Loretta Lariat: First Defeat

"Noohhoohh! Stop looking at me! Gimme my corset back! Right now! I can't believe you had to audacity to ... And God, you ripped the lacing! The seam too! Look how bad you tore it! You ruined it! This isn't fair! This is crazy! You vile wicked bastards! Release me! Stop staring at me!"

"Angie," pronounced one of the brothers, "these snug trousers she's wearing. The way they show off her legs, I'm afeared they might have the same dolorous effect on my sinful masculine nature as that decadent corset could have had. Maybe just to be safe, we should remove them, too. Put them out of sight like the other thing."

"Don't you dare!" Loretta wailed, "Don't! Don't! Not them too!"

"Yes, I agree," was Angie's reply, "Go ahead then. You'll have to remove her boots first. Those pants are much too tight on her to pull them off over the things. Plus she's got those spurs on."

"If we do that, Angie, we better remove both her socks, as well, don'tcha think? So they don't get dirty or have holes torn in them, out here in the front yard. Wouldn't wanna ruin them for her, would we?"

"No, indeed."

"You bastards! You vile dirty scoundrels! Stop this! Stop it! God! Oh God!"

Took them longer to get that part done ... A clumsier process. She nearly wriggled out of their clutches more than once during it. But nearly wasn't good enough to save her. Nearly was worthless, in plain fact. So finally her boots were pried from her feet, one after the other, and then her socks got peeled away, followed swiftly by her trousers.

Now they'd reduced her to her panties. Except for her neckerchief, for all the help that did her.

They weren't proper panties, actually. They were a simple plain pair of men's drawers. She owned no womanly panties. Could never find herself a pair that fit right inside men's trousers. Mostly they always seemed to be made too poofy, with excess layers and folds, and they'd bunch up inside her pants. While the ones that weren't like that were altogether too wispy and frail instead and you may as well not bother putting them on.

She couldn't believe this was happening to her. It was like she was trapped in a nightmare. Things like this didn't happen in real life. Not to someone like her. She was chosen by the Lord! A soldier of justice! She was supposed to be special and protected! What had gone wrong? What had she done, or hadn't done that she was supposed to do? There must be a reason! Why else would God have forsaken her so suddenly and completely? She couldn't understand or accept it.

She was weeping still. Sniveling like a little child. That was almost the most humiliating part of it.

No, not really. That was a weak and foolish lie, trying to tell herself that.

The most humiliating part was having her clothes torn off her body and not being strong enough to prevent it. To be stripped almost completely naked by these wicked dirty shameless villains. Making her feel utterly helpless and powerless and disgraced, and then, when she couldn't help but wail with horror, mocking her for it, without the slightest tiniest shred of forbearance or compassion. They were inhuman. They were monsters. And she was their prisoner. Totally in their power. It was terrifying and it was shameful.

She'd never been undressed this much out of doors before. Not even once, far as she could remember. And she'd certainly never been this exposed in front of other people. Especially men. Not even relatives. (She had no real family left anyway, since her father recently passed.) Now for the first time men were getting to see her boobs, let alone all the rest. And to have them be men like these! The foulest imaginable! Two brute cattle rustlers and a gunman that was actually a demon from Hell! The injustice! The shame! Her nipples had swelled twice their normal size, and stiffened just from the shock. They'd got so hard they actually hurt. They were aching like they'd been pinched, even though none of the villains had touched them—not yet. Oh God. She was a virgin and she was always chaste, despite the nasty rumors low people sometimes saw fit to circulate about her, usually after misinterpreting the reasons for her manner of dress just as Angie had decided to do, or was more likely only hypocritically pretending to do, in order to play this sick and twisted nasty little game ... In actual fact, Loretta had considered it a sacred duty to preserve her chastity, on account of her holy mission, though the angel had never given her specific instructions on that point. She had intended to remain a virgin her whole life. After all, no man she'd yet met had ever appealed to her romantically, anyhow. Not even a little. Not so far. Meeting an actual angel had set impossibly high standards for her, no doubt.

Now her purity and chastity was being violated and she couldn't stop it happening! She couldn't get away! She was going to be ... despoiled! No! It couldn't be! She mustn't let them! She would not submit! Somehow she must escape!

