As she walked down the quiet path to her apartment, it was very clear to Melinda that she was being followed.  Picking up her pace, her sleek red pumps clicked on the brick pavement as she hurried along, hoping to reach the street.  What she did not realize is that the threat was in front of her as well as behind.  Before she turned the corner, the four men, two in front and two behind, flashed their weapons and told her to shut up and walk quietly to the waiting car.  Melinda had no idea what was going on, and the approach was so sudden she did not have time to think of fleeing.  No one saw her get into the back seat of the car with the smoked glass windows.

The ride was not too long, and twice Melinda asked where she was going and who these men were.  The first time she was answered by an icy silence; the second by a sharp bark from the man next to her to shut up.  All four were Orientals, and they were all tall and powerfully built.  Melinda did not feel like a struggle, in or out of the car.

She was driven into a garage with an automatic door, and when inside, taken by two of the men, one on each arm, down a staircase to a room with a high ceiling.  It was like a cellar, dim, concrete and forbidding, and in one corner was a man sitting behind a small desk.  Melinda was directed to a wooden chair facing him.

“Well done, my friends.  You are sure no one saw you bring her here,” he said, in a Chinese accent.

One of Melinda’s escorts answered in what seemed to be Mandarin Chinese.

The lead man replied, “Very good.  Now we can get down to business.”

“OK, what the Hell is going on here?”  Melinda was indignant.  They obviously were crooks or something, but not muggers or rapists, thank God.

“My dear Melinda, you have information of great value.  Do you know how much you are worth?”  The man said, matter-of-factly.

Now it became all too clear to the beautiful woman in the chair.  Melinda worked for a secret government agency and she did have some knowledge that was very important to keep secret.  She was not an operative or anything like that, and she had no field training.  But she did know some very vital things about secret codes.  Melinda did not like her predicament at all.  She decided to play dumb.

“What?  What do you mean?  Who the Hell are you and how do you know my name?” She asked innocently.

Even though Melinda was very intelligent, she could easily pass for a dumb blonde.  Her shiny, honey-colored hair was long, stylish, and thick.   She was quite attractive, always wearing perfect makeup around her rosy cheeks, full lips, and intense blue eyes.  She always dressed expensively and used clothing and shoes to show off her ravenous figure.  At twenty-eight, she had a long, willowy body, slender, lithe legs, and a very slim waist.  Her breasts were not large, but well rounded, and no one ever complained they were too small.  She was stunningly sexy in her white silk blouse and short, red skirt.

“Do not toy with me.  And you may call me Mr. Chang.  We know the agency you work for.  And we know you have access to the Shanghai codes.  We want the code words for the last two months.  You tell us that and you will receive $100,000.”

“What?  I don’t know what you are talking about.  Now let me out of here.”  She rose up, only to be grasped by the shoulders and fiercely pushed down on the chair.  She flinched in surprise more than fear.  These guys mean business!

“If money means nothing to you, there are other ways to persuade you to reveal the codenames.  Prepare her.”

The two men standing behind her pulled her from the chair and into the center of the room.  Another man lowered an electric winch that had a cable at the end of which was a metal bar with two steel belts spread about four feet apart.  Melinda’s wrists were placed in the slings of the belts and the men tightened them.  She moaned weakly as the winch lifted her by her wrists. 

Still standing, the men grabbed each of her legs from behind and that left her suspended by her wrists.  She could not see what they were doing, but they took off her high-heeled pumps and she felt two more cold steel braided belts slipping over her feet and tightened on her ankles.  An adjustable spreader bar was there and the men pulled her legs wide apart.  It hurt and she grimaced as her legs were spread and her skirt rode up her hips.  Another winch lifted and pulled her legs opposite from her arms so that she was at a 45-degree angle, completely suspended, more or less face down in a stretched position.

“Number one.”  Said Chang.

Melinda wore no nylons so her legs were bare.  Behind her, one of the tall men grabbed what seemed to be a heavy leather strap.  It soon crashed down on her right bare foot with full force.  It was actually a thick tawse; a single belt split half way down the end in two sections containing small pointed steel studs along the way. 

“Ow!”  Cried Melinda as she recoiled in her sling position, swinging from side to side.  She squirmed to get loose but the steel belts held tightly.  The tawse crashed down again on her bare foot and then a third time.

“Stop it!  It hurts!”

“Hurts?”, mocked Chang.  “This pain is nothing compared to what is in store for you if you don’t cooperate.  My men will tear your skin right off you with a scourge if I want them to!  Is it that hard for you to understand?”

“I don’t know anything about the codes,” Melinda said softly, almost sobbing.

She realized instantly this was a big mistake.  “Aha!  Then you admit to their existence!  And if you know about them then you certainly know their names!”  Mr. Chang was relieved.  He did capture the right victim.  Now it was only a matter of time, skill, and effort to torture the truth out of her.  Melinda did not appear that strong and Chang felt it would not be too difficult to break her.

