"THE STARLET" by Naomi Tyrell
copyright resides with author
     
     CHAPTER ONE.
April hung upside down and naked from a bar suspended from the ceiling on a chain, her wrists duct-taped to her ankles and her ankles tied to the ends of the four-foot bar. A little stain ran down from between her legs, over her stomach and past her breasts where she had been unable to prevent herself urinating several hours earlier. And now she felt herself cramping again.
   God, she thought, wasn't anyone ever going to come and let her down?
   She'd lost all track of how long she had been hanging like this. Of course, she'd blacked out several times but even then there was no way to count the hours, maybe even days it had been. 
   Her last clear memory was of her and Karen, walking out the front door of Northmount High and tossing their texts and notebooks in the air in the time-honoured gesture.
   "No more school, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks," they'd chanted, laughing in their eighteen-year-old exuberance.
   And then they'd stopped laughing and looked at each other with a kind of wistfulness.
   "It really is this time, you know. The end. At least for you," April had said. "I mean, you've already got a job at that model agency. Me, I've still got two years of Business School, but it won't be the same. Particularly without you."
   "Jeez, April, I wish you'd applied to the Carlysle Agency along with me," Karen had said. "I mean, I figure we both had an equal chance..."
   "With that gorgeous, long, blonde hair of yours?" April had scoffed. "And my mousy straggle? Come off it!"
   "Your hair is not a 'mousy straggle!' You have lovely brunette hair!"
   "If you need an ad for 'bad hair days,'" April had laughed, a little bitterly. "No, let's face it, Kar, you're the model and I'm the frump behind the desk."
   "Yeah," Karen had challenged her, "like to bet on who's married first?"
   Well, right now it looked as if all bets were off, April thought. She had strong doubts about either of them getting out of this alive.
   For about the time Kar had issued that challenge, she vaguely remembered a dark blue or black minivan pulling up at the curb beside them and two hooded figures leaping out, grabbing them around their necks and throwing them into the windowless rear of the van. Here, by the beam of a single flashlight, they had been gagged and their wrists tied back to their ankles with duct tape. Then they had been tossed onto the floor of the van.
   Now April remembered something else. As the two hooded figures left them lying there and crawled into the front of the van, there was just a slight whiff of perfume.
   My God, she thought, one of their captors was a woman!
   Then they had been driven for a long time over bumpy roads until it was almost dark and, when the van stopped, the woman - April distinctly noticed her perfume now - came back and moved the duct tape from their mouths to their eyes.
   "We are miles away from anyone now." The woman had a very young-sounding voice April thought irrelevantly. "So we don't mind you screaming. In fact, you may want to do a lot of that. But we'd just as soon you couldn't identify the place, should you escape."
   "Small chance!" the other, definitely a young man, had chuckled.
   "I know, Mark, but...Owww! What the hell was that for?"
   "Haven't I made it clear? No names! Forget it again and I'll beat the shit outa you!"
   "All right...jeez," the girl whimpered. "It was you already said they had no chance of escaping."
   "Don't tell me what I said. Just obey the rules we decided on!"
   "Okay! Okay!" the girl muttered submissively. "Where are we putting these two?"
   "Hang the mousy brunette in the basement, I think. You know, head-down, feet up? Get her all discombobulated. The blonde is mine for tonight."
   "Jeez," the girl whined. "How come you always get the lookers?"
   "'Cause I'm the Boss Man. Besides, the brunette's cute or we wouldn't have taken her too.. And, of course, after a while, there may be not that much to tell them apart. Now, get about it!"
   What had the man, whom she now knew was named Mark, done to Karen?" April now wondered, finding it a bit weird that she could even consider her friend, given her own fearful circumstances. Perhaps it was the fact that she seemed to hear Karen's voice now, somewhere behind her head groaning in a kind of irregular rhythm, which seemed to match the sound of scuffling on the dirt floor of the basement. 
   It took April all the strength she could muster to turn her head in the direction of the sounds.
   It was Karen, all right, naked like herself, except for the wide leather dog-collar around her neck. And she was being led along by a man - most likely Mark - who was holding the other end of a leash clipped to the collar.
   Karen's face and breasts were filthy, as if they had been ground into the dirt of the basement floor, the skin darker where her tears had caked her tears to mud, and her long, slim legs moved slowly and gingerly as if her knees and shins were scraped from crawling. And she whimpered with each step she crawled.
   "Not much farther, little girl," Mark said, his words more soothing than his cold voice sounded. "This is going to be our portrait studio for today. Camera ready, sweetie?"
   "Ready."
   A cute little blonde stepped out from behind April now.
   "Christ, where'd you and Carol find these cuties?"
   "Jesus!" Mark shouted angrily, raising his hand. "Women! No names! Can't any of you fucking remember?"
   "Sorry. Sorry, sweetie! I'll remember! Promise!" The blonde backed away from that hand.
   Two names now, Mark and Carol, April thought. That had to be a help to the cops.
   "Though, I really can't see that it matters," the blonde defended herself. "It's not as if they'll ever see a cop..."
   Mark's hand swung viciously catching the blonde on the side of the face and knocking her to the dirt floor.
   "Jesus! What was that for?" she blurted out.
   "Think about it!" Mark snapped. "While you get the brunette down."
   "She stinks!"
   "I'm not asking you to sniff her snatch. Just get her down."
   "Y...yes, Massa," the blonde said, daring him to hit her again. 
   "I'll get you later, bitch," Mark glared at the blonde. "You got the black curtain in place, Carr, honey?"
   "Tape in the Video-cam, everything's a go," Carol's voice answered.
   "Then, for Chrissakes, give Manny a hand with the brunette!" Mark snapped.
   Another name. The blonde was Manny. And both she and Carol were too afraid of Mark to point out he had broken his own rule. Maybe April could make use of that fear somehow.
   Though God knows how.
   Manny and Carol had loosed her from the duct tape now and stood her up on both feet, holding her by the elbows while her head cleared. Then they took one piece of the duct tape and re-bound April's wrists behind her back. After this, as Manny held Karen and Carol held April, Mark held a piece of paper up in front of their eyes. 
   "Here, can you read this from this far away?" he asked.
   Although it was full of errors, it was written in bold felt pen and both girls nodded.
   "All right, this time we'll shoot you separately in front of that black backdrop. Later on, if necessary, we may try more 'interesting' shots. Let's start with Mousy here. What's your name, Mousy?"
   "M...ousy," April answered.
   "Your real name." Mark raised his hand.
   "A...April...April Lane," she stammered.
   "Better. So you begin, 'Hi, Daddy. It's April.' Got that?"
   "He'll know who it is," April said.
   "This time," Mark smiled grimly. "Later...well, you may not be so easy to recognize."
   "Camera's rolling," Carol told him.
   "Action," Mark said.
   "H...hi, Daddy. It's me. As you can see, I'm all right so far. But they say if you don't come up with a hundred grand by Friday, I may not be all right any more. Tomorrow morning sometime, you'll get a call from a pay phone giving you the number of a Swiss numbered account. If the money isn't there by Friday, they say you can...kiss goodbye to me."
   April stumbled over that last bit, as the complete impact of those words hit her.
   "Not bad," Mark said non-committally. "Now the other one. Karen, is it?"
   "You know my name, fuck you," Karen muttered weakly.
   "Shall I clean up her face a bit?" Manny asked. "It's all mud-streaked."
   "Leave it," Mark said. "Visuals are great."
   Karen's message was a bit different at the start from April's.
   "Daddy," she said, her voice breaking, "it's your baby. As you can see these people have already hurt me and they swear they'll hurt me more."
   But, after that, her script followed April's to the last dotted "i."
   "Okay, that's a wrap. Carr, get those tapes into Express Post. Their daddies should get them in a couple of days."
   "I don't see what you have to gain," April said. "Our fathers aren't rich. A hundred thousand is big money to them."
   "Banks love to loan that kind of money," Mark laughed.
   "Not to pay rewards," April pointed out.
   "So fuck the Banks. Your Daddies' money's nothing to us anyway."
   "I...I don't understand."
   "Explain, Carr," Mark grinned.
   "First, pretending to want money buys us time," Carol explained. 
   "Time? For what?" April asked.
   "To make real money. Millions," Carol answered.
   "Millions? How?"
   "Simple." Carol looked at April as if she were the Village Idiot. "By doing what we do best."
   "Even better than stealing girls off the street," Mark put in.
   "For God's sake, what?!" Karen suddenly cried out in frustration.
   "Why, by making and selling videotapes," Carol answered.
   "Of what we're going to do to you," Mark added.
   "That is, of course, presuming you don't get the money," Karen said hopefully.
   "I told you, the money's nothing," Mark said. "You two are going to be film stars whether your Daddies pay the bills or not. Take them to the 'Star Dressing Room,' Manny."
   ----
   The little blonde took the two girls, who couldn't have been much younger than her, to a tiny room, measuring maybe twelve by eight feet, cut the duct tape from their wrists and locked the door behind her. There was a tiny cot there with a thin mattress and no blankets, a toilet but no sink, and a rough wooden armless chair. But that was all. 
   Immediately, Karen flung herself on the cot and began to sob uncontrollably.
   "Oh, April," she cried, "we are as good as dead! You know that!"
   "Try to be brave," April said, sitting beside her friend and taking her head in her lap. "So far it's been just threats. They haven't actually hurt us yet."
   "But they have! They have!" Karen choked through her tears. "Oh, God. they've hurt me. That man h...hurt me!"
   "Easy! Easy!" April soothed. "What did he do?"
   "He...he buggered me!" Karen blubbered. "Oh, God, I've never felt pain like that! My ass is still throbbing!"
   "Jesus," April gasped. "They're really going to make good on their threats then."
   And suddenly the enormity of their situation donned on her.
   "Jesus..." she moaned, "Jesus..."
   And she bent over Karen and the two of them wept unconsolably.
CHAPTER TWO.
         The two slept only fitfully so that morning seemed to take a long time in coming. And when, at last, it did it was as bleak as their spirits. It was therefore a pair of very morose girls whom Manny led up to meet Mark in the morning.
   He was in what he called the Drawing Room, which seemed like a rather ordinary, if old-fashioned, living room - until one noticed that every chair, even the stuffed arm chairs, had leather straps with buckles on the arms, legs, and even, where it was possible, the headrests.
   As Mark evaluated his two hostages in the cold light of day, Karen tried to hide her nakedness behind her hands and arms. April, however, had decided in the night that her only approach was a more brazen one and she stared straight at Mark, arms at her sides, appraising him in turn.
   He was rather good-looking young man, if you discounted what he was doing, she thought. Light brown hair and clear blue eyes and what could have been an engaging broad smile, if she didn't know of the cruelty behind it. Even Manny was hardly your picture of a kidnapper and sexual pervert with her blonde curls and bright green eyes and cute little nose. Of the three, only Carol, as she remembered her from last night, seemed strange. Oh, she was more beautiful than Manny with her high cheekbones and full lips and long, sleek, black hair. But her dark brown - almost black - eyes were hooded  brooding as if they held a simmering violence barely in check. Instinctively, April knew that Carol was the one most to be feared. So concentrate on Mark. 
   Jeez, it seemed hard to believe that this clean-cut looking guy could be master-minding this whole terrible business!
   "You won't get away with this, you know," she said by way of her good morning, directing her words at Mark alone. "My father's probably already got the cops looking for us."
   "I don't think so," he smiled, sipping from a paper cup of coffee. "I don't think he'll know that there is anything wrong for a couple of days...until he gets that video, in fact. By that time, we'll have made several more tapes, which we'll keep feeding him at irregular intervals, just to let him know you're...more or less...all right. Of course, by the time they stop coming, you could well have been dead for weeks and we'll be long gone."
   "But he expected me home last night," April insisted.
   "No, he didn't. Nor was Karen expected home either. You two were going to take a bus up to a cottage near North Bay for two weeks right after exams."
   "How...I mean, that's not true," April's thoughts and tongue stumbled over each other.
   "You each brought a backpack to school yesterday for just that purpose. They won't be found for at least a week...until, in fact, the Custodians get around to sawing the locks off your lockers. And again, by that time, you father will have received our first tape."
   "But why more? Why make more tapes?" April said, feeling panic rising in her now.
   "As I said, to convince Daddy-o you're still alive.Also so raise the price on your head to...let's say two hundred grand, maybe. And so on."
   "Don't forget the real reason," Manny piped up.
   Mark shot her an angry glance then shrugged.
   "All right, he said, "you tell them, Manny love."
   "You two are going to be movie stars," Manny beamed. "Real full-blown, X-rated, Movie Stars."
   "With the shortest careers on record," Carol added as she came in. "And then, only if you can act like hell. This is cinema verité, dolls, which means it's all phoney but the blood. And that also means you get to live as long as you can suck Mark's cock and Manny's cunt, and do whatever else we say...and look like you just love it. But that's why we picked you after all."
   "What do you mean, you picked us?" April gasped. 
   "You played the Queen in Macbeth this year at the school, didn't you? And Aldonza in Man of La Mancha for the Music Club."
   "You...you seem to know a lot..." April allowed reluctantly.
   "And your silent friend, Karen, here. She was Head Cheerleader. That takes acting too...especially when your football team hasn't won in four years."
   "Five," Karen mumbled.
   "Don't correct me! Don't ever correct me!" Carol screeched and she struck Karen viciously on the side of the face with the back of her hand.
   Karen teetered on her feet but didn't fall.
   "Be careful of Carol," Mark said quietly. "There are those as say her temper borders on the psychotic. But she's a good cameraman and an even better lay, as you will find out. And I do mean both of you...and both of them. In fact, I think some footage of Carol fucking you should impress Daddy, don't you?"
   "You're disgusting!" April sneered.
   "Am I?" Mark smiled smugly. "Judging from what you two put in those backpacks, it didn't look as if you were exactly against a little girl-girl fun."
   "How did you..." Karen gasped.
   "Hey, it doesn't really take a hacksaw to get into a locker," Mark laughed. "I bet the knobby pink one's fun. And photogenic too."
   "God, do you know everythng about us?" April gasped.
