Even Ponygirls Sometimes Get The Blues

Chapter 21. The Operation
(Even Ponygirls Sometimes Get the Blues, by Aurelius)

“You and I look quite alike, you know,” said Madame Cavallo as she teased one of Jessica’s ringed nipples with her finger.

Jessica’s hands clenched as she tugged against the leather wrist cuffs that fixed them to the operating table. With her ankles similarly fixed, twelve inches apart, she was as helpless to resist Cavallo’s advances as she was to close her ears to the verbal torment.

“Oh yes, quite similar... except I’m perhaps a couple of years older and you are slightly prettier, I must admit. How old are you now Jessica?”

“Twenty-four,” Jessica said, before realizing she hadn’t taken her year on Rabbit Island into account. She wasn’t aware of exactly when her birthday had occurred. “No. Twenty-five.”

“Did you know I went to medical school?”

Jessica shook her head, eying Cavallo warily. Cavallo was standing over her in a white surgeon’s smock, which suited her rather too well.

“In Boston actually. I loved it there. It’s such a beautiful city. I made good friends, had a lot of fun and a lot of sex. It wasn’t just the socialising. I studied hard and was particularly interested in surgery. I watched many operations and even assisted in a few...

“But I had to quit after only two years because my father died. Suddenly I was responsible for a business empire on three continents and a fortune of two hundred million dollars. I sold off a few companies I wasn’t interested in and came back here, to my childhood home. Now I take care of the family business from here...

“You’re sexually submissive, aren’t you Jessica? You like to be dominated and you are turned on by bondage. True?”

Jessica shook her head in denial, praying that Cavallo would stop playing with her nipple like that.

“You are! And that’s why you’re in this position now. Rabbit Island chose you for those qualities, and they were right. I’ve seen how you behave around men. Like when Master Alex took you to that ballroom one evening and you sat at his feet, wearing his chains. You loved it. Admit it!” Cavallo almost became angry as she sought out a meaningless confession.

“Is this about Master Alex?” Jessica ventured.

Cavallo laughed extravagantly, mocking Jessica for thinking such nonsense. “Of course it isn’t, you silly pony. It’s about my avocation, adapting the human body for sexual slavery, and about your suitability to become my next true ponygirl. I use the word ‘true’ because a ponygirl, like any other true slave, should be modified to suit her function. A ponygirl has no need for arms. They are an unnecessary hindrance, create extra work for handlers and look unsightly. From now on we’ll take care of everything for you. All you have to do is run, obey instructions and look beautiful. I’m confident you can do all three. In return we’ll feed you, dress you and bathe you. Everyone will admire your beauty. I almost envy you...

“Envy me? You’re crazy.” Jessica muttered, continuing to tug against her wrist straps, not because of any hope of escaping, but to show she would not submit willingly.

“I’m not crazy, just lucky enough to know the thrill of true power is. I’ll bet millions of people fantasize about owning an island like this one and be able to fully indulge their sexual tastes. They wouldn’t do it as well as I do. I was brought up on this island and rode ponygirls years before I ever traveled in an automobile. I was driving and whipping ponygirls by the age of ten and was helping out in the breeding shed in my early teens. I performed my first caesarean at fifteen and had been involved in a dozen or more births by the age of sixteen.”

“Father made sure I stayed a virgin until I was sixteen. He stitched up my vagina himself. He knew I’d want sex the moment I was unstitched. How could I not be affected by sexual activity around me? When the time came, on my sixteenth birthday, he was confident that I had developed dominant sexual characteristics just by the way I handled a whip...

“He was partially right. Who wouldn’t enjoy wielding a whip on a slave’s back once taught how to do it properly? Have you ever whipped anyone, Jessica?”

“No!”

“But I bet you wanted to whip somebody?”

“Only you!”

Cavallo laughed. “Cute, but that’s one ambition you’ll never fulfil. Not even my father whipped me. He feared I might develop a taste for it. He firmly believed our childhood experiences formed our sexual orientations. For that reason he never allowed me to be tied up. I was always curious about bondage though. Sometimes I saw ecstasy on bound women’s faces when a man made love to them and I wanted to experience it for myself...

