Lakewood Avenue
Posted: Sun Aug 02, 2020 2:08 pm
“As you can see, your honor,” I could hear the mocking tone the Sheriff used in the honorarium; he practically choked on the word. “We’ve added the vertical blinds over the window. Does that satisfy you?” He paused before spitting out the last two words like they were some spoiled meat, “your honor.” He seemed to end every sentence with those same two words, spoken in the most disrespectful way.
The blinds did as they were designed to do. Thirty slats, one stacked atop the other, blocked the picture window that overlooked Lakewood Avenue, home of the police station and court house, the used book store (quaintly named Reeds’ Rereads), a pharmacy still offering same-day compounding and soft drinks for a mere twenty-five cents. There was a small grocery store peddling everything from avocado to zucchini sitting next to a small store selling stationery and scissors while offering overnight shipping service all over the world. Everything looked new and pristine. It was the perfect main street of a quaint little town located in the deepest part of the Antebellum South.
The town had made the news when the blonde actress, best known for starring opposite the guy who played Star Lord in those Guardian of the Galaxy movies was arrested for driving through the same town Supreme Court Justice Theresa Martin now found herself, with one of the two lights that illuminated her rear license plate blown out. The actress had had no way of knowing, of course, and even when she promised to get it fixed as soon as she could, it hadn’t been good enough.
The story made all the papers, how she had been handcuffed on the side of the road while a goading, mocking deputy told her that the Sheriff was expecting her. “They never even read me my rights,” she had said, looking confused, hurt, and ashamed, the memory of what had happened still lingering months later. “They just put handcuffs on me and put me in the back of that police car. It smelled of sweat and,” her voice had dropped to a whisper, “urine.”
The actress had described her ordeal, from meeting the Sheriff in the same room I now found myself in. How they had brought her a little cardboard box, no bigger than a milk carton. Her name, she revealed, had been printed on a small white label and that label had been affixed to the box. “I was used to my name on the big screen,” she wailed to the Barbara Walters wannabe, “not printed on a tiny sticker on an impossibly small box.”
The Barbara wannabe coaxed her to continue.
“They had me take off… everything,” the actress said, choking on that final word.
“Take your time,” there was genuine compassion in the interviewer’s tone.
She worked through it, telling the story of how she was stripped, item by item, and then how she was not only forced to lie on the exam table, her feet in stirrups that were mounted in such a way to “really spread you open, princess” as the Sheriff had said, but her legs were bound there with thick leather straps. “I couldn’t close my legs if I wanted to,” the actress wailed, “and oh, how I wanted to. It was the window, oh, God.”
The interview went to commercial when the sobbing started. When they returned, the actress had barely been able to continue. The interview ended when she couldn’t get through the cavity search and how the Sheriff, two deputies, and one bemused clerk had taken turns making sure that that “Hollywood Honey” held no contraband. It had been scandalous enough to cause an uproar and then outrage. The state of Alabama sent investigators, then litigators. Laws were written, rewritten, then passed, making sure that what had happened to that famous actress wouldn’t happen to anyone again.
Now I was there, standing in the same room where that naïve actress had been as ashamed as possible, confirming with my own eyes that the mandated changes were made. The blinds were on the window, blocking the view of the street. The exam table was still in place, but the stirrups had been removed. The cardboard boxes had been disposed of, as had the KY Jelly, and the latex exam gloves the Sherriff and two of his deputies had used to the shock and disgust of everyone that had seen that solemn interview.
Everything was as it should be. I couldn’t even see my car parked right outside the police station. The blinds did their job perfectly.
“Yes,” I finally responded. “I’m satisfied. Are you?”
The Sheriff just smiled. He had one hand resting on his belt and the other way eyeing me with an amused gaze that left me feeling a tad bit uncomfortable. It was like he was in on a joke and that I was somehow the punchline. “Not yet.” His smile turned predatory, “but I will be.”
I let that drop. We did the paperwork. I signed off on the mandatory inspection, with a promise that I’d be back again in ninety days to make sure everything was still as it should be. When the law had been passed, I, as outraged as everyone else, had volunteered to do the inspections. I was due for my sabbatical. Original I’d planned a three-month trip to Europe, visiting Paris, London, Amsterdam, and Rome. Now I had a different idea. I wasn’t going anywhere, but the Sheriff didn’t need to know that. I was staying in town. What good was an inspection when everyone knew it was coming? No, I wasn’t about to give the grinning Sheriff with his ample belly and knowing smile the chance to hide his actions. I was going to be here to catch him. I wouldn’t be back in ninety days: I’d be there for ninety days, hidden from sight. A cat ready to pounce.
“Ninety days,” the Sheriff said, “sounds ‘bout right.”
I left the police station feeling a bit better now that I was outside of the Sheriff’s gaze. He had a way of staring through you, as if he could imagine you naked. It was uncomfortable and a bit disconcerting. Standing outside the courthouse, feeling the heat of the late-spring day, I no longer felt like I was a bug beneath a magnifying glass. I wasn’t quite finished with the Sheriff. There was still a few more stops on our inspection. I had to visit the prison itself and then, before checking into my hotel room, I was to drive to the truck stop where the Sheriff reportedly ran a strip club and bordello aptly named Convicts.
I’d met with the actress personally and had been disgusted at the things she told me. How she’d been given a quota, first in the fields picking cotton, and when she couldn’t meet those demands she was told she’d be given a job more suited to her talents. “You probably got your start on your back, princess,” I’d heard the shame in her tone as she recounted the story. “So, this should be easy.”
She’d been taken to Convicts nightly to, at first, “strut her stuff," and then later to offer it up for sale.
The actress had served as a stripper, then to avoid the razor strap the warden used, first during prison intake, “so you know what to expect,” then every night that she didn’t meet her quota, she had done what she had to do to make more money, exchanging dollar bills rolled up tight and inserted into her nether regions to five and ten dollar bills when she accepted other, larger things into her body. “I was turned into a whore,” she sobbed.
My outrage had intensified. It was during that final interview that I knew I’d be keeping an eye on that southern town. I knew I’d ride that Sheriff until he was behind bars. It couldn’t stand and I wouldn’t let it.
I was wrong.
The Sheriff followed me outside, once again wearing that sarcastic, knowing grin. “I’ll follow you to the prison, princess,” he said.
I hated the way he said princess. “Your honor” had been bad, full of dripping sarcasm and mocking disrespect. Princess was worse. It was both derogatory and demeaning. It was the same word he’d used for that famous actress. Her life had been ruined. When the video leaked online of her humiliating strip-search, she moved out of Hollywood, vowing to leave the public life. She would never make another movie again. She lived in North Dakota now, on a sixty-acre plot of land. Her nearest neighbor is over twenty miles away. Her three-month stint in this southern town had ruined her life. I wanted nothing more than to make the fat, leering Sheriff know how that felt.
“Alright,” I said.
I got in my rental car and watched as the Sheriff sank into his cruiser. I started the engine and let cold air wash over me. Alone in my car I felt better than I had in twenty minutes. Just standing next to the Sheriff was uncomfortable. He had an authoritarian air about him and a disquieting manner that left me feeling ill-at-ease, like I was the butt of a joke I hadn’t known was even being played. But it was the grin he wore that bothered me the most. He hadn’t seemed concerned about my visit or about the laws that had been passed because of him. It didn’t appear to faze him in the least. Something about that bothered me.
I backed out of my parking space. On the street there were about two dozen men just milling around, like they were waiting for something to happen. When I’d arrived, the gleaming street had been empty, now it was practically crowded. Two men were standing in front of Reeds’ Rereads and when I drove by one of them pointed at me causing the other to nod. At that, they both grinned. Turning back to the road I saw a police car coming towards me. A moment later I heard a siren wailing from the back of my rental. I looked to see the Sheriff behind me, the bubble lights atop his car spinning, flashing red and blue into my rear-view mirror. A moment later, the deputy’s car that had been coming towards me turned to block my lane.
I stopped my car, blocked in front by some lame deputy and in the back by the Sheriff with his uncomfortable, lecherous grin. As the Sheriff approached, I rolled down the window.
“Well, princess,” the Sheriff said, waddling up to my car. “Seems we have a problem.”
“Oh?”
He gave me an insincere smile full of teeth. “Yup,” he drawled, like some out of work hillbilly, “you know you got, not one, but two taillights out?”
I rolled my eyes, “It’s a rental. How could I possibly know that? I’ll call the rental company and get it take care of.”
He made a tsking sound. “Get out of the car, princess,” he said, still giving that predatory grin.
“No.”
His grin faltered briefly. At that moment I finally saw the monster under the mask. He wasn’t used to having his authority challenged. I wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard the word “no,” before. Almost as quickly as his smile faded it was back again, the mask fully in place.
“It wasn’t a request. Now I’m adding resisting arrest to the charges.” His grin got even bigger.
I watched as he reached to the microphone clipped to his shoulder. He called into dispatch, spoke quickly while rattling off a few numbers I didn’t understand. I suspect it was related to the bogus charge of resisting arrest. “Ten-four,” he finished then looked at me again, “now, princess, get out of the car.”
In front of me, a leering deputy was watching from the hood of his cruiser. He, like the Sheriff, seemed to know exactly what was happening while I sat there confused and just a little bit scared. How could both taillights be out? I had rented cars before, dozens of times, and I’d never had any mechanical problems. One taillight maybe, but two. That seemed unlikely.
The blinds. It came to me in a flash, the way heat comes over you when you walk from an icy store into the heat of a Summer day. The blinds served two purposes and one had been used against me. Sure, they prevented wandering eyes from looking in, preserving some semblance of modest for the women as they were shamefully searched, but they also kept me from looking out. They prevented me from seeing the damage done to my rental car, the sabotage that afforded the Sheriff the opportunity to do what he was doing now. That this was planned was evident. Why else would the Sheriff follow behind me the moment I left the building that housed both the courthouse and the Sheriff’s office?
“Get out of the car.”
I got out of the car, full of fight. I shouted obscenities, calling the Sheriff a liar, a vandal, and a fat tub-of-lard. I was on a roll. I felt a rising terror washing over me and that fear came out as a litany of insults and accusations. Gone was the self-sure litigator. In her place was a frightened woman with knowledge of what was about to happen. The new laws be damned. The Sheriff had known I was coming, and he had set this up.
“Turn around, princess.”
