Winston's wrists were shackled to the wall above his head. He was naked, save for a pair of ill-fitting prison briefs, and the door of his tiny waiting cell was behind him. He wondered how long they would keep him in this repurposed broom cabinet before actually getting around to the sentencing, and, once he was sentenced, how the accommodations would change. If it all. From what Winston had seen when Disciplinarian Beatty escorted him in, the catacombs beneath the Command Center were full to capacity with prisoners. "Too bad the van's all full," Beatty had told him as she stuffed him into the vehicle, "I think your butt could use a few more stripes." She slapped his bottom painfully. "Don't worry though, I'll visit you in jail." Well, he was in jail now. He wondered how long it would be until Beatty made good on her promise.
He let out a slow, anxious breath, shifting his arms as much as he could in a vain attempt to make his wrists more comfortable. It was cold down here. Not freezing, but chilly enough to raise goosebumps across his mostly-naked flesh. It was sunny outside. How deep underground must they have taken him, for it to be this cold?
A low, husky moan came from the other side of the wall. It couldn't be...no, too low pitched to be Julia. But still, another human being. Winston pulled at his shackled wrists, trying to find a crack or something that he could look through. It ended up being much easier than he expected. Just below head level, and a foot to his right, an exposed water pipe punched through the wall, and there was a centimetre of open space around it that went all the way through. Ruefully thanking Overlord for giving him such young, flexible arms, he twisted his body to the side and put an eye up to the peephole. It was dark on the other side, but he could see a shape in the middle of the room.
"Hello?" he whispered loudly, "Can you hear me?"
He saw a small movement in the darkness.
"Who is that? Who's there?" A female voice loudly whispered back. She sounded familiar. Winston closed his eyes and counted to five. When he opened them, he could see a bit further into the darkness. The room was larger than the closet he was locked in, much more of a proper cell. In the middle of it was a sturdy table or bench, and bent over it was the biggest, roundest, plumpest rear end that Winston had ever seen. Each of those swollen cheeks could have contained Winston's head nearly twice over, and the dark cleft between them was as deep as his hand. For all their size though, the cheeks only drooped a little bit; just enough to make them jiggle energetically as their owner shivered. It was a rear end that Winston, to his guilt, recognized instantly.
"Maria!"
The massive buttocks shifted again, and a bit of Maria's hair appeared for a moment at the side of the table. Winston realized she was bound in place too tightly to turn around; her legs were fastened to the side of the table with tight bands that constricted her thighs and made them seem even thicker and juicier where they puffed out around the straps. "Who's that?" She repeated. Her voice sounded strained, as if she was in pain.
"Ah, it's Winston Fisher. I'm looking through a crack from the next room. How long have you been down here?"
The bottom trembled again, each cheek bouncing separately before wobbling to a halt.
"I'dunno," she half-whispered a little more loudly, "they had me in a waiting room for hours. Just threw me in here a while ago. Owwww!"
She rocked from side to side against her restraints, and her ass kept rippling. As his eyes continued to adjust, he saw that she was totally naked, and goose-pimples were covering the visible surface. The way her legs were bound apart put her womanhood on full display - or would, if her lower bottom cheeks weren't covering most of it. Winston involuntarily sucked in a breath. He was finding it hard to stay focused.
"Ah...how did they catch you? Where?"
"I's at Farren Heights," she moaned, "sold some grass to an undercover pig. That O'Brien bitch had him buying from me for weeks. He called me to the park and they was waiting. Owww, these ropes! I need to...ouuuuch!"
Winston could now see in detail. The walls of Maria's cell were tiled. The "ropes" that bound her thighs were loops of synthetic fibre attached to the sides of the table. Finally, Maria's ass was absolutely
covered
in handprints. Winston's eyes widened. Red, pink, and tan mottled together in a kaleidoscope of color and pain. The tops and edges of those feminine humps were like an elementary school collage, with dozens of palm-prints finger painted around and atop one another. The middle parts of her bottom, the peaks that jutted high above her waist and hid her torso from Winston's view, those were completely red, and with uneven swelling from the mistreatment they had endured. The thickest, fattest parts that met her thighs were darker.
