It was an hour before midnight when they picked her up. The black and white van glided up behind her as she stood waiting for a bus. They took her gently, one officer holding each arm, like escorts.
She started to ask a question and one of the voices beside her said, “This is just a routine questioning.”
Sitting on the floor of the van she felt her heart hammering in the absolute darkness. The walls and floor were padded and the sound of the street moving underneath her was hushed. The van stopped and the doors opened. The night sky had been taken away and replaced with brightly lit walls, ceiling. The night wind had been changed into air that never blew.
Again two men took her by the arms; they passed quickly from the painful white light of the big underground garage into a room with no light. A few steps inside a spotlight snapped on, its white cone shining straight down to where it cut a brilliant dot on the floor. It made the darkness seem blacker; a thickness into which a man need only step to become invisible.
“Stand in the light,” an invisible man beside her spoke.
“Stand with your feet on the marks.”
“But, what…” she began.
“Put your feet on the marks.”
“To do so she had to spread her long legs, stand with her feet uncomfortably wide apart. When her feet were on the marks the hands released her arms. She stood in the shower of light for several minutes. Nothing happened.
“What’s going on?” No answer.
When someone finally spoke to her it was a new voice and it came from the blackness somewhere in front of her. Close.
“Your name is Claudine Briodin.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.” Her voice sounded small. It was becoming hard to breathe through the fear.
Hands took hold of her wrists, large male hands. Two more hands started unbuttoning her blouse.
“No, please…don’t…I…wait…”
She couldn’t move her arms so she twisted her shoulders from side to side, trying to avoid the working hands.
“Hold still.” The hands pushed the blouse back over her shoulders and she was bare to the waist. The hands dropped to the zipper of her skirt.
She was crying now, softly, to herself.
Her skirt dropped to the floor and the hands slipped her panties down. She was told to step out of the clothes piled around her feet, and she did, numbly, letting the automatic motions she used every night do the final stripping of her body for these invisible strangers. The hands released her wrists.
“Put your feet on the marks.” Her bare feet stepped out, sideways. They left her standing there for several minutes, naked, legs spread.
Ten years of anti-terrorist lawmaking, a decade of growing police powers have brought me right here, to this place, Claudine told herself as she waited, trembling. The nuclear bombing of the Statue of Liberty last year gave the mad dogs one last push of frenzy…and the Routine Questioning laws.
She felt the pressure first against her bare ass, then something pressed softly at her shoulders, then calves, heels, back of head. She moved, started to step forward away from the pressure.
“Lean back.”
The hands took her wrists again and pressed them into soft cuffs at her sides. Wide padded cuffs were wrapped around her ankles. They have manacled me to a padded wall, her racing mind told her.
The wall started to tip slowly backward. When her feet left the floor her body weight put hard pressure on the cuffs and they dug into her arms and legs. The wall tipped faster and the pressure shifted to her ass and then ass, shoulders, back, legs, and she was lying flat. Her chest felt like she had been breathing steam and her legs were trembling visibly. Claudine tried to stop shaking but she no longer had any control over her hysterical muscles.
“Now, Claudine, we want you to answer a few questions for us.” The voice was smooth, deadly, coming from somewhere beside her in the blackness. She lay on the table. Waiting.
“What is your address, Claudine?”
“My identification…” Her faint voice cracked. It was a small timid squeak that made her angry with herself, her fear.
“We have your identification, Claudine. What is your address?”
“3133 Coachman Lane.”
“How long?”
“There? Three years.”
“Before that?”
“College. Dormitory.”
“Which college, Claudine?”
“State.”
“Take any ecology classes, Claudine?”
Oh, God no, here it comes!
“Claudine?”
“Only required courses,” she said slowly, each word sounding like a sentence.
“Who do you live with at 3133 Coachman Lane, Claudine?”
No!
“Claudine…you haven’t answered my question.” The voice was beside her head now.
No no no, oh no. Oh David!
The voice didn’t ask again.
She waited for it to start. She knew, her chest knew by the fire in it, that they would start doing things to her now. She closed her eyes. This will be the last time I can rest…take these few moments…
Her eyes jumped open when the padded table began to move, contract. Slowly it was pushing her ankles up toward he body. She watched her knees rise, tip, spread. Saw the ankles moving wider apart, legs opening. In the cone of light her body was ghostly white.
Oh my God no! No no no no. A wave of adrenalin washed through her body, warming the inside while her skin felt cold, so cold.
Then she felt the touch. Lightly at first on the stiff hair. Then rubbing slowly, pressing, opening the dry bristly hair to find wetness underneath. Something started echoing in the distance, something she didn’t want to hear.
