Caught ( A Serial ) by Reilly and Nan {Chapter One}

Written alongside Nancy B, an amazing writer who’s work can be found archived on Necrobabes under the name hisdinner. Her incredible spirit can also be found enlivening the board at Dolcettgirls.com. Thank you for sharing this with me Nan.

The storyteller stirred the sparks with her staff and cinders swirled up and out the chimney hole. Twelve girls lay around on mats and listened to the Elder drone, sing-song, chanting. The roundhouse held in their heat, and most of the girls drowsed.

“Trees are friends, grass is good Venture not out of our wood The Hunter comes, his net will find All careless girls who stray outside.”

“If I saw a Hunter I would steal his seed,” Marta whispered to the girl who lay next to her.

“Steal it?” Jeannie giggled and shook her head. “Are you a witch, now, Marta?”

“I ‘d have him, I’d get his seed in me, and then I’d keep him in my house, not like the Necessaries down in the pens. ‘Till he got boring, anyway.” Marta stared into the fire, smiling fiendishly.

The storyteller’s head was sagging into her bosom. She’d nod against the center pole ‘til morning. Most of the girls slept curled tight under their blankets around the fire. Marta and Jeannie lay on their sides, facing each other, sharing a blanket, snuggling close.

“Marta?”

“Mmm?” Marta was drowsy, too. She was dreaming of kissing a man. Such blasphemy.

“I wouldn’t want to keep a Hunter like one of those tame pale things in the pen by the river.”

“Why not?” Marta liked to picture the Hunters with their nets and their stingers. It made her squirmy. But Jeannie was right. Penning a Hunter would be all wrong.

“As if we could. A hunter? They can scoop up five girls in one net, just two of them, and carry them off to the City!” Jeannie shivered and pictured a brawny pair like the illustration from the Book of Banishment. They were supposed to be the enemy, but damn. Jeannie had been chastised several times already for staring at the picture too intently when she was supposed to be studying the history of the Cataclysm.

“Marta, tomorrow, let’s go to the aspen grove past the cornfields after morning training. Let’s play ravished women!” Jeannie moved closer to Marta, smiling, slipping her hands under Marta’s blouse to touch her.

“Play, you talk like a baby, Jeannie. Mm.” Marta giggled and scissored her legs in between and outside Jeannie’s. The two girls began to shift and move. “Tomorrow we have tests, remember?”

“Tests. As if we didn’t know the drill by now.” Jeannie moaned and kissed her bedmate, and the discussion trailed off.

At first light the fire-tenders slipped out the door. Chilly air crept under their blankets and the dozen girls awoke. Marta and Jeannie rose and pulled on pants and boots and went to the longhouse where the younger girls slept. Marta got them up and dressed while Jeannie served up steaming bowls of oats from the cookpot. Another in the string of endless days begun, Marta sighed. First put the little ones through their paces, then report to the Elders and get the Lessons in Expulsion and Rejoining. Boring. Tests and lessons, lessons and tests. It seemed to Marta that they never got to play anymore, never got to run through the woods and laugh and hide and shriek. Being eighteen was boring. This village was boring. She longed for something she couldn’t quite name.

A throng of girls from ten to seventeen ran through the forest and the meadows, jumping, twisting, rolling under fallen logs and leaping over bushes, climbing trees to scout the area, shimmying down and scurrying to the appointed Safe Place. Jeanne timed them as at last, breathless and gasping, they found their way past the camouflaged entrance to the caves of Haven.

“You’re the last in, all twenty safe and sound.” Jeannie whispered, clicking off the timer and noting the time on her clipboard. She peered through the dimness, lit by one feeble lantern far back in the cave. Tree roots made gauzy weird curtains, veiling the faces of the little girls. They watched the entrance and hushed themselves as Marta and Elder Diane entered.

“If I were a Hunter, I’d be licking my chops right now and rubbing my hands together!” the Elder shook her head. Diane was elegant, thin, tall, and she needed to stoop to get inside the Haven Cave.

Marta muttered “Dammit!” under her breath. These girls were in her charge, she’d bear the burden of the girls’ mistakes.

“You girls have left broad paths, crushed-grass highways pointing here! Your clumsy passage through the trees left bent-twig signposts to alert any half-witted Hunter to your hiding place!”

