Chapter 1

 

Female liberation is dead and buried. The era lasted only fifty years if you count the lead up but its end came swiftly. The final straw, so far as Man was concerned was when Woman tried to assert total dominance over him. It nearly worked, too. One more step and males would have been disenfranchised, their openings in the world severely limited and then reduced as virtual slaves to womankind.

It didn't take much. Certain leaders amongst the males met secretly and planned things carefully. The word spread-again with the utmost secrecy-and suddenly the tables were turned. Males, very scared now that they had come so close to disaster, assumed control once more.

Retribution was swift-and harsh. Women's rights were totally removed. Once more females became virtually the property of their fathers, and later their husbands, both of whom were not only permitted to exercise disciplinary control over them-it was demanded. Women once more became the responsibility of the men who controlled them. No more were women going to be permitted to assume anything like an equal place in society.

Ornaments, workers, mothers ... yes, under certain conditions ... But as to having a say, certainly not!

Oh they tried to resist, of course. Arguments raged over the media as to 'equal rights' but these were countered by men who claimed, not without some truth, that woman had tried to assume a vastly more than equal share of authority. When the new laws had been enacted restricting women's entry to the professions and to certain classes of employment and requiring that they first and foremost attend to their duties at home, many had rebelled. It was then that the penal clauses had been strengthened, men recognising that a few sharp lessons were needed to establish, once and for all, that women were now once more subservient to men and that was the way it was going to be from now on.

 

Angela Martin stood in the dock in the Women's Court. It was merely a square platform, some four feet each side and raised three feet above the floor of the court. Steps led up to it from the back. At the centre of the back edge was a metre high steel post. Her wrists were manacled behind her back to cuffs welded to the top of this post as they had been for the whole trial. She was naked now and had been from the moment the all-male jury pronounced her guilty. Mr Justice Rowbottom had said the fateful words: "Strip the prisoner naked for sentence..."

The bailiff had nodded, stepped up onto the platform and then proceeded to tear the clothes from her slender young body. He had first ripped open her silk blouse and torn it from her upper body, leaving her breasts covered only with her bra. Then he had undone her wrap-around skirt and flicked it off. Beneath it she had on panties and stockings. He squatted down and took off her shoes then pulled the stockings down and off her feet.

The audience, all male of course, since it was considered women should be home and working at their domestic duties, watched with bated breath. None objected. It was well past time these women, who had become most supercilious as they had achieved more and more power in the land, were brought back down to a proper level and, as the government had explained, shame and humiliation were potent weapons to achieve this aim.

The bailiff grinned at the men staring up at the near-nude prisoner and moved to her side. He didn't bother undoing her bra but took out his pen-knife and simply cut the band. It fell to the floor, exposing her creamy-smooth breasts to all and sundry.

Angela stood there in utter misery. She had never been a wanton girl and had never exposed herself to men except in the privacy of her bedroom. Her face blushed a deep red and she moaned softly as the bailiff so brutally stripped her of her clothes.

But he wasn't finished yet. He moved to her side again and inserted the blade of his knife into the waistband of her panties, sharp side out. It took one slash and the elastic parted. The silk material wafted down, exposing her neatly trimmed sex, to hang by the elastic bands on her legs. A couple more quick slashes and the now useless garment floated down to join the other pile of rags on the floor at her feet.

She was now stark naked and every pair of eyes in the court was upon her flesh, drinking in the slender but beautifully shaped body; the velvet-smooth, creamy skin and the firm muscles. Her breasts were not huge but they were full enough and perfectly formed with small pink nipples in the centre of the slightly larger areoles surrounding them.

Her thighs were shapely and muscular as were her arms. Her whole body reflected her love of athletics.

Judge Rowbottom left her in her shame for a few minutes. Hell, he was as enamoured of her body as everyone else in his court. But then he cleared his throat and looked down on her sternly. "Angela Martin, you have very properly been found guilty of the heinous crime of Incitement to Rebellion. Your plea that you were only joking was treated by the jury with the contempt it deserved ... Your further argument that you are young and that your youth is somehow an excuse, is also rejected out of hand. Even a nineteen year old is expected to know the law ..."

He paused a moment as Angela looked up at him in bewilderment. She had only said to Jean, her co-worker at the library, that it was a pity they could go no further, now being at the top of the promotional tree permitted for women. Surely that wasn't a crime. Alas, it was.

"You females need to be taught a severe lesson. We will not permit a return to the lawless days when you thought you could do anything you liked under the guise of 'equal opportunity' and 'sexual harassment'. Well, thankfully, those days are now gone and you females are back where you belong, under our control." He paused again, his eyes raking up and down her nude form. "Angela Rowbottom, it is the sentence of this court that you serve as a municipal labourer for the period of one year."

