FOREIGN PRISON

by Cardaniel

Chapter 0 - Prologue


Kalina was surprised she had managed to stay out of sight so long. She was thirsty, and cheered herself with the thought that she might die of thirst. She doubted the way out was that easy, though. She had seen one of the inmates try to starve herself. They simply force-fed her until she gave up.

Kalina shifted her weight slightly, hearing her chains rattle. The rough gravel irritated her bare buttocks. Her heart raced at the thought of being discovered, hiding in the shallow recess in the rough rock wall of the cavern. She reminded herself again that discovery was not only inevitable, but welcome. It would set the final events of her life in motion. But for the moment, it felt nice to sit here, leaning back against the jagged rock, her knees drawn up, her hands in her lap, her eyes closed. Her coming execution could wait a few minutes.

The dismal sounds of laboring women continued on just out of her sight. It was typical, Kalina thought, how the guards made it all so much harder, making the women work in the chains. All of the prisoners were naked, and all were festooned with metal shackles and links identical to Kalina's: each woman had thick steel wrist and ankle bands, metal collar, and a chain encircling her waist, all of these secured by padlocks; each woman's ankle bands were connected by a thick thirty-centimeter-long hobble chain. Attached to the midpoint of the hobble chain, another chain ran upwards, through a ring in the front of her waist chain, and the end of this chain was attached to her wrist bands, which were joined together by another padlock. When a woman was standing upright, this last chain went taut and pulled her wrists snugly against her waist, leaving her unable to raise or lower her joined hands; when she bent her legs to squat, sit, or kneel, the chain slipped up through the ring in the waist chain, enabling her at least to pull her hands away from her waist, though they were still joined to each other. Most of the prisoners were kept restrained in this way twenty-four hours a day -- though awkward, it gave the women just enough freedom of movement to perform their assigned manual labor tasks, but not enough to, say, attack a guard, if a woman were crazy enough, nor to have any hope of running away. If there were anywhere to run to.

The work detail was grim and exhausting, but a welcome break from the cramped cells, cages really, in which the women spent the rest of their time. The cells, each about a meter square on the floor and just over a meter high, were where the women lived, one woman to each cell. The floor and ceiling, and the left, right, and back walls of each cell were of rough concrete, while the front wall consisted of a door of vertical metal bars about ten centimeters apart, which swung open for entrance and exit. There was a small gap between the barred door and the floor of the cell, just high enough to slide food bowls in and out. Even in their cells, the women remained in chains. It made as little sense as anything else here, thought Kalina. Why chain us up when we can't possibly get out of the cell anyway? she wondered. She guessed that, as with so many things here, it was really for the purpose of making the prisoners' lives that much more wretched. And of course, sometimes it was worse. For minor punishment, or for entertainment, or for losing a competition, the guards might rearrange a woman's bondage -- padlocking a woman's wrist shackles behind her back to her waist chain, for example, and pulling her ankles as close to the waist chain as they could, securing them to the waist chain with another chain and lock, leaving her in her cell in that helpless chained hogtie position all night. Perhaps with a gag, perhaps a blindfold -- whatever amused them. And that was better than some of the other positions.

The work in the cavern was also marginally better than the first work detail Kalina had been on, in the greenhouse where the fruits and vegetables were grown. The commandant of the prison, in a speech he had made to Kalina and the others arrested with her on the day they had arrived here, took pride in the prison's self-sufficiency; in a pinch, they could supply everything they needed to support the staff and the population of inmates. No doubt, thought Kalina, they were even prepared to brew their own beer, for the guards, if they had to. Kalina had to admit the prisoners were fed well, though not through any kindness. The prisoners usually spent non-working time servicing the sexual needs of the staff, and the staff did not want wasted, skin-and-bones women doing the servicing.

The greenhouse was located at the edge of the cavern, its curved ceiling and far wall made of glass in place of the original rock. None of the inmates would give any thought to breaking through the glass wall to escape -- there was no one out there to help them for many kilometers in any direction. Also, their chains would make it impossible to negotiate the surrounding mountainsides, and at this altitude it was freezing cold out there. In the greenhouse, the heat was oppressive -- together with the high humidity, it made every woman break into a heavy sweat as soon as she entered. Kalina had spent several weeks spreading human excrement, collected from the prisoners' cells by yet another work detail, through the long rows of soil trays in which the vegetables were growing.