“So, not long after my sixteenth birthday I asked a handler to chain me up and fuck me like I’d seen him do to a slavegirl. He was happy to oblige and suggested the hanging peach position. He wrapped leather cuffs around my wrists and ankles, fixed them to either side of a spreader bar, and cranked it up. I’m sure you know what I mean. When I was at the perfect height for him, with my legs spread high and wide, he fucked me. That straining on my poor hurting limbs as my very first orgasm washed over me was the best feeling ever.” She looked up towards the ceiling at the blissful recollection. “but father had the man killed of course.”

Jessica was become flustered and confused by Cavallo’s revelations as she thought back to her own similarly ecstatic moments. She was close to tears “Why are you telling me all this?”

Cavallo took Jessica’s hand. “I want you to understand that I’m doing this operation for you as well as me. You will be able to live the rest of your life as an erotic fantasy, never to worry about the real world again.”

Jessica tried to wrench her hand from Cavallo’s but the wrist strap wouldn’t allow it. “That’s not what I want! You have no right to do this to me. I belong to Rabbit Island!”

“That’s true, you are their property... but like any other property you can be bought and sold. I’ll pay for you of course. The same goes for your friend in the breeding shed. The one with the big mouth. As soon as we confirm she is pregnant she’ll also be having an operation.” Cavallo paused, as if waiting for Jessica’s question.

“What kind of operation?”

“Her tongue will be removed.” Cavallo announced coolly. “We’ve performed this little operation many times before. She’ll be more manageable and in the long run she’ll be happier for it. But enough of her, she is of little importance compared to you, my beautiful ponygirl. Now just try to relax. I promise you won’t feel any pain either during the operation or afterwards.”

Cavallo gripped Jessica’s hand tightly, both knowing she would be the last person that ever held it. “The surgeon will be here soon, but don’t worry, I’ll be here throughout the operation.”

Right on cue they heard steps approaching from outside. Cavallo rearranged the expression on her face, let go of Jessica’s hand and stood ready to greet the surgeon and his team.

It was not a surgeon but a nurse who walked through the door. She looked vaguely familiar to Cavallo but didn’t recognise the smile. Behind Kate was Rachel, looking nervous but determined.

“Talk of the devil!” Cavallo said, impressed and amused by Kate’s audacity. “Your operation isn’t ‘til tomorrow. You will be punished for this. Severely punished.”

Kate and Rachel weren’t listening. Rachel had the tazer pointing like a gun as she stalked around one side of the operating table. Kate held a syringe in her hand as she approached Cavallo on the other. Cavallo laughed wildly as if it were just a childish game, her eyes darting between Kate to Rachel as she decided which one to barge past. She was bigger and stronger than either. Fearing the tazer in Rachel’s shaking hand she rushed headlong at Kate, her hands jabbed forward sending Kate tumbling backwards to the floor.

Cavallo hadn’t seen the cleaner kneeling by the door, she seldom every notice them. Karen tightly hugged Cavallo’s legs as she tried to pass. They reached a stalemate - Cavallo unable to free herself from Karen’s grip, and Karen unable to topple her in the way she’d done to others in the breeding shed. The tight-fitting leather hood provided protection from Cavallo’s desperate blows onto her head.

Rachel approached tentatively with the tazer. Karen mmmphed her encouragement for Rachel to use it as Cavallo continued beat her around the head. Rachel feared that Karen would get as much of an electric shock as Cavallo if she applied the tazer while they were so tightly joined.

Cavallo gave up hitting Karen’s head only so she could use her arms to fend off the tazer prod. She was primed like a cobra, ready to strike it from Rachel’s trembling hand as soon as it came within arms length. Such was her concentration that didn’t noticed the needle in her buttock. She soon began to feel its effect. Kate stood up just in time to catch the slumping Cavallo, easing her gently to the floor.