Chang was an experienced interrogator, helping the North Vietnamese years ago torture prisoners of war.  He moved on to interrogate internal dissidents with great success.  Along the way women became a specialty.  He especially enjoyed whipping them in front of their men, a very efficient practice that usually yielded double results.  Now he had moved on to the big stage, that of international espionage.  Chang and his team were selected for the most important kidnappings and interrogations.  This was his most vital assignment yet and he must not fail.

“The tawse came down again and again on the soles of Melinda’s tender feet.  She cried out in pain as each lash fell with a loud slap.  The metal studs drew a slight amount of blood when they dragged across her feet.

“You bastards!  Let me go! Ow!”  She was starting to panic and the pain was awful.

“All you have to do is help me with the words.  Soon the codenames will be the only things on your tongue.  And then we will stop hurting you.”  Chang had a certainty in his voice that resigned almost all of his victims to the fact that they could not get past the end of his levels of pain.  Each gradation involved a different whip, a different part of the female body, and an increase in the torment.

Melinda began to think quickly of what she should say next.  She was hurting but it had not been enough to make her give up the information.  She was actually very proud of herself so far.  In the event things got really bad, she knew the names of the “duress codes” which were close to the real names but were fakes that could be used for situations just like this one.  Fortunately, her refresher course had just been completed a few weeks ago.  The idea was to take just enough torture before confessing so it appeared that you had actually been broken by the interrogators and was telling the truth.

Chang motioned for the man with the tawse to stop beating Melinda’s soles.  “Prepare her for number two.” He commanded.

One of the men took out a razor and began to cut Melinda’s skirt from her hips.  She couldn’t see the threat of the razor from her position, but tried to squirm away as she felt his active hands on her and the rip of the material.  She chose that short, tight skirt to match her shoes and accentuate her curvy hips.  The man then cut off her red silk bikini panties.  She now wore only her white blouse and bra.

“Proceed,” Commanded Chang.  His man knew what to do next.  He brought out a thick, black rubber truncheon and with one furious stroke brought it against the backs of Melinda’s slim thighs.  He could do this easily because of her position in the suspension apparatus.  Melinda strained against her bonds, her spine bent back like a bow as she cried in pain.  Another cruel blow fell on her well-shaped, rounded buttocks.  Ugly red welts now raised on her soft supple skin and her muscular, lithe body grew taut with the pain.

“Pour it on, damn you,” Chang scowled as he told his helper to pick up the pace.  Chang knew this was very painful, but caused no cuts or bleeding.  There was time for that in the next grades if necessary.

The blows fell quickly now on Melinda’s legs and buttocks and her mind raced with the thought of when it would be when she had enough.  The pain was very bad, but not enough to make her scream, even when one blow hit her kidneys.  That really hurt and she hoped they missed hitting that place again.  Then the man began to attack her calves and shins.  After a while her cries faded to grunts or moans each time the flexible truncheon fell.  Chang knew it was time to get serious.

“Wait, go to number three.”  He waved his hand at another man to relieve the first, weary after laying on nearly fifty lashes on Melinda’s backside.  These raised large welts, and in a few places broke her skin, but did not cut or tear it seriously.

The razor came out again, and the man split the back of Melinda’s silk blouse and tore it off her supple shoulders.  He then cut the straps of her white lace bra and let it fall to the floor.  Chang mused at how fetchingly sexy she was, hanging there now completely naked. 

“You are a wonderfully beautiful woman, Melinda.  Perfect face and body.  Take your soft, gentle breasts.  Do you want me to whip them now?  How about your smooth, long back?  Full of scars from my floggers?  I am sure you have had plenty of men, but no man on earth will look at you the same when I am through with you.  What is it to be?  Can you really take more whipping or will you give me my answers?”  Chang waited for Melinda to think about it.

She now decided that she could probably take some more whipping, but as soon she began to be cut or mutilated, she would give up the duress codes. 

“I have nothing to say.”  She said, her resistance returning slightly, despite her humiliation at being stripped in front of these men and the ache now gripping her lower back and shoulders from the strained suspended position.  Chang liked this position precisely because it gave him access to every part of his victim’s body.

“Very well.  Proceed with grade three.”  The other assistant took over.  He walked over to Melinda and showed her a short, black riding crop with a square of flat leather at the end.  Another man worked the winch so that Melinda’s arms were raised higher again.  This put a terrific strain on her lower back and she moaned as she was raised to eye level with the man about to whip her again.

He gently began to rub Melinda’s small, pink nipples with the crop, as she turned her head away and moaned in anticipation.  Her excitement and dread of what was to come began to erect them, a feeling she never had before.  This was going to hurt, but least they weren’t cutting her, she thought.

