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PART 7
The next day, at eleven in the morning, the freshly showered prisoners were gathered in the gym. After some confusion and disarray—the discipline in the prison was beginning to flag—the girls arranged themselves in the regular three-row formation. Nadia allowed herself a small act of defiance; she left her assigned spot in the second row and placed herself in the middle of the last row, next to Katia. No one challenged her.
The first row had a gap: the place that belonged to the poor strangled Sara Gomez was empty today. The girl was here in the room though; her lifeless body was hanging by the neck from the gallows. The prison administration had found it necessary to stage a fake execution to cover a real murder; so Sara was convicted for some crime or the other, and her corpse hastily strung up before it got too stiff.
From a distance Sara was doing a credible job of looking executed by hanging, but any close inspection would easily reveal that she hadn’t died in the air. One big clue was a set of deep ligature marks going round Sara’s neck inches below the current placement of the noose. Then there was blood under her nail, chaffed skin on her stomach and breasts, a badly crushed vagina, and a big red bootprint forever stamped into the girl’s buttocks… It was impossible to see what Sara’s face was like, as her head was covered by the regulation black hood. For this Nadia was grateful; she had no wish to look again into those haunting dead eyes.
Once the order was established, Captain De La Peña came forward with Ines Santana and Bianca Vea at his side. Tatiana Velez followed close behind, carrying a backpack. She was smirking as she walked; something was making her happy today. The Captain cleared his throat and began a speech. He stressed the importance of the home front and stated that it was every citizen’s sacred obligation to aid the defenders of the Homeland. He called on his audience to recognize the necessity of wartime sacrifice and harshly condemned the slackers and the shirkers. None of it was new. Every De La Peña’s speech had touched upon these themes before. In the past, the prisoners would listen carefully to every word, trying to guess what was in store for them. Now they knew what he really meant: that it was their patriotic duty to drink cum and have their buttholes stretched by any soldier who came along.
Nadia found her attention drifting. She let the words wash over her, and instead reflected about Sara and her horrible fate. However, Nadia quickly realized that this was not a healthy subject for her emotional well-being, so she forced herself to think only about the upcoming orgy. She tried to guess how many men she would be required to fuck today, and who they might be: officers, enlisted men, or perhaps even civilians. At this point it didn’t matter much to her; but it was fun to speculate.
One way of deducing who was coming to fuck them today was to listen to the noises in the yard. Roaring of bus engines meant they’d be common soldiers, while purring of limos signified someone more important. Nadia let the words of the speech wash over her and kept an ear out for sounds coming from behind the walls.
Eventually she heard a soft, irregular drone barely distinguishable below Captain De La Peña’s booming voice. Yes, there could be no doubt; these were buses. But there seemed to be only a few of them, no more than two or three. Nadia was puzzled. Buses carried common grunts; but why the Colonel would bother to bring only a couple of platoons? Perhaps these were lower ranks from a smaller branch of armed forces: pilots, submariners, or even Internal Security goons. The last thought made Nadia shudder.
Once the engines had shut down, all became silent again. This was another oddity. Where was the commotion? Nadia expected to hear yelling, joshing, catcalls—the usual racket made by excited and horny young males. This gang, on the other hand, was uncommonly quiet…
Just then Captain De La Peña said something that made Nadia forget her musings and snap her attention back to him. The Captain was calling prisoners by name. He would read a name from his little notebook, and the girl he identified would step forward and turn around to face the rest of the prisoners. The singled out individuals did not appear to be worried, and Nadia soon learned why. These girls were called up to receive commendations for extraordinary contributions to war effort—or, in other words, for being fantastic whores.
Estela Garrido was named first—no surprise there. Katia Jimenez and Alita Lopez were chosen as well; it seemed that the Colonel remained happy with their service. Among others selected for the honors there were several known sluts, as well as an occasional nice girl. The Commandant announced the reward for the winners: a shot of brandy. Nadia wished she’d been selected too; it’s been a long time since she had any alcohol. Unfortunately, Nadia’s Frigate Captain neglected to put in a good word for her, so the only drinks in store for her tonight would be the forthcoming sperm cocktails. Disappointed, Nadia resolved to be a good little cum-guzzling whore. If she played it right there might be brandy in her future, too.