The little girls hung their heads, hot-faced shame shining on their cheeks. Jeanne crossed her arms and frowned. Marta stared at the Elder, wondering if this bitter husk of a woman ever smiled. Surely the girls’ trial hadn’t gone that badly. Elder Diane drew herself up and clapped her hands. She wasn’t finished yet. The Elder practically crackled with pent up energy. Why does she harangue us? Marta wondered as she passed between the silent girls, smoothing hair, patting them on their shoulders. She wanted to find Jeanne, be near her, ride out this tirade together.

Diane sat on the Teller’s bench and cleared her throat. She took the lantern from the floor and held it in her lap. The wavering light carved eerie marks into her face whenever she frowned, frightened the youngest girls who hid their faces from her. The older girls got deathly still. Elder Diane never took the Teller’s bench unless she had something terrible to tell.

“Sanctuary, keep us safe.” She intoned.

“We ask the Mother,” the ring of girls replied. It was ritual, meant to reassure, but the older girls’ fear shone in their eyes.

“Bless this place, shield it from eyes of Man.” Elder Diane scrutinized their faces as she chanted the litany. Marta’s eyes held something else. Excitement, longing? She leaned against the cave wall, outside the lantern’s glow.

“Safe from the ones who Hunt, safe in your arms.” The girls’ faces reflected rote devotion, mindless mouthings of the familiar words. Diane knew that what she was about to tell the girls would wake terror in them, and earnest prayers.

Elder Diane picked up the staff. “Remember this,” she spoke the ritual words.

“Forever write it in our hearts,” the girls mumbled back.

Diane leaned forward and the light made a mask of her face, demon brows lifting over golden glowing eyes and a cruel mouth. “Hunters captured them two days ago, in the far meadow–Cynthia and Lucille.”

The girls gasped and buzzed. “Cyndi! Luce! Oh not those two!” Diane waved the staff for silence.

“There was a third girl taken. Bonnie. But they –” The Elder’s voice broke and that frightened the girls most of all. Diane sat straighter, drawing herself up, pulling in her emotions. “Bonnie was left in the lower meadow as—as an example to us.”

The girls shrank back from her and held each other. Jeanne found Marta in the darkness and clutched her hand tight. “How does she know all this?” Jeanne whispered to Marta.

“Girls. Lucille escaped.” Excited cries died as Diane shook her head for silence. ” She will join us now, tell her tale, and then we must prepare Bonnie for burial.”

The camouflage parted and a dark-skinned girl bent low and entered the cave. Marta saw the slash of a knife wound on her cheek, and the bruises on her arms before the curtain brought darkness back. Lucille knelt on the floor at Diane’s feet and the Elder petted her and encouraged her to speak. Such a display of tenderness from Diane was rare.

“Bonnie fought hard, but she—but he caught her anyway. I got loose and ran and hid in the hollow of the burnt out oak, you know the one.” The girls nodded, murmuring. Bonnie was 19, one of their strongest girls. She could do anything. If they could capture her, was any of them safe? Lucille sniffled back tears and continued. “They didn’t see me. I remembered—you know, “Trees are our friends, grass is good—” Several of the little ones joined her song, tentative, confused.

Lucille sobbed, and Diane soothed her. “I crawled through the grass and I got inside the tree. But I could still—I could still see the Hunter. What he did to them.”

Lucille put her face against Diane’s knee and sobbed again and choked out the rest of it. “Cynthia, Cyndi, she was in a net and the Hunter pulled her up and I think she spat on him and then he hit her. And she fell down. And she—she just laid there. I couldn’t tell if she was—if she was ok.”

Diane bent to her, held her face in both her hands and said, “Lucille. You have to tell them.”

Lucille nodded, and then she looked around the room at all the little girls. “I am sorry, oh I am so sorry, I couldn’t help her, if I had tried they – they would have killed me too!”

Three little girls shrieked in the darkness. Bonnie’s charges, no doubt, left without a Guide now. Lucille’s face was wet with tears. “The Hunter had Bonnie trapped in a net too, but she got free and she ran at him with a knife, she was screaming. Screaming! And he took her and he—he broke her arm! She dropped the knife. He was mad. He held her around the throat and he hit her face ‘til she fell down. And then he got his ax. Oh Mother Diane, oh please.”

