Chapter 1

 

Thang Thi Kim stepped naked into the courtyard's bright sun and stared. The shame of having 300 pairs of eyes inspecting her long willowy body was overwhelming. She wanted to disappear, but the bondage prevented her from even covering herself or cringing. So instead, she straightened her back and turned defiantly towards the gawkers, her bound nudity on full display.

Shame...! She thought furiously raising her head. That is what this day is all about. The Masters demand we express shame for defying them, that we publicly bury our pride. This was why they such an elaborate ceremony out of their punishment, why they assemble the entire population to watch, why the hated scaffold sits so prominently at the center of the camp.

Their lives revolved around the heinous structure, around their Masters. There was no place in this camp for pride.

She stared out over the girl. So many dark-haired beauties, she thought, sitting quietly on their haunches, waiting to witness their sisters' shame and pain. What were they thinking? She wondered. Probably most were thanking their ancestors for sparing them from the rod today. That's what she thought when she witnessed punishment.

Kim stared at their short green tunics. The tunic made them blend together like neat rows of bok choy waiting to be chopped. Three-hundred "volunteers" and only 24 guards ... this was their real shame, Kim thought. If they felt pride, they could easily overwhelm their Masters, tear them to pieces, grind them into the dust under sharp female heals.

That would feel so good, she thought, to smash their faces, to break their bones.

She knew it was only a dream. There would be no revolt today, only the sound of the cane cutting through the air and the screams of those being caned. It was a hideous symphony, the Devil's music.

Most of these girls were from Vietnam like her. Others came from different parts of Southeast Asia. "Gentle and shy," that was the phrase used to describe girls of this region. No, there would be no protest, no revolt today.

A wave of sickening anticipation and fear passed through her body, but she hid it behind a brave face. The sun's heat felt good on her bare skin. They had spent the night in the pain-hut which was damp and dark. Those awaiting punishment were always kept in the hut for the night, tied to the small room's center post.

It was a cruel bondage -- their arms were pulled behind and tied together behind the post. One guard would raise their arms until they were forced up on their toes then a second would put a nail through their wrist tie into the post. They would stay this way until morning. By then, the pain in their shoulders and feet was excruciating. The guards who removed the nails would rub their bodies to restore circulation. It was terrible, but the guards seemed to enjoy their suffering.

Kim had been happy to get off the post and had greeted the morning sun with joy. She was also terrified; the sun signaled the start of their real punishment on the scaffold. The torture of the hut was only an annoyance compared to what they were now facing.

Pride and shame ... fear and bravery ... safety and terror ... this day was going to be full of conflict, full of testing. She moved her thin shoulders in a circle trying to remove the post's lingering ache.

Pain and joy... she thought with a grimace. They are cousins.

She accepted the duality she found in her life. It was her karma, her personal Tao to encounter opposites. She believed the world was full of metaphysical coins, each with two faces, each face seemingly in conflict with the other, looking off in a different direction.

How could two halves of a whole be in conflict? She asked herself as her shoulder pain receded. They could not. They were the same entity, inextricably joined together, forever, just as her suffering would always be linked to her joy, her shame to her pride, her pain to her pleasure...

Like many young Vietnamese, Kim believed in the dualism of the Tao, in the karma that had put her in this terrible place, the yin and yang. This philosophy was at the core of her being. It helped her cope. She felt a wave of sorrow and pity for Nardar and Tan, the other two girls on her coffle. They had no such comfort in their lives. They believed it was just their bad luck, their evil joss to stand on the scaffold in the morning sum, to...

The scaffold...!

She turned her head towards the wooden structure in the center of the yard and stared at it with a placid expression. Her heart was racing like a small animal but she refused to let her fear show on her face. The scaffold was beautiful in its own way -- finely constructed of rare bamboo and shellacked countless times with the resin of the female lac bug. It reflected the sun as if it was encrusted with a thousand diamonds.

Bamboo had an almost mystical appeal for the Vietnamese people, she remembered. It was the basis for much of Vietnam's greatest art like the book she read as a child -- Thanh Gióng (The Story of Gióng). This had been her favorite story. In her mind, she had ridden with the boy, Gióng, on his iron horse as he slew the Chinese invaders. Her mother's refusal to keep reading her the story had inspired her early literacy, which eventually led to her admission to the Vietnamese Institute for Political Studies, which in turn had led to her abduction. In a strange way, Gióng was responsible for her being in this place. His story had set the sad events in her life in motion...

