SENTENCE: FIFTY STROKES OF THE CANE

Tracy Holmes stood paralyzed in the prisoner's dock, shocked into complete silence. She had heard the judge, in his slightly accented English, pronounce his decision:

"Fifty strokes with the number 2 cane. Bailiffs! Take the prisoner down to the punishment room - I expect that room two will be free again now - and will the next officer available please administer the punishment directly. Miss Holmes, I trust this will teach you to obey the laws of our country. Assuming that it will, I am directing that as soon as you have suffered the appropriate punishment then your record will be cleared and you may continue with your travels, here or elsewhere. Next case please!"

A female police officer opened the low door of the dock and beckoned Tracy out. Tracy moved like a robot, unable to believe that these events were real. Another female officer closed in from the opposite side. They pulled her hands behind her and one of them snapped handcuffs around her wrists. Then they walked her out of the courtroom. She was still wearing the tight jeans and a T-shirt that she had put on that morning and, even in her shocked state, was aware that several pairs of eyes were appraising her body. She was too shocked, however, to guess more specifically what was going in the minds behind the eyes.

The day had begun cheerfully enough, if not entirely innocently. Tracy was traveling in Asia with three other co-ed juniors and some other boys from her college in Florida. They had been very severely warned not to have anything whatsoever to do with drugs, and had even been told that some Westerners had been executed in an Asian country for trying to smuggle drugs. They had been sensible enough to stay far away from this activity, but not smart enough to remain completely away. That morning, in their hotel room, Tracy had produced a couple of tokes of pot that Jerry, one of the boys, had stupidly (even if so far safely) brought along and had slipped her the night before. Two of them, Melissa and Florence, had said "No way!" But Tracy and her closest friend Debbie had decided that a few puffs in their hotel room, for sorority times' sake, could not do any harm.

They were wrong. The smell had gone through the ventilator system and an employee had alerted the police. While Tracy and Debbie had been puffing contentedly there had been a knock on the door. One of the friends, Melissa, had been passing the door at that moment and in an unfortunately oblivious moment had opened it.

Tracy and Debbie were busted and events had then moved so fast that the two of them had been completely bewildered. They had been whisked off to the police station and confronted with an accusation that had simply been undeniable. They had been allowed to call the American Embassy. A junior official there had told them, in bored and reproving tones, that they had been very stupid, that under current policy they would probably be warned and released but that it was just possible they would be sentenced to five days in prison. If they were, he had said, then the American Embassy would contact the local authorities on their behalf. He had also told them that they would know what was going on because the courts simply switched to English when Americans were involved.

Unfortunately, the bored official had not realized that the local authorities had just changed their policy, and that Tracy and Debbie were to be the first to foreigners to suffer from it. They had been sent immediately to a special court that dealt rapidly with minor offences. This was, indeed, a deliberate move on the part of the local authorities, who were determined to make an example of the immorality of visiting American tourists, before the Embassy could intervene. The two young women, left for a few minutes in a cell, had consoled each other that this was a real bummer but that they would simply be honest and that then, surely, they would be back with their friends very shortly, duly warned.

Marched into the court they had found themselves seated in an enclosure with several other accused. These were mostly young women, since the court dealt mostly with prostitutes. Tracy and Debbie, of course, knew nothing about this. They watched in embarrassment and horror as two young women were successively out in the dock, dealt with by the judge after police had spoken to him, and then marched out. One of them, who was simply conducted out by two policewomen, but the second was also followed by another police woman wearing sergeant's stripes who had been sitting with some other police officers in a separate section. The second young woman had looked rather scared.

Then Debbie, in a rapidly intensifying state of dismay had been taken to the dock. The court had, indeed, immediately switched to English. They policeman who had arrested them in their room had presented his account and the judge had asked her if it was accurate. Debbie had said yes and had begun to apologize but the judge had simply cut her short and had announced the sentence: fifty strokes of the cane.

It was not only Debbie who had gasped and dropped her jaw in stunned silence. Tracy and their two friends, who had followed them to the police station, had reacted in the same way. It had, of course, made no difference. Debbie had been conducted out, followed by another of the policewomen with sergeant's stripes, and Tracy had found her self in the dock, with exactly the same results.

She was now walking in a daze, her hands cuffed behind her and a female warden conducting her by each elbow. They had stepped into an elevator and one of the wardens pressed the button to go down several floors. She looked at Tracy's face, which was still blank with bewilderment. "You're lucky you're only to get fifty strokes, and with the one-hand three foot cane! Some women get a hundred, like the woman before you ... and she'll spend two weeks in a cell. She'll have to go to the punishment room twice. And the men get the four-foot two-handed cane, and that really shreds their arses!" The other warden added, "They have to have a doctor there, to stop them fainting!" Tracy found herself dissociating herself from this exchange and wondering at their surprisingly good English. The first warden was remarking, "With women they just rely on the sergeant knowing when to stop," to which the second added, "Too bad for you that you got the badminton champion!" Tracy suddenly began to feel sick.

The elevator had stopped, opening into a long corridor that was bare except for a number of doors on one side. Each doors had a window and a couple of male police officers were looking through one of these, grinning broadly. As the two wardens started to walk Tracy along this corridor, one of the doors, beyond the one where the two policemen were standing, opened. Out of it emerged one of the female sergeants and a young woman, hands cuffed behind her back and two female wardens at each arm. Tracy recognized one of the young local women who had preceded Debbie in the dock. She was staring down as they passed in the corridor but Tracy could see that her face was very red and could hear her sobbing. Tracy had a horrible idea that she knew the reason.

