Excerpt from "The Checkpoint: Book One"

 

Captain Kubeck turned a small wheel on the stocks clamped about Rachel Langford's naked breasts, driving the tip of a gleaming, screw-threaded bodkin a little deeper into pillowy-soft flesh. Rachel's scream of pain reverberated between the grim stone walls of Checkpoint One's interrogation room.

Checkpoint One was both the central customs post and police headquarters of the Duchy of Barovia; a small state that lay between Austria, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. The Checkpoint monitored access to and from its immediate, and equally modest, neighbour to the east, Nove Krasnic. It occupied the west wing of a castle that had once been the home of a prince when their capitals, Strakensburg and Zilny, had been two halves of one great city, but which now vied with each other for tourist business. Long ago the heart of the castle had been destroyed by fire and demolished leaving only its opposing wings and ancient walled gardens intact. Now the boarder ran along the crest of the low hills that were the southern extremity of the Little Carpathians and through the castle's former central courtyard, which was now a popular crossing point for tourists. During her stay in Barovia Rachel herself had passed across it several times without incident.

Until today...

'All I want is the truth, Miss Langford,' Kubeck said in his almost faultless English. 'And with a suspected terrorist sympathiser such as yourself I will go to any lengths to get it. Although Barovia is on friendly terms with the European Union we are not restricted by any of its laws about the treatment of prisoners. As you see we have our own methods of questioning suspects. They may seem harsh to you, but they've served us well for many years...'

Rachel's arms were drawn up about her head by heavy rubber-lined wrist cuffs strung from a chain that passed over a pulley bolted to one of the dark oak roof beams and down to a windlass mounted on the wall. Her legs were spread wide by more rubber-lined cuffs closed about her ankles and fastened to the ends of an iron bar, which was in turn secured by a snap hook to a recessed ring set in the heavy worn floorboards. Between the two sets of restraints her body twisted and swayed tautly in a futile struggle to escape her fear and pain.

A chain looped round the back of Rachel's neck supported the stocks imprisoning her breasts. These were two short thick wooden planks with inner sides butted together and linked at each end by long heavy bolts and wing nuts. Pairs of scallops cut out of the boards encircled her breasts and squeezed them into fleshy balloons. On the outer faces of the boards were a dozen screw-threaded bodkins with small knurled adjusting wheels for heads. They passed through pivoting sleeves arranged in threes and set out in arcs about each scallop so that their points faced inwards. These had been advanced until their tips were pressed deeply into the swollen side of Rachel's imprisoned breasts.

Collar-length dark hair framed Rachel's open, pretty face and large brown eyes that were now red-rimmed with tears. Her skin was pale and clear and there was a feminine fleshiness about her breasts, buttocks and hips that accentuated their curves. Her nipples were normally a virginal pink but were now flushed darker. A bikini-line-trimmed but still thick tangle of dark hair capped her pubic mound.

'I...I've told you the truth again and again,' Rachel sobbed wretchedly. 'I'm not a terrorist! It's all a mistake! Please let me go!'

However her words went unheeded. Kubeck's hard face did not soften and the green-uniformed guards who had escorted her into the chamber continued to gaze on her naked, chained and tormented body with appreciative interest but no sign of mercy. Her shameful exposure mortified Rachel almost as much as the pain in her clamped and pinned breasts. She had always been rather shy and until today Brian was the only man who had seen her naked. Now she was bared and degraded before total strangers.

Once more Kubeck held up a piece of paper in front of Rachel's face. 'Do you call this a mistake?' he demanded.

The paper was thin, almost translucent, and regularly creased, as though it had been folded up tightly. It was covered in columns of small print together with a few diagrams.

Kubeck pointed. 'Calls for the death to all unbelievers... the overthrow of Zionist capitalism... praise for suicide-bomb martyrs... advice on recruiting people to the cause... bomb-making instructions. This is practically a fundamentalist terrorist handbook. And it was found in your possession.'

'But it's not mine,' Rachel sobbed, 'I've never seen it before... ahhhh!'

Kubeck had tightened another screw, driving a different bodkin deeper into the underside of her trembling left breast. The array of rods was indenting her yielding flesh frighteningly deeply. She could only see the top six. Had the ones on the undersides broken her skin yet? Was that sweat or something worse she could feel on her chest? She imagined them being screwed on, skewering through her mammaries and meeting in the middle. What would that feel like? Yet despite the pain and fear, or perhaps because of them, her nipples were perversely erect, adding to her shame.

'Tell me again why you went to Zilny,' Kubeck said.

Rachel drew in a shuddering breath and fought to keep her voice steady against the pain and crushing embarrassment she felt speaking to the man who had reduced her to such a pitiful state. She tried to look over Kubeck's shoulder rather than meet those piercing eyes, but he slapped her cheek and twisted her chin round.

'No, do not hide your face from me when you speak.'

Blushing furiously she choked out, 'I... I've been staying in Strakensburg with my boyfriend, Brian Wilts, for the music festival. But we had a stupid argument yesterday he went off and left me. I was feeling miserable, so I walked over the hill to Zilny. It doesn't take long. There was a market and lots of small stalls. A man selling jewellery called out to me...'

'Can you describe him?'

'Uh... well he had a thick beard and a sort of skull-cap thing... and darkish skin.'

'Did you notice the name of the stall?'