   "All we need to know for now," Mark said. "The rest we'll find out on a 'need to know.' But we've already wasted precious time. I want a second tape today. One that shows how far we've progressed with your training in just one day. Carol, I think we'll use the brunette - April, is it? - for that one. We haven't touched her so far. So let's do Before and After Sequences."
   "I'd suggest the Green Room," Carol said. "You want to be her co-star?"
   "I think I'll leave it up to Manny today. She's good at the first steps."
   Carol shrugged.
   "It's your film after all," she said.
   "They all are, sweetie," Mark smiled. "They all are."
   As Carol led her from the Drawing Room to the Green Room - whatever that was - April found herself contemplating several things - none of which gave her much confidence.
   First, it was clear that this was not their first sortie into kidnapping and illicit video-taping. They all had their roles clearly defined, had definite steps to follow.
   Which led her to wonder how many times they'd done this before.
   And this in turn brought back newspaper headlines of missing girls whose mutilated bodies had been found, sexually molested before they were killed. How many of these had ended up on tape?
   And then there was the talk by that lady cop about what she called "Snuff Films," films which made fortunes in an underground market for the perverted entrepreneurs who nabbed girls off the street, then filmed them being tortured and killed.
   April shuddered with the sudden fearful certainty that Mark, Carol and Manny were running exactly that kind of business.
   Which meant she and Karen didn't have a snowball's chance of ever seeing beyond these walls again.
   "Come on, bitch!" Carol's voice cut through April's thoughts. "This is the Green Room. Green is supposed to be a peaceful colour."
   She laughed a harsh laugh.
   "Somehow, I don't think you'll agree after today."
   April looked around. 
   It was appropriately called the Green Room, as its walls were covered in green padding, obviously to act as a sound barrier, but what drew April's eyes the most was the rack set up in the middle of the room. It was a rectangular wooden frame, about eight feet high by four across, with manacles and ankles straps, the former attached to ropes which led over the crossbar to a winch on the side of the frame. Whichever girl was put in the device could thus be raised by the wrists until a her feet were lifted off the floor with her legs spread wide. 
   Around this rack were ranged four video cameras on tripods, one set about a foot off the floor and aimed upwards at the centre of the rack, one behind and well above to shoot downward at the victim, and two more - one in front and one in back - set at shoulder level. A maze of cables led from the cameras to a metal box well away from the rack and behind a green curtain. The rack itself stood under a bank of floodlights which were arranged to eliminate unwanted shadows.
   In fact, April would have admired the professionalism of the whole operation, if it hadn't been for the stand of hanging whips that stood beside the central rack.
   Those whips were meant for her skin, she thought as a chill ran down her back.
   "Put your hands through the manacle straps, honey," Manny said, her tone of voice giving the lie to the word "honey."
   A tone which was emphasized as she drew the straps so tight that April winced in pain.
   "Sometimes, you sweat a lot when I hit you," Manny explained. "That's when your hands slip out and you fall. Wouldn't want you to hurt yourself. Particularly considering you might be a little muzzy-headed at the time... from the pain, you know."
   Manny's hands now cinched the ankle straps on April's bare ankles down tight and, going over to the winch, proceeded to lift her off the floor until April was stretched tight, arms and legs splayed wide, staring down at the camera between her legs.
   "Nice angle, eh?" she heard Carol's voice from the behind the green curtain. "I can see every dimple on your fuckin' labia right now. Make sure you get her at least once right on the snatch, Manny-babe."
   "Gotcha. The one-incher today, Carr?"
   "It's always good for starters. Makes 'em howl like hell. And screams are always good for  Daddykins to hear."
   "You...you're nothing but...animals...vicious fucking animals" April gasped, angry even through her terrible fear.
   "Why, thank you, sweetie. Nice to be appreciated," Carol answered. "Even though the fucking doesn't come quite yet."
   "I'm ready, Carr," Mandy said from behind April.
   "Okay, we won't wait for Mark this morning," Carol said. "'Lights-camera-action,' as he'd say."
   There was a sudden swish of air and a hard thud rocked April's belly forwards.
   That was strange, she thought. Didn't Carol say this whip hurt like hell?
   "Ohhhhhh...shhheeeit!" she screamed as the stunned nerve endings of her back let loose and the burning agony coursed through her whole body.
   "That's my baby," Carol urged from behind the blanket. "Cry for Daddy. Give her one on the ass, Manny. I want to catch her face."
   "Aiiiiiiieeeghhh!!" April screamed as the inch-wide strap of leather burned across her buttocks, throwing them forward and her head back so that she stared into the camera above her head.
   "Great! Great!" Carol commented. "What a lovely show of pain. You really are some actress, honey. Or maybe she wasn't acting. Try her again, Manny. See if you can get your whip around her breast and give her tit a little kiss."
   "Cinchy," Manny laughed. 
   "Ohhhhh...cheeeeerriiist!" April screeched as the lash scorched her right nipple, drawing a single drop of blood."
   "Her nipple's bleeding, Carr," Manny said calmly. "See if you can catch that on tape."
   "Already got it. Nice if we had a matched pair, though."
   "No sooner said..." Manny moved around to one side.
   "Oh, please, nooohhhh..." April pleaded.
   "Than done!" Manny finished, bringing a direct blow down on April's left breast.
   "Ahhhhhhh, gahhhhhhhwwwwwhhh!" April cried as both breasts now trickled blood down over her belly.
   "Take a breather, Manny," Carol said. "I've got a little message for this bitch to send home to Dsddy."
   A hand appeared in the floodlight before April's tear-filled eyes. 
   "Read this. And, mind, read it as if you mean it or I'll have Manny start all over again."
   It didn't take much of an actress to read the message with sincerity.
   "Daddy, you can see they're hurting me. Please make them stop. They say soon they're going to make me ugly if you don't send the money they want to that numbered Swiss Bank Account. God, Daddy, save me quick. Please."
   "Very nice. Now, get the other one. I'll dump this one over there in the corner to think about what 'making her ugly' means while we play with her friend."
   Manny loosed April from the rack and Carol duct-taped her ankles to her wrists and laid her, arched over backwards in the corner, her body still wracked with the throbbing burns of the whip, the blood still trickling from her nipples to the floor.
   Karen was already  whimpering with fear when Manny led her in on the leash and dog collar but, when she saw April lying in the corner with her nipples bleeding, she began to shake uncontrollably and cry openly.
   "Oh, please, please don't hurt me like that!" she whined. "I'll do anything you say!"
   "You certainly will, doll!" Mark laughed following Manny and Karen into the Green Room. "Today's the day you learn to make the kind of films that really sell."
   April was immediately reminded of that cop's talk on Snuff Films at the school and so, apparently, was Karen.
   "Oh, God, no, I don't want to die!" she blubbered.
   "Relax, for Chrissakes!" Mark snapped. "We're a long way from that. I was talking about Fem-Dom and Male-Dom stuff. Make her kneel inside the rack, Manny and tie her wrists to the struts just above head level so her tits stick out."
   As Manny followed those instructions, Mark walked slowly around Karen.
   "Yeah," he said, "we got us a real looker this time. Her shows should be worth a mint. Those little tits alone are worth Fort Knox and she's got a tight ass just made for cock, I can tell you."
   "Yeah, I'll just bet you can," Carol muttered from behind the green curtain.
   "Shut up or I'll ram it up yours next, bitch!" Mark grunted.
   "Don't wait for me to bend over," Carol taunted.
   "It won't be for pleasure," Mark growled back.
   Nasty feeling between them, April noted. Another possible weak spot to pry away at.
   "You got the clamps?" Mark asked wheeling on Manny.
   "Here, Boss." Manny slapped something in his hand.
   "Don't you get sarcastic with me too," Mark warned her.
   "Hey, I meant it. You are the Boss Man," Manny said.
   "Okay, then," Mark grumbled. "Grab her right boob and hold it tight so the tit sticks out."
   "Ow!" Karen yelped.
   "Hey, coward, the pain hasn't even started yet. See this little hoop of metal? It's like a clamp that goes around a garden hose, right? Except it's got a kind of turnkey on the screw that tightens it. Now, if I were to slip the ring down over your nipple until the whole aureole was inside it..."
   "Aaaahhh."
   "Yeah, that probably hurts a bit," Mark nodded. "But what say I tighten the screw a few turns?"
   "Aaaaaaiiieeennnh..."
   "Pretty bad, eh? But only pretty bad. One more turn then."
   "Aaahhhhwwwgaaaaawwwhhh!!"
   "Yeah, that's better. Look at the way the nipple is swelling now as your blood gets trapped behind the clamp. Don't you wish you had your hands free to rip it off? You better not even think of that. Not any more. Look how the swollen nipple covers half the metal now. Try to take it off without knowing how to loosen the screw and you'd tear your whole titty off. Of course, if we leave it there, your tit will burst anyway. So it's kind of a six of one, half dozen of another game. Tear it off or  blow it off. Which will it be?"
   "Ohhhh...pleeeeeassssee..." Karen mewled pitifully.
   "Did I hear you say you'd do anything if I take it off?"
   "God...yes...anything..." Karen whimpered staring in horrid fascination at her slowly swelling nipple.
   "Absolutely anything?"
   "Yes...yes...just...oh, please..." Karen blubbered as much in fear as in pain.
   "Got all that, Carr?" Mark called to the brunette behind the curtain.
   "In the can," Carol replied.
   "Okay, Manny, release that clamp, untie her and the other bitch and bring them to me in the Drawing Room," Mark ordered. "Oh, yes, and bring a whip along just in case. Your choice. We'll watch a little TV before we have a Mid-Term Test on what we've taught this morning."
   -----
   They clamped the girls down into two easy chairs and watched April taping her second message to her father, complete with medium shots of the blood trickling down from her nipples and across her belly. Then they heard Karen's voice-over blubbering of a promise to do anything Mark wanted while watching an extreme close-up of her empurpled and distending nipple. 
   And, finally, just as April was on was on the verge of throwing up, Mark had Carol shut the set off and stared at his two hostages intently.
   God, April thought, I didn't know blue eyes could be so cold...but then, some icebergs are blue.
   "Well," he said at last, "what have we learned this morning?"
   "Apart from the fact that you're a cold-blooded bastard who couldn't give a shit for anyone...not even his girlfriends, you mean?" April asked in reply.
   "For God's sake, April," Karen whispered fearfully.
   But the unpredictable Mark just smiled his enigmatic smile.
   "You're right," he said. It's a good thing you learn that fast. It may shorten your stay here. Which brings me to my second question. What have you learned about your chances of escaping?"
   "I'd say they are between none and nil," April said.
   "Right again!" Mark clapped his hands merrily. "And about leaving here alive?"
   "About the same."
   "Co-rrect!" Mark cheered "A-plus for the little lady!"
   "But you just said she..." Karen stammered.
   "I said she might shorten her stay here," Mark explained. "I said nothing about escaping...or even about leaving here alive."
   "Then why should we bother fighting you?" Karen asked disconsolately. 
   "Because there's nothing else to do. Because, as human beings, you have a built-in instinct for self-preservation..."
   "And because, most of all we want to fucking prove you wrong," April sneered.
   "Bitch! I'll wipe that fucking sneer off your face!" Carol screeched hysterically.
   And she grabbed the inch-wide leather strap from Manny and brought it hard across April's face, splitting her lip.
   "Exam's over," Mark said coolly. "Take them to separate rooms tonight. I don't want them together tonight. We need them fresh in the morning."
   He took a suddenly docile Carol by the elbow and steered her out of the room.
   Then he turned back at the door.
   "Do something about that lip," he said to Manny. "I don't want it all puffy for their scenes together tomorrow."
   CHAPTER THREE
   April wondered if Karen spent all night wondering what Mark had meant by their "scenes together." For April the wondering was easy for Manny came in almost every hour with new ice for an ice pack that took the swelling down on her  lower lip and stopped completely what little bleeding there had been. By morning, her lip was only a little tender so that the welts on her back, buttocks and breasts began to throb again.
   God, she asked herself, was the rest of her life to be spent in some kind of pain or other?
   And the answer she gave herself was not the one she really wanted to hear.
   And so, between Manny's visits and the thobbing pain, the night passed and another gray day dawned. 
   She rose slowly from the little mattress that was her bed and walked stiffly over to the small, barred window that faced out on an overgrown garden with a lawn whose grass must be now be at least a foot long. A long-empty house, obviousy. Soon to be empty again once Mark's business with her and Karen was done. Hadn't he spoken about being "long gone?"
   Above the garden, a gray sky glowered, not raining yet but threatening. Just like her life. Or was it death? 
   Jesus, April, she told herself, try to look on the bright side. Isn't that what Mum would say?
   Mum was dead, of course. Had been for three years. 
   And so too was the "Bright Side." That had died the afternoon that she and Karen ran laughingly from Northmount High.
   "How's your lip?" 
   It was Manny, standing just inside her door.
   "Pretty good," April muttered. ""I'd say thanks except I suspect you only helped me so I'd look good for more crap today."
   "Look, kiddo, I don't enjoy this," Manny shrugged. "Oh, yeah, I like the money. But, basically, I just do what I'm told."
   "Because it gives you a sense of power, you mean," April tested Manny.
   "No, because I like the guy. Love him even."
   "Even fear him?"
   "No...yeah...yeah, he can be a bit...awesome," Manny admitted.
   "You're not afraid of Carol, though?"
   "Jesus! Can you imagine what would happen if Mark ever turned that hyena, Carol, loose on you?" Manny shivered. "Yeah, I'm scared shitless of her. She's looney-toons. And Mark's the only one who can control her. That's really why I only say 'How high?' when Mark says 'Jump.' But enough gab. Mark wants us all in the Green Room. And he's got breakfast and everything."
   File all that she'd just learned about them for future reference, April thought as she followed Manny down the dim hall. Right now, food was foremost on her mind. She couldn't remember when the last time was that she had eaten.