Once again I noticed that “your honor,” spoken with disdain, had been replaced with the princess. It was demeaning, condescending and shameful. Unlike me and my angry diatribe, the Sheriff was calm. I stood there, hands on my hips, shouting another bout of fresh obscenities, pleading ignorance, and claiming my innocence. I’d heard the same things in my own courtroom. Guilty parties espousing how they were innocent, or set up, or unaware they were breaking the law. Now I was doing the same. How quickly I became the same sort of person I always ridiculed when chatting amongst my peers.
“Turn around.”
When I didn’t move the Sheriff grabbed my arm and spun me sideways. I stumbled briefly and only the Sheriff’s strong hands prevented me from falling to the asphalt. Around me the sidewalk was filled with dozens of onlookers. Some were grinning, others were applauding. One woman was cackling so loud I thought she was about to have a stroke. All of there were looking at me. The quite ones held a look that I couldn’t quite read. Pity maybe. The loud ones were cat-calling and shouting either lecherous taunts at me or congratulatory praise at the Sheriff.
I heard the handcuffs before I felt them. A moment later my hands were cuffed behind me back. The cuffs were overly tight; I could feel them biting into my wrists. “Impound the car,” the Sheriff said to his deputy who was now standing next to me.
“Right away, Sheriff,” the deputy said, his eyes glued to my chest. With my hands cuffed behind me, my chest was pushed outward, like I wanted them to be seen. What I wanted was to be in my car and away from this horrible place, but that fear that was making my knees wobble was there, telling me what was coming. Legal or not, I was in trouble.
“Let’s go, princess,” the Sheriff said, “we have some work to do.”
“You haven’t read me my rights,” I said, grasping for anything to make this feel normal.
“You have the right to shut the fuck up.” He said no more.
The Sheriff led me away from my car. Each step was an eternity away from safety. I heard the engine start and glanced behind me as the deputy drove my car down the street, paused for traffic before making a right-hand turn before he faded out of sight. I struggled against the Sheriff’s arm. “You lying piece of shit,” I shouted. “I saw both brake lights. I saw them.”
The Sheriff kept moving, escorting me down Lakewood Avenue. I thought we were heading for the police station, instead the Sheriff led me into the stationary store. A little bell sounded as we walked through the door, announcing our presence. Not that the bell was needed. Like the Lookie-loos out on the street, the lone woman sitting behind the counter had watched the scene outside unfold. She had a bemused smirk on her face. “Took you long enough, Sheriff,” she said.
“You know how it goes,” he shrugged. “You ready?”
“Sure am. What’s your name convict,” the woman said.
She had brown hair tinged with purple tips. She was wearing a simple white blouse and a pair of blue, denim overalls. Her face held about a thousand freckles. She was grinning and all I could see was the lipstick on her teeth.
“She hard of hearing or just dumb?”
“She ain’t bright, that’s for sure. Tell Sheila your name, convict.”
“I’m not a convict,” I said, though at that moment I felt like one. With my hands shackled behind me and an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach I didn’t exactly feel normal either. This was all too real and unreal at the same time. I was in a situation I wasn’t sure I could pull myself out of, like that of a crashing plane in a deep, turbulent dive. I was falling, screaming away from the self-assured litigator, and becoming someone else. Someone lesser.
“Name?” Sheila asked again.
I gave her my name and watched as her nimble fingers flew across a keyboard. A minute later I heard an old-fashioned printer fire up. The sound was eerie in its antiquity. I heard each time a new line was printed, a weird, mechanical clipping sound. Sheila, all smiles, pulled a small label, about the size of a playing card off the printer. Still all smiled she showed it to me:
Theresa Martin
Inmate number:
3883-1523-8838
“Here you go,” Sheila said. She held the label to me.
My fingers were trembling as I spun around to take it. I glanced from Sheila to the equally amused Sheriff and back again. The number was glaring at me. An inmate number. My inmate number. Until that moment I thought I’d be able to get out of this. That the Sheriff was playing a cruel joke on me, one that would allow him and all the stragglers lining up on the street to laugh about over a piece of apple pie. “Oh, she turned so red,” or, “we really had her going.” Now, with that damning little label I knew this wasn’t a joke. The number had been ready to go. This was a setup.
“Don’t forget to grab a box on your way out,” Sheila called as the Sheriff grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the door.
It was then that I noticed them. Stacked five layers high in a haphazard pyramid were large cardboard boxes, each about the size of a milk crate. Stenciled on the front of each box was a black square the exact size of the label I was holding in my hand. The box screamed at me, taunting me with what it meant. My clothes were destined for one of those boxes and the label was meant for its pristine façade.
“Grab a box, princess.”
My cuffed hands limited my choices. I reached for a box about waist high and watched as the label slipped from my fingers to flutter to the ground. Behind me I heard Sheila laugh. “I think she’s figured it out, Sheriff.”
“Maybe she’d not as dumb as I thought.”
I wanted to scream that I wasn’t stupid but that had to be a lie. Here I was, trembling in fear and horrible anticipation, as I bent over to grab the label printed with my name and my inmate number. I plucked the label from the ground. Sheila merely laughed which made me angry anew. I gave her an angry glare.
“Think I’ll lock up early,” Sheila said. “Get a front row seat for the show.”
The Sheriff glanced outside, “Gonna be a full house.”
They were taunting me even more. Building the anticipation I felt. Once, when I was a girl, not quite a woman but on my way there, I’d gotten in trouble. It’s been so long I can’t recall what I did. That’s not important. My father, the strongest man I knew up until the day cancer took him, had told me to go to his room and grab a belt. “I’ll be up in a minute,” he said, shaking his head in disappointment.
I went through his closet, eyeing each of the two dozen belts he owned. Some were thin, some thick. Some had holes and some were studded. I ran my fingers over all of them, trying to decide which would hurt the least. My father left me there for nearly an hour, imagining which belt would hurt the least, which one would be the easiest to endure. When he came in, he told me I was free to go. That nervous anticipation had been my punishment. An hour of hard, nervous energy manifesting as cold sweat and a tight throat. I don’t remember what I did, but that punishment stuck with me.
I was feeling that now. My legs felt leaden and my mouth felt arid, like I had swallowed two dozen crackers without anything to wash them down.
“Come on, princess,” the Sheriff said, “grab a box and let’s go.”
Once again, I reached for a box. I clutched it tightly between my fingers. It wasn’t heavy. Why would it be? It was empty. How much heavier would it be when my fancy five-hundred-dollar shoes were placed in the bottom? How heavy would it be when my suit was placed inside?
The Sheriff held the door with one hand and my arm with the other. The bell tinkled again and a moment later I heard the bell again. Sheila was locking the door. I was the show, I thought. She was coming to see me.
The Sheriff, still grinning, led me across the street, the box in my fingers bouncing against my behind. I heard catcalls, both derogatory and flattering. The Sheriff guided me past Reeds’ Rereads and into the pharmacy.
“Got another one, Sheriff?”
“That I do, Roy. This here is princess.”
Roy laughed as I blushed again. “What can I help you with today, princess?” Roy asked.
I had no idea. Maybe because I am dumb, because once the Sheriff answered his response didn’t surprise me at all. “We need some KY jelly and some latex exam gloves.”
“How many gloves?”
The Sheriff glanced at me, flashing that predatory grin, “A box will do nicely.”
Roy grabbed the exam gloves and a big tube of KY jelly. He placed them in the box for me, offering a smile that wasn’t warm at all. I felt like a wildebeest being hunted by a lioness. I was a meal to be eaten; prey to be stalked. “That’ll be eleven dollars.”
I didn’t have my purse so how could I pay? I looked at the Sheriff, “I need my purse.”
The Sheriff laughed. “Don’t worry about it, princess.” The Sheriff turned to Roy, “put it on her tab. She’ll work it off.”
“Truck stop?”
“Yup.” I hated the way the Sheriff said that. To my Harvard trained ears, it sounded dim and uneducated. The Sheriff continued, “eventually. She’ll have to earn her spot there. She’ll start picking cotton on the chain-gang, like the rest of the strumpets. Eventually she’ll beg to go for the truck stop.” The Sheriff grinned at me, “but she’ll have to pay the price of admission first. No special treatment, right princess?”
I shook at the word. He could have said “Convicts” and it would have meant the same thing. Was that my fate? Stripping in front of dirty, callused men? Offering up my charms for a few measly dollars a song? As a lawyer I had routinely billed out at nearly five-hundred-dollars an hour. I made less as a Judge, but the prestige was far greater. Now I was going to be earning what? Ten dollars to be ogled and groped during a three-minute song? I trembled at the thought of it, feeling my leaden feet become even heavier. And what did he mean by paying my way? And why would I beg for the chance to strip for strangers? What could be worse than that?
The box in my fingers felt heavier now that it held the gloves and lube. Twice I had to bounce the box in my hands to get a better grip. If my hands were in front of me this would be easier, but that wasn’t what this was about. This was to teach me a lesson. My Harvard education was meaningless now. It didn’t matter that I was a judge. That I used to be an expensive lawyer. Now I was merely another, what was the word, strumpet, being dragged through the street by the Sheriff, building an audience for the show I was soon to give. Each stop on the way just added to my shame. We grabbed the box to let me know I would be stripped. The lube and gloves advertised the search. The Sheriff had cleaned up his office, putting the blinds up, but he didn’t get rid of the boxes and the gloves. He merely relocated them to less conspicuous places.
“One more stop, princess,” the Sheriff said, tugging my arm.
He led me from the pharmacy and into the grocery store next door. Two elderly women flashed me a look of undisguised disgust. I heard them whispering. I didn’t need to hear what they were saying. The look on their faces, the way their noses wrinkled told me all I needed to know.
The Sheriff led me up one aisle and down the next. I was a rat and he was the Pied Piper. Only he wasn’t playing a tune. I was the melody and I was drawing in the gawkers. Every shopper we passed gave me either a lecherous gaze or a glance of disdain. There wasn’t a single glance of support or pity. No, I was either someone to be mocked or someone to be ogled. I was an animal. Or I was meat. I wasn’t a person, not in the eyes of the shoppers.
“Let me help you,” the Sheriff said, stopping in front of a box of Ziploc bags. “You’ll need one of these.”
I remember the actress and how she whined about her panties being placed in a clear bag. “Wet or dry doesn’t matter. We want them to stand out.” Her voice had cracked when she repeated what the Sheriff had said. “Wet is better.”
“Wet is better,” I mumbled, recalling the interview.