Kalina hoped she wouldn't be shifted back to that job again. In the cavern she was in now, the work was exhausting, but at least it was cooler.

Kalina dragged her mind back to the present. She could tell, from the pattering and swallowing sounds, that one of the women was taking a "water" break. Kalina winced, conscious of the awful aftertaste in her own mouth, from her own most recent break, when she, like the girl now, had knelt in front of one of the guards, murmuring, "Please, Sir, may I have some water?" Waiting, almost mad with thirst, as the guard unzipped his pants and brought out his quickly stiffening manhood, while she knelt, mouth open, staring into the guard's eyes, until at last he mercifully peed into Kalina's mouth, and she held her mouth open until he was done, swallowing his piss and feeling it dribble down her chin, afterwards bowing her head to the floor and saying, "Thank you, Sir." Kalina had then been allowed to rise and return to work, while the guard returned to his beer, which all the guards stood guzzling while brandishing their ever-present whips.

Kalina was very used to the procedure. It was one of many things that filled her with a constant sense of shame. The permanent nudity was another. Even the loss of her luxuriant dark, nearly black hair left her feeling less a woman, less human. All of the women, like Kalina, had their hair trimmed regularly to the length of toothbrush bristles, barely enough to make hair color visible. She felt like an animal, sheared like a sheep.

She was just nineteen, and had only felt she was playing at the game of protesting against the government, with her friends, until that day the police had come. That was, as near as Kalina could estimate, about a month ago. Two of the women from her "committee," as they called it, besides herself, were here, in this room, of the original group of about forty women arrested. A larger number of men had also been arrested, all taken to a different facility and now, Kalina suspected, all dead. Including her fiancé. Kalina, like all of the others, had been sentenced to death, the sentence to be carried out "at the discretion of the prison authorities." Kalina had no idea when that would occur. She had noticed, before long, that she and the few other women whom she knew remained alive from her committee were among the youngest of the females arrested with her, and, she supposed, the most attractive to men. That, Kalina decided, must be the reason she, and the few others of her friends, were still alive, and what those men had been deciding, with scores marked on their clipboards, that first day. All of the rest of the women from Kalina's committee had disappeared after that first day at the prison. At least Kalina had never seen them again. She supposed that, for them, the death sentence had been carried out immediately.

Kalina knew, now, that her own execution would be postponed indefinitely, because the prison staff enjoyed the use of the inmates too much to want to lose any prematurely -- after working at hard labor all day, the guards abused them with sex and "games" at night. Some of the women here, Kalina had learned in furtive conversations, had been here under the same death sentence for years -- as far as they could tell, it was rare for any woman under thirty to be executed, once she had been chosen by the prison staff to remain alive. Kalina knew escape was impossible, release was impossible, rescue was impossible, and that she was sure to spend at least ten years here before dying -- unless she could force the issue sooner.

And I will do that, Kalina told herself. Today I refuse to work. I will not work ever again, or submit to sex, or play the "games." Kalina had feared punishment, but now longed for death.

If I just show them I'm not going to entertain them anymore, Kalina told herself, then they will give up and execute me. The execution itself terrified her -- she was sure it would be painful -- but not as much as the thought of living on in this hell for ten years. Five hundred weeks. A hundred times longer than she had already been here... she shivered. No more.

She gasped in a quick breath as a guard suddenly came into view, his face a mask of astonishment. "You! What are you doing here? Get back to work!" He waved his whip threateningly. Ordinarily he would already have used it, but there was a second reason all the women were grateful for the guards' beer: in addition to helping the guards make enough "water" to keep the women going through the long, exhausting workday, it also sometimes made them a little more mellow. But she knew it wouldn't be long before she felt the stinging lash. Kalina had always been a tough girl, not much affected by physical pain, but that didn't mean she welcomed it, and she was glad to be able to wait a little longer.

