"You have nice day?"
"Oh, Achmed… Ohhhhh, oh noooooo."
"Cell feel good after. Nice chain."
It was different. This time her hands were tied behind her back. It did not occur to Corey to complain. Achmed was a relief. Soon she could not complain. Her mouth was stuffed with rag, a bandage was wound several times across her lips and tied behind her head. She could utter no word, nor could she scream. A rope to her collar was her tether as Achmad led her from luxury back to prison.
It was a different post. It was placed where she could not see it from her cell. Audrey Cotswold was bound to it with considerable skill and an eye to aesthetics. She was gagged as Corey was gagged. The two girls exchanged anguished stares.
"I do real good job of tie." Said Achmed complacently.
He had indeed. Corey recognized its merit. Audrey could not move. She was clamped tight against the post by ropes above and below her naked breasts. By her neck. Her waist was doubly cinched, her hands were tied at the back as were her elbows. Her knees also bore the tight tight bands… Below them, Corey could not see. The tied girl?s feet were buried by a pile of tinder dry bits of wood, twigs, branches, paper and assorted inflammables. "Is not nice way for girls to die." Achmed insinuated.
The gags were a refinement of cruelty. The need of the girls to speak blazed from their wide and anguished eyes. Corey was choking with the urgency to tell Achmed this must not happen, that this lovely girl must not die by fire, that she herself would do anything… anything demanded… that she must be taken to Abdul Nour…!
But she could utter no word. She turned to her grinning jailor and shook her head again and again.
"Our Leader want you to be very good girl." Achmed explained blandly.
Corey nodded and nodded again. What more could she do? Nonchalantly, Achmed struck a match. Looking straight at her, he dropped the small flame on the outer fringe of kindling.
It flared instantly. Corey screamed against her gag and tore free of her leash. In frantic disregard of pain she stamped her bare feet up and down on the eager birth of conflagration.
"Is lucky girl." Achmed observed complacently. "You love her very much." He looked down at the blackened and scattered twigs and at her feet. "Is hurting?"
Corey shook her head. It had been too swift for injury. It was not until she had been led to her cell and the gag taken from her mouth that she was able to seek motives.
"Achmed, she?s not really going to be burned…? She isn?t! Is she?"
"Not if you very good girl."
She sighed in relief. The girl bound to the stake was not a trick, she was a demonstration of intent, a warning. Abdul Nour was serious in his fantastic plan. In one of the swift analyses with which she was constantly confronted, Corey ruefully supposed she would be better off as his wife than as his army?s whore. "Are you going to untie Audrey?" She asked hopefully. "It?s too cruel for her to stay tied like that… not knowing?"
"Give good scare. Very frightened of burn. She be very good girl too when let loose."
"Achmed, please untie her now. Oh please! And what?s going to happen to her… afterwards?"
"She make good whore. When you naughty girl she get whipped. You run away she get burned." Achmed disposed of such trivialities with a wave of the hand and a benevolent smile. "Now you give Achmed fine fuck."
Miss Corey Gibson folded her nudity to the floor. Wryly, she supposed she was no worse off today than yesterday. Laughing, she pointed out an omission: "Achmed, my hands! We?ve forgotten my hands. They?re still handcuffed behind my back."
"No forget. Is good that way."
What did it matter! Obediently, the daughter of vast wealth arched her back upon her manacled wrists and spread her legs.
Alone, sitting on her bench before seeking sleep, Corey Gibson reflected on the nature of girls. Girls were property. Girls had to do what they were told. Scarcely more than a couple of centuries of social usage had rubbed off on them its patina of equality. But it was easily erased. A few days as the captive of men had brought her to where she was, grateful for the emotional release of being fucked by her jailor every evening, thankful when she was not bound with rope, finding a strange pride in being desired by the male, even as a whore. Escape no longer bothered her. Girls did not escape! It was as simple as that.
Corey was amused by the sudden realization that Achmed had gone away and forgotten her handcuffs. Even more significantly she had forgotten them herself. A girl must indeed be both physically and spiritually enslaved when such an acceptance of chains was carelessly automatic. She made her familiar tug against the steel bands. They were tight as ever. She would not escape them. She shrugged away the loss of her arms in resigned indifference. She was still sitting on the boards when Achmed returned with Audrey Cotswold.
Corey did not believe Achmed cruel. What he did now must be under the spur of urgency, orders, or a preoccupation of his own. It was done swiftly in silence. Her own exclamations died unborn against the gag he thrust into her mouth and buckled behind her neck. Audrey was already gagged and twisting her arms fretfully against the handcuffs at her back. Her collar was instantly tethered by chain and padlocked to the opposite wall. Corey?s own chain was unlocked, gathered to half its length, then locked again. Two startled girls stared at the bars as the door slammed shut behind their departing jailor.
It was frustrating to the point of tears. Confirming instant suspicion, each chained girl stepped out to touch, to make contact with beloved flesh. Their tethers snubbed their necks within a yard of union. They stood, so close, helpless, defeated, denied, and gazed at each other pathetically. They made strangled sounds against their most efficient gags, they motioned despairingly with heads compressed by straps. Convinced of the denial of their need of each other they returned to their respective walls. Audrey sat on the floor, Corey on her bench. Both were equally hard on female bottoms.
They slept. Both girls had become inured to chains, their metal collars, and an unsympathetic surface on which to lay. It was the deepest dark of night when Amrah opened the barred door and unlocked the padlocks at their necks. Without pause, she used the shorter chain to join their collars four feet apart. Padlocks clicked again. Hurriedly, she pushed them from the cell to the waiting figure of a naked girl. It was Josie. Josie?s plight was a duplicate of their own. She grinned a mute greeting. But gag and handcuffs permitted no more. In seconds she was collared and linked to Audrey?s neck. Where one went, so would the others.
"We get away." Amrah?s whisper was both urgent and demanding. "You better trust Amrah or we get caught."
She emphasized her demand by a firm tug on the leash she had prudently fastened to Corey?s slave neck iron. Dazed, the three helpless girls followed where they were led.
Should she have struggled, kicked, resisted this nocturnal rescue? Perhaps! But Achmed had left the two of them sufficiently helpless to enable Amrah to handle them with ease. There had been little choice. And suppose Amrah was a friend! Suppose she was leading them to freedom! The method of her doing so was not illogical. Three dubious and argumentative girls would have been far more difficult than the three gagged nudities now slipping so silently into the night. They were a package Amrah could control. She herself would be fleeing her enslavement as an unpaid whore. But the keys! Where had Amrah got the keys by which to take them from their prison? Corey rejected the stress of speculation as she strove to appease the pressure on her neck. If they were being led to freedom by this unorthodox handling, so be it! Freedom, by any means, was vital. Nothing else mattered.
Eight padding bare feet, the clink of chain. Whispers of sound in the desert night. Amrah led them along the great wall to the door. When it closed behind them the sound spoke of no return. Beyond them now was limitless space, but in the foreground the dark shadow of a truck.