The hair was stiff now only at the top. Lower it was softer now, wet. The table moved, spread her legs wider, separating the lips.
She was crying now, in hard sobs, her chest heaving as though it was trying to throw out the burning by the force of its convulsions. Her head was turned, cheek against the table. Tears ran down into her nostrils, were sucked in. She began to choke.
She felt the one-fingered touch on the soft skin inside the crook of her elbow. The finger pressed down and a needle bit through to a vein, stayed, was taped in place. Then she felt a finger stroke the inside of her other arm.
Cramped muscles unclenched, moved in the other direction, stretched, then rested. Her body was relaxing. Her breathing slowed down, the pounding of her heart becoming a sigh.
They’re giving me something, A drug.
The stroking continued its slow work, making sure she stayed wet.
Her eyes started to drift shut when she saw something move into the light. It entered the brilliant cone several yards above her feet, dropping toward her stomach. It moved with an awkward precision like a mechanical hand inside a radioactive room. This hand had only one finger.
It glided down toward her knees and before it disappeared below the rise of her belly she saw that a red light had winked on at its tip. She heard the echoing sound again and this time she knew it. It was her voice, screaming.
“No! Please! Wait…please!!”
She twisted her hips to the left and the probe swung to follow. She tried to twist back to the right but the table firmed, tightening under her, holding her hips still. Oh Jesus oh…now…it’s going to happen to me right now!
The probe stopped. She could feel her pubic hair rise up and touch it when she breathed. She tightened her stomach muscles, tried to stop breathing. Tightened her butt and tried to pull down and away from it.
Oh David david david david. Help me David.
The probe touched her. It began stroking, then lightly plowing the furrow of her lips with such a delicate touch.
Claudine’s flanks were icy with sweat that glued her skin to the table. Suddenly a new warmth spilled into her body. She was hit by a spasm that clenched her stomach muscles and locked her jaws together. It flowed away leaving her unfolding from the cramp, blooming…so high…so high…
And as she opened, the probe entered her. Her ass had lifted from the table as she pushed her hips up. The probe slid down the length of her lips, dipped and slipped smoothly into her vagina.
It was known officially as a sophisticated interrogation device, but its operators had given the specialized computer a name. They called it ADAM, for Automated Deflowering And Molesting. Its purpose was to bring a female to the point of orgasm and keep her there. It listened to Claudine Briodin’s heartbeat, felt the moisture on her skin, knew her internal temperature. It fed her amphetamine to increase her irritability, synthetic fraction of THC to heighten her sense of touch, mescaline derivatives to sharpen her erotic perception. The penetration probe was controlled by streams of data coming from sensors in her wrist and ankle cuffs.
She knew what was happening, but it was all down there so far below her mind…and it felt so good.
“Ohhhhh.” It was the smallest sound.
Slowly ADAM changed the cone of light, making it warmer.
Her head began to turn from side to side in time with the stroking as it became quicker. Incoming data to ADAM to it her breathing had changed to a heavy working rhythm. In response it widened the probe.
“Ho..Gh…Ghod…puh…lees…”
Oh, God, my name is Claudine, please be gentle!
“Hih…hih…huhn…hn…”
The probe grew longer, fatter, and warmer.
“Oh! Oh…oh…oh…mmmm.”
She felt her body try to arch, push her pelvis up against the sweet pressure.
“Nice skinny hips,” ADAM’s operator said to a coworker three floors above the interrogation room, watching a television monitor. “I like her kind of body. They look more naked when you can see the hip bones under the skin. The fat ones look like they’re still covered up after you strip ’em.”
A new drug was pushing into her veins and Claudine could feel its effects. Bright colored sparks flashed behind her eyelids when she blinked.
“Ah haaaaaaaah! Oh, yesss…yes yes yes.”
The swollen probe was gliding in and out, oiled by her wetness, at just the right speed, with just enough force. She barely felt the table move, readjust her. Dimly she felt the cheeks of her ass being moved apart. Her eyes popped open as she felt something, another probe, begin to nuzzle her tight circle of flesh.
“Who do you live with, Claudine?”
She didn’t know if the voice was real or in her head.
She felt pressure against her anal sphincter and a spurt of something, lubricant, then a terrible pushing, shoving as an object far too big invaded her rectum.
She screamed for a long time.
When she woke she could tell that thing was still up her ass. The probe in her vagina was still there, too, but not moving now. She was cold again.
“Claudine…” The voice was right beside her ear, so close it startled her and she wrenched against her bonds.
“Tell us now and it will be over. Who do you live with?”
“Fuck you.”
