The Reformatory For Wayward Girls, Marcia Staylace, Head Wardress (As told by Claudia Barrows, former inmate) ///////////////////////////
I admit I used to a bad girl. I drank, I smoked, I beat people up, I used to get aroused by starting and being in barroom brawls. Once I stuck a knife into someone and got arrested for assault with a deadly weapon, and my parents got me out and the first thing I did was call the man I stabbed and threatened him if he testified against me. I was then re-arrested for threatening a witness. Not being the smartest girl in the world, after I get bailed out the second time I call the man again and threaten him again. Well that was going too far -- I get arrested again and held without bail. Several days later in my jail cell, the public defender came by and tells me that I face a maximum of five years in state prison. However, as I was only eighteen and a first offender, he had worked out an agreement where I would voluntarily commit myself to 18 months to the Marcia Staylace Reformatory For Wayward Girls, a privately operated facility for first offending young females. As my lawyer painted a rather ugly picture of my chances in court, I signed the papers and the next minute regretted I had.
Just after the public defender left the corridor two big strapping women wearing special uniforms grabbed me, knocked me to the floor, cuffed and gagged me, attached the cuffs to leg irons, put a tight collar and leash on my neck and marched me into a waiting van.
"Welcome to the worst year of your life," the matron in charge said. With a sinking feeling I knew she was right.
They then chained me to the wall of the prison van and we drove around town for hours.
I caught some glances at my keepers. They were attired in green jackets with shiny brass buttons that came up to high, tight, round collars like that worn by priests, but theirs were so tight as to cause neck bruises. Their waists were very tightly taken in -- at that time I did not know what a corset was. Their green skirts were full and came below the knees, where they were met by high-heeled boots. I wondered how they could run so expertly, or even move, in those high heels. Both women -- one blonde and one with brown hair -- were in their late teens and both had long hair neatly piled up. The blond one saw me look at her and she yelled "Eyes to the wall!" I yelled something unprintable back, so she stopped the van, slapped me across the face, and put a hood over my head so I couldn't see, growling "that'll fix you. Want more?" Eventually we came to an abandoned field with a shed in the middle of it. I was then leashed and taken into the shed, where there was an elevator. My keepers pressed the button and we dropped several stories.
When the door opened I looked around me. I was in an underground world of people who were dressed as my keepers were, but only in different colors. I could see a row of cells on one side, and a girl with a vise around her waist chained to a post on a few feet from me. "Where am I?"
"Shut up and move, you," and I was dragged by the scruff of the neck as I observed my new world.
This place was far cleaner than any jail I had ever been in. People in green uniforms had two stripes on their sleeve; yellow uniforms one; red uniforms none. Those in red also usually wore manacles. Regardless of rank, all wore thick chafing collars and were tightly secured at the waist. None paid us any attention. I was hauled towards an office which had on the wall: MARCIA STAYLACE, HEAD WARDRESS. The occupant wore a blue uniform with three stripes. Looking up from her file, she asked me if my name was Claudia Barrows. I nodded.
"You've been a very bad girl," she said. "Assault, threatening a witness. Before that, expulsion from parochial school. Expulsion from public school -- how did you manage that??" Without pausing she droned on: "Disrupting classes and assemblies. Disrupting detention hall." She looked at me. "What do you have to say for yourself, Barrows?"
I didn't have anything to say, then started to mumble.
"When you address me you address me as Lady Marcia or ma'am. You keep your head down and you do not look me in the eye. Do you understand???"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Very well. You're no better or worse than the rest of them that come in here." She pointed to the guards "Cell 152 with Bertha. Maximum restraints." The guards nodded and grabbed me and gave me a shower with stiff brushes, and threw me into a cell with a steel door. They tore my clothes off and cuffed me to a hook in the ceiling and put a corset around me. Tighter and tighter they laced it, until I screamed, but all I got was blows whenever I yelled. They then put little padlocks through the lace holes before putting on these weighted boots that twisted my feet and this horrible stretch collar around my neck -- something like a watchband, but around my neck for goodness sake -- and strapped my ankles, knees, waist, wrists, elbows, and forehead to a concrete slab which was to be my bed, finishing the job by blindfolding me and putting a bit in my mouth. My cries for mercy were to no avail. Heaving my body -- even breathing -- hurt due to the vise of the corset these madwomen locked on me. They slammed the door of the cell and I cried.
What were those next days like? They are all a blur in my mind, they were so similar. The day began with light coming in through my blindfold and someone in a green uniform with a plate of slop. Silently she removes by breaking bit and shoved mouthful after mouthful of the garbage she calls food down my throat. Breakfast was rice or flour and gravy, lunch didn't exist, and dinner was usually stale biscuits with maybe cheese or perhaps butter if we were lucky. She never spoke, and when I attempted to speak I was slapped across the face the first time, and the second time denied food or bedpan privileges for two days.
Ah, the bedpan! Freezing cold and stuck under my behind twice daily which wasn't enough! I remember the time I complained about the coldness of it, and next time it was shoved under me scalding hot.
But those were minor complaints compared to the corset which they tightened twice a day and which tore into my ribs and flesh. In my mind's eye I could imagine the very skin flaying off of my body -- I do know I got thinner on their bloody diet of garbage. Also the collar was causing purple marks on my poor suffering neck, and the manacles caused all my joints to be red and inflamed. I wondered how much more I could take. State prison must be paradise compared to this. I became delirious and/or hysterical much of the time.