Confirmation followed in another second, when she heard a sudden, muffled, thwatt!, followed by a cry, also muffled. The two men staring through the door further down the corridor had reacted with a laugh. There was an understanding in the prison that the female police would allow men to watch the caning of a woman if they paid a high enough bribe. These two had paid a handsome price for the privilege of watching two American girls stripped and caned. As Tracy was led past them by her two wardens, one of whom said something to the men, who reacted with another laugh, she glanced through the window between their heads. In that instant she glimpsed an arm flashing up high and then down and heard another muffled thwatt and shriek. Her head swam as she realized that these must be the sounds of Debbie being caned.

In a moment they arrived at the door out of which the group of four had emerged a few moments before. One of the wardens pushed it open and the other pushed Tracy through it, just as she heard another thwatt and shriek down the corridor. But now she was confronted with the room in which her own punishment was to take place. If she had had any doubt it would certainly have been dispelled right then. In fact, she had had no doubt, but had not known what to expect.

The room was bare concrete, the floor painted gray and the wall green up to shoulder level, with white above that. Two bare, bright lights hung from the ceiling. The room was cool, which would normally have been welcome in the tropical climate but made Tracy shiver at this moment. Against the wall to the left was a large, heavy X-shaped frame, the crossing somewhat lower than half-way up, with straps hanging from the crossing and the lower and upper arms. Terrifying as this sight was, it did not actually represent Tracy's fate. The punishment rooms were used for both male and female offenders and the X-frame was usually reserved for the whipping of men. But the rest of the room was disconcerting enough.

Hanging from racks on the back wall was arrayed a wide range of instruments for corporal punishment, from whips, through straps, to canes. In the center of the room was a curious piece of furniture, unlike anything that Tracy had seen before, but horribly obvious in its function. It was a padded board, about five feet long and two feet wide. The legs were higher at the further end, facing the wall on the instruments were hanging, and were splayed out and sloping back. The legs were actually at right angles to the board, but their backwards angle made the board slope downwards to shorter legs that splayed out at the nearer end. There was a large hump in the padding at the high end. Straps hung from a third of the way down the longer legs and nearer the bottom of the shorter legs, and two ends of a wider strap hung from the underside of the board, a little more than a foot from its higher end. A small desk with a book and papers stood in the far right corner, while in the near left corner, behind the door, was another item of furniture, not altogether reassuring. It was a toilet, without a seat. Beside it, beneath a faucet sticking out of the wall, was a bucket with cloths and a toilet paper holder was affixed to the wall.

Tracy now found herself positioned between the right wall and what was plainly the caning bench, facing the latter, held by the warden on each side. They had been talking in their own language, but suddenly switched to English.

One of them, the one with a more pleasant voice, saw Tracy staring in terror around the room. "You don't have to worry about the X-frame - that's only used for men, and for women who are sentenced to flogging for violent crimes - they often get marked for life!" Tracy was not really comforted. Both pieces of apparatus looked equally terrifying and she did not know enough about local law to realize how severe corporal punishment could be

"Where's the sergeant?" asked the other warden. "She's here in a moment ... with foreigners she always like to bring her own cane."

Tracy's head swam even more. There could be no doubt that she was about to suffer a very painful punishment, but the idea that the sergeant was bringing a special cane specifically to beat her somehow made it seem even worse. She was staring at the equipment in the room, knowing that some of it was there for her, half trying to understand what might happen, half trying not to think anything at all.

The door opened and the warden's remark was confirmed. A female sergeant with a distinctly deliberate manner entered, holding a long cane in her left hand. She greeted the wardens and then passed behind them. Tracy was startled to feel a hand press across her bottom, accompanied by a remark by the sergeant in English.

"Nice round buttocks! I think we got the better bottom here, don't you think?"

One of the wardens laughed in apparent assent and the sergeant added, "Nice enough to deserve special treatment. We'll see what we can do!"

The same warden laughed again. Then the sergeant gave an order that resulted in one of the warden's undoing the handcuffs. Even as Tracy felt relief at this, bringing her hands together in front to rub her wrists, she began to realize it meant that it was only to facilitate something much worse.

The sergeant had now come around in front of Tracy and stood there, staring straight in her eyes.

"Take your clothes off ... leave them on the floor."

Tracy looked at her in stunned amazement, "Wh..wh..what..??"

The sergeant stared at her silently for a moment. She was flexing the long cane between her hands. The she said, icily, "You must be stupid to be here in the first place, but can you be so stupid that you don't understand your own language, which we use for your convenience? I said take off you clothes ... everything ... and leave it on the floor. NOW!"

