After the Shooting

by VO

After the shooting absolute petrified silence.

She had been pushing her way past Stephan through the open door into the corridor when it happened. He just swung round, pulled a gun out and shot her in the head! She collapsed half in, half out of the room. He pushed the door shut, sweeping the whole of her out into the corridor.

Then, swinging round again and glaring at us like a searchlight: "Now - understand?"

We did. Nobody moved.

"You do as told, and you do quickly." Pause.

"Understand?"

Stephan strode up the room to where Petra stood, frozen like the rest of us.

He jabbed her in the chest with the gun.

"Understand?"

"Yes," she whispered, completely paralysed.

"Louder!" Jabbing again.

"Yes."

He pivoted to rake the rest of us with his murderous stare. "Now stand at beds!"

We couldn't obey fast enough.

"Hands behind heads!"

All our arms flew up, Petra's as fast as the rest of us.

"Now, you will wear clothes I have brought." Pause.

"Understood?"

Each of us received a blast of that Sauron stare in turn. And in turn, each one of us mumbled our terrified "Yes".

"Then now you change! When I get back God help girl who isn't looking good and standing like now. Pile old things here," he pointed the gun at the floor in the centre of the aisle. "Everything off and all new gear on. All! I want to see all. You work for Stephan. You dress properly ." Pause.

"God help them!" he said again. He allowed the gun to make the point before sticking it in his waistband.

He moved deliberately to the door, then pivoted round and raised his arm level to point with deadly effect at Petra. "And you, you come with me."

She hurried across with zero hesitation. He pushed her savagely through the door in front of him as he turned. The door banged shut. And so did a big clunking bolt.

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They had to step over the body.

Horrific! - But - reaching his office, Stephan seemed to switch off!

He had her stand by the door, went over to the desk, sat: and buried himself in the laptop on the desk.

After some minutes, looking up, he seemed to notice her again.

"You," he said. "Get on pole! Hold arms out! I will not have you making noise!"

Having pronounced, he went back to his screen.

Petra had no idea what he meant.

Dare she ask? Dare she not?

"Please, I don't know what you mean, get on what?" she asked. "I don't know what you mean."

He looked up with his previous insane irritation mounting again. "The pole, the pole" he shouted. "You will spend time on the pole!"

"Yes, I will, I will, I just don't know what you mean," she said, desparate.

"Good God, I have explain everything?" he exploded. "There is pole. Now take clothes off and sit!"

He was pointing just beside her. There was a sort of coat-stand, cut off about a third of the way up. A pole.

At least she could understand the clothes bit. Didn't like it but understood it.

"You want me to take my things off?"

"Yes, take things off, don't you always? Didn't I say so?"

"I've never done this before."

Stephan was trying to get back to his screen.

"My God, I will have you here for rest of night!" he shouted. "Clothes off, on pole, arms out!!" And back to the screen.

Petra, weeping now, took off her smart jacket and looked for somewhere to put it. She daren't ask. Daren't move really. She folded it and put it on the floor.

Then the rest of her things, including shoes and tights, until she was standing in her bra and pants. Did he really mean everything? He had said everything. He probably meant everything. Bra and briefs completed the pile on the floor.

She looked at the pole thing but could not bring herself to imagine how she was to sit on it! It was about an inch across and came three-quarters of the way up her thighs.

"You'll have to tell me I'm afraid," she whispered. "I just don't know what you do."

He looked up. Jumped up. "Ridiculous!" he shouted. "You sit on pole! You sit on it!" He came from behind the desk.

He backed Petra up against the pole. "Now sit!" he shouted.

Bewildered she bent her knees so that the thing was nudging her bottom. Actually, she realized, it was a bit more than a pole sticking up. At the top was a something like a bike saddle - one of those evil narrow racing things. Well, not quite at the top. The pole sort of jutted through by about four inches.

"God No!" he roared. "You are a totally ridiculous person!" The pole goes in the front, not the back! Have you never used dildo, you stupid dog?"

"What!?" Petra couldn't help crying, realization dawning. "You want me to take it in there? "

"Yes, you sit on it, sit on it!"

He was completely huge, looming over her as she tried to 'sit'.