Diane held Lucy’s shoulders and leaned close to her face. “You must tell them.”

“He put her neck across a log. And he pushed back her hair and he chopped off her head! And he found a spike and he pushed it into the dirt and oh god, the blood. He stuck her head on it! But–but then he used her body. He tore off her clothes and he—he spent his seed in her. Oh mother, why? And then he ran a spike through Bonnie. He left her body lying in the dirt. He built up a fire and.. mama! He roasted her.” Lucille collapsed at Diane’s feet, curled into a ball. The others stood at Diane’s command and made their way to the meadow.

One by one the girls were made to pass by the carcass of the girl. The hunter had bound up Cyndi and thrown her into his vehicle. He’d taken part of Bonnie, too. When each girl passed by her remains, they could see close up the marks of the Hunter’s knife. As she’d roasted, he’d carved bits of her for his lunch, he’d feasted well. Lucille told how he’d removed one leg and tossed it onto the seat next to his before he drove away. It was cold in the meadow. There, resting on the crude spit was the beautiful ruined body of the strongest of them all. Bonnie. Diane made each girl pass on the trampled grass between Bonnie’s head spiked head and her body, feeling Bonnie’s vacant stare.

Marta and Jeanne walked together. “I wonder where he took Cyndi. What will happen to her?” Jeanne and Marta stared at the spit that ran through Bonnie’s sex and out her shorn neck. Marta could picture the Hunter’s hands on Bonnie’s body as he sliced the meat from her.

“The woods cannot protect her now,” Marta whispered. She gazed east to the haze that marked the distant City. Smog tainted the sunset fire-orange and blood-red. ————————————————

Herbert Noodleman was a clerk. Said so on every piece of clothes he wore. In the morning he would get up at 6:45, put on the uniform of the day, walk to the clerk stop and catch the company bus. On the bus he would dream, it was always the same dream, sparked by the passing of King’s Butcher Shop. He would stare at the pretty girls on display in the window, his mouth watering at the possibilities. When he was a boy his father was invited to a company picnic, as a rare honour they served girl. From that day forth he dreamt night and day of that sweet tender meat. But owning a girl was a lot of money, and a clerk could not afford one. If you were lucky the government would supply you with a mate for a year, but meatgirls were for the rich. Except that Herbert had a plan. For five years he had been saving his money, eating half rations, never even thinking about visiting the Pleasure Palace, he was on the verge of a dream! All day long he fantasized, blonde, brunette, or maybe a redhead? Today he would make that dream a reality. However time would not comply, choosing to drag by. He could not stop daydreaming, even while stocking the shelves his erection was so prominent he had bumped it twice! Twice he had to go to the restroom, find a stall and relieve himself. At lunch he informed his best friend Derek. Derek giggled, “Dude this is amazing! You buy her, play with her for a month, then dinnertime!!” They both knew the rules, meatgirls could only be kept for a month, then must either be returned to the shop for preparation or, if you had the money, brought to a restaurant. Derek interrupted the exposition, “And you promised I’d get a try and a taste right?!” “Shhh, ok ok, but keep it down.” Herbert tried to contain his friend, “We can’t have anyone else knowing.” “Are you shitting me?!” Derek questioned. “I couldn’t eat you much less shit you,” Herbert shot back and they laughed at the joke they’ve been re-telling since school. “Seriously Herb, you’re gonna be a hero. You are living the dream!” Derek’s response pushed Herb into another daydream, everything else his friend said was lost, only the company buzzer would bring him back, and slowly he trudged off to finish the day. He watched Derek drive away on the bus, waving to him as he gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up. As he walked trumpets blared in his mind, the sky was brighter, his steps lighter. Falling off the curb due to his lightheadedness, he scraped his knee. Yet he would not be deterred, righting himself he marched onwards… to King’s! Inside he waited and watched while the regular patrons were serviced by the buoyant crew. They would pinch and prod the girls, some screaming and crying, some downright angry, one large gentlemen had a beautiful redhead down on all fours. She was held down by an employee while he ran his hands down her back, smacking her thigh, and pinching her sex, “You must have the best hunters in the business to consistently get meat of this quality?” The assistant smirked as he held the girl firmly when she bucked upon being entered, “We pay top dollar for hunters and their catch sir.”