Tracy jumped at the violence of the last command but, at least, was startled into action. She kicked off her sandals, then, taking a deep breath, pressing her lips together and staring downwards, she reached for the edge of her T-shirt and pulled it up, up over her chest, over her head - which at least blocked the awful view for a moment, and then off her head, dropping it on the floor. She was wearing a bra - they had all been warned not to walk around braless - and she was surprised to find the sergeant staring unabashedly at her chest. Tracy almost stopped her undressing but realized that this would probably provoke another explosion, so she moved her hands to the poppers and zipper of her jeans. In the silence, the sounds of undoing them were strangely loud. She pushed the jeans down and because of their tightness she had to wriggle her hips through them. She reached down to pull them off her feet and stood up again, kicking the jeans away. The sergeant was looking down at Tracy's panties. These were bikini and not thong, but the sergeant still stared. Tracy stretched her hands behind her back, fiddled with the fastener on her bra until it was released and then slipped the garment over her shoulders and let it fall from her breasts to the floor. Tracy had very fine breasts, high, full, round, firm and with small dark nipples. The sergeant stared at them, seeming both casual and interested. Tracy wondered whether she was a lesbian.

The sergeant was not, in fact, but she had developed an unabashed interest in observing both the prisoners she had to cane, and the effects of the caning itself. This, for her, was a unique moment, for she shared the interest of many of her countrywomen in observing what it was about American women that their men seemed to find so sexy. And she was now in a peculiar position to do this. She had not caned an American woman before and the sudden effort of her government to inflict this lesson had put her in a singularly privileged role She stared at the now almost naked girl in front of her. She already knew well that many female offenders found a visual inspection by a female police officer humiliating, and she was sure that this American girl would find it even more so.

The sergeant's stare suddenly made her painfully self-conscious about her own sex in a way that had never happened before, even when she first gone all the way with a boy friend. It was more like the mild hazing she had endured when she had joined the sorority and the new girls had had to parade naked in front of the sorority committee - only far, far worse. She was a natural blond and her pubic hair was honey-colored. She also liked to wear bikinis and so kept up with her bikini waxing. Often she liked to admire in a mirror how she had removed the unwanted pubic hair so that the soft hairs of her muff neatly followed her slit down the center of her pubes. Now she could almost feel it curving back between her thighs under the sergeant's gaze and began to think of the hair as protecting her most intimate privacy. And she was becoming increasingly uncomfortable as she saw the sergeant staring below her waist with such interest. Instinctively, she pressed her thighs more tightly together. Unfortunately, never having been subjected to corporal punishment before, it had not yet occurred to her that she would shortly be forced to present to the sergeant's view even the most intimate details of her pussy, still at this moment safe between her legs.

A long, excruciating silence continued until the sergeant, seemingly satisfied with her examination, stepped back, pointed over to the toilet in the corner and ordered, "Go and relieve yourself!"

Tracy was stunned yet again, her jaw dropping once more. The sergeant, who enjoyed such moments, stared at her, sighed and remarked with exaggerated patience.

"Since, in your own country, your stupidity has presumably not yet resulted in the situation that you've now landed yourself in, you may not realize that when you are bent over for a caning you may well find yourself needing to urinate. If you do that during your caning then your punishment will be extended. We are therefore kind enough to provide the opportunity to relieve yourself before your caning starts. Get over there and do it!"

The warden to her left had moved back to let Tracy past and, with a deep gasp of dismay and embarrassment, Tracy turned to go over to the toilet in the opposite corner. As she did so, she suddenly caught sight of two heads in the door window. She swallowed in disgust at the knowledge that two men were staring at her, naked as she turned towards them. But there was nothing she could do except hurry her steps towards where she didn't want to go. At the same time, the sight of the two men made her remember that she had heard the clunk of a door closing a minute earlier. Debbie's caning must have finished and the guards had moved to the next display, which was her. She could only barely wonder what state Debbie was in, because she was now becoming so consumed by her own distress.

All she could do was to stare at the floor as she shuffled over to the toilet, avoid looking at the window in the door, and try not to think more than a second ahead. She turned around to sit on the toilet bowl, recoiling slightly at the feel of the cold porcelain on her skin and the uncomfortable way that the hard edge, without a seat, pressed into her thighs. She was supposed to pee but it was hard to do so while the sergeant and the two wardens were staring at her. The thought flickered through her mind that normally she wouldn't have thought twice about peeing while other women were around, now it was so different. She managed to force herself and was immediately shocked at the noise of her pee splashing in the bowl. The embarrassment brought her effort to an end - she couldn't manage any more. She had to force herself to tear some of the toilet paper and wipe herself off. Somehow she thought that she didn't want to show herself still dripping. The paper was coarse and unpleasant. She stood up awkwardly and barely remembered to flush.

She didn't know what to do next. The sergeant pointed to the near side of the caning bench and one of the wardens moved around the bench to the same side. She found herself standing beside it, bewildered. "Go on! Don't just stand there! Get up on it!" ordered the sergeant. She didn't know how to get up. She knew, without thinking, that her bottom had to go at the higher end, but the back legs sloping outwards made it very awkward to mount it. The warden still standing at the other side, rather more helpful, said, "Put your hands on the bench and lie down on it with your hips at the end." She bent forward, placed her hands halfway down the padding and tried to swivel upon to it. As she did so, she suddenly felt her hips lifted by strong hands and found herself moved bodily onto the bench with the two wardens hoisting her. Then she was lying down on it, head it, head near the lower end. She felt each knee grabbed and her legs forced apart as straps were quickly fastened around her thighs.

Part of her wanted to scream in furious protest, but she was rapidly being overwhelmed by an urge simply to submit. The wardens had now moved level with her shoulders, pulling her arms down and strapping her wrists to the front supports of the bench. The face of the warden on her right was just inches from her own and she heard her whisper, "It'll be over in about 5 minutes."