"Maria, you..." He realized there wasn't much he could really say.
"I what, Win?"
"You..." he thought quickly "I'm sorry they got you."
"Ow. You too."
Her huge butt wobbled again, and Winston realized she was struggling to reach back and rub herself. There were at least two sizes of handprint scattered around her ass, and for all he knew there were signs of a third spanker lost in the red miasma in the middle.
Is that what they've done to Julia as well?
Winston suddenly found himself pulling harder at his shackles. He had to get out, had to find her...
The door to Maria's cell opened, and he heard her gasp. Winston put his eye back to the crevice.
"Citizen Maria Saldana," said the voice of Disciplinarian Charrington from somewhere to the right of Winston's peephole, "based on our records, your stay here has been
quite
some time in coming."
A tight male body in a blue uniform walked in front of Maria's head. Winston couldn't see as high as Charrington's face, but he could practically hear the smirk on it. Winston quieted his breathing. He didn't know what the Disciplinarian would do if he found Winston was watching, but he suspected that both he and Maria would be worse off for it.
"I hope you've been made comfortable thus far?"
"
Chucha madre
, asshole!"
Charrington clucked his tongue. "I suppose I didn't expect any better from one who, oh let me see." He raised the wrist with the computer on it out of Winston's view. "Twelve confirmed counts of contraband distribution over a one month period, thirty-eight counts of possession of contraband with intent to distribute, two counts of evading arrest, two counts of obstruction of justice, one count of public indecency, and one count of jaywalking. Hundreds more suspected."
"I got the public indecency charge when officer Perry made me run home without my pants!"
"There are proper channels for making these assertions, Ms Saldana. You will be given access to them in due time." Charrington's heels clicked against the tile floor as he walked out of Winston's view again. When he next spoke, his voice was closer to the wall. "Regardless, that charge is irrelevant to our current discussion. I'm here concerning your black market history."
There was a pause that seemed much longer than it probably was. Maria twitched a little on her table. Winston started to fear that Charrington had noticed the peephole, but then he heard the Disciplinarian open some kind of package.
"These were under your name in the evidence department. Chocolate, alcohol, cannabis, peppermint...were you planning to poison the entire city?"
Maria struggled against her bonds. Her bottom jiggled and shook with the vibrations. "You know that shit ain't poison!"
"Those decisions are made by Overlord, and are not for either of us to question! I shudder to imagine how many hospital visits you and your dealer friends might have caused!"
Suddenly, Charrington stepped up beside Maria's shamefully presented bottom and gave the left cheek a mighty
slap
. A white handprint appeared against the red skin as the buttock bounced like a spring. A second later, another, even harder slap punished its twin. Maria cried out, legs straining against the synthetic loops. Charrington just leaned forward, putting his torso partly in Winston's view, and gave her ass two more slaps. As the girl wiggled and whimpered, Charrington withdrew his hands and crossed in front of the peephole so he was to the right of Maria's ass.
"And yet, that hardly seems to be the least of it."
He bent down to rummage in his belt pouch. Winston clenched his teeth, eyes glued to Maria's heaving caboose. He knew he should stop watching now. He had already seen enough punishments to know what they looked like. His mind went back to that first afternoon that he walked to the store with Julia, and how he had thought the same thing when he'd witnessed Maria's public discipline then. But still, he watched.
"Soft Slider water-based lube," Charrington said, presumably reading off a label. "I understand you're an auto mechanic, but this hardly appears to be an industrial lubricant. In fact, there's only one possible use for this substance that I can think of."
His blue-suited body stepped up next to the table, and he rested one hand on Maria's naked buns.
"Violating the civic decency laws is serious enough. But intent to distribute?"