Chapter 1 - A new sect member

 

Whack.

"Gnnngh!" The unhappy recipient of the lash uttered an involuntary response.

"Hold firm Neenah! Take the pain of the lash in the spirit with which it is delivered," Marsha commanded in a low, almost reverent tone, but complying with that command was all too hard, especially when the next shot from the cat bit again.

Hiss, crack. This time Neenah kept her sickened agony to herself, merely gritting her teeth and shuddering under the murderous stripe.

"Ten!" Marsha toned. Curses to it all, she still had fourteen more lashes to take and already Neenah felt sick to her stomach and even a little dizzy. The bite of the lash took her over again, as it impacted across her shoulders with a wicked leather on skin rattle that five lashes make when working in unison. Neenah felt the hard, vicious cords bite into her back, felt again, the sharp, tough knots of the whip attack her already ravaged back.

"Aaargh...ugh!" Neenah fought to choke off a cry of pain and then remembering herself again, gulped at a new wave of nausea and stood firm for the next that would be struck across her from the other side. It came all too soon; the woman standing to Neenah's right was due her strike. Both of the women whipping Neenah were themselves naked to the waist, wearing simply their loose, low-slung white Zouave pants that both she and Marsha wore too. Neenah stood bound to a wooden whipping pillory, an edifice constructed and reserved purely for fastening and holding women to be whipped. Neenah's arms were raised to shoulder height and fully outstretched, fastened with cords about her wrists that were in turn fixed to the extremes of the whipping post. Her pretty face stood higher than the board against which she stood. She pressed her full, ripe breasts against the broad plank that was part of the post, she wanted to try and spare her breasts another sample of the whip-lashing effect of the cords swirling around her succulent back and ripping across the front of her body. The five corded cat-o'five-tails being used on her were long enough to do that and had already done so enough times to make her wince and cringe.

Although to all intents and purposes, the scene being enacted was every bit like one that might have been at the command of a Judge, Mullah or Cadi, on this occasion, none of those learned men had ordained a whipping for Neenah. No Mullah had demanded that Neenah be stood half-naked at the whipping post to suffer four and twenty from two women wielding judicial whips, trained to the task. No Judge had decreed that another stand aside as presiding officer and count on the lashes and no Cadi had decided that rather than inflict the whipping in the public street, Neenah could suffer her agony and humiliation behind the locked doors of a gaol or police cell. Had that been the case, the sight of a sweating, shuddering woman taking stripes from two half-naked beauties sweating copiously from their hard endeavours whilst a third, stripped to pants and skimpy bolero counting on those lashes would have been nothing in any way unusual in a Talasian ruled town of the Provinces. What was unusual, perhaps even fantastic was that Neenah had volunteered to stand where she now stood. She had willingly stripped to her loose, low slung Zouave pants and had hitched the waistband lower, to allow the two women whipping her, broad scope to flash their whips across her bare back. She had kicked off her sandals and stood willingly enough to the whipping post and allowed the two women to bind her arms outstretched. She was glad too that Marsha had been on hand to count the strokes on, for all four women were members of a sect that was prevalent enough in Provincial lands at that time in the middle of the Talasian rule, for they were members of a sect of flagellants. Specifically, they were all members of Marsha's appointed white flagellants.

They were not the only flagellant sect in the Provincial town of Zephora at that time. Flagellant sects were springing up and dying back like crops in the fields then. In addition to the white, there was the brown sect, the grey, the blue and the red. All displayed their allegiance to their particular sect by the strident colour of the loose, floppy pants that was almost ubiquitous amidst the flagellant community, the loose, flowing Zouave pant.

"Fifteen!" toned Marsha and again, an agonising flash of pain blinded Neenah. Her body went taut again and Marsha gazed impassively into Neenah's sweating, screwed up face.

"Oh, please God help me...!" Neenah groaned.

"He is Neenah, but your soul is bitterly tainted. Take the lashes my sweet one, God will help and guide you!" Neenah let out a wail of pain with her tears as the next ripped across her back. Marsha suddenly snapped at the girl who lashed her then. "Use that thing with a will! Anything less is blasphemy and I'll take you to the mullah myself if I see or suspect it!" Marsha's handsome features were lined with anger as she spoke.

