The Photograph

 

This story is all a reaction to a photograph I saw in National Geographic Magazine. Sometime in the 1980 NG did an an article on modern Japan. The purpose of the shot was to illustrate how the impact of population density and the scarcity of open land impacts the society. It showed two women in formal equestrian attire seated atop mechanical horses on front of a large projector television. The shot featured the mechanical equines with the image of a green leafy bridal path on the giant screen. Both riders were styling in snug jodhpurs, or perhaps just tights, and tall black riding boots. The horses were partly realistic and partly abstract. Not intended to be photographically realistic, they were 3-D and generally horse shaped in all the places that would be in the rider's field of view. That is: the head, neck, shoulder, even the flanks and rump were of proper shape and size and covered with a carpet-like hide, while the bottom of them, the area of the legs was purely functional, with an enclosed mechanism that allowed the horse move and mimic the gaits of a live horse. The riders, two attractive Japanese women that looked to be in their late twenties, quite obviously knew they were on camera. Both sported wide happy ad-agency smiles. The caption said that since land to dedicate to horses was rare, these equestriennes in training would practice indoors before graduating to live mounts. The rider’s attire was a but over the top, overly stylized and mildly suggestive. One rider in mid gait had lifter her athletic looking bottom a few inches above the saddle. Her tan jodhpur slacks looked like they were painted on. Very nice.

 

The rest of he story is sheer fancy.

 

The Agency

 

There is a somewhat obscure civil agency in Japan, and its name is very difficult for me to pronounce. A qusi-branch of the criminal justice system, this agency is dedicated to some non-traditional forms the punishment for men who have committed violent crimes against women. Men accused of assaulting women, whether acquaintances or strangers, are sometimes permitted to forego the humiliation of public prosecution, and jail, by permitting corporal punishment to be inflicted upon them by women who themselves has been assaulted, beaten, or robbed. The men under sentence know that the woman doling out the punishment is not the same woman that they attached and injured. The women who carry out the punishment and the men receiving it are matched at random and all remain anonymous. Sometimes the men get more than they bargained for. Policewomen oversee the punishment, and they have on occasion looked on and allowed a woman to inflict lasting injuries.

 

Corruption in the System

 

It has become increasingly commonplace to assign this form of sentencing to non-Japanese criminals, especially those from illegal immigrants from poor countries. Often this is done without the accused man’s consent. Foreign criminals are not afforded the rights of a Japanese citizen, and often they do not appear in public court. They are transferred into this program and receive often-brutal corporal punishment inflicted by a random Japanese woman. After the punishment they are summarily deported.

 

The agency’s location and charter have been a poorly kept secret for many years. While none of this ever hits the public media, there are many stories about it in circulation. If you know a Japanese woman who was the victim of violent crime, you might ask he if she has heard of this story. Chances are that she will smile shyly and say no, but you might just catch a naughty twinkle in her eye. But there have been stories of well-placed women, women with high social status and power, who arrange to visit the agency and being permitted to inflict severe corporal punishment simply for the thrill. If you visit the right discothèque or women’s spa, you might hear rumors that a woman with connections can pay a visit for the right price.

 

The Protagonists

 

The big black Lexus pulls into a huge multi-story parking garage, after a time the driver manages to find a space. Two Japanese women in well tailored business suite step out and hoist large gym bags from the rear seat. They walk to a door where a uniformed guard stops them. The women offer him some sort of cards. He checks his clipboard, and admits them with a perfunctory bow. One of the women, Koihime, is older, perhaps even a well-preserved 50. She is an officer in a Tokyo law firm that specializes in gutting out failing businesses. And while she is a well-shaped and attractive woman, her demeanor is overtly businesslike: cool, rarely smiling, uncompromising, even a bit cruel. It is easy to imagine Koihime foreclosing on a company, throwing the employees out of work with a slight smile. Accompanying is her protégé, Satomi, a younger woman of perhaps 30. Satomi is taller and heavier than her boss, but in a way that some would still find pleasing to the eye. Satomi had been blessed with a very pretty face and big brown almond shaped eyes. These are the sort of eyes a Japanese would be proud of, and never “westernize”. And unlike he boss, Satomi tends to make eye contact with everyone, giving him or her a disarming smile. But appearances can be deceiving. Like her boss, Satomi is all about money and power. The women had met professionally several years earlier. Both came from influential Japanese families, both shared a ultra conservative politics, and both seems to be more interested in business than in finding a man. The older woman had taken the younger under her wing and was instructing her in the ways of power and how to manipulate people, especially men. The younger woman has taken the lessons to heart and has become every bit as ruthless as her boss.

