VIDEO STORE by Joe Doe NATALIE IS INTRIGUED TO DISCOVER THAT THE VIDEO STORE IN HER BOYFRIEND'S HOMETOWN RENTS POLICE STRIP-SEARCH VIDEOS. Natalie looked at the crowded video shelves and sighed. So much entertainment, so little time.... She was staying at her boyfriend's parents' house for the weekend. Steve's mom had suggested watching "Steel Magnolias," but his Dad had a different sort of entertainment in mind. Steve explained that, though he usually rented, he had purchased this tape because the woman in the first segment had been his high school history teacher, and he had always had a crush on her. Even though he was in college now, he had never forgotten about those long, lazy days in history class, watching her reach for the top of the blackboard.... At first the tape seemed to be a tedious home movie about an attractive young woman paying her water bill at city hall. The video seemed boring until the clerk asked the woman if she had compared the meter figure on the bill to the meter outside her home. When she admitted that she had not, the nerdy clerk left the counter and returned with a Sheriff's deputy. The grinning deputy immediately escorted the confused woman into the portion of the building used by the police department. Natalie watched in amazement as the woman was led into a large tiled room, which appeared to be empty except for a small cabinet, a few chairs, and a medical examination table. Natalie was stunned when the grinning deputy ordered the blushing woman to remove "every stitch" of her clothing! She seemed reluctant to disrobe, until the deputy pointedly reminded her that "the Sheriff will paddle your fanny if you resist arrest!" Natalie gasped as the blushing young woman reluctantly began unbuttoning her blouse. Natalie felt her own face turn red as Steve and his dad began to hoot and wolf whistle at the unfortunate woman on the screen. The first portion of the video had been rather crude; there were apparently only two cameras in the payment area, and the sound had been difficult to hear. But the search room had ceiling cameras mounted in all four corners, as well as those mounted on the walls. Natalie noticed that she could even hear the unfortunate woman gasping as the smiling deputy expanded the recessed steel stirrups that had been folded under the table. Natalie clenched her own thighs together as the leering deputy locked the humiliating stirrups into place with two highly audible CLICKS. She watched intently as the furiously blushing woman stripped herself naked in front of the grinning deputy. Just when Natalie thought the things couldn't get worse for the woman, the deputy snapped on a pair of tight latex gloves and ordered the crimson-faced woman to put her feet into the stirrups. The exam was detailed, slow, painstakingly thorough, and anything but amateurish. Steve and his father watched the woman's debasement as though it were a football game, casually critiquing the deputy's technique as they evaluated the squirming woman's anatomy in the most graphic ways imaginable. Natalie, too, found the video exciting, although she wasn't as vocal as the two hooting, whistling men sitting next to her. She was a teacher herself, and she couldn't help identifying with the humiliated woman in the video. And she knew that every one of her male students would RACE to the video store on his 18th birthday if a video of her were available! She shuddered at the thought. The naked woman was marched, with her hands cuffed behind her back, to the shower and delousing area of the station. She was sat on a long wooden bench next to a man who had been arrested for assault. The teacher was left on the bench naked and cuffed; the fully clothed male prisoner had no restraints whatsoever. The exposed woman blushed and squirmed as male officers and other visitors to the station dropped by to munch on the doughnuts that had been placed close by. It was only after the humiliated woman was showered and deloused that the nerdy village clerk returned to reveal his mistake. It seems that double checking the meter wasn't really a requirement after all. It was an innocent mistake. The woman was immediately released. "Justice is done," Steve chortled. Natalie mumbled something about the outrageous consequences of the clerk's error. And why didn't they search the MALE suspect? They let him post bail right at the station, and they didn't even cuff him. It was so unfair! "That geek of a clerk went to school with me, and he had a crush on her, too", Steve chuckled. "Nobody made any 'mistakes,' Natalie -- except maybe her, when she decided to march into city hall and pay her bill in person. Did you see how short her skirt was? Any woman who dresses like that is naturally going to give a guy ideas. Pretty dumb, if you ask me." Natalie gritted her teeth as she listened to her boyfriend piously blame the victim, but, as she saw Steve's dad nodding sagely, she decided not to argue the point. The thought that dressing sexy entitled the police to strip you butt-naked was too sexist and too stupid to