This was true, ever since the separation of sexes men inhabited the cities while women returned to a life of nature. However the desire and lust of mankind turned to anger, then to hunger. Hunters were commissioned to go out and retrieve girls for mating and for meat. At the government processing plant the girls were judged, and sent to their fate. Herbert knew a guy who clerked there, he said it was amazing, and sometimes they would pick a girl who cried too much or fought too hard and make an example out of her right there! Helped to keep the girls in line, his friend told him.

—————————————

Cyndi’s shivered in the back of the hunter’s truck. She’d survived the hunt, sobbed for Bonnie, and silently shouted encouragement to Lucy as she made her escape. Oh, Bonnie, no. Cyndi could cry out here, she could sob and lament her fallen sister. The Hunter had secured her, trussed in the net to big iron rings and he’d stretched hard belts of elastic over her, pressing her to the corrugated metal floor. She was nearly sick as the truck bumped through cattails and ditches and finally onto the paved road just outside the City. Cyndi tried to remember all they’d taught her around the fire. The Capture Lesson. She tried to summon it, but she was so afraid.

Captured girls are meat or whores. Whores eat; but meatgirls eat more. Don’t let your belly conquer you: after one moon, the meatgirl roasts. Serve Man on your back or as a suckling pig, the choice is yours. The less you squeal, the longer you live.

Cyndi couldn’t understand why the Elders didn’t count escape among her options. Surely she’d be left unattended while this Hunter ate or slept. She’d slip out of his house and—

The truck pulled into a cavernous building. Cyndi watched as burly men in gray overalls pulled down the clanging metal door and secured the locks. A cacophony of screams and wails and harsh voices filled the space around her, and slaps and cuffs. Cyndi counted at least ten other trucks. Some held ten girls or more. She was alone on hers. A blaring voice shook her bones, tinny-sounding, unnatural. “Trucks in the red zone have 5 minutes to unload into Intake port A-1. Red zone Hunters, unload now, Port A-1.”

She tried to turn to watch as the girls were freed from nets or chains and herded into a huge set of metal doors. They were stumbling and crying in front of hunters who prodded them along with sticks that made the girls jump and scream. Some fell, and some fought back.

Cyndi watched as two of the gray-overall men rushed forward with red sticks to prod at a wild-haired girl who’d backed into a corner. The wild one shrieked an invocation to the Mother and hurled herself at the largest of the men. “Aiiieee, Mother, for those Expelled!” she wailed as her feet flew up and she kicked the gray man in his gut. He fell backward, landing hard, swearing, but his partner rushed in and pressed that awful stick to the fighter’s side. She collapsed, her body jittering, a pool of urine darkening the floor beneath her.

Cyndi’s neck was nearly breaking with the strain of watching from the tight bonds that pressed her to the truck bed. She didn’t see the black suited man approach the girl. But suddenly he was there, the black suited man and he wound the girl’s blond hair around his fist and yanked her head up from the floor. He pressed a metal rod to her temple –No, Cyndi realized, it was a gun –and muffled thunder pounded through the room.

All around her, the girls quieted and the Hunters shoved them ahead. Impatient gray overalled men barked orders and she watched as the hunters pushed the girls to the right or left, forcing them into two streams. Friends were parted, girls sobbed, but none had the courage to scream. They all passed by the fallen one. Some made the sign of Rejoining. Cyndi snorted. She wondered how many here, facing those two doors, could still believe. There would be no Rejoining in the fires. The Mother couldn’t save their bones, after their meat was gone.

Two doors. The left door was labeled “Food Quality” and the right, “Other.” Cyndi’s captor released the strong elastic bonds that held her to the truck and she sat up, rubbed her arms and swiveled her neck. She did not raise her eyes to him as he yanked the netting away from her and released the shackles that held her ankles to the floor pins. Cyndi watched the dead girl, blood pooling, dripping as she was thrown onto a metal cart and pushed into a side door marked, “Govt Surplus.” Her arm dangled off the cart and brushed the girls she passed. Cyndi shivered and cowered. No houses here. Only metal doors and guns and death. She could smell it in the air.