"Have lubed?" he demanded suddenly. "You have not! Are you one stupid dog? Lube! Lube!"

"I don't know what you mean," she whispered, now in a half squat, with the pole top pressing against her. "I just don't. I'll do what you tell me, but I don't know what you want! "

"Oh! You are ridiculous, you know nothing! Wait!"

He went across to the desk and rummaged in a bottom draw. He found a half-used tube, brought it over.

"Lube! Lube! he shouted. "Always lube the pole! Do you think we are barbarians? It would scrape otherwise."

He was completely crazy. She knew that from the moment he used his gun, but now she had heard his talk and seen his switchback moods she realized he was not just mad, he was mad mad, crazy mad.

He smeared what was left in the tube over the top of the pole. "Now sit," he said. "Enjoy!"

It took her no time to decide that with a crazy crazy with a gun you just did as you were told, no question. Biting her lip she let the thing slip into her - an inch, one and a half. Nothing to hold onto, but she discovered she could lean her back against the wall. She was on tiptoe, eyes tight shut to cope with the tide of humiliation that swept into her every time her terror momentarily loosed its grip.

When she opened them it was to see Stephan back at his screen, apparently oblivious again. But he looked up, appraised her efforts.

"An inch more. Not so much on toes or you will not be able to keep still."

He had switched to solicitous mode. She let herself down a fraction.

He was rummaging again, then came over with something reassuringly small in his hands.

"Down some more and I will fit the bells. After that, no more moving." Then, loud and straight in her face, "NO MORE MOVING". Then throwaway again: "Or the bells will tinkle and I will have to think of something very bad for you."

It was sort of throwaway, but that made it carry even more menace. He wasn't threatening what might happen, he was telling, and if there was something worse than what he was doing to her now, she just didn't want to know. She slid down some more, and found herself resting on the 'saddle'. A bit of relief actually.

"Now move your hands please." Instinctively, she had been holding her hands in front of her, covering her front as best they could. Now she had to drop them away.

"These are your bells," he said, holding up a couple of tiny metal bells which jingled tinnily as he swung them. "You may put them on."

"Where?" she wept."I don't know what to do. Just tell me. I'll do it."

No explosion this time. He was close and he was matter of fact in his mad mad way.

"You just clip them to your nipples. - Or I will if you like?"

She took them from him.

No problem understanding how they worked - they were small alligator clips which you squeezed open. The bells were attached by a thread - nylon maybe - allowing them to hang free - and to swing and tinkle with any movement.

The clips were going to kill her, she could see that: - small, almost fiddly, difficult to squeeze open, jaws with tiny teeth. But it was either get them on or ...

She put them on.

They killed alright, excruciating, biting sharp and hard, drawing little droplets of blood. But she somehow kept control, just two sharp hisses of air, as she released the clips, the second almost a stifled scream, mouth in rictus, head thrown back. Christ it hurt!

It went on hurting, but quickly climbed down from the atrocious peak of that second bite. She opened her eyes.

He was waiting. "Now arms out in front of you."

She held them out.

"And now you keep still. The bells will tell me!" He was back at the desk. He sat. "You see, we are not barbarians. You are alive. You have a seat. All I ask is that you do not move."

She didn't move.

At least at first.

She sat on her narrow saddle, her toes just reaching the floor, with 'the pole' inside her, the bells dragging at her nipples, and her arms stretched out in front of her.

Across the room Stephan ran his mouse ragged with never a look in her direction.

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After the door had banged shut it was ages before anybody even thought of moving. We just stood there in front of our beds, our hands behind our heads, terrified out of our minds.

But everyone knew he had said we had to get changed and eventually that thought sort of surfaced. It was the girl opposite me who took her arms down first I think, and started unbuttoning her jacket. By the time she had slipped it off and put it in a bundle on the floor the rest of us were following suit.

None of us wanted to meet each other's eyes, ashamed at the way we had each of us jumped into line without a spine between us. Like 3rd formers, except that with 3rd formers there's always one who pulls a face behind teacher's back.

Not a single pulled face amongst us - just the drained pallor of shock and fear.