   This morning, the Green Room had been divided into two parts by a fake wall, papered on one side with fruit and vegetables so that it looked like a suburban kitchen wall. In this part, a table and four chairs had been arranged so that Carol's camera could take them all in, along with the microwave behind them There was no fridge or stove and April figured that the three brought all their food in, for "breakfast" turned out to hamburgers, chips and coffee in paper cups. Unorthodox as the food was, the two girls sat and ate it ravenously, not even noticing that Manny had left them alone.
   They were about half way finished their coffee when Mark entered and sat down at a third chair.
   "Okay," he said. "Break-time's over. And you've passed your screen tests. Now we begin the real film-making."
   "What the hell have we been doing then?" April asked.
   "Making a couple of bread-and-butter films. The ones that may bring in good bucks from frantic fathers, but can always be copied and sold to an even more selective market. In either case, they bring in cash for cameras and videotape and house-rentals and all the stuff we need to make the real money-makers. Short films with just enough plot to hang a hot sex scene on. Or a Male Dom, Fem Dom or what have you."
   "Which'll it be today, Boss?" Carol asked, coming into the "Kitchen" and sitting in the fourtth chair.
   "I figure from the stuff we found in their lockers, a Girl-Girl would be good for starters."
   "Great!" Carol grinned lasciviously. "Love them. Lots of tongue and snatch."
   "Then get the lights and cameras ready next door," Mark said.
   "I'm way ahead of you. Set's all ready, cameras ready to shoot."
   "You're a wonder!" Mark leaned over and kissed the black-haired girl on the cheek.
   "That's why you love me." Carol rose and walked around the end of the phony wall wirh Manny glaring after her.
   "Well, ready to start?" Mark asked.
   "Do we have a choice?" April muttered bitterly.
   "Right," Mark smiled. "Here's your lines. Karen says 'I just love these sleepovers, don't you, babe?' and April answers, 'Yeah. When are your parents expected back?' Then Karen says, 'Not 'till tomorrow afternoon.'"
   "And I say 'Then we've got all night,' right?"
   "Right! And that suggestive tone..."
   "What's wrong with it?"
   "Nothing, April, it's perfect."
   "But Karen wouldn't call me 'babe.' That's a man's word. 'Doll,' maybe"
   "Make it 'doll.' Then, since, you know so much, April, what do you do after you say the bit about we've got all night?"
   "I get up, take Karen by the hand and lead her into the bedroom."
   "Maybe you should be directing this," Mark laughed.
   "Maybe I should. For instance, what are we doing sitting here in our nothings? We'd hardly be having coffee naked even considering what we had in mind for later."
   "How would a man's pj's do?"
   "Perfect!" April nodded. "I'll take the tops."
   "No, you've got the bigger boobs. Karen's are fine for a model, but this is sex we're selling not cereal. She gets the tops. Manny!" 
   "Just happen to have a pair right here," Manny grinned smugly.
   "What made you...?"
   "Hey, I'm only twenty! I remember over-nighters as we used to call them. Get dressed girls. And here, Karen, I'll take that collar off. Don't want you to look as if April picked you up at the pound."
   It was all so light-hearted that April couldn't help finding it ironic. What they were talking about was her and Karen being coerced into a lesbian scene to be filmed and sold to Stag Parties and other sleazy markets. 
   Well, who was it said, "When rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it?" Not her mother certainly. 
   She took Karen's hand and led the reluctant girl out of the kitchen, thinking that it was no wonder that Karen was hesitant. April had made love to a woman before - though only once - but Karen, she knew, was a complete neophyte. Mark didn't know it, but she really was going to have to be the Director this morning.
   -----
   The other half of the Green Room had been set up as a bedroom with a real double bed, a thick mattress, sheets, pillows, even a duvet - Carol's cameras being cleverly hidden in the shadows beyond the subdued light that fell on the bed.
   What had been a stage for torture yesterday was now transformed into a scene for lesbian loving. 
   God, April thought, was the whole world this phony?
   "You're on your own, girls. Sleepover. Action!" Mark said from the darkness.
   April threw herself on top of the duvet, relishing the silkiness of the material on her still-tender back, and held out her hand to Karen.
   "Come to me, doll," she purred. "Kiss Mama's breasts like you still love her."
   Karen was surprisingly quick on the uptake. Of course, she and April had worked together often doing improvisations in Drama Class and they were pretty sensitive to each other's clues.
   "Oh, but I do love you, Big Mama," she breathed, crawling onto the bed beside April. "I only went out with Rory because he's the son of Dad's best friend."
   "But to the Spring Prom?" April whined.
   "What'd you want me to do? Sit with you and watch TV?" 
   "And fuck, dammit! Did you and Rory fuck?"
   "Mama, you know we didn't! You know I save myself for you," Karen pleaded.
   "Enough talk. Get to the action," Mark's voice muttered from the darkness.
   "Then pull my pants down and suck me off, you whore!" April growled hoarsely.
   Karen's fingers worked the pyjama bottoms down over April's hips and April kicked her legs until the material flew across the room.
   "Now, bitch!" she snapped at Karen. 
   And Karen's head dove into the pussy April and she had shaved the night before the last exam.
   For a first time tasting another girl's pussy, Karen seemed to be enjoying it, April thought. At least, her lips were sucking on April's clitty with enthusiasm and her tongue was flicking back and forth across April's labia as if she'd done this for years.
   "You...you been holding...something back on me, bitch?" she gasped.
   Karen raised her head. 
   "What's the matter?" she asked.
   "Nothing's the matter. You're doing just fine. Just...just don't stop! Aaahhhhhnnn!" April moaned. "Stick your tongue up my hole! Yeah! Waggle it around! Oh, Christ, yeaaahhh!"
   "Can you do me, Ap...Mama?" Karen panted, her excitemnt almost causing her to forget the names they had adopted.
   "Sure, doll.But get that top off first. I want to suck your tit."
   "Be careful," Karen warned her. "One of them's still sore...where you bit it yesterday,"
   "I'll be gentle as a butterfly," April promised.
   And she was too. April's lips and tongue fluttered over Karen's nipples before they began a cross-country journey down the hills of her breasts, over the foothills of her ribs, across the plain of her flat belly, and up the rise of her clean-shaven pubic mound, concluding with a dive into the sweet abyss of her pussy.
   The cleft was redolent with the musk of Karen's sex already, so it was not long, under the ministrations of April's tongue, before her labia were soaked with her pre-cum and her belly was heaving up against April's mouth. 
   "God, I wish we had a dildo!" April raised her head and gasped. "Oh, God, my fucking kingdom for a dildo!"
   "Under the pillows," Mark's voice said from the darkness.
   April's hand dug frantically under the pillows and emerged with an eighteen-inch black silicone double-ended dildo.
   "Jesus, the amswer to a maiden's prayer," she gasped.
   "Not a maiden's, a whore's," Mark laughed.
   But April wasn't listening. 
   "Turn around and put one leg over one of mine," she told Karen.
   Quickly, almost frantically, Karen obeyed.
   "See how that brings our cunts just a few inches apart?" April continued. "Okay. Now, you take this and insert one end up my snatch a few inches. Yeaaaahhh, that's good. Oh, shit, that's good! Now, I'm going to inch my hips forward until the other end is touching your pussy lips and you hold it there, gingerly. Just steadying it and aiming it right at your dripping hole. Yeah. Be ready for, when I say 'Now,' I want you to let go of the dildo and keep your snatch right where it is. Ready? Now!"
   Then, as Karen loosed her grip on the dildo, April shoved her hips at Karen's, driving the flexible silicone shaft deep up both their pussies.
   "Aaaaahhhhhhnnnnn!!" they cried out simultaneously.
   Instinctively now, they both began to grind their hips around, making the dildo move inside them and across their clits, while they grunted and panted virtually in unison,
   "Ohhhhgawwwhhd! Ohhhh...sheeeeiit! Ohhhhhgawhhhhh!!"
   with mounting speed and intensity.
   Karen came first, howling her orgasm out in an inarticulate babble of sound and collapsing back on the mattress in a limp heap. Which left April to writhe her hips against her friend's almost insensate pussy, panting obscenities for another maybe ten minutes before her belly tightened and her throat constricted and she convulsed into the biggest climax she had ever imagined was humanly possible.
   It was so mind-numbing, in fact, that she didn't know if he had cried out with it or not.
   She even lost track of how long she lay there listening to Carol, Manny and Mark talking about this morning's tape as they reviewed it.
   "Jeez, that little brunette's really a knockout when she's in heat!" That was Mark and April could almost see him drooling.
   "Yeah, it's kind of a pity we'll only have her for a short time." Carol sounded distinctly more cool toward April.
   "I mean, the blonde strikes you right away with that long hair," Mark was continuing. "But, if you really look at her, she doesn't have much of a figure."
   "I guess not. Nice eyes, though." Carol sounded more favorably disposed to Karen than April.
   "Eyes-schmeyes! These are sex videos. You see the hooters on the brunette, Carr?. How the nipples stick up when she's excited? Look, there! And those lips and that tongue! Doesn't it just make your balls ache to think of that tongue lapping at them?"
   "Actually, no. But then my balls have never ached that much."
   "But look at them!"
   "I see them."
   "Nice. Real nice." April was sure Mark was drooling now. "You know, what I think? Next tape, I should fuck her."
   "Can we make it a Threezie? You me and her.Threezies sell well."
   "Maybe, after I've had her to myself. I've really got to feel that pussy wrapped around my cock."
   "I still think a Threezie would be better."
   "Hey, let's make a division between sheer business and pleasure," Mark protested.
   "Then you don't need me to film it."
   "But I do. Boy-Girl still sells."
   "I'd rather not..."
   "Look, bitch. I say shoot it, you shoot it! Okay?"
   "Okay, okay. Can't I be allowed a little jealousy?"
   "You? Jealous? Well, let me tell you, you're right to feel that. She's a real cutie, that April, and a damn good fuck from what I've seen. Jeez, those hips!"
   "Oh, just jerk yourself off and shut up about her!"
   April heard the door to the Green Room slam as Carol stormed out.
   Maybe that jealousy can be used too, she was thinking. In fact, she was collecting quite a bit of amunition to use against the three of them. Now what she mostly needed was an occasion to act as a gun.
   But absolutely first on her agenda, April knew, was to give Mark the best damn fuck he'd ever had.  
   CHAPTER FOUR
   April's chance to put that agenda item into practice came sooner than she could have expected. After an unusually quiet day where they were told they'd be left alone while Carol and Mark edited this morning's tape, the girls were fed a take-out supper of Chinese food and taken to their separate cells again for the night.
   However, on entering hers, April found that, instead of just one thin mattress, the bed had now been furnished with a couple of thick pillows, two clean sheets and a heavy wool blanket. She was too tired, however, to give this change much thought but simply relieved herself in the toilet, flushed, washed herself as best she could in the cold  water from the toilet bowl and crawled under the sheets, savouring the crispness of the linen on her still sex-sensitized nipples. 
   God, she thought, she'd never realized how much sex could turn a person on. Take right now, for instance. Despite her physical tiredness, she felt more alive, more vibrant - yes, that was the word - than she ever remembered feeling in her whole life.
   And mostly because of a foot or so of flexible plastic! God, what would a real cock be like?
   April only had about twenty minutes to lie there before she heard the key turn in the lock of her door and Mark came in carrying a roll of one-inch duct tape.
   Instinctively, she wrapped the sheet around her nakedness as she sat up.
   "What's the duct tape for?" she asked.
   "Because I'm going to fuck your brains out," Mark said huskily.
   That's when she noticed the bulge in his crotch.
   "You don't need to tie me up to fuck me," April said, allowing the sheet to fall around her waist.
   Mark seemed more than a little non-plussed by that response.
   "I...I don't?" he stammered.
   "No, I want you to fuck me. Ever since you took that mask off and I saw your face, I've wanted you to fuck me. And, if I could just see your naked body, I know I'd want it even more."
   "Jeez, I was right," Mark said. "You really are one hot bitch."
   "Come here and let me take your shirt off," April said softly.
   Mark was obedient as a lap dog. He moved to stand right in front of her as her fingers slowly undid the buttons of his sport shirt. Then she took the two sides of the open shirt and pulled him to his knees in front of  her, letting little kisses follow a line up his chest as he sank down. 
   Finally, his face was right in front of hers and she put a hand around his neck and drew his head forward 'til his lips crushed against hers. 
   Quickly parting her lips and teeth, April now shoved her tongue into Mark's mouth to do battle with the tip of his.
   "Ohhh...gawwwwhhhh..." he moaned.
   But it was not a protest. April rather thought it was more an admission of defeat. For from that point on, everything that happened was dictated by her.
   Their mouths still locked, April stood up and they turned around. Then she sat him down on the bed and slowly removed his trousers and undershorts, her hand straying, as if absractedly to rest on the shaft of his hard cock.
   "Mmmm...nice..." she said, appraising it. "Bet it tastes good too."
   And without waiting to be invited to a Cock Supper, she now went down on her knees, took the engorged head between her lips and began licking around it.
   "Oh...oh...jeeez!" Mark moaned.
   After a few moments, she began to tire of this and began to lick him slowly from the base of his cock to its head, pausing at the bottom to take his balls into her mouth and roll them around her tongue. At the top end, she again engulfed the swollen head and sucked at the drops of pre-cum that were starting to form. 
   And all the while she was thinking,
   "I must seem experienced to Mark. But most of this I got from the films Dad bought after Mum died."
   Those films were forbidden fruit, of course. But right now they might be saving her life. 
   Finally, when she judged she'd better stop or Mark would come in her mouth, April raised her head and breathed,
   "Now you...you eat my pussy."
   Mark was so excited now he flung her on her back, dove between her legs and started licking hard at her labia and chewing at her clitoris, taking it between his teeth and pulling on it.
   "Aaaaghh!" April howled. "Not so hard! Leave something for a main course!"
   And Mark, chastised, began to lick her more gently and tongue the inner walls of her pussy with loving strokes.
   Then, slowly at first, but increasing as he lapped her more, she felt that tightness in her belly comng on.
   "Hurry!" she urged. "Get your cock into me quick before I come!"
   And Mark leapt to his knees, grabbed her hips and impaled her on his weapon.