Her whole body felt like it was on fire. Some of that sensation was just from the intensity of the summer sun, striking so much more of her pale skin than it ever normally would. But this roaring heat was pulsing from inside of her as much on the surface. Seemed like her cheeks were about to melt off her face. Her ears were burning too, just as bad. Like bees had stung them. Loretta had never been this completely hugely conscious of every part of her body all at once, every physical sensation from the top of her head to her tiptoes. Revealing all of herself to the wide world had flipped a switch in her system and exaggerated every feeling a hundred times. The grass, for example, prickling the soles of her feet—that sensation alone—she felt that prickling and tickling with such intensity now that all the sudden she could barely stand it. Literally! She couldn't bear to stand on the stuff! Had to lift up on her toes high as she could stretch to lessen the teasing jabs on her heels and arches. Simply having to stand barefoot on this dry yellow grass had turned into a terrible humiliating torment. Just because the rest of her was bare and enflamed. She knew the ground wouldn't bother her at all if she still had her pants and shirt.

She could barely breathe, and her heart was trying to pound itself out of her chest.

Then finally, snickering, they pulled her drawers off. Of course they did. She'd expected it. It still made her scream again—her loudest and shrillest yet—and shudder all over, like she was being electrocuted. She would have fallen over, if the ghastly brute brothers weren't clutching her so painfully tight.

They could see her privates now—her most private privates! They could all see her bush. They could see her slit. They were all staring and grinning. All four of them. Staring straight down at her ... her cunny ... her bare burning cunny ...

(And when she used that silly crude forbidden word, silently inside her head, it made her clench down there. She felt the lips of it squirm together, fearfully. And it had every reason to fear, oh yes. She didn't do that, though—she didn't make it clutch and squeeze—it had seemed to react by itself. And yet it tickled inside, too. But then it always did, when she got embarrassed. Every time. For any reason. Shame always made her feel that irritating itchy tickle inside her crotch. Just never this strong before.)

"No! No! No! Give them back! Give them back! Gimme my drawers! Gimme my drawers! You can't do this to me! You can't do this! I'm naked! I'm NAKED! Oh God! You've stripped me naked! Give them back! I'm a Marshal! You're criminals! I hate you! I hate you! Give them back! Please! Please! God!"

They just laughed and laughed, all of them. Howling like wolves.

She wanted to die. Just fall down and die. Why couldn't she just die?

3.

"What are you doing to me now? What're you going to do now?"

"I told you before," said Angie. She had something in her hand. Loretta had trouble seeing what it was. Couldn't twist her head around far enough, the way they'd positioned her. Angie swung it through the air around her and it made some little whistling sounds. Then finally Loretta got a glimpse of the thing. Oh God. It was a riding crop.

"You can't! You mustn't! How can you be so cruel? How can you treat me this way?"

"Like this," said Angie, and applied the crop across Loretta's upraised buttocks.

They'd bent her over the top rail of the fence in front of their house. Face down, and far enough over that she was straining on her tip toes, still. The top of the rail pressing her tummy was scorching hot and gritty, with jagged, sharp-edged cracks all over the surface. She was afraid it would stick a bunch of splinters into her stomach, if she moved around too much. Then they'd tied her there in all her nakedness, very tight. She didn't resist them as they did it. After the tantrum when her drawers were taken, she'd quieted down again. Only sniffled and whimpered a bit more. Felt drained and disconnected. The sense of fuzzy unreality came back.

She could almost believe none of this was happening—and wanted to. Clung to that illusion as long as she could. It all felt so much like just a dream. And at this point that dream had become so extreme and bizarre, it almost wasn't scary anymore. Too plain ridiculous and elaborate. She'd always known it was vaguely possible that some villain might best her one day, whether by random mischance or genuine skill. The forces of evil should not be underestimated. The frontier was full of villainy; they didn't call this country the Wild West for nothing. A day might come when she'd have to take a bullet. Thought she was prepared for that. The idea of death in the line of duty held no terror for her. She would be taken up by the angels. Yet a situation like this would never have occurred to her, not in a century. She'd never imagined an enemy doing anything else to her besides killing her, with no fuss. This shit instead was almost turning comical. Loretta even snorted and giggled for a second as they were binding her to that fence post. She could barely wriggle after they were finished. Only kick her legs behind her. Not that doing that did her any good. Didn't manage to hit any of them back there.

She kept doing it, all the same. Kicking both feet high as she could every time she was struck. Not trying to strike back at Angie, though. It was a mere reflex. Must look pretty silly. Pretty undignified and childish. You just can't help kicking your legs like that, like a panicked frog, when some cruel witch keeps whipping your ass with a riding crop. Especially when your soft and sensitive lily-white ass is totally bare and defenseless.

