She’d admitted her guilt, and so the severity of the magistrates’ sentence had taken her aback: “Eight weeks in prison. Twenty strokes of the cane to be administered on admission; twenty more each fortnight; the final twenty immediately prior to your release.”
Each twenty administered by the jail’s punishment officer, in private. He made her strip, shower. Tied her over the whipping frame. Showed her no mercy.
On her third trip to the punishment room, she begged him to spare her. He laid down the cane, walked around the room and lifted her face: “And what will you do for me if I do?”
“Anything, sir…”
“Anything?”
A long pause. She gulped. “Anything…”
He walked back around her; his hand pushed her legs apart. He took her hard, fucking her with the same intensity that he usually beat her.
And then it was over. “Now, young lady,” she heard him say. “Attempting to bribe a member of prison staff? I’m minded to report you to the Governor. But the rulebook permits me the option of doubling the number of strokes due, and I think that would be more appropriate in the circumstances. So: forty strokes…”