Bright Sy Beach

It's been a long time! I've been looking forward to returning to Bright Sky Beach and I hope that everybody enjoys. I try to answer every message that is sent to me so please don't hesitate to send me feedback or just to strike up a conversation. Interacting with readers is what makes the effort worth it.

***

"License and registration, please," the mustachioed officer said as he peered into Heather's car.

The twenty-year-old sorority girl pulled her license from her purse, while her boyfriend, Jason, combed through the dash for the registration. In the corner of her eye, she could see the officer's partner, a dark-skinned man, pace back and forth on the passenger side as he shined his heavy, metal flashlight into the back seat to see her three sorority sisters, Amelia, Charlotte, and Maisie.

"Here you are, sir," Heather said quietly as she handed the documentation to the officer.

"Thank you," he said, "We will be right back with you, just hold tight."

"Yes, sir," she said as he walked away.

Today had been long and exhausting and it wasn't going to get any better, she knew. Spring Break was supposed to have gotten started six hours ago, but Heather and her four friends, were just nearing the outskirts of Bright Sky Beach at ten PM when the red and blue lights of the police lit up behind her.

Heather's stomach dropped as she found a wide spot on the side of the highway to pull over. A lamppost towered over the car and dozens of other cars whooshed by her toward the beach. She wasn't sure why she had been stopped, but she assumed it wouldn't end well for her.

Bright Sky Beach was famous: an urban legend among college students. It had the best parties, the hottest college students, and the worst police. That was part of the allure though. Bright Sky Beach used the new Judicial Codes, which allowed for painful naked punishments to be meted out for petty crimes and unlike most locales, the sentences were announced quickly, and the punishments executed the same day.

It was wild, apparently. Hourly, offenders were marched onto the beach, forced to strip, and spanked while hundreds of people watched the show. Consensus online was that the town did it on purpose to bring onlookers to town. The "entertainment" was taboo and, Heather thought, lots of people found it incredibly exciting. That had made the city one of the most popular Spring Break spots this year. Obviously, the five people in the car felt the same way, but Heather never thought that she would get mixed up with it all before even setting foot on the sand.

"Why did we get pulled over?" Maisie asked from the backseat.

"I don't know. I wasn't speeding," Heather whispered, scared that the police, who were still back in their cruiser, could already hear her.

"I think it's us, Maize" Charlotte said.

"Did they see us? I thought the windows were dark," Maisie answered.

"What were you doing?" Jason asked sharply, looking back at them.

"Those two were drinking the airplane bottles," Amelia said, nonplussed.

"Oh god. We're fucked. None of us are twenty-one," Jason said.

"Shit, shit, shit," Maisie said, "Quick push the trash under the seats."

Charlotte's shoulders dropped, "Well we knew this was a risk coming here."

"Not for me. I was only going to drink in the room," Amelia hissed, her green eyes burning a hole in Charlotte.

"Well, you're fine," Charlotte said, "You haven't had any."

"They can get all of us for possession. You know what this place is like," Amelia said, "They'll arrest you for anything."

"Let's just hope it's something else," Maisie said.

"Yeah, so I can be the one in trouble," Heather said. She glanced at Jason who squeezed her hand for support. He knew she must be stressed.

"Sorry," Maisie said.

Heather looked in her mirror and saw the officers exiting their car, "Hey, they're coming back. Shut up."

"Just don't admit anything," Maisie whispered.

"I know, I know," Heather whispered before rolling down the window.

"Do you know why I pulled you over?" the officer asked.

Heather hesitated, "No, sir. I'm not sure."

"Well, I observed your car struggling to stay in its lane," he said.

That didn't seem right. She hadn't noticed herself weaving. "I don't think..." she started.

My partner has also observed empty alcohol containers in the vehicle, so I need you to exit the car for a sobriety test, please," he said, politely.

"Sir, maybe I'm just tired," Heather tried to explain, "I've been driving for six hours now and it's late."

"I'm sorry. Out of the car please. Will the rest of you please provide your ID to my partner, please?" the officer said.

"Why?" Charlotte asked.

"Checking if any of you are twenty-one and able to possess alcohol," he said flatly, staring into the backseat.