 

The Man

 

The young man had come to Tokyo from the streets of Manila to work in the construction trade. But plans fell through and he lost his job. Still, he opted to remain in Japan, quite illegally, and pursue his own fortunes. But the Japanese society is not merely homogeneous, but often outright xenophobic. And being of very particularly dark completion, and speaking very little Japanese, (understanding only a little the working class dialect, and only when spoken slowly) he never did catch up with any of those imagined fortunes. He had in fact gotten the distinct impression that the Japanese didn’t like him. He also discovered that he didn’t especially like them either.  Things went from desperate to worse. He fell in with a rough street crowd, most disenfranchised illegal emigrants, and soon he took to snatching the handbags of wealthy-looking women. Sometimes when the women didn’t let go, he punched them hard in the face. It always worked. He was very fast; within half a block he had the cash and credit cards, and sometimes the car keys out. The purse went into a dustbin. And it felt good to smack a smug looking Japanese bitch in the face. After a time he became even bolder and more confident, until one day he grabbed the wrong purse. This 20 something woman in business attire didn’t let go. So like with all the others, he spun and punched her in sharply the nose, breaking it. The blood ran, but she still didn’t let go. So he kicked her hard in the shin. But she still gripped her purse firmly. Then instead of running, he decided that she needed to be taught a lesson, and so he began hitting her again and again. It was about this time that her two female companions began kicking him both high and low and delivering other skillful martial arts blows. He went down on his knees, and they began to take turns kicking the stuffing out of him. He was lucky the policeman came when he did, even though the bastard just stood and watched him take a beating for a while before interceding. He spent two days in the police infirmary. Being a foreigner and faced with the testimony of unimpeachably Japanese eyewitnesses, he opted to plead guilty in exchange for an alternate sentence of some kind followed by deportation.

 

Algo ex Machina.

 

Now he finds himself bound hand and foot and being shoved along a hallway by three overly enthusiastic policewomen who give him mocking smiles. They seem happy with whatever it is they have in store for him. They own a door and shove him roughly into a small room. The room is overtly ornate looking, with large mirrors on the walls, except for one wall dominated by a huge projector television screen. Is he going to watch something on this TV?  One of the policewomen says something, and a gag in the form of a hard rubber mouthpiece is shoved into his mouth. He resists at first, but a one of the policewomen has gripped his hand in something like set giant plastic nutcrackers, and with a sincere smile, she squeezes them together until she’d very nearly broken the bones. The two other cows fastened the strap on this plug-gag thing around his head, and pulled it very tight. The effect is that he could not breath through his mouth at all much less speak.  The thing is jammed deep into his mouth and hurting. He is puzzled, and oddly alarmed at the odd sight, but this room contains two great life-sized artificial horses standing side by side. They face the big TV screen that takes up nearly all of one wall. The horse are very odd, they have furry carpet-skin, and stylized manes and tails that looked like they were made from yarn. But the horses both have authentic leather saddles strapped across their broad backs. They are mounted atop of some machinery. He guesses that they can mimic the movements of a real horse. Looking notices as well that the room is decorated with paintings of people on horses, like hunters and ladies in black coats. It’s all horses! Horses, horses, horses! What the fuck was this all about? Then clacking like hens the three shove him over to one of these horses, standing him directly behind it. There is the whir of an electric motor one of the horses lifts up, pivoting all the up on its front legs! It whirs to a stop with its nose to the floor, the back legs sticking almost straight up in the air. They shove closer the horse-standing-on-it’s-nose until he is looking right into its hollow plastic gut. Inside the horse’s hollow body is a harness of nylon web. And there’s a hole through the horses back. It hits him: this is where the saddle is!  The hole is through the saddle! There is a hole through the horse and through the saddle! He struggles, but the policewoman cheerfully gives him another prolonged crush with her nutcrackers, while the others shove him into the horse’s belly. Then by pulling and twisting his hair, they force his face up against the opening. Paralyzed in pain from the nutcrackers, he cooperates fully. The web harness is pulled across his back and ass and cinched up until he is wedged tightly inside of the horse. Chattering in business-like tones, the happy policewomen pull the straps even lightener, until his back is arched uncomfortably backwards. A strap is pulled tight against the back of his head, cramming his face even more tightly into the opening. He sees his own face reflected in the dark television screen and the picture is very disturbing: he is looking at the brown leather saddle and his face is in the center of the saddle! Clearly someone was going to sit on that saddle! And, the plug crammed into his mouth! It had a bump, a protuberance that exactly where their crotch might be. The policewomen! All women! All the guards were women!  He was going to be a live dildo for some fat Japanese policewomen! The horse moves again with an electric whir, lowering itself back down onto a more natuaral horse-like posture, standing again on all four legs, and he is now laying flat on his back, looking up an the ceiling. The smirking policewomen are back; standing beside the horse with their faces very close. Giving him a decidedly unfriendly smile one of them says something to him in Japanese, actually several sentences of something, even though she just had to know he didn’t understand a single word. She turns and disappears from view, the lights dim and he is alone, and lying on his back inside a fake horse with is face sticking out a hole in the saddle. Fuck. After a few moments there was a scuffle and feminine laughter. From the sounds it’s clear that someone is being tied inside other horse. Then the room was quiet, except for the soft sound of his neighbor’s nasal breathing. It matches his own.