The rope at her neck jerked forward suddenly and her defensive memories disappeared. Surprised, she stumbled forward a few steps trying to keep her balance. Her arms were useless; the guard had pulled her tied wrists to her shoulder blades, crossed them, and tied their ropes to the rope around her neck. None of them had the use of their arms. She would bring the entire coffle to the ground if she fell now. The thought of it made her shudder. Such clumsiness would bring great dishonor on her family especially her ancestors who were surely watching her now, waiting to see how she would bear this trial.

She fixed her eyes on Nardar's high ass and her long legs and quickly synchronized her steps to hers. The other girls in their barracks made fun of Nardar's hard and perky ass cheeks. Asian men preferred soft curves in their women and a gentle roundness in a girl's behind.

How fucking ignorant these girls were, Kim thought. Didn't they realize everyone in the camp had features the gwei lo (the white ghosts) preferred. Nardar's perky ass was not that unusual here at Gió Nnhẹ Nhàng (Gentle Breeze) Camp neither was her pronounced cunt, her full high tits and dark areola, and her long legs. Each of them had one or more of these features. The "volunteers" at Gió Nnhẹ Nhàng were all almost certainly destined for use by Western men, she had decided long ago.

Stupid cunts...! Did they think it was just a coincidence the Masters had brought together so many Asian females who had features favored by the gwei lo? Did they think the camp's training and its cruel bondage and discipline were done for no reason? At night in the barracks, they talked about going home. How ridiculous they were! None of them was ever going home, ever.

Nardar, the lead girl, stopped at the scaffold's steps then pulled back suddenly on the lead rope. She was screaming her refusal to mount the steps, crying out shamelessly and shaking her head in abject terror. The sound of the cane tearing the air was like the hiss of a snake. Kim felt it pass close by her thigh on its way to striking Nardar's perfect ass. Her screams of fear changed instantly to screams of pain. They cut through the still morning air like a knife.

The pain seemed like a real thing, like a ghost had descended onto the yard. It levitated Nardar's body magically onto the first step or maybe it was just the threat of a second cane stroke.

They would all be screaming soon enough, Kim thought miserably as she followed meekly intent on avoiding the same discipline. They were not punished often at Gió Nnhẹ Nhàng, but when they were the Masters liked to make the most of it. They conducted the event with great solemnity and gravitas almost like a religious ceremony. Nardar's protest was an inexcusable violation of the protocol ... a sacrilege of sorts.

Kim couldn't understand such logic, but she appreciated it -- the heinous screams of the three girls being caned would add to the pomp and circumstance. They would reinforce the idea that the Masters ruled, that the camp's rules were inviolate, that the penalty for breaking those rules was unbearable agony, that there was no escape for anyone not even in death. The inevitability of their suffering, the certainty of it would also underscore the terrible reality of the camp's no-mercy-ever policy.

It was amazing to her how many of these simple girls still believed they were too pretty to be treated harshly. Beautiful creatures are always treated better, she thought. It was one of the unspoken realities of life. How ironic, she thought, that our privileged upbringings will make our pain even harder to bear.

She looked up as she climbed the steep steps. Nardar's exposed cunt lips were rubbing against each other causing a rivulet of seminal fluid to run down the inside of her leg. She had ejaculated from the extreme emotions, from the fear, Kim reasoned. It happened sometimes especially with simple girls.

Nardar was Myanmarese (Burmese), young and inexperienced, and without a higher education. She had been a 21 year-old secretary working in a bank in Mandalay when she had been taken. She still didn't fully understand or appreciate her situation ... which was probably why she had tried to run in the first place.

Trying to escape Gió Nnhẹ Nhàng camp had been a foolish decision, Kim thought. It was understandable though, the Burmese were an impetuous people. Even so, it had taken the Montagnard trackers employed by the Masters less than a day to find and to bring her back. There was no eluding them in the steep hills surrounding Gentle Breeze.

The savages had stripped her and tied her face-down by her bound wrists and ankles over a bamboo pole then bound her elbows and knees together. The elbow binding was solely for the purpose of making her journey even more painful. The knee-tie though, they discovered later, was to hold a ripe banana in her cunt. It was a tradition for the tribe. The two men carrying the pole had also attached a small fruit, guava, with twine to each of her nipples. They bounced playfully over the ground pulling on her tits as they walked into camp. The little men carrying Nardar smiled and nodding to the horrified spectators.

The Masters allowed the Montagnards their cruel amusements like the pole-tie and the guava, but they didn't allow the savages to mark or fuck those girls they captured. Kim found this interesting when Nardar had told her story in the pain-hut.

