The Checkpoint 3: Chapter One
Courtney screamed and spluttered: ‘Y… you can’t do this
to me…!’
‘Yes I can,’ said Sergeant Ivanka
Stefanik, who was holding a fistful of Courtney’s hair at the back of her head
‘…when you are a radical sympathizer!’
‘I’m not, you stupid bitch… umfff!’
Ivanka pushed her downward and there
was a splash as Courtney’s head and bare breasts were plunged into the freezing
water once again.
‘And you will not insult me during
questioning,’ Ivanka added.
Courtney strained to lift her head out
of the icy pail but with her hands cuffed behind her back, she could not raise
her naked torso while Ivanka was pressing down on the back of her neck. She squirmed and jerked frantically but she
was imprisoned in the simple but terrible device.
A small wooden trestle with a padded
leather top was mounted transversely over the middle of a low, rectangular
wooden base board set on heavy castors. The trestle top and sides of the base had
buckled straps bolted to them. Set on
the base on each side of the trestle was a pair of copper buckets sitting on
wooden blocks. One was set lower down
and was empty, while the other’s rim was almost level with the top of the
trestle and was filled with water in which cubes of ice were floating. This was the one into which Courtney was
being dunked. A pair of polished copper
posts rose up out of the middle of the bucket thirty centimetres above the
water level and were spaced just far enough apart for Courtney’s neck to fit
between them, preventing her twisting her upper body sideways to escape the
freezing water. A short padded
horizontal bar bridging between the tops of the vertical rods and fastened to
them with sliding rings locked by screws on their sides, prevented her lifting
her head clear of them.
Courtney was straddling the device
with her legs spread about the lower bucket, the rim of which pressed against
the insides of her knees, so that her feet rested against the sides of the
wooden base where the cuffs were buckled about her ankles. She was bent across the padded trestle so
that her head overhung the larger bucket and the trestle top rested against her
lower belly and the front of the hip bones. A long
leather strap had been buckled across the top of the trestle over the small of
her back to hold her hips down so that her bare bottom jutted outwards and
upwards.
Ivanka pulled on Courtney’s wet hair
and her neck slid back up between the rods and her head came out of the
water. Once again, Courtney gasped and
spluttered for breath.
When it was not wet and contorted by
fear, Courtney had a pretty face, framed by shoulder length wavy brown
hair. She had an upturned top lip that
exposed her perfect bright white teeth, a firm nose with a snubbed tip,
straight full brows over clear brown eyes with a slight rebellious tilt at
their outer ends and heavy, dark-lashed lids that normally half veiled
them. Her lightly tanned, clear-skinned
body was well-proportioned with a tight waist. She had
soft, pale wide-set breasts capped by large pale brown nipples with cherry tips
– at least when not shrivelled with cold as they were now. Her hips were rounded with pale, deep-cleft
buttocks and smoothly tapering thighs, at the apex of which hung her prominent
pussy mound. It was crowned by a
bikini-line trimmed fluffy mat of dark curls but its plump rounded outer lips
were smooth and bare. From between them pouted the crinkled and suggestively
impudent vertically split tongue of inner labia. This prominent Mound of Venus peeped from
between her spread thighs that also exposed the puckered pit of her anus
nestling in the cleft of her bottom cheeks.
‘Will you behave yourself now?’ Ivanka
demanded.
Ivanka was a lean, slim woman wearing,
except for her jacket, a police uniform.
She was only a few years older than Courtney but she carried herself
with icy self-assurance. Her skin was pale and her dark hair was pulled tightly
back and pinned in a severe bun. She had
deep, dark intelligent eyes set under straight dark brows, a slightly overlarge
but firm narrow nose and shapely but thin lips.
Her rolled shirtsleeves exposed slender but well-muscled arms. She spoke fluent English with a slightly
clipped accent.
Courtney snivelled in fear. They would never treat her like this in
England… but she was not in England.
She was in a lofty chamber with a
black beamed ceiling and whitewashed stonewalls. It had high barred lancet windows, a large
store cupboard in one corner and an imposing oak desk in another. The room was in Checkpoint One, which was
both the central customs post and police headquarters of the city of
Strakensburg in the Duchy of Barovia, a tiny independent state that lay between
Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, and guarded access to and from its
equally minuscule neighbour to the east: Nove Krasnic. The Checkpoint occupied one half of an
ancient castle that now formed a gateway between the two countries, which lay
on the boarder between them that ran along the crest of the low hills that were
the southern extremity of the Little Carpathians, and divided what had once
been a single medieval city into two capitals.