The room was suddenly quiet. All Kate could hear was her own palpitating heart as she contemplated what she had done; not knowing if it was a triumph or the biggest mistake she would ever make. Then she saw Jessica looking at her with a face the picture of joy.

“You weren’t much help, just lying there while we did the fighting!” She joked, then kissed Jessica lovingly on the mouth. “But no problem Jessi. Let’s get you out of here!”

“To where?”

“Good question, Jessi. I haven’t thought that far ahead, but let’s bugger off before the surgeon arrives.”

Kate and Rachel unstrapped Jessica’s wrists and ankles on their respective sides.

Jessica was confused. “Katie, how did you suddenly become a nurse?”

“Call it ambition!” Then Kate turned to Rachel. “Handcuff her!”

Rachel was confused. “What?”

“Handcuffs! They’re in a pouch on your belt.” Kate replied, slightly exasperated, “Put them on Jessica and go back to the breeding shed... now...hurry! I’ll stay here to cut poor old Karen out of her cleaner costume.”

Jessica trusted Kate implicitly, and being required to remain naked and cuffed didn’t bother her much. She had grown too accustomed to it. Rachel led Jessica from the surgery, grabbing her arm as forcefully as Brenda’s dykes might have.

Kate reached for one of the heavy surgical blades and looked down at Karen kneeling in front of her. “You’re not bothered about a little blood are you?”

Karen shook her head.

“Good! Then you can stay and help me.”

The scalpel she wielded sliced through Karen’s hood as if it were made of butter.

“It’s over there,” Alex said to Vince as their hire car crept along an industrial backstreet in Bangkok.

Vince scrutinised the small loading bay with a door to its side. “I don’t recognise it.”

“You wouldn’t. Charlie’s probably moved five times since you last visited him,” said Alex without exaggeration. This Chinaman’s slave-tending operation seldom stayed in the same location for more than a few months. Vince pulled up alongside a black Mercedes.

Alex got out, walked up a couple of steps and buzzed the intercom. He turned to Vince whilst waiting for a response. “Back up the car to the loading bay. I’ll be out again in five minutes.”

After a pause, the door buzzed indicating it could be pulled open. Alex entered cautiously into the loading hall. It was packed with pallets of Chinese canned soup. There was nothing to arouse suspicion that this was anything other than an unremarkable trading company. That’s the way Charlie liked it. Alex knew Charlie also liked basements, so when he spotted a flight of steps leading downwards he sensed that was where he would find Charlie and his cages.

The scene had a reassuring familiarity for Alex - ten slave cages were lined up in the middle of the floor allowing for all-round inspection.

Charlie’s normal exuberant greeting was substituted this time by a restrained shake of the hand. Alex was not the only visitor. Charlie was conducting business with two men, the owners of the Mercedes parked outside.

Sandwiched between the two sharp-suited men was a young Thai woman, her naked body being thoroughly and intimately examined by them. She wore Charlie’s trademark dog-collar and leash but her hands were free. It’s important that a purchaser can see how she reacts to their advances. Some slaves appear docile in cuffs but will turn into wildcats the moment their hands are released. This one however was soft and yielding, accepting her fate and hoping to avoid a beating that would result from misbehaviour.

Alex watched the scene from a respectful distance. She was a beautiful creature, even with the distressed look on her face as latex-gloved hands violated her sex. With long silky black hair, nice tits and slim but not too skinny body, she would make a good everyday whore, the sort that most men, white or Asian, would find appealing.

The two businessmen spoke to Charlie in Thai:

“We’ll take her.”

“Very good choice. You want cage or body harness for her?” Charlie asked in Thai of about the same standard as his English.

“No, it’s not necessary.”

While one man held the naked girl tightly to his chest in a non-consensual tango, the other removed a pen-like object from his jacket. He jabbed it into the back of the girl’s neck, just below her dog collar. She gave a pathetic gasp, and then lost consciousness. Her dancing partner continued to hold her limp body upright against his. The man replaced the tranquilizer pen in his jacket and pulled out two plastic cable ties. He pulled the girl’s lifeless arms behind her back and looped a cable tie tightly around her wrists. He bent down and fixed her ankles similarly. Charlie removed her dog collar and leash. She was ready for transportation.

