The Death Penalty

By Trystl



I can't believe this is happening, Sara Johnson thought to herself.  How
did I ever let myself get trapped with a husband like this?  He'd seemed
like such a catch at the time.

Sara's arms were bound tightly behind her back, in a Japanese style
chest harness; she was lying on a musty mattress, still damp from her own
urine.  He'd left her bound for what seemed like days; then punished her,
when he found that she couldn't hold her water, by looping a rope around
her waist and tying it off with a slip knot.  As he'd pulled the rope tight
she'd felt her organs sloshing around inside her as they adjusted to the
new shape of her body.  It was an odd feeling, not too unlike mud being
squished through her toes.  He'd tied the end of the waist-rope to the mass
of knots behind her back, tugging to make it as tight as he possibly could.
Even with her back arched the rough fibers of the rope tore at the tender
flesh between her legs.

Next he'd bent each of her legs at the knees, wrapping more rope around
her ankles and thighs.  Except for the rope, and a gag--which was held in
place by a leather head-harness--she was naked.  Ugly welts striped her
breast, stomach and legs.  They would fade rapidly as they healed.  "It's
lucky you have such pale skin," he'd told her on more than one occasion. 
"It marks so nicely.  If you were darker there'd be scars."

And she always thought, I'd be darker if you ever let me go outside.

It had been months since she'd seen the light of day; years since she'd
actually felt the sun's rays on her skin.  She'd been dark enough when
she'd met him.  She'd loved the feel of the sun's warm rays, lying out for
at least a few minutes almost every day.  She hating looking so sickly
pale; and missed the smell of the grass and the feel of her favorite
sunning towel crushing the newly cut blades beneath her.

I can't believe I married such a monster... he wasn't a man.  Calling
him a man was too good for him.  And yet, she thought, I would call him an
angel and promise to bless his name throughout all eternity, if he would
just end this torment and let me die.

Her muscles ached, cramping as she shivered in the cool air.  She could
hear the soft hum of the air conditioning.  He opened the vent to this
small room on purpose, knowing the small space would quickly become to cold
for comfort, for someone not wearing any clothes.  He liked to keep the
room cool so he wouldn't get too hot when he worked on her.  Even with the
coolness, his recent beating had left her covered in the sheen of
perspiration.  It made the welts he'd raised sting, but that had quickly
dried when she no longer had a reason to wiggle and squirm.

Her arms felt like dead weights.  But she was used to it.  Sometimes
they ached so much when he punished her for long periods, like this, that
she wondered if she would ever be able to use them effectively again.  I've
definitely lost strength, she thought.  She was convinced her muscles had
atrophied from the hours of disuse and lack of freely flowing blood.  It
used to bother her when she had difficulty with bottles and jars that
should have been easy to open, but not anymore.  She hardly noticed the
strange pains that sometimes flared up, even when she wasn't tied.  As if
her body were remembering everything that had been done to it, even as she
herself tried to forget.

Footsteps.

He was coming.  She could hear his distinctive shuffle as he approached
the bedroom door.

The key rattled and the knob turned.  She felt the rush of warm air,
tainted with the distinctive smell of his cigarettes; heard the flip of a
switch, and closed her eyes a moment before light flooded the room. 
Squirming on her bed, she turned towards him despite the discomfort the
ropes caused when she moved.  Maybe it was the sudden light and not her own
fear, but tears were already falling as he approached the bed and loomed
over her.

"You gonna cry, already?" he asked.  "Maybe I should give you something
to cry about."

Rough fingers took hold of her breast and squeezed, digging nails into
her skin; pulling as if he were trying to rip a chunk of raw hamburger from
the rest of the pack without removing the plastic first.  She screamed into
her gag, trying to arch her back in an effort to relieve some of the
pressure, but the crotch-rope didn't give her much leeway.

Please, not the breasts, she thought.  Her breasts, although not that
large, were quite sensitive.  That, of course, made them one of his
favorite targets.  And now they were more tender than normal and still
swollen from the clamps he'd used earlier that day--or had it been longer?
Locked here in this basement room, time tended to loose its meaning.

For once, he seemed to hear her and let go, but he didn't leave.

He never left that easily.  Instead he picked her up and set her down
again, with her legs under her.  Then he pushed her, forcing her to lay
back, her body held in an awkward arch because of the tension on the rope
between her legs.