 

The Transformation

 

Koihime and Satomi changed out of their business clothes and into western looking riding attire. Satomi pulls up the snug tights and appraising her backsides in the mirror, she says something that makes them both laugh. White button down blouse and tall black boots complete the outfit. Both now transformed from businesswomen to equestrienne, they leave the changing area and are met by a pretty young policewoman who smiles formally and welcomes them. She hands each of them a small white mask, the kind of costume mask that covers only the eyes, in the style of Zorro’s mask. Grinning, they put the masks on. The pretty young policewoman admires them, telling them that no one will even know who they are. They appraise one another with wide smiles, Koihime asks Satomi if she is ready. She responds with a wide grin, snickers, and nods yes.  The policewoman nods her own approval. Leading them to door, she opens it and ushers them in.

 

The Punishment

 

The room is dimly lit, but they can see well enough. The Koihime picks up a sheet of paper. Reading aloud in a sing-song voice, she details what each of the two men has done to land them here. Both women walk to his horse and look down at him. Their faces loom over him, only a few feet above his own. The older woman gives him a menacing smile. The younger one looks down without smiling. Behind her mask are two very Japanese looking brown eyes, and they survey him without revealing her thoughts. The women turn and look down at the other guy, whoever he was. They discussed something for a few moments, followed by the sound of the cracking and creaking sound of saddle leather. By looking out of the corner of his eyes, he can see one of the women has climbed up on the other horse, and is standing up in the saddle. It’s the old one; the mean looking one. So that guy is going first. And he gets the mean old bitch. Sorry about your luck. The other woman was still standing beside his horse; at the edge of his vision he can just barely see her shoulders a dark ponytail. So he gets her. She is younger and prettier and doesn’t seem as mean. The older woman, still standing up on the other horse looks down and says something in a personal tone of voice to the poor saddle-face-bastard beneath her. She laughs shrilly, brushes her hair back, and gives him an absolutely evil grin. She likes it! The bitch really enjoys it! And then, bending at the knee, she ever-so-slowly lowers herself down onto the saddle. The helpless face under inhales with a series of deep nasal breaths. The breaths rise to a panicked crescendo and then abruptly end. She is sitting. She says something to him, or perhaps only about him, him again in that mocking evil bitch voice. Both women laugh.

 

The younger woman turns back and faces him now. She grabs the rubber nub sticking up out of his mouth plug and shakes it back and forth, and saying something that she finds so humorous that she snorts a nervous laugh. Continuing her one sided discussion, she pinches his nose very hard, punching his nostrils together and holding them shut. Smiling broadly, she continues the one-sided discussion, yanking on his nose back and forth to drive home her point. He’s getting frightened. He needs to take a breath. He’s starting to feel a burning in his lungs but she continues to pinch his nose tightly shut. There was no way to get a breath through his mouth; the plug was absolutely airtight. He looks up and they made eye contact. He wanted to cry out that he needed air, but all he could do was make an animal grunt. At this she giggled girlishly and said something through her laughter. Suddenly her expression was angry. She gave his nose a violent twist and let go. He gasped in air through his nostrils. Her expression is back to unsmiling and hard to read.