After Warden Santana paid out the prizes out of a hip flask, the Commandant returned to his sermonizing. Nadia wished the soldiers would hurry up. At this point, she preferred an hour of a most depraved buttfucking to another five minutes of these talks. She listened dutifully though; you never knew when your name might be called.
At first the speech was rather sunny. Using glowing praise, the Commandant lauded the selfless souls who sacrificed their own pride and comfort for the sake of the defenders of the Homeland. After a time, however, his address acquired more ominous overtones. He began by slamming the shirkers who would not carry their weight; then he smoothly segued into thunderous denunciations of saboteurs and outright traitors. Uh-oh, thought Nadia, this didn’t look good. Where were those soldiers? Why wouldn’t they hurry up?
Abruptly the Captain fell silent. He was staring at his notebook with a sort of dark expression that made the girls catch their breath. The silence stretched. The prisoners waited, growing increasingly nervous as the Captain was studying his writing. At last he looked up and said two names. "Silvia Munoz. Patricia Abril." The girls stepped forward, worry in their eyes.
"What I just told you was not an idle talk," said the Commandant. "There are some among you who consistently and deliberately refused their duty. These are the individuals I am referring to!" He pointed a prosecuting finger at Patricia and Silvia, who shrunk in their skins. Refusing duty, of course, meant trying to avoid sexual acts, or being less than enthusiastic about them. This was true for both girls. Patricia Abril’s sensitive anus could not abide penetration; the poor girl hurt badly every time. Silvia Munoz’s problem, on the other hand, was more psychological: she must have had a thing about forced sex. She did all that was demanded of her, but slowly and mechanically; and was often slapped for hesitating.
Pointing a finger at the cowering prisoners, the Commandant asked a rhetorical question. "Are these mere idlers who put their own comfort above our heroes, or are they something worse?" He let this linger for a few seconds, then answered his own question. "I maintain that these two are guilty of deliberate sabotage."
This did not look good. There was no chance now that Silvia and Patricia could get off with a simple warning. Slacking could be forgiven but sabotage required punishment. But what kind of punishment?
Right on cue, Tatiana Velez opened her backpack and took out what looked like a bludgeon or a club. It was made of shiny black rubber and its size and shape rather recalled an elongated bowling pin with a rounded knob on end. There was a strap attached to the handle, like in the old-style police batons. Tatiana weighed the club in her hand and grinned at Patricia. This answered the question about punishment: it appeared that the accused girls were to be caned.
The Commandant raised his voice. "But sabotage is not all! We’ve got treason here, within these very walls! There is a traitor among you, a violent and dangerous traitor!" The prisoners looked anxiously at each other. A violent traitor? What was he talking about? "Yesterday afternoon,” continued De La Peña, "an inmate of Santa Margarita attacked an officer of the law and inflicted injuries on him…Juana Diaz!" The girl jumped. "You are guilty of assault, attempted assassination, and high treason. Take five steps forward."
Walking on unsteady feet, Juana took a place next to Silvia and Patricia, the two alleged saboteurs. The accusation against her was very, very unfair—everyone knew that Juana was defending her life and that the "injury" she inflicted on Captain Martinez was but a simple scratch. Evidently, this counted for nothing.
"The accused individuals," said the Commandant, "are guilty of serious crimes. Such crimes call for serious penalty. Therefore, by the power vested in me by the Supreme Commander General Vilareal, I sentence Silvia Munoz, Patricia Abril, and Juana Diaz to—" There was a pause, as looked into his notebook as if to confirm one last thing. "I sentence them," he said a second later, "to death by hanging."
Commandant’s words were met by a stunned silence. The prisoners were shocked beyond speech. While everyone was paralyzed by the nasty surprise, the guards moved without delay. They pounced on the condemned girls and speedily half-pushed, half-carried them toward the gallows. By the time Nadia realized what was going on and turned around to look, Juana and Silvia already stood on the platform with black bags on their heads and nooses around their necks. Patricia tried to put up resistance but was pacified after a short beating. A moment later she joined the other two girls on the scaffold.
"Attention!" bellowed Sergeant Tatiana Velez. "The Boss is not finished yet!"
Every head in the room snapped back to Captain De La Peña. "It was brought to my notice," he said, "that in the past week certain inmates took advantage of a lax discipline and committed acts of homosexuality. We cannot punish all the perpetrators; but we will punish those guilty of the most flagrant violation. Prisoner Francisca Pons. Prisoner Alita Lopez. You are hereby declared guilty of Lesbianism and sentenced to death by hanging."