The riding crop brought tangible reality back to her consciousness in vivid crystal clarity. Pain's real good at doing that. Killed the sense of floating disconnection; no more foggy sleepiness while this was going on. And all the comedy in the situation instantly evaporated, the moment Angie started.

"This isn't fair! I'm a law officer! Stop it! I'm a grown woman!"

"You sure don't sound like one, carrying on like that. You should be tougher if you're as grown up as you think you are. Kids take whuppings like this every day. Way of the world. I know me and my brothers took our share, when Pa deemed it necessary. We learned to take our licks without raising a ruckus. Guess you never did, little girl. Didja?"

In fact Angie was right on the money about that. Loretta never took any kind of beating like this before. Nothing even close. Never had to. Her father never spanked her, not once. Even when she might have deserved it some as she was growing up. Didn't believe in that sort of discipline, because his own drunken parents used to do it to him much too much, he used to say, and much too hard, when he was little. He'd vowed not to pass that needless suffering on.

"Oh God. Why is this happening? I don't deserve this!"

"You durn well DO! You got all naked, Marshal! Right in front of me! Stark nude, like the day you were born. But you ain't got the body of no innocent babe no more. It's bad behavior and I won't stand for it. Not right for any unattached woman to show herself off all naked and lusty outdoors in front of strangers," said Angie, panting. "It's an incitement to lechery!"

"You made me! You did it! Not me! You took all my clothes!"

"Shouldn't have allowed that to happen. But you did. You're weak. Too weak to be a Marshal."

"It was two against one! Two men against a lone woman, near half their height. Your brothers are brutes and bullies! I wish I could have shot them! They'd be dead in the dirt now if your demon hadn't disarmed me! I didn't know what I was facing. Took me by surprise!"

"'Cause you're no good. No good at all."

"Yes I am! I'm good! I'm good! I've been good and fought for good all my life!" (Well, not all of it, strictly speaking. The angel only came to her a relatively short time ago. No need to bring that up. Let's not split hairs.)

"Your intentions are nice, I'll allow you that. And you're fairly courageous—or you were so long as you had that magical gun to depend on. Made it too easy for you. Real problem is, your manners. You ain't properly civilized, like a modern woman should be. You're saucy and sinful and savage and you need correction for your wayward nature. So here it is. I'm administering EXACTLY what you deserve, little girl, and EXACTLY what you need."

"Nuuhhahhh! Gaawwwdammit!"

"Don't you swear at me!"

"Aaayyahhhrr!"

She tried to say silent. She wanted to endure her torment with patience and stoicism and measured, cool disdain. But it was just too hard. It was impossible. The dreadful crop was just too painful. She couldn't bear it. It scorched her naked ass like lightning bolts. Every single stroke made her kick and holler.

She knew perfectly well it was useless to beg for mercy. Such humiliating pleas would only give her tormentor further entertainment and satisfaction.

If she managed not to beg like that, it would be a slight comfort. One small surviving victory. One last tattered shred of her dignity that she would have managed to hang on to, in spite of all else that had been lost or surrendered or spoiled. In the future she would still be able to tell herself, "Angie didn't take that from me. She got everything else she wanted ... She stripped me and whipped me and shamed me more than anyone else ever made me feel in my whole entire life, but she didn't manage to make me beg her. She didn't lower me as low as that."

Only then it happened.

She didn't mean to do it. Never consciously decided to do it ... Only suddenly became aware that the sounds she was making were not wordless exclamations anymore. Instead, almost as if she was hearing another person, she heard her own voice as if from a great distance saying "Please, Angie! Oh please oh please no more! I can't take anymore! Spare me! Mercy! Have mercy! I beg you! I beg you! Please!"

And then she heard Angie laughing at her again. Laughing in triumph. "Not just yet, little girl. First you must apologize. Say yer sorry for trespassing on my property and hassling my brothers!"

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! Never again! I swear! Never! I promise! I'm sorry for everything!"

"Very good. One thing more. Apologize for your lewdness! Apologize for dressing like you do and parading yourself around like such a sex-crazed wanton slut."