Neenah, gasping with pain did not suspect for a second that the woman was whipping her with anything less than all her well-practised strength, she was feeling every cord from every whip stroke and everyone was creasing her to her very toes. She looked almost piteously into Marsha's cold, impassive, dark eyes. Marsha was a stridently handsome woman. Twenty-six years old and senior member of the white sect, she was the unannounced sect leader and indeed, its founder member. She stood watching Neenah take her flogging with her arms folded and her legs parted proudly as she stared into Neenah's shuddering, grimacing, sweating features. She knew better than all the rest what shattering agony Neenah was going through and she knew it was a bridge that had to cross to enter her own beloved sect.

The count rose inexorably and Neenah's agony exponentially. By the time the count reached eighteen, Neenah was sure she was going mad with the torture. Every time the cords bit into her body, her pain crazed mind shouted at her.

'Tell her to stop! End it now! Tell her you've had enough. Go, run from this mad-house and leave it forever,' but somehow, for some reason, Neenah hung on, held her tongue beyond a groan, a yelp or a shout of pain. By that time, Neenah's body was not her own, she had no control over it; it twisted this way and that in set, repetitive response to the way the whips were struck across her. She gasped, groaned, bent at the knees with her head back, but still Marsha stood implacable, watching, counting, merciless, yet not the instigator, counting, yet not calling on the stripes as an unstoppable duty. Neenah could stop this, Neenah could end it now. She heard twenty-two, but it was not a victory, it was a lament, lamentable that there were still two more of those dreadful, mind numbing, gut churning lashes to feel yet.

"The body does not matter Neenah, only the soul," Marsha reminded her, but all that mattered was the blinding pain as that next lash slashed across her and bit into her and even the last lash was not a relief, for it too, still had its quota of torture to deliver and Neenah felt the grinding agony score across her lower back and winced as the knotted cords flew around her ribs and slapped in a sickening termination of biting knots at her stomach.

Marsha raised her hand in a silent command for the girls to stop, but there was no real need, their lethal cats were already hanging limp at their sides. Marsha stepped close to stare into Neenah's sweating tear streaked face.

"Did you really think twenty four lashes were going to be easy Neenah, did you really? That's silly; you know now," she spoke quietly, but Neenah detected an almost mocking tone. "Cut her free!" she ordered and Neenah gave a gasp and a moan as she let her arms fall to her sides. "Can you stand?" Marsha asked, still with that hint of cynicism in her voice. Neenah gave a gulp and nodded.

"I feel sick...and a bit dizzy," she admitted.

"Help her!" Marsha ordered and the two whippers, their own half-naked bodies sticky with sweat, took an arm each and helped Neenah to a couch. Marsha stood by her, seeming to tower over her as Neenah morosely took a sip from the goblet of water offered.

"You can bow out even now Neenah. You know that," for a moment, Neenah almost imagined Marsha was trying to entice her to go down, not to accept the offer of being a member of the sect of the white Zouaves. "Now you know at least how hard it will be and indeed, it will get harder, many times. There is no shame in declining the offer." Neenah knew that now she had endured the ordained twenty-four lashes, Marsha could not eject her from the sect but for some gross misdemeanour. Neenah looked into Marsha's handsome, dark face and smiled.

"I'm in aren't I mistress?" Marsha gave her a smile and nodded.

"You are Neenah. You did well, really!" Again Neenah heard the words, but read the comment. It was still mocking, telling Neenah that she was superior, she was better. "I will show you how I can take the lash myself soon enough Neenah, but don't ever forget it is always your choice and your choice alone that will keep you in our beloved sect. Do not listen to anybody else who may try to cajole or entice you to stay should you wish to leave. There is no disgrace to going down. Marsha took Neenah's sweaty, soft hand and kissed it lightly.

"You have endured the mandatory flogging. You are now a member of the flagellant sect of the white Zouaves. Bless you!

Chapter 2 - The cane and toil

 

Neenah was a beauty indeed at even at her tender age of just twenty-one; she had known more men than most. It would be true to say that she was a confirmed and unabashed user of men. She loved them every bit as much as they loved her and hardly a day would pass when Neenah would not be opening her legs for some strong man's fat cock. She loved the large men, powerful, even dangerous ones. Men who seemed uncaring about her. The men she enjoyed were men who took their women, had their pleasure and went on to the next. Neenah wasn't looking for love or commitment, just sex, just men and their stiff, fat phalluses. She knew what she did was against the law and she would even agree that to a great extent, the way she lived her life was even morally, intrinsically wrong, but morals and mores were for the birds and others, not for her. She liked men and she liked what they did to her and did for her. So what if she woke in the arms of one man and fell asleep that night in the arms of another having enjoyed a third during the day? As long as the mullah didn't find out, Neenah was not going to concern herself unduly. The men got as much out of it as she did.