The passengers started digging in their purses for their IDs as Heather opened her car door. This was going to be bad for everybody as everybody in the car was twenty. She hoped none of them were stupid enough to try to pass off one of their fakes. Her stomach sank further realizing that if they were searched, which seemed likely, the officers would definitely find their fraudulent licenses that they used to buy the liquor and beer.

The officer, his nametag identified him as Sergeant Burkes, led her to between her car and the police cruiser and turned to speak, "I'm going to conduct a field sobriety test to judge your level of impaired-ness, please follow all my directions."

"I haven't drank anything, sir, I promise," Heather said. She could feel her voice getting higher like it did when she was stressed and nervous.

"Then you'll pass the test. Now stand on one foot and count to thirty please," Burkes said.

Heather couldn't think of a way to avoid the humiliating test and decided she had to comply. She put her arms out for balance and raised her right foot.

"Arms by your side, please," Burkes ordered.

The co-ed let her arms drop and stayed balanced, "One, two, three... "

"No count like this: one thousand one, one thousand two," he said.

Heather sighed and restarted, "One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three..."

She knew that she hadn't had anything to drink, but it still took all of her focus to not teeter from side to side. It didn't help that he had made her stand longer than thirty seconds by making her start over. It felt like forever, but eventually she finished and let her foot down, "One thousand thirty."

"That seemed hard," Burke said, coldly.

"What? No," she said, "I'm fine."

"The test was inconclusive, but with empty bottles in the car and my observations I'm going to ask you to take a breathalyzer test," he said.

"Fine, I haven't drank anything," Heather squeaked.

"Ok, I want you to go over there and sit down," the officer said, pointing to the far edge of the tarmac that ran up against the grass on the side of the road.

"Yes, sir," Heather said as she walked ten feet to her left and carefully sat down on the hard surface.

The black police officer, holding her friends' ID cards came to talk to the sergeant, who she assumed was the ranking officer. The two of them spoke for a minute and she tried to read their lips, but it was too dark even in the glare of the streetlight above her. She saw the sergeant speak into the radio fastened to his shoulder. She hoped that she was telling dispatch they were about to let her go, but she knew that couldn't be true in this town. Glancing at her car, she could see her friends' worried faces looking at her and the officers.

Then finally the bad news came. The two officers walked toward her and the sergeant spoke, "Heather Simpson-Scott, you are now under arrest for underage possession of alcohol and possessing an open container of alcohol while driving a motor vehicle."

"What?" Heather squealed.

The officer ignored her, "You have the right to remain silent to avoid incriminating yourself, you have the right to contact a lawyer and be advised by them before speaking, and if you start speaking without a lawyer you have the right to cease speaking at any time. Do you understand?"

"Um, um, yeah," she stammered. Heather couldn't believe this was happening. She hadn't done anything wrong. This was so unfair.

"Stand up please," Burkes ordered.

She stood and the officer grabbed her wrist and led her to the trunk of her car. He spoke to his partner, "Get the extra cuffs for the rest of them. I got her."

His partner headed back to the cruiser as he ordered her to place her hands on the trunk of her sedan. Heather complied and felt the sergeant's hands frisking her down her flanks and hips. Her friends' eyes grew wide as they realized what was going on. Heather felt her face grow red as the man touched her ass and pulled out the empty pockets of her short jean shorts.

"Hands behind your back, please," he said. Heather complied and felt hard metal cuffs around her wrists, securing them behind her.

At the same time, the dark-skinned officer approached the passenger door and she heard him tell Jason, "Reach over and turn off the car and hand me the keys."

As she was helped back to sit on the ground, she heard the car's engine turn off and the officer put her keys in his pocket. Jason's door opened and he was soon being frisked against the hood of her car. In the backseat, her girlfriends were talking excitedly and gesticulating.

As Jason, his hands behind his back, was led toward Heather, Sergeant Burkes opened the back passenger door and reached in to help Amelia out of the compartment. She climbed out, his hand around her forearm, and leaned against the hood of the car.

Jason's officer dropped him off and went back to the car to extract Charlotte, who, as the smallest of the five, had squeezed into the middle of the backseat.

Luckily, that left her alone for a moment with her boyfriend. "Are you ok," he asked, quietly.