argue with. The next "COPS" style segment contained the arrest of a lovely young woman who had called the police to complain about her neighbor's stereo. Unfortunately for the young lady, the neighbor bowled with the two officers. The three men quickly agreed that heavy metal sounded best loud, and the comely lass with the bad attitude needed a trip to the station. The neighbor said he was "too stoned" to come watch, but he promised his mortified neighbor that he would be sure to rent her video. The third segment was slightly longer than the others, since the young woman accused of littering at the gas station was in fact an out-of-town attorney. The video replay revealed that the pump jockey had been mistaken, and the elegantly dressed woman hadn't dropped anything. But no one bothered to check the woman's story until after the search was complete. But it was the Sheriff's over-the-knee "attitude adjustment session" that made the attorney's segment 10 minutes longer than the others. The wooden bench was perfectly designed for an over-the-knee spanking. Although the kicking attorney almost knocked over the doughnuts, the whistling onlookers didn't seem to mind. Natalie thought the searches were completely unfair, totally unwarranted, and the most exciting things that she had ever seen. In each of the three segments, the woman had ultimately been released; after all, she WAS innocent. In the second one, a camera crew had actually accompanied the officers, while in the other cases, cameras mounted in the gas station, on the squad car, and at the station had captured the action. The prevalence of readily available cameras made Natalie suspicious of the Sheriff's motives.... Steve's father laughingly admitted that "this town sure does like video cameras, and the Sheriff sure does like searches!" Steve and Natalie slept in separate rooms that night, a strangely Victorian touch given the video that the family had watched together. But Natalie let her fingers do the walking as she recalled every delicious detail of the women's humiliation. As she drew herself closer and closer to the brink, Natalie kept repeating the ominous warning from Steve's mother: "You're a very pretty girl, Natalie, and you should watch how you dress in this town. The Sheriff has a bit of an attitude about what he likes to call "smarty-pants college girls." Natalie awoke from her blissful sleep with one mission in mind: Steve had to take her to the local video store. Steve's mom had warned her to dress carefully, and Natalie thoughtfully considered her attire. What could be more careful that a half t-shirt and denim shorts? A bra wasn't really necessary on such a warm day… She looked over her shoulder and admired her tight jeans in the mirror. You didn't get much more "smarty-pants" than that. Natalie knew that Steve's dad was the mayor, and she was confident that no one would mess with her as long as Steve was around. She felt that, since she was invincible, there was certainly no reason she couldn't enjoy a harmless little tease. The first one through the door of the huge video store, she raced past Steve and casually tossed the copy of "Steel Magnolias" onto the counter and then she dashed on to the "ADULT" section. As Steve casually perused the latest goofy titles in the "ACTION" section, Natalie began reviewing the enormous collection of search tapes on the rear wall. She quickly realized that the main difficulty would be in selecting which tapes to watch. The boxed sets immediately caught her eye. She knew, for example, that an anonymous phone call didn't justify searching all the young women at that hoity-toity country club. But obviously the Sheriff didn't agree. The picture on that box displayed a long line of kneeling women with their delightfully bare bottoms raised submissively in the air and their thighs clenched demurely together. The caption of the next photo on the box read, "All right, ladies...SPREAD 'EM!" The photo was the same as the previous one, except that now the women's legs were spread obscenely apart. One young woman, peeking over her shoulder, seemed particularly distressed at her public exposure. Natalie looked at the grinning Mexicans watching from the side of the room. She imagined the thrill that those hardworking illegal immigrants must have felt at seeing the spoiled and pampered women kneeling bottoms up for their viewing pleasure. The forgotten workers had been ignored for years, but the young ladies were certainly conscious of their presence today. The next boxed set recorded the Sheriff's work proctoring a local LSAT exam. It angered Natalie that only the pretty young female students were searched, but she took some comfort in the fact that the searches were doubtlessly distracting to the male exam-takers. As a teacher, she wondered about the propriety of subjecting comely coeds to cavity searches simply because the male proctors thought they "looked suspicious." Did they really think the young women were hiding their crib notes THERE? The final boxed set showed the Sheriff's visit to the