Nadia closed her eyes. So the incident in the showers was not forgotten after all, and poor Francisca and Alita were going to swing for this. Nadia thanked her lucky stars that she kept herself from kissing Katia—if she hadn’t it would been their necks in the noose now. She was prudent not to succumb to temptation; but mostly it was dumb luck. Who could’ve predicted this? No one expected the hangings to come back. Didn’t the Colonel instruct Captain De La Peña not to kill any more prisoners? Why was he suddenly so free with dealing death sentences?
The Commandant didn’t bother to order Alita or Francisca out of the formation; the guards took them right where they were. Alita Lopez was plucked from the winners’ row—they didn’t even let her finish her brandy. It did not matter that only minutes ago De La Peña praised Alita’s contribution to the war; she was going to hang anyway.
The prisoners were ordered to turn around and make thirty steps forward so they could watch the executions up close. By the time they were in position, five hooded and noosed prisoners already stood on the gallows platform. They were all on the left side next to each other. Apart from them, with two empty slots in between, hung the corpse of Sara Gomez. Nadia’s last row had become the first and the closest to the gallows. Nadia ended up opposite Patricia Abril—so near that from where she stood Nadia could clearly see goosebumps on Patricia’s skin.
Twirling her club on its strap, Tatiana Velez ascended the steps to the platform. For a minute she did nothing but strut from one end of the gallows to the other like a model on a runway. This was her moment and she was making the most of it. Presently Tatiana deigned to notice the condemned and made a show of inspecting them one by one.
The girls’ hands were bound behind their backs; but their feet were not constrained. Sturdy nylon nooses with identically placed knots were wound around their throats. The hanging rope was given very little slack, so the bodies did not have far to fall.
Each doomed girl stood on a trapdoor—a wooden flap hinged on the end of the platform and propped by a rickety-looking plank. A system of wheels and pulleys tied the plank to a switch next to each trapdoor. Tatiana inspected the switches as well; one could see how tempted she was to pull the triggers.
She took her sweet time though. First she stepped behind the girl on the far left, Silvia Munoz. Tatiana stood like that for some minutes, breathing down the poor girl’s neck and watching as her victim was getting increasingly agitated. At last Tatiana stepped back and with a well placed kick released the trapdoor mechanism. The flap underneath Silvia collapsed with a loud thump. The first execution had begun.
The hanging girl arched her back and twisted her shoulders as through trying to shrug the noose off. Her feet, so still a moment ago, became a whirl of movement. The hood, wrapped tightly over her head, did not fully conceal the frightened, agonized expression written on her face. Tatiana watched Silvia for a few seconds, then stepped to the next victim.
Next to hang was Juana Diaz. Tatiana fussed with the knot under Juana’s ear; she turned it this way and that, relaxed it, tightened again. Finally the knot was arranged to her satisfaction. Tatiana patted the girl on a shoulder and hit the trapdoor switch.
For the second time in only two days Juana Diaz felt the squeeze of a rope around her throat. As she realized that this time there would be no release, she stopped struggling and gave herself over to the noose. The falling trapdoor had somehow given Juana a crosswise push, and now she was swinging round and round, her outstretched toes tracing a wide circle in the air. On her left, Silvia Munoz was kicking far and wide, swaying irregularly. A few times it looked like the two hanging bodies were about to collide but they never did; the nooses were placed too far apart.
Tatiana skipped over Patricia Abril and went straight to the two accused Lesbians, Francisca Pons and Alita Lopez. Francisca Pons was dispatched in passing, without any foreplay. As she walked by, Tatiana casually pulled the switch that controlled Francisca’s trapdoor. She continued on without sparing a single glance at the body now flipping and flopping at the end of the rope. For the Sergeant, this hanging was strictly business.
Alita Lopez was a different story. Tatiana stopped behind Alita’s back and stood still, regarding the girl’s rich black locks. No hood could contain the wealth of Alita’s glorious hair; it escaped from underneath the plastic, spilling down her shoulders. Tatiana put aside her club and grasped two thick handfuls of Alita’s curls. She stroked the hair; brushed it with her fingers; wrapped it around her fist. She raised it to her cheek and rubbed it against the skin as though testing for softness. In the middle of the play Tatiana kicked the trapdoor switch. There was a brief interruption when Tatiana had to steady the dangling body. This done, she continued with her amusement. As the strangling girl twisted her limbs and feverishly ran on air, Tatiana gathered Alita’s increasingly damp locks into her hands, raised it up, and buried her face in it.
