Blind Justice - Dungeon Diaries 1

Excerpt from the short story "Dungeon Diaries - Blind Justice". The rest of the story can be found on Amazon.

If you want stories from the warden's point of few, find the "Tales from the Dungeon" series on Amazon.

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The hazel eyes observe me from the caramel-skinned face. A dark brown braid rests on the perfectly shaped breasts, and a playful, perfect smile appears on the beautiful face. She is wearing a black, short-sleeved shirt and a pair of black leather pants; the clothes hug her fit body like a glove. Her posture is that of a powerful, confident woman, and she seems misplaced in the cold, harsh surroundings; she could be found on a model runway.

“Elisabeth Wiggins, correct?” She looks at the tablet in her hand.

I nod.

“We don’t see many teachers down here…” She smiles. “You have been sentenced to a month’s incarceration for wire fraud.” The woman leans against the wall while reading my profile. “A month is fairly long sentence, must have been a lot of money.”

A month is a long time? I feel my palms getting sweaty.

She looks at me with a raised eyebrow. “You are well dressed today, Elisabeth. I appreciate the effort; you are a very beautiful woman.”

Is she hitting on me?

“Tha… thank you?”

The woman puts the tablet down, leans in over the table, and checks her watch; it is her only piece of jewelry, a large, silver watch, probably a men’s watch. It looks elegant on her and only enhances her femininity. The smile disappears. “For the next month, you are the property of the P.E.D. You must do whatever me and my co-workers tell me to do. Do you understand?” There is no longer any playfulness in her voice.

“I do.” I see no reason to argue; it sounds like standard fare for prisoners.

“Very good. Stand up.”

I oblige and feel my throat tighten as the woman pulls out a pair of handcuffs and walks towards me. Apart from a single, awkward session involving an old boyfriend and a pair of fuzzy, flimsy handcuffs, I have never been restrained in my life. My brain is refusing to accept my new status as a prisoner, and though I had every intention of being cooperative when I entered the P.E.D., I find myself resisting when the woman pulls my arms back and handcuffs me. I can feel tears well up in my eyes as the cold steel restrains me, and the sound of the metal clicking against my watch and bracelet sounds wrong to my ears.

“I’d advice you not to resist, Mrs. Wiggins,” the ‘educator’ says. “This will be hard enough for you as it is.”

She drags me out of the room with a firm grab on my arm and takes me down a hallway, through a set of double doors. If the first area felt like a different world to the carefree, sunlit streets outside, this is a different dimension; the brightly lit corridors are gone, replaced by exposed, grey stone bricks and dimmed lights.

“What is this place?” I ask, unable to hide my discomfort.

“Welcome to the P.E.D., Mrs. Wiggins,” the woman says behind me. I can hear the smile in her voice; she has done this countless times.

She pushes me into a medium-sized room. It has no windows, a few lockers and what looks like a garden hose coiled on the floor. The educator takes off my handcuffs, but the relief is temporary.

“Take off your clothes.”

I look at her in disbelief. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Now do it.” Her eyes, that had been playful when I first saw her, looks cold and impatient.

My gaze is drawn towards the taser and truncheon in her belt as I hesitantly remove my dress.

“All of it. Put it on the bench.”

I remove my underwear, watch, and bracelet. The woman pushes me up against the wall; the cold stone feels rough against my skin. She then turns on the hose and showers me with cold water. The icy water is brutal, and I can not help but cry out.

“This is standard practice for all prisoners,” the educator says and smiles. She turns off the hose and handcuffs me again.

My entire body is shivering and shaking. I feel humiliated and disoriented; how can a citizen of a modern, civilized country be treated this way? I am only a few blocks away from the main square of the capital!

My humiliation is deepened when the woman finds a collar in one of the lockers. In any other situation, I would have been fascinated by it; it is obviously well made, polished steel, with a ring attached, but I refuse to be treated like an animal.

“You are not putting that on me!” I say and take a step back.

