apart from a full set of irons that cuffed her hands at her waist and rattled down by a single chain between her feet to her ankle cuffs. He held her at the elbow, making sure her hands were neither high enough to cover herself up top nor low enough to shield her shorn sex.

  And in the far background, having tucked herself out of sight and in the shadows, Nurse Reyes-Garcia sat at a small table with her monitoring equipment. Briefly, she gave it the once-over, then looked upon her prisoner: trembling, nearly bawling, unable to move farther in her leg irons than six inches at a time, casting mortified glances hither and yon at the literal host of audience members who had chosen to be present for her final condemnation and justice.

  Everyone in the jury had brought a punisher with them: cattle prods, floggers, straps—the usual—and more than a few (mostly among the Submissive) had brought toys or ticklers. But Tabitha, her “prosecutor”, wore no paddle, and Malcolm, her “judge”, had not brought his birch rod. Instead, at Tabitha’s belt and on the podium beside the gavel landing, were coiled two long, single-tailed bullwhips.

  This may be too much, before it is all over, Nurse Reyes-Garcia thought. I shall be watching you closely. I will stop this if it begins to get out of hand.

  As unlikely as Reyes-Garcia would have thought it, cloistered in the deep background as she was, Veronica—and only Veronica—found her with her pleading eyes. You’re doing it to me, her eyes seemed to say. You’re keeping your promise to me, and I don’t know if I can take it.

  Nurse Reyes-Garcia thought, Is this more than you expected or bargained for when you opened up to me, Veronica Cruz? Is this not what you wanted?

  Perhaps not—but it is, I think, exactly what you need.

  Do you trust me?

  ****

  At the center of the Arena was a makeshift three-step wooden display platform, ten-by-ten, stained and polished splinter-free. Standing at its center would place her in a direct, twenty-foot line in front of and below Judge Malcolm, and also effectively prop her up just enough so that everyone could get an even better look at her.

  Officer Alejandro stopped at the steps, let go of her arm. “You go up alone,” he said. “You stand and receive your judgment alone.” He pointed. “We do not have all night, 197.”

  Veronica started to take the first step, then put her foot back down. “I’ll fall,” she said miserably. The ankle chains were too close.

  Officer Alejandro huffed, but, studying her feet, seemed to reach a similar conclusion. Instead of uncuffing her feet, however, he picked her up and placed her over his shoulder.

  Laughter. Everywhere.

  He carried her up the steps, stopped in the middle, set her down, patted her rear, and left her there.

  Veronica’s mouth hung open from the shock of the handling and the crowd reaction. All about her, cameras flashed. A din of murmuring, comments ranging from physical appraisal to observations about her current emotional state, wriggled through her ears and down to her brain like burrowing worms.

  On either side of her, nailed into the wood, were iron rings. A third ring was just behind her. Officer Alejandro had placed her right in front of it. Knowing a little—guessing more—Veronica looked up. Some of the cameras followed her gaze.

  There, suspended by cable wire, dangled a fourth iron ring.

  Madam Reyes-Garcia, what the fuck’s going to happen to me?

  “Ms. Tipton,” Judge Malcolm said, “state the charges for the record.”

  “Certainly,” Prosecutor Tabitha answered, powering on her phone and reading from the screen. “The Commonwealth of Virginia charges Ms. Veronica S.J. Cruz on the following counts: abuse of power, violation of trust, conspiracy to mayhem, falsification of intention, fraudulent dealings, attempted murder of longstanding tradition—and three months or so of general bitchery.”

  The jury erupted with fervent applause, but their stares remained hard and unmoved.

  “The prosecution is willing to set aside certain other charges in the interest of maintaining institutional integrity,” Prosecutor Tabitha continued, “depending on the plea of said defendant.”

  “Veronica Cruz,” Ju
dge Malcolm then said, “have you heard, and do you understand, the charges brought against you?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Veronica said. There was no arguing any of it.

  “On the first count—”

  “Guilty, Your Honor,” Veronica said, forcing her head up high, still crying.

  “You didn’t let me finish.”

  “I’ll do it for you,” Veronica said, her breath steadying, even as she felt every eye in the Arena on her like actual heat. “I’m guilty of all of it. Every count. The only question is what Your Honor plans to do about it. I’d throw myself at the mercy of the court, but in these wrist and leg irons, I’m afraid I’d fucking faceplant.”

  Laughter from the general audience.

  “Very well,” said Judge Malcolm. “Is the prosecution satisfied with the proffered plea of the defendant?”

  Don’t you dare let me off, Tabby, Veronica thought, sniffling, wishing she could wipe her nose.

  “I’m satisfied she admits her guilt,” Prosecutor Tabitha said. Then added, “You have my sentencing recommendation already.”

  “Does the defendant wish to make a statement before the imposition of sentence?”

  Veronica turned her head to the jury. “I admit … I admit I’m scared, and that’s hard enough, but … I mean, I don’t expect any of you to believe this, but…” Her voice was cracking again. She lowered her head.

  Satisfied, knowing smiles—almost respectful—from the jury box.

  “Say it,” said Judge Malcolm.

  “Out with it, Ronnie, before all these witnesses,” said Prosecutor Tabitha.

  “I … won’t do it again,” she said, fumbling for a way out of it. Saying it would be speaking the truth—but there were just too many people. Her mother was probably watching from home, and she was fond of saying that a Cruz never apologizes.

  “No, you won’t,” Tabitha agreed. “You can’t, anymore. That’s not all. You said it in front of Melody. You as well as said it in front of me and Malcolm. And we do believe you. But they all need to hear it. Now.”