Hands reached out and pulled her from the Hunter to the doors. She held her breath. She knew the chant, but it was useless, she had no choice! The gray man before her sneered and gestured with his thumb to the left. Food quality! Oh Mother, no! Cyndi shook her head, but no one paid the least attention. She thought of the girl outside. She choked off her sobs. Another gray man, Clerk, she made out on his pocket, he took her arm and pulled her through the doors. They’d emerged into a giant ring. Row after row of seats ringed them and all the seats held men. Cyndi stumbled into the woodchips of the arena. The small circle was crowded with girls. A harsh voice brayed over their heads.

Was this the Men’s Roundhouse? She guessed it was. It was a round room. And the men sat there, rings of them, staring into the center as if to watch the Storyteller. But here, in the center, were only girls, terrified girls who turned around, seeking shelter anywhere. Cyndi was one of two dozen. Most of the girls were naked, and all had their wrists bound behind them. Voices barked, and gray men circled the perimeter, shouting at the girls and separating them with sharp blows of their canes. The loud voice kept counting, his voice like a man possessed, he yodeled numbers, and then he pounded his hammer, he cried, “Lot 5! Sold to Brannigan’s for 5000 credits.” “Lot 6- Kings, 4500 credits, move ‘em out boys, Clerks! Assist all buyers!”

“You’re lot 6, girl hurry it up, get in here, go! Go! Go!” The gray clerk man prodded Cyndi and the girls around her into the back of some sort of truck. They were harnessed, rough rope collars tied to metal rings on the walls. The ropes were coarse. Girls cried and the door was closed. They’d dumped her out here, at a dirty back loading door marked “King’s Deliveries” a week ago. The black suited man and two gray overall men argued about her. Cyndi hadn’t seen more than this dingy place where no bush or tree or patch of grass had ever grown. For a week now, Cyndi had lived as a trapped rabbit in a hutch, fed tasteless food, kept from the sun. They put heavy metal manacles on her. She’d seen the sleek, lovely girls they’d taken away, inside. She wondered what the meat girls ate. She wondered if she were to be the dog’s food. Cyndi sat in the darkness and whenever she was sure there were no clerks about, she sawed and sawed at her collar with the one sharp stone within her reach. She tried to sing the songs, but she could not find heart for it. She longed for mountain air and Susan, and release. ——————————————————

Finally someone noticed Herbert, “Hey clerk! Who are you picking up for? Wait a minute you’re not office you’re warehouse! Do your gawking outside buddy!!” Herbert cleared his throat, “I’m here to purchase.” “Really,” the guy chuckled, “show me your pay coupons!” Lifting his hand, clutching his cherished coupons, Herbert thought they radiated in the fluorescent light, “Take a look at these!”, plopping them down on the counter. The guy took a minute to count them, he looked at Herbert and let out a pronounced sigh, “Listen Buddy, this is a lot, but this is King’s. That blonde over there, she’s double this.” Herbert’s head started to become too heavy for him to hold up anymore. The girls here were all plump and beautiful, he must have been fooling himself. He started to scoop up his coupons when the guy whispered, “Come with me.” Herbert followed him behind the counter, past the girls trussed up for delivery, into the back room past the stables, into a dark corner. Clutching her legs in her arms sat a girl, naked except for the shackles on her neck and feet. “Sit up girl we might have a buyer for you.” kicking her with his feet, he grabbed her face and presented it to Herbert, “pretty right?” He looked into her soulful brown eyes, she was beautiful. Her brown hair although slightly matted was thick, her eyes red from crying, her mouth in a permanent pout. “She came in the last shipment by mistake, too skinny. Boss don’t have the time or place to fatten her so he was gonna ship her to the palace as a plaything. If you’re not in a rush, take her home, enjoy her and I’ll tell you how to plump her up.”, the guy was smiling at him and when he finished he winked. Herbert was getting light headed again but managed to exhale, “yes.”

Cyndi was dizzy. She’d been bound to the floor a week, unable to stand without a clerk to release her, unable to walk free, there for any off-duty man’s casual leering abuse. Each man who’d come near her had promised to visit Cyndi when she reached the Palace. Cyndi wouldn’t meet their eyes, but inside, she took new hope. The Palace? Better a whore than meat—but now this clerk? This man had bought her? She found herself unshackled from the wall only to be collared and led onto the Clerk Bus. All around her the men engulfed her, they overpowered her with their scent. The fumes of the bus were terrible, but these Clerk Men, they smelled so strong, she nearly gagged, time and again, her head pounded, she couldn’t breathe.