   For maybe a minute he pounded into her, harder and harder, deeper and deeper, until, just as he reached a depth of her vagina she didn't know she possibly could have,  Mark froze, grunted something unintelligible, and fired one, two, three volleys of hot cum into her belly.
   He pulled out immediately and rolled off her, looking down at her in awe.
   And she decided to add an epilogue to the play.
   Slowly she spread her legs, raised her hips and slipped an arm under her buttocks. Then, squeezing her vaginal muscles, she forced a good ounce of his milky cum to drip into her palm.
   "Ohhhh...I can feel it dripping out," she moaned in ecstasy. "It feels so goooohhhhd!"
   And she slipped the hand out from under her and sat up, holding his cum out to him.
   "Want some?" she purred. "No? Okay, then, all the more for me."
   And she licked the sticky goo off her palm and swallowed it.
   "Jesus," Mark breathed, "I've got to find some way to keep you around."
   April lay down on her bed.
   "I'm sure you will, Boss Man," she said softly. "Goodnight."
   -----
   In the morning, Mark was nowhere to be seen - Manny said he'd gone to town for more videotapes - and Carol was in the foulest mood in which Karen and April had ever seen her. Karen had no inkling why, but April figured she'd somehow found out about Marl's visit to her in the night.
   "All right, you bitches," she said as she greeted them in the Drawing Room as Manny fed them a breakfast of black coffee. "I think today in Mark's absence we'll do a Les-Dom tape. That's a female Domme teaching one or more girl slaves to obey. I've been showing Manny the camera angles I want. So guess who gets to play the Domme."
   April looked at her, dressed in a short, black leather tunic and high-heeled black leather boots and hazarded a wild guess.
   "You do," she said.
   Carol smacked her across the cheek with the back of her hand.
   "You say 'Yes, Mistress,' or, in this case, 'You do, Mistress' from now on!" Carol snapped.
   "Yes, Mistress," April said, feeling her cheek to see if one of Carol's knuckles had cut it.
   "It's not cut, if that's what you're worried about. That is, it's not cut yet. You'll probably have several cuts and such before the day's out, though. You see, I train my slaves with this."
   She held out a leather whip with six slender lashes.
   "A six-tailed cat. Cuts like hell, hurts like hell, and and the cuts are so deep they usually get infected. You don't want too many strokes with this, do you?"
   "No, Mistress," both girls said.
   "Good. Put them both in those dog collars with leashes. I'll lead them in on all fours and have them squat beside me in the big arm chair on the platform. It's the closest we've got to a throne. Start the shot as we come in Manny, pan with us over to the arm  chair and don't stop 'til I say so."
   "Gotcha."
   Carol dragged the girls, scrambling on their knees, over to the door.
   "Okay, action!" she commanded. 
   The camera whirred and Carol started her slow progress toward the big chair, the two naked girls scuffling along on their knees beside her. Once they had mounted the platform, Carol sat and motioned the two girls to take a place beside her on the floor. They squatted like dogs, their arms between their knees, on feet and hands, which seemed to please their Mistress.
   "Now," she said, "April sit up and beg."
   April tried to adopt a pose that looked like a begging dog.
   But the bent whip came swatting across her breasts, almost knocking her over.
   "Ungainly mutt!" Carol spat. "Show her, Karen."
   Karen perched on her haunches and balanced precariously there.
   "Good dog," Carol said. "Now, Karen, eat my pussy."
   "What?"
   "I saw you doing it this morning. Now eat it like a dog."
   "I...I can't..." Karen stammered in a mixture of disgust and terror.
   And all six lashes of Carol's whip slashed down upon her back, causing six long welts to blossom on her skin, four of which began immediately to ooze blood.
   "Aaaaiiihhhnnn," Karen moaned.
   "You never say 'I can't' to me or  'I wont.' That just means, 'Please whip me, Mistress.' Say it."
   "Wh...what...?" Karen sobbed. 
   "'Please whip me, Mistress.' Say it!"
   "P...please whip me, Mistress."
   "Certainly slave."
   And Carol brought a second set of lashes streaking across Karen's back.
   Dazed by the pain, Karen slumped to the floor without a sound.
   "You get that on tape, Manny?" Carol asked her off-camera technician.
   "Every second of it."
   "Good. Copy that much and send it to her Daddy. And put her to bed.  But leave another camera for me. Little Angel April and I have some business to take care of."
   All was silence as Manny helped Karen to her feet and out of the Drawing Room. Then Carol rose and dragged April with her on her leash, picking up a camera on the way.
   She led April down to the Green Room where the rack had been set up again and used the leash to hang her by the neck from the top bar while she fixed the manacles on her wrists and ankles. Then she loosed the leash and used it to tie April's hair up on top of her head.
   "Now," she said, "I'm going to say 'Action' for your Swan Song, baby. 'Cause it's going to show me beating you with the cat until there's no skin on your back, butt, belly or breasts. Sooner or later, you'll be dead. Your only hope is that it's sooner, 'cause I plan to finish you tonight."
   "But why? Why do I deserve this?" April sobbed.
   "Because you fucked Mark, damn you! And the bastard liked it. Said you were a better lay than me!"
   "So which is it?" April spat, fear giving rise to anger. "That I fucked him? Or that he liked me better?"
   "Aaaaaaghhh! Fuck you, bitch!" Carol screeched hysterically.
   April shut her eyes tight as the cat o' six tails came slashing across her breasts and belly.
   -----
   She awoke moaning,
   "Ohhhh...the pain...the fucking pain..."
   "It's all right," Mark's voice said soothingly. "She only hit you once before I stopped her. I've got her sedated now and tied down to her bed until we see if she's finally gone off the deep end."
   "But my breasts..."
   "She was literally blind with anger. Only one or two straps hit you at all and they just grazed. Your left breast is scraped but the skin's not broken. Your friend, Karen, is a different case, however."
   "What...what do you mean?"
   "She's had twelve really long, deep, nasty cuts on the back. Manny can't get them to stop bleeding. I'm afraid she's useless to us now."
   "What...does that...mean?" April asked, a terrible fear beginning to form a knot in her stomach.
   Mark shrugged.
   "For your sake, we'll see she has the best burial we can give her," he said.
   CHAPTER FIVE
   "But why did Carol have to use that whip on Karen?" April sobbed, as the enormity of the situation began to dawn on her. "It was me she was mad at."
   "I expect it was to scare you by showing you what she was going to do to you," Mark replied. "That whip's a killer. I mean it."
   "Then why do you use it?"
   "For show. In shooting a tape, we show someone - usually me - hauling back with it, and then cut to a close-up of the girl's face as she gets hit with something else. It's phony but visually effective."
   "Please, can I see Karen?" April's concern now centred on her friend. "I've had a Saint John's Course. Maybe I can so something."
   "She's beyond  Saint John," Mark said. "Believe me, it'd be better if you never saw your friend again. Besides, she'so crazy with fever she'd never recognize you."
   "I'd still like to see her," April insisted.
   Mark shrugged.
   "Have it your way," he said.
   -----
   They had put a clean sheet and a pillow on Karen's tiny bed and laid her on her stomach, tying her hands and feet to the bed-legs sho that she would move too much and open up the few cuts that had begun to heal. Her back was a patchwork of bandages, most of which were stained with blood, and the sheet was already spotted with it.
   Manny was in the process of changing a dressing as they entered and Karen was conscious enough to feel that pain for she moaned.
   "How is she?" Mark asked, for April could find no voice to speak 
   "Come look," Manny answered. "They're all like this...and getting worse."
   In spite of herself, April found herself peeking over Mark's shoulder at Karen's back.
   The lesion Manny had uncovered was about ten inches long and April could see it was both deep and badly infected. It was bright red and puffy all around it, and little globules of puss oozed up out of it as she watched.
   "How's her fever?" Mark asked.
   "Hundred and three and going up," Manny nodded. "I've quit even trying to get it to break."
   "She'll fry her brains soon," Mark nodded. "She'll be just a vegetable."
   "For God's sake, let me try..." April sobbed, lunging forward.
   But Mark grabbed her by the arm. 
   "You've seen her. You know in your heart you can't do anything. Nobody can. Face it, you're alone now, Doll."
   And he led a sobbing April back to her room and locked her in.
   -----
   April never saw Karen again, never knew exactly what happened to her. Manny said she'd died peacefully in her sleep and Mark had taken her body somewhere and buried it. But April's recurring dream said otherwise.
   In it, she became Karen and she was awakened from a feverish sleep by the sound of Carol's voice.
   "So, they say you're going to live," it was sneering and she rolled on her side to see Carol standing naked just inside her door with the six-tailed whip in her hand. 
   For a moment, then, she seemed to confuse April and Karen's identities. 
   "I'll teach you to fuck Mark," she snarled.
   "I...I didn't fuck Mark," she protested. "That was April!"
   "Dammit, it was you! And you're going to pay for that!" Carol gave a hyena howl and swung the whip at Karen.
   Karen/April tried to roll away, but she ended up on her murderously painful back, jammed in against the wall. 
   And Carol brought the vicious leather weapon down again and again on Karen/April's breasts and thighs and belly, more than once sweeping upwards to lacerate her pussy.
   Karen/April screamed and whimpered and howled for help but no one came.
   It just went on and on in a mounting fury of agony until, abruptly, she awoke, huddled against the wall, sweating in remembered agony...and knowing two things as absolutely certain.
   She was going to get out of here.
   And she was going to kill Carol...and, most likely, that bastard, Mark, too.
   -----
   And then, the morning after Karen vanished, there was a new face in the "Kitchen" of the Green Room.
   She was a tiny Oriental with big, dark almond-shaped eyes, long glossy black hair, tiny, perfect breasts and the most beautiful oval face April had ever seen. 
   "April, this is May Lin," Mark said, handing her a paper cup of coffee. "May's father is a well-to-do Hong Kong businessman. We expect great things from her. However, she just joined us last night and needs to know the rules. So I'm going to leave that up to you."
   "Surely that's your job," April said.
   "Normally, yes. But, with Carol...indisposed...I have to show Manny how to run the Mixer for the cameras."
   "How is Carol?" April asked, not hoping she was better exactly but wanting news that she was still around. After all, you couldn't kill someone who'd already died.
   "She's out of bed," Mark said, "but I still don't dare let her out of her room. Not for your sake. Every time I bring her food tray in I find her, still babbling about me fucking you." 
   He laughed wryly. 
   "Little does she know it was the other way around. Jeez I wish I had that on tape! Maybe next time, I'll have a camera. God, I van still see my cum dripping out of your pussy! Anyway, the point is, you're the only one we've got to show May Lin the ropes. Oh, yes, and you'll have to help us make the first tape for Papa-san."
   "By doing what?"
   "I'll show you once we're ready next door. C'mon, Manny."
   The two rose, walked around the end of the fake wall and left April and May Lin alone. 
   And there was a long pause.
   "Well...." the Oriental asked at last. "What's the first rule?"
   "I guess that'd be 'Don't try to escape until we've made a plan we're sure will work,'" April said.
   "And is there a second rule?"
   "Yeah. It's 'Obey whatever Mark or Manny say and do it quick and without questioning.'"
   "And a third?"
   "Only if Carol ever gets out of her room. She's a tall girl with hair like yours and the kind of dark eyes that seem to bore right through you. And she's looney-toons, crazy, psychotic. She...she whipped a friend of mine to death."
   April stumbled mentally every time she had to think of Karen.
   "No!"
   "Yes, she did. So, if your Papa-san values your life, he'd better send them however much they want fast."
   She couldn't bring herself right now to tell May that it didn't matter how quick Papa-san was, she was doomed for her short life to be a Porn Starlet on Demand.
   Unless the information she had gathered already on the relationships between Mark, Carol and Manny could somehow be used...
   "Ready in here!" Mark's voice called from next door.
   As they rose, April clutched the little Oriental's hand.
   "I know it's a terrifying moment for you, May," she said earnestly. "Believe me, it is for me too. Whatever I have to do, please understand that it will be my first time."
   "Mine too," May nodded.
   And her big eyes brimmed with tears.
   -----
   The other half of the Greeen Room was bare of everything but the Rack and its assortment of whips and the moment May saw it she began to shake like a poplar leaf.
   "My father told me about rooms like this," she whispered. "The Mainland Chinese used them for interrogations. My father's back is still scarred from one of those 'Interrogations.'"
   "We will not scar you," April promised, hoping she was not lying.
   "What do I do now?" she asked the shadows around the pool of light that bathed the Rack.
   "Shackle her wrists to the manacles and tie he hair up to the cross bar so it's off her back," Mark's voice answered.
   April led the docile girl over to the Rack and bound her as she'd been told.
   "Now what?" she asked.
   "Pick out the inch-wide strap. You know the one."
   April certainly did. She held it out in the direction of the voice.
   "Here you are."
   "No," Mark said. "Don't you understand? Manny needs me here. You whip her."
   April's jaw dropped in shock.
   "I...I can't..." she stammered.
   "Yes, you can. You both can and will." Mark's voice was totally emotionless. "Now, when I say 'Action,' start. And count. A blow every five seconds. Six strokes in all. Thirty seconds of tape. Then she reads her message to Papa-san. The whole thing should run one minute."
   "But I...I can't..." April protested again.
   "Get behind her. Yes, right there, but a bit to the left so we can see her back. There. Don't move your feet except to step forward as you swing. Ready? Action!"
   April swung limply and the strap carressed May Lin's olive skin.
   Even then, she convulsed and a small whimper escaped her lips.
   "Jesus! Stop tape! You call that whipping her?" Mark cursed.
   "You do it then!" April shouted, walking away.
   "No, you're going to fucking do it!" Mark snapped back."Tell you what. It's still six strokes - that first love-tap doesn't count. And for each one I think is not hard enough, I'll give you two that I think are twice as hard. Deal, April? Whip her right or I'll whip you double-double. Now take your position again. Ready? Action!"
   April planted her bare feet and drew back the inch-wide strap. Then she stepped and swung the whip forward in a hissing arc. It struck May with a hard smack just below her shoulder blades. Then there was a moment's pause - which Apil well understood -  before the girl reacted.