"Their erections were so big they lifted the loincloths away from their balls," she explained, "but no one violated me or inserted themselves into any hole. In that area, they were respectful."

Respectful...!

The silly girl's story reinforced Kim's belief they were destined for a larger purpose; Gió Nnhẹ Nhàng was just a way-stop in a much longer journey, one that somehow involved Western men. This was why the savages had left her intact, why the punishment for escape was caning rather than death.

What about my own stupidity? She asked herself. Was Nardar's escape any more foolish than mine? She wondered as she stepped onto the platform. A guard had slipped his finger into her vagina during her washing. With her hands tied overhead in the shower, her only defense was to kick out at him with her bare foot. It was done instinctively without thought or malice. The guard would have surely ignored it, but an officer was passing by the showers by at the same time. He made it an official matter. Once that happened, both their fates were sealed. There were no extenuating circumstances -- none -- for a "volunteer" striking a man in the camp.

The guard who had touched her had already been whipped and his wandering finger amputated as a permanent reminder not to touch the merchandise. These things had been done to him in private behind the guards' barracks. Her punishment on the other hand was to be very public and very painful ... in keeping with the goal of making it an object-lesson for the camp.

Still she was lucky; striking one of the Masters on purpose often meant a terrible death. Her caning punishment was considered merciful.

She wasn't afraid of a quick death like the throat cutting done to someone who was seriously ill or injured. Such a death would be a blessing. The death promised at Gentle Breeze for purposeful offenders was anything but quick; it was always hideous and painfully long.

She had witnessed an execution once and immediately put what she'd seen out of her mind. It wasn't that she didn't remember; it was simply too horrible to think about. Her mind had simply blurred out the details and left behind only flickering scenes and abstract ideas about what had happened.

It was shameful to forget such things, she thought as they waited. It dishonored the one who had suffered so horribly. She couldn't do anything about it; she had little control over her mind. Still ... it was the kind of thing that brought shame like when she had lost control of her bladder while waiting for the Master to pronounce her sentence. She had slumped and nearly fainted with relief when he announced she would only be caned. Later, she marveled at feeling relief even gratitude at being sentenced to a caning.

She looked out over the crowd as her thoughts rambled on. The bamboo under her bare feet was smooth and even. The scaffold was a masterpiece of Vietnamese craftsmanship and artistry. It used no screws or bolts only clever cuts and rawhide strips to hold the pieces together. It held the four men and three bound women without any sway or creak.

Slowly, she forced herself to focus on the current reality.

She looked more closely at the crowd. Some of the girls had tears streaming from their eyes, but they were not crying. Noise, even the slightest sound, was forbidden during punishment. Even the forests beyond the stockade seemed strangely silent. This was one of the reasons Nardar had been struck so viciously at the foot of the stairs. The caning ceremony was supposed to be conducted in strict silence so that their screams, when they came, would be even more impactful, more terrifying.

Still, Kim was grateful for their tears. Their expression of sadness made her feel connected; just another reason for her to act in a dignified and honorably way during the coming ordeal.

Other girls had told her the canes they used for punishment would not break the skin, only raise a painful welt. It was the large number of welts and their comprehensive coverage over her naked body that would generate the real agony. The guards assigned to the caning were experts; they could bring out the most hideous pain without leaving permanent marks, causing madness, or mortally wounding the victim. This last statement was always spoken with a respectful whisper as if their caning skill was to be admired.

A guard stepped in close and untied the coffle rope at her neck. He held her slender body by her cunt and one tit while a second guard tied a rope under her arms. She winced at the shame of being touched like that in front of the crowd. She knew every eye was watching, every mind was feeling her humiliation, her fear. It was beyond embarrassing.

She needed to do something to do something so she turned her head towards the guard and smiled. It was just a gesture, but at least it was something. He smiled back then squeezed with his hands reminding her in the most appallingly graphic way possible that she was here to suffer no matter what courageous gestures she made. Suddenly it hit her; he was right, all that mattered now was the pain. Later perhaps she would think about how she looked and acted, but right now it was the pain that counted.

The rope harness was designed to suspend her from her shoulders. She knew the reason -- the violent jerking brought on by the cane could easily dislocate her shoulder if she was suspended by her wrists. Hanging her with a harness under her arms was a kindness. The excruciating pain of a shoulder dislocation was reserved for a death sentence not an ordinary caning.