She looked directly up at the guard and shook her head. Proud of keeping the tremor out of her voice, she said loudly, "I'm not working anymore!"

The guard glared at her, and now at last came the whip, slashing at her shins. Sitting as she was, her knees drawn up, her most sensitive parts were protected, but she knew that wouldn't be so for long.

The burly guard took two long steps towards her and hauled her upright with a strong hand under her armpit, her chains rattling with the movement. Kalina could now see the other women, most of them avoiding looking at her as they went on about their tasks. Kalina was one of the two dozen women working at enlarging the underground cavern by brute force. Some women were swinging sledge hammers at the rock walls, gradually crumbling them -- they had to do it kneeling to give their arms enough freedom to swing the hammer. Some of the women with the hammers were up on scaffolding in front of the wall, to reach the higher parts. Other women crawled on the floor, gathering loose rocks and taking them to waiting wheelbarrows, while others rolled the wheelbarrows out of the cavern to the designated dumping area -- two women to each wheelbarrow, not just because of the weight but because the handles were too far apart for one woman's joined hands to grasp.

Kalina hardly heard the steady clinking of the women's chains anymore. She had lived with it constantly for a month.

Many of the older women, older meaning late twenties, with muscles built up from years of heavy labor, looked as though they were made for this kind of work, while the younger ones mostly did not. They all shared in common, though, slender bodies, usually with long, smooth legs, young pretty faces and large, proud breasts, looking more like university girls who would be looking forward to the next weekend's party, instead of prison inmates -- except for the occasional stripes of whip marks, some old and fading, some fresh.

Several of the older women, longtime inmates judging from their muscles, were looking at Kalina now and giving her tiny shakes of their heads, obviously trying to discourage her from what she was doing. They knew better than to try to talk now. I know what I'm doing, Kalina thought to herself, and tried to convey this thought to the scared-looking women.

Kalina gasped in pain as the guard suddenly slashed with his whip across her breasts. "Get back to work!"

She shook her head and dropped back down to sit against the wall, not so much to protect herself -- she knew she couldn't for long -- but to emphasize her recalcitrance in a "What are you going to do about it?" manner. The guard reached down for her once more, and suddenly stopped.

Kalina looked up, puzzled and suddenly scared by the guard's expression: a smile was slowly creeping across his face. As she watched, he straightened up and backed away, and signaled to the other guards to join him some distance away for a conference.

The rest of the inmates all continued going about their assigned tasks. They didn't need to be told that any slacking off would be punished in the usual way. None of them saw the guards' inattention as an opportunity for escape. There was nowhere to escape to.

The guards, each taking an occasional swig of beer, were holding an animated discussion punctuated with periodic bursts of laughter. They looked as if they were discussing football scores, not planning the torture of a prisoner that was no doubt the actual subject.

At last there seemed to be agreement. One guard took off at a trot out of the cavern, as another shouted for all the women to stop and stand in place. As they stood, the younger ones looking frightened, the older ones resigned, the remaining guards fanned out and began looking at the women's collars.

Each collar had, on its side, a colored metal tag, with a number such as 326-07 stamped on it. The collar tags of Kalina and her friends, Kalina had noticed, had each been blue, but among the prison population as a whole the tags came in a variety of colors. Kalina could see that the guards were looking closely at all of the blue ones. Several women she didn't know had blue tags, but the guards unerringly picked out, and pulled aside roughly, Kalina's friends, the two here from her committee. Kalina had never looked closely enough at other women's numbers to pick up any pattern, but it now occurred to her that part of the code on each tag was a group number, by which the guards were now identifying the prisoners who had arrived here at the prison with Kalina. The colors were no doubt simply for the purpose of saving the guards the trouble of looking at every single tag -- since Kalina's was blue, they had only to look at the blue ones.

Moments later, Vasilia and Anya were standing in front of Kalina, both looking terrified, each held at her elbow by one of the guards. Behind them, the other women were ordered back to work. The guard who had found Kalina in her hiding place, now standing beside her, turned to face her and said firmly, "Choose one!"