Noone broke the strung-out silence as eyes averted we took our things off and began to put on what Stephan had told were our 'uniforms'.

There wasn't much brain free to analyse the fashion, the gunshot still ricocheting around the skull, but it was a posh very trad secretary look I would say. Navy skirt, white blouse. An actual tie with a stripe! Black boots. And a trench.

The rustling noise of someone superquick at the end getting into their trench - put on the whole outfit, he had said - was the first thing to take the edge off the silence, and then someone was whispering to their neighbour for help with their tie. There was no mirror, so several of us were soon asking for help to check things were straight etc. We were still terrified but the talking - whispering - lowered the tension ...

The moment she was ready though Speedy Gonzales at the end was back standing parade-style beside her bed, now in her uniform, eyes fixed to the front - and with her hands back in punishment mode, clasped behind her head, dragging at the buttons of her tight trench.

Others had recovered enough to challenge her - though in whispers, and not directly. "Is she keen or what!," I heard the girl opposite mutter to no-one in particular, nodding towards her, "Prefect material, I'ld say." But actually I think the speedy girl was just completely terrified still, like we'd all been five minutes earlier.

"Am I OK?" whispered the girl on my left, turning towards me and fiddling with her tie.

I straightened her collar. "Yes, fine," I whispered back. "What about me? I'm Alex. "

"Kadri," she whispered, but couldn't manage a smile. Then: "Um.. your belt? - Won't he want it buckled?"

"Oh, God, I don't know!" I had tied it without thinking. That after all is what you do with trenchcoats! Could that be wrong?

Immediately after thinking that I thought, Christ, what am I thinking? Nobody tells me how to do up my mac!

Then I thought: nobody except a mad freak who had just shot someone!

Tie or buckle, no way of knowing which we had to do. Hating my myself, I took Kadri's advice and buckled up.

"Thanks," I said.

"Are you going to .. to, you know, put your hands like he said?"

Four of the others were now back 'on parade' - 'hands like he said', fingers grimly interlocked behind their heads, standing very straight and strained in their new white macs and black boots, and looking very nearly as pale and terrified as ever. The girl opposite Kidri was one, and I could see the tears running down her face as she held her position.

"Do we have a choice?" I muttered miserably. "Aren't you going to? He's a psycho. Any little thing."

"I know, I know, yes, but just check me will you? I've not done a tie up since I was eleven!"

"Yes, it's fine," I said and got back into position. There was a strong rustle of protest from the sleeves of our macs as we both raised our arms.

"Christ, this is humiliating!" I whispered, staring ahead. As courage under fire it would not have won me the VC.

The girl opposite had lost her attitude too. She was Prefect material herself now, standing straight and strained, hands obediently behind her head. Her parade-ground gaze went a centimetre or so past my own.

Except she had buttoned up her trench wrongly! It looked completely Dad's Army! I had to tell her. Without moving my own arms I leaned forward at the waist and told her.

There was a sudden crimson flush to her pallid face. "Oh my God," she choked, and a feverish rustling broke out as she undid belt and buttons, and then did everything up again, her desparate fingers fighting each other as well as the buckle and the new still-stiff buttonholes.

Hands behind head, stand up straight.

"OK?" she gasped. Her face was even more flushed now - wet with perspiration in fact, part exertion, all dressed up in those clothes, her mac now fully buttoned and belted again, all present and correct this time - and part I guessed just pure terror.

"Yes, fine now," I whispered across the aisle.

All quiet now.

Time to think I suppose, but actually I think we all just stood there with just one thought in our minds for quite a while: Oh God!!

It was only twenty minutes since we had arrived! Twenty minutes!

We had been tired, whingy, complaining about the having to share the room, Kedri muttering about the hard bed, Petra demanding to see Tresell, a bit of attitude showing all round. Then Stephan says we are to get changed, our gear is in the suitcases - and Anna kicks off with how she's certainly not going to get changed, who do they think they are, nothing like that was agreed, etc., etc.

And he pulls out a gun and shoots her! Just shoots her! Just as she stood there, mouthing off!

That was twenty minutes ago.

A bit different now!