She stood facing him on the bus as he held her leash. She had a very athletic body, her breasts were small but pert, but she had thick thighs and the most delicious rump. He couldn’t stop smiling, and watched as men walked by, “Bought a pet did ya clerk?” , a large heavyset man with office manager branded to his pocket asked, smacking her rump. “Cost me a lot, but she’s worth it.”, Herbert beamed. “Not bad, not bad at all,” he squeezed her ass, “little skinny on top, but this rump is amazing. Gonna fatten her up a bit?” “Got a month,” Herbert was getting agitated with this man pawing his girl and would probably have said something, but it was his stop. Exiting the bus he heard the whistles and playful slaps of his fellow bus riders.

They didn’t talk to her as friend, nor work-mate, or any one at all. The Elders were right. These Men, they’d cast us out, and now? She’d just been bought as food. As Food! Cyndi listened to them talk, felt their hands crawl over her like lice, and inside, she burned. “A month!” she shivered. She looked at this gray Clerk Man, so proud, the way he held her leash, the way he beamed over the smelly men’s remarks. She hated him. She looked out of the window and watched a bird fly west until the glare burnt her eyes. She wept. The new collar hurt. She wanted to scream, and why not? It didn’t matter any more. In a month, she would be dead.

His apartment was the standard government-issue clerk dwelling. Sparsely furnished, but it was all he had ever owned, until now. He undid her collar and lead her into the bathroom. She waited while he tested the water and filled the tub. They stood beside each other, as an awkward silence filled the room, Herbert cleared his throat, a nervous habit his father had hated. “I bought special soaps and lotions for you,” he tried to put her at ease. She stepped into the water and he used an old company coffee mug to pour water over her. He gently scrubbed the shampoo into her hair, and held her back as she leaned back to rinse it clean. He let her smell the soap before he began to wash her, starting at her neck as as the water gently lapped against it.

“My name is Cyndi”, she hesitantly offered. Inside she quaked. Man doesn’t touch this way, man stings or hits. Man doesn’t soothe with lotions, man spits. She felt her dizziness return. This was all too much. He was not taking a month, he meant to clean her up, he meant to cook her this very night! Cyndi heard the Elder in her head, singing the Sorrow Song. “Lay down, the fight is done. Close your eyes and welcome water, welcome night. Lay down, and let the Mother soothe…Close your eyes, the fight is done.” Cyndi shivered and gave in. What else could she do. This man prepared his meat, he wanted a beautiful feast, and she would be one. She tried to close her mind to anything but sweet songs. The scented soap was almost chamomile, it almost took her home.

He lifted her arms up taking care to clean every inch, “I’m Herbert.” The washing would continue in silence until he began to clean her womanhood. She balked at first, he tried to be re-assuring, “Easy girl. Just want to get you clean.” He was very gentle, but when his finger slid up into her he closed his eyes to help savor this moment. Easing her out of the tub he stood in awe of her glistening body, the water dripping off her, the cold air making her nipples erect. He could not contain his excitement, leaning in to kiss her softly on her lips. The taste of her, the softness of her, made him feel like he was melting. She responded to him, he had not expected that. His hands did not know where to squeeze first, her skin so warm and wet, and so very very tender.

Cyndi dared to look into his eyes. He’d kissed! This didn’t feel like Final Walk, it felt like First Nights. The sweetest times of all! Could he want not food tonight, but love? Cyndi felt his hands, still so inviting, his touches pleasing, not terrifying. Do men know love? All the books, all her learning had denied it. Men knew Business and Facts and nothing of tenderness. Men worshipped Money and hard sharp things, things that gouged and cut and ensured they stayed on top. But Herbert? He had just kissed her! Cyndi smiled and kissed him back.