“What was that, princess?”
“Nothing.”
The Sheriff placed the box of freezer bags in my shameful cardboard box. “Come on,” he said, all smiles, “it’s almost showtime.”
My feet became anchors. The Sheriff had to drag me down every aisle. He repeated what he had said to Roy, adding the shameful box of clear bags to my tab. The bags that would hold my expensive French panties. That would show the world what I wore beneath my expensive designer suit.
Outside again I felt the heat of the day. There wasn’t a cloud in the pristine sky. I heard a dog bark a block away, the sound followed by the call of some bird I couldn’t quite locate. The street that had started empty when I arrived an hour ago was now a bustling hive of anticipation. Sheila was leaning against the courthouse wall, right next to the window with the blinds that had blocked my car from view. The blinds had helped me believe my car had been tampered with. The blinds had simply let me believe a lie. Other people, men and women alike were spread out around the window, but they weren’t looking at the blinds. No. They were looking at me. And they were cheering. Some of the words were appreciative and under different circumstances could be flattering, but most were derogatory and misogynistic.
They all made me blush.
It felt good when I was ushered back into the combination courthouse and police station. The throng of people disappeared from sight and if I focused on something else, I could almost block out the raucous cat calls that were still being thrown my way.
The Sheriff pulled me into the exam room. I eyed the blinds first, thankful that they were there. At least they kept the mob at bay. I could hear the commotion beyond the window. Out of sight was not out of mind. The window and the loud audience beyond had distracted me briefly. It wasn’t until the Sheriff told me to put the box on the exam table that I noticed it. The stirrups were back, mounted to the exam table. I had never seen stirrups set so high up on a table. Or spread so wide.
“We don’t have all day, princess. Put your stuff down.”
I backed against the table and dropped my box of shameful supplies.
“Let’s get those cuffs off you.”
I moved to the Sheriff and let him unshackle my hands. I rubbed my wrists, my eyes locked not on the Sheriff or the blinds that kept me hidden from the mob outside. My eyes focused on the stirrups and the leather straps built into them. The interview returned. “I couldn’t close my legs if I wanted to,” the actress had wailed, “and oh, how I wanted to.” The straps were thick and padded. And obviously strong.
“Okay, princess, let’s get started.”
I unbuttoned the lone button on my blazer. My fingers were trembling. I felt both hot and cold. I couldn’t make spit; my mouth was so very dry. The mob outside sounded impossibly loud. I heard a horn sound, then another, then another after that. Then I heard the Sheriff laugh. When I looked at him, he was shaking his head.
“There’s no need to rush, princess,” he said in that deep accent of his. “First things first. Open the blinds. The princess needs an audience.”
It’s funny. Until that moment it never dawned on me that blinds were meant to be opened. Hell, even in my own house the blinds I had in my windows could be opened, one way leaving the slats in place, just rotating them out of the way or they could be pulled up, letting in even more light. Letting the world outside be seen. Letting the outside in.
“Come on, princess, you can do it.”
My feet didn’t want to move.
“Looks like we’ll need the strap. Do I need to call for Betty?”
That got me moving. The television interview with that now retired actress hadn’t gone on long enough to get to the final part of her time at the police station. That part had made the newspapers though. “They spanked me,” she had said. “With this mean strap they called Betty. That name was even burned into the supple leather. When the Sheriff called for Betty, I hadn’t known who he meant. But Betty wasn’t a she. Betty was a monster.”
“No.” I shuffled to the window. On one side of the blinds there was a plastic dowel hanging down. Turning it would rotate the slats, revealing me to the outside world. I wanted to reach for it and not the pair of hanging strings, but I knew better. No matter what I had to tug on the string. I had to open the blinds to the raucous audience I could hear shouting beyond the glass. With my throat tight and my eyes half shut, I reached for the string and tugged. Slowly the bottom of the blinds rose. Beyond the blinds I heard applause and even more catcalls. A moment later I could see my audience. There had to be forty people milling outside that large, spotless window.
I kept pulling and the blinds kept rising. Behind me I heard the Sheriff, “Keep going. We open things wide.”
He wasn’t talking about the blinds. No, he was talking about something else entirely.
I opened the blinds fully. The applause stopped leaving me staring at the openly anticipatory looks of my audience. Sheila was standing in front, smiling at my discomfort. She brought her hand to her mouth, made a Vee with her index and middle fingers, then waggled her tongue where her fingers met. I turned away but the look in the Sheriff’s face was equally predatory. I wasn’t a person at that moment. I was meat and nothing more. Fresh meat.
“Okay, princess. Put your box in front of the window. We want to give everyone a good show.”
I don’t know why he said we. I wanted nothing to do with it. Still, I obeyed. What choice did I have? I shuffled to the exam table, plucked the box into my nervous hand, and set it in front of the bay window. I removed the box of freezer bags and my shameful label, marking me as inmate number 3883-1523-8838.
“Good. Good. You know what to do.”
I turned to face the Sheriff. I knew what he was going to say, and I was disappointed that I was right. I obeyed his command to turn around. I couldn’t look outside. I kept my head bowed, staring at the tiled floor and at the rubber baseboard. I couldn’t lift my head. I didn’t want to see the leering, ogling, panting men and women that were eying me like a thirsty man eyes an oasis. Hearing them was bad enough, how could I face them?
With trembling fingers, I unbuttoned my blazer. I pulled it off and folded it neatly. As directed, I put it in the box. How long until I saw it again? When I stood, I heard another round of applause.
“Now the blouse, princess.”
The blouse was harder. Taking the blazer off had been simple. I did it every day because it didn’t hide anything that needed to be hid. The blouse was different. The blouse covered skin. I fumbled with the buttons, first one, then the next, and then the one after that. I heard a ticking sound and looked up at Sheila. She was tapping the glass and when I saw her, she gave me a thumbs up. If this was so great, why wasn’t she in here? Anger flashed across my face. She must have noticed because she started to laugh.
I undid another button. The cups of my bra oozed into view as my blouse parted. My bra was white, adorned with tiny purple orchids. Scalloped lace decorated the edges of the cups. Outside I heard another round of cheering. I finished unbuttoning my blouse, once again eyeing the baseboards. I didn’t want to see my audience. I didn’t want an audience.
I folded my blouse and put it atop my blazer. The Sheriff directed me to do my skirt. Emotionally, it was harder to do than the blouse. In reality it was simple. There was a single metal snap at the back and a nice long zipper. I unfastened the snap and unzipped the zipper. It was the hardest easy thing I’ve ever done. Unfortunately, that would change. The skirt fell to the floor amidst even louder applause. I folded the skirt and used it to cover my blouse and blazer.
I bent to unfasten my heels. Dropping below the window felt nice but it was short-lived. It took less than twenty seconds to add my shoes to the cardboard box that now held most everything I owned. My ID, purse, credit cards were all impounded. All I had was what I wore and all of that was going into that hateful cardboard box.
My hands were trembling when the Sheriff spoke. “Bra, princess. Let’s see them tits.”
Outside I heard the chanting begin. “Tits. Tits. Tits. Tits! Tits!” Louder and louder. The audience and the Sheriff wouldn’t be denied no matter how much I longed to open my eyes to find myself lying in my bed, covered in sweat, waking from a terrible nightmare. I was living one and sadly, I was wide-awake. My heart was a jackhammer. I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to. I couldn’t close my legs if I wanted to. The words rushed back to me. What one desired was taken as easily as my dignity.
I reached behind me to grasp the back of my bra. The throng in front of me became blurry as my eyes finally began to water. I chocked back a sob. I unfastened the bra. The straps fell down my shoulders. I pulled the bra away with one hand and covered my breasts with the other. I dropped the bra in the box. I felt the hot tears in my brown eyes. I blinked them away and felt them run down my cheeks. My skin was flushed red in shame. I wanted to close the blinds. I wanted to run away. I wanted to attack Sheila and make her take my place.
The Sheriff chuckled at my discomfort. “Almost there, princess. Get your baggy ready.”
I flashed him an angry gaze. Crouching, I used my body to shield my nakedness. I plucked the zip lock bags from the floor and opened the box. I pulled on of the gallon bags free. I glanced up to see Sheila, her hands pressed to the glass, staring down at me, a lecherous grin on her cherubic face. But she wasn’t an angel. None of them were. The chanting was louder and growing louder. When I stood, my hand once again blocking my breasts I saw the crowd was even larger. People were still coming in. I saw one middle-aged man, his hair more brown than grey, texting on his phone. I could easily imagine what he was sending out. We got a live one at the courthouse. Or, Fresh meat for Convicts or even, Fresh, ripe pussy. Come and get it.
“Let’s go, princess. Strip ‘em off.”
I tried to swallow and began coughing instead. It was too much. “Please,” I begged, “don’t do this.”
The Sheriff gave me a malicious grin. There was no compassion there. I was nothing more than what I imagined. Fresh meat. “Off with ‘em.”
I shut my eyes and whisked my fancy French panties down. I stepped out of them. When I picked them up I heard applause. I kept my eyes shut and put the panties into the zip lock bag by feel alone. It wasn’t after I was looking down that I open my eyes. Only then did I drop the bag containing my panties into the cardboard box.
“Put the label on.”
I crouched again, using the wall as a shield. I peeled the backing off the label, the one showing my name and the damning prisoner number. I affixed the label to the box. Everything I owned was in that box. I had no money, no clothes, no dignity. It had all been taken away.
“Okay, princess,” I heard the Sheriff say, “hop on up.” I heard his hand slap the leather seat of the exam table.
I whimpered, trembling in shame. I glanced at Sheila who was still staring down at me. She was enjoying my plight, reveling in my shame. If she liked it so much maybe she should be here instead of me. Maybe I should find out what she drove and smash out her taillights. Maybe she wouldn’t be so enamored if it were happening to her.
The Sheriff made me jump by slapping the exam table again.
I wanted to put it off, but I had no choice. I stood, foolishly covering my breasts and pubic hair as best I could. It was useless, the crowd would see everything once my feet were in the stirrups, but it wasn’t a conscious decision. My arms moved on their own, trying to protect my modesty for as long as possible even if it was a losing proposition. They would see everything. I had nothing and the mob would see everything. The dichotomy was terrifying.
I jumped on the table to another round of applause.