We stand, straining to keep still - trying to eliminate every last rustle of our noisy new macs - holding our arms up and clasping our hands behind our heads, like girls who missed their buses and arrived late for Assembly.

Each one of us absolutely terrified!

We stayed like that for ages, expecting at every moment that the door to fly open at the next. But as time passed it got more and more uncomfortable, and the more uncomfortable it got, elbows here and there began to sag...

If you were late to school yourself (not in UK, I know!) you will know what it's like! I know all the details myself because it became a familiar feature of life with Stephan. It's OK to begin with, but it gets really painful after a while... Your start out holding your elbows braced back so they point outwards, but it doesn't take long before your arms start to ache, and soon after that you are giving in to it and letting the elbows slip forward - and forward again - till they are simply pointing at the floor in front of you and your fingers are rather desparately hanging on to your neck - you look very hang-dog once you reach that point! And that's how you feel as well. At school that's about how you are when the announcements start, and you just have to hang on for a few more minutes. With Stephan, you never know how long. He always leaves the room, and it can be ten minutes before he comes back - or a couple of hours. It's such a little thing, having to stand with your hands behind your head, such a silly little punishment, but it can be absolutely diaboloical.

Everything depends of course on what happens if you just give up, take your arms down and sit or whatever. If nothing much happens, you can do that as soon as your arms begin to ache. You have a detention - OK, so what, stay behind, no big deal. But if it's a homicidal maniac you're waiting for - you stand still with your arms up, braced smartly back, for as long as the building waves of aching, aching discomfort can be tolerated - and then some more.

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Petra knew what waves of aching discomfort were. And how the waves got bigger and bigger. 'Arms out in front' was a bit different from ''Hands behind the head'- and a whole lot worse. No support at all, not from your head, not from each other. You just held them out. And they just ached and ached.

She tried to concentrate on other things.

Think of something!

But no, she could only think of the ache and how bad it was, and how she couldn't possibly keep her arms up much longer. She could go on sitting on the pole, even though she was on tiptoe and the saddle was so hard and narrow . She could go on having those little bells hanging from her nipples - the bite of the clips was hardly noticeable now. But she couldn't keep her arms out much longer.

Maybe she could bargain? 'I'll stay on the pole and keep the bells on but please could I take my arms down,' - Would that work?

He's a maniac, remember? For Christ's sake!

"God! But I can't!" she screamed to herself. "I just can't keep them up much longer. And I can't keep them still! They're moving about! I just can't keep them still! God!"

Should she warn him? Warn him that she couldn't hold them out much longer? Beg him to forgive her? Plead with him? Just the arms, just let her take her arms down, promise him she would do anything - anything - if ...

A gentle tinkle broke the taught silence of the room. She was right. Twelve and an half minutes after beginning this silly little punishment and her arms were moving, in spite of anything she could do. They had juddered, her breasts had juddered, and the little bell on her left nipple had made the announcement.

Her tormentor didn't look up from the screen.

Had he not heard?

Petra had to struggle hard to keep control. Her body wanted her to give up, was screaming at her to give up, her arms, her poor arms were weeping and pleading to be let down. But her terror of him screamed louder still, and as the next wave of sweet unbearable aching rolled in she steadied, stifled her misery, taking her lower lip between her teeth and biting hard.

"OK, arms down."

He had heard.

It was Stephan, in schoolteacher mode, head still in screen, speaking to her quietly, as though closing an exam.

Her poor arms needed no further invitation. She hugged them across her breasts, each hand taking an elbow opposite and holding it, cradling it, nursing it, after its torturing ordeal.

Her bells tinkled merrily.

"Come here, please."

She was almost paralysed, sitting on the saddle without moving for so long. But somehow she eased up and off the pole and crossed to where Stephan indicated, beside his chair, and, as he gestured, looked at the screen.

It was sort of barrack room, she thought, a bird's eye view, with the soldiers standing in two lines facing each other.

She thought at first it was a photo, but then noticed there was movement. The soldiers were standing very straight, though not exactly to attention - they must be doing some sort of drill. As she looked more closely she realized they were each of them clasping their hands behind their necks. Some of them had their heads up and elbows more or less back, others had their heads bent down with their elbows pointing to the floor. It was the arms here and there that were not completely still. - And the soldiers were women - at least from the high up camera angle she could see that some of them were.