She blinked at him in confusion. "Ch-choose for what? Wh-what's going to happen?" Kalina's mind spun frantically, the courage that had inspired her defiance draining away by the second. What were they going to do? Would they beat the girl she chose instead of her? Would they beat both her and the chosen girl? Would they make them have sex with each other? She remembered the guards laughing together a few minutes earlier. That must be it, she thought: sex. That or a fight. The after-hours games the guards devised for their own entertainment usually consisted of taking two of the women out of their cells and either having them perform degrading sex acts on each other, the guards cheering them on and shouting commands, or else having them do battle with each other, while the rest of the women watched in silence from their cells. Kalina's heart froze up every time the guards started pacing between the cells, deciding whom to choose for abuse tonight. Kalina, in the month she had been here, had not yet been forced to have sex with another of the women. She had been chosen to wrestle twice -- so typical of males to love watching naked women wrestle -- and had once had to fight another of the women, both of them using fists. Luckily for Kalina, she had won each time. It was no fun at all to lose.

The guard's eyes narrowed, and he repeated, "Choose one! You're deciding who gets punished for what you did. Choose one and say, 'Punish this one.'"

The panic Kalina felt was echoed in the eyes of her two friends. She shook her head, knowing she shouldn't, but unable to stop the gesture of negation. She refused to believe this could be happening. Kalina was so ashamed of dragging Vasilia and Anya into this, and trembled at the images rushing through her mind of what would happen, just minutes from now, to someone she cared about. With her stomach tied in knots, Kalina wished fervently she could go back half an hour and undo what she had done.

Her mind spun frantically. The idea of choosing one of her friends to be hurt went against the core of her being. She loved all of her friends dearly, and now had to point to one and say, in essence, I want you to suffer.

Kalina had often read about "a few seconds stretching out forever," and wished that could happen, but somehow time seemed to move as fast as it always did, maybe even faster, and she knew the guards considered hesitation in following an order one of the worst of crimes.

It came down to elimination, and Kalina had known from the first instant which girl she could not choose: Anya. Kalina would do anything to avoid hurting Anya.

*   *   *   *   *

Kalina had met the others in the committee after joining the movement, and had become close to Vasilia, but Anya Simonina had been Kalina's friend all through school. They had played together as children, shared secrets as adolescents, talked about their future and their dreams as the end of school came near. The same age as Kalina, Anya looked years younger, almost like a child, a full head shorter than Kalina and probably a dozen kilos lighter -- or would look that young if not for her full, firm breasts, surprising to see on a girl her size, a genetic inheritance along with her weak eyesight. Her breasts and cute, pixieish face were probably the main reasons she had been kept alive. Along with her small size, which somehow seemed to make her that much more fun to torment. In a prison full of powerless women, Anya was the most powerless of them all.

Anya's parents had died when she was eight, and she'd been raised by an emotionally remote maiden aunt. That, thought Kalina, was probably one reason Anya was so painfully shy. Anya had taken a job in the local library after completing school. She preferred to work in the receiving area, cataloguing new books and preparing them for shelving, rather than having to deal with people out in the public part of the library. Kalina had coaxed and cajoled Anya into coming along to a committee meeting, just so Anya could make some new friends, just two weeks before they were all arrested. Kalina blamed herself for Anya being here in prison with her. In Hell.

In an instant of memory, as if she was drowning, Kalina's mind went back to that awful day -- one of an endless succession of nightmare days beginning with the police breaking into the meeting of the committee, just after Kalina and Anya had arrived. Kalina and all of the others from the committee had found themselves in a courtroom within minutes after being taken out of the police vans. The guilt of all of the members had been a foregone conclusion before the trial had even started, with the leaflets they had been going to distribute, tacking them up to streetlamp poles and leaving them under park benches, all displayed as evidence for the judge to examine. Kalina, like the others, had sat stunned during the reading of the death sentences.