The Sheriff stepped between the stirrups. He grabbed my ankles and set my knees into the stirrups. I shut my eyes, not wanting to face those who were facing me. I felt the straps buckle around my thighs. I felt another set of straps on my ankles. The Sheriff moved something, forcing the stirrups to move even further apart. I felt the cords in my thighs tighten as my legs were forced impossibly wide. Women are taught at an early age to keep their legs together and I wanted to close my legs. Much like that once-upon-a-time actress I, too, wanted to close my legs and like her, that pleasure was denied me.
The Sheriff ran his hands through my sparse pubic hair. “This’ll have to go.”
I whimpered at that, too.
The Sheriff leaned over my body and strapped my arms to the sides of the table. There I was, lying bound, my legs spread as wide as they’d ever been. Only the Sheriff’s body was blocking this shameful display from the throng of people outside the window. “Ready, princess,” the Sheriff said.
“Please,” I said, sounding nothing like a powerful judge, used to ruling over men and women alike. I sounded like a child afraid to look under the bed for fear of the monster lurking there.
“Of course, since you said please.”
The Sheriff moved away, revealing all of me to the Lookie-Lou’s, the leering lecherous men, and the hateful, contemptuous women. The applause was deafening. I kept my eyes glued shut but I could hear everything. There wasn’t anything flattering now. I was nothing but a convict getting the shame I deserved. My whole body was glowing red in shame. My legs were splayed open and no matter how much I strained against the straps, I couldn’t close them. They were open and they’d stay open until the Sheriff unshackled me.
I kept my head turned towards the nearest wall and I welded my eyes shut. I wanted to close my legs, oh, how I wanted to, and I wanted to flee, to be anywhere but lying open and undignified. I felt fresh tears in my eyes. My fingers dug into my palms. My chest rose and fell in abject humiliation.
I heard a tapping on the glass, but I didn’t dare look. I didn’t want to see the mocking, leering faces staring at my indecent display. The tapping continued and when I finally peeked, I saw Sheila tapping on the glass. She was giving me a thumbs up sign, as if to say way to go. This wasn’t something to be lauded. This was a hateful, humiliation defeat and nothing more. I shut my eyes again and turned away.
It was the sound of the Sheriff ripping open the box of latex exam gloves that made me took again. He was grinning, not as joyously as Sheila, but big enough. He put a glove on his monstrous hand. “Let’s make sure you’re not hiding anything up there, princess.”
I kept my mouth shut. I merely turned away again. I tried to imagine I was at the doctor. Only when I was at my ob/gyn I didn’t hear the loud din of a gathered crowd or the soft tune the Sheriff was now humming. I didn’t even try to place the song. It would only add to my shame.
The Sheriff opened the tube of KY jelly. The cap fell to the floor causing him to chuckle. “Butterfingers,” he joked. “Get it.” I did and it was stupid. I kept my mouth shut.
I flexed when the Sheriff finally touched me and whimpered as a fresh bout of humiliation washed over me when the Sheriff’s fingers penetrated me. His fingers were thick and when he pushed, I grunted in pain. He waggled his finger, probing me. Searching for contraband was a lie. I was a judge, meeting professionally in a police station, why would I be hiding anything? But it wasn’t about that. No, it was about adding to my shame. Reducing me even more from a high-powered judge to a meaningless strumpet that didn’t matter to anyone.
“Seems clean to me,” the Sheriff mused.
I kept quiet about that, too.
“Still, I think we need a second opinion.”
Again, my legs strained as I tried to close them. The straps and stirrups held firm. I didn’t need an audience and I didn’t need a second opinion.
The Sheriff’s voice rose, loud enough to carry through the glass, “Sheila, come in here.”
Sheila left the window and a moment later I heard her enter the exam room. “Can I help you, Sheriff.” Then, as if she just spotted me, “oh, well, this is embarrassing. Why didn’t you tell me you’d caught another harlot?” She followed that with another dig, “let me guess. Prostitution? She looks like a whore, open for business.” Both she and the Sheriff chuckled as I seethed in shame, yes, but anger, too.
“Can you help me out?” the Sheriff asked.
“Of course. What do you need?”
The Sheriff handed Sheila the box of exam gloves. “We need to make sure she won’t be smuggling anything into the prison later.”
Sheila, all smiles as she donned an exam gloved, said, “I get it. Can’t let these sluts get away with anything.”
The Sheriff had been course, shoving his fingers in me with an indifference that was way more welcome than what Sheila did. Sheila slipped first one and then a second into me. Then with her thumb she began masturbating me. Slowly at first, then fast, and faster still. She was skilled and no matter how much I wanted to ignore what she was doing, soon I found my body betraying me. I felt a rising need growing under Sheila’s touch. The fingers on one hand pumped into me. With her other hand she caressed the most interested part of me until I felt my hips bucking as much as the straps would allow. Just as my pleasure peaked, Sheila pulled her hands away. I hissed and whimpered, “no,” hating myself but unable to stop the word. Outside the window I heard another chorus of applause.
“She’s clean there,” Sheila said. “Guess we should check her other hole, too.”
“Good idea.”
It was not a good idea but bound and spread as I was, I had no choice. I was no longer a judge. No, I was a helpless bimbo played with by my betters.
Sheila added another dollop of lube to her fingers. Still gave me a smile that was anything but comforting. It was full of malicious animosity. I knew Sheila to be a bully by the look she gave me. She put one hand on my stomach and then faced Lakewood Avenue. She waved her hand making the din outside the picture window grow even louder. She was playing for an audience and I was the instrument.
When the applause was loud enough, Sheila slipped a finger into my ass. I grunted and nearly bit my tongue. The pleasure she had brought was replaced by this new shameful indignity. She probed my ass, feeling around as if I had planned on being arrested and had decided to smuggle contraband into a prison. I was supposed to be spying on the Sheriff during my sabbatical, not spread out like an insect on a cork board in a middle-school classroom.
Still playing to the audience, Sheila began masturbating me again. As before she played with my body until I was on the unwelcome precipice of release. Just as my pleasure began to crest, Sheila pulled her hands from my body, leaving me panting and aching for more. “She’s clean, Sheriff.” I turned my head to watch Sheila remove her gloves and deposit them into a fresh zip lock bag. She dumped that bag into my box of clothes. When I got those back, I would have a shameful souvenir.
“That’s good.” He stared at me forcing me to turn away again. “Maybe we need a second opinion.” He raised his voice again, shouting to be heard over the din of the appreciative crowd. “Line up,” he called. “Sheila will get you kitted out.”
My head snapped toward Sheila and the Sheriff. Sheila was leaving the exam room, carrying the box of latex gloves with her. It wasn’t until I saw her outside, standing on the crowded street of Lakewood Avenue that the full weight of what the Sheriff had said crashed into me. Sheila was passing out the exam gloves, one to everyone present. I moaned and then cried. My crying turned to sobs. How many gloves were in a box? What had the Sheriff said? The box will do nicely. I now knew what he meant.
One by one the gawkers came, getting an up-close view of what they'd witnessed through the window. Each of them probed my body, sticking their fingers into my ass or my pussy. Sometimes both at the same time. Some caressed me, trying to elicit a pleasurable sigh but most were there just to shame me. I kept my eyes shut but couldn’t turn off my ears. I heard derision in every word. I was a judge. I wasn’t used to feeling this low. This degraded. My body hurt. My pussy was poked, prodded, pinched, slapped, tickled, and tormented but it was my mind that hurt the most. I was better than this. This wasn’t fair.
Through it all I strained against the straps that held me open. I tried to close my legs until my thighs burned. It was just another agony in a long line of discomfort. No matter how much I wanted to close them, I couldn’t. The hateful asylum straps held firm.
When the last hand left my body, I hadn’t been aware of it. I was too busy berating myself for being here. Surely this was my fault. Why had I volunteered to make sure the Sheriff had obeyed the laws written because of him? Why did I believe I had the power to make him comply? The Sheriff held all the power. I was nothing but a strumpet bound for the cotton fields, working under the oppressive Southern sun until I begged to be a whore. Being here didn’t make me smart. It made me stupid and I did it to myself.
“Sheila!”
I kept my eyes shut and turned away. I didn’t want to see what was coming anyway.
“Yes, Sheriff.”
“Let’s get her dressed. The judge is ready for her.”
I used to be a judge. I would decide the punishment for the people brought before me. I always tried to be fair and reasonable, balancing the need to protect the community with the fact that these people were not monsters no matter how monstrous their crimes. Sometimes I had to be harsh. The law was like that, especially on repeat offenders, but I had committed no crime. I had set out for justice and now found myself nothing but a cog in a powerful, unyielding machine. If I broke the machine would keep spinning and they wanted to break me. I wanted to think I wouldn’t let them, but I knew that wasn’t true. I would be broken. The only question was how long would it take.
When the Sheriff unstrapped me, I barely noticed. He helped me off the exam table only to catch me as I tumbled to the ground. I sat there, numb and trembling. I spotted the cap to the tube of KY Jelly that had fallen to the floor. How long would it sit there? Would it still be there when the next foolish woman cycled through town? How long until the next innocent victim drove down Lakewood Avenue, wanting to stop for a drink, enticed by a sign advertising soft drinks for a mere twenty-five cents?
Sheila came in with a burlap sack. She threw it on me with a chuckle.
“Get dressed, princess,” the Sheriff said amiably.
The sack was scratchy and filthy. Dried mud caked the hem. There was a cutout for my head and two tiny holes for my arms. Printed on the sack was a large potato with a pair of googly eyes and a mouth curled up in a smile. Happy was printed above the potato and Farms was stenciled below. Happy Farm potatoes. My dress was literally a potato sack. Still, it was better than nothing and beggars, as the saying goes, can’t be choosers. The potato sack, while still shameful, was a far cry better than naked.
Sitting on the floor I donned the musty burlap sack. Dried mud crumbled and fell to the floor. It was scratch and uncomfortable. It was almost too small. There was a rip in the front, revealing an uncomfortable amount of cleavage.
“On your feet.”
I staggered to my feet. The bag was too short. It left most of my ass uncovered and only by standing perfectly still was my modesty in front retained. Any movement or any wind would reveal my violated pussy to any who happened to be nearby.
“Thank you, Sheila,” the Sheriff said. “Always a pleasure.” He dipped a little nod.
“The pleasure was all mine,” she said. “You’ll let me know when she gets to Convicts? I’m looking forward to taking her for a spin.”
“You bet.”