"Your friends," he said. "They wait for us."

The penny dropped.

CCTV. The dormitory. She hadn't twigged because they had had to change.

"I'm afraid there has been talking", said Stephan tapping his earpiece. "I will not have talking!" And then, as the two of them watched, one of the figures suddenly took her arms down and sat on the bed.

"What is happening here? said Stephan, and caught something through his earpiece. "What?" he yelled.

He leapt up, his chair crashing over behind him, hand flying up to his earpiece. "How can she say that? I will kill her! She is ragdoll, she is crucified." He was still listening. "Why does she say that? I am good employer! Excellent employer!" he screamed.

He ripped out the earpiece and threw it across the room. A pause. Petra hadn't moved, couldn't move, except for shaking, shaking uncontrollably as she stood in front of the screen.

He suddenly seemed to remember she was there. "You!" he said, swivelling upon her and levelling at her chest that menacing arm of his, finger outstretched and withering.

"I said everyone to change!" he yelled. "Everyone! You disobey!! I kill you! Why you disobey?"

She daren't look at him. " I ..You told me to come with you and..." she began.

"Why you disobey?" he barked again. "Is wrong with uniform? You not like uniform?"

"No, no...you just told me to ..."

"No? No? You like her?" - he jabbed at the screen with his other finger - "You think what she think? You think blouse crap? You think boots lousy? You think trench stinks? "

"No, no, I mean you said to follow you ..."

"You go get uniform now!" he broke in again, yelling. "Then I show you! Then I show her!"

Petra was caught in the headlights. She couldn't move.

"GO!!"

She moved.

"You not speak! - Speak and you lose tongue!" he yelled as she reached the door. "You all lose tongues."

Fortunately, the door to the dormitory was unmistakable and Petra found it even in her panic. Like the door to a boiler, all steel and lumpy. She only half-registered that the body she had had to step over a bit before was gone. She pulled back the bolt and the door open.

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I didn't know her name, but the girl who had broken down and collapsed onto her bed was still jabbering on when we heard him at the door. She didn't hear a thing, but one or two of us did. We all braced up properly, and the others caught on. Didn't know whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that someone was out of line. Would they attract all Stephan's attention? Or would we all be for it ...?

But it wasn't Stephan!

It was Petra. And she hadn't anything on! Completely naked! Except for things on her nips! And in her face she looked awful - her make-up all running, tearful, underneath the mascara pale as death.

When we realized who it was, the tension completely collapsed. It wasn't Stephan! The relief was so huge we all just sort gave up on the standing-by-your-beds thing and crowded round, asking if she was OK, what had happened, had he hurt her, where were her clothes, etc etc.

She reacted very weirdly! She would have nothing to do with us! Said absolutely nothing! Just looked at us through the tears, and shook her head and looked down and went to her things. She seemed desparately miserable. She grapped the big case. Then straight back out! She kept her eyes down, but we could see she was weeping streams, tears actually dripping off her. Almost stumbled to the door with the heavy case, the things on her nips jingling - tiny little bells they were - and the door slammed. The bolt scraped across - and we were back on our own.

What now?

Everyone was looking for a lead I suppose and we might have fallen meekly into line if anybody had got back by their bed and raised their arms into that ghastly position - but nobody did.

We just sat around on the beds, whispering and embarrassed.

Then suddenly a voice boomed out - Petra's voice in fact - coming through on some kind of PA system.

"Please," she was saying, very weepy, "please listen. Stephan says you should be standing by your beds. He told us but you haven't." She broke down for a second or so. Then: "And hands behind heads, like he said." Pause. "Stephan says he's going to ... going to... punish me for it ... You're going to have to listen, but I'm the one who ... it's just me ... and I'll get more if you do it wrong... So please, please ..." she trailed off. "I have to count to three," she started again. "And then it starts. "Please, please just do it."

We all jerked into movement together, frantic panicked movement. We had been so hot in our macs that most of us by then had undone our belts and the top button. We leapt up, feverishly doing ourselves up, getting our things straight. Kidri and a girl two down were still buttoning when Petra got to three.