Tracy realized that the warden was actually trying to be kind, but it didn't work. What was "it"? She knew that "it" was the sergeant and her cane, but beyond that she knew only fear. The warden reached down under the bench and Tracy felt the wide straps flipped across the small of her back and tightened. This pulled her down against the bench, forcing the hump at the rear end of the bench hard into her belly, tilting up her hips. She suddenly recognized an utterly unexpected and highly discomforting sense of familiarity. She had thoroughly enjoyed having sex wither latest boyfriend, who liked best to enter her from behind. When she had got used to this doggy-style sex, she always looked forward to kneeling down on her elbows, with spread her legs and her bottom tilted up towards him when he was kneeling ready and rampant behind her, for she knew that offering him such an inviting view between her thighs drove him almost crazy with the desire to thrust hard and deep into her. This sudden sense of familiarity in her exposed position, now forcibly restrained on the caning bench, almost choked her with disgust and fear.

The wardens had stepped back and Tracy saw the one on her left nod towards the sergeant. Tracy couldn't help herself staring back, to where she could see the sergeant carefully adjusting her stance. She suddenly felt a thin line of firm pressure across the center of her bottom. The sergeant's gaze was focused on it. Then she turned briefly and her eyes met Tracy's.

A wave of panic and fear overwhelmed Tracy's mind and body. Abruptly she knew she was going to pee and, a helpless moment later, felt the liquid spurt from between her thighs. She squeezed her eyes shut in agonized embarrassment, which at least saved her from seeing the grinning faces at the door. But she could hear the spurt of her pee splashing softly on the concrete floor. As it slowly and erratically stopped, she forced herself to open her eyes and look back. The warden's eyebrows were raised and the sergeant had a look of disgust on her face.

Tracy was not to know that the sergeant's feelings were of satisfaction rather than disgust. "So you foreign girls can't even control yourselves! Well, that will certain guarantee a little extra attention ... and you can clean the mess up yourself when we've finished with you! Meanwhile, if you're finished, we can begin."

She focused her gaze on Tracy's bottom again and Tracy felt the thin line of pressure harden across her cheeks. At same time she was ludicrously aware, in the cell's cool air, of a warm trickle of urine slowly dripping from her clitoris. For a moment, life seemed to stand still, and then WHAP!

Tracy actually saw the sergeant's arm and the cane suddenly lift high over her shoulder and start to sweep down. In the same instant her senses fused in a shockwave of pain exploding in her bottom and surging through her body. For a few seconds the unbelievable pain seemed unbelievably to grow even worse ... and then slowly recede into a furious burning across her cheeks.

Tracy didn't hear her own shriek and she wasn't aware of her body's frantic jerk against the straps. But she slowly became aware of herself gasping in horrified surprise, of the shocking pain in her bottom, and her body pressing down on the bench. With mind still swirling, she heard the warden to her left call out, "One!" And then, a few seconds later, felt pressure across her cheeks again. Her mind just clear enough to tell herself, "Omigod! Another stroke!" When WHAP! again. Her brain just registered the hiss and crack of the cane a split second before another explosion of pain jerked her body along the bench and brought another shriek to her throat. "Two!" she heard the warden call as she desperately gasped for breath a second time, and then sshhwishhTHWATT! Again, once more sending her senses whirling in agony. Her mind was spinning off into chaos as her bottom exploded in continuing bursts of unbearable fire. Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Eight! Nine! Ten times the warden called out, as the sergeant whipped her cane down across Tracy's helpless bottom in a series of ferocious strokes.

The spinning of Tracy's mind seemed to slow and she became aware once again of the warden standing silently beside her, eyes shifting between Tracy's bottom and her face, as Tracy's recovering brain and the ghastly pain in her bottom told her that, yes, here she really was, helpless as the beating to which she had heard the judge sentence her, had actually begun. Now she was breathing deeply, trying to regain her self-control, when she saw the warden exchange glances with the sergeant, and felt the cane pressing across her bottom again. She couldn't do anything but wait, helpless and hopeless, for the next stroke.

THWATT! It came almost immediately, then, before she could recover, it came again, slamming her into another helpless spasm of jerks and squeals and gasps. With the rapidly building pain in her bottom, a cycle of fiery explosions and throbbing, agonizing aching, this second set of ten strokes seemed worse than the first, sending her mind spinning into confusion and leaving her screaming and twisting against the straps.

Gasping for breath, she began to recover slightly in the next interval. She was normally considered the opposite of a cry-baby and her skill and enthusiasm for several sports made her seem usually tough and disciplined. But this punishment was turning her world completely upside down. Since at least the eleventh grade she had been very proud of well-shaped prominence of her bottom, and of its rounded firmness. Other girls admired it and she liked it when boys ogled. But she had never, for a single instant, thought of her bottom as her body's gateway to excruciating pain, which it had now suddenly become. She had never been in the position that she was now in, utterly helpless, with her bottom as the focus of other people's attention, especially when those people were making her bottom the target through which to inflict deliberate pain. It was not just the pain, excruciating though that was, but the also the circumstances in which that pain was being inflicted, that were sending her mind spinning out of control.

