Alice was watching through the chain link fence. She saw Juan approach the border in his fancy car. It had cost nearly a quarter million, but Juan could afford it. She watched as he was waved into an inspection bay by the customs officers. The trunk lid went up, and Juan was escorted into a low building. Alice could only wait.

Alice and Juan were going to get married. He was a friend of her father, and she had known him since she was a little girl. When she was seventeen, he asked her to marry him, and she said yes, but they would wait until she was eighteen and had finished high school. When her parents were killed, the Bureau of Child Welfare had placed her in a group home, and on her eighteenth birthday they kicked her out. Juan had said he would go immediately to get her. She said she would find a way to meet him at the border. Now he was in the U.S., but she couldn't go to him; so near and yet so far! She watched and waited.

Then she saw Juan again. He came out of the building, handcuffed, and was put into a windowless van and driven away! Alice ran to the exit from the customs station and tried to get in.

"You can't come in here, unless you are crossing the border."

"You don't understand. My fiancé was in there, and they have taken him away. I've got to find him!"

After five minutes of arguing, she finally got into the building, where they checked her ID and asked all sorts of questions. They showed her a picture of Juan, and she identified him. "He was carrying a lot of money."

"We are getting married and honeymooning in Las Vegas."

"He's being held incommunicado as a suspected terrorist. I'd advise you to go home and forget about him."

"No way! He's no terrorist. I love him, and we're getting married. Besides, I've nowhere to go. I have no home, now."

"How did you get here?"

"I took a bus from Houston and then a taxi to here."

"There's no one to take you home?"

"There's no one who even knows I'm here."

They left her alone in a room for a while. Then a man and woman, not in uniform, came in. "Last chance. Will you get lost and forget about Juan?"

"No! I'll do anything I can to get him free."

They handcuffed her, and led her to another windowless van. "Wait a minute! Am I under arrest?"

"You are a material witness, maybe an accomplice. If you cooperate with us, maybe it will help get your lover freed, well, deported instead of jailed for life."

"I want to talk to a lawyer."

The woman laughed. "No one knows we have you. If you don't cooperate... well, it could go very badly for both of you." They blindfolded her before she was taken from the van and led down some steps and though a maze of corridors. The blindfold was not removed until she was in a windowless room, actually, a kind of cellar, almost a dungeon. "Tell us what target your lover was going to bomb. We found explosives in the trunk of his car, underneath the spare tire."

"You're crazy. Juan's no terrorist."

"You won't cooperate."

"No, not to tell you lies."

The woman sat on the edge of a desk. "Cigarette?"

"No."

She lit one, even though government buildings are supposed to be smoke-free. "Your lover-boy isn't cooperating either. Now, under the civil forfeiture laws, we're going to seize the money and the car, but it's a lot cleaner if we have his confession. If you both cooperate, he probably won't have to face a military tribunal, and possible death, as a terrorist. It may be he'll just be deported, and you can join him abroad, if you want to. Now, the situation is very simple. The bleeding-heart civil libertarians insist that he be kept under 24-hour television surveillance, so that we can't torture a confession out of him. However, no one knows you are here, so we can torture a confession out of you, if you don't voluntarily incriminate him. All you have to do is tell us you will cooperate."

"No."

The woman pressed a button, and two more men entered the room with lights and television equipment. The woman got on a phone. "Can the prisoner see the TV monitor outside his cell?" She paused for the answer. "And there's no way the surveillance camera will show what he's watching?... OK." She put down the phone and pointed the camera at Alice. "OK, loser," she said, "we've got your blonde girl friend. Either you cooperate and confess or we'll make her confess. You can watch what happens. It won't be nice to watch, if you really love her, but we'll stop interrogating her as soon as you sign a confession. OK?"

Of course there was no reply. One of the men removed the handcuffs, leaving Alice standing there in front of a TV camera. "Alice, tell us how long you have known about your fiancé's being a terrorist." Alice just shook her head. "Alice, take off your clothes. Show your lover your naked body."

"No!"

The woman nodded and the three men grabbed Alice by her arms and held her, while the woman cut the blouse from sleeves to collar and pulled it away, exposing Alice's lacy bra. She undid the waist band of the skirt, and it fell away, revealing skimpy panties. "Must I go on, Alice? Just tell me you will cooperate."

Alice said nothing. She was determined not to betray her fiancé. It took only seconds to cut away the bra and panties, exposing Alice's girlish breasts and wispy blonde pubic hair. "Are you a virgin, Alice?"

"Yes."