"Oh God, you're not all ready! He's counting! Please! I just get more - " she interrupted herself with a cry, and we heard a sort of splat sound.

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Stephan had hit the palm of her left hand with the end of a strip of leather.

She was back on the pole, holding her hands out in front of her as before, only now they were palm upward, ready to get the punishment.

She cried out again as the leather hit her other palm with its sullen heavy splat.

And again, as the first palm was revisted.

And again, and again, and again.

The cries were getting louder each time, but still, this was another schoolgirl punishment - only a bit more serious than the one being suffered along the corridor. Schoolboy's anyway.

Then suddenly with about the sixth crack Petra's cries started to get really worse. It was clearly getting desparately painful now. She had been told to keep looking straight ahead as the punishment was administered but with the eighth splat she couldn't stop herself turning to him as the most desparate scream yet was torn from her with a distraught look of alarm and appeal.

It was just momentary, she took her eyes away immediately, but she had earned herself a pudding, as he put it.

Meanwhile she continued to be force-fed the main course.

It wasn't costing him any effort at all. He just let the weight of the heavy leather splatting against her palms do its increasingly agonising work. Each blow now hurt terribly, and each further tenderised its target as well, so the next felt even worse: and so on.

As the blows kept landing, first on one palm, then on the other, she had terrific difficulty keeping her arms out and, worse, keeping her hands open. Each time the leather fell she couldn't stop screaming, head thrown back, tears almost spurting with the blow - and as soon as the leather bounced up she couldn't stop curling her fingers over the tortured palm either. It was instinctive, nature's attempt to protect from further hurt, impossible to control. But then she had to control it, had to make those fingers uncurl for the next cut, and this required a massive amount of will power. She knew another blow was going to hurt so much, and every fibre of her wanted to curl her fingers tight and snatch her hand away. Instead she had to keep her arms out and force, somehow force, her palms flat. From an observer's point of view, her supplicant gesture appeared to express a sort of plea for the hateful leather to return...

Excruciating! Completely excruciating! And back it came, again and again.

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Along the corridor we forgot all about the discomfort of the standing punishment, and how hot we were, and how tired our muscles must be getting. We didn't know exactly what was happening to Petra, but it sounded absolutely terrible.

What should we have done?

Stormed out of the dorm and rescued her?

Shouted at Stephan to stop? (We had gathered by this time that whatever went on in our room was being seen and heard where Petra was.)

We did neither of those things, remembering the shooting - but also hearing what happened to anybody who fell foul of him. We just made sure this time we kept our positions, kept absolutely still, kept our arms braced back tight - and felt the waves of terror sweat swirl around us.

In the end Stephan stopped, we were allowed to go to bed, and Petra was allowed to come to bed as well. Nobody dared speak.

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In the morning no sign of Stephan!

And in fact a bewilderingly different world!

A woman we hadn't seen before came in and said she hoped we were rested after our long journey and we could come and have breakfast when we wanted!

After that we were allowed to relax in the 'studio', a big room upstairs, quite comfortable with a posh tele, and told that we should be properly dressed and ready from six onwards.

We were all in a state of shock for hours, hardly talked, thinking everything we said would be listened to:  but everyone got ready as instructed.

After an hour's wait three of us were called out to meet a client. (There were apparently two clients only!) Expecting a goat, or worse, he turned out to be quiet and attractive! We were almost disappointed as well as astonished when he delivered us back to the house around 1.30 when all we had done was sit with him in a couple of clubs.

And that turned out to be the deal!

He seemed to be the one and only client we ever had any dealings with - don't know what happened to the other! - and all he wished was for us to be with him as he spent time each evening in a couple of very posh clubs.

Amazing! He was clearly terrifically rich . He was always kind, always considerate. And all we had to do was be with him and sip Louis Roederer's Cristal. We couldn't have guessed it, and I suppose we all thought it couldn't last - and then what...

But it did last! And, what's more, we got our money, all of it, and on the dot.

There was just one thing. Whenever we went out with him - basically three of us went out one night and another three the next (with two of us 'on the bench') - we had to wear those trenchmacs Stephan had provided: and nothing else! - Well, boots, we had to wear them. But that's all.