While the paperwork was being finalised Alex inspected the latest incarnation of Charlie’s slave emporium. Alongside one wall was a portable gas stove, boxes of food, crates of two-litre plastic water bottles - feeding and watering twelve slaves and himself was a serious undertaking. Nearby was a television, watched avidly by Charlie and his slavegirls during their long evenings. At the end of the large room was a double mattress on an improvised plinth of soup cans. The bed was covered by a neatly spread duvet cover. A good slave keeper must be a good home-maker too.

The other side of the room had some exercise equipment. Alex had seen Charlie’s multi-gym and rowing machine before, but the treadmill was a new addition. By happy coincidence it was at that momnt being used by a naked woman with pale skin, American or British Alex assumed. Her skin glistened with accumulated sweat. She was walking fast, having no choice in the matter; metal cuffs attached her wrists to the respective rails on each side of the treadmill. Alex enjoyed watching her overweight rump in motion - like a cow chewing grass, he thought.

She didn’t turn her head to look at Alex. She couldn’t, because Charlie had adapted a ponygirl’s bridle for her. The chin-strap of the bridle was connected by a two-foot chain to the treadmill’s LED display in front of her. The bridle’s blinkers precluded her from any sideways glances, obliging her to concentrate on her preprogrammed exercise regime. She still had twenty-five minute to go, Alex noticed.

The transaction for the Thai girl had concluded. They paid by cheque, the equivalent of 20,000 cans of soup, and Charlie gave an appropriate receipt. The man holding the girl hoisted her effortlessly onto his shoulder and carried her from the basement, while his colleague folded and pocketed the receipt, shook Charlie’s hand with a respectful bow and departed.

Alex hardly noticed the men leaving. He was engrossed by the woman’s progress on the treadmill, and wondering whether Rabbit Island should acquire some more exercise equipment. He was also somewhat mesmerised by her bobbing breasts.

“Fat American ass!” Charlie shouted from the other side of the cages.

“Who? Me?” Alex asked, pretending to be offended before smiling warmly at his old friend.

“No. You slim American ass! SHE fat American ass,” Charlie said, pointing a stubby finger at the poor woman on the treadmill. “Very good for her Thai men don’t eat girls or I sell her easy.”

“I wouldn’t mind a slice of that rump,” Alex joked, directing it as much to the woman as to Charlie.

“She lost five kilos in two weeks. Five more more to go. Good diet, lot of exercise, no problem.”

They left her to complete the exercise program, and Alex skipped up the stairs to summon Vince to come down to the basement.

Vince entered with their two recent acquisitions. They both had their hair intricately woven into long braids, giving them a tribal look, although one was too fair skinned to be a native from those parts. They were naked and each had her hand cuffed behind her, with a chain joining the two together side by side.

“Jesus, Alex, we nearly suffocated in that trunk,” the fair-skinned one complained.

“Do you remember this one?” Alex asked Charlie, ignoring the girl’s remark.

Charlie studied her face briefly and shook his head. “No. Don’t know her. She and her for sale?”

“No. I think I’ll take them back to Rabbit Island when the repairs are done. This is Nancy. She escaped from Rabbit Island but was then kidnapped. We had to pay a ransom to get her back.”

Charlie was impressed. “Ohhhh, Miss Houdini. Don’t worry I give her extra chains! No-one ever escape from me.”

While Vince’s attention was taken by the woman on the treadmill Charlie gave Alex a tour of his caged slaves. It was part of slave traders’ etiquette to cast an expert eye over each other’s merchandise. The slaves followed Charlie’s presentation routine. They knelt on their shins, with a straight back and head held high. The leash connecting the dog collar to the top bars made it difficult for them to do anything else.

“Any virgins?” Alex asked.

They moved to a cage containing a white girl. “This one!” Charlie said proudly. “American virgin.”