I am about to protest further when the educator pulls out her truncheon and hits me hard on my thigh. I scream out in pain and falls to my knee, and she uses the opening to quickly lock the smooth steel around my neck. It is a tight fit, and I feel a rising panic in my chest. Dread and claustrophobia washes over me, numbs my senses, and it all explodes a second later when the woman pulls out a small, unseemly remote and presses a button that creates a sharp, intense pain in my neck.

“This button controls the shock function in your collar.” She smiles. “This was the lowest setting; I suggest you stop protesting unless you want to feel how high it can go.”

I start crying. I can no longer hold back the tears as the woman locks a pair of leg irons around my ankles. A few days ago, I was teaching math to a bunch of kids, now I am a shackled felon being dragged out of a cell. I feel violated and abused, and I cannot help but feel that I am in a bad dream.

I try to regain my composure, try to recover some semblance of dignity as we walk down a dark corridor. The sound of the chains between my ankles echoes between the stone walls. She walks confidently in front of me, dragging me by a chain locked to my collar; it is humiliating, dehumanizing, but the shock from the collar still burns on my neck to remind me who is in control.

We enter a dark stairwell. I have trouble keeping up the pace due to the leg irons, but the woman refuses to slow down.

We must be several stories below ground level now. The stairs seem to continue even further down when she pulls me away, into another dark corridor. The arched ceiling is low and the air cold.

“It… it looks like a medieval dungeon,” I say, awkwardly trying to strike up a conversation to convince the woman that I have no intention of causing her trouble; I fear her.

“That was the inspiration, yes.” Her voice is casual and calm, as if this situation is not beyond insane. “You’re going to spend a lot of time here.”

“Th… this is where I’m going to serve my sentence?” The realization hits me out of nowhere, as if my mind had blocked it off until now, trying to convince myself that we would eventually walk back up and find a simple, decent prison cell for me.

The woman stops and turn towards me. There is a hint of concern in her eyes. “Your file said that you had the choice not to come here, Elisabeth, to serve the full length of your sentence in a normal jail. What did they tell you about this place?”

Damn that lawyer…

I do not know how to answer. The judge knew what this place was, my lawyer probably did as well. Did he? Did my husband know when he persuaded me to accept it for a shorter sentence?

I feel sick.

She smiles, but the concern is gone. “We’re going to torture you here, Elisabeth Wiggins. And more. And it is too late to change your mind.”

“Torture?” I do not believe my ears.

She nods and pulls at my collar. “I will start you off easy, don’t worry.”

She opens a steel barred door, like the ones you see in medieval or fantasy movies, and pushes me into a small, cramped cell. The only light comes from the corridor, but there is nothing to see anyway, except the shackles hanging from the wall. The woman unlocks my handcuffs, pushes me up against the cold, damp wall and locks the shackles around my wrists. My arms are stretched out to the sides, slightly higher than shoulder level.

I pull at them, test them, but it only serves to amuse my captor.

“They are impossible to escape, Elisabeth. Trust me. You are going to be here until I decide otherwise.” She kneels and exchanges my thin, standard leg irons for a set of heavy steel manacles to match the wide shackles. “There, much better. Not that I fear that you will run off…”

I am at a loss for words as my brain struggles to comprehend the predicament, I am in.

The wide shackles feel slightly more comfortable than the sharp handcuffs from before, but any semblance of comfort vanishes when the woman finds a small step ladder and uses it to pull my collar chain upwards until it starts choking me.

“Hard to breathe?” she asks with a sadistic smile.

“Y… yes…”

“Perfect.” She locks the chain to a ring above my head.

I am hardly able to move my body; my arms are stretched wide, and the tight collar is already hurting my neck. I can feel the fear take over my mind, sending it into full panic mode. I am afraid of the intimidating woman in front of me, but the fear only intensifies when she turns and leaves.

“No! Please! Don’t…”

She locks the door and disappears into the dark.

My body starts shaking, but it only tightens the collar around my neck. Tears are streaming down my face, and I scream in frustration. Every moment, every attempt to struggle only increases my panic and underlines my helplessness; I am completely at the mercy of a sadistic stranger.

And though I want to blame my husband and my lawyer, I did the crime. Society has decided that this positive, young schoolteacher deserves this.

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