“Think about it again, bitch!”  Shouted Chang.  He was getting impatient.  Most of his female victims were brilliant conversationalists by now. 

“Lay it on!”

The man drew back the flexible crop and brought it hard against Melinda’s left breast.  With slap it struck her just below her nipple and caused her to cry out.  This was the worst pain she had felt so far.  Maybe if she just was able to stand a few more of these strokes she could appear to break.  The crop came down again, this time the end slapping her tender nipple and causing her to scream for the first time.  She was starting to weaken.  Her wrists and ankles also began to hurt badly, which she felt between the blows, as the steel bands cut into her.

Again and again the crop slapped against her sensitive breasts, chest, and armpits.  As the torturer moved to her stomach and lower abdomen her entire front became red and swollen.  When Chang ordered a rest she was amazed that she must have taken over forty strokes from the crop.  She hesitated and looked down and was relieved when she saw no blood.  So far, so good, but how much more of this did she have to take to be believed?

When Melinda said nothing Chang immediately waved his hand in an order to go to level four.  Melinda was dreading that.  She knew the next torture would begin to seriously hurt her.  She looked up and saw one of the men with an ugly cat-o-nine-tails.  The handle was about three feet long, and each long lash was thick, tapered, braided black leather.  Small metal studs graced the end of each lash.  Melinda instantly knew this whip could cut her badly.  She bravely decided to take at least a few of these lashes to see how much she could stand.

When the first blow fell it was like a blast of fiery agony between her bare shoulder blades.  The whip stroke was so hard the breath was knocked completely out of her and although her back exploded with pain, she did not have the breath to scream.  Another lash across the middle of her back evoked the hoarse shriek Chang had been waiting for.  Melinda was beginning to perspire and her shapely, tanned body began to moisten and glow in the light of the room.  She had a light, golden suntan, which matched her honey-blonde hair.  There were no bikini lines, as Melinda always sunbathed naked.  Now she was bathed in pain, sweat, and blood.  She felt the first trickles down the sides of her ribs. 

After the tenth lash, she cried out.  “Stop it, damn you!  Do you want to know the codes?”   She was sick to her stomach with the pain by now and felt like vomiting.  Her back, thighs, and buttocks were crisscrossed with red from the multiple marks of the cruel cat.  Many of the lashes bit into her terribly.

Chang perked up. “I am listening.”  Another man quickly fetched pen and paper. 

“Omega six, alpha seven, gamma nine.”  She slumped in her bonds.  Her ordeal was finally over.  Melinda now hoped she would be lowered from her painful suspension and allowed to go.  She would get right to a clinic.  Maybe the scars on her ravaged back wouldn’t be so bad if she went right away.  Then she was jolted back to her predicament with the shouting of Chang in her face.

“You lying bitch!  Don’t you think we know about the phony codes you are supposed to tell us under torture?  I don’t believe these are true and I am going to whip you until you tell me the truth?  Have you got that?”

Melinda realized in horror that she was not convincing Chang of anything.  Now she really got worried.  Thinking back to her early training, Melinda had read accounts of the heroines of the French Resistance during World War II.  Captured by the Gestapo, many of them endured frightful whippings at the hands of the Nazis.  Most all of them had the courage to take such hideous punishment, and many of them died under the lashes.

 Melinda always wondered how she would react, stripped naked in a torture chamber.  Did she have the courage to resist such savagery?  Could she be as worthy as the young women who refused to be broken despite the brutal lashes of the Gestapo whips?  What caused them to be so courageous under such harrowing conditions, alone, unclothed, and undergoing such vile tortures?  Maybe they knew more about what they were getting into, but even the best training could not prepare you for the real thing.  And those women always carried a suicide pill, so if they got captured, they could kill themselves before breaking under the floggings.  That was not an option Melinda had.

Melinda decided that she would not talk for at least a bit longer.  Even if she were scarred a bit on her back, she was sure that someone would take care of her and she would recover.  And she could return to her fellow agents with the victory of bearing up under extreme pain.  She would also be a modern heroine.  But more suffering there would definitely be.  There would be agony ahead for sure.  Chang was not going to give up now.

Number five was going to be the worst, Melinda could now see.  The man stood in front of her with a long, tapered whip, braided leather with what could be a flexible metal core.  Not quite as long as a bull whip, but clearly it was designed to do maximum damage.  Melinda shut her eyes tightly as the whistle of the first lash went through the air and hit her squarely across her breasts.  She opened her eyes wide at the horrible pain that seared through her entire chest as her scream confirmed her agony.  Her flat stomach muscles grew taut with the pain but this only increased its severity as the second lash struck firmly across her hard, flat stomach.  Each lash produced a long tear through her skin surrounded by a wide, red welt.

The third lash produced a blood-curdling scream as it curled around her ribs and cut again into the ripped flesh on her livid back.  She didn’t know how much more she could take of this as it was excruciating.  Blood began to drip on the floor.

