The Start of my Troubles
by Anthony Palmer
Mine is a tale of downfall and catastrophe. And even these words are inadequate – it was a soul-throttling knot of despair in which I found myself tied. I challenge you reader, smug reader, to think of any misfortune more grave, any woe more woeful than mine: I was imprisoned by a ruthless band of Oriental schoolgirls. Yes, I see your smile has faded, I hear the silence of your humility. Few of you will continue beyond this paragraph. Cowards!
I had been in Japan just three months when I fell into their web, a web crafted with such predatory precision. I still don’t even know how many of them there were, or how many other innocent young men, such as I, were ensnared. They had no morals, no mercy, and even the smallest misdeeds were fearsomely punished. They simply laughed when I told them I would make their wickedness known. ‘You may be the victim,’ they said, ‘but therein lies your compulsion to silence. Victims are cowards, fools, laughing stocks, while we are stealthy and feline and beautiful.’
But I will speak of the miseries these callous young women made me suffer; I will make my testimony heard. Yes, Miss Sachiko – Sister Sachiko – ha! – your deeds are recorded here for the world to see, and I will begin my damning narrative that day, just after I fell under your control, when I first saw the inside of your oak-paneled office…
It was barely a week since I had woken up in a locked classroom – my cell as I soon discovered – with sketchy recollections of passing out in a bar, somewhere near Osaka. They never told me, but I’m sure that my drink had been adulterated. And I often wonder how they had moved me, and then transported me to the empty school that they had made their ‘Institution’. Someone must have helped them. All I know is that I had been talking to a rather young-looking but attractive local girl, before all memory ceased. I was never certain which of them this young woman could have been, but I knew she wasn’t Sachiko.
Sachiko I had met several times since my abduction, but this fateful morning was the first time I encountered the withering extreme of her wrath. I was brought to see her by one of her sharply officious followers. There was a vague warning that she was, for some reason, displeased. My captor led me to a spacious room and told me to stand in front of ‘Sister Sachiko’s’ desk. The room contained a number of old wooden writing tables, laden with piles of books and loose sheets of paper. It had been a headmaster’s office before it became the abode of the headmistress.
Sachiko was sitting at a large desk, formerly the principle’s I imagined, studying her calculus homework. Without moving her gaze from the work she spoke.
‘Richards, I’ve brought you here on a disciplinary matter.’
‘Indeed Miss?’ I responded, intrigued.
‘Yes, indeed.’ She looked up suddenly. A beguiling indignation sparkled in her huge dark eyes. She swiveled round on her chair to present a pony-tailed profile, and reached for a remote control on a nearby shelf. The Bruckner she’d been listening to stopped abruptly, and the office was filled with the sound of my voice.
‘Did you see Mariko yesterday? Did you see what she was wearing? How old? Sixteen? My goodness! I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a delectable rump.’
She switched the sound off with a jab of the control box.
‘That is your voice, is it not Richards?’
‘Yes Miss Sachiko…it is.’ I was completely taken aback.
With the beginnings of a patient smile, she said: ‘Yes, there are microphones in the Institution corridors as well as in the cells.’ A deceptive utterance as I recalled.
‘Well, Miss Sachiko, uh – this is positively Orwellian.’
She seemed to consider the observation with some satisfaction, and then more menacingly rejoined:
‘It will be Richards. You have made a vulgar sexual remark about one of my sisters. You should know by now that disrespect will not be tolerated. I’m going to make an example of you.’
‘But Miss Sachiko, I was merely admiring Miss Mariko’s very considerable beauty.’
‘Enough Richards!’ she cracked like a bullwhip, springing to her full five feet ten. In the gleam of her anger I saw something dangerous. A tense paused followed, and then she whispered:
‘In the pre-discipline room, over there, you will find a bathrobe. Take a shower, put the bathrobe on, and then wait for further instructions.’
What could I do? I entered the small windowless room, and Sachiko clicked the door to behind me. At one end was an open shower, lacking even a curtain, with a small drain in the tiled floor beneath. There was a chair and study desk in the middle of the room. Draped over the chair, just as she had said, I found a bathrobe, white and perfectly clean.
I must have waited twenty minutes after taking the shower, before I heard briskly clicking heels approach my temporary cell. The door unlocked electronically, and to my surprise it was Mariko who entered. Of all the deadly beauties in the Sisterhood, only Mariko was in the full flower of womanhood. And although I had seen her giggle rather girlishly once or twice before (to the great irritation of Sachiko), this time she had only a distant smile, the smile of one basking in her own fresh-found loveliness. I was instantly rapt. She was wearing the same white leggings, over her sturdiness, that had prompted my ill-advised enthusiasm some time before. And there was a white blouse tied beneath her bosom, its corners draped about her navel. She simply bloomed, standing wordlessly at the door.
Give me a moment to compose myself, reader. Thank you. Now let me tell you this: you will never know the sunset-golden beauty that shone from the skin of that slim bared midriff, or the glorious sweep of those curves, soaring up and in as hip became waist. And her hair reader, hair of the jettest black…
Mariko cleared her throat. ‘Richards,’ she said, ‘Sister Sachiko will receive you presently. Of the circumstances that await you, I can say nothing, but I must relay a warning to you: If, during the – ensuing chastisement – you show any signs of excitement – that is to say – arousal – Sister Sachiko promises to unleash upon you a tidal wave of torment. Is that quite clear?’
