Community Service Ch. 12

Though it pained me to say it, even to myself, Norma was a sight for sore eyes.

An undeniably attractive eye-catching and head-turning young woman, Norma's curves were in all the right places, and she had dynamite legs.

With her olive-complexioned good looks, Norma-

Norma lifted her right foot, preparatory to descending the six wooden steps.

"Yes, Mrs Newlove. Right away," I said respectfully and acquiescently.

But I was too late; too late, now for any amount of bowed, cowed submissive respectfulness and unambiguous fawning acquiescence to be of slightest repair or commute ...

Norma was already on her way to 'remonstrate' with me.

And so I had to stand there, making no attempt whatsoever to avoid the full impact of the stinging and stunning roundhouse chastising slap that Norma, making the most of her downward rush impetus, administered with sufficient venomous irritated and agitated patience-exhausted power and perfection to knock me right off my feet.

Cue: A rushing hoard of sock-changing females, their thudding socked or bare feet sounding to me like the thunderous roaring of the stampeding hooves of a spooked herd of buffalo as hurriedly they descended the six wooden steps to come and kick and trample me while I was down.

*

So ... I wonder what those two want, I thought, tentatively feeling my sore and tender right cheek as I headed for Community Service Officers Karen and Linda's office.

I still hadn't forgiven them both, for, for their own selfish reasons, kiboshing all of my job applications by warning off prospective employers.

I remembered again, my absolute shocked disbelief and outrage when by pure accident I had made the profoundly demoralising discovery and stumbled upon the irrefutable printed proof of it while tidying their office while they were over the road at the deli.

And, what did CSOs Karen and Linda do, when confronted with the cast-iron evidence of their unspeakable machinations in the form of the dozens of letters they'd received from said warned off prospective employers reporting their compliance and my rejection? They'd hauled me before Ms Harmman and told her they'd caught me rummaging in their desks while entrusted alone in their office. For which I was then severely punished ...

Probably, my two supervisors were just summoning me from sheer bone idleness. Calling their whipped-pup dogsbody in to make them some coffee because they were too busy playing on their computers and couldn't be bothered to get up from their swivel chairs to make it themselves.

Or perhaps, to come and massage their feet; not because they wanted a foot massage, particularly, but because authoritatively summoning me to perform random and unpredictable spur of the moment foot massages for them was a good way of keeping me in my place and permanently on edge.

By now, routinely going on my bare knees before them on their scratchy office carpet every morning to perform their pre-work coffee break foot massage, I knew the sizes and the shapes and the contours of CSOs Karen and Linda's thin yellow cotton ankle-socked feet, better than I knew my face in the mirror.

But there was no point in idle speculation. Nothing to be gained, from rambling rumination upon the myriad of possible reasons for their summoning me to their imperial presence.

I'd find out soon enough.

Within a minute I was knocking politely on their office door.

"Come in, double-oh-seven!" called CSO Linda.

Upon entering the office I was surprised to see, sitting on the comfortable black leather two-seater settee that Ms Harmman had installed, two Securi-Fem officers - female prison transport personnel.

Their nametags, over the left breast pocket of their uniform white with maroon trim blouses, declared them to be Officers Lori and Affina.

Both of them, stunningly beautiful, with jet-black hair and flawless bronzed-gold toned skin, appeared to me to be of Indian extract.

Never before had I beheld such astoundingly attractive young women.

Their mid-thigh white shorts, and their leather, toe-posted strapless sandals and the somehow enigmatic-looking gold anklets they wore set off Securi-Fem officers Lori and Affina's eye-catching golden legs and shapely French-pedicured feet to breathtaking effect.

The sight of them did, literally take my breath away.

I couldn't put my finger on it ...

But there was something, profoundly moving, something inexplicably humbling, about being in Lori and Affina's Goddess-like presence.

It was all I could do, to resist the ... compulsion, that suddenly I found myself in the unshakable grip of, to go reverently down on my knees before them, and ...

This was crazy!

I told myself to get a grip.

My supervisors must have let them in through the back entrance, I thought, via the courtyard's back gate - because I'd certainly have noticed them coming down the six wooden steps from the upper level of the Sock Room if they had come in from the street entrance.

And they'd been here for a while, from the looks of things: the two thick white coffee cups on the rectangular smoked-glass coffee table in front of them were now empty and cold-looking.