The girl’s head hung downwards, her straight blonde hair covering her face and her shame. Charlie tapped her under the chin with his riding crop. She raised her head, shaking it to clear the hair from her face and showing both the red ballgag in her mouth and the rage in her eyes. The privileged American teenager didn’t take to her captivity with the passive acceptance shown by the Asian girls, but with the right training she would become an excellent whore or sex slave just the same. The fire of loathing in her expression impressed Alex as much as her fine young body.

They were reaching the end of the line of cages. “You remember this one?” Charlie asked.

Alex studied the cage’s occupant. She was far from being a teenager, attractive for her obvious thirty-something years, but there wasn’t a demand for older slaves, certainly not in Charlie’s market sector. “No. Give me a clue!”

“Remember drug whore last month? Shaking with no drug?”

Alex smiled, remembering Charlie’s amusing phrase. “What? Cold chicken?”

“This is her. Now clean and good health. Very good. Help me with cook and clean.” Charlie opened the cage door, unwound the leash handle from the cage bars and helped the woman to her feet. It was strange that Charlie would be trying to present this one to Alex. Her skin was scarred from cuts and cigarette burns inflicted in her past, while her teeth had had more attention from a man’s fist than a dentist over the years.

“She say likes tied-up and chains, and whipping too. She say want to go to Rabbit Island. So I tie and beat her, test her truth, but I not so sure. Think she faker.”

Alex pitied the woman standing before him, wondering why anyone would lie about such a thing?

“You’re too old to be a Rabbit Island slavegirl,” he said apologetically. A tear trickled down her cheek almost immediately, “but I have a man who works for me on Rabbit Island. A Filipino, and a good and loyal worker. Last year his wife died, and he needs a woman to live with. You can be his new wife.”

It isn’t often that one can bring such happiness to somebody, but at that moment Alex did. Her ecstatic smile said it all. After twenty years as an enslaved whore she was to become somebody’s wife. It was something she had alway dreamed of. With her hands locked behind her all she could do was fall to her knees in front of Alex and kiss his shoes. Charlie tugged on her leash, and returned the joyful woman to her cage. Alex enjoyed having power over women, the power to train and punish but also like now, the power to bring happiness.

“How the hell does she know about Rabbit Island anyhow?” Alex asked.

Charlie pointed an accusing finger at the neighbouring cage. “That one tell her.”

“Hello Doctor Alex,” said Janie, her face shifting with various emotions. She was happy for her caged neighbour but her underlying sadness was apparent. “My memory is returning. I can remember things, lots of things!”

Alex was unsure whether that constituted good news or not. “You remember Rabbit Island? But I’m sure you were never there.”

“I only know of it from other people. I was somewhere else but I can’t remember the name. An island. I remember a woman who owned it - Cavaro.”

“Cavallo?” Alex prompted.

“Cavallo. She did this to me.” Janie broke into sobs. “I don’t want to remember any more. Can you give me something to help me forget again?”

Alex gulped his saliva, glancing at Vince who was also listening intently. “Janie, are you sure?”

“I’m positive. How could I invent someone like Cavallo? I wouldn’t want to.”

Vince stuck his hand through the bars and pulled Janie’s hair back so she looked upwards. “Open your mouth!”

He used a finger to feel inside her mouth, and a moment later turned to Alex. “She hasn’t any back teeth. It’s likely she was a Cavallo ponygirl.”

Alex agreed.

“Did we send any of our ponygirls to her?” Vince asked.

“Just one, and four bunnies, but she wouldn’t dare harm them. Besides, we’ll be collecting them in a couple of weeks.”

Charlie soon had Nancy and Lina accommodated in their cages, fixing Nancy (or ‘Houdini girl’ as he renamed her) in ankle shackles as well as the usual cuff and collar arrangement. “So you come back and collect your four women in two weeks?”

“Three weeks before we are back here,” Alex corrected him. “then we’ll collect Nancy, Lina, Janie and our lovely new bride. Don’t sell them!”