Kalina barely remembered being transported, in a daze, by van and later, astonishingly, by helicopter, to this prison, a fortress built within a mountainside. She and the other women who'd occupied cages in the van were led to a holding cell, where Kalina had been reunited with Anya, after having been separated during transport. Anya had run to her, crying, throwing her arms around Kalina, and as the hours went by in the holding cell, Anya had fallen asleep with her head in Kalina's lap. Kalina had wanted so much, oh so much, to tell Anya how sorry she was to have so ruined her life, but her shame had choked her throat every time she tried.

It was while they were all in holding that the commandant had made that speech of... well, surely "welcome" was not the right word. A speech of orientation to their surroundings, Kalina supposed.

After that, one at a time, the women were taken out of the holding cell and led away. When the man pointed at Anya, she clung to Kalina but was pulled away and taken from the cell, crying. Kalina, when her own turn finally came, was taken to a small room and made to strip at gunpoint, throwing her clothes in one of several cardboard boxes and jewelry in another, wondering how the prison authorities would unscramble the clothes and rings and necklaces later. Then she was led to another room, this one very large, where the women taken from holding before her were already standing, naked, quivering with fear, each with her wrists handcuffed behind one of the many poles that stood in rows throughout the room, each with her ankles strapped to the base of the pole. Each pole had a number displayed in large numerals at its top. Anya was there, looking terrified, her hair still in the cute pigtails tied with ribbons that were so incongruous now. Kalina was positive Anya could never have voluntarily shown her bared breasts to anyone -- she was self-conscious about them, and always dressed to hide their size. And certainly she could never have imagined showing her dark triangle of pubic hair for all to see. Perhaps not even to herself in a mirror. Anya's face was one concentrated blush. Kalina had felt faint as she herself was secured to one of the vacant poles, but somehow remained standing.

The rest of the women arrived one by one eventually, each secured in turn to one of the poles. A guard at the side of the room would shout "Stand up straight!" if any of the women tried to kneel, crouch, or even slouch, and "No talking!" at any hint of whispered conversation. All of the women kept their heads down as they waited, not wanting to look the others in their nudity. Once they were all there, uniformed men entered, individually or sometimes in pairs or small groups, perhaps three dozen men altogether over a span of a few hours. Each man walked slowly around the room, looking closely at the bodies of every one of the women, while making notations on a clipboard, then left the room, and was replaced a few minutes later by the next man. All of the men were silent except for giving frequent orders to the women to hold their heads up and stand up straighter. Whenever one of them walked behind Kalina she could feel his eyes, as if they were fingers, on her backside. Kalina stifled a shriek the first time one of the men reached out to feel her breast -- not appearing to intend to cause pain, but as if simply trying to make sure it was real. She could see the reason for the ankle straps: Kalina, not yet suicidal at the time, had not tried to kick the man, but directly in front of her, it appeared that Marta had wanted to, when it was her turn to be groped. The straps made any such defense impossible.

Just once Kalina stole a look at Anya, and saw her friend standing despite trembling knees, eyes shut tight, lips pressed together and quivering, face streaming with tears, afraid to make a sound. Kalina saw Anya go suddenly rigid, with a squeak of fear, when one of the men did the breast test on her. Kalina couldn't bear to look at Anya again after that.

At last, after being left alone for another interminable wait, still handcuffed to the poles, all too frightened to speak now despite the absence of any guard, the women had been led away one at a time again. Kalina, in her turn, had been taken to a small room where she was subjected to several indignities of body grooming, including trimming her hair to barely a centimeter in length, was fitted with the chains she now wore, and was led to a tiny cell in a cell block, the other cells filled by women she had never met before, except for her friend Vasilia, in one of the cells across from her. Kalina's heart felt ripped to pieces to see that Anya wasn't there.

For three weeks she didn't see Anya, and assumed Anya had been executed back then, on that first day.

Kalina had found herself to be a member of an eight-woman team, teams being assigned work duties together in different parts of the prison. But they had put three teams together here, to do the work of expanding the cavern -- and Anya was on one of the other teams. Kalina remembered how excited she had felt when she finally saw Anya, on the day Kalina's work assignment was switched to the cavern. Seeing that Anya wasn't dead. Stupid, thought Kalina. Anya would be so much better off if they had killed her.