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t relished every one of those sinister, crystalline words. ‘The circumstances that await you’… I knew of course that some retribution was planned, but what could it be, this ‘ensuing chastisement’, this punishment that carried with it the danger of arousal? Would it distress, or delight? And how could these young women, still in the dawn of life, gaze so casually into the mind of a man and see so much?
‘Is that clear, Richards?’
‘Utterly, Miss Mariko.’
‘Very well then, follow me.’
I put on slippers and we walked out through Sachiko’s office to a foyer, and then out of the building. We crossed a small gravel courtyard and then entered another, larger block. Inside she led me through long corridors, occasionally turning to make sure I hadn’t dropped too far behind, or was considering an escape. How could I?
We passed through a doorway and into a stairwell, where she stopped abruptly. Again she looked at me over her shoulder, and for the first time I noticed the beauty of her jaw-line. Her stare was so prolonged that I’d expected words, but there were none. Instead she straightened her back, turned away, and started to ascend the stairs in slow deliberate steps. What calculated wickedness, what monsters!
There was no avoiding the gorgeous thing. At first I tried to hold my gaze on the back of her head, but the dance of her regulation ponytail offered no respite whatsoever. Her regulation ponytail… that blue-black flagellum on the spotless linen of her blouse… After a brief pause on one of the landings, we continued upwards. Five times I lost my balance and stumbled, attempting to climb the stairs with eyes closed. And all the while, the rhythm of her hips, the clicking of her heels…
At the top of the stairs we came at last to a door. Mariko knocked. ‘Enter!’ It was Sachiko’s voice. The door opened and I saw that the room beyond was large, some kind of hall or assembly room. We slowly advanced, and I knew I would be down before I’d stepped inside the ring.
Sachiko was addressing other members of the Sisterhood.
‘…and nothing can challenge our love of the Motherland, or end the need to keep it pure and untainted.’ She glanced across at Mariko and then at me. There was a stiffening of her stance, which I thought betrayed a slight alarm.
‘Yes, now, let us begin. Art class. Today, the Western male nude.’
So this was it. The Sisterhood was sitting behind a semicircular row of easels in preparation for the class. A white leather couch stood in front of them. And in a moment I would be lying on it, disrobed…
Oh God, I had only that time to dispel the scene in the stairwell from my mind. What could be done? I tried to think with all my might about the causes of the Franco-Prussian War. I tried to think with all my might about anything, anything but that wonderful view of Mariko on the stairs.
But it was useless, pointless. I had known I was condemned since I heard the admonition from Sachiko’s lovely assistant. Nothing could deliver me from this evil.
Sachiko said nothing. She simply raised her eyebrows at me expectantly. Charcoal and pencils were readied. Eight pairs of Oriental eyes watched me pull the cord on the bathrobe. With a wriggle of my shoulders I let the garment fall, and bathed for a moment in the cool air of the room. There was a sudden, unexpected satisfaction. I had the floor now, and I had it completely. I stepped towards the couch, lay down slowly, and with growing abandonment took a long leisurely gaze at Mariko’s sculpted elegance, as she took her place among the easels.
And that was that. As soon as I’d reclined I was upstanding. Helplessly and irretrievably. The game was up already, and I had resoundingly lost. So I lay proudly, like Galileo on his deathbed, as my defiance sent a ripple of gasps around the assembled Inquisition. Silent hours passed. The Sisterhood was spellbound. And I felt almost grimly nonchalant, with my onlookers so engaged.
Then at last Sachiko pulled up a chair and sat down. The patient smile of hers hovered somewhere near her lips.
‘Well Richards. I don’t believe you even tried. I don’t think you even made the smallest effort.’
I had nothing to say.
She looked away and continued softly.
‘You remember that remark you made about Orwell a while ago? Foolish. When I heard it I realized what we lack in this Institution. We need our own corrective inner sanctum.’ She paused, quite unruffled by my nakedness. ‘Well, I’m having this put to rights as soon as possible, and I should like to invite you to be its first guest.’
Although I was attentive to the graveness of Sachiko’s words, and the rarefaction of her speech, I couldn’t help noticing how her dark blue skirt had ridden up somewhat. I found myself torn between the need to be soberly engaged, and the very pressing desire to study her magnificent legs. Her forward-leaning posture had widened the arch of her thighs, and in the wistful cloud-light of the room they glowed like candle-lit silk.
‘Oh, and don’t think you’re getting out of this one either.’ She rose and the fabric fell back to her knees. She turned to her sisters. ‘Come along now, let us begin the class. We can’t be put off by – minor mishaps.’
And that, reader, is all I can tell. Yes, I know, there is more that needs telling. Much more in fact, if I could reveal to the full the wrongdoings of Sachiko and her disciples. But the Sisterhood was right. I am compelled to stay silent; I shall never be able to describe the scenes that followed. What they said about the dishonour of the victim was true – I would make a fool of myself, a laughing stock. So I have just one thing left to tell, one small secret I believe they never glimpsed, or perhaps they chose gracefully to ignore. And if ever I met Sachiko again, I would tell her of it: that deep within all that punishment, that reprimand and shame, I discovered, somewhere, a hidden pleasure too.
Here ends the testimony of Edwards Richards, unable to recount his tale any further.