Ivanka slapped Courtney’s bare bottom
hard enough to leave a palm print and make her flesh ripple. ‘I asked: will you
behave yourself now?’
Fear and indignation still raged
inside Courtney, but the shock of the ice bath and realization of her total
helplessness had brought home the seriousness of her situation.
‘Yes…’ Courtney said in a tiny
voice.
‘Yes, Interrogator Ivanka,’ Ivanka corrected her.
‘Yes… Interrogator Ivanka,’ Courtney
repeated miserably. What did you do in
situations like this? Oh yes: ‘I w… want
to see the British Ambassador... th… that’s my right!’
‘At the moment you have very few
rights,’ Ivanka warned her. ‘But that
one can be granted. However, at this
time of night, I doubt if the Ambassador himself can be reached. But Sir Humphrey Chiltern, the British
Honorary Consul, happens to be in the Checkpoint dealing with another
case. Would you see him?’
A title like that sounded very grand
and reassuring. ‘Yes… please,
Interrogator Ivanka…’
Ivanka let go of Courtney’s hair and
stepped back, leaving Courtney to hold her own body painfully extended out over
the pail of icy water. Her bare breasts
were still half submerged, but she was unable to straighten up fully because of
the strap across her hips and the bar across the tops of the twin posts, and
with her hands cuffed behind her she could not brace herself in any way.
Ivanka went to the desk and used the
phone to make an internal call. She
spoke a few words, put the receiver down and came back to Courtney. ‘Sir Humphrey will be here in five
minutes…’
She reached down into the pail of icy
water and pulled a second padded bar spanning between the twin posts like the
one at the back of Courtney’s neck, up out of the water until it pressed
against the front of Courtney’s throat, giving her something to rest on to ease
the strain on her back. It kept her face
out of the water but ice cubes still bobbed about her breasts.
‘There, now you’ll be able to tell him
your story.’
‘B… but he can’t see me like this,
Interrogator Ivanka!’ Courtney protested.
‘Yes he can. He’s lived in Barovia for many years and is
used to our methods. He won’t be in the
least embarrassed.’
‘B… but what about my embarrassment,
Interrogator Ivanka?’ Courtney blurted
out.
Ivanka slapped Courtney’s bare bottom
hard, so that she yelped and the crisp smack echoed round the room. ‘You are a suspected radical
sympathiser. Be grateful he won’t find
me beating the truth out of you!’
***
As Ivanka had said, Sir Humphrey was
neither surprised nor embarrassed to see Courtney naked and bound, bent over a
bucket of ice with her bare bottom thrust up into the air exposing the intimate
details of her groin. He merely glanced at her while greeting Ivanka in fluent
Barovian.
Sir Humphrey was a lean, fortyish,
greying man dressed in a cream linen suit with a pink bow tie. He sported a neat moustache and gave the
impression of being distinguished and amiable but also sharp-eyed.
‘This is Courtney Carpenter, aged
twenty-one, and a British subject, ‘Ivanka explained, switching to
English. ‘She has been arrested on
suspicion of being a radical sympathiser.
She was abusive and resisted a body cavity search, so it was necessary
to restrain and cool her down.’
‘Did you find anything in her?’ Sir Humphrey asked.
‘No.’
Courtney blushed and squirmed at the
memory of Ivanka’s latex-gloved hand feeling inside her vagina and rectum as
she searched for concealed objects, lingering that little bit longer than was
necessary. The woman was a lesbian, she
was sure of it…
‘Perhaps I’d better hear what she has
to say for herself,’ Sir Humphrey said.
Ivanka prodded Courtney’s bottom. ‘Tell Sir Humphrey your story.’
Courtney’s cheeks burned with fresh
shame at the prospect of conversing with this elegant man with her breasts
freezing in icy water and her bare bum stuck up in the air before him! But she had no choice. She spoke trying to keep her teeth from
chattering.
‘I… I’m from London. I’m a model… I just do occasional promotional
jobs… one day I hope to be an actress. I was hired to work at the B… British
Pavilion at the Barovia International Festival of Arts and Culture… handing out
information leaflets, explaining the programme and guiding people around. T… this was my last night. I was just going back to my hotel when these policemen stopped me. Somebody had made a complaint about
some brochures I had been handing out…’
Ivanka presented several of the
brochures for Chiltern to see. ‘They’re
genuine on the front, but on the backs they have been printed with radical
propaganda calling for the overthrow of the Duke of Barovia and the formation
of a government ruling by Sharia law… and denouncing America, of course.’
