The institutionalised tr.., p.67
The Institutionalised Trilogy, page 67
As to the third part, the question of her wrongdoing and of her deservedness of punishment the answer was simple: nothing and none. She was entirely blameless, as were they all, and therein hung the most exquisite irony - she had been a blonde-haired, bubbling voluptuous perfection of flowering womanhood. Had she not been, had she been dumpy and plain, then the slow dismantling of that perfection would not have held such piquancy for those that had manipulated her, those who were ultimately responsible for her incarceration and were more than happy to pay for its continuance.
Momentarily bathed in the flare-up of some small residual ember of defiance, she risked glancing along table. Great mounds of sumptuous fabrics served to delineate one workstation from the next. Everywhere butter-satins and coil silk brocade vied with diaphanous chiffon, tulle, organza and the lustrous subtly two-toned champagne-shimmer of dupion silk to capture the eye. Damask ribbons and luxurious laces struggled forlornly for prominence against hypnotically stunning Swarovski crystal beading and all manner of exquisite embellishments in what was for all intents a bridal-meringue heaven of cloudlike shimmering gossamer luxury.
Seated and appropriately secured, she was passed a dress; it was an immense thing, a hopelessly over-opulent cathedral-length bridal gown and a veritable river of platinum draped-satin.
“Hand-finished in England with love, care and attention” it said inside - even the label itself was picked out in gold thread and had clearly been hand embroidered. And so it would be - all that precious intricate detailing, the kind of eyesight-eroding handiwork that was guaranteed to draw gasps of awe, would have had care and attention aplenty lavished upon it come the bride’s special day. The comments and compliments will undoubtedly come thick and fast; there will be admiring glances and incredulous voices struggling against a backdrop of jubilation and laughter.
“Can you just imagine the work that went into that?” someone will breathlessly enthuse. Another will excitedly gabble: “How could anyone sit working away for the number of hours that something like that must take to complete?”
Here sat six young ladies who could answer the latter question easily enough: it took discipline, strict discipline, workhouse discipline. It took the kind of discipline that could only exist and thrive behind high walls and security fences - and then only when enforced by the threat of the cane, tawse, paddle and martinet.
It took the kind of exploitative discipline that many had believed had disappeared with the Victorian workhouse system, eradicated by social reform, enlightened views and the more open social structure of the modern world. Yet it persisted here, under the guise of the enlightened application of the scientific method. Here work was carried out that was beyond economic mechanisation, work traditionally, if discreetly, confined to the sweatshops of the Third World. But how much more profitable when not only are labour costs practically zero to start with but certain workers actually attract income in their own right, through the sponsorship of their detention.
The seamstress’s voice rang in Susan Stringer’s ears. “Get that stupid head of yours down and get back to work!” Crestfallen she turned to her needlework...and then she froze: There, in amongst the piles of shimmering nuptial exaltation - the snow-white satins and ivory silks - a label had flipped out from within a scalloped neck. A coat of arms; a swan, collared in gold and chained by the neck, the very epitome of beauty and grace in bondage, stood surmounted by a coronet picked out in gold thread.
This had once been the symbol of quality in bespoke matrimonial wear - and one day would again. But more poignantly, this was a symbol she knew only too well of old. She had grown up bathed in its shadow; a marque that had grown in prominence even as she herself had reached skyward, precious inch by tottering inch. This was a marque seemingly symbolising her life - indeed it was her life, it was her family, the family business in fact, the company that had prospered so greatly under her late father and that should now rightly be under her control! Instead - in some way beyond her comprehension - either directly or indirectly she was under its control. She was under the control of what was effectively her own company, albeit presently held in trust and under the chairmanship of her stepmother... from now on she was going to be slaving away for her own company! And in chains!
A tear formed, welling up from the beautiful corn flower blue depths of those heartbreaking - and heartbroken - eyes. It trickled, gathered momentum, fell splattering on to the perfect fabric in her hands, defiling some perfect young woman’s equally perfect wedding dress...Then came another, then another and yet another, gathering pace, each more brimming, each heavier with despair then the last...A continuum formed rivulets, tributaries matured to torrent and torrent became flood - there could be only one outcome.
A jarring, nerve-jangled gasp quivered its way past her soft, full lips as the first audible snivel provoked the first of many, many accompanying jolts of high-voltage, low current electricity. Safe, yet far from harmless, at least psychologically speaking, the static discharge-like shocks would continue until such a point as she might regain control and resume sitting passively mute.
Yet she wasn’t to get the chance - already the seamstress was on her feet and advancing toward her along the row of silently perspiring girls, each bent intently over her needlework as if nothing else in the world existed or mattered. The stern woman, walking slowly, purposefully and with her full mature hips swinging beneath her tight tailored serge skirt, unclipped the chestnut red-brown tawse from where it perpetually hung from her black leather belt beneath her jacket as she came, slapping the heavy thick leather, once in her hand, lightly yet threateningly against her thigh in time with the casual unhurried rhythm of her gait - she had all the time in the world to deal with this girl...