Patricia Abril knew that she was left for last. She could see nothing from underneath her hood but she heard the knocking of opening trapdoors, little gasps of the falling girls, the creaking of wood, the sounds of wrist hitting a buttock or a thigh slapping against a thigh. She could feel the gallows shake under the burden of swaying bodies. Patricia knew that the other four condemned women already dangled in the noose. And now she could hear a steady beat of approaching steps.
Tatiana strolled toward Patricia, holding her black club—which has hasn’t used on anyone yet—easily by the strap. She came to a stop behind the dark-skinned girl and spent a few seconds just standing there, breathing down her neck to give her an even bigger scare. After she was satisfied that she could hear Patricia’s teeth chatter, Tatiana swung into action. First, she made the girl lean forward as far as the rope allowed. Then she spread Patricia’s smooth round buttocks and slid the palm of her free hand into the crack. The noosed girl squirmed but had no choice but to allow this treatment. As Tatiana stroked and tickled Patricia’s tiny pinhole of an anus, she raised the club to her lips and licked the knob on the end.
At that moment Nadia experienced an abrupt shift in perspective. Like suddenly seeing a picture of a vase instead of two faces in profile, Nadia recognized what the object in Tatiana’s hand really was. This was not a club or indeed any kind of blunt weapon. Nor was it a mere decoration. This was…had to be…a dildo! A simple, abstractly-shaped one; not one of those anatomically correct designs that Tatiana favored; but a dildo nonetheless. And, while it was about a right size for a police truncheon, for a dildo, it was colossal.
Tatiana pulled her big black dildo out of her mouth and looked to confirm that the tip was thoroughly covered in saliva. She used Patricia’s own bound wrists as a wedge to keep her ass crack open. Then, after firmly grasping Patricia around the waist, she drove the giant dildo into the unsuspecting girl’s asshole.
Patricia jerked forward but was instantly checked by the tightened noose. She yowled like a wild animal and started to dance in place, stepping from foot to foot. Tatiana held the girl in an iron grip and pushed the spit deeper and deeper, paying no attention to the girl’s increasingly agitated movements. It was tough going, but Tatiana was strong. Patricia made another crazy attempt to get away, so, to teach her a lesson, Tatiana relaxed the grip for a second, letting the girl choke herself on the rope. This worked very well. Patricia realized that she had no choice but to accept the dildo.
The thing was now so deep inside Patricia’s guts that a bulge had appeared on her lower stomach. The sounds coming from under the hood were deafening. At last the dildo would go no further. Tatiana confirmed this by hammering the end with her fist, sending shockwaves of pain up Patricia’s body. Once she was sure that the dildo was all the way in, Tatiana tied the strap around Patricia’s hips to keep the thing in place. She turned Patricia around to show the prisoners the huge black rod sticking out of her butt. She then stepped back and spent a moment enjoying the view of a shapely dark-skinned female writhing in pain. When she had her fill, she hit the trapdoor switch.
Patricia’s howls had ceased the instant the trapdoor opened. She froze for a second, then continued stepping from foot to foot, this time on thin air. Her body was shaking from head to toe. It was clear that Patricia was in a lot of pain; but one could only guess what was causing her more suffering: the new agony of the stretched neck or the old torment of the stretched anus. Patricia’s anal muscles worked visibly to expel the foreign object. Her fingers scratched the smooth plastic of the dildo there was no way she could not undo the strap. To relieve the pressure in her bowels the hanging girl spread her legs as far as she could, making her figure resemble an upside-down letter Y. For several long moments the wide-open crevice of her snatch darkly gaped right opposite Nadia’s face. Of course, this could not last. Before long, the pressure on Patricia’s neck overwhelmed all other pressures. The strangling girl slowly brought her legs together and even twisted one around the other.
All trapdoors were now down. Five female bodies were tossing and turning on the rope like so many fish caught on the hooks. Each danced to her own tune, some slow, some fast; but they all gave their utmost. Even the sixth girl, though she was long dead, danced with the others, responding to the vibrations that shook the gallows.
