Free Into The Arena by Sean O'Kane

hour under Carlo's whip.
    Holding her by an arm each, two guards led her through the door the men used, it led into a small mess room with chairs gathered round a table, a TV and a bar. From there she was marched into a corridor and then right, up a steep staircase and out into sunlight. For a moment she was blinded and couldn't look around her as she was led, stumbling out onto the deck. When they halted her, she was able to squint around and she saw she was aboard what looked like a bulk carrier of some sort. It was fairly large, with its own derricks above large hatchways, which presumably covered holds like the one she was being held in. At the stern was the main superstructure and up at the top of that, on the bridge she could make out figures moving behind the glass. But there would be no help from that quarter, whoever commanded this ship just had to know what its cargo consisted of. They had emerged, she realised from the fo'c'stle and the main deck was reached by a stairway down from where she stood, Carlo led them down it. The wind was cool and added to the goosebumps which fear had made start out all over her, her hair kept blowing into her eyes and she had to constantly flick it back to see where she was going. And when she did see; she wished she hadn't.
    Out in the middle of the deck was a large frame made of wood. It stood about ten feet high and was about six feet wide. From its four corners hung chains, the lower two having leather restraints already attached.
    Tara tried to hold back and struggle. "No!" she whimpered. "Why? I don't......."
    Carlo whirled round and raised his hand. She shut her mouth instantly.
    "You don't speak! Not now; not ever again till a man tells you to! You have got a big lesson to learn, but you won't need to speak to learn it," he relaxed and smiled as she subsided. "Maybe scream a bit, that's okay."
    The men holding her were laughing as they dragged her forward and attached her wrists to the two uppermost chains. Then they hauled on the chains until she was stretched out, her arms straining out and up, her toes just able to support her. But when they had looped the chains around hooks on the frame's sides, they each took an ankle and as Tara gave a despairing wail, they pulled them savagely apart until they were some inches off the deck and then buckled the restraints on. The strain was incredible; all she could do was try and wrap her fingers round the chains above her wrists to try and take some weight off her shoulders. But it was plain that that would only be scant and short-lived relief. She looked down at her straining body, strung up and spread like a starfish, even her breasts, normally so full and prominent were pulled into low mounds by the strain. Instinctively she tried to close her legs; aware that her widely spread thighs were the source of how truly vulnerable she now was. Carlo could do anything he wanted, she had only ever seen and experienced the whip applied to back and buttocks but she shrewdly suspected that a man could apply it to pretty well any part of a woman who was displayed like she was. Certainly a man as cruel as Carlo could.
    He came to stand in front of her, holding a three foot long, thin, wickedly flexible rod with a tasselled end.
    "You're going to taste this for the next hour, Blondie. And while you do, I'm going to explain what you are now. You nod your head or shake it when I ask you a question. No one wants to hear what you got to say, and you're gonna stay up there for a while longer for speaking just now. Understand?"
    Tara opened her mouth, then snapped it shut and nodded her head. She was desperate to find out what she had done wrong, why she was being punished. But all she could do was endure her 'lesson' and maybe find out in Carlo's own sweet time.
    He moved to stand behind and to one side of her. "Going to warm you up a bit first," he told her, and then struck.
    The 'Sshwack!' noise the whip made sounded oddly dead out here in the open