Erin Seagrove sat back in her office chair and flicked her eyes from the file to the rather intense woman sitting in front of her. Ellen Bright was a smart brunette with dark polished eyes and a sophisticated ageless demeanour that could belong to anyone between 25 and 40 or so. The birth date on the file had been left blank, which suggested an age leaning towards the upper end of that bracket, so Erin decided not to make anything of it. Not considering the medical report on this woman, she certainly knew how to take of herself.

Next to her latest participant the blonde and less ambitiously curved Erin felt wanting. God she hated women who could out poise her.

“You do know what our programme involves?” Erin asked, trying to reassert herself over the situation.

“Oh yes,” Ellen replied in a cool unhurried tone.

“Now your story is about a nurse serving in the Middle East, in what, the early 1970s?” Erin said. “A conviction for petty theft it says here.”

The woman nodded slightly as if it was unimportant and gave up a smile that was just the right side of superiority.

“I have to say 50 lashes is a lot… but I am not entirely clear about your relationship with this nurse,” Erin said, her gaze returning to the document she had now read two dozen times.

“Would it suffice to say that she was a distant cousin?” Ellen extended an open palm to heaven as if to say that if that answer didn’t work she could find another.

“Yes,” Erin agreed and closed the file. “But I do need to be clear that you understand what we are trying to do here. I mean 50 lashes is a lot, why do you want to… explore this experience? You do understand that we will faithfully recreate the entire event and you will be flogged just as Rachel Saunders was?”

Ellen remembered all the times the older Rachel had regaled her with her dread experience, how she had repeatedly said such things as ‘you have no idea about the world, not given what I went through.’ Ellen had had nothing to say. Could it have been so terrible, could it have had such an effect on one life?

“My reasons are my own,” Ellen said lightly with a dismissive wave or her hand.

Erin held her gaze for a long moment and then shrugged. “Okay then,” she sighed. “You have read the script, does it match your expectations and the facts as we know them?”

“Oh yes,” Ellen purred with a barely contained impatience.

*

The impression the scene conveyed was one of unrelenting heat and sinister still air. The sunlit walls were a little too starkly bright and the shadows too dark and threatening. The low whitewashed buildings were typical of any number of countries in the Middle East and only the Coca-Cola advert and the small details like shoes or the wrist watch on the uniformed guard suggested it was the mid-20^th century.

Ellen, in the guise of Rachel, managed to look beautiful and composed even in a rough cotton smock. This, although her face was devoid of makeup and her mid-length dark hair was tied roughly back and off her face.

The female guard who led her into the large minimalist room was casual and patient as her prisoner composed herself, although neither of them looked at the wooden frame or the meter long leather bound stick lying across it. Not until the man arrived and then the small dark uniformed woman looked up at a clock.

“It is time,” she said and indicated the double A-frame trestle.

Ellen nodded and appeared to make a small swallow. Then like a queen she moved across the room to face the punitive furniture head on.

“Please take off your under things,” the woman said.

Ellen made a sour expression but obeyed without hesitation, elegantly stooping as she reached under the smock and tugged at her functional cotton briefs before stepping out of them.

“You kneel on the lower padding and bend over the large pad across the top,” the guard said with a cursive wave of her hand.

This time Ellen paused before taking that last step forward to kneel down. Her ample spherical hips ballooned out as she dipped her back and leaned forward, even this motion was dignified. When she finally folded herself over the top it looked like a yoga exercise. But by now the cotton was taught across her bottom, which was thrust upwards like a double dome.

The man grunted and then leaned in to take the flexible stick and then stood back. Then he nodded.

This was a signal for the woman to move forward and seize the hem of the smock and turn it up and off Ellen’s bottom so as to leave it bare. The gasp was audible and neither the watching Erin nor the actors were quite prepared for the eroticism.

“Oh God,” Ellen whispered as she suddenly felt exposed.

The female guard licked her lips with nerves and then as officiously as she was able said, “F-fifty, you may begin.”

The man stepped into the stroke as it described an arch at shoulder height and then with moderate force lashed Ellen across the bare bottom.

She grunted.

There was a pause as everyone studied the effects, namely a deep red line swelling across both cheeks. Then the guard struck again.

“Hmmm,” Ellen’s grunt was more pained.

“That’s two,” the woman said as she tried to appear unmoved.

The third, fourth, fifth and sixth fell slowly over a minute and each time Ellen groaned, and each time a red swollen welt was left across her flesh.

“Six.”

At the seventh Ellen screamed. In fact she became quite vocal for each of the next five, after which she was openly crying and wailed even between strokes.

“That’s a dozen,” the woman announced. “Can we have a nurse please?”

The nurse was a qualified one and took only a moment to agree that both the bottom and the woman were holding up.

“Are we sure?” Erin asked from off camera.

“I’m alright,” Ellen said angrily, if rather muffled by her posture.

“We’ll cut that last bit in the edit,” an unseen male voice said.

The next dozen took slightly longer, but Ellen coped better and only at the last did she scream out; mainly as the 25^th stroke took her unawares.

“Let the prisoner up for a break and get her some water,” nurse instructed.

The previously poised and together Ellen responded by bursting into heavy sobbing.

*

The rest of Ellen’s flogging was three times as bad as the first part. Even from the start she was still riding the lines of pain. It was odd though. For one thing she felt so exposed and instead of fear of the whip, she wondered if the posture was too revealing. Also she was aware where her elbows rested on the padding and took her weight, that and a small uneven crack just below her nose.

It wasn’t just this trivia floated before her; it was as if that was all she was. Then there was the woman screaming out every time she was struck. Ellen could even feel her pain, lines and lines of it right across and wrapping around her upturned bottom. Oh do be quiet, she told her, I can’t hear myself think and besides you are distracting me from the…

Then the pain was hers again and she boggled at the mind flip. Rachel had never spoken of it.

This was forever now, a simple deal. The stroke would bring pain and she would trade for a scream. It made her feel better and made her want another. Only she didn’t, she really, really didn’t, but no one cared. She would have it anyway. So…

She thought about the crack before her nose. Had it always been there? If so it was just like the whip and her bottom. They were eternal and belonged to one another.

*

“That’s 50,” the woman said. She sounded relieved.

Ellen was sobbing vigorously, but had no strength to rise and the woman guard and the nurse had to help her.

“Is it over?” the punished woman asked.

“Yes, yes dear it is over,” the female guard said, momentarily breaking character.

Ellen felt bereft and a profound sense of loss. She took comfort from the unrelenting throbbing in her bottom, after all it dominated all else for the moment.

*

“How do you feel about it now?” Erin asked.

Ellen smiled. She looked less imperious now, but just as beautiful.

“Better,” she laughed.

“You mean physically?” Erin put in.

“Oh that too,” Ellen laughed again, “Talk about pain… I couldn’t sit down for a week and three weeks later I still have some interesting colouring down there.”

“But how do you feel about it all?” Erin said.

“At the time I felt… humble, like… I don’t know… I like I didn’t matter or rather everything I thought mattered didn’t. But that soon passed and I felt… euphoric.”

“Was it what you were expecting?”

“No, no, not at all… I thought… I thought that I would get something over on someone. On Rachel… and I thought I would put up with the experience to do it. But instead… I feel a tremendous sense of achievement… and… and instead of besting her I feel closer to her now.” Ellen enthused and smiled more genuinely than she had before.

“Would you do it again?”

“Ask me again in six months,” Ellen laughed.