As the sergeant and the warden exchanged glances again, and as the sergeant raised her cane again to begin the third set of ten strokes, Tracy became a helpless, almost mindless body. THWATT! The thirtieth stroke cracked across her now badly bruised bottom. She reacted as a mere bundle of reflexes, her body jumping forward on the caning bench with each CRACK! of the cane, her hair flying as her head jerked up with a squawk of agony .

The sergeant knew exactly what was going on, since she had observed it many times, both formerly as a warden and now under her own administration of the cane. She expected it and was normally satisfied to continue this way until the caning was finished and the poor woman, whoever she was on that occasion, slowly came back to life. She was, hover, more than a little fascinated to observe the effects of the cane on the bottom of an American girl. The girl's skin was much paler than that of the local women. As usual, the cane strokes were leaving a line of white for a brief moment before the blood rushed back into the line of its impact and the flesh under the skin's surface began to show the damage. With this girl's bottom, each mark was starting to grow purple beneath the skin and then crimson would rise to the surface, creating a satisfyingly brilliant pattern of strikes across the bruised cheeks. By half-way through the third set of ten strokes, the marks of several strokes were starting to become prominent welts and, where later strokes had landed over earlier, their crossings were turning deep purple. On the outside of the girl's right bottom cheek, even more deeply crimsoned fingers of raised welts splayed outwards and downwards, where the flexible rattan had curled around the bottom and its tip had bitten more deeply into the skin.

The sergeant, as was her practice, had begun by aiming the first two sets of ten strokes more or less across the crown of the bottom presented to her, and had now shifted her aim slightly higher. This girl's bottom was rather fuller and rounder than many she caned, and the upper part of her bottom, being better padded, was better able to absorb the cane strokes. Even so, the cane's impact here had a harsher sound and the bruises were appearing faster and darker. The sergeant did not consider herself sadistic but, having long before got used to the idea that her duty was to inflict pain deliberately and fulfill the purposes of the legal system in which she had found her career, she now found considerable satisfaction in administering these punishments with the maximum efficacy possible. And she was more than pleased to have the privilege of administering such punishment to one of the many young Americans who seemed to take such pleasure in flaunting their disrepect for local customs, and the first who had been called to account. THWATT! She delivered the thirtieth stroke with perhaps a bit more strength than was normal and watched without surprise as the accumulating pain caused the girl to jerk and shriek in reaction.

Tracy felt almost as though she were about to faint. Apart from the awful, throbbing pain in her bottom, her brain was now blurred, tears were dripping from her eyes and she could feel her body covered with sweat. She breathed as deeply as she could. The oxygen seemed to help with the pain. And some need of self-control, developed in her years of sport, was reasserting itself. She began to think again, knowing she shouldn't just lie there helplessly, being beaten. She realized that the strokes had been coming at very regular intervals. This was where she could recover some grip on herself. Looking at the warden on her left again, she felt there was a very fleeting look of encouragement, but it came just before the warden turned to her right and exchanged another look with the sergeant. This was it. Tracy knew the beating was about to start again.

Her hands found the wooden supports to which they were strapped and she gripped them as though her life depended on it. She made herself look back at the sergeant, something she had been unable to do for the last twenty strokes or so. Saw the sergeant fix her gaze on her bottom and felt the thin cane pressing against it. Realized that the line of pressure was now low across her cheeks, just above her thighs, and for a fleeting moment remembered the inviting vulnerability between her thighs that she had once been so happy to exploit. Then the pressure vanished and she saw the cane lift high over the sergeant's shoulder. This time she forced herself to stay aware of it all: the swish of the cane, the THWATT as it struck low across her own bottom, the explosion of pain in her up-thrust rear end, even the jerk of her own body as it reacted to the impact and the gasp of agony that burst from her own throat. For a moment her brain started to swim and then her ability to think suddenly returned and, in that moment, she knew, not only that she would survive this horrible ordeal, but also that she could salvage some self-respect from it. She started to count. She knew that she had missed the count of one, so she started at two. She heard the warden callout "thirty-one!" and she kept on counting. As she was counting "four" she saw the sergeant's arm and the cane rise high. Still forcing herself to watch, she counted "five" and then, as the stroke landed, another shock wave ran through her body and her mind. Then she heard it all again and the feeling came, with a peculiar surprise, that her mind seemed to disconnect from her body as she saw the lift of arm and cane starting the next stroke. As her bottom flared again and her body jumped of its own accord, she began to feel that she was seeing it all as from a distance. The strokes were coming at five second intervals and she started to count again. swisshhTHWATT! She realized she could hear quite clearly both the sound of the cane's swish through the air and the explosive sound of it landing across her bottom. It was becoming weirdly fascinating. Count and swisshhTHWATT! Count, "thirty-three!" and swisshhTHWATT! Start counting again. As the warden's call rose to forty strokes, Tracy was still gasping and twisting against her straps, still sweating all over (even on her bottom, the bizarre realization suddenly entered her mind), but she had made it to forty, she had her mind back, and there were only ten more to go.