 

She takes hold of the saddle with both hands and looks down. The horse shits a little as she puts her weight in the stirrup. The saddle leather is creaking and pulling against his face. Then the woman rises up over him and swings a tall riding boot over his face, slipping it into the other stirrup. She stands in the stirrups over him and he is looking up the length of her back: from her butt up all the way up to her shoulders, even a fleeting glimpse of her dancing ponytail. But it was the tan jodhpur-like tights stretched across her broad backsides that dominated his view. He considers how completely helpless he is and another shiver runs down his spine. The woman leans back in the stirrups, passing the crotch of her jodhpurs across his face. Looking down at him, she gives him a mocking smile. He looks back, desperate to make direct eye contact, to communicate, trying to use his eyes to plead with her. She meets his gaze just as directly; her smile broadens into a wide grin. She expression seems even more menacing because of the their postures, her peering down at him, exadurating her neck and chin and the openings of her nostrils. She straightens back up so that he is again looking past the curves of her big butt and up at her back. Then she says something, just a short utterance, and with that announcement she sat down. Just sat! Like he wasn’t there! The seat of her jodhpurs suddenly stretched even tighter, and her butt spread out even broader, and then it was dark.  She just sat down. Hard! It was surprisingly painful! Her butt had seems broad and even bit fleshy and he had hoped it would be soft. But instead it was remarkably muscular, hard and unyielding. Her pelvic bones were jammed right into his eyes, cramming them deep into the eye sockets till he was seeing colors, and his nose was being very painfully smashed as well. She just on him at first, but she wasn’t sitting still. She was moving her hip and shifting around while talking to her friend in an excited high-pitched voice. Each little movement was adding another sharpe stab of pain. And now his lungs are beginning to burn from the lack of air. He can feel the panic nearing. She stopped moving and now both of them were talking. He began to have spasms of panic! What if she doesn’t understand how desperate I am! Or what if she doesn’t care! ! He was dying and there wasn’t any thing he could do! She shifted forward, rolling her hips, and pressed her crotch down on the mouth plug, smashing it down on his teeth and pinching his lips to his teeth till they burned like fire. Some of the weight was off of his nose; he tried to pull in some air! She lifted her bottom even more till he was just able to drag some air in through and his nostrils. His breaths were long a labored and the inhalations made a loud sniffing sound. Laughter. The smell is bad! It’s just like he was afraid it would be! It was a think overwhelming musky odor, it was a bit like the smell of peanut butter, but strong. And he had to keep breathing it, and smelling her ass; he had to. The woman seemed to be enjoying it, too. She made an “mmmmmm” sound and laughed when inhaling her smell. Everything hurt, his lips were on fire and his eyes hurt, and his nose was being smashed down until it felt like it might even be broken. But it was also that she was sitting on him. It was humiliating; it angered him and frightened him in a way that made him feel completely powerless. This woman just sat on him like an object, like sitting on a chair. For her it was nearly effortless. He was completely helpless, unable even to plead! He knew she hated him, because of what he had done to other Japanese women, and also because he was Philippine. She was a rich woman, he was sure of that; the clothes and the props were all designed to rub it in. She had never know what it meant to be poor, to be vulnerable. She would never know it. She would never imagine it. And she didn’t care. She just sat on him, put her stink on him and laughed about it.

 

He hears both women talking, chattering to one another with cheerful a high-pitched voices. The horse begins to move and horse hoof noises come from a speaker somewhere under the machine. The woman is rolling her hips back and forth to match the motion of the saddle, and every ten or twenty seconds she makes an effort to roll her hips forward and lift her bottom off his face. These are his only opportunities to get a breath, even if it does mean inhaling her ass smell. When she sits again, he is unable to breath at all. She leaves him in this predicament until the pain and the panic are very strong. Then once again she rolls forward and lets him smell her ass with a series of deeps sniffs. Its obviously that she is deliberately making him smell her ass. She wriggles her crotch against the rubber thing in his mouth and shifts her bottom around until she feels his nose. She shifts he bottom so his nose is pressed up into her ass crack. Then she traps him like that and he has to struggle to inhale through his nose. Sometimes she talks to him when she does this; other times she is silent. Now the horse is moving differently, moving up and down and more forcefully. The sound changes too. The horse is trotting. There is a wave of pain every time the horse goes up, since he is lifting her weight with his face. She uses her legs to stay up and only meet the horse with her bottom with every other thrust. This is better for breathing, but it hurts every time she comes down in the saddle. This trotting goes on for a long time. Sometimes she misses the beat, and this is worse yet. She lands harder than ever and then bounces hard, boom-boom-boom, with the motion of the horse. She finds the every-other-step rhythm again after a few bounces, unless she starts to laugh. When she laughs, she looses the rhythm and bounces on him again and again, very hard. Sometimes this makes the other woman laugh at her. If this makes her laugh, too, then it takes her longer to find get the rhythm again. The movement changes again, and he knows the horses are running by the classic 1-2-3 rhythm of the hoofs. The movement is easier for the rider to master, and she falls back on him less often. Both horses are running and the riders are getting an aerobic workout, their words now clipped and breathy. They go on and on like this, until long after he is seeing stars. The pain in mouth and cheeks of different now, unrelenting, and he is in fear that there may be pertinent damage, broken bones or damage to his eyesight. How long will the punishment go on? His greatest fear is that the women may not understand the incredible harshness of what they are doing. He grunts and screams against the plug in his mouth, but the sound is not very loud and it makes him ache to breathe even more. What if they don’t understand what is happening to him? He might even be killed soon!