*   *   *   *   *

The guard who had caught Kalina cleared his throat, forcing her mind once more back to the present. "Do you want them both punished?"

Tears flowing from her eyes, Kalina looked at Vasilia, who flinched and moaned. Vasilia knew what was coming, even before Kalina, her voice shaking, touched Vasilia's arm with her elbow and said, "P-punish this one."

The guard smiled, turned Vasilia by her shoulder and said gruffly, "Get back to work." When she stared at him uncomprehendingly, he raised his whip and repeated, "Get back to work! Go!" Relief flooding her face, she quickly shuffled back to the women gathering rocks, while several guards closed around Anya and pulled her away. Anya and Kalina both shouted, "No, please!"

I should have known I should have known I should have known, Kalina told herself, cursing her stupidity. I told them what I wanted them to do. As if they would actually do it.

The guard stood again in front of Kalina, and she dropped her eyes, fearing to display insolence as much as she feared to see what they were doing to Anya, beyond him.

Kalina flinched as the guard reached towards her and, to her astonishment, unlocked the padlocks that secured her wrist cuffs to the chain at her waist.

She looked up at him at last, wide-eyed, knowing it must be a trick, as she cautiously swung her arms, testing her aching shoulder muscles. She had not had full, unrestricted use of her hands and arms in at least a week, since her last wrestling match.

The guard grinned and put his hand out to the side, where one of his colleagues, the one who had run out of the room and returned later with items needed for Kalina's punishment, wordlessly placed one of those hated gags in it. Knowing better than to protest, Kalina stood still and opened her mouth wide as the guard pushed the rubber phallus into her mouth and secured it with leather bands around her head. It filled her mouth completely, going in almost, but not quite, far enough to engage her gag reflex. Her teeth slipped into the groove at its base, making it impossible for her to push it out with her tongue even if it hadn't been held in place by the leather straps.

Kalina knew she could untie the straps herself, her hands being free. She wouldn't dream of trying it, though.

She got a second, even greater surprise when, his grin expanding, the guard handed her his whip.

"Congratulations, bitch. You've just got yourself promoted to guard. Just to do one job, though, then it's back to being an inmate. Sound good to you?"

Warily, knowing it was expected of her, Kalina nodded.

By now the guard was clearly having a hard time holding back his laughter. He moved to the side, swung his arm back to point to Anya, and said very quietly, "Your job is to whip that bitch over there. One of her friends has been very bad."

Kalina felt the blood drain from her head, and nearly passed out. Anya was about ten meters from her. The guards had detached Anya's wrist cuffs from her waist chain, still locked to each other, and tied a rope to them which they slung over one of the many hooks embedded in the low ceiling of the cavern, pulling her arms taut up over her head. That alone left her with her feet just able to reach the floor of the cavern, but then they had unlocked her hobble chain and secured her ankles to the ends of a long spreader bar, leaving Anya barely able to get the tips of her toes on the floor, her legs spread wide. Tears were streaming from her eyes, her lips pressed tightly together yet still quivering. The men were standing around her, making lewd comments about her body and laughing.

Kalina looked hopelessly at the guard, shaking her head frantically, trying to give him back the whip.

He looked at her in good-natured surprise. "What, you don't want the job? It's such an easy task." He went on, again quietly, obviously so that Anya couldn't hear, "All you have to do is whip her until she passes out from the pain."

Kalina gasped and shook her head even harder, her breath whistling in and out of her nose as if she had just run five kilometers. She pushed the whip handle against the guard's broad chest.

The guard fixed his piercing eyes on her and held her gaze. She found she couldn't look away, as if her eyes themselves were in bondage.

He continued in that same near-whisper, "Well, if you don't want the job, then we'll all do it. I'll whip her until she faints. Then we'll revive her, and another man will take his turn. And the next, and the next. If we can't revive her, we'll wait till the doctor says we can start up again. We'll keep going until every one of us has had a turn. Want us to do that instead? If you whip her, then we won't. She'll only have to pass out from pain once, instead of over and over."

