Chapter 9

The alarm clock rang stridently, jolting me into wakefulness with a start. It was a long time since I'd needed to set the damned thing and, for a second or so, I couldn't remember what the awful noise was nor how to stop it but once I managed to accomplish this previously automatic action, I laid back in my bed while my heart rate returned to normal and my brain worked itself into gear. The reason that I had to be up before dawn this day was that this was when the prostitute who'd been so foolish as to steal from one of the men on the island was to be punished. I still did not know what her fate was to be, all I did know was that I was to report for duty, before dawn, to the small dock where the occasional supply boat arrived when the goods it was carrying were too big or too heavy to travel here by helicopter. Tossing back the single thin sheet that was all I needed here in the tropics to keep me warm at night despite my habit of sleeping in the nude, I stretched and yawned widely, tensing then relaxing the muscles in my arms and legs before swinging my feet to the floor. It didn't take me long to wash and to dress in my nurse's uniform and after that the first order of the day was a trip to the kitchen for coffee. Here I found that I'd already been beaten to the percolator by Mr Cunningham, who was the head of security here, and Mr Haga, the man in charge of the domestic staff. They both greeted me, one rather more pleasantly than the other and I answered them individually back in the same manner. A quick cup of unsweetened, black coffee followed before Mr Cunningham suggested that it was time for us to be going.

"Isn't the boss coming?" I asked.

"Naw... not a lot to see just now," replied Haga. "But he'll be down later once the bitch starts to suffer. He'll want to see that."

"And you won't, I suppose?" I commented putting my cup down and following the two men out into the garden where the sky was just starting to show the first tinges of the pre-dawn light.

I'd been to the little dock before - well, I'd been everywhere on the island - since it was so tiny everyone had - but this was the first time that I'd ever seen another person there. Not that there were many there now, just the three of us, the girl to be punished along with two of the guards and a small audience that seemed to comprise of a few of the men who were there more out of boredom than anything else and most of the girls who, I'd guess, felt a sort of sympathy for one of their own number even if she was a thief. The only alteration that I could see to the dock itself in the way of torture equipment or anything else that could be used to punish someone was that there was a small, metal cage complete with iron bars on all six sides laying on the ground. I'd have said that the cage was about three foot across on each side. Still not knowing what to expect, I stood and waited.

As the edge of the sun peeked over the horizon, Mr Cunningham stepped forward and instructed the guards to get the girl into the cage. They closed in on the girl and hustled her towards the cage but only after removing the blanket that she had previously had draped about her shoulders and thus leaving her totally unclothed and very vulnerable looking. She had to clamber into the cage through the top and, once she was inside, the lid was lowered and padlocked into place. There wasn't a lot of room for her inside the metal cage and she had to curl up to get in. She looked rather uncomfortable but beyond that, as barbaric punishments go, it didn't look too bad. A chain was lowered from the small crane that was normally used to hoist crates and deliveries from the open decked boats that visited us on occasion and the cage was winched up into the air, the girl gripping the cage's bars and looking about her wildly as she jabbered and pleaded in her own language. And then everything stopped - the cage turned lazily a few degrees this way and then that but that was all. I looked up at the girl who was now suspended about ten feet in the air and then back at Mr Cunningham. "And that's it?" I asked a little incredulously. "I had to give her a full physical for this?"

"Oh, this is the easy part for her," the security chief explained. "She stays in there all day until sunset, then we let her out. Twelve hours, naked, in the sun with no shade whatsoever. No food, no drink, no shelter, no relief. And those metal bars get hot and you can't escape them. It's a much tougher punishment than it looks right now."

I shuddered as I contemplated what kind of day the slut was going to have. "Tough, yeah," I echoed as the small gathering started to drift away. One of the men unpacked a sunlounger for me and popped up a large parasol. I had to stay here all day to keep an eye on the girl, to make sure that she didn't actually die on us, but at least I had a little comfort. I'd already made sure that some iced drinks be made available and I'd brought down a good, thick book and under my uniform I'd put on a swimsuit. "You won't forget to send breakfast down later, will you?" I asked Mr Haga who assured me that it would arrive just after eight.

"And don't neglect to make sure you let the slag watch you as you eat," he sniggered sarcastically. God, I thought, you really are a bastard, aren't you?

By ten o'clock I was bored. I'd long since changed into my costume and had been sunbathing until the heat drove me into the shade provided by the parasol. I'd already gone though a litre of water and I was still perspiring like a pig. The book hadn't proved as interesting as I had hoped it would be and so my only relief was talking to the occasional visitor who called to see how the girl was doing. And so far she was coping very well, I thought. True, she was covered in sweat and she was squirming round, trying to get as comfortable as possible, trying to ease the aches and pains that her cramped condition was inflicting upon her but all that was only to be expected. But she was still alert and active and I judged her to be fit to continue.

By lunchtime she'd given up trying to talk to me realising that I simply didn't understand her lingo and as I consumed my meal, she simply looked at me longingly and occasionally thrust a hopeful hand out through the bars silently begging me for some food or a drink - which she did not, of course, receive.

At two o'clock I took a swim to cool myself off and her eyes followed my every move. Clambering out of the water, I moved towards the cage for a closer look at her and I could see that, despite her dark complexion, her skin was starting to burn and blister. As I returned to my chair, who should appear but Kevin, the security guard who had been assigned to look after me following Glaswegian Jimmy's raping of me during my early days on the island. Ever since then, Kevin and I had been friends and I would always be grateful for the support he'd shown me during that dark time. I smiled at him and, as he returned that smile, he held out a large, ice cold cider which I took from him gratefully. "How's she doing?" he asked nodding at the girl in the cage.

"Not so good. She's really starting to suffer now."

Kevin tutted under his breath and shook his head slightly which is when I realised that one of the reasons that I liked Kevin so much was because he genuinely cared about everyone, no matter who they were or what they had done. "Look after her, Carol," he said sadly before setting off back to his duties.

Mr Foster arrived just before four o'clock and his first question to me was to ask how the girl was doing.

"I'm a little worried about her, to be honest, Sir. She's not moved for about twenty minutes now. She's still conscious but I don't think that she's 'with us' any more. I'm not at all sure that there's any point in leaving her there any longer as she simply doesn't know what's happening to her any more."

"But she has to stay there Carol, if only as a lesson to the others. Unless she is about to die, she remains in the cage."

Shaking my head, I simply told my boss that I understood his reasoning but wasn't sure that I agreed with it. With the work day over at four, more and more of the population of the island turned up to observe what was going on. "You realise, Sir," I tried again, "that once you let her out of there, she'll not be capable of working for quite some time?"

"That hardly matters, Carol," Mr Foster patiently explained. "She's off the island on the first chopper in the morning. Like I said previously, this is more about teaching the others a lesson in what will happen to them if they break the rules rather than trying to punish the bitch herself."

"Oh, I see..."

"No you don't, Carol, not fully anyway. I don't think that you'll ever get into my mindset and that of the people I associate with... but that doesn't matter as you couldn't possibly be a nurse if you did. Now, come and walk with me for a moment, I've something to talk to you about."