Charlie laughed at the very thought. Two women who looked like they should be in the jungle, another without arms, and the superannuated whore Alex had married off to one of his workers. He thought Alex had gone soft.

TABLES TURNED

Kate was right in insisting that Jessica should be Rachel’s prisoner. They walked right past one of the male handlers on the way back to the breeding shed without attracting any attention, other than the man getting an eyeful of Jessica’s naked body.

Once inside the breeding shed Jessica was freed from the handcuffs.

“I want clothes like yours.” Jessica joked, fingering Rachel’s dungarees.

She didn’t have long to wait. As soon as Rachel handed over the tazer prod Jessica took over. One of the breeders had to give up her frame to accommodate another one of Brenda’s girls.

Three hours later Kate and Karen still hadn’t returned to the breeding shed. Jessica was hardly able to run for it with her cracked ankle, so there was no alternative but to wait and hope. A refrigerator full of sodas was raided to create a party atmosphere, aided by some amusing entertainment that their captured former keepers were providing.

A sudden assault on the breeding shed brought an end to their laughter. Three men armed with pistols burst through the door. Jessica and Rachel dropped their tazers and raised their hands. The three naked and newly pregnant women they had released from their frames subtly distanced themselves by a few metres, implicating Jessica and Rachel, not just as ringleaders but solely responsible for the current situation. Cowardly behaviour perhaps, but who could blame them in the circumstances? They hadn’t ask to be freed.

There was a hint of amusement behind the stern expressions of the gun-toting men.

“One, two, three, four, five of you.” One of the men counted with a point of his gun, “but no empty breeding frames?”

He looked down the line of kneeling figures, all securely chained, all hooded except one. This one was making something of a commotion.

“Jesus! It’s Brenda!”

Brenda’s noises were involuntary and incomprehensible. Jessica and Rachel had decided some revenge was in order and had just the tools for the job. Nestled between Brenda’s ample rump the inseminator was pumping away on a long stroke, with its dreaded tremble option enabled. At the other end the milking machine was having limited success in extracting any goodness from her dangling breasts, even though their size promised so much more. The harness ballgag that so often tormented Kate was now tormenting her nemesis; the straps dug deeply into the abundant flesh of Brenda’s rotund and reddened face.

“She looks like a boiler about to blow,” said one of the men.

“It would be cruel to interrupt her now,” another replied. They could interpret neither Brenda’s grunts nor her bewildered, crossed-eyed expression. They figured it was safer to leave her to run her orgasmic course while they searched for the other workers-turned-prisoners.

Removing the hoods of the breeders one by one, the pattern started to emerge: Their colleagues were the ones gagged and dazed, having each been given a sedative jab. One of their colleagues was easy to spot, due to the broad hairy back that couldn’t be hidden by the breeders’ flimsy baby-doll dress.

“Steve?”

He strained to look up at them, gagged and bewildered, though his confusion rapidly turned to embarrassment. The iron breeding frame and shackles holding him in the breeders face-down kneeling position easily contained his frantic struggles.

One man produced a camera. “We’d better produce some evidence,” he announced trying to hide his gleeful smile. “Look up at the camera Steve, then we’ll get you free.”

Steve was freed just in time to witness Brenda’s earthquake of an orgasm. Her rhythmic grunting and growling was more reminiscent of a man or a wild animal than a woman, yet all the witnesses, male and female, found something peculiarly sexy about her reluctant performance. Her unlikely erotic show stopped when the inseminator’s timer shut it off. They were wrong if they thought Brenda’s mechanical rape would have softened her. She battled against her frame with a fury and strength far greater than Steve’s. The men promptly released her before she developed revengeful thoughts for each of them. She did, after all, hold the keys to the penis restraints they wore.

While Brenda skulked off behind a partition to dress in her dungarees the three breeders were locked back in their frames. There seemed to be some confusion after the nurse had been freed from her frame; she was screaming about what had happened to her uniform. Having already relinquished her breeder’s dress the nurse wore nothing but a naked rage of indignation, much like Brenda’s but smaller and with perkier breasts. She ran deliriously from the breeding shed in a mad scene all of her own.