Juana Diaz, first to be strung up, was the first to give up the fight. Francisca Pons followed suit seconds later. The two girls stopped kicking; their muscles visibly relaxed. Two thick streams of pee tinkled one after the other into special wooden buckets.
Patricia Abril was the next to expire. Already exhausted from pain, she lost consciousness sooner than the others. Her body struggled for a while out of a pointless inertia, then it was over. She did not piss herself. Nadia was glad that Patricia was spared that indignity—hanging stark naked with a dildo in her ass was humiliation enough.
It took longer for the last two girls to die. Alita Lopez would come to rest from time to time; but just when one would think she was done, she'd wake up and lift a foot or bend an elbow. Silvia Munoz, after a short initial period of intense motion, stopped moving altogether. But her body was twitching constantly as it hung. She was squirming with pain and discomfort. It was hard to tell, but Nadia had a feeling that the girl had been conscious and fully aware.
The last time Alita woke up she parted her legs slightly and pissed. Tatiana watched hungrily as the bucket was being filled with pee. Nadia did not want to think what the woman wanted to do with it. When the last drop fell Alita was already dead.
Silvia's twitches ceased shortly after she filled her own bucket. It was all over now. Six lifeless bodies were swaying on the gallows, gradually coming to rest. Never before had they strung up so many at the same time. Nadia looked at her fellow prisoners. Their faces were grim. There were only thirty of them left now, six less that the supposed absolute minimum. Obviously, the Colonel’s order was rescinded or perhaps violated. Or, more likely, it was never real in the first place, and the safety they so enjoyed was only an illusion.
The show was over. It was time for the surviving prisoners to begin earning their keep. Overwhelmed by an unexpected group execution, the girls completely forgot about the soldiers waiting behind the door. But of course they were there, waiting behind the door. Nadia could almost see them: rough, loud men with iron-hard cocks. Will they be dismayed by dead bodies hanging around in the background? Maybe a little. Certainly not enough to lose their hard-ons. And if these are a bunch of internal security thugs, the sight of six naked executed females would only make them hornier.
Tatiana was having a little alone time with the corpses, so it was left to Warden Vea to command the prisoners. "Listen to my order!" she shrilled. "On the count of one, make about face! On the count of two, spread out to the sides! On the count of three, make thirty steps forward! One...two!...three!..."
Practice makes perfect, and so the girls finished their maneuvers in under a minute. They all knew from the past experience what the next commands were going to be: go to your hands and knees and open wide your butt cheeks. Nadia's asshole was already tightening with the anticipation of an imminent invasion. But these commands never came! The girls remained standing.
After a short wait the door had opened as last, and the new arrivals started to file in. One look at them, and Nadia's jaw dropped. She was not alone—every prisoner was staring dumbly in the same direction, hardly comprehending what they were seeing. It took a while for Nadia to recover from the state of shock; but when she did she cursed herself for being such a stupid cow. Of course! It all fit. She should've known this all along.
Nadia thought back to the time she was arrested. At first she tried to hide but was discovered within two days. They sent her to a filtration camp converted from a stadium, where she had to sit, sleep, eat, and pee in the open air. After more than three weeks the stadium was closed, and Nadia was transferred to a jail cell somewhere in a rural area. She told to wait for a trial, then seemingly forgotten. For a whole month she had to stew in that lousy place, with no company aside from insects. Finally she was put in a car and driven to the capital. Her destination was the old Courthouse. She was escorted inside, into the big central chamber, where she saw dozens of shackled women in prison uniforms. They were all brought there to be tried by the newly formed tribunals. This was where Nadia first met Katia Jimenez and many of her other future prison mates. The trials were remarkably short. The accused were called by name, charged with some bogus crime, then speedily convicted and sentenced to a random prison term. Nadia got twenty years. At the end of the day the women were loaded into three old buses and shipped off. Two buses went to Santa Margarita; Nadia and Katia were in one of those buses. The last bus took a different turn and was never seen again. The rumour was that everyone on that bus was summarily executed.
