COURAGE by Joe Whatever Julie Stromberg smiled as she peered through the cellblock peephole. The female prisoners gripped their cell bars tightly, staring nervously at the ominously ticking clock. "Sissies!" Julie snickered, contemptuously. Raul enjoyed watching the pretty blonde in the cutoff shorts bending over to look through peephole, but he also had a job to do. "You shouldn't be back here, Miss," he said, sternly. The college coed was startled for only a moment. "I'm an American -- a tourist -- and you don't have any authority over me," she snapped. "My father could buy and sell your whole cheesy, chili-pepper country." "You still shouldn't be here" he replied. "I am the only English-speaking guard today; if they found you back here, the other guards might mistake you for a prisoner." Julie felt a tiny chill run down her spine. "Gosh, do you think they would?" She smiled and casually dropped her fashionable purse onto the dirty cell floor. Raul watched as she playfully stuck her sneakers through the bottom of one of the open cell doors in the deserted outer cellblock and began to impishly swing back and forth. "I've never been spanked," Julie mused. "I've always wondered what it would be like. I could tell my father I accidentally locked myself in one of the cells.... "Would you like to see them spank my bare fanny?" she asked Raul teasingly. "If you took my purse to lost and found, I'd have no ID," she said, feigning distress. "Do you really think they'd strip me...butt naked? I bet when they bent me down over the block with the other girls all those dirty old men in the visitor's gallery would try to look right up between my legs." Julie gave the guard a playful smile as she swung her weight backwards. She felt another delicious shiver as her cell door CLANGED shut. "Oh darn!" she said with mock exasperation. "Now I'm locked in -- and you have my purse...." "You still have your visitor's badge," Raul said, quietly. Julie instantly unclipped the badge from the front of her teasingly short white half-shirt and tossed it through the bars to Raul. "They forgot my middle initial" she said. "Can you get it fixed?" "It could take hours," he replied, thoughtfully. "And the punishments start in 20 minutes." "Gosh darn it!" Julie replied. Julie gripped the bars tightly as she watched the smiling guard pocket her badge, pick up her purse, and walk towards the door. Her heart skipped a beat as cellblock door locked shut. Even if someone in the audience did speak English, she knew no one would help. The fact that she was a beautiful, wealthy American and totally innocent of any crime would make her shameful bare bottom punishment all the more delicious. She felt a trickle of sweat run down her back as she gripped the bars tightly and nervously listened to the ticking of the clock on the wall. Edited by C. Lakewood © Copyright Joe Whatever, 29 August 2003