He banged his gavel and rose, bowed to the court and left the room.

All eyes were on the prisoner though. She had started to cry, her body shaking in anticipation of the terrible year to come. Her parents and sister looked up at her in anguish. Oh why had she been so silly as to joke about such a thing? They went up and held her hand while the bailiff undid her manacles and the court usher gathered up what remained of her clothing to go in the rag-bag. She would not be needing it where she was going, even if it had been fit to wear.

 

She was conveyed to the municipal labourers' pens, there to be processed. They didn't give her anything to cover her nakedness. She was taken out, under guard, to the yard at the back of the courthouse and pushed up into the paddy-wagon. This had no seats. Indeed, it was merely a metal box bolted onto the frame of a utility truck. The box was made of steel mesh and you could see inside quite easily. There were three others under sentence of municipal slavery for varying periods and the four of them huddled on the bare metal floor, horribly ashamed at their nudity and that when the vehicle pulled out into the road, everyone would be able to see inside and to jeer at them.

The principle that prisoners had dignity and should not be on public show had gone along with the women's liberation movement. Females were now little more than chattels and when they erred, they needed a sharp lesson. Public humiliation was a most effective part of that lesson.

The door clanged shut, the driver got in and off they went. It was as bad as Angela had thought it was going to be. People had heard of the court's decision and men had gathered to watch as the vehicle came out, all staring in at the naked girls crouching in the wagon. The driver went slowly to add to their misery and they were able to hear snippets of comments, especially as they were stopped at lights.

"Serve the sluts right. Hope they put them on park duty. I'd like to see the blonde's buttocks whipped to harder and harder effort ..."

"Should be shorn of her hair; make her into a real slave ..."

"Should have sent her to the public brothel. That'd really teach her what her role in life is ..."

These and other like comments had the girls crying in no time. But there was no let-up. All the way to the pens, similar comments or parts of them were offered.

The pens were on the outskirts of the city, a part of the municipal depot. The girls were kept in cages near the front of the depot and a public viewing gallery had been constructed outside the barred front of the cages, rather like at those old-fashioned zoos where you stared in at the caged animals. For a fee, you could come and walk up and down the gallery, peering in at the hapless females incarcerated therein. All part of the punishment ... Of course, during the day, they were working but from six until nine, every night of the week, you could come and stare in at the hundreds of women and girls doing it hard.

The cages were each two metres high and three square. The floors and back walls were concrete, the roof corrugated iron and the other walls: the front and sides, made of iron bars. At the front, just inside the bars was a trough through which flowed clean water. This was for drinking. At the end of the row of cages, the drinking water ran down the side of the cage to its rear and thence into another trough that sloped in the opposite direction to the one at the front and ran along the back of the cages and thence into the sewer. Water was turned on to run in these troughs for five minutes every hour during the times the women were in residence. They had to squat over this to relieve themselves-all in view of the watching public.

Before Angela and her companions were delivered to the cages however, they had to be processed. There were, of course, the entries to be made in the register but then they were taken to be depilated. It had been decided that to shave them clean of body hair and thus expose their sex totally would be an added shame. And shame was a very big part of their punishment. As well as the hard labour, that is. Each of them was in turn made to stand up before the barber and have her pubic hair whisked off. Then the depilatory ointment was smeared all over the newly shaved parts as well as her legs and under-arms. This was both painful and effective. After a few applications they would be naked all over for the rest of their lives ...

The last part of their initiation into the world of municipal slavery was their 'welcome'. Welcome it was called but it was as far from a welcome as Angela could imagine. They were taken out to the public viewing area and up onto a small dais. There was a metre-high wooden post standing in the centre of this. On its top was a set of stocks and Angela was ordered to place her wrists in the holes while the top was then lowered and bolted shut. Her ankles were pulled wide apart and locked into manacles set into the floor of the dais a few feet back from the stocks. She was now bent over at the hips and her legs pulled well over a metre apart.

One of the guards now came up, holding a supple cane in his hand.

"Ten strokes is the minimum for each new slave," he announced sonorously. "But if they scream or wiggle their buttocks too much, then we double it ..." Angela started to cry. "That will get you nowhere, slave. Keep it up and I will immediately double the welcome." She quickly subsided.

He raised the cane while the watching public-and the other new girls, looked on, the former in gleeful anticipation of the screams and gyrations of the girl's body; the other girls in anguish that, very soon, they too would be facing the same treatment.

The guard raised the cane high and then down it came. 'Thwap!"

"Oooowwwweeeagggghhhh," she screamed and started sobbing again.