 

Suddenly his rider is stopping her mount: it slows from running, trots for a bit, and then resumes the slow walking motion. The riders are talking: the woman sitting on him says something to the other, and she respond with shrill laugher. The woman sits back on her bottom: his breathing is cut off; her pelvic bones are smashing his eyeballs every time she bounces. She is speaking to him now, or speaking at him, since she knows that he can’t understand her language. But she goes on talking. Then she leans forward and raises her bottom off of his eyes. He is grateful to trade the deep and frightening pain in he eyes for the aching mouth pain, and also to get a breath. She farts; a short deep rumble, and being so close it is unexpectedly loud! He is shocked; instantly overwhelmed with anger and shame. The woman punctuates her fart with an exaggerated sigh of relief; this elicits a shrill giggle from the other rider. Then the smell hit: a overwhelmingly sour smell, like kim che or rotting vegetables, and very strong. Gasping in revulsion he holds his breath for a few seconds. But only a few seconds, and then with every sniffy nasal inhalation his nose is filled with her nasty stink. All the while they are talking about him, mocking him and laughing. She leans forward and farts on him again. It’s not as loud this time, but it goes on longer. Both of the women are convulsing with laughter; their voices shrill and excited. The sour smell is sharp again. Overcome with laugher, the woman lets herself drop on so hard that he sees stars. She leans back till her pelvic bones are jammed into his eye sockets; her bouncing convulsive laughter sends intense stabs of pain throughout his head. He is starved for air and his eyes are seeing flashes of color from having her butt cheeks jammed into them.

 

The laugher subsides and she makes the horse go faster again, and again she is bouncing her butt on him with no apparent concern. He is very frightened that she may be bashing him to death, perhaps deliberately, perhaps merely negligently. But the fear is strong; he knows she if she kills him, there will be no penalty, no retribution. It is difficult to time his breathing to her rhythm, and he can feel the growing panic. She has her horse in a slow canter now, and she leans forward on her crotch, driving the plug down into his lower jaw. She says something over and over; her voice deep and breathless with a pending orgasm. She is ramming her crotch down his throat, and he can both feel and hear something tearing deep in his jaw. She rips another little fart, but after a quick throaty laugh she goes back to breaking his jaw with her orgasm.

 

He wakes up in the infirmary, his wrists strapped to the bed’s steel rails. He jaw is broken, but it is more minor than he had imagined. It will heal. As will his broken nose. But the nose is now permanently altered, pug shaped and pressed over to the left. His facial bones had required x-ray. But despite the intense purple bruising, no significant damage was seen. The intense tenderness and the unrelenting headaches began to subside after a few days.

 

Koihime and Satomi drive away in Satomi’s Lexus. They left Tokyo drive directly to an expensive resort in the mountains, where among other activities featured there, they rode real horses.

 

The man was declared persona non-grata and after a few days they put him on a plane bound for the Philippines. People at the airport stared at him, standing there between the two bored policewomen. Many wincing at the sight of his battered swollen face, and at his blooded eyes within the mask of purple bruises. But others smiled. At the airport he was taken to the immigration counter. A Japanese bureaucrat was stamping and signing his papers without speaking. He was taken to another room, where a pretty young Philippine woman in uniform stamped his documents again. She finished and handed them to him, and their eyes met briefly. Her mouth curved into an ornery smirk. “I see you got into some sort of trouble during your stay in Japan.” It seems more like a statement than a question. Then she made a sound like a horse’s snort and smiled.