Kalina's bladder let go, and her urine pattered to the ground between her feet. She had to do this. It was not only her fault Anya was here in the prison to begin with, it was also her more immediate fault Anya was in her present peril. Kalina was sure every one of the guards, with their arm strength and experience, could do a more effective and painful job on Anya than Kalina could. And there were nine of them here. No doubt they would play with Anya, stretching out the torture interminably. Kalina couldn't make Anya go through that. Anya would get through the whipping much faster, with much less accumulated pain, if Kalina did it.

Another thought also entered Kalina's head. Her plan today, for bringing about her own execution, had never had a chance of being successful. Beyond the fact that, apparently, when your defiance went past a certain point the punishment was shifted to your friends, there was the guard's reference to the doctor: Anya wouldn't be allowed to die either. This prison was, to the extent possible, a place of eternal punishment, even more like Hell than Kalina had realized. No prisoner was allowed to escape, not even the ultimate escape of death. Only the prison could choose the time of any inmate's death. Kalina would suffer exactly as long as they wanted her to. Maybe that was what the older inmates had been trying to tell her. They had probably seen this before.

The sudden slap of a whip against her backside brought Kalina back to the here and now. She saw, to her horror, that the guards were starting to assemble in a ragged circle around Anya, waiting for the show. Kalina's thoughts had been accompanied by such a vivid mental image of herself whipping Anya that she had started to imagine she had already done it in reality, that it was in the past, and she could start trying to put it behind her. Instead, it loomed in front of her, awful, unavoidable. Again she felt lightheaded, ready to faint. She wanted to, but struggled against it, fearing the consequences.

She forced herself to stumble towards Anya, still hobbled by the short chain between her ankles, studying the whip she held in her hands. The handle was about fifteen centimeters long, thick enough to grip easily, with depressions for the fingers to help avoid slippage. At the end of the handle, the whip itself consisted of several separate narrow strips of flat leather. It would not usually cut the skin, she knew from painful experience, but would leave scrapes and bruises which would take their time in healing.

Kalina could see Anya squinting at her. It seemed to Kalina such an unnecessary cruelty, on top of the many abuses the poor girl had already suffered, that Anya couldn't have her glasses. Kalina wondered whether that had added to Anya's troubles, that she was so near-sighted she often couldn't see what the other women were doing. Kalina herself had learned a lot from watching the ones who had been here longer.

At this distance, Kalina wasn't entirely sure Anya could see that Kalina was holding a whip. The guards had not, of course, told Anya what was to come.

Shuffling closer to Anya, Kalina looked into her friend's eyes, seeing them widen.

"K-Kalina, what are you doing?" Now, thought Kalina, she can see the whip. Anya was trembling, constantly shifting her feet, trying to find a way to make her tip-toed spread-legged stance more tolerable. In spite of the month of constant nudity and sexual abuse, Anya's face was bright red with embarrassment -- her naked body had never yet been so clearly the center of all attention, from so many guards at once.

Kalina shrugged helplessly, the gag filling her mouth so completely that she couldn't form any remotely intelligible sound. She longed to say how sorry she was, how powerless she was, how ashamed she was at what she was about to do. And to tell Anya -- how desperately Kalina wanted to tell her! -- to take just a few light blows and then pretend to faint, and it would all be over. The guards, of course, had thought of everything, and the gag was for exactly this purpose: that Kalina could not tell Anya how to end this.

Kalina looked up and down Anya's small, slender frame, and again into Anya's terrified eyes. Anya was shaking her head frantically, moaning, "No, no, no..." Obviously she had guessed why Kalina was holding the whip in her sweaty, shaking hands. Across the front of the thighs, Kalina thought. That would probably hurt the least. She looked at the guard who had caught her, who had instigated this performance, now standing behind Anya, and prayed with all her heart that it was all just a scary game and the guard would laugh, let Kalina go and release Anya from the chains. Instead, he looked at his watch, and back at Kalina pointedly. He had not suggested that there was a time limit for Kalina getting started, but the look told her there was.