A creepy sort of feeling until you got used to it - very thin fabric, very smooth against your skin, and quite short, so you felt you were really inviting everyone in every time you sat down. And you rustled all the time, or at least every time you made the least movement, as though you were saying to everybody within a radius of a mile that there you were, all you had on was your mac, and you really really wanted someone to come and fuck you... Which is to say, we got to really love wearing them in the end!

But there was also Stephan.

Most of the time he didn't seem to be in the house - not even to sleep. But whenever he showed up, we knew! He always blasted in, found something wrong, did his thing. We were to be hung up by our thumbs, disemboweled, have our thumbs cut off, crucified. And one of us, always, ended up actually undergoing one of his horrendous punishments. We were always reduced to quivering wrecks, asking ourselves again and again why on earth we put ourselves through this, why we didn't just get out of it all.

Only in the morning it always looked a bit different: Stephan and his punishments every once in a while v. growing mountain of cash for champagne evenings with Feisal. We had come for the money and the money was coming: so Stephan and his punishments were just things we would have to put up with.

That was what I thought anyway. But Jared and Filke did disappear after his next eruption. They were best mates and J had to spend most of the night 'kneeling up' - with the rest of us - and listening while Filke was given a 'riding lesson'. (I must say I didn't think Filke would be up to making a break directly after Stephan had finished with her, but she did.) When we woke to the bed-and-breakfast cheerfulness of the housekeeper their beds were empty.

That gave Stephan something to rave about, you can imagine. He was back in action before we had fully realized they were gone and we all had to get into the steel triangle things that were stored under our beds.

"These persons will be found. They will be torn like dogs." he began. "I am good employer! No one leaves. NO ONE LEAVES! I am kind. I make life cosy! I give soft punishment! And scummy dogs leave! Ah! They will suffer. They will hang like whelks. They will die, die!" Pause. "And you" - he raked us as we stood there with his laser glare - "you will do like Skeffington! You will spend day locked like daughters!"

He bent down and pulled out a black mat from under the nearest bed, and then a steel bar contraption.

"Get out Skeffington, you stupid bugbears!" he yelled. "Now! And mats!"

We discovered there was a steel thing under each of our beds. And a mat. We scrabbled to get them out and pull them to the front of the bed, as he had.

"Now you sit. No clothes. Sit in Skeffington!"

We had no idea what we had to do.

"Move! MOVE!" he screamed. "I eviscerate! I enflay!"

Thank God Katia who was nearest muttered in her misery, actually not to him as such: "We don't know what to do.... We just don't know what we have to do...."

He heard her. "Imbeciles! Are you imbeciles?"

He grabbed her. "No clothes! You know that? NO CLOTHES! No clothes for Skeffington!" he yelled. "No clothes NOW!"

That was clear enough. Katia stripped. We all stripped.

He then had her sit on her mat with her back against the end of the bed. "See!" he told the rest of us. "Sit on arse and then lock putrid ankles in bar." Katia had her legs pulled apart and her ankles locked in iron cuffs, one at each end of a meter-long iron bar.

"Do it! Do it!" he yelled to the rest of us.

We did it. The mat was rubber or something - shivery to sit on when you've nothing on! - with a sort of rim right round it - bizarrely at a moment like that it reminded me of the sort of thing you change babies on! - without the flowery plastic.

Getting the iron thing fixed was a struggle. A meter was quite a spread for your legs and then you had to bend towards your ankles to close the heavy steel cuff: an awful car-door clunk when you succeeded. They wouldn't come undone on their own, that was for sure, and their hard steel edges with all the manoevering had already made ther mark.

Then we had to fix a collar thing round our necks. It was connected to the middle of the ankle bar and it was so short you had to draw your knees up before you could get it round your neck. But - with more pulling and twisting- and more scraping and bruising of the ankles - another horrid clunk.

Half way up the linking bar there were cuffs for your wrists. You could only do one of your wrists because when you had locked one wrist you couldn't move it and so there was no way you could do the other one.

Stephan did it for us. He came round, not saying anything, but giving us each a personal blast of that petrifying glare of his as he placed our remaining free wrist in the steel manacle and clicked it shut.