But even that had been... how long ago? Weeks? Months? For the once inquisitive, imaginative young Susan Stringer time had now merged into one long drawn-out treacly strand of mindless repetition and equally mindless toil. If she could have seen herself she would have been shocked - not by how she appeared as an individual but rather how that very individuality now merged seamlessly into the institutionalised background of everything else. When lined up and with her wrists securely handcuffed behind her back, numbered and in green and white striped prison uniform dress, she was now totally indistinguishable from any of the other browbeaten subjects who waited with head bowed submissively at the security grille to be let into the workroom each period. This was an obedient girl, a girl who knew her place, a girl who simply worked when told, went to the toilet when told, returned to her cell when told, slept when told and did so without argument - and latterly, much without thinking, if truth be told.
Punishment had certainly found a place in moulding her but more pleasant aspects, too, had had a part to play in instilling that obedience. There was a humming, buzzing, throb that seemed to carry throughout the entire body and structure of the bench she and her nameless colleagues would be sat upon while daily bent to their tasks - pleasant in its way, it was never quite enough. As the work drew her in, consumed her mind, her crotch would rub back and forth as if possessed of a mind of its own. Only from time to time would she become aware of her own actions - these were most often the times that the hot flush of arousal would light her cheeks. The seamstress, or sometimes a supervising nurse, would ‘tut’ to themselves, perhaps smile condescendingly - and the cruel fuel of humiliation would work its magic and further kindle her burning red-cheeked face.
Her pale, sun-starved, face angelically framed within the anachronistic bottle-green striped bonnet of her uniform, the dried tear-traced streaks now lent a street-urchin girlish charm that was easily the equal of some truly pitiful denizen of the Victorian workhouse system. On her the prison uniform dress they kept her in no longer looked at odds with the era in which she actually existed. Rather it seemed the other way around; her mannerisms, customary bowed-head posture and submissive demeanour seemed to cause her, somehow, to look as if shifted in time. Looking at her now, it was as if one were peeking through some privileged peephole in time back to a simpler age. An era in which the social strata were well defined, an age wherein such a girl might well have found herself confined to the workhouse or some other such institution for some minor misdemeanour or other - perhaps even as a result of some trumped-up charge brought about merely for having slighted a well-placed, would-be suitor. In short: she looked now to belong to a different world entirely, a world wherein such a girl would have been docilely accepting of her station, would have naturally bowed to authority and would never have as much as dared even consider herself suitable for any role above scullery maid or at best lady’s maid - if pretty enough to appear decorative about the place in the home of some well-to-do society woman.
Day after day, the bell signifying the end of the work period would ring and the uniformed girl would look up from her needlework, a strangely lopsided, weak smile now more often than not playing around her lips... It was the routine - it meant it was time to be led back to her cell - and she would be glad, she always was now... After all, she felt safe in her cell, now - there she would be safely under lock and key.
There would be a short period of ‘free time’, when the other girls would be allowed to pace up and down within the narrow confines of their cells, but this she would spend with her hands on her head and her nose pointed into the corner - she accepted that now, she knew she deserved it.
The sleep bell would ring and those others - now firmly secured in medical restraints on their mattresses and the key having been turned in the padlocks that secured the barred sides and tops of their narrow mental-asylum-styled cage-beds - would be allowed at last to sleep. Yet still she would remain, standing forlornly and alone in the corner of her cell, her nice safe cosy cell, with her hands on her head - and knowing full well that the slightest digression from her prescribed position could so easily provide her with the half-dozen or so prison-cane strokes that the day’s inhumanly hard work had, so far, excused her from.
Finally they would come, the Senior Wardress and her nurse assistant. She would be allowed to use, albeit under close supervision, the little transparent plastic bedpan that presently stood taunting her between her plastic bottle-green shoes. Under detailed instruction she would be allowed to undress, the routine as painstaking on the part of the staff as it was irksome and tiresome to their charge. She was being disciplined to the point of awaiting specific instruction before unfastening each individual button of her awful, perspiration dampened, nylon prison uniform overal-dress.
One by one the buttons would be unfastened when indicated, with her meekly responding with “yes miss” at each instruction and then a submissive “thank you miss, may I unfastened another?” after each was duly undone.
And so the long-winded, tiresome process of undressing would be progress, button by button - slowed still further by her ever-worsening crippling stammer and their insistence that she repeat the entire formula whenever she stumble and stutter over a word as well as by her lead-heavy and near mindless weariness. Then, in the same manner, it would be time to tackle the complex fastenings pertaining to her underwear, those that she could manage unaided, anyway - although those were few. Always the sequence of instructions would differ slightly, although her responses were to remain the same. After all, it was not their intention that she should blindly follow a specified sequence per se so much as she should mindlessly follow instruction, to the letter - no matter what that instruction might entail or by whom it was issued.
At long last she would be able to dress in the mid-thigh length hospital issue PVC nightdress with its matching voluminous knee-length incontinence bloomers and be placed in the full six-point medical restraint system that graced the bed platform in her cell. Lastly the folding cage system would be unclipped from its retaining catches up on the wall and swung down to be locked in place around and over her bed. The latter formed what amounted to a cage within the cage and was largely redundant - given the unassailable security of the cell itself and the fact that the inmate was thoroughly restrained with arms down by her sides and legs spread, strapped firmly to her mattress - but for the psychological impact it had on the girls forced to sleep within its security, the cage-bed was an invaluable device.