‘Oh dear,’ Chiltern said. ‘These do
look rather serious. What were you doing
distributing such things, Miss Carpenter?’
‘But I d… didn’t! I don’t know anything about them! T… the ones I gave out and didn’t have any of
that stuff on!’
‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘Did you check the backs of each one?
‘Well… no… but why would anybody at
the British Pavilion give that stuff out?’
Her breasts felt as if they were freezing solid. ‘I… I am not a radical sympathizer! I’m B… British… and they can’t treat me like
this… it’s inhumane… illegal!’
Chiltern shrugged. ‘It would be in England, Miss Carpenter, but
they have different standards in Barovia.
They are on friendly terms with Britain and the European Union but they
are not a part of it, nor are they signatories to any international human
rights agreements. By their laws they
can do use extreme measures to learn the truth – especially from a radical
suspect.’
‘But I’m not a
r… radical anything!’ Courtney sobbed.
Chiltern turn to Ivanka. ‘It is possible that somebody obtained a
package of leaflets and added this propaganda and mixed them with the
authorised items. Miss Carpenter may be merely their unwitting distributor.’
‘I know, but at the moment she is the
only person we can link to their distribution.
We’ll have to keep her here while the
people she worked with are questioned.
Her past life will be investigated by the British police and Europol. As the literature mentioned America, the CIA
will also have to be alerted…’
By now Courtney was gazing at Ivanka
in despair. ‘B… but everybody would
think I’m a radical!’ she sobbed. ‘H…
how long will it take?’
‘A few months, perhaps. If there is any doubt you will be kept on
their watch list.’
‘A few months!’ Courtney cried,
aghast. ‘But what will my modelling
agency think? Will I get any work while
I’m being investigated?’
Ivanka shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Inevitably, there are consequences. They are regrettable but they cannot be
helped.’
Courtney groaned. She’d loose
everything!
‘A pity she cannot be judged by the
old laws of Barovia,’ Chiltern mused.
‘That would be so much quicker and more discreet.’
His words gave Courtney a sudden
fleeting hope. ‘What are these old
laws?’
‘A civil code that used to exist here
in medieval times, long before war and revolution swallowed up Greater Barovia,’
Ivanka explained. ‘Laws were created especially to allow women to prove their
word in legal cases when they had few other rights. They are called permezatenci, which
means a “permitted violation”, because women would bring it upon themselves by
volunteering to be judged by ordeals of pain and sexual humiliation. The
accused has to make a formal declaration of her innocence before witnesses and
continue to assert it after a given number of tests. There is a belief in Barovia that when women
are subjected to extremes of pain and pleasure they are unable to lie. If they endure their ordeals without
confessing their guilt, they are declared innocent.’
It all sounded horrifying and totally
medieval. But if it was quick and
secret... ‘Please, Interrogator
Ivanka. If I was t… tested like that,
would my agency have to know?’
‘Nobody else would have to know
anything,’ Chiltern said, ‘not even the British government. Once the process is invoked, it is conducted
purely within Barovia. I would be requested
not to inform the British ambassador until it was resolved, therefore he would
not pass on any suspicions about you to the authorities. But don’t think it’s an easy option, Miss
Carpenter. What you are experiencing
now is quite mild by comparison.’
Courtney shuddered. Her breasts were turning blue. But she could not face the alternative. Not the shame and the damage to her career. ‘H… how long would it take, Interrogator
Ivanka?’
Ivanka looked at her narrowly, as if
assessing her. ‘In your case a week…
perhaps eight days.’
Eight days! But that was better than months and a ruined
career and people pointing at her and wondering… ‘I’ve finished my job here… I don’t have to
go back home straightaway… no one would know what I was really doing.’
Ivanka was looking thoughtful. ‘It would save us a lot of time and
inconvenience… if you volunteer of your own free will…’
‘I do… I volunteer!’ Courtney said desperately.
‘It is my duty to warn you once again,
Miss Carpenter,’ Chiltern said earnestly, ‘that it will not be pleasant. You will suffer imprisonment, humiliation,
pain and multiple sexual violations.’
Courtney gulped. ‘I… still want to do it.’
He shook his head and turned to
Ivanka. ‘I don’t think she
understands. She will break down and
confess at first instance and only waste all our time.’
Despite her fear, Courtney felt a
flush of resentment at that suggestion.
‘It’s your fault for mentioning the
old laws, Sir Humphrey,’ Ivanka said with a wry smile. ‘But perhaps she should
be given a taste of what to expect first.