   April watched fascinated as May's head flew back, yanking on her hair, and her back jerked forward as the delayed shocks of pain burned over her.
   "Aaaaaiiiiigawwwhhh!" she yelped as a bright red welt blossomed on her smooth olive skin.
   "One," Mark said from the shadows. "Better."
   And April suddenly had the weirdest feeling come over her.
   It was kind of like excitement, but even more like...something that had no name as yet. She just knew her belly was in a tight knot as she drew her arm back, counted five and swung again.
   This time the whip slashed across May Lin's tiny buttocks and her cry was almost instantaneous.
   "Aiiiiiiieeeeegawhhh! P...P...please, no more!" the Oriental sobbed.
   "Three!" April grunted through clenched teeth, the knot in her gut expanding so that her heart started to pound with a wild exhilaration.
   And the whip caught May Lin on the side of her right breast and curled around her body. April saw the red swelling rise on the rounded flesh.
   "AAAhhhhhnnnnn!" the girl moaned with what little voice she had.
   "Scream, damn you!" April hissed. "Scream for mercy!"
   And she swung again so that the whip raised an ugly welt across both of May Lin's thighs.
   "Aaaaaaiiiiiiieeeee! Merceeeeee!!" the girl screeched.
   "Sorry," April said, suddenly feeling anything but. "Two more to go, bitch!"
   Across the back again, overlapping the first and turning that welt a darker red.
   April watched in a gruesome  fascination as the empurpled area began to ooze little drops of blood. She bet if she aimed one more right on that spot.
   Yes!! The lash nearly opened up the skin into a full-blown lesion. One more then...
   "That's six. April stop! For Chrissakes, stop!" Mark's voice drifted through the darkness of her mind. 
   Must open May Lin's back right up...must...
   Then someone slapped her face hard and she was standing there, the whip hanging limply in her hand, breathing in harsh gasps, her heart still beating wildly as if with the wonderful exhliaration of coming down from a horrendous orgasm..
   "God, is she all right?" she asked Mark.
   "Yes.  Don't worry. She'll be all right. Manny's got her and the cut's not deep. She'll put her to bed and she can do her message to Papa-san tomorrow."
   He looked deep into her eyes.
   "It got to you, didn't it?" he said.
   "S...something did," April shook her head to clear it. "I don't know what."
   "I do," Mark said.
   "What was it, then?"
   "The feeling of power. The feeling that you were the only one who could control another person's life. Who could make her feel pain. As much pain as you wanted. Even kill her if you chose to."
   "God, yes," April gasped. "That's it exactly. That's exactly what I was feeling."
   "You know what that makes you, don't you?" Mark asked.
   "Sick, I guess. Sick in the head?" April guessed.
   "No, it's quite normal for the one with the whip to feel that way. Guess again. What does it make you?"
   "I...I don't know."
   "It makes you one of us," Mark said. 
   "And just in time, bitch," Carol's snarking voice jarred them.
   "Carol!" April gasped.
   "How...how did you get out of your room?" Mark stammered in surprise.
   "Broke a panel in the door," Carol shrugged as if it were nothing. 
   She showed him her bleeding knuckles.
   "Wh...what did you mean by 'just in time?'" April stuttered uneasily.
   "Because, if you are one of us, that means I can fight you as an equal," Carol sneered. "Oh, it would be easy to hang you from that rack and take your flesh apart. But that is the victory of the Mistress over her slave. And that's no victory at all. There's no honour in it. Much better we fight for Mark's cock as equals."
   "I hope I never ever lower myself to be your equal," April answered back. "But I will fight you on equal terms for my right not to be your slave."
   "I get to set the rules," Carol said.
   "If it is to be equal, Mark must set the rules," April insisted.
   "Mark already is biased," Carol snorted. "And that bias favours you."
   "Then we both must set the rules," April suggested.
   "Three each," Carol said.
   "That's fair."
   "We fight here, in this room, with the rack and all the other stuff stored away," Carol said.
   "Accepted. We must both fight naked, so there can be no hidden weapons," April suggested.
   "Done. And the fight is to the death," Carol said.
   There was a moment's pause before April said,
   "Done. We each get a choice of one weapon."
   "Agreed. So the final rule is our choice of weapon. No two the same."
   "You challenge," April said. "Go ahead."
   "The cat o' six tails." Carol grinned superciliously.
   Though she was quaking inside, April tried to show an outward calm as she walked over to the rack of whips and took her time examining them. 
   "This one," she said at last.
   And she held out a nine-foot bullwhip.
   "Tomorrow morning at nine sharp," Mark said. "Manny, make sure all cameras are loaded."
   "Gotcha, Boss Man."
   CHAPTER SIX.
   "She'll take you apart with that cat," May Lin said, sitting up in bed and sipping some consommé April had brought her. 
   "Why should you care? I almost did the same to you," April asked.
   "All that's left now is a little scrape. Manny is a miracle worker. My back feels fine."
   "God, I'm really glad. You know, you probably won't believe that I'm really sorry that I hurt you. In fact, I think I was sorry even while I was whipping you. That's crazy, isn't it?"
   "Maybe not as crazy as what I was thinking even while you were beating the shit out of me with that strap."
   "What do you mean?" April asked.
   "I was thinking, even while I was screamng blue murder...'I hope she doesn't stop.'"
   There was a long silence while April took that revelation in and tried to make sense out of it. Finally, she asked slowly,
   "You...actually...liked...being whipped?" 
   "I...more than liked it," May Lin's dark eyes probed deep into April's. "In a crazy sort of way, I needed it. I even had a climax..."
   Her tiny fingers cupped April's chin and her lips moved to within an inch of April's.
   "So, please don't ask me to forgive you," she breathed. "I've done that long ago. Ask instead if I could ever love you, even love you beating me."
   "And...could you?" April asked.
   "April...I already do," May answered.
   "We're some pair." April shook her head in disbelief. "I get an orgasm whipping you and you get off on being whipped by me."
   "So please get this business with Carol done with and hurry back," May Lin whispered. "Then I'll show you how to make love to a woman."
   And their lips met softly.
   The Green Room had been stripped of everything but the camcorders that lurked in the shadows and the black curtain behind which Mark and Manny operated the monitors and Mixer. The pool of light in the centre was about twice its normal size now, roughly delineating the limits of the area within which the Duel to the Death was to be fought. On one side, April stood, stark naked, the bullwhip coiled in one hand.
   She stood proudly, not merely as a show of bravado, but also because she suspected her opponent had little idea of her strengths. The rigorous dancing practise that had gone into the playing of Aldonza in Man of La Mancha had made her quick on her feet and given her good strong legs. Also, the Director of the production had decided that a logical prop for the character was a bullwhip, much like this one, so she had some experience in using it as well as the upper body strength needed to wield it effectively.
   Deliberately choosing to be a few minutes late, Carol now made her entrance into the pool of light, carrying her cat o' six and naked but for her knee-length, high-heeled black leather boots.
   "The Rule was 'naked,'" April reminded her.
   "Footwear is not clothing," Carol sneered.
   "Then those heels are two more weapons," April pointed out.
   "Mark?" Carol appealed to the darkness.
   "Take them off, Carol," Mark said impatiently. 
   Carol sighed and pulled them off, putting them down just beyond the circle of light.
   Stand at the edge of the light. When I say 'Action,' the fight begins," Mark said. "Then, you'll hear nothing more from me until one of you is dead."
   "Good," Carol sneered. "I wouldn't want to be distracted from the pleasure of flaying the whore."
   "Action!" Mark snapped.
   With the nine-foot whip, April's greatest advantage was reach, and she put that to use immediately. He drew her arm swiftly back and then swung forward, uncoiling the leather snake. Then a quick flick of her wrist made its tip snap across Carol's right breast, drawing a sudden trickle of blood from the nipple.
   Carol looked down at her breast in surprise, giving April another chance to swing unimpeded. And again the long, black snake hissed through the air and bit a slice just of flesh from just under the first wound.  
   Carol staggered back a bit and April decided to press her advantage. She stepped forward and swung again.
   But this time Carol was ready. Her left arm flew out in front of her and bullwhip coiled around its wrist. Suddenly, Carol was planted on two feet while April teetered off balance. 
   Thus, Carol hauled April toward her and, before April could protect herself, the short, lethal whip lashed across her ribs, raising half a dozen angry red welts.
   At the close quarters, April realized, the bullwhip was useless against the cat. Carol was going to make flayed meat out of her within minutes.
   Unless...
   Swiftly, she wound the whip counter-clockwise, freeing it from Carol's wrist and leapt back out of the way of the flailing cat.
   This now put Carol off balance and she straggered forward...to meet the bullwhip on its return journey.
   The long lash coiled around her neck and Carol gasped for air.
   "Gahhhh! Gahhh!" she gagged, dropping the cat and clawing at the thing around her throat.
   Then April stepped back again and yanked on her whip. 
   Carol's head flew back.
   There was an audible crack.
   And Carol slumped to the floor and lay there, her eyes staring blindly at the ceiling, her swollen, purple tongue lolling from her open mouth.
   Manny rushed out from behind the curtain and bent over Carol.
   "End of match," she said flatly.
   And April turned away, retching violently.
   -----
   "You did it! You killed her!" May Lin greeted April with a joy bordering on hysteria, her black-eyes sparkling with excitement.
   "Yes, and I hate myself for it," April replied, listlessly. "It was terrible." 
   "You'll get used to it," the Oriental promised.
   April searched her dark eyes intently.
   "You can't possibly mean that," she said.
   May Lin took April's hands in hers.
   "Oh, but I do," she said earnestly. Then she sighed deeply. "I see I have to tell you quite a bit about me that none of you know. And for now, I'd like what I'm about to say to stay between us."
   "Of course," April promised.
   "Okay. In the first place, I don't think Mark has got a snowball's chance of extorting one cent out of my real father, the Hong Kong tycoon. He disowned me a year ago."
   "For God's sake, why?"
   "He didn't like the company I was keeping. You know, back-street bars that were mostly fronts for BDSM Parlors. That's where I came to know what love meant to me. I suppose I could've drifted into that life, earning enough to pay my way by selling my body on the Open Market - that's the Street, to you. But my real Daddy had spoiled me in one way. He'd given me a taste for the Good Life. Posh digs. Gourmet Food. The best wine. A Corner Hooker doesn't get much of that. And, besides, the johns who go for whips and manacles are as likely to kill you as pay you. Not my style. Pain, great. A real turn-on. Death, the ultimate turn-off? Uh-uh." 
   May Lin shook her head to emphasize her point.
   "Anyway, I took the High Road. I applied to a Chi-chi Model Agency I knew was just a high-priced Call-Girl outfit in disguise. And I interviewed by screwing the balls off the boss. He hired me right there in his bed."
   May Lin chuckled at the memory while April merely shook her head in wonder at the startling revelations pouring from this innocent face.
   "I worked quite lucratively at the Agency for almost a year, and then I met Ho San He was...another sort of businessman, shall we say? Not quite on the right side of the law. He was also into BDSM and when he discovered that I got off on pain, he and I became an item. I left the agency and moved into his really posh penthouse, purely as his plaything at first. But then, one night, Ho and a colleague were discussing a third man who was trying to muscle in on one of Ho's best markets.
   "'He's got to be disposed of,' the colleague said.
   "'But neither you nor I can do it,' Ho pointed out. 'The police would be down on our necks within hours.'
   "'Of course, they would never suspect a girl with a face as innocent as mine,' I said.
   "'Are you suggesting you could kill him?' Ho said, his jaw dropping. "You've never killed.'
   "And I shrugged.
   "'There is always a first time,' I said.
   "So the man was invited to a party where I made an obvious and unrefusable play for him. And, to make the story short, we went to bed, where I had hidden a length of rope under the pillow. Then, just as we both came, I garrotted him."
   "And it didn't sicken you?" April asked.
   "Oh, it bothered me a bit to watch him die. It took longer than I thought it would. But I was able to shake the feeling off and go back to the party."
   "You sound terribly cold-blooded."
   "Not at all. The idea of killing still sickens me to this day. But when it has to be done, you just do it. In the case I just told you about, it was part of my job. In your case, it was self-defense. But in neither case does the motive really matter. You just learn to enjoy what must be done."
   "You've killed more than once then?"
   "Sure. Maybe a dozen times. Tell you the truth, I've lost count."
   "Jesus!
   "But now we've got a more important thing to talk about, April, honey," May Lin abruptly changed the subject.
   "What thing?"
   "Us. Pleasing us," May Lin said quietly. "Reach under my pillow."
   April groped under May Lin's pillow and her fingers closed over hard yet flexible plastic. She knew immediately what it was, but Jeez, so big?!
   She drew it out to look at.
   It was a black strap-on dildo, about nine inches long and maybe one and a half inches in diameter.
   "Found that in a trunk in the Green Room," May Lin grinned.
   "But this is too big for me!" April gasped.
   "It's not for you," May smiled. "It's for me."
   "Jesus, it'll split you apart."
   "I don't think so."
   "It'll still hurt like shit, then."
   "Well put," May laughed. "That's where I want it put."
   April stared at her in disbelief.
   "You...what?" she gagged.
   "I want you to put that thing on and ram it up my anus."
   "But..."
   "You get your jollies out of giving pain; I get mine out of getting it. Works out nicely, don't you think?"
   "No foreplay?"
   "Just thinking all day about you shoving that into my ass is foreplay enough," May laughed. "But if it'll make you feel better..."
   She rolled over, got to her knees with her head on the pillow and stuck her rump up in the air.
   "Spit on my asshole and work the spit in with a finger. Ahh...yeah... Make it two fingers now, no three. Ahhh...Gawwhhd...yessss."
   "Doesn't that hurt?" April asked.
   "Of course. That's the idea. You got that big black prick on yet?"
   "Almost."
   "Hurry or I'll shit all over your fingers!" 
   "It's on."
   "Then ram it in. One hard push...and as far as it'll go. Ahhhhhggggaaaawwwwwd! Yessssss!!!" May Lin  screeched in pain.
   And again that wonderful feeling of exhilaration shot like a lightning bolt through April.