That was too far, too much, even then. At least for another moment or two, it still was. "I'm not! No way! I never was! I promise! I swear! I never—Ahhuuhhaarrhh! Huuhhuurr! Gawwd no please I'm SORRREEE! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'll say it! I'm saying it! I'm sorry!"

"Confess it all, outright. Confess to your lewdness! Admit you're a wanton slut!"

No, she told herself, Never! Never! I'll die first. But out loud: "I do! I admit it! I'm lewd and wanton! I behaved like a no-good slut and I'm sorry and I swear I'll change! I'll never act like a lewd wanton slut again!"

"Ah hell, Loretta. There's nothing you can do about that. That's nothing you can change. Your soul is corrupt and it always will be. I just needed you to face the truth square, finally. I just wanted to hear you admit it out loud for all to hear. What's spoken can never be unsaid, however many times we might try to deny it afterwards."

No. It wasn't true. She hadn't meant any of it. Only said that shit 'cause she was forced. Only lied to make the pain stop.

But God oh God she wished she hadn't spoke those awful lying words aloud. God oh God she wished she could forget the sound of her own voice saying those things, as if she believed them, as if they were true. Sounding so convincing, because she'd known she had to. They had to sound that way or Angie would have kept whipping her bottom until Loretta said them right.

And now just like Angie pronounced, true or not, those words could never be unsaid. She could deny them the whole rest of her life, but never really take them back. Never erase this moment. Killing Angie and her brothers and the demon (if that was possible) in the future wouldn't do it. Even dying herself wouldn't change the fact that this had happened. God oh God.

4.

They didn't rape her. Angie wasn't as much a hypocrite as that, thankfully. The shame-game concluded after her "correction."

"You've had your sport," Loretta mumbled, once they let her loose from the fence. She hadn't the strength to stand up straight. Neither the strength of body nor of will. She just huddled meek and pathetic in the grass at Angie's feet, shivering despite the heat, and had curled her body up to hide her privates as much as possible behind her folded legs. She hugged her own knees with one hand to help hold the pose while the other rubbed the burning stripes across her bottom. Which didn't soothe them at all—made them hurt worse, in fact. But she didn't stop rubbing them. She couldn't. That hand was out of her control. The grass was still dreadfully prickly between her clenched cramping toes. She was pretty sure she'd peed herself, a little, during her beating. She could feel the residue of trickles between her thighs, and she could smell the urine. At least she hadn't sprayed out an enormous amount all over the place. She was gonna need to poop soon. Real soon. Hoped it wouldn't hurt too much. It probably was going to. Oh God. Oh Jesus. She felt bestial. As filthy and low as a farm animal. A dog or a pig. But at least she wasn't raped. They dishonored her but didn't steal her chastity. They left her that. "You ... you've humbled me. You triumphed over me completely."

"I know," Angie said, "And it's good to know you know it too. It's also quite nice to hear you admit it so openly. Well spoken, little girl."

"I'm not a little girl. I'm not. You beat me but I'm not a little girl. Stop calling me that."

"What are you then? Can you honestly still call yourself a law officer, at this point? Not with a straight face. You got no badge no more, and no fancy magic gun neither. You don't have nothing, do you, except painful red stripes all across your bare little white hiney. What's that make you, huh?"

"I don't know. I don't know anymore."

"Didn't we just get done teachin' you? Need a repeat lesson already?"

"No. No!"

"You sure? Boys, maybe we should put her ass back over the fence again. You can lash her this time—my arm's worn out."

"Please! Please, no. Not again! I can't bear it again! My bu-bu-bottom hurts so much! So much!"

This made the brothers guffaw, when she stuttered. "Listen to her, 'my bu-bu-bottom' ... You mean your ass? Christ's sake, call it what it is."

"My ... my ass. Oh God. Dear God, my poor ass! Please don't whip it again. Please! You don't need to. I swear I've learned my lesson and I'll prove it to you. Listen ... I'm—I'm a little ... little ... punished ... sinful slut. I'm a sinner and slut and I guess I got the punishment I deserved, for my wanton ways and lewdness. You punished me enough. I'm so ashamed of myself. For everything. I swear I learned my lesson. I've learned humility. I swear to you. Please believe me." She slumped to her knees, and pressed her hands together in prayer, though of course that exposed all the parts of her body she wanted to keep hidden. Not that it made any difference now. "Don't whip me again! I'm begging you! I'm a sinner and I'm a slut and I admit it and I'm begging you not to whip my poor sinner slut ass again! Please!"