If she is as weak-willed as you seem to think, then she will break
quickly and we will take the normal course of action. If she is still willing to volunteer for permezatenci then it is her right. I must respect our laws.’
Chiltern sighed. ‘Then do so, Sergeant. I will leave you to it…’
‘No.
It should be done by a man as a figure of authority. You are a resident
of Strakensburg and familiar with our ways.
You are qualified to do this.’
Chiltern looked surprised. ‘Would that be quite proper in my position?’
‘It is if I authorize it.’ Ivanka looked at Courtney. ‘You will be
permitted to undergo permezatenci if
you allow Sir Humphrey to test you first to prove that you have the courage to
face the full ordeal. If you admit your
guilt or you beg him to stop, then the process of
international criminal investigation will begin, do you understand?’
Courtney felt as if her stomach was
being scooped out by a blade of ice. ‘I…
I do, Interrogator Ivanka.’
‘Now politely ask him to test you.’
‘Per… please will you t… test me, Sir
Humphrey…’ Courtney stammered.
Chiltern was still protesting. ‘What
about one of your other officers?’ he asked Ivanka. ‘Where is Captain Kubeck?’
‘Unfortunately the Checkpoint is
extremely busy right now as you know.
The influx of visitors to the Festival has created extra work. We have no one else to spare. Her case has already taken me from other
work. I only ask for half an hour of
your time, Sir Humphrey.’
‘Oh, very well then, Sergeant. Let’s get this get this over with…’ He began removing his jacket.
Ivanka indicated the store
cupboard. ‘You may use anything you wish
in there. I will be back in thirty
minutes. And do not be gentle with her
just because she is a fellow countrywoman. I expect to see her bottom well tanned…’
She left the room, closing its big
iron studded door behind her.
Chiltern rolled up his shirtsleeves,
surveying Courtney’s body critically. ‘This is nothing personal you understand,
Miss Carpenter. It’s just the way they
do such things here.’
‘I… I understand…’ Courtney choked
out.
‘Sir,’
he said pointedly. ‘If I’m to be a figure of authority you will call me “Sir”.’
‘Y… yes, Sir…’
‘For the next half hour I’m going to
be your master and tormentor…’ he stroked and patted her bare bottom, admiring
its soft curves and pliancy. ‘I admit it
won’t be unpleasant with an attractive woman such
yourself. Knowing that you are
unwillingly pleasing your tormentor is of course part of the test…’
He went to the cupboard and selected a
thing that looked like an oversized flyswatter with a chunky handle, a springy
cane blade with wires wrapped around it and a broad black rubber paddle blade
with metal studs set in it. He swished
it through the air in front of her.
‘This is an electric spanking paddle,’
he told her. ‘The blade will hurt by
itself and electric studs will double the pain.’ He stroked the blade over her
upraised bottom. Her buttocks clenched
in a futile attempt to escape its touch.
‘Now I’m going to give your bottom a
good paddling and you will cry. It’s
natural. Don’t try to be brave. Scream and plead and beg for mercy as much to like and I’ll ignore it. There are only two ways of ending the beating
before you faint. One is to confess
clearly and unequivocally your guilt and that you are a radical
sympathiser. The other is to offer your
body to me for carnal use.’
Courtney whimpered.
‘Of course that would also be
humiliating and degrading to a free woman, but then they wouldn’t be true tests
of character otherwise. Barovians
believe that if you want to prove your honour, you have to sacrifice it first…’
He drew back his arm and swiped the
paddle through the air.
Courtney screamed as it struck her
right buttock full on. Her flesh rippled
and a crisp smack echoed about the chamber.
Then the electric studs stabbed her with their electric pins, redoubling
the pain as Chiltern promised. He swung
again, smacking into her left buttock with the same agonising result. Then he changed the angle of his swing
slightly, bringing the blade across at a low angle so that it caught the
fleshier undersides of her buttocks, making them shiver and bounce.
Tears dripped from her eyes that were
screwed up in pain and dripped into the bucket beneath her. She had never felt anything like it before in
her life. ‘No… ahhh… please... Sir…
stop… awww… it hurts… eeek… I can’t… don’t!’ she babbled.
‘I’ll stop if you confess you are a
radical sympathiser!’ Chiltern said,
still swinging the terrible paddle vigorously.
‘No… I’m innocent!’ she screamed.
After a minute of this her bottom was
a rosy red and felt as if it was blazing, while her breasts, jerking and
swaying from the impacts of the blows transmitted through her body, were
freezing as they bobbed amongst the melting ice cubes. She was caught between fire and ice! Oh, for some of that ice on her bottom! The relentless pain overwhelmed her and with
a sob of shame, her hot pee spurted in fits and starts into the empty bucket
between her thighs.