But what were they doing here?

CSOs Karen and Linda had scooted out from behind their desks on their castor-wheeled office swivel chairs, so as to face their two prison system visitors in a less formal and more congenial manner.

CSOs Karen and Linda had finished their coffee too. And, both of them sitting with one leg crossed over the other, my two young blonde, concave bob hair-styled supervisors were doing that thing, they did. Where they would repeatedly allow their uniform issue black, thick rubber soled backless, clog-like shoe to dangle ever more precariously from the toes of their yellow cotton ankle-socked foot ... and then with that oft-practised shaking movement of their ankle, shuck the shoe back on and start over again.

I doubted they even realised they were doing it.

"What happened to your face, Sockboy?" inquired CSO Karen with an amused smile at clapping eyes on my blotchy reddened right cheek, that I now realised must be superimposed with Norma Newlove's handprint.

The post-slap kicking and trampling I'd taken by the sock-changing females' bare and socked feet had left me feeling sore and achy in places but otherwise unscathed - at least physically; mentally was another matter.

"I bet it was Mrs Newlove who did that," ventured CSO Linda, just in time preventing her black clog-like shoe from falling from the tips of her yellow ankle-socked toes and shuffle-shucking it fully back on again. "She doesn't half pack a wallop."

"Well, he must have stood and taken it, Lindz. Or Mrs Newlove would have been straight on the phone to us," CSO Karen said, crossing her leg and straightaway proceeding to dangle her other black clog-like shoe. "Mrs Newlove would have further chastised Sockboy herself, yes - but she would still have reported his indiscipline to us."

"Isn't it great, Kaz, having Mrs Newlove and her bitchy cronies to keep an eye on double-oh-seven for us?"

"Yeah, Lindz. Otherwise, we wouldn't have so much free time to spend on our office computers, playing games and keeping up with all of our friends on the social media sites."

"Or to go and sit in the deli across the road, Kaz, enjoying a leisurely coffee and a Danish, confident that we're leaving double-oh-seven in good hands."

"Or sit on our comfy couch, either with our games consoles or just to watch great films and stuff on our brilliant fifty-inch flat-screen TV that Ms Harmman had installed for us - she knows Sockboy is dull company!"

Trying to tune out CSOs Karen and Linda's baiting buffoonery, I looked out through the office windows at the flagstoned courtyard out back.

Doing my best to shut out their brain-dead banter, I stared at all of the socks, mostly white, pegged to the AFP red, green, blue and yellow coloured nylon clotheslines that I'd propped up for the socks to catch a drying breeze.

There was rain forecast for late afternoon, and I made a mental note to bring the socks back in before they got all wet through again - with my ever increasing dirty-sock workload, I couldn't afford time-consuming setbacks like that.

Meanwhile, I had so much to be getting on with.

"Um ... Miss Karen, Miss Linda ... was there something I can assist with?" I said, respectfully and politely. "Only, it's ten-fifteen, time for my morning coffee break, and-"

"Oh! By all means, double-oh-seven - don't let us stop you! Go and have your coffee break. And we'll tell Officers Lori and Affina, shall we, that you don't want them to drive you to Greystone Prison to visit that ungrateful seditious girlfriend of yours, Tina Marshall?"

I couldn't believe my ears.

I wrote to Tina every day.

Most of my ink was used, in telling her how much I missed her and how much I wanted her back - I was always careful not to let on about the worst of my Sock Room sufferings.

And I certainly hadn't told her that for the last three months or more I'd been working a seven-day week in the Sock Room - and that my ten-hour Saturday and Sunday shifts were unremunerated.

Tina would have had a fit.

And I phoned her once a week: the five-minute phone call, as allowed by Greystone Prison's stringent regulations.

But, face to face, I hadn't seen her in months.

"T-Tina, Miss Linda? I can visit, T-T-Tina?"

"Well, you've been working so hard, double-oh-seven, trying to reduce that massive backload of dirty socks, I asked Ms Harmman again for you if she couldn't possibly wangle a Visitor Pass."

"And if he believes that, Lindz, he'll believe anything!" hooted CSO Karen, almost causing her to lose control of her precariously dangling clog-like shoe.

The two Securi-Fem officers, Lori and Affina, laughed too. Even their mildly amused chuckling laughter at my expense was all tinkly and wonderfully melodic.