Breathing in great heaves, her own eyes looking as terrified as Anya's, Kalina took the whip handle back and swung it forward, and the leather strap slapped against the front of Anya's upper thighs. Anya's mouth flew open and she let out a shocked squeak, clearly not having believed Kalina would go through with it. Anya tugged so hard with her upstretched arms that she lifted herself completely off the ground for a moment in her struggle to free herself. Her voice shook so much it was hard to understand her. "Kalina, stop, stop doing this..." She gasped as Kalina swung the whip forward once more, catching her this time just above the knees.

Tears streaming from her eyes, Kalina looked pleadingly at the guard. He tightened his jaw and swung his arm in a hard whipping gesture.

And I do have to do it harder, Kalina realized. And in places where it will really hurt. He told me I have to keep doing it until she faints. That will never happen if I keep doing it so soft.

Kalina closed her eyes, trying to detach herself from the situation, to remove all the personalities and make the problem more theoretical. Anya needs to pass out from the pain. How to make that happen? Breasts, of course. Her sex, definitely. Underhand swing for that. But later. Wait until she's already in a lot of pain. Start on the front of her body, hit hard. She hasn't even screamed yet. Make her scream, make her use up air. And do it fast, over and over, don't stop, don't let her catch her breath.

Anya gasped as Kalina opened her eyes, seeing something new in them. A determined look, the emotion leached out of it. Stifling her sobs, Anya desperately choked out, "Kalina, it's me, it's Anya, stop, stop, please stop..." Her pleading ended with a piercing scream as the whip slapped directly across her breasts, seeming to set them on fire.

That's it, thought Kalina. Like that, but harder. And quickly, quickly.

She drew her arm back and swung it forward, again and again, whipping her friend's breasts, her stomach, her legs. She went around behind Anya. Anya didn't try to look behind. She was hardly aware of Kalina's presence, or of anything else except the searing pain all over the front of her body.

And now suddenly on her buttocks and back. Anya was shrieking continuously now, not trying to form words.

Kalina came around in front again, not much more aware of her surroundings than Anya was. Breasts and sex now, she thought. She ignored the strain and tiredness in her arm, and swung out again, harder than ever, catching Anya full on the breasts. Anya's eyes were squeezed tightly shut, her hands clenched in fists, but her scream had little wind behind it. Good, though Kalina, she's getting close.

Kalina had never used a whip in her life, but she was getting the hang of putting it where she wanted it. Now's the time, she thought. Twirling the handle and making an underhand swing, she managed a slap with the leather straps directly along the length of Anya's sex lips.

Anya's entire body convulsed, the muscles standing out like a da Vinci drawing, her scream finding new life from the awful pain in such a sensitive place. Kalina was not waiting to watch this; she was already swinging the whip across Anya's breasts once more, following that with another slap across her sex. She repeated it twice more, then stopped as she realized Anya's scream had faded. Anya's face, red until now, was a pasty white color, and as Kalina watched, Anya's eyes rolled up out of sight and she went limp, to hang by her arms, her head lolling back.

The control Kalina had exercised over herself snapped, and threw the whip down and collapsed to her knees, her face buried in her hands on the ground, her body wracked with uncontrollable spasms of sobbing.

She was dimly aware of movement around her, and looked up, hoping to see that the guards were releasing Anya at last. Instead, she saw, in greater horror than ever, that they were lining up in front of the girl and behind her, the guards first in each line unzipping their pants. No!!! Kalina grunted hopelessly against the gag. You can't do that to her!! Not now!!

Kalina quickly turned away from them on her knees and lifted her butt high in the air, grunting insistently and pointing to her sex. Do me, not her! Do me!! Do me!!

The guard who had caught her, her personal tormentor, laughed. "I think the prisoner has learned her lesson. But let's make sure." He walked to Kalina and dropped to his knees behind her, pulling down his pants. The rest of the guards lined up behind him, eagerly commenting and laughing.

Anya shook herself awake at last, still hanging from her arms, every inch of her body throbbing with fire, especially her breasts and crotch. As she cried weakly, she watched one guard after another avail himself of Kalina, some using her vagina, some her ass. Around them, the rest of the women silently continued working.



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