"No! I just got accused of DUI in this stupid town," Heather hissed, trying to be quiet, but feeling herself unable to control her volume.

"Shhh, don't insult their town," he said, "Those three are going to have it worse?"

"Because they are actually drinking?"

"That and Maisie has weed," Jason said.

"Oh, no," Heather said, "I told her..."

She went silent as Amelia was helped to sit down on her knees to her right. "Ow, I'm in a dress. Please just hold on. The concrete is so hard," she complained, "I haven't done anything wrong."

"Remember that right to remain silent," Sergeant Burkes said, warning her to shut up, as he went back to the car to fetch Maisie.

"God, we are so fucked," Amelia said.

"Shut up. Don't incriminate us," Heather said. She was pissed that the others had been drinking in the backseat, but Amelia could have at least told her rather than keeping quiet back there.

"Ugghh, I knew coming here was a bad idea," Amelia continued.

Heather nudged her with her shoulder as Charlotte was brought to join the huddle. She was a red-faced ball of rage. Her blue eyes shown even in the shadows as she dropped onto the tarmac to Jason's left. "Get your hands off me," the blonde grumbled.

"Relax or you'll get a resisting arrest charge, too," the junior officer warned.

Charlotte remained quiet and the four of them waited for the sergeant to bring Maisie to them. In a minute, the five college students sat uncomfortably in a line on the side of the road. Watched over by the junior officer, the friends couldn't risk speaking to each other as the sergeant returned to the squad car and a second police car, its red and blue lights flashing silently, arrived on the scene.

Two more officers, both tall, bearded men, spoke to Sergeant Burkes and eyed the line of arrested young people. The three approached and the junior officer tossed one of the new arrivals Heather's keys.

Heather realized they were going to search the car but couldn't find a reason to complain. As the two new officers opened the car and started to search through the driver and passenger seat, the sergeant approached Heather with a black box with a clear, plastic tube sticking from one corner that she recognized as a breathalyzer.

He knelt in front of her and spoke, "Take a deep breath and blow into the tube for ten seconds, please."

Heather nodded. She knew that she was going to blow a zero, so she wasn't worried about this, although she did hate having to do this on the side of the road. She knew tons of people from her university were coming to Bright Sky Beach and she hoped none of them would recognize her as they whizzed past. Trying to put the idea of her classmates seeing her naked when all was said and done, she inhaled and blew.

"Hmm, zero," Sergeant Burkes said after waiting a few seconds for the results. He pulled the tube off the device and replaced it with a new piece of plastic before moving onto Jason.

The sergeant repeated the orders for each of his prisoners, noting that Maisie and Charlotte blew above 0.00. Since they were both underage, that meant that any number above 0 was illegal and certainly meant they would face another charge.

As the tests were given, Heather watched the officers turn her car inside out. They obviously found the empty airplane bottles under the seats and had opened the trunk and started pulling out the co-ed's duffle bags and back packs that had been stuffed in there. By the time they pulled out two cases of beer and a black plastic bag full of vodka and rum, Maisie and Charlotte had both blown into the breathalyzer to reveal their crimes.

As the sergeant was filling in paperwork to document their positive breathalyzer tests the searchers began to make a pile of closed bags. The dark-skinned officer grabbed a dull green bag with blue straps and set it in front of Heather and the others.

"Ok, whose is this?" the sergeant asked.

The friends all stayed silent. Heather wasn't going to be the first one to narc. If Maisie actually had weed in her bag, then she wasn't going to be the one to say which bag was hers. She hoped that Maisie would take the fall if she actually did have it. She knew that the police would threaten that they would all go down for it.

"Come on," the sergeant said, "Do you want to go down for something only one of you did. Think about it."

There was a long silence until Amelia piped up, "That bag's mine. The pink purse over there, too."

"Alright, thank you, Miss Goldstein," the sergeant said. Amelia's bags were set to the side and labeled as the rest of the bags were brought in front of the offenders, one by one.

Amelia had broken the floodgate and now it wasn't so bad if you claimed your own bag. Heather hoped that Maisie, or anyone else with illicit drugs, wouldn't be mad at Amelia. They were caught and there was no reason for all of them to go down. Heather didn't know Maisie had any weed. She was no stranger to smoking but she didn't get caught holding the bag. No reason to make her punishment worse.