local FBI academy, where he gave each female member of the graduating class a thorough demonstration of proper cavity search techniques. The two smiling female FBI instructors, who watched as the Sheriff put the girls through their paces, had little empathy for their female students. But their smug smiles melted when the Sheriff and his deputies picked up their rifles and informed the two bitchy instructors that they were next.... The wall was lined with hundreds of tapes, and Natalie simply couldn't decide. She suspected that Steve and his dad had already seen most of them, so she decided to concentrate on her own fantasies. "Let's see," she thought. "Innocent of any crime...well-educated...brunette...about my age and build...." She was so engrossed with the videos that she didn't notice the two pairs of male eyes ogling her from behind. It wasn't until she heard the clerk's voice that Natalie awoke from her trance. "Excuse me, miss," the clerk said, unctuously. "There seems to be a problem with your video." The fact that he was standing next to the Sheriff gave Natalie a hint of how serious the problem really was. Still confident of her immunity, however, she decided to have some fun. "Hi, Sheriff," she said, brightly. "What are you doing here? Aren't the exercise videos by the entrance?" The Sheriff glared back, angrily, and Natalie knew her sarcasm had hit pay dirt. It was a remark about the Sheriff's weight that had earned the lady lawyer a dose of bare bottom justice. "You forgot to rewind your video, young lady," the clerk said, sternly. "You're in a heap of trouble." "Actually, it was my boyfriend, Steve, who rented the video," she replied, innocently. "I go to college with Steve. You know about college, don't you Sheriff? It's the place with the ivy on the walls where the SMART girls go. In fact, I'm SO smart, that I actually TEACH there. Can you believe that, Sheriff?" She beamed. "Seeing as how I'm the girlfriend of the mayor's son, and I'm staying at the mayor's house as his guest, maybe you two boys should just search each other," she snickered. She breezed past the two enraged men and sauntered over to the "ACTION" section of the store, where Steve was carefully examining a video box. The cover showed a shirtless muscle man with machine guns in both fists and a knife in his teeth. Men! "Steve," she said, sweetly. "The big, bad Sheriff says your mom forgot to rewind her video. Could you explain to Sheriff Redneck that I've never rented a video at this store, I'm not responsible for the inventory, and, if he wants to strip search someone, he should call your dad and ask if he can shuck down your mom?" Steve didn't even look up from his box. "Just have a squad car drop her by our house when you're done with her, Sheriff," he said, evenly. "When will her tape be ready? My dad and I will need something to watch if this one turns out stupid." Steve's voice was as calm and passive as if he were placing an order at the drive-through. But Natalie's heart was racing.... "Our sassy little coed's tape will be on the shelves in time for the Saturday night rush," the Sheriff replied. "I'll have the deputy give your dad a copy when he drops her off." The Sheriff smiled as he removed his handcuffs and playfully jingled them in front of Natalie's horrified face. "These are the bracelets I use on the SMART girls, sweet cheeks. And when we get to the station, I'll show you the paddle I use, too!" Natalie swallowed as she felt the handcuffs tighten around her wrists. She suddenly became aware of the cameras in the store: cameras for sale or rent, CCTV cameras on the ceiling, cameras recording her from every angle. She listened in stunned horror as the Sheriff and Steve chatted casually about her video debut. Steve predicated that her tape would sell briskly, particularly when the undergraduates she was teaching found out that they could see every inch of their lovely instructor for a measly $14.99. A number of Natalie's professors would also doubtlessly enjoy seeing their mischievous student receiving the discipline she richly deserved. And then there were the fraternities.... Natalie was now sweating profusely, and, with her hands cuffed behind her back, she soon looked like the first place winner in a wet t-shirt contest. She looked up at the video camera that was pointed directly at her and began to regret not having worn a bra. As the Sheriff led her out the door, she noted that there was a freeze-frame of her smiling face displayed on the video monitor with the ominous title, "COMING ATTRACTIONS...CHECK BACK TONIGHT!" She winced. The image had been captured from the video store security cameras. The smug smile she had worn when she had teased the Sheriff about his weight would now be used to advertise her video. She stared unhappily at her goofy, grinning self. A sharp slap across the seat of her shorts reminded her that the patrol car was waiting -- and the Sheriff was a busy man. But at least she knew what video she would be watching with Steve's family that night.... Edited by C. Lakewood