Sheila left me there, my mouth agape. Maybe she was right. Maybe I was a prostitute. If not in action, but in the eyes of this small, hateful town. The actions would come later.
“Come on, princess. The judge is waiting for you. We’ll get you sentenced, checked into the prison, and out in the fields by three.”
The blinds did as they were designed to do. Thirty slats, one stacked atop the other, blocked the picture window that overlooked Lakewood Avenue, home of the police station and court house, the used book store (quaintly named Reeds’ Rereads), a pharmacy still offering same-day compounding and soft drinks for a mere twenty-five cents. There was a small grocery store peddling everything from avocado to zucchini sitting next to a small store selling stationery and scissors while offering overnight shipping service all over the world. Everything looked new and pristine. It was the perfect main street of a quaint little town located in the deepest part of the Antebellum South.
The town had made the news when the blonde actress, best known for starring opposite the guy who played Star Lord in those Guardian of the Galaxy movies was arrested for driving through the same town Supreme Court Justice Theresa Martin now found herself, with one of the two lights that illuminated her rear license plate blown out. The actress had had no way of knowing, of course, and even when she promised to get it fixed as soon as she could, it hadn’t been good enough.
The story made all the papers, how she had been handcuffed on the side of the road while a goading, mocking deputy told her that the Sheriff was expecting her. “They never even read me my rights,” she had said, looking confused, hurt, and ashamed, the memory of what had happened still lingering months later. “They just put handcuffs on me and put me in the back of that police car. It smelled of sweat and,” her voice had dropped to a whisper, “urine.”
The actress had described her ordeal, from meeting the Sheriff in the same room I now found myself in. How they had brought her a little cardboard box, no bigger than a milk carton. Her name, she revealed, had been printed on a small white label and that label had been affixed to the box. “I was used to my name on the big screen,” she wailed to the Barbara Walters wannabe, “not printed on a tiny sticker on an impossibly small box.”
The Barbara wannabe coaxed her to continue.
“They had me take off… everything,” the actress said, choking on that final word.
“Take your time,” there was genuine compassion in the interviewer’s tone.
She worked through it, telling the story of how she was stripped, item by item, and then how she was not only forced to lie on the exam table, her feet in stirrups that were mounted in such a way to “really spread you open, princess” as the Sheriff had said, but her legs were bound there with thick leather straps. “I couldn’t close my legs if I wanted to,” the actress wailed, “and oh, how I wanted to. It was the window, oh, God.”
The interview went to commercial when the sobbing started. When they returned, the actress had barely been able to continue. The interview ended when she couldn’t get through the cavity search and how the Sheriff, two deputies, and one bemused clerk had taken turns making sure that that “Hollywood Honey” held no contraband. It had been scandalous enough to cause an uproar and then outrage. The state of Alabama sent investigators, then litigators. Laws were written, rewritten, then passed, making sure that what had happened to that famous actress wouldn’t happen to anyone again.
Now I was there, standing in the same room where that naïve actress had been as ashamed as possible, confirming with my own eyes that the mandated changes were made. The blinds were on the window, blocking the view of the street. The exam table was still in place, but the stirrups had been removed. The cardboard boxes had been disposed of, as had the KY Jelly, and the latex exam gloves the Sherriff and two of his deputies had used to the shock and disgust of everyone that had seen that solemn interview.
Everything was as it should be. I couldn’t even see my car parked right outside the police station. The blinds did their job perfectly.
“Yes,” I finally responded. “I’m satisfied. Are you?”
The Sheriff just smiled. He had one hand resting on his belt and the other way eyeing me with an amused gaze that left me feeling a tad bit uncomfortable. It was like he was in on a joke and that I was somehow the punchline. “Not yet.” His smile turned predatory, “but I will be.”
I let that drop. We did the paperwork. I signed off on the mandatory inspection, with a promise that I’d be back again in ninety days to make sure everything was still as it should be. When the law had been passed, I, as outraged as everyone else, had volunteered to do the inspections. I was due for my sabbatical. Original I’d planned a three-month trip to Europe, visiting Paris, London, Amsterdam, and Rome. Now I had a different idea. I wasn’t going anywhere, but the Sheriff didn’t need to know that. I was staying in town. What good was an inspection when everyone knew it was coming? No, I wasn’t about to give the grinning Sheriff with his ample belly and knowing smile the chance to hide his actions. I was going to be here to catch him. I wouldn’t be back in ninety days: I’d be there for ninety days, hidden from sight. A cat ready to pounce.
“Ninety days,” the Sheriff said, “sounds ‘bout right.”
I left the police station feeling a bit better now that I was outside of the Sheriff’s gaze. He had a way of staring through you, as if he could imagine you naked. It was uncomfortable and a bit disconcerting. Standing outside the courthouse, feeling the heat of the late-spring day, I no longer felt like I was a bug beneath a magnifying glass. I wasn’t quite finished with the Sheriff. There was still a few more stops on our inspection. I had to visit the prison itself and then, before checking into my hotel room, I was to drive to the truck stop where the Sheriff reportedly ran a strip club and bordello aptly named Convicts.
I’d met with the actress personally and had been disgusted at the things she told me. How she’d been given a quota, first in the fields picking cotton, and when she couldn’t meet those demands she was told she’d be given a job more suited to her talents. “You probably got your start on your back, princess,” I’d heard the shame in her tone as she recounted the story. “So, this should be easy.”
She’d been taken to Convicts nightly to, at first, “strut her stuff," and then later to offer it up for sale.
The actress had served as a stripper, then to avoid the razor strap the warden used, first during prison intake, “so you know what to expect,” then every night that she didn’t meet her quota, she had done what she had to do to make more money, exchanging dollar bills rolled up tight and inserted into her nether regions to five and ten dollar bills when she accepted other, larger things into her body. “I was turned into a whore,” she sobbed.
My outrage had intensified. It was during that final interview that I knew I’d be keeping an eye on that southern town. I knew I’d ride that Sheriff until he was behind bars. It couldn’t stand and I wouldn’t let it.
I was wrong.
The Sheriff followed me outside, once again wearing that sarcastic, knowing grin. “I’ll follow you to the prison, princess,” he said.
I hated the way he said princess. “Your honor” had been bad, full of dripping sarcasm and mocking disrespect. Princess was worse. It was both derogatory and demeaning. It was the same word he’d used for that famous actress. Her life had been ruined. When the video leaked online of her humiliating strip-search, she moved out of Hollywood, vowing to leave the public life. She would never make another movie again. She lived in North Dakota now, on a sixty-acre plot of land. Her nearest neighbor is over twenty miles away. Her three-month stint in this southern town had ruined her life. I wanted nothing more than to make the fat, leering Sheriff know how that felt.
“Alright,” I said.
I got in my rental car and watched as the Sheriff sank into his cruiser. I started the engine and let cold air wash over me. Alone in my car I felt better than I had in twenty minutes. Just standing next to the Sheriff was uncomfortable. He had an authoritarian air about him and a disquieting manner that left me feeling ill-at-ease, like I was the butt of a joke I hadn’t known was even being played. But it was the grin he wore that bothered me the most. He hadn’t seemed concerned about my visit or about the laws that had been passed because of him. It didn’t appear to faze him in the least. Something about that bothered me.
I backed out of my parking space. On the street there were about two dozen men just milling around, like they were waiting for something to happen. When I’d arrived, the gleaming street had been empty, now it was practically crowded. Two men were standing in front of Reeds’ Rereads and when I drove by one of them pointed at me causing the other to nod. At that, they both grinned. Turning back to the road I saw a police car coming towards me. A moment later I heard a siren wailing from the back of my rental. I looked to see the Sheriff behind me, the bubble lights atop his car spinning, flashing red and blue into my rear-view mirror. A moment later, the deputy’s car that had been coming towards me turned to block my lane.
I stopped my car, blocked in front by some lame deputy and in the back by the Sheriff with his uncomfortable, lecherous grin. As the Sheriff approached, I rolled down the window.
“Well, princess,” the Sheriff said, waddling up to my car. “Seems we have a problem.”
“Oh?”
He gave me an insincere smile full of teeth. “Yup,” he drawled, like some out of work hillbilly, “you know you got, not one, but two taillights out?”
I rolled my eyes, “It’s a rental. How could I possibly know that? I’ll call the rental company and get it take care of.”
He made a tsking sound. “Get out of the car, princess,” he said, still giving that predatory grin.
“No.”
His grin faltered briefly. At that moment I finally saw the monster under the mask. He wasn’t used to having his authority challenged. I wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard the word “no,” before. Almost as quickly as his smile faded it was back again, the mask fully in place.
“It wasn’t a request. Now I’m adding resisting arrest to the charges.” His grin got even bigger.
I watched as he reached to the microphone clipped to his shoulder. He called into dispatch, spoke quickly while rattling off a few numbers I didn’t understand. I suspect it was related to the bogus charge of resisting arrest. “Ten-four,” he finished then looked at me again, “now, princess, get out of the car.”
In front of me, a leering deputy was watching from the hood of his cruiser. He, like the Sheriff, seemed to know exactly what was happening while I sat there confused and just a little bit scared. How could both taillights be out? I had rented cars before, dozens of times, and I’d never had any mechanical problems. One taillight maybe, but two. That seemed unlikely.
The blinds. It came to me in a flash, the way heat comes over you when you walk from an icy store into the heat of a Summer day. The blinds served two purposes and one had been used against me. Sure, they prevented wandering eyes from looking in, preserving some semblance of modest for the women as they were shamefully searched, but they also kept me from looking out. They prevented me from seeing the damage done to my rental car, the sabotage that afforded the Sheriff the opportunity to do what he was doing now. That this was planned was evident. Why else would the Sheriff follow behind me the moment I left the building that housed both the courthouse and the Sheriff’s office?
“Get out of the car.”
I got out of the car, full of fight. I shouted obscenities, calling the Sheriff a liar, a vandal, and a fat tub-of-lard. I was on a roll. I felt a rising terror washing over me and that fear came out as a litany of insults and accusations. Gone was the self-sure litigator. In her place was a frightened woman with knowledge of what was about to happen. The new laws be damned. The Sheriff had known I was coming, and he had set this up.
“Turn around, princess.”
Once again I noticed that “your honor,” spoken with disdain, had been replaced with the princess. It was demeaning, condescending and shameful. Unlike me and my angry diatribe, the Sheriff was calm. I stood there, hands on my hips, shouting another bout of fresh obscenities, pleading ignorance, and claiming my innocence. I’d heard the same things in my own courtroom. Guilty parties espousing how they were innocent, or set up, or unaware they were breaking the law. Now I was doing the same. How quickly I became the same sort of person I always ridiculed when chatting amongst my peers.