And, in a way, somehow ... lulling.

I thought about Tina all the time - her, and her best friend Janice Middleton, who was her burger bar co-worker and also her flatmate.

I desperately wanted to see them.

Despite both of their steadfast refutations and denials, I felt myself to be at least partly responsible for their unthinkable predicaments.

I remembered the afternoon when Tina, trying to protect me, had caused a cacophonous commotion in the Sock Room and in doing so made herself an enemy of Mrs Newlove, who's diabolical little game she had interrupted and thwarted.

Mrs Newlove, seconded by her Sock Room cronies Gina Stainham and Cheryl Chubb, had strenuously insisted on pressing charges of Grievous Assault against Tina. Resulting in Tina's being brought before the Community Service Liaison Officer, Ms Harriet Harmman, who's position as an AFP MP authorised her to adjudicate in such local matters.

From then on - although to be fair, Ms Harmman had done her best for them; had repeatedly tried to talk them around and get them to change their activist ways and abandon their anti-AFP leanings - things had rapidly gone downhill for the intransigent Tina and Janice.

In keeping with Greystone Prison's strict monthly-visiting regulation, I had applied for and had been issued with a Visitor Pass four times.

But each time, something had happened to cause Ms Harmman to tear me off another strip and revoke my precious Pass as a crushing punishment for "stepping out of line".

Ms Harmman seemed to very much enjoy and delight in watching my ensuing wretched begging and pleading performance, humbly beseeching her at any cost to rescind her decision to cancel my Visitor Pass. Before eventually tiring of my tearful tantrum, refusing my pitiful petition, and instructing her two subordinates and my two supervisors CSOs Karen and Linda to return me to my duties at the Sock Room forthwith.

Tina and Janice were due to have been released from Greystone Prison weeks ago, but they were still incarcerated in that hellhole.

Jailed for their moral standpoint, repeat-protesting against the iniquitous Authoritarian Female Party government's so-called female-friendly policies and initiatives, they had stood firm and unmoving on their principles and so had remained confined in detention beyond their provisional release date, pending further courses of rehabilitative correctional treatment and political doctrinal inculcation.

I was convinced that Tina and Janice's treatment in that notorious, all-female run institution was far worse than Tina was letting on.

Both in her letters, and during our precious weekly five-minute phone conversations that with the sudden automatic Time's-Up click of a dead phone line were always all too soon abruptly disconnected and over almost before they'd begun.

I was sure that Tina was trying to protect me - again.

Horrible, unspeakable things were happening to her and Janice within the walls and behind the bars of that execrable establishment that she wasn't telling me about - that she was protectively keeping from me.

Reading between the lines of her letters, I was sure of it.

I would do anything to get Tina and Janice out of Greystone Prison - anything.

Given the option, I would quite happily take their place.

After all, it wouldn't be the first time I had assumed a punishment awarded to Tina upon myself - as is a male citizen's right of appeal, under AFP legislation.

At least then I would be out of this damn Sock Room, and away from the sock-changing, Sock Room attending females of Canford.

But of course, the AFP government would not allow me to do it.

Tina and Janice, ardent decriers of Prime Minister Caroline Flynt's female-friendly eco-socio policies - and not least, her brainchild male-subjugative initiatives, schemes and projects - were anti-AFP to their cores and resolutely immovable in their stance.

They believed in male-female equality, and-

My unhappy reverie was ended by a triple-beep sound: a text message to a mobile phone.

Securi-Fem Officer Affina read the message and relayed the gist of it to my two supervisors.

"Our driver and co-driver colleagues, Jamelia and Samira, have just come back," Officer Affina said in her honeyed voice. "As I mentioned earlier, one of our van's back tyres was looking a bit underinflated, and so they'd gone off to find an airline, leaving Lori and me here to enjoy your offer of coffee. But now Jamelia and Samira are back, parked outside the back entrance as you suggested, CSO Karen, where its quiet. So, now we're ready to roll ... unless Community servant David double-oh-seven would rather have his coffee break first?"

"Um, no ... Miss Affina," I said respectfully.

It was impossible to be anything other than respectful; reverent - suppliant, even - to such an amazingly beautiful young woman with the aura of charismatic presence of Securi-Fem Officer Affina.

There was ... something about her.

Looking at her, I felt again that same, almost irresistible ... compulsion.

To reverently go down on my knees before her, and ... kiss her feet.