The sergeant saw that Tracy's reaction to her caning had changed, noticing a difference in Tracy's eyes and in her reaction when the cane landed. It was unusual but not unknown for women to emerge from a passive state of acceptance towards the end of their caning. She decided to deliver the last ten strokes where she had aimed the previous ten, low across the bottom, where she knew women were psychologically as well as physically more vulnerable. The welts were already showing crimson and purple just above the crease where the girl's thighs began. The position of punishment, with the hips raised by the hump at the end of the bench and thighs pulled apart by the straps, always exposed the private parts and she had been interested to see that this American girl's labia were much pinker than those of local women. And the pubic hair was different. She could tell now that this girl had taken care to remove any pubic hair that would show when wearing a bikini, for the hair covering the front end of her slit had a sharp edge. Local women had a smaller area of pubic hair that softened into the intimate skin of their crotch. Her own crotch was like that. She thought this was much more attractive and why men didn't always prefer local girls, she couldn't imagine. She'd been told that American girls called their pubic hair their muff, and now she could see why. It looked, somehow, muff-like, whatever a muff was. Well, pubic hair or no, this girl was certainly not going to want to wear a bikini for three weeks at least. The sergeant remembered the spurt of urine that had shot from the girl's slit a few minutes before and which was still puddled on the floor. She smiled slightly. The girl's punishment was not yet over.

The sergeant's champion skills at badminton had given her the ability to wield the cane with remarkably fine nuances of delivery and, before starting the final set of ten strokes with the cane, she made one final assessment. When the prisoners were bending over in this position, their labia sometimes became so prominent that it was possible for the sergeant to make her cane just tip this delicate skin, and she was not above doing this deliberately for the sake of a few final effects. But this girl's labia were too deeply protected between her thighs. Too bad, it would have interesting to see her reaction - and to tell her husband about it. The sergeant's husband always wanted to hear the detail when she caned a women prisoner. They usually had vigorous sex afterwards and this little detail always made him even more excited. And with an American girl as the prisoner her husband would be desperate to hear every little detail. The sergeant smiled to herself, for she knew she could bargain something extra out of her husband for the privilege of these details. She hadn't yet decided whether that would be sexual favors or housework. She had to finish the job first.

She proceeded to deliver the final ten across the rapidly darkening swathe of bruises low across the girl's bottom cheeks, carefully adjusting her arm strength and wrist flexion for each stroke. The wardens, who had come to know the peculiarities of each sergeant's style of caning, could tell by the slight variations of sound, both of the cane's sizzle through the air and its impact on the Tracy's bottom, that the sergeant was giving an extra edge to these final strokes.

Tracy felt only that the pain was unrelenting, each successive set of ten strokes yet another passage of agony. Gripping the bench legs frantically and trying desperately to take a deep enough breath before each stroke, her body bucking against the straps as it absorbed the shock of each impact, she knew that she was hanging on to her self-control only by the thinnest margin. A hot, sharply throbbing numbness began to spread through her bottom, even between her thighs, offering some relief from the immediate explosions of pain as each stroke landed. Finally she heard the warden call out fifty, just as she was feeling as though she might be cut right in half.

She was left gasping for breath, tears flooding her eyes, and an agonizing throb of pain in her bottom. But it was over. She had survived. Through tear-blurred sight she saw the sergeant turn to place her cane across the small desk. Thank God! The sergeant had now walked behind her, where she could not see, and after a moment reappeared, holding another implement. Oh God! Was there something else? The answer came in a moment: "Well, if you had behaved then your punishment would be over. But since you've messed up this room we will see how you take six more strokes with a whip."

The sergeant actually took care to show Tracy what she was now holding. It was a whip, a short one, about four feet long, looking as though it was made from plaited leather, thicker at the handle than at its business end. Tracy, in renewed despair, glanced at the warden. She thought she saw a glimmer of sympathy, but it was not going to help her. Once more her hands went to the bench legs and she gripped them desperately. The sergeant took up her stance again and as she raised her arm Tracy took another deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut.

WHAPP! The whip seemed to cut right through the numbness that had begun to bring relief to her bottom and Tracy felt herself once more jerk and shriek with the pain. WHAPP! Again. Her mind was spinning out of control once more as the whip cut across the center of her bottom in six vicious strokes. Then it stopped, and she heard the sergeant say something. But she didn't know what it was, because she felt suddenly and completely exhausted by the anguish, her mind in state of numbed awareness, without real thought, floating somewhere at the edge of the terrible pain filling her bottom.

The sergeant had gone behind her again to hang the whip back up on the rack but, while she was there, stopped to gaze shamelessly between Tracy's thighs, at the details of her sex in the white recesses of her cleft, untouched by the cane and the whip that had covered each cheek with brilliantly colored weals and swelling welts, now rising from a ground of angry red that had now suffused the girl's entire bottom. The six strokes of the whip had broken the skin in a few places where strokes had crossed, and there were some spots of blood. The sergeant reverted to her own language and remarked, quite matter of factly, "I'd better take a good look because my husband won't forgive me if I can't tell him all about it!" The warden who had been on Tracy's left said nothing, but the other one laughed coarsely. "OK, you can undo her now," the sergeant added.

Tracy realized that the straps at her waist, her wrists, and her thighs were being undone, and that she was being helped down from the bench. She moved stiffly and with great reluctance, as though fearing that her legs might fall apart from her body where the pain had seared her. Without thinking she moved one hand very gingerly to a bottom cheek and was shocked to find the normally silken, smooth skin swollen and deeply dented.