She would be allowed to sleep then, but it would not be for long - even now she was still undergoing what was described as a ‘restricted sleep pattern’. It was the on-going price she still had to pay for having once dared to argue, for having once dared to resist and struggle against the system. It was designed to help break her down - and it was doing its job quite nicely.
But first, before any of that, before she would even be as much as allowed to leave the immediate precincts of the workroom, she would have to bend for the cane. True, she had managed her work quota today, they all had in fact, but still she had the prescribed brace of cane-strokes to come.
The doctor’s prescription had been simple but surprisingly detailed: Two strokes were to be laid across the subject’s bare buttocks while she was tightly bent at the waist and grasping her ankles with both hands. The subject was to keep her legs locked straight and her heels off the floor throughout, politely thank her chastiser, after each stroke, for being so kind as to have taken the time to correct her behaviour and to docilely bring her lips to the cane when proffered at the end of the punishment. Any digression from this sequence and formula, no matter how slight or trivial, was to result in the subject receiving both strokes anew from scratch. Three such failures were to result in the subject receiving a full six stroke disciplinary punishment, with the subject secured, spread-legged, over the trestle. This whole procedure was to be repeated twice per day - once upon waking and once before being allowed to retire - and was to continue until such a time as the doctor might decide to revoke it.
The only revision made to that prescription, since its conception, was to tweak the timing of its execution such that it would always be carried out in front of her fellow inmates.
This was the sixtieth day of that revised prescription, the one-hundred-and-twentieth time she been required to pull down her latex bloomers in front of the five other girls that went to make up the workhouse-regime trial group. Accordingly, coming up would be the one hundred and thirty ninth and the one hundred and fortieth cane-cuts of those she had routinely received since that date.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, others had their own trials and tribulations to deal with - and not all necessarily restricted to the inmates. Indeed, unknown to Susan Stringer, at that very moment events were unfolding outside of her cruelly restricted little world the implications of which seemed to hint that the powers-that-be, those behind the scenes long fondly believing themselves free of the interference of university ethics committees, probing, busy-body social-workers and the like, might not be quite as immune to investigation as they had once thought.
Police, Camera, Action
(Posture discipline, forced PT and hair cutting, psychological conditioning, caning)
Bong...bong...bong...
Seemingly originating from everywhere at once, an electronically-generated chime softly sung out its entraining command. The tone, a mellow, resonant gong-like ‘C’, played one octave below middle C, was as rounded and as gentle as to politely usher aside the silence rather than shatter the peace. Yet, diffusing lazily through the sparse, white and uncertain cuboid space of the room, barely had its final throbbing tintinnabulation had time to fade before it was replaced by the harshly hissing, rasp and rustle of nylon.
Spurred into conditioned action in response, like some life-sized marionette, the violet-eyed girl smartly rushed to stand within the thick black perimeter of a ring marked out on the floor. One of several such markers positioned around the room, this particular zone lay before the nigh-imperceptible outline of the door toward which she was now faced.
Pausing only to smooth out the wrinkles and creases in the skirt of her green and white striped dress and grasping the slippery fabric at the hem between the thumb and forefinger of each hand, as if contemplating a curtsy, patient 30C assumed the requisite pose. With her arms - and hence dress - held stiffly out to her sides at some forty to forty-five degrees to her body and with one foot placed in front of the other, a simple submissive inclination of a pretty head clad in a beribboned humiliatingly-anachronistic bonnet, a partial bending of the knees - and the perfect image of still-frame genuflection was complete...All that was left now was the waiting.
And so she would wait, as she had so many times before, countless times before. She would wait...and wait...and wait. She knew she would wait because they always made her wait, it was all part of the discipline you see - it was good for her. Already her plumply-feminine frame was quivering - partly in fear, partly through the sheer physical trial of maintaining that endurance-sapping pose. It hurt those now flaccid dancer’s muscles: Pointedly denied the long hours of exercise it had taken to hone and tone that frame, her physique had now taken on a much more softly-contoured feminine aspect - one that was both pleasing to the eye and that matched her now burgeoning buttocks, hips and bosom. It hurt like hell...but it hurt far less than the cane that would be repeatedly laid across her bare backside if she should capitulate to the ache in her limbs - and the shame that would burn within as, once again, she would be broken to tears.
Officially referred to as temporary waiting accommodation, this blank-walled box of a room had been home to its sole lonely occupant for a little over two months now - the girl had neither ventured nor seen beyond its walls for all of that time. Yet she, herself, had been kept constantly under observation throughout, her every action filmed and recorded. Her most basic of bodily functions had been carefully measured and logged and every behavioural nuance and response had been scrutinised and analysed as if she were some caged lab rat. Yet in a sense that was exactly what she was, a lab rat; this was a scientific study after all and she was the subject, no more than that... that she was a caged lab rat was without doubt.