   "Grab my hair!" May Lin howled. "Yank it! Pull me back as you ram in! Yeaaaghhh! Yeeeeaaaaghh! Yeeeaaaaghhh! I've been bad, April! Bad! Punish me! Hurt me with that big damn cock! Owwwwhhaaahhh! Yeeeeaaaagghhh! Ram me! Ram me! Ram! Ram! Raaaaaaaaam! Ohhhh, sheeeeeeiiiiit! Yeaaaaaahhhhh!"
    May's screams became a song of joy as April's orgasm began tightening her belly. And the two girls sang in a climactic fugue, pain and sheer ecstasy inextricably intertwined as their mutual orgasms washed over them.
   And as they floated down from the heights of their suddenly crumbling mountain, their bodies still joined by the massive dildo, April breathed in May Lin's ear.
   "I've never, ever, felt anything like that!"
   "Honey doll," May Lin breathed back. "It's been a big few hours. Whipping me 'til we both got off. Killing Carol. Fucking me 'til we both came. And to think this is just the beginning."
   God, but April hoped so.
   Maybe even, with May's loving help, she could learn to like the killing.
   -----
   That evening, in honour of her victory over Carol, Manny persuaded Mark to invite April to join the two of them in the "Kitchen" for a meal of take-out chicken and ribs. And April with a plan beginning to form in her mind, asked,
   "Since there will likely be too much food and we've no fridge, can't we invite May Lin to join us?" 
   "As long as she wears her dog collar and leash and is tied down to the chair with that," Mark said, "I guess it's okay."
   And so May Lin joined them, almost as an equal, thus setting April's plan in motion.
   For the Special Dinner, April was allowed to wear the clothes she'd been wearing when she was grabbed at the school but May was still formally a captive, even on this special night, and thus wore only her collar, nothing more. Perhaps that too would soon change, April theorized.
   Just as Mark cast his last rib aside and began to sip his coffee, April started the ball rolling.
   "You know," she said, "it seems to me there's got to be some re-designation of roles around here."
   "What do you mean?" Mark asked.
   "Well, to begin with, Carol is lost to you as a Dungeon Mistress."
   "You volunteering for the job?"
   "Does Manny want it?" April asked.
   "Hell, no!" Manny protested. "I've always wanted to be on the cameras."
   "And with a few more lessons on the finer points, she'll be pretty good at it," Mark allowed.
   "Then I guess that leaves me."
   "But you're a hostage," Mark objected.
   "Apart from a few crummy tapes, what has that brought in?" April challenged him.
   "She's right," Manny told Mark. "April's a stage actress. On tape, she looks phony even when she's being real. They're not exactly Box Office."
   "And Daddy's been as tight as usual with his dough," April added.
   "All right!" Mark gave in. "With the two of you ganging up on me, what chance do I have? You're my new Dungeon Mistress, Manny's my technician. But that only leaves May Lin, here, as our one slave. Hard to make a lesbian tape with one girl. Unless you want me to dress in drag."
   "Excuse me," April said, "but I was thinking May's job-description should be altered too."
   "Oh, no, I won't throw away her Papa-san's millions," Mark said adamantly.
   "I think you better tell Mark what you told me this afternoon, May," April said.
   So May Lin told about her falling out with her father, her acting as a high-priced whore, her liaison with the shady Ho San and finally her role as Executioner for her boss.
   And Mark listened with his his jaw hanging open the whole time, hardly daring to believe that he was hearing all this from a girl who looked like a porcelain doll. 
   However, when she finished, Manny said,
   "What she says is true, Mark. You should see her face on tape while April's whaling the hell out of her. She's screaming, sure. But she's having a big fucking orgasm at the same time. That's the kind of woman who could garrotte a man right as he came in her."
   After Manny spoke, there was silence for a long time. Until April finally broke it.
   "We need an Executioner too, Mark," she said. "Carol was both and I don't relish that part of her job. But May Lin could certainly earn her keep."
   "And enjoy it too," May Lin said.
   "Shit!" Mark gave in completely. "Have it your way. Jesus, I'm a slave to a bunch of women!"
   "Relax and learn to enjoy it, honey," Manny said, leaning over and kissing him on the cheek. "When rape is inevitable, you know..."
   "Get to bed, all of you, before I change my mind," Mark grumbled.
   "Right, Boss-Man," Manny laughed.
   -----
   That night as they lay together in May Lin's bunk, naked and soaked with sex, May asked April quietly,
   "That business tonight about changing the roles, that was all kidding, right?"
   "Not unless Mark was kidding," April answered. "For my part, I was dead serious. And, as you say, that was just the beginning."
   April lay awake long after May was breathing heavily in her arms.
   She had lots to think about.
   
   CHAPTER SEVEN
   In the morning, Mark gave her the opening she was looking for. The four of them - Mark, Manny, May and April,  had gathered in the Kitchen for a breakfast of fried eggs on a bun which Mark had brought in from somewhere, and he set his paper cup of coffee aside and addressed April directly.
   "You know," he said, "I've been thinking, and you've created a big problem for us."
   "Oh, really?" April said, as if she had no idea what was coming. "What?"
   "Well, if we put last night's reorganization of job-descriptions into effect," Mark answered, "it leaves us with all Chiefs and no Indians. I mean, we can hardly show May Lin being whipped like a slave in one video and then show her garrotting someone in another."
   "Why not? I'm good at both. I even like both," May Lin said.
   "Because you're the only slave we have. You gonna strangle yourself?" Mark pointed out.
   "Guess not."
   "There is a solution though," April nodded in casually.
   "Like what?" 
   "We get more slaves."
   "All right, then," Mark said, but his tone said he was still arguing. "Let's say I drive the van as usual. Who does the actual grab?"
   "I can. I'm plenty strong enough," April said. "But, even then, I don't think that's the solution to our present problem."
   "You got any ideas, then?" Mark said haughtily.
   "I might have," April said, taking a sip of coffee and making Mark wait.
   "Well, what?"
   "First, let's recognize that, even when you and Carol were working together, you could only nab one girl at a time."
   "That's because it often took two of us to wrestle them into the van. You and your cheerleader friend were different. We got you by surprise. Even then, your friend nearly got away from me."
   "That's because you had to manhandle them into the van," April said. "How typical of a man's approach...but then they do call it 'man-handling.'"
   "You got a better way?"
   "Sure. They get into the van of their own  free will."
   "I don't get it." Mark scratched his head.
   "All right, let's go back a step," April continued. "Right now, Manny needs you here to teach her how to run the Studio, right?"
   "For a while anyway."
   "For quite a while!" Manny added her two cents.
   "Okay, then, let's recognize you can't take any slaves for 'quite a while.' But I doubt if the money will hold out for 'quite a while' with no new stars and no new tapes..."
   "And no new millions from my Papa-san, as you call him," May Lin added.
   "No, you're right," Mark admitted.
   "Which means we need some new blood quick," April said confident now they had Mark on the run. She'd worked this all out while May slept last night.
   "And your solution?" Mark asked.
   "Let May and me do the grab."
   "What!?"
   "Think about it. A pretty little Oriental who looks as delicate and innocent as a butterfly and a mousy brunette...."
   "You're not mousy!" May Lin objected. "You have lovely hair."
   "But I have a face that somebody once called 'descript.' Pretty enough but unmemorable in a crowd."
   "Not when you're flushed with your orgams," May said flatly.
   "I don't often have an orgasm when I'm out on the street," April smiled. "Okay, here's the scenario as I see it. Couple of high-school-age girls, May and me, one a lovely little Oriental, the other 'descript,' at best. Neither of them looking like a couple of kidnappers, arrive in town and stop for a bite to eat at a Donut Shop where the local kids hang out. They join a couple of local girls, saying they're new in town and looking to meet some local girls. Conversation gets around to TV or music or whatever and it turns out the 'strangers' have their van just loaded with the latest in electronics. Locals, impressed, ask if they can see it. 'Sure,' the strangers say. They pay for yhe locals' coffee and go out to the van. Locals get in, all excited. Locals are never heard from again."
   "Jeez, it just might work," Mark said, his blur eyes bright with excitement. "But what happens if they fight you once they see there's no stereos or whatever?"
   "You got a spring knife?" April asked.
   "Just so happens I have," Mark nodded. "Got it off a gang-doll that we nabbed. Jeez, was that a bust!"
   "Yeah, as I recall," Manny said, "it took only two strokes with the one-incher to turn the hard bitch to silly-putty."
   "And her gang-daddy was glad to wash his hands of her," Mark said. "But, anuway, yeah, I have a spring-knife, four-incher."
   "Plenty. It's mostly for show anyway," April said.
   "What about May Lin?" Mark asked.
   "Just give me a piece of rope about this long." May Lin held her hands a little more than shoulder width apart. "A few seconds without air is usually enough to convince someone that I'm serious."
   "So it's all set then," April said. "May and I do the pick-ups from now on. Manny is the techie and Mark runs the business."
   "Hold on! Let's not rush into this! I'm still not sure you two can handle your part."
   "Tell you what," May Lin stepped into the discussion now. "Give us a chance. If we blow it, we blow our innocent cover at the same time and we're useless as grabbers. In that case, I'll willingly go back to being a slave. You know I love being whipped. And April, who loves whipping me, can go back to being whipmistress and assistant grabber. Deal?"
   "Sounds fair enough," Mark nodded. "When do you want to begin your test run?"
   "Sooner the better," April said. "This morning would be good. I can wear these clothes that I was grabbed in. What were you wearing, May?"
   "Black sheath dress and high heels," May said.
   "Too obvious," Mark said. "We must have something else around here."
   "I've got a whole trunk full of stuff, abandoned by former Porn Stars," Manny said. "I don't think they'll object to your wearing it."
   "Good," Mark said, "you and May go find something relatively plain. Jeans, dirty white sneakers, no socks, man's shirt, you know."
   "Okay then," April said when they were gone, "since I'll likely be driving, where's the nearest town?"
   "Jeez, yes.  Never did ask if either of  you could drive," Mark said.
   "Our family has a van. I drive it all the time."
   "Good. Then, the nearest town is Claresville. That's where our food comes from. But I guess you want the nearest one with a High School."
   "That was the general idea."
   "That'd be Horner. You go down our lane to a dirt road, turn left 'til you meet  Highway seventy-eight. Turn right there and go about twenty miles. You gotta not blink or you'll miss it. There's just a General Store, a Dunkin' Shop, a liquor store, a hotel and the High School. I've been checking around there. During the day, local kids hang out in and around the Dunkin' Shop. Come night, those who can pass for nineteen are in the Hotel or, this time of year, out in the bush with a bottle."
   "That last would be mostly boy-girl pairs," April nodded. "Seems to me our best bet is the Dunkin' Shop. I mean, even if is Summer, there's bound to be a few girls without jobs or Summer School, hanging around there and hoping to pick up a couple of guys for later."
   "You know your teenagers well," Mark said.
   "Hell, I am a teenager!" April laughed.
   "You'll pardon me if I keep forgetting," Mark said.
   -----
   The sign said they were on the outskirts of Horner but, to April and May it looked a lot like more of the farmland they had been driving through.
   "You sure we're here?" May asked.
   April cast a glance at her partner, thinking how impossible it was to make her look plain. She even had the shapeless man's shirt tied up under her breasts so that her flat, olive-skinned belly was exposed, its little dimple of a navel just crying out to be kissed.
   "The sign said 'Horner.'"
   "That's not what I mean," May said. "I meant, you sure we're really here and about to kidnap a couple of girls no older than ourselves, to torture, videotape and use to extort money?"
   "It does seem like a bit of a nightmare,doesn't it?" April chuckled.
   "A nightmare?" May answered seriously. "It's a dream come true. Watching you whip them during the day, then having you beat me at night. I mean, you're going to get really expert with every different whip we've got. And that means a new experience every night for me."
   April felt the familiar knot beginning to form in her belly.
   "Look," she said. "There's a stand of alder over there. You want me to stop the van, cut an alder cane and whip the shit out of you?"
   "Sure, but we don't have time for the sex afterwards," May said laughingly. "Mark made us promise we'd be home by four. I don't think he wants us playing with whatever merchandise we acquire."
   "Okay, then, just shut up." April set her jaw and drove doggedy on.
   "There's the Dunkin' Shop," May said.
   "I see it. And there are cars in the lot. Hopefully, a couple of girls have borrowed Daddy's for the day."
   It looked like they were in luck, April thought, looking around the doughnut and fast food shop. In a corner booth at the back, two pretty girls - one auburn-haired and one blonde - were engaged in a lively conversation but looked up and smiled as April and May came in. 
   
   April immediately chose to treat their smiles as an invitation to join them and, once they had received their coffee, led May over.
   "Hi, I'm Jassie," the redhead smiled. "New in town?"
   "Maybe," April answered. "Maybe just passing through."
   "What's that supposed to mean?" the blonde asked. "I'm Hel, by the way. It's really Helga, but I hope to taise a little before I'm through."
   "Small chance here," Jassie muttered.
   "What it means is," April andwered Hel's question, "we've just finished High School and we're bumming around in my van looking for a spot to stay a year or two and have some fun."
   "Well this is hardly it," Jassie said.
   "No fun places here?" May Lin asked.
   "Apart from the hotel, where most of the patrons have no teeth, and the Dunkin Shop, that's it," Jassie shrugged.
   "No radio?"
   "Two stations, both Country," Hel sneered.
   "TV?"
   "Two also. Both network. The same network."
   "Jeez, I got more than that in my van!" April laughed.
   "No kidding?" Jassie said.
   "She's got a satellite dish built into the roof," May told Jassie. "How many channels is it, April?"
   "Hundred and sixty-some," April shrugged.
   "Jeez! I'd like to see that set-up!" Hel gasped.
   April smirked at May Lin. This was going to be perfect.
   "Shall we show them, May?"
   "Why don't we, April?"
   They headed outside to the parking lot and let Hel and Jassie climb into the back of the van first. Then May pulled the door shut behind them.
   "Jeez, it's dark in here!" Jassie exclaimed.
   "Got to start the engine before we have power," April said. "Hold on."
   The van's motor came to life and a subdued light filled the back of the van.