When her harness was finished, the guard holding her moved her onto a small ramp then took up the slack in her harness until she was on her toes. Being stretched on her toes accentuated the muscles and curves in her body. She glanced at the crowd again and saw admiration in many eyes. Many of the more cosmopolitan "volunteers" appreciated her shapely body, her exciting face, her long black hair. She even saw lust in some faces. The crowd was like an animal now, a single entity sexually excited by the prospect of the terrible suffering she was about to endure.

Why was that? She wondered. Why did people enjoy someone else's pain, someone else's misfortune? Was it relief at avoiding the same fate or just our inherent savagery? She didn't know or care right now. All she cared about now...

She looked down at the narrow bamboo ramp which extended perhaps three feet beyond the edge of the platform and maybe five feet above the ground. The cane's kiss was close now, she thought shuddering, still trying to stand straight in the blazing sun. Suddenly she felt wetness on her leg and looked down. It was piss she had lost control of her bladder again. Some of those in the front row smiled at her shame a few looked away trying to pretend they didn't notice. She felt the liquid tickling her pointed feet then in her toes. Her shaming was complete.

"These three have violated our rules," Commander Dung said in a loud but unhurried voice.

She turned her head respectfully towards him. Dung, Commander Dung Duc Hoc was the head-Master of Gió Nnhẹ Nhàng Camp. He determined their training program, he set the rules, he decided on punishments. In many ways, he was like their God; they suffered or prospered, lived or died based on his judgment. Wasn't that what a God did?

This question was perfectly consistent with her belief in Tao, Kim thought, hovering on the edge of insanity.

Dung stood at the end of the platform facing the crowd. His hands were folded casually behind his back as if he was out for a stroll. Kim and the other two girls to be caned watched him with polite deference. He wasn't a handsome man, she thought numbly, but right now that didn't matter. In another time, in another place she would have rejected him out of hand; she would have felt satisfaction at making fun of his flirtation. In her old life her beauty had given her certain privileges over men. One of those was to determine who she gave her attention to and who she didn't. It truly seemed like a million years ago on a different planet. That life was over now, she thought, as she watched this ugly little man defend her punishment.

She knew her mind was wandering, struggling to shield her from the reality of her situation, to deflect the overwhelming terror slithering up her bare legs.

"...Now they suffer so you might learn," Dung continued, "and I want you all to watch closely and remember it could easily be you who suffers."

He nodded in the direction of the three bare-chested guards who stood behind each girl. Kin's man reached out and gently turned her body so she was perpendicular to him. She struggled to comply by moving her toes. What else could she do? Resistance was impossible, pleading had no effect.

"Try to stand as still as possible when your turn comes to be caned," he whispered. "It is much more painful if I hit an existing welt by mistake. Understand...?"

He was holding one of her nipples, pulling her gently, fine-tuning the exact position of her feet. She opened her mouth and exhaled unaware she had been holding her breath.

"Mer ... mer ... mercy, Master," she stammered, her eyes wide with paralyzing fear.

He smiled and nodded encouragingly then stepped back to the rail on the other side of the platform. On the signal from Commander Dung, he pulled back hard on an iron lever. The ramp under her feet fell away quietly; she was now fully suspended by the harness just a few feet from those in the front row. She stared at them in terror.

The transition from support to suspension was relatively gentle -- the ramp had just swung away leaving her in the air. It was swinging ever so gently now in the morning breeze, mocking her. She could hear Nardar screaming at her back; grunting in a maniacal struggle to get her feet back on the platform. It was clearly impossible, Kim thought, they were too far away from the edge. She knew Nardar would try anyway; she had no compunction about disrupting the solemnity of the caning ceremony with her screams and flailing legs.

Burmese people...! She thought critically. They were an excitable, overly dramatic lot. Despite her terror, she remained surprisingly calm and quiet, swinging slowly at the end of the rope harness. It was almost like a playground ride.

She watched as the guards took wet green canes from a small trough hanging on the back rail; she watched as they flexed the wet sticks nodding at their supple movement. They were exactly the right balance of firmness and flexibility to inflict maximum pain, she thought. Green canes were for pain, red were for death. The fact that she would suffer but not die, which had seemed so important during her sentencing, now seemed irrelevant -- red or green, they both delivered unbearable pain. What difference did it...

"Begin," Commander Dung ordered quietly.

Nardar's torturer aimed his first stroke then flicked the long cane across her flashing calves. Her scream echoed across the yard. Kim watched over her shoulder as the girl's body convulsed, twisting in every possible direction at the same time as if trying to separate itself from the hurt. Two bright red marks appeared on her legs. Before this punishment was done, she would have hundreds of bright red lines running up and down the length of her body, front and back. These men prided themselves on an even distribution of the lines, on how parallel they were.