She knew what was coming next.

He loved to humiliate her this way, slowly climbing onto the bed.  She
could feel the bed sinking as it took his weight; hear the squeak of the
springs as he crept up along her body, brushing his nakedness against her:
the hairs on his leg, his flaccid prick, the scrape of his toenails against
her hips as he sat on her chest, catching his balance and pressing her down
so that the rope burned between her legs and she wondered if she was
bleeding.  He spread his knees a little and rocked his hips forward;
forcing his balls to bump against her chin, her nose.

"Can ya smell that," he asked as he reached around and grabbed one of
her nipples, twisting and pinching until she cried out with the pain of it.

She hated the musty smell of him; but this humiliating little ritual
always came first.

Sliding his fingers into the strands of her thick hair and balling his
hands into fists, he pulled her head forward grinding her face into his
crotch and rubbing her nose along the crack of his ass.  He always did this
just before taking his shower, to make sure that his odors were at their
most rank.

Finally, he sat back on her chest again and began to remove the gag. 
When he was done with her, it would go back on, without giving her the
chance to wash the horrible taste of him from her mouth.  She felt the
strap loosen and instinctively clamped down with her teeth, trying to keep
him from removing it, but she still remembered the first and only time
she'd tried to resist.  He'd used both fists to simultaneously punch both
her jaw muscles.  Her mouth had ached for more than a week; and he'd ripped
the gag out anyway.  So when he began to pull, she forced herself to relax
as much as she could.  The gag had been in her mouth for so long that her
jaw ached; she should have been happy to have it out, but she knew it
wouldn't last long.

As if to prove her right, she felt the cold metal on her lips, and
reluctantly opened for it.

She wasn't sure what she'd do if he forced himself inside her mouth
without something to keep it open, but he was smart enough not to find out.
For a long time, he'd used to us an "O" ring gag; but then he brought home
one of those dentist's springs, from the office where he worked.  Working
with it a bit, he'd tweaked the spring strength and welded on a few
additional pieces of metal so that no matter how wide she held her mouth,
the pieces dug into her tender palate.  She thoroughly hated the spring
gag, so of course, it quickly become one of his favorite toys.

"Open up," he said, holding it out now.

It was pointless to hesitate.  Hesitation only gave him an excuse to
punish her more.  And yet she'd never willingly been able to accept the
spring gag without making him prove yet again that he would used any means
necessary to get what he wanted.  He looked down at her and calmly took a
deep puff on his cigarette, until the embers glowed brightly.  "I'm
waiting," he said as he laid the cigarette down on her chest and rolled it
up across part of her breast with his fingers.

She gasped, panting with the pain until he picked the cigarette back up
and sucked the ember back to life as he examined his handiwork.

"That's a pretty shade of pink," he said, taking the cigarette in his
fingers once again.

"All right, all right, all right!" She said, squeezing her eyes shut,
and opening her mouth as wide as she could.

Instead of burning her again, as she'd half feared, he held the springs
of the gag together, and slid the metal past her teeth.  She groaned as the
metal dug into the roof of her mouth.

"That's good," he said, twining his fingers into her hair again.

Sara tried to take a deep breath like she always did, just before he
entered, but something made her cough.  Perhaps it was a larger than normal
speck of dust, or a piece of lint that had clung to his body and chosen
this moment to fall off.  Not paying any attention to her spasms, he shoved
his cock into her opened mouth, causing her to choke all the more.

"Oh yeah," he said as her tongue balled up in the gag reflex and pressed
against him.

He pressed deeper inside her, ramming his pelvic bone against her teeth;
pressing her nose against his belly as she bucked beneath him, so that when
she ran out of air and tried to take a breath all her air passages were
firmly covered.  He pulled almost all the way out, but when she tried to
draw a breath, her throat seemed to draw closed on her allowing only a
wheezing trickle of air to make its way into her lungs.  Then he was
thrusting inside her mouth again, blocking all the passageways.

Sara felt the blackness creeping over her mind; and her last thought
before she died was, what did I ever do to deserve a death like this?

Sara didn't believe in an afterlife.  After all, what kind of god would
allow a person to endure the kind of life she'd had?  Certainly no god she
was willing to believe in--so she was more than a little surprised when she
opened her eyes and found herself strapped down to a chair in a sterile
white room.