She could not take any more of
this! It was too much! She would die! She had to escape and there was only one way…
‘Ahhhh… please… Sir… eeeee… Sir…. awww… Please screw me… I b… beg you
to…ooooh… fuck me… fuck me… h… hard… p…
please… Sir!’
Chiltern stopped beating her, leaving
her blazing buttocks to twitch pathetically.
‘What did you say?’
‘P… please screw me… Sir,’ she said
clearly, snivelling and blinking through her tears. Had she really just begged an Honorary Consul
to screw her?
Chiltern pushed the shaft of the
spanking paddle sideways into her mouth so that she had to clench her teeth
about it. ‘Hold onto that and don’t let it go,’ he commanded. ‘If you are not sufficient pleasing, I’ll use
it on you again…’
He reached around the ice bucket and
turned a tap. The freezing water began
to drain out of the upper bucket into the lower one between her thighs. In a few seconds her breasts hung free;
dripping wet, purple and blue and tingling as circulation began to return to
them. Chiltern stood behind her and she
heard him opening his flies. That he
stepped onto the base of the trestle frame and lay forward across her upraised
body. He rested his hands on the trestle
on either side of the waist. She felt
stiff penis rubbing through her wet cleft and then finding the mouth of her
vagina. The fabric of his trousers
rasped over her simmering buttocks as he positioned himself.
‘This is for your honour and the
truth,’ he told her.
Then his shaft plunged into her and
stretched her sheath wide. And to her
horror and shame she sucked on it in desperation. He thrust into her so that the trestle frame
creaked and her sore bottom flesh smarted as it was compressed by his
lunge. He lay over her and reached under
her and grabbed her freezing breasts that were bobbing in the empty bucket from
the power of his thrusts and cupped and squeezed and kneaded them. Courtney
screamed as they filled with pins and needles.
Drips of lubricating juices fell from her squelching, bulging vulva into
the bucket between her thighs. The
contrast between her blazing buttocks and reviving breasts and churning,
dribbling vagina was overwhelming her senses.
She was going to cum…
Chiltern dug his thumb nails in to her
cold nipples so that she screamed about the paddle shaft clenched between her
teeth and he roared in her ear: ‘Are you a radical
sympathizer?’
Courtney shook her head wildly even as
her loins burst and he pumped his sperm up inside her. Then there was an interval of confusion and
dizzy delight in a world beyond guilt or innocence....
***
Afterwards, as Courtney slumped limply
in her frame, too dizzy to think, she was dimly aware of Chiltern standing over
and using her damp hair to wipe his penis clean of his sperm and her juices,
even as same mixture was dripping out of her sore pussy into the bucket between
her thighs. It was one more humiliation
to endure. Then he tucked his now
flaccid manhood away and became the immaculate gentleman
once more.
He took the spanking paddle from
between her teeth and stooped down and lifted her chin to examine her red-eyed
tear-streaked and woebegone face.
‘You have passed the test, Courtney,’
he told her. ‘You are fit for permezatenci.’
And for a moment, Courtney felt a
bizarre surge of gratitude towards the strange man who had just reduced her to
tears by beating her bottom and tormenting her frozen breasts and screwing her
almost into insensibility.
***
Courtney’s bottom was still rosy red
but her tears had dried and her breasts were turning pink when Ivanka returned.
She examined state of Courtney’s
bottom critically. ‘Did she break?’
‘She is braver than I thought,
Sergeant,’ Chiltern conceded. ‘She still insists she is innocent. I think she is, but it’s not up to me to
decide. Look at the time… I must be off
now…’
‘No, Sir Humphrey,’ Ivanka said,
gently but firmly. ‘We are still
short-staffed and we have no room in the cells tonight. As you have proven how well you can handle
her, I suggest we share her permezatenci between
us, one day at a time. Take her home
with you now. You can test her there or
anywhere else you see fit, as long as she is kept secure, and I will see to
here. Barovia would be most grateful for
your assistance in this matter…’
Chiltern sighed. ‘You always know how to get round me, don’t
you Sergeant?’
‘I hereby deputised you as a temporary
assistant inquisitor. I rely on your
honour not to be gentle with her.’
‘I will not be gentle with her,’
Chiltern promised.
Courtney shivered. In the space of a few hours her world had
been turned upside down. The only thing
she was sure off was that she was innocent.
But proving it was going to be a nightmare…