“I’m afraid it’s the other way around, Claudine.” With a snap the blunt tube up her ass extended rings of sharp spikes. She stopped screaming when her tears ran into her mouth, filling her throat. The spiked tube began to move, just slightly, in and out. Finally her screams became the name David.
They let her rest. Then the voice came again.
“You didn’t tell us his last name, Claudine.”
“No, no, please…I told you what you asked. Please!”
The spikes snapped back into the shaft and it pulled quickly out of her. Her sigh of relief became a moan.
A new chemical, or an old one she had forgotten, spread numbness up her arms and she slept.
She was wakened by the probe in her vagina.
It was warm, heating her inside, starting to move slowly in and out. And it moved…so…nice!
It’s the chemicals. I don’t really want this. It’s…so nice…
“Is David a green panther, Claudine?”
“Noooo…” becoming a moan.
“Has he ever blown up freeways? A pulp mill? Refineries, auto plants?”
“I told youooooo…”
So nice now. The drugs…
“Does David know anyone who is a green panther? Claudine? Are you listening?”
A sudden jolt of amphetamine and synthetic adrenalin.
“NO!!”
The voice quiet against her shout…”Are you lying to me, Claudine?”
The probe stopped its delicious work.
“NO!”
Wetly, the probe withdrew. Her body screamed with the chemically induced need they had given her. A monkey on my crotch, she thought, giggling to herself.
I’m empty!
“Does David know any ecology guerrillas, Claudine? Give me a name.”
“No. I can’t…”
“Can’t what, Claudine?”
“I need…”
“Need what, Claudine?”
Oh please, please! I need…I need…”
Her hips writhed in the echoes of the stilled rhythm. She could not open her eyes.
“What do you need, Claudine?” The voice was close beside her head.
“I need…it…” Her voice was fading.
“Tell me what you need, Claudine. Say it!”
“I neeeed…”
“What, Claudine?”
A whisper. “The machine.”
“What do you want it to do to you, Claudine?”
“Ohhh, put it back in me, please. Please please please please.”
“The names of your friends, quickly Claudine.”
The probe began to trace a narrow oval, touching her lips like a light breeze.
Quickly, hysterically, she rattled off names.
The probe, no longer gentle, rammed into her as a swirl of THC exploded up her arm and into her brain, out along her nerves and into her clitoris.
She was no longer empty.
She floated. Somewhere very far away her hips were working, her body slippery with sweat. She glided. At last she lay serene, soaking, bathing in pleasure like warm water.
“They love it,” the attendant three stories up said to his bored pal. “Beg for it…don’t want it to stop.”
“Uhh.”
“Remember that girl they picked up…she was on acid and wine. Went nuts. Wanted to go to work for us if she could get back on the machine.”
“ADAM rules.”
“Right, Butthead.”
At 55 minutes of rippling orgasmic peaks, ADAM sense that possible heart damage might result if Claudine was kept at climax. He flooded her system with sedative, slowly withdrew the probe. She urinated for more than two minutes.
In the upstairs room a computer terminal dumped a hard copy profile of her sexual response patterns…more intimate knowledge of her wants and needs, her pleasures, than any of her lovers had ever known.
The table was wet from her. The probe entered her again, injected a speck the size of a pepper grain into her vaginal wall, discharged a stream of cloudy thick fluid that would leak slowly for the next hour. And withdrew.
Three floors up the attendant saw the green surveillance blip wink into life. “That one won’t send for a while,” he said. “When old ADAM screws ’em they don’t want human dick for weeks.” Laughter. The transmitter planted in her vaginal wall would send Claudine’s location every time she had intercourse.
She lay drained, muscles pushed hours past their exhaustion points. Her naked body shook with shudders she couldn’t control. She was cold again.
ADAM began feeding her. Vitamins, caffeine, swirls of nutrients.
Her arms and legs were freed and they helped her sit up, bare legs dangling from the edge of her torture table. A hand reached into the light and put her clothes beside her.
Needles shot up through her feet when she stepped down. That was how she knew she had been there, on the table, a long time. She dressed slowly. Hands at her elbows led her across the room, into a hall with dim lights. At its end, a door. She shrank back, afraid. A hand at the small of her back gave a gentle push, the door opened, and she was standing on the street.
Claudine cringed, afraid the people walking past her on the morning sidewalk would know where she had been…what she had done. What had been done to her.
They must know, they must look at me and be able to see me spread out in there.
It was only early morning but the day felt used, soiled. Exhaust fumes blew in her face, the sunshine looked dirty.
Across the street a giant billboard shouted the President’s re-election slogan: WHATEVER MEANS NECESSARY.
The bus stop was right in front of her and Claudine put her hand into the pocket of her coat, pulling out her transfer.