“Turn around.”
When I didn’t move the Sheriff grabbed my arm and spun me sideways. I stumbled briefly and only the Sheriff’s strong hands prevented me from falling to the asphalt. Around me the sidewalk was filled with dozens of onlookers. Some were grinning, others were applauding. One woman was cackling so loud I thought she was about to have a stroke. All of there were looking at me. The quite ones held a look that I couldn’t quite read. Pity maybe. The loud ones were cat-calling and shouting either lecherous taunts at me or congratulatory praise at the Sheriff.
I heard the handcuffs before I felt them. A moment later my hands were cuffed behind me back. The cuffs were overly tight; I could feel them biting into my wrists. “Impound the car,” the Sheriff said to his deputy who was now standing next to me.
“Right away, Sheriff,” the deputy said, his eyes glued to my chest. With my hands cuffed behind me, my chest was pushed outward, like I wanted them to be seen. What I wanted was to be in my car and away from this horrible place, but that fear that was making my knees wobble was there, telling me what was coming. Legal or not, I was in trouble.
“Let’s go, princess,” the Sheriff said, “we have some work to do.”
“You haven’t read me my rights,” I said, grasping for anything to make this feel normal.
“You have the right to shut the fuck up.” He said no more.
The Sheriff led me away from my car. Each step was an eternity away from safety. I heard the engine start and glanced behind me as the deputy drove my car down the street, paused for traffic before making a right-hand turn before he faded out of sight. I struggled against the Sheriff’s arm. “You lying piece of shit,” I shouted. “I saw both brake lights. I saw them.”
The Sheriff kept moving, escorting me down Lakewood Avenue. I thought we were heading for the police station, instead the Sheriff led me into the stationary store. A little bell sounded as we walked through the door, announcing our presence. Not that the bell was needed. Like the Lookie-loos out on the street, the lone woman sitting behind the counter had watched the scene outside unfold. She had a bemused smirk on her face. “Took you long enough, Sheriff,” she said.
“You know how it goes,” he shrugged. “You ready?”
“Sure am. What’s your name convict,” the woman said.
She had brown hair tinged with purple tips. She was wearing a simple white blouse and a pair of blue, denim overalls. Her face held about a thousand freckles. She was grinning and all I could see was the lipstick on her teeth.
“She hard of hearing or just dumb?”
“She ain’t bright, that’s for sure. Tell Sheila your name, convict.”
“I’m not a convict,” I said, though at that moment I felt like one. With my hands shackled behind me and an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach I didn’t exactly feel normal either. This was all too real and unreal at the same time. I was in a situation I wasn’t sure I could pull myself out of, like that of a crashing plane in a deep, turbulent dive. I was falling, screaming away from the self-assured litigator, and becoming someone else. Someone lesser.
“Name?” Sheila asked again.
I gave her my name and watched as her nimble fingers flew across a keyboard. A minute later I heard an old-fashioned printer fire up. The sound was eerie in its antiquity. I heard each time a new line was printed, a weird, mechanical clipping sound. Sheila, all smiles, pulled a small label, about the size of a playing card off the printer. Still all smiled she showed it to me:
Theresa Martin
Inmate number:
3883-1523-8838
“Here you go,” Sheila said. She held the label to me.
My fingers were trembling as I spun around to take it. I glanced from Sheila to the equally amused Sheriff and back again. The number was glaring at me. An inmate number. My inmate number. Until that moment I thought I’d be able to get out of this. That the Sheriff was playing a cruel joke on me, one that would allow him and all the stragglers lining up on the street to laugh about over a piece of apple pie. “Oh, she turned so red,” or, “we really had her going.” Now, with that damning little label I knew this wasn’t a joke. The number had been ready to go. This was a setup.
“Don’t forget to grab a box on your way out,” Sheila called as the Sheriff grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the door.
It was then that I noticed them. Stacked five layers high in a haphazard pyramid were large cardboard boxes, each about the size of a milk crate. Stenciled on the front of each box was a black square the exact size of the label I was holding in my hand. The box screamed at me, taunting me with what it meant. My clothes were destined for one of those boxes and the label was meant for its pristine façade.
“Grab a box, princess.”
My cuffed hands limited my choices. I reached for a box about waist high and watched as the label slipped from my fingers to flutter to the ground. Behind me I heard Sheila laugh. “I think she’s figured it out, Sheriff.”
“Maybe she’d not as dumb as I thought.”
I wanted to scream that I wasn’t stupid but that had to be a lie. Here I was, trembling in fear and horrible anticipation, as I bent over to grab the label printed with my name and my inmate number. I plucked the label from the ground. Sheila merely laughed which made me angry anew. I gave her an angry glare.
“Think I’ll lock up early,” Sheila said. “Get a front row seat for the show.”
The Sheriff glanced outside, “Gonna be a full house.”
They were taunting me even more. Building the anticipation I felt. Once, when I was a girl, not quite a woman but on my way there, I’d gotten in trouble. It’s been so long I can’t recall what I did. That’s not important. My father, the strongest man I knew up until the day cancer took him, had told me to go to his room and grab a belt. “I’ll be up in a minute,” he said, shaking his head in disappointment.
I went through his closet, eyeing each of the two dozen belts he owned. Some were thin, some thick. Some had holes and some were studded. I ran my fingers over all of them, trying to decide which would hurt the least. My father left me there for nearly an hour, imagining which belt would hurt the least, which one would be the easiest to endure. When he came in, he told me I was free to go. That nervous anticipation had been my punishment. An hour of hard, nervous energy manifesting as cold sweat and a tight throat. I don’t remember what I did, but that punishment stuck with me.
I was feeling that now. My legs felt leaden and my mouth felt arid, like I had swallowed two dozen crackers without anything to wash them down.
“Come on, princess,” the Sheriff said, “grab a box and let’s go.”
Once again, I reached for a box. I clutched it tightly between my fingers. It wasn’t heavy. Why would it be? It was empty. How much heavier would it be when my fancy five-hundred-dollar shoes were placed in the bottom? How heavy would it be when my suit was placed inside?
The Sheriff held the door with one hand and my arm with the other. The bell tinkled again and a moment later I heard the bell again. Sheila was locking the door. I was the show, I thought. She was coming to see me.
The Sheriff, still grinning, led me across the street, the box in my fingers bouncing against my behind. I heard catcalls, both derogatory and flattering. The Sheriff guided me past Reeds’ Rereads and into the pharmacy.
“Got another one, Sheriff?”
“That I do, Roy. This here is princess.”
Roy laughed as I blushed again. “What can I help you with today, princess?” Roy asked.
I had no idea. Maybe because I am dumb, because once the Sheriff answered his response didn’t surprise me at all. “We need some KY jelly and some latex exam gloves.”
“How many gloves?”
The Sheriff glanced at me, flashing that predatory grin, “A box will do nicely.”
Roy grabbed the exam gloves and a big tube of KY jelly. He placed them in the box for me, offering a smile that wasn’t warm at all. I felt like a wildebeest being hunted by a lioness. I was a meal to be eaten; prey to be stalked. “That’ll be eleven dollars.”
I didn’t have my purse so how could I pay? I looked at the Sheriff, “I need my purse.”
The Sheriff laughed. “Don’t worry about it, princess.” The Sheriff turned to Roy, “put it on her tab. She’ll work it off.”
“Truck stop?”
“Yup.” I hated the way the Sheriff said that. To my Harvard trained ears, it sounded dim and uneducated. The Sheriff continued, “eventually. She’ll have to earn her spot there. She’ll start picking cotton on the chain-gang, like the rest of the strumpets. Eventually she’ll beg to go for the truck stop.” The Sheriff grinned at me, “but she’ll have to pay the price of admission first. No special treatment, right princess?”
I shook at the word. He could have said “Convicts” and it would have meant the same thing. Was that my fate? Stripping in front of dirty, callused men? Offering up my charms for a few measly dollars a song? As a lawyer I had routinely billed out at nearly five-hundred-dollars an hour. I made less as a Judge, but the prestige was far greater. Now I was going to be earning what? Ten dollars to be ogled and groped during a three-minute song? I trembled at the thought of it, feeling my leaden feet become even heavier. And what did he mean by paying my way? And why would I beg for the chance to strip for strangers? What could be worse than that?
The box in my fingers felt heavier now that it held the gloves and lube. Twice I had to bounce the box in my hands to get a better grip. If my hands were in front of me this would be easier, but that wasn’t what this was about. This was to teach me a lesson. My Harvard education was meaningless now. It didn’t matter that I was a judge. That I used to be an expensive lawyer. Now I was merely another, what was the word, strumpet, being dragged through the street by the Sheriff, building an audience for the show I was soon to give. Each stop on the way just added to my shame. We grabbed the box to let me know I would be stripped. The lube and gloves advertised the search. The Sheriff had cleaned up his office, putting the blinds up, but he didn’t get rid of the boxes and the gloves. He merely relocated them to less conspicuous places.
“One more stop, princess,” the Sheriff said, tugging my arm.
He led me from the pharmacy and into the grocery store next door. Two elderly women flashed me a look of undisguised disgust. I heard them whispering. I didn’t need to hear what they were saying. The look on their faces, the way their noses wrinkled told me all I needed to know.
The Sheriff led me up one aisle and down the next. I was a rat and he was the Pied Piper. Only he wasn’t playing a tune. I was the melody and I was drawing in the gawkers. Every shopper we passed gave me either a lecherous gaze or a glance of disdain. There wasn’t a single glance of support or pity. No, I was either someone to be mocked or someone to be ogled. I was an animal. Or I was meat. I wasn’t a person, not in the eyes of the shoppers.
“Let me help you,” the Sheriff said, stopping in front of a box of Ziploc bags. “You’ll need one of these.”
I remember the actress and how she whined about her panties being placed in a clear bag. “Wet or dry doesn’t matter. We want them to stand out.” Her voice had cracked when she repeated what the Sheriff had said. “Wet is better.”
“Wet is better,” I mumbled, recalling the interview.
“What was that, princess?”
“Nothing.”
The Sheriff placed the box of freezer bags in my shameful cardboard box. “Come on,” he said, all smiles, “it’s almost showtime.”