Men had expelled the women from the cities, they had no hearts. This was a man. Cyndi laughed at herself for believing so pedantically in all the Expulsion lore. For here was a man, right here, who kissed her soft and sweet. The Elders said to kiss a man was to burn in Hell. Kissing a man meant a pact with the devil. Did she dare respond in turn and risk eternal fire? Oh yes, she did! Cyndi shook herself—so dizzy now, she could not be sure of anything. But here was a man who wanted kisses. Not food. Not tonight. Maybe not for many nights. If she could make him love her more—maybe– Cyndi smiled. This clerk man, this Herbert–would he free her? “I’ll risk Hellfire when I’m dead if it means I don’t go out of this world, already roasting.” She kissed Herbert once again.

She stood up and he marveled at her glistening body, water beading off the freshly scrubbed skin. He led her to the bedroom where she offered herself to him. Sliding into her wet sex he thought he might cry. When she pushed against him he bit his lip and quietly moaned.

Cyndi felt his hard planes, marveled at how her body seemed made to fit against his, soft against hard, the way he jutted out and she folded in, the perfect way he filled her, not with fingers, but with his own sex, and oh, Mother, forgive me, she thought, but as he slid in deeper, she wanted nothing else but more. Her breasts ached and when he nuzzled them, she thought she would explode.

Soon they rocked together in a rhythm only nature could compose. He burst inside her and held her tight as they fell asleep in each others arms. As sleep overcame him Herbert realized for the time in his monotonous clerk-like existence, that a month was truly not a long time.

In the morning he served her breakfast, it was a sweet and starchy mixture the King’s clerk had sold him. He watched her eat it knowing this was a beginning; a beginning of an end he had dreamt of his entire life, and now he was confused by feelings that were so… foreign.

She smiled shyly at this man—this Man!—who served her like a training girl. He would hardly meet her eyes, and she had no idea how to cope. She’d blasphemed, in some of the Elder’s eyes, she was beyond hope, beyond redemption now. Cyndi was afraid to say a word and break the spell. He fed her rich food, but he had loved her, last night had been as sweetly tentative as any First Night should be. But better. Cyndi felt the slight bruisy ache in her sex. It satisfied her in a way she hadn’t known could be. Even when the New Mothers were selected and they entered the Necessary’s pens and lay with them, she’d heard no stories about this. They made it out to be only a grim duty, harvesting their sticky gatherings squeezed out from those men. Those Necessaries, kept in the pens to ensure the Mother’s bellies would be filled. Nothing like this.. Cyndi smiled up at Herbert openly. This is no weak pale thing the City spurned.

He felt the clock hit 7:25, and needed to get to the bus stop. He took her hand and led her to her cage. Her eyes looked deep inside him and she understood. He watched her climb inside her body just fitting, her rump protruding past the bars. There was this feeling of… regret as he locked the gate. Driving past Kings he felt a momentary panic, what would he tell Derek?!

What hurt most was the window, Cyndi told herself. If only it were lower, wider, closer, she could see more than the gray stones of the building facing theirs. And it was closed, so that she couldn’t hear a bird, or the rush of wind, and she could only smell fumes of acrid poison as the world of Men roared to life again, stamping out all that was soft and good, replacing it with metal, bars and – Cyndi wept. What a fool she’d been. He’d given her such a tender look as he’d shoved her in this cage. As if – Cyndi sobbed, one short aching choking sound escaped her mouth as she tried to hang on. His face, why did it look that way? The Elders were right. This man just wanted both, a whore, and food. She’d fatten well for him in this tiny cramped space, but she couldn’t think of it. Cyndi couldn’t think about the metal bars that pressed and chafed her or she would go mad.

He held the cardboard box in his hand for too long, staring at nothing. He should have put her in a better position, so she could at least see out the window. Why did he care? Why did this day have to drag even longer than the last? He just wanted to go home… to her. He had avoided Derek all morning, and with break approaching he suddenly felt… sick! Clutching his side he made his way to the infirmary, it would be a demerit; he had never left work sick, ever. Yet he did not feel right, and the doctor’s endless questions were making him feel worse. He endured them and watched as his chart was stamped with a red “Sick Day” stamp. Stepping outside the air smelled sweeter, and the anticipation in his stomach was getting worse. Sitting on the bus, alone, the driver constantly monitoring him in his mirror, he remembered to keep his hand on his stomach to not draw suspicion. Standing before his door, reaching for the knob…