So, thought Nadia. The time between her going into hiding and the arrival at Santa Margarita was about nine or ten weeks. Give or take. And how much time passed from General Vilareal’s coup d’etat that installed Captain De La Peña as the prison Commandant? Exactly ten weeks! So it made perfect sense that the newcomers were not a crowd of horny soldiers that Nadia expected at first. Instead they were women—scared, bewildered, in some cases defiant women that bore unmistakable signs of having been recently imprisoned. The wave of arrests set off by the new regime had finally reached Santa Margarita.
The newest prisoners entered the room in pairs. The first thing they saw upon entering were the ranks of the current inmates, and their first reaction was invariably appalled surprise. Nadia could not understand at first what they were so upset about; then it struck her. She and her friends were wearing their birthday suits. Nadia had gotten so used to their enforced nudity that she didn’t even consider how it might look to an unprepared outsider.
The new arrivals' initial surprise was nothing compared to the shock they got after they happened to glance at the far end of the room. The obscene spectacle of six nude, faceless bodies hanging by their necks seemed to mesmerize the new girls on the spot. They especially goggled at the corpse that had a dildo protruding out of its anus. Many blanched as they realized the full implications of this particular detail.
Once a pair passed through the door, they were given a few moments to study their surroundings and appreciate their situation. After this they were told to strip naked and hurry up about it. Their clothes were tossed into an ever growing pile in the corner. The newly exposed girls blushed and tried to cover their privates as they tottered to the center of the room. There they had to undergo an even bigger humiliation—a thorough cavity search performed by Bianca Vea and Ines Santana. The girls had to bend down and spread their legs in full view of everyone, which allowed the Wardens to scrupulously inspect the anus and the vagina. Nothing was ever found; however that didn’t prevent the searchers from enjoying their jobs.
Once this was done, the new girl officially became a Santa Margarita inmate. As a sign of this she had to take her place in the ranks. At first the newcomers filled the gaps between the existing prisoners, then they started forming new rows: the fourth, the fifth, the sixth… Only when the seventh row was more than half full, the seemingly inexhaustible inflow of the new prisoners had finally stopped. In barely half an hour the prison's population had more than quadrupled.
Nadia noted that all the new prisoners were below a certain age and above a certain level of attractiveness. This was not surprising—the girls had been quite obviously selected for these qualities. They didn't know it yet, but there would be a lot of fucking in their future.
Nadia turned her attention to her new neighbors. On the left was a young, pretty redhead, who stood with her eyes tightly shut so that she would not have to see the gallows. She must have been snatched very recently—there were bikini lines still visible on her skin. Nadia stared at the redhead's breasts, so pale compared to the tanned chest and stomach; she wanted to touch them, to hug the girl, to whisper words of reassurance in her ears... Nadia instantly checked her desires. One wrong move, and they would both be strung up for Lesbianism. And besides, there was nothing reassuring she could've told her anyway.
On Nadia's right was a dusky-skinned Mulatto woman who looked remarkably like Patricia Abril, except curvier. She tried to look cool and unaffected as if any fears were beneath her; but every one in while she would glance at the at the gallows as though she expected something to change there. She caught Nadia’s eye, pointed at herself, and circled a thumb around her throat. She then made an inquiring gesture, as though asking if they'd hang her too. In response Nadia could only shrug. They did not know it then, but the question turned out to be prophetic. That Mulatto girl's stubborn independence soon led to a violent outburst, and before the week was over she was swinging from the very same noose now occupied by Patricia.
At last the stream of new prisoners had dried up. There was a pause, during which four of the guards hurriedly left the room. Nadia waited, certain that something else was coming. She was right.
The guards returned a minute later with one last girl. Two of them flanked her on either side, holding her by the arms, and two others marched before and after. She was a tall girl dressed in stained, ragged khaki short and a badly crumpled blouse, which was torn at the collar to reveal a young perky breast. Her feet were bare and very dirty. Her wrists were handcuffed behind her back and another set of cuffs was attached to her ankles, making her walk with short, awkward steps. She could not see where she was going anyway, because her head was hidden underneath a shapeless black hood.
The unknown girl stumbled blindly between her captors, who half-led, half carried her toward the back of the room. They passed swiftly through the ranks of prisoners and in a few moments closed the distance to the gallows. The girl swiveled her head unseeingly from side to side, as the guards rushed her up the steps of the platform. They were met by Tatiana Velez, who threw a noose over the the girl's head, but made it loose, so that it was impossible to feel through the fabric of the hood. Tatiana did not bother with trapdoors and switches; she led the blinded girl to the edge of the platform and simply moved aside, letting her victim to step obliviously onto the empty air.