It didn't take long for the officers to go through the bags and eventually they found everything that Heather was worried about. In a small wooden box in the bottom of Maisie's gray backpack they found the marijuana which they documented and bagged. Plus, all of the girls had their fake IDs in their purse, as was necessary to show to bouncers and bar tenders, although, for now Jason's was still secret in his wallet, though she expected that would get found eventually. In all, the five of them sat in silence for twenty minutes or so watching the search before the officer's spoke to them again.

"Ok," the sergeant started, "The five of you are all going to be taken into custody for the night."

Amelia gasped and the others sucked in breath at the news. Heather knew it was unlikely, but she was hoping that having tested sober, they would let her go to report to court later, but no luck.

"Since you'll be in custody for less than twelve hours, you won't have to undergo the entire intake process. Basically, we will just do the basics, and then you'll be in the holding cells until tomorrow when you can see the magistrate."

"Do we get to see a lawyer?" Maisie asked.

"Public defenders will be at the office. They always are on party nights. If you want to call your own lawyer, you can do that in the morning," the sergeant said.

Heather was scared. She'd never spent a night in jail before, but it sounded like good news that she wouldn't have to be fully processed. At least in her friend group, the realities of the Punishment Codes were well known. Strip searches and being tied down naked were assumed, but it was also a joke. She assumed her friend group was weird, but when you could be publicly humiliated for a parking ticket, she thought it was healthy to joke about it.

She wished she felt like that now. Right now, she was just scared and embarrassed to be sitting with her hands cuffed on the side of the road. She hoped that tonight she would get to talk to her friends, and they could make each other feel better. She expected there wouldn't be much sleep tonight as they waited their date with the magistrate.

One by one, Heather and her friends were packed into the back of police cruisers. Heather, Jason, and Amelia were forced into Sergeant Burke's car while Maisie and Charlotte were placed in the second vehicle. Heather hoped that didn't mean they were going to be sent somewhere else. She suspected they were going to be subject to harsher punishments since they had been drinking and Maisie had the weed.

The car with Maisie and Charlotte left first and Sergeant Burke and his partner sat on the side of the road and Heather couldn't figure out why. Eventually, the answer appeared as a tow truck arrived to take Heather's car away.

"Where is gonna happen to my car?" Heather asked.

"When you're released tomorrow you can get it out of the impound. Your expense, of course," he answered.

That annoyed Heather but she kept her opinions to herself. Jason nudged her and she touched his shoulder with her head in the closest approximation of a hug she could manage. It was nice to have him next to her, and she imagined what might happen to him tomorrow. She hoped that she wouldn't have to watch. This was partially her fault, at least, she had swerved and gotten them pulled over.

At the thought of having to watch him be spanked, or whatever was going to happen, she realized he might have to watch her be punished, too. He'd seen her naked plenty of times, but tomorrow was going to be different. They might joke about spanking, but they'd never done anything fancier than him holding her hands down while they fucked.

She hoped that was all that would happen, a simple spanking. Jason had told her that was the most common sentence in Bright Sky Beach, but it was possible to get a harsher punishment. She hoped that if that did happen to her, that it would be a caning or strapping on her backside, rather than a punishment directed elsewhere on her anatomy. If her breasts or pussy were punished in front of Jason, she thought she might die of embarrassment.

Heather remained in a daze as the cruiser drove into town. They got off the highway and meandered through the city streets toward the seaside. As they got nearer to the ocean, the sidewalks were packed with her peers who were joining the ongoing parties that would rage until bars closed at 3AM.

The cruiser pulled into the lot of the large granite courthouse and parked near the back door. The two officers got out and waited until they were joined by a third officer to extract Heather, Jason, and Amelia. The sergeant gripped her by the bicep and pulled her from the car, leading her up a short concrete stoop into the side door of the building.

Burkes swiped a keycard and led her through a set of heavy metal doors and into what was obviously the entrance to the local jail. In front of her was a desk with a uniformed officer sitting behind it, flanked by two doors labelled male and female. Heather's stomach dropped as she was led to the woman's side at the thought of being separated from Jason.