   "I don't see any TV sets or anything," Hel said in some confusion.
   "Hey, what's with the knife?" Jassie gasped, staring at the gleaming blade in April's hand. 
   "You just be good girls and follow instructions," April said coldly, "and no one gets hurt. Otherwise..."
   She took the point of the knife, pressed it against the place where Jassie's skin showed just above her tube top and drew a line down between her breasts. The material parted and fell away, revealing her apple-sized breasts, their nipples raised and hard with fear.
   "Don't...don't cut my breasts..." Jassie sobbed.
   "Too late. I already have," April said, pointing to the thin red line of blood oozing down Jassie's chest. "But be good girls and neither of you will be hurt again."
   For a while, she thought.
   The little blonde hellion Hel, however, still tried to live up to her name,  She waited until April put the knife down to tape Jassie's wrists and ankles together and then she made a dash for the rear doors of the van.
   But May Lin's two feet of rope brought her to her knees as it caught around her throat and May put a single loop in it behind the girl's head. 
   "Move and I twist this 'til you can't breathe," she hissed in Hel's ear. "Understand?"
   The blonde nodded silently. 
   And the rest of the "Grab" continued without incident.
   -----
   Mark however, did not seem particularly impressed.
   "So you got two pretty girls. Big deal," he said. "What do you know about them?"
   "Not much. But they must be well-to-do," April said. "I mean, they're both wearing designer-label clothes."
   "Again, big deal. They can buy them by working as waitresses on weekends. Do their fathers have money?"
   "Don't know," May Lin admitted.
   "Then, for Chrissakes, find out!" Mark bellowed. "You gotta research before you grab!"
   -----
   April felt the familiar excitement knotting her belly as she regarded the two newcomers strung up side by side on the rack, their toes an inch or so above the floor.
   "Decided to save my energy," she said, "and whip you both together."
   Besides, she figured, if one's courage broke that would trigger the same response in the other.  
   "Think I'll use another whip today," she said thoughtfully. "What do you think of this one, May?"
   She held out a black braided-leather lash about six feet long.
   "I think that should kiss both their backs at once," May nodded in agreement to her choice. "Of course, you'll have to be careful you don't slice them to ribbons."
   "What if I do? There are more girls in other towns. Maybe even in Harper."
   "But what if these girls are important?" May asked. It was a bit of dialogue that they had virtually rehearsed next door in the Kitchen while Manny was stringing up Jassie and Hel.
   "What do you mean 'important?' Like do their Daddies have money?"
   "Yeah, like that." 
   "So  how about it, gals? Do your Daddies have money? Enough to buy your way out of here?"
   "N...no..." Jassie answered in a tiny voice.
   "Mine neither." Hel shook her head.
   "Too bad. Tape ready, Manny?"
   "Gotcha," answered Manny's voice from the darkness.
   "Action!" Mark said.
   April swung the brutal lash, watching with an unholy charge of adrenalin as it cut across both girl's backs, which instantly striped and spouted blood.
   Jesus, she thought, she was going to have to be careful with this whip.
   Then Jassie's sobbing cry got through to her.
   "Pleaase!" it begged. "My fath...father has no money, but Hel's dad runs a chain of restaurants. You can get all you need from him. Just let us go."
   "Liar!" Helga sobbed. "Her dad does too have money. He's the President of Panatech."
   "The software company? April gasped. "Jesus, we've lucked in this time."
   "I...I'll call my Dad," Jassie relented in the face of her friend's capitulation. "He'll send you as much as you ask for. Please...just let us down."
   "No," April said flatly. "I mean you want to spoil all my fun? Here's the way it goes. I whip you 'til I've had enough - not you. And we tape me doing it. Then you make a short tape asking for the money. And we send the tape to your Daddy. Then he sends us the money."
   "And you let us go?" Hel sniffed.
   "Don't go getting curious!" April spat angrily and her whip swept forward again.
   "Aaaaaaaaiiiiieeeeeegaaaaawwwhh!" both girls screamed in unison.
   And again the orgasm built in April's belly, and she found herself flailing away at the two lacerated backs, lashing them again and again, her cum juices coursing down her inner thighs.
   This time, it took both May and Mark to drag her away, panting and fighting and screaming her orgasm to the skies.
   -----
   How long it was she couldn't tell but, when April's head finally cleared, she saw Jassie and Hel still hanging limply from the rack, with Manny spreading ointment on their mutilated backs.
   "Are they..." April started to ask, afraid she might have killed one or both of them.
   "They'll be all right, no thanks to you," Mark said. "You were so out of it half your blows missed cleanly. Jeez! To think you almost killed the daughter of Panatech!"
   "I'd suggest you only use the inch-wide from now on," May Lin said. "I mean, I, for one, can testify you're damned good with that."
   Yeah," April nodded, her heart still pounding. "I guess I better."
   However, as May Lin took her elbow and steered her toward the Kitchen, she turned back to look at Jassie and Hel once more.
   "But that was sure one hell of an orgasm!" she sighed.
   
   CHAPTER EIGHT
   "We've got business to do," Manny reminded them the next morning. "Like a couple of tapes for their Daddies."
   "Thatt's right," Mark said. "Anybody got an idea how we contact them?"
   "Hel let on as I was fixing her breasts last night that both their parents have cottages in the area. Thery were just in Harper for a liquor run."
   "Which gives us two problems," Mark said.
   "What problems" April asked.
   "Well, up now' we've concentrated on grabbing girls with (a) less powerful parents and (b) with no contacts in this area. That means by now, their Daddies will have cops swarming all over, looking for them."
   "Unless we scare them off," May Lin said.
   "And how do you propose to do that?" Mark snorted.
   "Give me a half hour and I'll show you," May grinned.
   -----
   Helga and Jassie hung side-by-side again on the rack, their pretty faces masks of fear.
   "Okay, April. When I say 'action,' you give them one stroke each with the one-incher. That's just to bring the tears to their eyes for effect. Then - I think, Jassie first - you are going to read this message to Daddy onto your tape. If you try to screw it up, I'll let April loose with the whip from yesterday. Capiche?"
   Both girls nodded numbly.
   "Okay, action!"
   "Aaaaaaahhhnnnn!!"
   "Now move around in front, and your turn Jass."
   "'Daddy," the teary-eyed redhead read, "'you can see they're hurting me. They're going to hurt me more if you don't send a million dollars to a Swiss Bank Account you'll be sent later today. Please don't try to find me, or they'll kill me and Helga too."
   Then the blonde read the same message, the only variants being a slightly lesser sum of money, and Jassie's name.
   "That last sentence should make them stop and think about starting a search for them," May said.
   "Smart!," Mark nodded. "Wish I'd thought of it before."
   "Men never think things through," April laughed, only half jokingly.
   "Now, Mark," May Lin said, "since you'll be excess baggage this afternoon, why don't you drive these tapes to some place, say a hundred miles the other way from Harper and mail them. But, before you go, you got a dozen or so friends you could invite to a Private and Very Special Party, tonight?"
   "Sure, I guess," Mark said. "What's the occasion?"
   "The unveiling of our newest servant," May Lin smiled her "inscrutable Oriental smile.
   "You know what we need?" May Lin said as soon as the party was set and Mark was on his way with the tapes.
   "No. What?" April asked. 
   "A bunch of Lesbian-Domination tapes."
   "Carol didn't much like doing them," Manny said. "And I don't really know too much about them. With Mark as our Boss-man, we've mostly done Male-Female stuff."
   "Well, they're by far the biggest sellers in the Orient," May said. "Especially if the Domme is Oriental and the slave is white."
   "You going to try out for the Domme?" Manny asked.
   "I don't see too many other slant-eyes around here," May smiled. 
   "And who've you got in mind as the slave? Anyone we know?"
   "In fact, yes. Did you happen to notice the expression on that blonde, Helga, when April brought her into the Whipping Room yesterday?"
   "I did for sure," Manny said. "Got it all on tape, in fact. It said, 'To hell with you buggers. You'll ever crack me.' I also got a shot of her tear-stained face as she hung there after April had beaten the shit out of her. Sorta Before and After shots, you might say."
   "And what was the After shot saying?" Mark asked. 
   "Same words, but without the same conviction. She's that close to breaking."
   "Good!" May nodded. "Exactly what I want. Give me the day with her today. And, by the way, make sure that party Mark set up is a mix of male and female."
   "Knowing Mark it would be," Manny smiled.
   "You got lots of tape, Manny? "
   "Enough for a couple of hours."
   "Plenty. You got any thin rope around? Coarse, if possible?"
   "How about binder twine?" April asked. "I saw some amongst Carol's stuff."
   "Just the ticket. Get me some. Two six-foot pieces should do. Then go get that blonde, tape her wrists behind her and bring her here. Then we'll tape her to one of these kitchen chairs while Manny shoots that, using maybe a medium shot. After that, it'll be all medium shots and medium close-ups, finishing with a long extreme close-up. I won't need to cue you."
   "Jeez, you could do Mark's directing job," Manny said.
   "I'm beginning to think that too," April commented.
   "This doesn't need a director. You'll instinctively know when to change angles," May Lin assured Manny. "By suppertime, I guarantee little Hel will be ready to play my slave at the party."
   "Jeez, are you a pro at this stuff?"
   "About as close as you'll find," May said. "Ho San used to show this kind of film to me every night. Then he'd say, 'I have a friend who's a Domme. Don't ever make me introduce you to her.' It was a threat I never forgot."
   "Bad stuff, eh?" 
   "The worst," May Lin shuddered. "My stuff  will be Cinderella by comparison. Howevr, it still should make us a fortune."
   Helga was brought into the Kitchen and made to sit in one of the kitchen chairs. Then her ankles were taped to the rear legs and her wrists to her ankles, so that she sat with her little breasts thrust forwards, their nipples red and pointed with fear.
   "Okay, action," May Lin muttered and Manny's camera began to whirr.
   Then May took a length of binder twine and began two wrap it around and under Hel's left breast, until it was completely encirlcled, whereupon she tied it off and threaded a coffee stir-stick under the outside loop. This she followed by doing the same to the right breast.
   "Nice little bra, you've got now, eh, Hel?" she asked. "Comfy and uplifting. Enticing too, the way it shows your tits. But it'd be even better if you boobs were bigger, don't you think? Well, we aim to please."
   And she took the stir-sticks between the thumb and forefingers of her two hands and gave them a twist to the right, tightening the circle of coarse string around Helga's breasts.
   "Ahhhhhnnnn..." Helga moaned.
   "Shit it hasn't begun to hurt," May said disparagingly. "Now, if I turn the sticks again..."
   "Aaaaaaaaagggghhawwhh!"
   "Yes, that's more like it. In fact, it's probably all we need. We'll let your body do the rest."
   Helga was breathing hard now, trying to fight the pain and sweat broke out on her forehead and upper lip as the blood trapped behind the circles of cord began to swell her breasts and turn them purple.
   "Jesus...Jesus..." she whimpered, as her nipples began to swell and leak little droplets of clear liquid flecked with milky blood. 
   "Pain getting worse eh?" May Lin crowed.
   "Jesus...yessss..." Helga whined.
   "You can put a stop to it, you know."
   "H...how? Please just tell me."
   "I want you to do something."
   "Anything. Just tell me and free my breasts before they b...burst," the blonde wept.
   "They do too, you know. Nipples seem to blow right apart. Very messy."
   "Tell me what you want me to do," Hel screamed. "Plleeeaaaase!"
   "Just obey me." 
   "I will."
   "Every word I say."
   "Everything. Just un...undo my breasts!"
   "Say 'I will obey you, Mistress in everything.' Say it!"
   "'I...I will obey you...Mistress...'"
   "In every fucking thing!"
   "'In every fucking thing you say!' Pleeeeeaassse!!"
   "Fine. Untie her. Wipe the blood from under her breasts where the cord cut into the skin. And get some of your ointment on it. See she looks lovely for tonight. She's going to be in a lot of close-ups."
   "Her boobs have already been," Manny chuckled.
   As she and April left the Green Room, May Lin turned to her.
   "I'd never done that before," she said. "It was quicker than I expected. Too quick, in fact."
   "It still took too long for me," April shuddered. "I'm sure I'll see those bloated tits in my sleep forever."
   "So will I," May nodded. "Nice dreams make for sound sleep."
   "Nice dreams? Nightmares, you mean."
   "To each his own, sweetie," May Lin laughed. "To each his fucking own."
   -----
   The party that night was great fun for everyone...except possibly Helga.
   Jassie, who served the drinks, was decked out in leather manacles, a dog collar and a short white apron that hid nothing, but that was all. Even then, she wore more than the host and any of the guests, who were all buck naked. However they had been guanteed the relative anonymity that they would be filmed only from the navel down.
   As soon as the guests were assembled in a circle on easy chairs, May Lin led Helga in, the latter clad in only her dog collar with a short leash, her eyes blindfolded. May wore Carol's black leather boots and short leather skirt but her firm, full breasts were bare. 
   And she did carry a little riding crop.
   "Now, my little blonde slave,' May said, her soft voice full of threat, "you are to begin your rounds. You do not know anyone here except Mark, April and me, so it is useless to try to recognize them by their voices...or what you feel of them. As they are our honoured guests, you are to grant each of them his or her request immediately and without question. Verstehen?"
   Helga nodded dumbly.
   "Very well. You, sir, may have the pleasure of being the first. And do not worry if you forget to ask for something. Helga will be back again."
   April could see the blonde's lower face go slack with despair at those words.
   "What is your pleasure, then, sir?"
   "I want her to lick my cock until I shoot my cum all over her face."
   "Helga?"
   But Helga hesitated...just a second too long.
   "Immediately and without question," May Lin hissed. And the riding crop descended on Helga's butt.
   With a little yelp, Helga rose to her knees and began licking from the base of the man's rod to the tip, holding it between her hands and stroking it at the same time.
   "Ahhh...fuck...yes..." he moaned.
   And only seconds later spurted his creamy ooze on Helga's lips, cheeks and blindfold.
   "Next," May Lin said unemotionally, yanking Hel away. "You ma'am."