My feet became anchors. The Sheriff had to drag me down every aisle. He repeated what he had said to Roy, adding the shameful box of clear bags to my tab. The bags that would hold my expensive French panties. That would show the world what I wore beneath my expensive designer suit.
Outside again I felt the heat of the day. There wasn’t a cloud in the pristine sky. I heard a dog bark a block away, the sound followed by the call of some bird I couldn’t quite locate. The street that had started empty when I arrived an hour ago was now a bustling hive of anticipation. Sheila was leaning against the courthouse wall, right next to the window with the blinds that had blocked my car from view. The blinds had helped me believe my car had been tampered with. The blinds had simply let me believe a lie. Other people, men and women alike were spread out around the window, but they weren’t looking at the blinds. No. They were looking at me. And they were cheering. Some of the words were appreciative and under different circumstances could be flattering, but most were derogatory and misogynistic.
They all made me blush.
It felt good when I was ushered back into the combination courthouse and police station. The throng of people disappeared from sight and if I focused on something else, I could almost block out the raucous cat calls that were still being thrown my way.
The Sheriff pulled me into the exam room. I eyed the blinds first, thankful that they were there. At least they kept the mob at bay. I could hear the commotion beyond the window. Out of sight was not out of mind. The window and the loud audience beyond had distracted me briefly. It wasn’t until the Sheriff told me to put the box on the exam table that I noticed it. The stirrups were back, mounted to the exam table. I had never seen stirrups set so high up on a table. Or spread so wide.
“We don’t have all day, princess. Put your stuff down.”
I backed against the table and dropped my box of shameful supplies.
“Let’s get those cuffs off you.”
I moved to the Sheriff and let him unshackle my hands. I rubbed my wrists, my eyes locked not on the Sheriff or the blinds that kept me hidden from the mob outside. My eyes focused on the stirrups and the leather straps built into them. The interview returned. “I couldn’t close my legs if I wanted to,” the actress had wailed, “and oh, how I wanted to.” The straps were thick and padded. And obviously strong.
“Okay, princess, let’s get started.”
I unbuttoned the lone button on my blazer. My fingers were trembling. I felt both hot and cold. I couldn’t make spit; my mouth was so very dry. The mob outside sounded impossibly loud. I heard a horn sound, then another, then another after that. Then I heard the Sheriff laugh. When I looked at him, he was shaking his head.
“There’s no need to rush, princess,” he said in that deep accent of his. “First things first. Open the blinds. The princess needs an audience.”
It’s funny. Until that moment it never dawned on me that blinds were meant to be opened. Hell, even in my own house the blinds I had in my windows could be opened, one way leaving the slats in place, just rotating them out of the way or they could be pulled up, letting in even more light. Letting the world outside be seen. Letting the outside in.
“Come on, princess, you can do it.”
My feet didn’t want to move.
“Looks like we’ll need the strap. Do I need to call for Betty?”
That got me moving. The television interview with that now retired actress hadn’t gone on long enough to get to the final part of her time at the police station. That part had made the newspapers though. “They spanked me,” she had said. “With this mean strap they called Betty. That name was even burned into the supple leather. When the Sheriff called for Betty, I hadn’t known who he meant. But Betty wasn’t a she. Betty was a monster.”
“No.” I shuffled to the window. On one side of the blinds there was a plastic dowel hanging down. Turning it would rotate the slats, revealing me to the outside world. I wanted to reach for it and not the pair of hanging strings, but I knew better. No matter what I had to tug on the string. I had to open the blinds to the raucous audience I could hear shouting beyond the glass. With my throat tight and my eyes half shut, I reached for the string and tugged. Slowly the bottom of the blinds rose. Beyond the blinds I heard applause and even more catcalls. A moment later I could see my audience. There had to be forty people milling outside that large, spotless window.
I kept pulling and the blinds kept rising. Behind me I heard the Sheriff, “Keep going. We open things wide.”
He wasn’t talking about the blinds. No, he was talking about something else entirely.
I opened the blinds fully. The applause stopped leaving me staring at the openly anticipatory looks of my audience. Sheila was standing in front, smiling at my discomfort. She brought her hand to her mouth, made a Vee with her index and middle fingers, then waggled her tongue where her fingers met. I turned away but the look in the Sheriff’s face was equally predatory. I wasn’t a person at that moment. I was meat and nothing more. Fresh meat.
“Okay, princess. Put your box in front of the window. We want to give everyone a good show.”
I don’t know why he said we. I wanted nothing to do with it. Still, I obeyed. What choice did I have? I shuffled to the exam table, plucked the box into my nervous hand, and set it in front of the bay window. I removed the box of freezer bags and my shameful label, marking me as inmate number 3883-1523-8838.
“Good. Good. You know what to do.”
I turned to face the Sheriff. I knew what he was going to say, and I was disappointed that I was right. I obeyed his command to turn around. I couldn’t look outside. I kept my head bowed, staring at the tiled floor and at the rubber baseboard. I couldn’t lift my head. I didn’t want to see the leering, ogling, panting men and women that were eying me like a thirsty man eyes an oasis. Hearing them was bad enough, how could I face them?
With trembling fingers, I unbuttoned my blazer. I pulled it off and folded it neatly. As directed, I put it in the box. How long until I saw it again? When I stood, I heard another round of applause.
“Now the blouse, princess.”
The blouse was harder. Taking the blazer off had been simple. I did it every day because it didn’t hide anything that needed to be hid. The blouse was different. The blouse covered skin. I fumbled with the buttons, first one, then the next, and then the one after that. I heard a ticking sound and looked up at Sheila. She was tapping the glass and when I saw her, she gave me a thumbs up. If this was so great, why wasn’t she in here? Anger flashed across my face. She must have noticed because she started to laugh.
I undid another button. The cups of my bra oozed into view as my blouse parted. My bra was white, adorned with tiny purple orchids. Scalloped lace decorated the edges of the cups. Outside I heard another round of cheering. I finished unbuttoning my blouse, once again eyeing the baseboards. I didn’t want to see my audience. I didn’t want an audience.
I folded my blouse and put it atop my blazer. The Sheriff directed me to do my skirt. Emotionally, it was harder to do than the blouse. In reality it was simple. There was a single metal snap at the back and a nice long zipper. I unfastened the snap and unzipped the zipper. It was the hardest easy thing I’ve ever done. Unfortunately, that would change. The skirt fell to the floor amidst even louder applause. I folded the skirt and used it to cover my blouse and blazer.
I bent to unfasten my heels. Dropping below the window felt nice but it was short-lived. It took less than twenty seconds to add my shoes to the cardboard box that now held most everything I owned. My ID, purse, credit cards were all impounded. All I had was what I wore and all of that was going into that hateful cardboard box.
My hands were trembling when the Sheriff spoke. “Bra, princess. Let’s see them tits.”
Outside I heard the chanting begin. “Tits. Tits. Tits. Tits! Tits!” Louder and louder. The audience and the Sheriff wouldn’t be denied no matter how much I longed to open my eyes to find myself lying in my bed, covered in sweat, waking from a terrible nightmare. I was living one and sadly, I was wide-awake. My heart was a jackhammer. I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to. I couldn’t close my legs if I wanted to. The words rushed back to me. What one desired was taken as easily as my dignity.
I reached behind me to grasp the back of my bra. The throng in front of me became blurry as my eyes finally began to water. I chocked back a sob. I unfastened the bra. The straps fell down my shoulders. I pulled the bra away with one hand and covered my breasts with the other. I dropped the bra in the box. I felt the hot tears in my brown eyes. I blinked them away and felt them run down my cheeks. My skin was flushed red in shame. I wanted to close the blinds. I wanted to run away. I wanted to attack Sheila and make her take my place.
The Sheriff chuckled at my discomfort. “Almost there, princess. Get your baggy ready.”
I flashed him an angry gaze. Crouching, I used my body to shield my nakedness. I plucked the zip lock bags from the floor and opened the box. I pulled on of the gallon bags free. I glanced up to see Sheila, her hands pressed to the glass, staring down at me, a lecherous grin on her cherubic face. But she wasn’t an angel. None of them were. The chanting was louder and growing louder. When I stood, my hand once again blocking my breasts I saw the crowd was even larger. People were still coming in. I saw one middle-aged man, his hair more brown than grey, texting on his phone. I could easily imagine what he was sending out. We got a live one at the courthouse. Or, Fresh meat for Convicts or even, Fresh, ripe pussy. Come and get it.
“Let’s go, princess. Strip ‘em off.”
I tried to swallow and began coughing instead. It was too much. “Please,” I begged, “don’t do this.”
The Sheriff gave me a malicious grin. There was no compassion there. I was nothing more than what I imagined. Fresh meat. “Off with ‘em.”
I shut my eyes and whisked my fancy French panties down. I stepped out of them. When I picked them up I heard applause. I kept my eyes shut and put the panties into the zip lock bag by feel alone. It wasn’t after I was looking down that I open my eyes. Only then did I drop the bag containing my panties into the cardboard box.
“Put the label on.”
I crouched again, using the wall as a shield. I peeled the backing off the label, the one showing my name and the damning prisoner number. I affixed the label to the box. Everything I owned was in that box. I had no money, no clothes, no dignity. It had all been taken away.
“Okay, princess,” I heard the Sheriff say, “hop on up.” I heard his hand slap the leather seat of the exam table.
I whimpered, trembling in shame. I glanced at Sheila who was still staring down at me. She was enjoying my plight, reveling in my shame. If she liked it so much maybe she should be here instead of me. Maybe I should find out what she drove and smash out her taillights. Maybe she wouldn’t be so enamored if it were happening to her.
The Sheriff made me jump by slapping the exam table again.
I wanted to put it off, but I had no choice. I stood, foolishly covering my breasts and pubic hair as best I could. It was useless, the crowd would see everything once my feet were in the stirrups, but it wasn’t a conscious decision. My arms moved on their own, trying to protect my modesty for as long as possible even if it was a losing proposition. They would see everything. I had nothing and the mob would see everything. The dichotomy was terrifying.
I jumped on the table to another round of applause.
The Sheriff stepped between the stirrups. He grabbed my ankles and set my knees into the stirrups. I shut my eyes, not wanting to face those who were facing me. I felt the straps buckle around my thighs. I felt another set of straps on my ankles. The Sheriff moved something, forcing the stirrups to move even further apart. I felt the cords in my thighs tighten as my legs were forced impossibly wide. Women are taught at an early age to keep their legs together and I wanted to close my legs. Much like that once-upon-a-time actress I, too, wanted to close my legs and like her, that pleasure was denied me.