"Hey, loser, your fiancée says she's a virgin. You don't want that to change, do you, before you are married? No, of course not. Not yet. Don't wait too long before you confess." The men buckled padded leather cuffs on Alice's wrists and ankles. Motors whirred and cables came down from the ceiling, which the men attached to the cuffs.

Alice was really frightened now, but she would not betray Juan. She watched as the woman pressed more buttons. The motors whirred, and Alice hung from her wrists. More whirring, and her feet were raised shoulder high and pulled apart until Alice felt as if her hips would dislocate. The TV camera was staring right at her exposed vulva. The woman picked up a black strap and showed it to the camera. Then, like a striking snake, it whipped down on Alice's upturned labia. Alice shrieked in pain. "Are you going to cooperate?" Alice shook her head. Meanwhile, the men removed her shoes. "Loser," the woman said to the camera, "We play by the same rules as the Spanish Inquisition. Don't make 'em bleed or break 'em up to the point where they can't be seen in public. You like your honey's twat? That whispy blond hair? I think we'll work on the twat a while, while you think about when you will confess." She used the strap four more times, leaving Alice blubbering and her labia bright red. One of the men handed her a pan, and she showed it to the camera. "Hot wax, loser." She poured the wax over Alice's mons and vulva, while Alice gritted her teeth and tried not to scream. It was hot, but not blistering hot. They waited a while, as the wax cooled. Then Alice yelped, as the woman ripped the wax off, taking all the pubic hair with it. "Isn't that pretty, loser? Like a little girl's. Alice, have you ever been eaten out?" Alice shook her head. "Well, surely you masturbate."

Again Alice shook her head. "My, loser, what an innocent creature she is... was." The woman took a hose and played the stream of water over Alice's naked labia. She aimed it at her vagina, and Alice screamed as the water pressure distended her very private place, where nothing bigger than a tampon had been before. Then she played the stream a little higher, letting the water impinge on Alice's clitoral hood. "Ah, ah, ah, oh, oh, please stop! Oh, ahhh, please! Ah, nooo!" vocalized Alice, as she jerked her legs and hips, trying to avoid the water.

The woman placed her hand on Alice's mount of Venus, now hairless, and directed the stream between the labia so it ran like a river down a canyon. No matter how much Alice thrashed around, the end of the hose moved with her, and the water was relentless. "Ah! Oh! Oh, no! Oh, God! Ahhh!" cried Alice, as she went limp and hung quietly.

"Well, loser, it seems she's a responsive little slut, don't you think? Well, she's not here to have fun." The woman turned off the water and held up for the camera a vaguely dildo shaped device. "The old inquisitors called this the agony pear. See how it works" She twisted the shaft, and the other end opened out like the petals of an opening flower increasing in diameter three or four times. "I could use my fist," she said, collapsing the device, "but this is so high-tech. Last chance, loser, to confess, before your virgin's cunt gets stretched."

"Noooo!" wailed Alice as the pear was pushed inside her. "Ahhh!" she screamed as it expanded inside her, pressing a stream of urine from her flattened bladder.

"There, there, it doesn't hurt that much, does it? You are just humiliated to know that your lover is watching, aren't you, you cunt?" The woman pressed a similar device into Alice's anus. Even lubricated, she had to push hard, and Alice screamed. "Oh, come on. It's no bigger than shit." When it was fully inserted, the woman expanded it. There was no way it would come out. Alice writhed with the discomfort of two swollen things in her pelvis, one pressing the back of her pubic arch, and causing strange, unfamiliar sensations in the G-spot she didn't know she had, while the other was hard against her tail bone and seemingly locked against the one in her vagina. She wondered if she wasn't being damaged, internally. Would she bleed, when they came out? "Last chance for a while, Alice, to agree to cooperate. OK, you'll just have to hope that loser of a lover of yours says he'll confess." The woman pushed a third pear into Alice's mouth and expanded it until Alice thought her jaw might break. She certainly couldn't talk or breathe through her mouth, except for whistling gasps of air through the hollow core of the pear.

"Now, loser, comes the interesting part, what the inquisitors called the water torment. We've improved on it a bit, in that we can apply it at both ends."

The woman inserted a hose into the pear in Alice's rectum and another into the pear in her mouth, forcing her to breath through her nose. The hoses connected to water pumps, controlled by buttons on the desk. A man grabbed Alice's hair and pulled her head back. The woman pushed a button, and water filled Alice's mouth, cutting off her air! Desperately, Alice swallowed the cold water, until she could gasp for air. By now, however, cold water was flooding into her rectum.