As she tried to regain her senses she was abruptly brought up short by the sergeant again. "Right! Now that your punishment is over you can clean up the mess you've made of this place! Get a bucket of water and mop it up!" She was pointing over towards the toilet, where Tracy's humiliation had begun and where a bucket and cloth stood beneath a faucet.

Tracy could not believe this renewed assault on her self-respect, but neither could she do anything to resist. She hobbled awkwardly across to the toilet corner, not daring to place her hands on her throbbing bottom. She half-filled the buck and then lugged it to the back of the room, where the sergeant was still standing. Sure enough, splashes of her own pee were glistening on the concrete floor, where it had spurted almost all the way to the wall on which the array of instruments was hanging. Tracy fell to her knees and began to clean up what was indeed her own mess. She was cringing, not only at this new humiliation but also at the knowledge that she was once more, in this position, presenting her severely damaged bottom to the eyes of her tormentor.

The sergeant, finally, said, "OK! That's good enough. Take the bucket and empty it in the toilet." Tracy staggered to her feet and did as she was ordered. The sergeant had turned to the desk, where she was entering a record of Tracy's caning in the book. Then, she said something to the two wardens, picked up her cane, looked at Tracy again, and said, "Perhaps now you will know to respect our laws!" and turned to leave the room without waiting for a reply.

Tears were still running from Tracy's eyes as the warden who had been standing to her left said, not unkindly, "Alright ... it's finished. Come and get your clothes on again and we'll take you back upstairs to where you can leave. Your friend is probably waiting for you ... her punishment was over a little while ago." Tracy, incapable of speech, returned to where her clothes were still lying in the ignominious heap into which they had fallen just a short while before, and thankfully started to get dressed. She regretted having worn the tight jeans that she had picked up that morning without any sense of what the day would bring. Pulling them up over her corrugated and throbbing bottom was painfully difficult, though the feeling of the fabric stretched taut around her cheeks became strangely comforting, like a protective shell. And it was an enormous relief to be wearing her clothes again.

The wardens, no longer grasping her elbows, motioned her out of the room and accompanied her down the corridor along which she entered this hell. The men she had seen were no longer there, but a disconcerting reminder of what she has just endured came in the sound of more muffled thwatts and shrieks, from the other side of a door they passed. One of the wardens, reminding her of an earlier exchange, remarked, "Just be grateful that you didn't get a hundred ...and that you can leave instead of being left in a cell!" Tracy could not even imagine what that would have been like.

They re-entered the elevator, went up several floors, and the wardens let her out. She was in a large, bare hall. There, perched very uncomfortably on the edge of a hard chair, was Debbie, face still red and wet with tears. With her were Melissa and Florence, who had escaped their fate but had followed them to the police station. They had actually been in the courtroom, following the proceedings with horror, and were now extremely anxious to get them back to their hotel as quickly as possible.

Her friends didn't wait to talk, saying only "Let's get out of here! The clerk's been helpful and gave us permission to go out a back entrance to avoid the press. There's a taxi waiting there, and the hotel's done the same thing. Let's go! Can you two walk OK?" Tracy looked at Debbie's tearful face and they nodded together. In truth, she was walking stiffly because her bottom was throbbing with pain, but she gratefully followed them in a rapid exit. The taxi was waiting and they got in. The other girls had already made arrangements with the driver and they didn't have to tell him where to go. They didn't talk in the taxi, either, just staring at each other, still in disbelief.

The drive was only about ten minutes and, as they swung around a corner to a tradesman's entrance, Tracy saw that, indeed, the press was clustering at the main entrance. They paid the driver, asking him to tell no-one and gave him a very large tip, then hustled into the building, into the service elevator, still staring at each other as it went up to their floor, exited in a hurry, down the corridor, finally locking the door of their room behind them.

Only then did Tracy and Debbie burst into sobbing tears and their two friends, deeply distressed, tried to find a balance between comforting them and finding out what had happened. One friend was hugging Debbie and the other Tracy. One of them said, "Why don't you both have a good hot shower, it'll make you feel better, and then you can lie on the bed and we'll use cream and stuff on your poor butts."

Their two friends started to help them both get undressed. Tracy and Melissa were standing to one side and behind Debbie and Florence. After getting off her T-shirt and bra, the friend moved to the fastenings of her jeans. Debbie reacted immediately, "Oh God! Be careful! My butt's so painful I can hardly touch it!" Together, with great care, they eased down her jeans and panties. Tracy and Melissa were attending to the same needs, but both glanced at Debbie's bottom cheeks as the jeans were eased down over them.

They both reacted in the same instant with a gasped "Omigod!" Tracy's reaction continued with, "That's what it looks like! No wonder it feels so awful! Mine must be the same!" Up to that point, except for a very brief contact through her fingers when her caning had finished, her only information about the state of her bottom had been fed by its nerves directly to her brain. She winced as Melissa helped ease her own jeans and panties down. Melissa had just said, "Yes, I'm afraid your butt looks just as bad!" and then gasped in horror, "In fact I think it's even worse ... I can't believe this! It's bleeding!" Tracy reached behind her and very gingerly slid a hand over her corrugated, throbbing cheeks and felt something wet. She looked at her hand and, sure enough, there was a smear of blood. She thought, "That must have been the whip." Melissa was saying, "Come on .... Let's get you in the shower and then we'll see what we can do to help you with this awful mess."