As the pain grew ever more hideous Melinda lost control and began to heave and choke between her shrieks.  The savage whipping continued on her bare chest. The lashes cut through her nipples and tore at her breasts with each stroke.

By the twentieth lash and the twentieth scream, Melinda mercifully passed out from the stress.  Chang was surprised she had remained conscious and resistant for this long. 

The assistants knew exactly what to do next.   Filling a small bucket with water, they mixed in vinegar and salt.  When they applied it to Melinda’s bleeding back, she was jolted to consciousness.  At first she thought they had burned her with a red-hot iron!  The searing, burning sting of the chemicals shot through her entire body.  She chafed again at her bonds in a desperate effort to break free.  Melinda quivered with the new pain.

Her lips trembled.  “Stop it please…I can’t stand any more of this…the pain.....don’t hurt me anymore…”

“No I won’t stop it, please,”  said Chang sarcastically.  “I am losing my patience.  Number six will give me what I want.”  Chang was excited knowing he could inflict more suffering on his alluring captive. 

Another man, now fully rested and ready to go to work on Melinda, produced a long, flexible fiberglass cane and stood behind her.  It was a barbaric instrument, designed to cut deeply into the flesh.  Many of Chang’s victims had cooperated after just looking at it.  But Melinda was barely conscious, and her head was down between her shoulders.  She was too weak to hold it up anymore.  Her thick hair was wet with sweat and flecks of blood from the earlier whip action.  Even Chang got a drop or two on him from the last episode.

The tip of the cane landed directly between Melinda’s legs, striking her exposed vagina.  Never had she felt anything as awful as this.  She shrieked so loudly even the torturer stopped and turned to glance at Chang, who hesitated and then motioned him to continue.  The cane kept hitting her mercilessly on her vagina, groin, and between her buttocks.  By the fifteenth, hideous lash, Melinda was through.  She could not faint and she could not go on.  All that was going on inside her head was the thought of more terrible whips and the secret code words.

“Oh my God, stop it...I’ll tell you.  Just leave me alone…”

“Well......”

“Delta four….Gamma seven….Beta three…”  She could barely get the words out even though they were only things on her tormented mind.  Chang hurriedly copied the names and then compared them to some scribbling in a notebook. 

“That’s it,” he said, obviously victorious.  “They match.”

Chang knew this last torture would be sure break her.  Melinda was quite strong, and although she did not match Chang’s endurance record for women, he admired her for lasting this long.   He liked using the whips and they were effective, as this session proved once more.  It reminded him of a similar session in Eastern Europe, where a captured opposition leader refused to give up the hiding places of her accomplices.  She too was young, very pretty, and blonde, but with large, pendulous breasts.  Chang had her tied to a triangular whipping frame all night long, changing the instruments and the aim as she stubbornly refused to talk.  In the end though he got even more than what he wanted, she was broken so thoroughly by his techniques of inflicting pain.

He came out of his musings as Melinda was lowered from the cables.  She collapsed on the floor, far too weak to get up.  Every move sent new aching waves of residual pain through her ravaged body.  She was ashamed in a way, knowing these foul bastards had broken her.   But she apparently was not as heroic as she thought, maybe it was because it wasn’t really wartime and the stuff they wanted was maybe not that important.  She had taken quite a bit, more than she thought she would, and she was definitely going to bear some scars.  That is, if they didn’t kill her.  But that last whipping was so horrific, and the thought of them starting on her again sent shivers through her.  She felt death would be much better than another session in the straps.

Chang threw Melinda an old blanket to put around her mangled shoulders and after a while she was put back in the chair, dragged there by the guards.  She had to be held to stop her from falling over she was so weakened by the successive whippings.  Sitting on the chair was itself a throbbing misery and soon she was in a small pool of blood where the cane had done its lacerating work on her.

Even speaking seemed to hurt.  “What….are….you….going…to do…with…. me?”

“Do?  Why I’m going to let you go of course.”  Chang said.

Melinda now felt a new ray of hope.  She thought she would be killed.

Chang explained.  “By now your agency will know you are missing and a search will be on.  If they find you dead, then they will assume we tortured the information out of you before killing you.  They know that we never let anyone die before we have broken them completely.”  Melinda was forced to agree, filing that horrible thought as her body ached with the evidence of Chang’s terrible skills.

“On the other hand, when I let you go alive your pride will take over.  You will claim you were brought here and brutally tortured but gave up nothing before escaping most heroically.  Because if you tell your superiors you broke under my whips, you will be seen as weak and never trusted again with such vital secrets.  And that you probably won’t do.  So I leave it up to you.  Good bye Melinda.”

Chang also knew that sending back Melinda alive would confuse them for years over the real fate of the codes.  He laughed at this thought, then ordered the men to drop her in a nearby park and readied up the equipment for another day.