She loved to court the strong, brooding soldiers who patrolled the street as policemen, their short swords at their sides, their horsewhips tied to their belts. They looked so strong and unapproachable. How she loved to lie with them and on them and reduce them to her level as they enjoyed a loin wracking orgasm with her. She would roll off them, sticky and wet with sweat, their fresh semen oozing from her hot, wet gash copiously. She was an incorrigible, insatiable slut. She knew she deserved a whipping, but she was equally sure that even a mullah's whip would not stop her enjoying the games she loved playing. Friends warned her, others assured her that if she were caught, she would stand in the public whipping posts for a stern and well deserved flogging.

"That would close your legs for you Neenah!" they warned. "They'll make you close your legs," they would tell her, but Neenah would laugh and smile.

"The mullah will have to catch me first," she would say. Like so many of her kind, they believed that they would never be caught in that, the most private of acts.

So Neenah was never short of men being as pretty as she was, some would say very pretty, with a curly mane of brown hair that her mixed mulatto breeding imparted to her. She had bright, cobalt blue eyes and soft, honey coloured skin. There was no shortage of men eager to lie with Neenah the mulatto. Whether it was her blood or her lack of virtue it was hard to decide, but she was all too eager to lie with men and open her legs to let them into her.

As on one hot and dangerous occasion, Neenah arranged to meet twelve men with two of her friends. In the event, only Neenah turned up and some of the party of men arrived with friends. Neenah finished by satisfying no less than fifteen men on her own. They could have pulled her apart, but she was as hot and voracious as the men that night. At times she rode one man, whilst giving fellatio to a second and hand relaxing two others. She was smothered with semen and ended up swallowing so much, that by morning, she felt queasy and sick, but amidst it all, she had a wonderful time and being the soul-centre of attention, she was spoilt by the men's adoration. When she awoke the next morning, all but three of the men had left and she was dripping and covered with sperm. She had to wipe it from her face, hair and body; wads of it drooled from her sore, aching vagina and she felt sick from the stale, ugly taste in her mouth from the penises and the mass of semen she had ingested. That did teach her a lesson however, she vowed thereafter never to take men en-masse like that again; she would enjoy her men one at a time in future.

Neenah could smell myself all the next day and was unable to afford a body rub for a week. Every time she dropped her pants to sit down, the smell from her bush and from the stale cotton of her pants assailed her. She was rank and smelly for a week, but the smell reminded her of the men and made her horny all over again.

It was a while after that Neenah got involved with a sweet girl who saw herself as a reformer and a revolutionary. Neenah's only interest was the fact that she knew a good number of the girls in the group were man-eaters and she thought there was a good chance that she would meet some like-minded girls and some good man-friends. It all went very wrong when Neenah and her friend were arrested in the town square for dissent and causing an affray. Neenah had never joined the sect for any political gain, she was merely after men, but she was arrested and had to face the punishment meted out to such girls. Female dissent was a common enough misdemeanours in that part of the Province and so the courts had plenty of experience in dealing with such offenders.

Both girls were sentenced to a public caning. Neenah's friend was ordered to receive thirty strokes, and Neenah was to receive twenty-four. Neenah was very frightened in the court, especially when the judge just asked her out of the blue if she was a virgin. Neenah was not so stupid as to tell the truth and told the judge that she was.

"We can always check on such things you know!" he snapped, but to Neenah's immense good fortune, the judge did not pursue the point. Neenah knew her mixed race gained her a lot of suspicion and prejudice and she reasoned the judge only asked her the question because of her ethnic mix. Black girls were always suspected of any crime over a more Provincial girl, especially sexual crimes. The judge told them they would both weep and suffer anyway and he demanded that both girls do thirty days hard labour to follow. The judges were getting annoyed with protesting girls; Neenah knew she and her friend were not going to get off lightly.

They were both taken to a lockup at the side of the gaol, where a brutal looking, animal of a man ordered they strip to the waist. Neenah and her friend had both seen public floggings enough time to know how the ritual worked. Girls were not allowed to loiter around public floggings, but both had seen enough to know how the ritual was played out. Neenah morosely watched her friend exit the room with the guard. She looked as afraid as she felt and Neenah felt deeply sorry for her and herself as she watched her timidly follow the guard, her loose, baggy marl Zouave style leggings, creasing and folding, low and off her crotch as she moved.