Up to this moment, none of them had seen a bottom punished in any way at all, let alone one that had just undergone a severe judicial caning. Still shocked at both the day's events and the results now before them in the appearance of Tracy's and Debbie's bottoms, they all agreed the best thing was to get them in the shower and talk about it afterwards.

Tracy and Debbie got in the shower together. They had often done that before, sometimes even larking around in a jokingly sexual way. Now they found themselves clinging together, emotionally bonded under the hot stream of water, crying bitterly, and their hands began very gently feeling for each other's bottom. At first without consciously thinking, their minds slowly started to connect the astonishment they felt at the hardening irregularities of the other's bottom with their own sense of both pain and relief, as they felt the same corrugations across their own bottom softly massaged with hot water and slippery soap.

They did felt a bit after their shower. Their friends helped with drying their bottoms as gently as possible, and then led them to the bed, where they lay face down side by side, and Melissa and Florence got out a variety of creams and lotions, preparing to repair the damage, in so far as this was possible.

They were still gasping words of horror at the condition of Debbie's and Tracy's bottom. Melissa, now bent closely over Tracy's bottom, for a moment became so completely amazed at what she saw. Perhaps because she was a studio art major and a rather skilled oil painter, she simply stared at it for a few moments, as though it were something spectacular, like an amazing new painting. How had the smooth, pale spheres she had last glimpsed, without giving them a thought, when they were all dressing that morning, been so transformed?

By now Tracy's bottom was deep purple and crimson all over, an angry crimson spreading out into the edges of the cheeks even beyond were the cane had actually landed. Its paired spheres was now matched by deep grooves and prominent ridges that ran across Tracy's cleft and stretched, on the outer side of the right cheek, into prominently swollen fingers of crimson, curling round where the tip of the cane had buried itself in the flesh, stroke after stroke after stroke. A little blood was still oozing from a few spots. Melissa slipped a hand carefully over the once smooth skin of Tracy's cheeks, feeling the still hot corrugations, moving her finger tips gently down the jagged lines of welts bordering the bottom cleft, tracing the grooves from left to right cheek and following the deep imprints of the cane stretching across the bottom, astonished at how the tramlines of bruises still offered such a startling record of each stroke.

Florence began to stare at her friend with some disapproval. "What are you doing, Melissa? Stop staring and get down to something helpful!" She picked up a jar of skin cream, removing the lid and scooping out a liberal amount of cream to apply to Debbie's bottom. Melissa woke up from her peculiar reverie and began to work on Tracy's bottom in the same way. Then slowly, as tactfully as possible, they began to ask about what had happened after Debbie and Tracy had been marched from the courtroom..

At first, Tracy could hardly bear the idea of revisiting the experience but then it began to seem therapeutic to share it with her friends, and to compare her own experience with Debbie's. It was clear that Debbie had also received an extremely severe caning, but it sounded as though her sergeant had not been so vicious. The both agreed on how they had at first been stunned with disbelief, how they had been marched off as if into a nightmare, their horror at their first glimpse of the punishment room, their humiliation at undressing, their anger when they were strapped to the bench and how it turned into helpless terror, the excruciating shock of the first stroke, the way in which they'd felt overwhelmed by a nightmare of pain that seemed it might never end, and then the final silence, also somehow unbelievable, as they realized that the beating had ended and their bottoms were still there, throbbing with pain.

Tracy found out that Debbie had also been told to pee. It was obviously the usual thing. But Debbie had not disgraced herself when strapped to the bench. When Melissa and Florence heard that Tracy had practically peed in the sergeant's face, they even managed a laugh. But they also managed to identify the six, vivid welts from the whip with which Tracy's punishment had concluded, and they knew it had been a very long way from a joke.

Their tension and pain was finally beginning to ease slightly when there was a knock on the door. There was an immediate argument as to whether they should answer it, but Melissa finally went to the door and, leaving the door chain in place, opened it slightly ajar. It was one of the boys who were traveling with them but Melissa kept the door chained, for Tracy and Debbie were still lying butt-naked (and striped) on the bed.

Tracy could hear the whispered conversation.
"I just wanted to know whether they're OK?"
"Sure, if you can call having your arse beaten black and blue OK!" .
"It's so awful .... Jerry feels really bad."
"So he should, and more! The stupid jerk! You can tell him that nobody gave him away, even though they probably should have. He just deserves to have his buns totally busted."
"Yeah .. we all think that ... well, just checking in with you. Should warn you that the press is trying to get at Tracy and Debbie, but the hotel is being pretty helpful in keeping them out. Need anything?"
"OK ... no, I don't think so right now, but we appreciate it. I'm guessing that we'll stay holed up in this room, at least until tomorrow. Maybe you could call us on the phone in about an hour to see if they want anything to eat. Let the phone ring twice, hang up and then dial again immediately ... that way we'll know it's you!"
"OK, will do, take care!"
"Thanks!"

Melissa closed and locked the door again. "That was Robert ... I talked with him 'cause I think he's OK."

This was followed by a sudden silence, because all four girls had had the same thought at the same moment. Tracy expressed it first: "Omigod! You know what ....the press is bound to print something and EVERYONE is going to know ... the whole school ... and our parents! What a goddam mess!" "Yes," added Melissa, not too helpfully, "You'll probably be in Time and Newsweek!"