“Kneel on the bars, belly to the bar. Hands behind your necks, heads down. Don’t speak, don’t move.”

They knew the chant by heart and they knew the drill as well. They did it every morning. They did it the same way and with the same terror and resignation. It never changed and they had no expectation it ever would. The rattling clink of many chains, the repeated ratcheting of steel cuffs and shackles heralded the start of another day for Sharon and her fellow prisoners in the penal colony. They knelt across from each other, seven to a side in an unvarying sameness, physically echoing the recurring ritualistic matins. They were all young women; they were all completely naked but for prisoners’ foot-arching high heels and they were all serving indeterminate sentences of punishment and hard labour at the pleasure of the state. They all knelt with their shins on raised parallel steel pipes laid across the floor inflicting enfeebling and painful distress on their lower legs. With all their weight on their shins, barely endurable if they remained stock still, their ability to rise was effectively hampered, since if they shifted their weight to one side in order to stand, the pain did become unbearable. They had to evenly distribute their weight on both pipes and on both legs, not to be comfortable, but to simply keep their agony at endurable levels. Kneeling on those terrible steel pipes, every morning signalled the start of their day every day.

The belly bar was simply another steel pipe above those on the floor. It wasn’t very high, slightly set back from the front kneeling bar. Its purpose diabolical, its effect egregious and its simplicity stark; this bar forced the prisoners to suffer the full and agonising distress imposed by the twin bars on which they knelt. Belly bar was a misnomer since the proper position for muster required them to kneel up with the belly bar at their pubes just at the join of hips and thighs. It prevented them from kneeling up straight and they dared not refuse to press themselves firmly into its cold hard rigidity. In consequence, they strained up against it bent only slightly at the hips, not draped over it, or in any way permitted to alleviate the aching effect of the kneeling bars on their shins. In fact, it maximised the pressure of their weight on the kneeling bars while forcing them to exert effort to maintain position, jutting their buttocks broadly and conspicuously rearward at the same time.

Every morning was a trembling trial of painful endurance and every morning one or more of the girls felt the lash on her attractively offered buttocks or the back of her thighs, eliciting a yelp of pain and renewed effort to strain up and press hard into the belly bar. It wasn’t until all fourteen prisoners were whimpering and whining with the pain and effort to maintain proper position, heads properly bowed and arms raised high, elbows wide with their hands at the nape, fingers white in tenacious intertwined grip, that the next order of the morning could be issued. Sometimes it took a long time. The warders didn’t mind waiting.

“Shackle and chain the prisoners.”

Sharon didn’t look around when she felt the cold steel ring fit to her ankle. If she had, she would have felt stabs of pain in her shins from her movement; she would have heard the snap of leather on flesh and felt the blaze of fiery stinging torment it imparted to her naked bottom or thighs. Prisoners were not permitted to move without explicit orders to do so and that included performance of bodily functions, which was the next event on Sharon’s morning programme. But she didn’t have to look; she felt that first cold ring of steel with the same sinking feeling, the same revulsion every morning. She had felt it every morning since she had been released from isolation into the general prison population eight months earlier. It didn’t vary, her morning restraint, and that of the thirteen other women in her cell block became boringly routine, as did so many aspects of prison life in the penal colony. Sharon depended on punishment and work assignments for variety and variance in her scheduled ennui. First her left ankle, then her right, chained together in heavy leg-irons. A cold steel cuff circled her left wrist behind her neck. Then her arms were drawn down and her right wrist joined her left, clamped painfully tight in cutting narrow steel manacles behind her back. No chain there, just barely movable steel hinge connectors permitting only the slight angling of her arms and wrists, skin pinching constriction making even that small freedom painful and discouraging. The rigid handcuffs forced her to hold her arms down, the steel cuffs underlining her twin cheeks and her forearms framing their gentle pliant convexity and the soft yield of her posterior cleavage. She curled her fingers in an unsuccessful attempt to alleviate their crippling grip. It was in this moderate and gently steel restrained attitude that their two rows of seven were raised to their feet, placed standing in line by height order for steel neck rings and coffle chains.

Cold, cold‑steel restraint was always cold. Sharon wondered if they didn’t keep the shackles and manacles refrigerated overnight to keep them that way. Her neck ring always sent a shiver through her body, raising the hair at the back of her neck when she felt its familiar touch there. In assembly line fashion, as with their leg-irons and handcuffs, the warders moved down their naked ranks with neck rings. One held her hair off her neck, a signal for Sharon to bow her head. The cold steel ring at her nape; letting her hair fall, a signal for her to raise her head for the ring to be snapped shut at her throat. That terrible grate of the lock informed her of its irremovable encirclement of her neck for the day ‑ her heavy steel companion marking her prisoner, necklaced, braceleted, and leg-ironed in identical fashion with her equally naked and equally restrained sisters in suffering. The grinding daily repetition, the loss of individuality, separate identity, even her name, Sharon was prisoner 3260 cell block 91, grated as harshly as the lock on her neck ring - and as consistently.

“Right turn!”

Click! Click! Click! Down their motionless ranks, massive coffle chains snapped to their neck rings by the warders wed them in steel linked inseparability to each other like naked white pillars in two rows of seven. Sharon felt and heard the metallic snap of her coffle chain under her chin. In the automated response she had been trained to, she inched back precariously in her towering heels, removing the slack in the chain between her and the girl in front until she felt the necessary pressure at the back of her neck and the chain no longer sagged. She moved her feet apart, raising her leg-iron chain off the floor, drawing it taut between her ankles. When all the prisoners of cell block 91 were completely shackled and chained in their two coffled files of seven, graduated by height, Sharon stood in fourth place behind the lead girl in her chain linked queue. They all looked straight ahead, focusing on the back of the head in front of them. They neither moved nor spoke although all seemed attentive, expectantly awaiting their next command. They all knew what it would be, but its timing was unknown and their immediate response to it required their undivided attention.

“By the numbers ‑ block and number!”

Sharon’s lead girl sounded out the required response. Down the queue, one after the other the prisoners repeated the litany in high strident tones nearly shouting. If they couldn’t be heard, they would feel the whip. When the girl in front of her responded, Sharon cleared her throat. The coffle chain drew slightly tighter as she raised her head in readiness.

“Block 91. Prisoner 3260 correctly shackled and chained, sir! Thank you sir!”

When fourteen women responded one after the other they stood quietly waiting for the next command. It was not verbal.

The noisy cacophony of snapping whips, shrieking women, the rapidly clinking rattle of leg-iron chains and the quick time click and tramp of high heels announced cell block 91’s coffled march to the facilities for morning ablutions.

Sharon stood in front of her station, leg-iron chain taut between her heavy ankle shackles. Tears streaked her cheeks; scarlet stripes streaked her bare legs.

“Mount your pins!”