'No... there was a small faded sign... I couldn't read it.'

'Go on.'

'He showed me several pieces. There was a nice amber pendant. It was quite cheap, so I bought it. I kept the receipt to show at the customs desk when I came back like you're supposed to. I hadn't noticed until then that it was so smudged you couldn't read it properly. Then customs man opened up the back of the pendant and found that paper...'

And then they had taken her through to this forbidding room. It had high, barred lancet windows, store cupboards, some heavy high-backed chairs and against one wall what looked like a huge dark oak wardrobe that extended from floor to ceiling. Here she had first seen Kubeck seated behind a big desk: a lean man in his forties, looking immaculate in his crisp smart uniform, with close-cut iron-grey hair, a thin goatee beard and moustache and piercing grey eyes. He had examined the contents of her bag, the pendant and the hidden document and then ordered Rachel to strip for a body search to see if she was carrying any more prohibited items. When she hesitated the guards had jabbed her with the batons they carried hooked to their belts, except they were not batons but electric cattle prods. While she was too shocked to resist they had stripped her themselves and Kubeck had examined every piece of her clothing. Then the guards had held her bent over the back of a chair while Kubeck had examined her body cavities. His hard, rubber-gloved fingers had probed inside her, not just her vagina but her rectum as well. She had sobbed and squirmed and Kubeck had slapped her bottom and warned her to keep still. Nobody had ever treated her like that before. She could do nothing to stop him feeling her intimate hot wetness. When he was finished she thought at least she would be allowed to dress, but instead they had cuffed her arms above her and brought out the terrible stocks and it seemed that from then on she had not stopped crying...

Kubeck was looking at her thoughtfully. 'Perhaps you have simply been the victim of a cruel hoax,' he said. 'Or possibly this paper was intended for somebody else, and it was passed to you by mistake.'

Rachel's heart lifted. 'Yes, that's it!'

'However,' Kubeck continued grimly, 'that does not explain this...' He held up a copy of the guidebook to Strakensburg that had been in her bag. 'Is this yours?'

Rachel was confused. 'Yes, but I...'

Kubeck flipped it open at the foldout map of the city and held it up to the light so Rachel could see. Half a dozen bright pinpoints shone out of the page.

'If you are innocent why are the locations of the police headquarters, the main power station, the central telephone exchange, the Duke's Palace and several other key sites all marked by pinholes? That's an odd selection for a genuine tourist to make. If you had to highlight them why not use a clear pencil mark, unless you wanted to hide your interest. Are they targets for your bombs?'

'No... I didn't... I mean... I don't know...' Rachel stammered.

'Possessing one item of incriminating evidence might be misfortune, but a second is stretching coincidence too far...'

There was a flash and crack as Kubeck's shock baton jabbed quickly into the heavy under-swells of Rachel's imprisoned breasts, left and then right. She shrieked as burning electric hammers seemed to slam into her. She had never experienced such sharp deliberate pain delivered with such cruel calculation before. It left her shaking and sobbing helplessly. Her mind was spinning. This could not be happening to her. It was a nightmare...

Kubeck grasped her hair and pulled her head up. Rachel blinked the tears from her eyes to find herself staring into Kubeck's implacable face.

'They're recruiting people like you now: a foolish girl from a good home who would be easily led. I suppose you were told to keep your western dress and manners, so you'd blend in. When were you converted?'

'I... I wasn't... uhhh!'

He had pressed the tip of his baton into her hard right nipple, and she jerked like a puppet in her chains as the jolt tore through her, leaving her nipple burning, stinging, and pulsing fiercely.

'Admit it: you had that paper all along and simply transferred it to the pendant so you could claim it was not yours if it was found, just as you have done. Maybe you had other copies and have already passed them on. We'll find out when we search your hotel room.'

'No...ahhh!'

He had shocked her left nipple. Her entire breast seemed to burn.

'Did you come to the music festival to make new contacts and convert others? Perhaps you see Barovia as a small vulnerable state ripe to be destabilised.'

'No!'

He was dragging the tip of the shock baton down her body over her tremulous belly and through her pubic curls until it slipped into the mouth of her vagina. Cold metal contacts pressed into the folds of her warm wet tender flesh. Why was she so wet? Oh God, no, her clitoris was growing hard. How could it react like this? Yet even as Rachel whimpered in fear, Kubeck's slate-grey eyes bored into her, so masterful and dominating. He would do it. Nobody had ever handled her like this. She wanted to hate him but instead was filled with the frightening insight that this was perfectly natural. He was a powerful man, and she was just a helpless naked bound girl. She felt the will to resist draining out of her.

'Was this so called break-up between you and your boyfriend all part of your strategy? Will he return with materials for you bombs after you have selected the targets?'

Rachel knew what was going to happen, but she could only tell the truth. 'No.... ahhhheeee...!'

The pain was unbelievable and seemed unending, setting her hips jerking as though in an obscene parody of sexual frenzy. Her wetness carried the current through every intimate crevice and deep up inside her. Her pussy was on fire, exploding, spasming, pulsing, shuddering, while her clitoris was a beacon of delirious pain. She was impaled on a rod of torment crackling within her. A hot spurt erupted from her cleft and sprayed across the floor in fitful jets. Something seemed to explode in her brain, and she sagged limply in her chains.