"Well now," came a male voice from somewhere behind the chair.  "That
wasn't too bad for your fourth term."

"My fourth term?" Her voice sounded strained and funny in her ears; and
she couldn't seem to make sense of the words.

A man wearing a white frock stepped into view.  A doctor perhaps?

"Don't tell me you've forgotten your first three terms already, Mr. 
Johnson," he said, shining a small penlight into one of Sara's eyes.

Mr.  Johnson?

She blinked, trying to puzzle out the strange words and figure out what
was going on...

...And then the memories did come flooding back: like waking from a long
dream and suddenly realizing she was not who she thought she was.  Part of
the mind still clung to the identity that was Sara, but the deeper part of
the mind that had lain dormant knew now that it wasn't even female.  Sara
had merely been the name of the identity they had given him inside their
virtual world.  It sounded familiar but he couldn't remember why.  His
thoughts and memories were still a bit fuzzy.

"I see it's coming back to you," the man in the white frock said as he
moved the pen light to the other eye.  "Your memories will tend to become
progressively harder to regain after each term, but this early in the
series you shouldn't be having any real problems yet.  Any dizziness? 
Disorientation?"

He glared at the doctor.  He didn't like being placed into the mind of
such a pathetically, spineless creature as that Sara character had been.

Apparently the doctor decided he wasn't going to get an answer so he
supplied one himself, "No?" he said, moving on to the next eye: shining the
light around as he leaned close, as if trying to look inside the soul. 
"I'm afraid your next term won't be as mild as this one was," the doctor
went on.  "Military war prisoner under intense and extended interrogation.
It was cultivated from an actual experience, if that sort of thing
interests you, with a few extra details thrown in by the designers for just
the right effect."

His anger was becoming increasingly cold.  He didn't like being
restrained, or having this know-it-all fuck talk to him like that.  "No one
treats me this way," he thought.  "One of these days you'll learn that."

Without making any sudden movements, he tried to test the restraints. 
He couldn't feel his arms.  He didn't feel the resistance of straps holding
him back.  His arms and legs must be paralyzed with some kind of numbing
anesthesia.  So for now he'd have to accept that he was helpless.  But
there would come a time.  He'd get his chance.  Until then, he could wait.

"So what happens next?" he asked.

"After I've given you your post-inspection physical?" the doctor asked
with mild amusement.

So glad I can keep you entertained, he thought.

"Part of what makes the overall process so effective is giving the
subject enough time between each virtual term to assimilate what they've
experienced.  Therefore, you'll remain here until your next scheduled
reentry, which is noon on the day after tomorrow."

"Here?  In this room?"

"Not only in this room, but in this chair."

"You've got to be kidding," he exploded.

"Oh, believe me... I never kid when it comes to discussing the process."

"What if I need to take a shit?"

"That won't be necessary," the doctor said.  "You may not have noticed
yet, but your plumbing is attached to the chair.  We have the ability, of
course, to run the simulations at a very fast speed.  We could run the
simulation so fast that you wouldn't have time to feel any needs, even if
you were eating normal food--which you are not.  But it's been our
observation that subjects tend to experience the events more like memories
when we do it that way.  Not totally ineffective, but certainly not as
powerful as it is if the full term is played out at very nearly the speed
of real life...  or even slower.  Some of the most effective rehabilitative
associations, however, occur during those moments of intense anticipation
while the subject wonders what terrible things are in store for them next.
And, your next session will indeed be quite a terrible ordeal; much worse
than this last session, you can trust me on that.  It will take just over
seven months of real time to complete."

"Seven months?"

"Feeling a bit helpless?" the doctor asked cheerfully.  "It's not very
pleasant is it?  But then I expect it wasn't very pleasant for your wife
either."

"For my wife?"

Once again more memories came flooding back.

Sara had been his wife.  Now he remembered the pleasure he had taken
from beating her; and he remembered the anger he'd felt when she'd died
beneath him, robbing him of his future pleasures.  Only now those memories
were mingled with the memories of the pain and fear he had felt as her. 
Had they fed her actual memories back to him, or had they been simulated
from the memories they'd raped from his own mind during the trial?

Whatever happened to the old world constitution and not being allowed to
force a man to testify against himself?

"Well then," said the doctor.  "I see you're well on your way to
remembering, so I suppose I'll leave you to your own thoughts now.  I'll
see you again in a couple of days."