"Now you do like Skeffington!" he said, reaching the front again. "You learn no leave Stephan. Stephan good employer. You learn."

He turned, opened the door - and then stood back. "In!" he barked to figures in the shadow of the corridor. And in shuffled Jared and Filke.

They had nothing on, and their hands were on their heads.   They looked absolutely distraught.

"To your beds," Stephan told them. "You will stay with your good friends here while they do Skeffington. They do Skeffington for you. You no talk. NO TALK." - A final raking glare said this last meant us, sitting in our two facing rows on our mats, locked into well-nigh perfect immobility, beginning to learn the hard way about 'Skeffington'. And he turned on his heel and clanged the door behind him.

None of us ate that day, and none of us moved either. It wasn't too bad sitting like that - for the first ten minutes. But from the moment Stephan had clicked shut the last cuff you were completely immobile -  ankles and wrists and neck locked tight to the frame. It wasn't like handcuffs or rope or anything, you just couldn't move at all.

After the first ten minutes it got to be uncomfortable - really uncomfortable after an hour - horribly uncomfortable after the first couple of hours: but still 'uncomfortable' is not too much of an understatement.

Thereafter though: progressively hellish. The shooting pains began then, lancing flashes up and down your arms and legs. They came in spasms, getting more frequent as time passed. And though you knew it was only making matters worse you couldn't help panicking from time time, wrenching at the steel cuffs and mangling your wrists and ankles in the process - because they didn't move a millimetre and the edges cut and bruised.

As the day wore on we were all suffering very miserably indeed. We daren't talk, but by the fifth hour I think we were all from time to time sniffling, weeping, crying, moaning. Every now and again there was screaming too. The cramps were very difficult to bear. And every now and again someone pleaded to the cctv to be allowed to go to the toilet. No response whatever. After all, we had our mats.

What was going through the minds of the two at the end I don't know. They sat still the whole time with their hands on their heads as far as I could tell, knowing I suppose that what the rest of us were going through was down to them!

That is the sort of day you remember, and thereafter it wasn't difficult to remember not to try and get away.

Jared and Filke never tried again. Nobody did.

For my part, there is though a dark and bewildering confession I'm afraid I have to make.

I found myself not actually wanting to escape!

Those horrifying sessions with Stephan gradually exerted the most unbelievable influence on me, beginning with that awful day of 16th Century English torture. It was when he released us, casually flicking one of the wristirons open, that I had this terrific surge of gratitude towards him! How absurd! How ridiculously stupid! But that is what I felt, a great surge of gratitude, a great warm flood of feeling towards him, for allowing the desparate, maddening discomfort and the awful cramping pains - by then more or less continuous - to stop. In that moment I would have done anything for him, anything! Had I forgotten that he was in fact my torturer? That he was the one who had locked me in that iron thing and let me sit there all day with the cramps tearing me up? I hadn't forgotten, no. But it simply made no difference to what I felt. "Thank you, sir," I breathed, as he bent to undo me. "Thank you! Thankyou!" And as he went down the row - wearing a breathing-mask, presumably as much to rub in our abject humiliation as from fastitidiusness - I actually I heard some of the others say the same.

After that I began to fantasise about him choosing me to go along the corridor with him, me picked out for solo punishment. What would it be like? What exactly would he do to me? I would be brave, whatever it was, I would put the Skeffington display behind me and, as the special one, as the one he had specially chosen to go with him, I would bear it without the screaming and the moaning and the pleading we had all heard from Petra.

When the time came of course and it was me who  was balanced naked on that sweaty seat - as Petra had told us she had been - with the pole tranfixing me and the bells clipped to my poor nips, it only took half a dozen strikes of that lazily slapping leather for my self-dedication to be swept away and I was weeping and crying out as loudly as Petra ever did.

It has not always been the pole and the strap since then - Stephan is nothing if not imaginative in the weaknesses he exposes and exploits - but none of his ingenuity meant that anything got easier in the months that have elapsed.

Not easier, no. 

And its grip on me, his grip on me, a relentless tightening of the vice.

THE END

6th December 2007

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