The Brig
By Mason Powell
Alternate Publishing, 1984
The room was bare except for a hanging light bulb with a tin cover, and under it a waist-high wooden plank table about six feet long. The door shut behind me with an awful finality.
So this was where the rapes took place, I thought in terror. Then everything changed and the terror got worse. The sergeant reached up to the wall behind the door and took down a thick, black leather razor strop. This was not the room where the rapes took place.
This was the room where the whippings took place.
The sergeant walked slowly to the center of the room and laid the leather strop quietly on the table. Then he walked just as slowly back to where I was standing, and looking at me with that smile of his, loosened his collar.
The room had dark, dingy walls that must have once been painted pale green. Time had made the color uncertain, and in any event, there was not enough light to tell. Just that one bulb that hung over the table, spreading a cone of light down on the table harshly, and leaving the upper part of the room and the walls in gloom. The tin shade on the light bulb was also a cone, but a cone of darkness. It reminded me of the kind of shaded light they used to have in poolrooms.
The sergeant unbuttoned his shirt and started pulling it off.
The table was made of wooden planks, with thick, sturdy legs, braces at the bottom and under the top, and a solid plank for a top. It was about six feet long, and a little wider than a man’s body. I felt my breath coming harder.
The sergeant was stripped to the waist now, and he walked over and stood next to the table, where the light fell on his chest and body but left his face in darkness. I had known that he was well built, but the uniform had covered a great deal. H is chest was broad, and thickly muscled, as were his powerful arms. He had a pelt of dark, curly hair that started at his throat, spread out, and covered his chest and belly all the way down, getting thicker below his navel before it disappeared under his belt.
“Strip!” the sergeant said, “And lay face down on the table!” Continue reading →