It would be a great shock to anyone, to suddenly find yourself in a freefall, then a split second later to be jerked upwards by the terrible vise around your neck. Before the girl could comprehend what was happening to her, she was already swinging in the noose. She stretched her legs trying to reach solid ground. Finding none, she bucked, twisted, desperately tried to free her hands. During an especially energetic arms and shoulder twist the blouse got caught between the handcuffs and tore away completely. Now the girl hung topless.
The new prisoners gasped and murmured as they watched the hanged girl struggle on the gallows. None of these newbies had ever seen a hanging before. But even the experienced prisoners who witnessed dozens of hangings could not remain impassive. For the girl had put up an incredible fight. She was young and strong; did not want to believe she was going to die; and must have thought it possible to free herself from the noose if she moved forcefully enough. Her chaotic contortions were only making the rope tighter but that didn’t seem to dissuade her.
The strangling girl’s pendulous swings made the gallows shake visibly. The other hanging bodies were rocking too, and the creaking of wood got so loud, it sounded like groans. Ignacio Escobar looked worried. His team of builders weren’t exactly highly trained professionals, and the structure they built wasn’t all that sturdy. Given enough stress, it could conceivably collapse at any moment.
Ultimately there was no cause for concern. The gallows could easily withstand the combined weight of seven slim females, no matter how energetically some of them bounced on the rope. Besides, under the circumstances even the wildest activity was strictly temporary. While the hanging girl twisted her torso and flung her limbs in all directions, the noose was quietly doing its job.
In the end she simply stopped. After a few powerful kicks, she stretched her body as though to prepare for another effort...and remained in this position. The creaking and groaning ceased; the only sound now was the faint jingling of the leg chains. The girl hung limply, turning slowly from left to right. A dark stain started spreading down the front of her shorts. This caused renewed consternation among the new prisoners, most of whom were unaware of this unappealing but natural effect of slow hanging.
Nadia glanced at the redheaded on her left. The poor girl was sweating, trembling, and hyperventilating, and in general appeared to be on the cusp of fainting. That's okay, thought Nadia uncharitably. She'll get used to it. They will all get used to it, once they see enough bodies swinging in the noose. And those of them, who become the swinging bodies themselves, will get used to it the fastest...
The hanged girl’s shorts were soaking wet now. Her toes were curled; she was dead. Nadia studies the unknown girl as her body steadily rotated on the rope. She had more bruises than Nadia supposed at first; asphyxiation made them stand out against the discolored skin. There were burns and cuts as well. The neck had become elongated and painfully thin where it was constricted by the noose. One of the nipples was erect and pointed forward; the other seemed to be missing altogether—was it cut off? Nadia wondered who the executed girl was. What made her so dangerous to the regime that they had to dispose of her in such a way? Idle questions. Nadia knew she would never find out the executed girl's identity or even learn what she looked like. But one thing Nadia could say for sure. The anonymous girl did not have an easy death.
Sergeant Velez unlocked the dead girl's ankle cuffs. With some difficulty she pulled down the sodden shorts, revealing the once white panties. Then she pulled down the panties. Nadia was saved from having to watch what happened next, because at that very moment the prisoners were ordered to turn around.
Captain De La Peña demanded everyone’s attention and instantly got it. The girls were all ears, although the sounds coming from behind were quite distracting. The Captain gave the same speech he delivered on his first day as a Commandant. He described the prison’s arrangements and procedures, explained prisoners’ duties, outlined the rules and hinted at severe punishments for violating them. Unlike the first time, everyone got the hint now. The still warm bodies dangling from the gallows helped to drive his point home.
"Any questions?" asked De La Peña in the end. No one had questions.
"Very well. The Wardens will divide you into shifts and direct you into showers. Each of you will get exactly four minutes to clean up." He studied his hands, then looked back at the prisoners. "You will reconvene here at twenty three hours sharp. We are having a visit from the Second Paratroopers Brigade and I want you on the very best behavior. Understood?" The prisoners made disorderly noises of assent.
"Understood?" he asked again, louder. "Yes, Sir!!!" shouted each girl at the top of her lungs.
The Captain allowed himself a tiny smile of satisfaction. "In this case, dismissed!"
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