"Looks like twenty for this slut ..." said the guard, grinning in glee and again raising the cane.

"Thwap," it came again, but this time she remained silent, relatively, anyway. Her naked bottom was now striped with a pair of tramlines and the male audience breathed in deeply. This girl was quite exquisite. Each one of them wished first, that it was he down there administering this initial punishment; and second that he might have her at home as his personal servant so he could discipline her any time he felt it necessary-which would be very often, of course.

The other girls were not bad either. They stood up, all stark naked, all totally nude of hair on their bodies so their sex was fully exposed to the paying customers, hands on the backs of their heads as they had been ordered, waiting their turn. Their breasts were well-formed and firm and their bodies, if not quite as athletic as Angela's, were nevertheless most attractive.

More strokes followed and Angela managed, somehow, to maintain her cool and not cry out, wiggle her bottom or start sobbing again. It was hard. The cane hurt horribly. She could hardly repress the urge to wiggle herself to try to ease the fiery pain at each stroke and not to cry out was almost impossible. She managed it though for she was a strong girl and in former times would have gone far in the world. As it was, the position of library assistant was all that was on offer.

"Ten," intoned the guard. He had not pulled the strokes, delivering them as hard as his powerful muscles would allow. This 'welcome' was a most necessary part of their punishment. It made them realise straight away that they were now virtual slaves for the duration of their sentence and they had better shape up, or face a similar punishment every time they erred.

Angela's buttocks were now very severely marked. The early strokes had formed into bruises and when a new one was laid over them, the pain was much worse. The guard knew his onions. He really knew how to make a girl scream but this one, after that first stroke, anyway, was showing unusual fortitude. They would need to watch this girl; she might give them some interesting times ahead, he thought. Well, she might be strong, but so was he. For the final ten strokes he laid on even harder, trying now to break her before the twenty strokes were completed.

He nearly succeeded. If there had been one more, Angela knew, she would not have been able to resist. As it was, they had to help her to stand up after the stocks were undone and move her over to take her place next to the other girls. Her bottom was raging. It felt as if the guard had hit her with a red-hot poker. It throbbed and burned. She just knew she would never be able to sit down on it again.

The other girls had their 'welcomes' and then they were each allocated their duty for the rest of the day. It was already early afternoon. They had not been fed at lunch time and now they learned they would only eat twice a day and not even have a break at noon. Water was to be given to them on the hour but that was it.

Angela drew the park as her first duty. A high collar was affixed around her neck and this was attached by a chain to a moped bike. A guard mounted the bike and took off out of the compound. Angela had to run at a fair clip to keep up. She might have been an athlete in her former life but she had seldom run with bare feet and never ever in the nude. Her face was a deep beetroot-to match one of the colours of her severely striped buttocks. But run she must. If she tripped, she would be dragged along by her neck and she didn't think the guard would be all that sympathetic to her plight. She might even be strangled or have her neck broken! It was even more shameful than the trip in the cage on the back of the truck for now she was even more exposed to all as the guard led her down this street and that on the way to the park.

She wasn't looking forward to her duty, either. She had visited the park herself, once, (she had been so horrified she hadn't wanted to return) and seen the women toiling there. She thought it a dreadful punishment but this was what she had to do. Fail and she would earn more corporal chastisement to her flesh. That had been very clearly stated. Work hard. Do not try to hide your nakedness from the men who will come and ogle you ... and above all else, obey all orders.

They arrived at the park and the guard drove the moped straight up to the ornamental pond with its tinkling waterfall. This was their destination and here Angela would slave until sundown when the park closed.

There, beside the waterfall, was the huge waterwheel. This was the means of raising the water up to the artificial mountain down which the water gurgled and cascaded. In former times, it had been driven by an electric motor. Now it was powered by human muscle-naked female human muscle.

In place of the motor, there was now a huge capstan. There were four spokes to it and room on each spoke for two girls. The spokes were at neck height and the girls' wrists were chained to them. One guard watched over them and he was armed with a bull-whip-one of those long, oiled snakes that, in expert hands, could open the flesh right up.

He now called a halt and released one of the girls from a spoke, gesturing to Angela to take her place. He locked her wrists in the cuffs, gave her welted bottom a sharp pat, and ordered them to resume while the other guard took the freed girl away. She would be employed weeding the gardens for the rest of the day.

The labour was hard. The weight of the waterwheel and the water each bucket contained was a massive load and it took the eight girls all they had to make each painful step. In Angela's case, it was doubly hard as her buttocks were so badly welted, her legs wouldn't seem to obey her instructions to assist in pushing the spoke ...