Brenda took charge again, stopping the men from releasing Billy, the fifth and final staff member, from her frame. She crouched down and stroked Billy’s ball-gagged and tear-stained face. “It’s all your fault Billy, because you were the first one they captured. I have to punish you or people might accuse me of favouritism. So I’m going to leave you locked in this breeding frame for the next seven days.”

Billy sobbed, while Brenda was holding back her emotion too as she stood up to deal with the two remaining culprits, Jessica and Rachel.

“She’s not a fucking breeder,” Brenda screamed at the men just as they were fixing Jessica into a breeding frame. “Look! Ringed nipples! She’s a ponygirl, so why the hell she’s in here I have no idea!”

With their shaved hair and uniform piercings, ponygirls looked much the same to those, like Brenda, who didn’t work with them every day. But then she saw Jessica’s heavily strapped ankle, and suddenly went pale. A visible shiver ran down her spine as she realised that this ponygirl was supposed to be in the operating theatre.

The nurse returned, still naked, and in a worse state than when she left the breeding shed a few minutes earlier. She was screaming, “Something terrible has happened, something truly terrible!”

Jessica, Rachel, Kate and Karen were reunited in a dungeon not long after.

Four stone pillars in a row, each separated by about a metre, held the four naked women. Iron shackles, a permanent fixture on the pillars, held their wrists above their heads, obliging them to remain standing. There was just enough slack for Jessica to bend a hand down to scratch her nose. Tales of their adventures kept them going, particularly Kate’s gruesome tale.

“After you and Rachel went back to the breeding shed I cut Karen out of her cleaning restraints just as I said I would. I looked at Cavallo lying on the operating table. She even looked evil while she slept. It made my blood boil to think of what she was going to do to you Jessi. I asked Karen whether she minded the sight of blood. She said she didn’t...

“So once I’d found theatre gowns and masks my mind was made up. We undressed the bitch and threw her clothes in the furnace, then we shaved her head so she looked like you. Karen did a great job...

“Then the surgical team arrived. I’d been in operating theatres many times before and this wasn’t my first amputation, although it was for poor Karen. The surgeon was excellent, the best money can buy, I’m sure. What can I say? The operation was a success!”

“And here we are in the dungeon!” said Rachel, wondering might be their fate after such an escapade. Nobody dared answer.

Jessica’s bawdy tale of how they got Brenda in a breeding frame lightened the mood to such an extent that Kate could have keeled over with laughter if it were not for the chains holding her upright. “And I’ll never forget the moment when they found the man we put in the frame,” Jessica recalled, mimicking the man’s shocked voice. “Steve?”

Evening had fallen, and the shaft of natural daylight had been replaced by the faint glow of an electric light somewhere outside the dungeon. Since being chained up no-one had attended to them with so much as a drink of water. Perhaps they would wait until the middle of the night to whip us, Jessica thought. In the meantime, spontaneous chuckles as they recollected their amazing day sustained them until they were too tired to talk.

Jessica dreamed of the night of her first encounter with Master Alex on Rabbit Island. He’d left her standing in chains, a bitter sweet torment that felt like a beginning. By contrast, this felt like...

All Madame Cavallo’s other loyal cronies were at her bedside when she awoke with the morning sun. She was proud and stoical, although a tear sometimes rolled down her cheek, to be elegantly wiped away by one of her handmaids. Lucinda was busy at the dressing table making a wig for her mistress.

“The culprits are chained up in the dungeon Madame,” said Brenda in an attempt to cheer up her employer. “What would you like us to do with them?”

Cavallo didn’t reply immediately, in fact several tense minutes elapsed. Nobody spoke while Madame Cavallo was carefully considering her options. Finally she turned her head slowly towards the man standing to her right, the island’s General Foreman. With an expression neither angry nor smiling she gave her answer:

“Prepare the guillotine.”

End of Chapter 21

coming soon... the guillotine