Finally, one day, my blindfold and gag were removed and I was fed by a different person in a yellow uniform who stayed in the cell and would at least talk to me. Her name was Bertha, and although she refused to remove the restraints, she did share with me some of her "people food" as opposed to the slop I was force-fed. But in one respect things got worse. My corset was laced tighter and tighter by Bertha, and once I dared ask her to loosen it. At least she didn't slap me but she did tell me sternly "No way." Every four days some people came in to examine my agility and to walk me, shackled, to the shower while my slab -- so-called bed -- was cleaned. On their fourth visit they allowed me a pillow, and on the fifth, they told me I didn't have to be pinned to the slab any more, except at night, and I was allowed the freedom of my cell with Bertha, who had a real bed and many of her personal belongings with her, as well as a key to the cell. In fact they called it HER cell which had MY slab in it. I was also allowed to wear clothes and required to wear a red uniform.
When I asked Bertha about her status she stated that was a question which was not allowed. She did tell me that the purpose of the agility tests was to monitor how long it took for my condition to degenerate so I would be incapable of committing serious assault. She also removed my corset -- blessed relief! and then ran through the same agility tests I had taken corsetted. I did much POORER without my corset on, and after a couple of hours without it my back ached, and in fact I welcomed its grip when Bertha put it back on me -- if only not so hideously tight!
Food also improved, and the next day I was taken to my work assignment. Some inmates scrubbed floors, others toiled in a mushroom farm just outside but still underground in this artificial cave; some younger girls were in school; some of us made or repaired uniforms; and I had the most ironic assignment; I was placed in the corset shop, where I built and repaired the very instrument with caged me and every woman here.
My supervisor at the corset shop was a woman named Christine. She was a nice lady, even though she chained me to my seat at the start of each day and didn't let me out of it for any reason. She also kept me in leg irons all the time, but she had such a nice smile and said she hoped I understood. I began to be sexually attracted to her and Bertha, and in fact to a number of the other women there, but if I made any advances I knew the punishment would be gruesome. By this time I knew better than to disobey an order like silly Dorothy, who got put on the whipping post, or Barbara, a yellow who got demoted to red for twelve days for disobeying a direct order from Lady Marcia.
Lady Marcia came around -- in her massive solidity and came up to me personally. I shook with fear, but she said softly "You'll work out. You're going to be a good girl." On the 200th day since my commitment here -- we used no calendars, just a linear count of days, as January and July, midday and midnight, are alike here in the underground -- Bertha took my corset off and ordered me to go to work without it. By lunchtime my back was aching from the lack of support, and by the time I got back to Bertha's cell I hurt as much as I did in the days of manacles on concrete. I begged Bertha to relace me, and she did.
Shortly after that they gave me a front-laced, unlocked corset and a pad under the slab. I laced myself just as tightly as the bruisers who tortured me in metal stays, my back needed so much support. The staff knew this and my treatment continued to improve. One hundred and thirteen times I woke up, went to work, came back to Bertha's cell, talked with her all evening, was strapped to the bed, slept, it all started again -- a woman in green interrupted me at work. "Lady Marcia wants to see you." My heart filled with fear, but anyhow Christine released me and with trepidation I walked into m'ladys office. She had a big smile on her round face.
"Good news," she said. "Your release document," she said as she handed it towards me.
"Thank you, ma'am -- but hasn't it only been, well, --"
Interrupting, Lady Marcia said "Day four thousand, six hundred and eighty-four of this fine institution, and you were committed on 4371, so you have been here 313 of our days. True. Ah, but it has been eighteen months! Clocks here are all artifically slowed to a forty-two hour day! That's one way we keep people from being rowdy -- the day is so long, people get tired with twenty-eight hours with the lights on, especially if they can't sleep through our fourteen-hour lights-out period. I, of course, can." She straightened up proudly in her corset stays, stiffer than that of anyone here, including inmates. "Also," she continued. "It prevents the rowdiness one associates with the last day of school. You thought you were facing almost half your sentence the day you are released. That means you're not going to do anything to get in trouble." She smiled. "Go to your cell, get your things, you'll be escorted to you're parents, you're a free woman." To emphasize this she took the irons off my legs.
I walked out of Marcia Staylace's office feeling -- what? Angry about my torment? No. Hurt that they had me thinking I had almost twice the sentence I did have? Not really. Elated that my time was up? Yes, but not that much. Once I started wearing corsets of my own volition, in spite of my involuntary commitment and red uniform, I was treated like just another one of the girls. And the girls were rather delightful if I do say so myself.
Back to Bertha's cell to get my uniforms and corsets and I was on my way home to my parents place. They couldn't imagine the change in my behavior, neither could the people I used to be rowdy with. I found out I needed a corset so I could stand up straight without undue pressure on my back, and in flat heels, my feet hurt like they used to in high heels, so I went back to high heels, and got a job as a cocktail waitress.
Six months or so after this, Lady Marcia came knocking on the door when my parents were away. She had a proposition for me. Would I like to spend a year as a yellow uniformed wardress in her reformatory?? The pay was more than waitressing -- "and no rude guys pinching you," she added. "Think about it. We need you. Drug rehab centers are run by ex-addicts, why not go back where you can help some hideous creature like you were two years ago become a lady?"
She had a point. I signed, and went back into the cocoon where I transformed from bad girl to good woman.
One more thing. Shortly after going back in Marcia and I had a soft drink in her office, one thing led to another, and we slept together -- and I found out that "Marcia" had male genitalia, as did half the people here! I really have found a new home ...