But worse-far, far worse, was the circle of men who stood around the low fence just outside the track on which they trudged, eyeing the eight nude girls, admiring their firm glistening flesh, their beautiful breasts and their so totally naked vulvas. The men's eyes clearly indicated their sexual lust for the sweating girls. Their hands obviously ached to reach up and feel the firm breasts, the naked mound between their legs and the soft buttocks. They didn't because it wasn't permitted and the guard, while encouraging them to look and to talk of their desires, would not permit anything further.

He didn't stop them fondling their own middles though, most of which displayed even more clearly the desires of the men. Angela had seen it all before, but only as a spectator and she hadn't stayed long. She had been so horrified at what the world had come to with these inhuman punishments for women that she had gone home and cried. Now she was a participant. She knew of course she would be given other duties and she even knew what most of them were. Not all were as bad as this but they were bad enough and each involved a public display of their naked bodies.

She applied herself. She always had. No matter what she was doing, she tried to do it to her utmost. This was no different. She pushed hard against the hateful bar, her body shuddering with each step, the sweat quickly forming on her skin and gilding it just as it had the other seven girls. Step after step, while the sun beat down on their flesh, she strained against the dead weight of the bar.

The burning rays of the sun were bad. She was already in pain... She knew in a few days she would be tanned all over but in the meantime she would burn. But that was no excuse to slack.

'Crack,' went the whip on the back of some poor girl who had allowed her attention to wander. The girl screamed, "Oooowwwaaagghhhh."

The men around her cheered the guard. "Go on, guard! Whip her again! She's still not trying hard enough ..."

But the guard was fair. He whipped when it was necessary but only then.

The water was lifted up and poured out at the top into the beginning of the little stream that culminated in the tinkling waterfall and thence into the ornamental pool at the base. It looked cool and it sounded lovely and the cries of the children who played on its edges were pleasing. But the sweating, straining muscles of the eight naked girls who provided the power for the waterfall bore testimony to the agony they were suffering. Second followed painful second and turned into minutes. On the hour they were permitted to stop for five minutes and swallow a few mouthfuls of water. This was not a humanitarian act. If they had not been watered, they would have dropped from dehydration. The water in the stream slowed to a trickle and so, therefore, did the waterfall. The children cried as it fell silent and the overseer cracked his whip once more. It was time to begin another agonising hour.

One hour followed the next, the only break being the watering spell and of course the male audience who stood around, staring silently-or not so silently, at the eight girls straining at the bars.

"This one's not pushing as hard as she might, guard," said a man.

The guard agreed and 'craaaaaack' went the whip over the miscreant's buttocks. She yowled and jumped into the air a little but then she really laid into the bar-as did her companions. A lash to the back of one was a fillip to each and all of them strained just that little bit harder.

By the end of the first hour, Angela was just about all in. Even her superb athleticism, her dedication to training and her iron will, were not enough to prepare her for this dreadful mindless slog; the utter exhaustion she found herself in. Every step was a nightmare that seemed to take hours to complete. Every hour, when the signal came to begin again, she just knew her muscles would not respond ...

But respond they did, especially when they were tickled by the crack of the whip against her now reddened flesh. Her mind became numbed to the pain. She stepped almost automatically. Her cheek came down against the bar-until the guard noticed and lashed at her already well-striped buttocks.

And still the children played, oblivious to the girls' agony since they were kept away from the capstan by their parents.

And still the men stayed and watched, delighting in their pain and suffering. Delighting in their svelte bodies; so naked-so utterly and totally nude, now that their natural body hair had been permanently removed, exposing their sexual organs to all and sundry. All part of the shame and humiliation ...

She didn't want to look at these men. But she couldn't tear her eyes away from theirs as they stood around the circular path worn smooth by countless feet trudging round, hour after terrible hour during daylight hours. She knew they were ogling her body. But she couldn't help looking up into their eyes, seeking a spark of compassion for her plight.

There was none. These men wouldn't have been here if they had felt even a shred of sympathy for their predicament. No, they were here because it was sexually titillating to watch the naked females working to the nth of their physical capacity. There were plenty of other gangs they could go and watch-and many of them did, moving to a different activity each day for variety, but none beat this one for sheer drudgery. Even the road repair gang where some of the girls had to push the huge cart laden with boiling tar wasn't as hard as this, for this toil just went on, hour after hour, step after dreadful step from dawn until dusk.

In the winter that might only amount to eight hours but in the summer it went to fifteen. It made no difference to the guards. The girls were roused from their cages an hour before dawn, fed, hosed down and then made to run in a coffle linked by chains attached to their neck collars to the park so that as the sun rose, they were already trudging around the path. And there they stayed until the sun had gone down.