The Sheriff ran his hands through my sparse pubic hair. “This’ll have to go.”
I whimpered at that, too.
The Sheriff leaned over my body and strapped my arms to the sides of the table. There I was, lying bound, my legs spread as wide as they’d ever been. Only the Sheriff’s body was blocking this shameful display from the throng of people outside the window. “Ready, princess,” the Sheriff said.
“Please,” I said, sounding nothing like a powerful judge, used to ruling over men and women alike. I sounded like a child afraid to look under the bed for fear of the monster lurking there.
“Of course, since you said please.”
The Sheriff moved away, revealing all of me to the Lookie-Lou’s, the leering lecherous men, and the hateful, contemptuous women. The applause was deafening. I kept my eyes glued shut but I could hear everything. There wasn’t anything flattering now. I was nothing but a convict getting the shame I deserved. My whole body was glowing red in shame. My legs were splayed open and no matter how much I strained against the straps, I couldn’t close them. They were open and they’d stay open until the Sheriff unshackled me.
I kept my head turned towards the nearest wall and I welded my eyes shut. I wanted to close my legs, oh, how I wanted to, and I wanted to flee, to be anywhere but lying open and undignified. I felt fresh tears in my eyes. My fingers dug into my palms. My chest rose and fell in abject humiliation.
I heard a tapping on the glass, but I didn’t dare look. I didn’t want to see the mocking, leering faces staring at my indecent display. The tapping continued and when I finally peeked, I saw Sheila tapping on the glass. She was giving me a thumbs up sign, as if to say way to go. This wasn’t something to be lauded. This was a hateful, humiliation defeat and nothing more. I shut my eyes again and turned away.
It was the sound of the Sheriff ripping open the box of latex exam gloves that made me took again. He was grinning, not as joyously as Sheila, but big enough. He put a glove on his monstrous hand. “Let’s make sure you’re not hiding anything up there, princess.”
I kept my mouth shut. I merely turned away again. I tried to imagine I was at the doctor. Only when I was at my ob/gyn I didn’t hear the loud din of a gathered crowd or the soft tune the Sheriff was now humming. I didn’t even try to place the song. It would only add to my shame.
The Sheriff opened the tube of KY jelly. The cap fell to the floor causing him to chuckle. “Butterfingers,” he joked. “Get it.” I did and it was stupid. I kept my mouth shut.
I flexed when the Sheriff finally touched me and whimpered as a fresh bout of humiliation washed over me when the Sheriff’s fingers penetrated me. His fingers were thick and when he pushed, I grunted in pain. He waggled his finger, probing me. Searching for contraband was a lie. I was a judge, meeting professionally in a police station, why would I be hiding anything? But it wasn’t about that. No, it was about adding to my shame. Reducing me even more from a high-powered judge to a meaningless strumpet that didn’t matter to anyone.
“Seems clean to me,” the Sheriff mused.
I kept quiet about that, too.
“Still, I think we need a second opinion.”
Again, my legs strained as I tried to close them. The straps and stirrups held firm. I didn’t need an audience and I didn’t need a second opinion.
The Sheriff’s voice rose, loud enough to carry through the glass, “Sheila, come in here.”
Sheila left the window and a moment later I heard her enter the exam room. “Can I help you, Sheriff.” Then, as if she just spotted me, “oh, well, this is embarrassing. Why didn’t you tell me you’d caught another harlot?” She followed that with another dig, “let me guess. Prostitution? She looks like a whore, open for business.” Both she and the Sheriff chuckled as I seethed in shame, yes, but anger, too.
“Can you help me out?” the Sheriff asked.
“Of course. What do you need?”
The Sheriff handed Sheila the box of exam gloves. “We need to make sure she won’t be smuggling anything into the prison later.”
Sheila, all smiles as she donned an exam gloved, said, “I get it. Can’t let these sluts get away with anything.”
The Sheriff had been course, shoving his fingers in me with an indifference that was way more welcome than what Sheila did. Sheila slipped first one and then a second into me. Then with her thumb she began masturbating me. Slowly at first, then fast, and faster still. She was skilled and no matter how much I wanted to ignore what she was doing, soon I found my body betraying me. I felt a rising need growing under Sheila’s touch. The fingers on one hand pumped into me. With her other hand she caressed the most interested part of me until I felt my hips bucking as much as the straps would allow. Just as my pleasure peaked, Sheila pulled her hands away. I hissed and whimpered, “no,” hating myself but unable to stop the word. Outside the window I heard another chorus of applause.
“She’s clean there,” Sheila said. “Guess we should check her other hole, too.”
“Good idea.”
It was not a good idea but bound and spread as I was, I had no choice. I was no longer a judge. No, I was a helpless bimbo played with by my betters.
Sheila added another dollop of lube to her fingers. Still gave me a smile that was anything but comforting. It was full of malicious animosity. I knew Sheila to be a bully by the look she gave me. She put one hand on my stomach and then faced Lakewood Avenue. She waved her hand making the din outside the picture window grow even louder. She was playing for an audience and I was the instrument.
When the applause was loud enough, Sheila slipped a finger into my ass. I grunted and nearly bit my tongue. The pleasure she had brought was replaced by this new shameful indignity. She probed my ass, feeling around as if I had planned on being arrested and had decided to smuggle contraband into a prison. I was supposed to be spying on the Sheriff during my sabbatical, not spread out like an insect on a cork board in a middle-school classroom.
Still playing to the audience, Sheila began masturbating me again. As before she played with my body until I was on the unwelcome precipice of release. Just as my pleasure began to crest, Sheila pulled her hands from my body, leaving me panting and aching for more. “She’s clean, Sheriff.” I turned my head to watch Sheila remove her gloves and deposit them into a fresh zip lock bag. She dumped that bag into my box of clothes. When I got those back, I would have a shameful souvenir.
“That’s good.” He stared at me forcing me to turn away again. “Maybe we need a second opinion.” He raised his voice again, shouting to be heard over the din of the appreciative crowd. “Line up,” he called. “Sheila will get you kitted out.”
My head snapped toward Sheila and the Sheriff. Sheila was leaving the exam room, carrying the box of latex gloves with her. It wasn’t until I saw her outside, standing on the crowded street of Lakewood Avenue that the full weight of what the Sheriff had said crashed into me. Sheila was passing out the exam gloves, one to everyone present. I moaned and then cried. My crying turned to sobs. How many gloves were in a box? What had the Sheriff said? The box will do nicely. I now knew what he meant.
One by one the gawkers came, getting an up-close view of what they'd witnessed through the window. Each of them probed my body, sticking their fingers into my ass or my pussy. Sometimes both at the same time. Some caressed me, trying to elicit a pleasurable sigh but most were there just to shame me. I kept my eyes shut but couldn’t turn off my ears. I heard derision in every word. I was a judge. I wasn’t used to feeling this low. This degraded. My body hurt. My pussy was poked, prodded, pinched, slapped, tickled, and tormented but it was my mind that hurt the most. I was better than this. This wasn’t fair.
Through it all I strained against the straps that held me open. I tried to close my legs until my thighs burned. It was just another agony in a long line of discomfort. No matter how much I wanted to close them, I couldn’t. The hateful asylum straps held firm.
When the last hand left my body, I hadn’t been aware of it. I was too busy berating myself for being here. Surely this was my fault. Why had I volunteered to make sure the Sheriff had obeyed the laws written because of him? Why did I believe I had the power to make him comply? The Sheriff held all the power. I was nothing but a strumpet bound for the cotton fields, working under the oppressive Southern sun until I begged to be a whore. Being here didn’t make me smart. It made me stupid and I did it to myself.
“Sheila!”
I kept my eyes shut and turned away. I didn’t want to see what was coming anyway.
“Yes, Sheriff.”
“Let’s get her dressed. The judge is ready for her.”
I used to be a judge. I would decide the punishment for the people brought before me. I always tried to be fair and reasonable, balancing the need to protect the community with the fact that these people were not monsters no matter how monstrous their crimes. Sometimes I had to be harsh. The law was like that, especially on repeat offenders, but I had committed no crime. I had set out for justice and now found myself nothing but a cog in a powerful, unyielding machine. If I broke the machine would keep spinning and they wanted to break me. I wanted to think I wouldn’t let them, but I knew that wasn’t true. I would be broken. The only question was how long would it take.
When the Sheriff unstrapped me, I barely noticed. He helped me off the exam table only to catch me as I tumbled to the ground. I sat there, numb and trembling. I spotted the cap to the tube of KY Jelly that had fallen to the floor. How long would it sit there? Would it still be there when the next foolish woman cycled through town? How long until the next innocent victim drove down Lakewood Avenue, wanting to stop for a drink, enticed by a sign advertising soft drinks for a mere twenty-five cents?
Sheila came in with a burlap sack. She threw it on me with a chuckle.
“Get dressed, princess,” the Sheriff said amiably.
The sack was scratchy and filthy. Dried mud caked the hem. There was a cutout for my head and two tiny holes for my arms. Printed on the sack was a large potato with a pair of googly eyes and a mouth curled up in a smile. Happy was printed above the potato and Farms was stenciled below. Happy Farm potatoes. My dress was literally a potato sack. Still, it was better than nothing and beggars, as the saying goes, can’t be choosers. The potato sack, while still shameful, was a far cry better than naked.
Sitting on the floor I donned the musty burlap sack. Dried mud crumbled and fell to the floor. It was scratch and uncomfortable. It was almost too small. There was a rip in the front, revealing an uncomfortable amount of cleavage.
“On your feet.”
I staggered to my feet. The bag was too short. It left most of my ass uncovered and only by standing perfectly still was my modesty in front retained. Any movement or any wind would reveal my violated pussy to any who happened to be nearby.
“Thank you, Sheila,” the Sheriff said. “Always a pleasure.” He dipped a little nod.
“The pleasure was all mine,” she said. “You’ll let me know when she gets to Convicts? I’m looking forward to taking her for a spin.”
“You bet.”
Sheila left me there, my mouth agape. Maybe she was right. Maybe I was a prostitute. If not in action, but in the eyes of this small, hateful town. The actions would come later.
“Come on, princess. The judge is waiting for you. We’ll get you sentenced, checked into the prison, and out in the fields by three.”