No matter that my two supervisors CSOs Karen and Linda were present.

What was wrong with me?

It was only at a sharp "Earth, to double-oh-seven!" from CSO Linda, who was trying to regain my attention, that I was able to drag my mesmerised eyes away from Securi-Fem officer Affina's golden anklet, which I then noticed was identical to her colleague Lori's.

I needed to pull myself together.

Again, I told myself to get a grip.

CSO Linda was saying, "Ms Harmman has informed us, double-oh-seven, that Governor Monroe has been in touch this morning."

CSO Karen said, "Governor Monroe says that despite some of her finest officers' best, determined efforts at effecting their rehabilitation, prisoners Tina Marshall and Janice Middleton are proving completely unresponsive and singularly unmalleable. Both of them, flatly and adamantly refusing to renounce their radical oppositionist anti-AFP convictions and to embrace and benefit from instead the Authoritarian Female Party government's female-friendly ideological values and the many Utopian quality of life enhancing opportunities attendant thereof."

CSO Linda clarified: "In other words: The unthankful unappreciative pair of out and out troublemakers won't learn which side their bread is buttered."

CSO Karen said, "Which is where you, come in, Sockboy."

CSO Linda supplied: "To help break your girlfriend Tina's stubborn, rebellious resistance and get her to play ball, Governor Monroe wants you, double-oh-seven, brought in. As a sort of bargaining chip. Governor Monroe believes that you will prove to be her weak link. Provide Tina with the right incentive - with the decisive persuasive factor - and finally, she will come to her senses: Hang a Sword of Damocles over your head, and Tina will do whatever is necessary to have the threat hovering over you removed."

CSO Karen further explained: "Governor Monroe thinks that she can use Tina's undying love for you, Sockboy - yes, for you! - to kill two birds with one stone: Break Tina; break the less strong-willed Janice."

"Tina and Janice can't be broken!" I yelled defiantly. "It won't matter what you hang over my head. You can hang over my head whatever you want - Tina and Janice will never play ball. Don't you see? Some things in this world are worth fighting for, and-"

CSOs Karen and Linda suddenly sprang from their castor-wheeled swivel chairs, and I did nothing to stop them from grabbing an ear each; still doing nothing to resist nor saying anything disrespectful or impolite when their fingers viciously twisted my oft-abused earlobes - my ears by now were like two cauliflower florets.

"Coffee break? I'll give you 'coffee break' - double-oh-seven!" snapped CSO Linda as she gave my right earlobe a painful, extra-vicious twist for added emphasis.

It was all I could do not to cry out - but I didn't want to give them the satisfaction of admitting they were hurting me.

"Some things in this world are 'worth fighting for'? Try fighting us - Sockboy!" invited CSO Karen, prompting me goadingly with a similar eye-watering twist of my left earlobe.

I knew how this went: They were hoping I'd be foolish enough to resist or at least complain.

I knew with certainty that if I did either, CSOs Karen and Linda would order me to place my palms down on one of their desks. Then they would pull my white uniform shorts down to my ankles and summarily administer with their AFP-issue whippy bamboo canes a Standard Six bare bottom caning in front of Securi-Fem officers Lori and Affina.

I very much did not want that to happen.

"Come on, you - into the van!" hissed CSO Linda as my two surly supervisors hustled me out through the office door. "You are going on a day trip to Brighton whether you want to or not. You are being chauffeured and escorted in elegant executive transport by amazingly beautiful Goddess-like ladies. You should be thankful, double-oh-seven!"

"Yes, Miss Linda. Thank you."

"Have you ever seen young women before with such sex-appeal who are as drop-dead gorgeous and possess such alluring magnetism as Securi-Fem officers Lori and Affina?"

"Only you and Miss Karen, Miss Linda."

"Oh, yeah. I know you worship the ground we walk on - double-oh-seven!"

"Don't worry, Sockboy," rejoined CSO Karen as now we all made our way through the flagstoned courtyard full of propped-up drying socks, as disappointed as her colleague Linda that I hadn't voiced a complaint at their provocative abusive treatment. "They'll have you back here in plenty of time to bring in all of these socks from the clotheslines before it rains later, and to sweep and mop the Sock Room floor before you go home."

"Yes, Miss Karen. Thank you," I said respectfully. "That puts my mind at rest," I added, under my breath.