F Campbell - Margo

She was then shown the doors and windows. They were heavily locked, and where the need was obvious, they were also barred.

Imprisonment was implicit. She could understand that after awhile all thoughts of escape would vanish from a girl's mind. It would become simply a wasting of her time.

"I may as well show you a punishment. It's not all gravy here. I think there's a girl downstairs in one of the punishment rooms. Come along."

The girl was most definitely there. Punishment was simple and ingenious. Its severity depended on the length of time it was imposed.

In the center of a large room, a cloth had been laid, and from it protruded innumerable spikes, all pointing up, all close enough together to prohibit the placement of a foot. A naked girl stood upon widely separated concrete blocks. They were not fastened, but were free to do their owner's bidding. The owner herself was naked and half suspended by her wrists above her head, but not tightly enough to rob her of an awful choice. She could stand as she was in the atrociously tiring widely spread pose or she could step from the concrete blocks. But what awaited her bare feet below made the choice an impossible one to make. The delinquent maiden was obviously weary. Her head bent forward as she supported her weight from the strapped wrists above. Jean treated the introduction as normal.

"Alice, this is the new girl. Her name is Margo Davis. I'm giving her the tour."

Tired eyes raised and focused. A tired voice said, "Hello, Margo. I'm sorry you've caught me like this. Maybe tomorrow I'll be back to normal – I hope."

Their conversation did not matter. The punished girl was breathing heavily. Her thoughts and efforts obviously aligned to her predicament.

Her pubic hair and the plump lips of her sex were obscenely thrust into prominence by her wide spread legs. She could do nothing to hide any part of herself. Margo shrank from the through she herself might someday stand like this, available to anyone who wished to look. Rossland left a girl nothing to call her own.

"Damn it, Margo, I hate to be forever apologizing, but there's something else – I have to whip you."

Jean sounded genuinely sorry, as though contemplating au unpleasant duty, which perhaps it was. They had left the punished maiden in her wide spread pose, her gasping and laboring and the contemplation of the spikes so close to her bare feet. They now stood in the hall beyond the door. Jean's announcement heralded their next move.

"Whip me!" Margo was incredulous. "I haven't done anything. Why on earth would you whip me?"

"Remember the thirty days, honey. Every girl gets whipped on the first day and quite often during the time period. But most certainly today. I warned you you wouldn't like it."

"But I thought it was Henry Ross who whipped the girls. I didn't realize we whipped each other. It seems such a waste I'm not going to get anything out of it, and I don't see what you get either. Does Miss Harridance get it on the act?"

"Just you and me, honey. But there's something else you'll learn. You say I don't get anything out of it, but there you're wrong. I suppose it is deplorable, but we're all the same. After awhile we all get so we love to whip another girl. It doesn't matter which girl it is – there's no animosity involved. It's just the beautiful sound of the leather of girl flesh."

Jean paused. "I'm terribly sorry."

Margo was instantly thankful for Norma Boulter. The older woman's caning of her youthful bottom had removed most of the terrible fear a girl might normally experience when confronted by what most evidently confronted her now. Woefully, she gazed at Jean.

"There's no way I can talk myself out of this?"

"You know there isn't, dear. There never is. Once a girl is sentenced, things happen. Look, I can fasten you well enough the way you're chained. There no sense in taking things off. I've just locked them on you. Come this way."

It was unreal and unbelievable. But Margo knew it would happen. When they reached the appointed room, there were several girls leaning against the walls, obviously waiting. She turned to Jean in dismay.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart. It's their privilege. Any of us can watch a punishment if we want. There will be a few more drifting in before I get you fixed."

Fixed! Watch while she was whipped! Margo understood the sympathetic glances and the blunt enquiries about holes in her head.

The metal she wore certainly weighed a ton.

It was very simple – exactly as Jean had promised. It required no freedom from her metal bonds. A hook snared the link in her cuffed hands and rose gently above until she stood almost on tiptoe, thus tautly stretched so she could do nothing. Her whole body was naked and vulnerable to the whip. An involuntary moan of disenchantment escaped her lips. But she clinched them tight to stem whatever else may have lurked in her protesting mind. Instead, she looked around. It was as though the trapped girl sought escape or aid or the assurance of a friend. But it was all impersonal. The number of her audience had increased, and others were still arriving. From comments she could hear, she gathered the behavior of new girls was often a matter of interest. They did not all accept the whip in precisely the same manner. Their responses ran all the way from the stoic down to mindless screaming. Margo hoped she could keep her own somewhere safely in between.

There was, in her mind, no single thought of reprieve. She thought this strange, but Rossland had put its first finger on her mind.

It was an actual whip. It wasn't a cane or a crop – it was a whip. Margo was no expert, but assessed it as being neither good nor bad.

It was just a whip, designed to hurt girls. It would not cut her flesh raw and bloody, but that was its only consolation.

Casually, Jean said, "You're not supposed to know what you're going to get. It could be five or fifty. Are you ready?"

It was utterly different from the yellow cane across her bottom cheeks.

She remembered Norma Boulter's suggestion of a graduation to her virgin back. This was it. The single thong sliced her skin crosswise from shoulder to shoulder. She bit off an involuntary scream, and found herself kicking in futile anger and frustration at chained feet. The act made a fine sound of clashing links, but that was all. The pain seeped once more into every crevice of the girl named Margo Davis.

"I'll start at the top and work down. But I'll break the pattern often enough to keep you off guard. There's no use in my apologizing. It's standard procedure."

Margo started to reply, but her voice trailed away into another flash of flaming anguish. The tip of the thong bit sneakily into the armpit of the raised limb. She handled it with no more than a squeal of combined anger and agony which slowly turned into a low moan. In the pause before the next lash, the helpless girl gazed around at the considerable array of faces watching avidly what was being doe to her. None were cruel or flushed with pleasure. She saw sympathy there, but for most she was just "the new girl" getting her first taste of the whip. They had seen it all before. Margo closed her eyes for the third stroke. It was generally conceded she had done well. Few new girls did better. It now transpired that she had been sentenced to twenty strokes, this being the standard initiation. And when the last of them had cut her innocence, she was warmly kissed and embraced by a great many young women she had never previously seen. Her whipping had sparked a memory in all of them. Some laughingly flipped their skirts for her to observe the same scarlet lines upon their own flesh. They were a sisterhood of pain.

Margo would have liked to reciprocate the ardent arms. She managed very well with the hot, moist lips, but it would have been nice at that moment to have put her bare arms around another girl and find comfort in the act. But this was not to be. One by one, the inmates left the room until only Jean was left. She too kissed her and hugged her tightly, assuring her she had done well and said perhaps Margo would not be too unhappy at Rossland. She ran her fingers up and down the weals she herself had made on the innocent back.