   "Does she suck pussies?" the anonymous woman asked.
   "She does now," May Lin chuckled.
   And she took Helga by the hair and guided her head between the woman's parted legs.
   "Lick, bitch!" the woman said. "Lick my pussy and suck my clit!"
   May Lin shoved Hel's head forward and the blonde began to work on her task, finishing only when the woman squirted the fluids of her orgasm over her chin.
   The first trip around the circle of degenerates was mostly one-on-one, with Helga servicing men and women alike with mouth and hands as requested. A couple of women called for Fisting and Hel was even able to drive her forearm up the the elbow in one woman's vagina. It came away sodden and sticky.
   "Now, let me watch you lick my cum off your arms," the woman laughed.
   And a blow from May Lin's riding crop across her shoulders, convinced Helga to lick the woman's arm clean of the slimy ejaculate."
   By the time that first round was finished, Helga looked about as despodent as April had ever seen anyone look, but May had even further degradations in store for her, forcing her to act with various combinations of guest - two men and her, one up her pussy, the other being sucked off; three men with one up her anus, one up her vagina and one in her mouth; a man and a woman, the man sodomizing her while Hel sucked the woman off - every combination of two, three or even four - pussy, rectum, oral and fist - that May or the guests could devise.
   By the time Manny announced, 
   "I'm out of tape..."
   and Mark had Jassie serve the pizza, Helga looked emotionally shattered, her whole, naked body clothed now in layers of bodily excretions, streaked and filthy and smelling of sweat and stale sex.
   Even April, regarding her, could not help feeling horrible for the poor girl whom her Oriental friend had put through so much. Hel had experienced a lifetime of degredation in one night, April realized. Thank God May Lin was her friend!
   
   				CHAPTER NINE
   Of course, Mark sold fifteen copies of the Party Tape that night, one more than there were people at the party - one man having bought a copy for an absent friend. Then Manny put clips on various Late Night Internet sites she knew of. Those, along with word of mouth, got the ball rolling. In fact, Manny predicted, by the end of the first week, they'd have their biggest seller ever. She projected ten thousand copies at a hundred clams a pop. 
   "Who cares of their Daddies pay up," Mark laughed, the night after the party, "as long as we can keep on turning out this stuff? And with May Lin running the store, that should be money in the bank."
   "That's right," April had nodded, scratching her head thoughtfully, "May is kinda running the store, isn't she?"
   "You got any more ideas for Box Office smashes?"
   "In fact, yes, I have," May said. "We haven't heard from Jassie's father yet, have we?"
   "Not a word," Manny confirmed.
   "Then it's time for her to star in her own show," May Lin said. "April, do you remember that Road Construction Camp on the way into Harper?"
   "Seems to me I do," April nodded.
   "Wonder where they eat their meals? Dinners in particular?"
   "Not in camp, you can bet on that. And specially not on Wednesday nights. That's always Chili Night at the Dunkin' Shops. And they got one almost next door."
   "Then what do you say we pay a visit to the Harper Dunkin' Shop at suppertime on a Wednesday?"
   "Tonight's Wednesday," Manny pointed out.
   "Right. Tonight, then," May Lin grinned.
   "What do you have in mind?" April asked suspiciously.
   "Our second biggest Box Office Hit," May Lin smirked. "And that's all I'll say for now. I'll brief you on the trip to Harper, April."
   -----
   Six-thirty found April and May-Lin entering the Dunkin' Shop, dressed in hip-hugging jeans and belly-shirt tube tops that showed their braless nipples clearly. As they expected, this garb attracted every male eye - about forty of them - in the place.
   "Hey, easy, guys," April laughed at the Construction men. "Don't stare so hard. I swear I can feel your eyes crawling all over me."
   "That's 'cause they are," one burly man said. "Where in hell'd you come from?"
   "Just staying with friends over by Clareville," May said. "You guys work around here?"
   "Roads," another nodded.
   "That must be tiring work," April said.
   "Not so tiring we couldn't be up to a night of fun," a third man leered.
   "Boaster!" a fourth laughed. "Brad the Boaster."
   "You gals up to some?" Brad asked. 
   "Me? I got a guy back in Clareville," May said."He'd kill me."
   "Me too," April allowed.
   "But tell the guys about your cousin, April."
   "Jeez, I shouldn't," April demurred. "That's up to her."
   "Go on. She'd just love to have a few guys drop in unexpectedly," May urged, lasciviously.
   "I know but..."
   "Look, guys, April here has a cousin, Jassie, visiting for a few days. She's a real knockout redhead, by the way. And all she's done since she got here is bitch about the fact that April and me are getting laid while she's playing Old Maid. I figure it'd both serve her right - and secretly make her happy - if she had a few of you drop in tonight...just to meet her."
   "How about all twenty of us?" Brad asked.
   "As I say, she'd probably complain like hell..." April started.
   "You might even have to hold her down..." May interjected as rehearsed.
   "But she'd secretly be tickled to death," April finished.
   "What...what time should we come?" Brad asked.
   "About nine? I'll give you directions to our place," April said.
   "And you won't mention this to anyone?" May Lin said.
   "And risk the Foreman finding out we left the site all night?" Brad asked. "Not on your life!"
   April and May left soon afterwards both smirking inscrutable Oriental smiles.
   "My 'cousin,' Jassie, is in for the surprise of her life," April said.
   "Yeah. Star of our latest Epic," May Lin answered. " It's called Gang Rape."
   -----
   The twenty men arrived in three cars, turning their headlights off, as instructed, as they came up the lane, for Mark had decided - he said - that he didn't want a crowd attracting attention to the fact that something unusual was going on. Frankly, the girls suspected, it was because the Gang Rape video wasn't his idea, whereas he'd convinced himself the Party one was.
   When the uniformly muscular men were shown into the Drawing Room, however, they were greeted by an ususual sight. For Jassie, their anticipated hostess, was hanging by her wrists and from a chandelier in the middle of the room, and she was naked as a baby, but for a strip of duct tape across her mouth.
   "When Jassie heard how many of you guys were coming to 'see' her," April explained, "she suddenly was afraid she'd get cold feet and back out before anyone had had any fun, inckuding her. So she demanded that we hang her up there so she couldn't stop you - at least the first time around - and tape her mouth to stop her screaming."
   "Yeah, Jassie's quite a screamer when she's coming," May Lin added.
   "Anybody want to start her off?" April asked. "That chandelier is on a pulley so we can lower it 'til her pussy is a comfortable height."
   "And her asshole too," May added. "She likes it there."
   "Suppose we want to go Two-on-One? Pussy and asshole, both at once."
   "That'll have to wait for the Sloppy Seconds. We'll let her down for those."
   "Sounds good," Brad nodded, virtually drooling. "So as Vice-Foreman, I go first."
   "First I heard we had a Vice Foreman," another man muttered.
   "You saying I don't know more about Vice than anyone here?" Brad laughed.
   "I think maybe the one up on the chandelier may," the man grumbled.
   "That's exactly what I'm gonna find out," Brad grinned, moving around in back of Jassie. "Lower her onto me a bit, Slant-Eyes!"
   May Lin lowered the chandelier until Jassie's pussy was directly above Brad's uplifted cock and he lost no time. He took two fingers and parted her labia and rammed in, all in one hard thrust.
   And an amazing thing happened. Jsssie's head flew back and she grunted something to Brad.
   "She wants me to take the tape off," Brad gasped.
   "Do it, then," April nodded.
   And Jassie planted a fierce sideways kiss on Brad's mouth.
   "Christ, fuck me, stud!" the redhead panted. "I'm so horny I'm gonna come and come and come and come! Ohhhh...ohhhhh...sheeeeeeiiiit!!!"
   And the wild gyrations of her hips as she convulsed through several orgasms almost tore the chandelier from the ceiling.
   "Jesus!" Brad gasped, as he staggered away once his orgasm had spurted up her pussy. "That'll be it for her tonight, for sure. I never knew a woman could come like that."
   He flopped into a chair.
   "Whaddaya mean, cocksucker?" Jassie cursed. "Let me down and let me at these studs. How many are you? Fuck, it doesn't matter. I'll take you all. One, two, three at a time! Jassie the Jezebel, my father's friends call me when they're fucking me. But they're all old. They give out after one. I bet you guys can go all night, eh? Well, then, prove it to me. Let me down, you Yellow-Skinned bitch, and let me fuckin' at 'em!"
   May Lin lowered the chandelier while April undid the ropes that tied her wrists to it.
   And they sat back to watch, hardly aware of Manny's cameras whirring in the background.
   Jassie was a naked whirling dervish of sex. At first, she took the men one-on-one in whatever aperture - mouth, pussy or anus - appealed to them. Then it was two-on-one, one in her pussy and the other in her rectum or mouth; then three on one - vaginal , rectal and oral all at once. Then she tried one in the pussy, one in the anus and two in the mouth. And, finally, as a climax to the video, she succeeded in taking eight men at once, -  - two in the vagina, two in the pussy and two in the mouth, while her two hands masturbated two more.
   And, finally, as they came, shooting their sex-scum all over her, she fell back on the sofa, while those six - the last ones to leave - dressed shakily and hurried away in the final car.
   "God, that was great!" Jassie panted. "I mean Wow! Do you guys do this all the time?"
   And she promptly closed her eyes and fell into a well-earned sleep.
   "Jeez!" Mark exclaimed coming on from the anteroom with Manny and her camera. "I mean, did you see all that? Jeez, we just gotta find a way to keep this little sex-maniac around!"
   "Well," April said, nodding toward Jassie lying cium-spattered on the couch, eyes closed and with an almost beatificlly sated smile on her lips, "she sure doesn't look in any hurry to leave."
   May Lin, however, had no time for their chatter. She was still caught up in the business of the evening. 
   "Manny, can you make me a rush copy of tonight's tape? I need it before seven in the morning."
   "You going to deliver it to her old man yourself?" Manny asked.
   "No, this isn't for her old man."
   "Who then?"
   "I consider it kind of an Insurance Tape," May Lin smirked. "April, can you be up at the crack of dawn? I'd like you to drive me to Harper."
   "Sure, I guess. Why we going there?"
   "Tell you on the way."
   May Lin sure wasn't very candid about her plans, April thought. Maybe that was where the idea that Orientals were inscrutable came from.
   -----
   So seven-thirty the next morning found them turning off Highway Seventy-eight and into the Road Construction Camp to be greeted by "Vice-Foreman" Brad, who looked a bit red-eyed and sallow-cheeked.
   "Let me lead the way," May Lin said as they pulled to a stop. "You just back me up."
   "I don't have much choice," April said, a little bitterly. "All I know is that we're delivering something you call an 'Insurance Tape.' You haven't actually been too forthcoming about anything else."
   "Sorry for the oversight," May said. "But you're smart. You'll get the drift soon enough."
   "It's just that I thought we were in this thing together," April pouted/
   "We are, lover. We are," May assured her.
   "God, you back so soon?" Brad asked as May rolled the passenger window down. "I'm not sure the guys can take another night of Jassie at this short notice."
   But May ignored that comment.
   "You got a TV?" she asked.
   "Sure."
   "VCR?"
   "Naturally."
   May picked up a brown manila envelope from beside her on the sheet and handed it to Brad.
   "Then get the guys together and watch this tape tonight," she smiled but her voice was underscored with threat. "I'm sure you'll recognize yourselves; you're all quite clear on tape. In fact, you even egg each other on by name as you fuck it to Jassie."
   "Jesus..." Brad gasped.
   "This is just a copy,.of course," May continued. "There's the master and several others back at the Clareville house. Now, I imagine you wouldn't want to see any of them distributed."
   "Jesus, no!"
   "Too many wives, girl friends, bosses you wouldn't want to pick this up off the Net, eh? Our camera-woman can see that a copy of this tape appears on every porn site in the world at the flick of a switch. I mean, she's that good.
   "So, first, you shut up about last night. Impress that on your boys first. Shut up or. by God. we'll release it over cyberspace within seconds. Got that?"
   "Yeah." Brad looked impressed and worried.
   "Also, we can trace you through your names and your Company no matter wher you go. April, my friend here, sweet as she looks, just loves to flay the skin off informers, don't you, doll?"
   April licked her lips.
   "Two at a time," she said.
   "In fact, there's short clip of her doing just that to two poor girls on that tape," May said. "Did they live, April?"
   "Dunno. Never asked," April shrugged.
   "And, finally, if you try to kill us or sic the cops on us, there's a copy of that video in a Safety Deposit, to be opened 'in the event of' that will point the finger directly at you."
   "You seem to have covered all bases," Brad said.
   "There aren't any others, honey," May smiled. "It's our game so we make the rules. See ya. Let's go, April."
   April turned the van around and they sped off in a cloud of dust.
   "Well, we certainly scared the shit out of them," May Lin laughed.
   "Yeah, you certainly did," April nodded. 
   And she wasn't laughing.
   CHAPTER TEN
   "You wanna hear an idea I've been playing around with in my head?" May Lin asked that evening over takeout steak and fries...accompanied for the celebration with a bottle of Burgundy served in liquor store plastic wine-glasses.
   "With two potential million-dollar movies already in the can?" Mark laughed. "I'd be nuts not to."
   "Then we have to grab ourselves a man," May said.
   "What?"
   "Look, so far we've been appealing mainly to men by having a man or a woman knock a girl around," May explained. "But women need to get their jollies too. And a whole lot of them get their rocks off by watching men get knocked about by one or two women. The female Domme with a male slave is really big in Hong Kong, and we got a helluva Domme in April.. They get enough of what you think of as fantasies in their daily lives."
   "I dunno..."
   "You didn't see the women's faces when  that little blonde bitch was sucking a man off, then." Manny said. "I did. The guy was moaning 'God, stop, I can't take any more," and the women were slavering. 'Don't listen to him! Give the bugger shit, babe. Make him plead for it to stop!' Really!"
   "What do you think, April?" Mark asked, turning to her.
   "For my money, we've got an even better Domme in Jassie. I mean, if she's going to join our Merry Band, he might as well have a role to play."
   "That's it!" Manny crowed. "Tie Jassie up until she's so horny she's practically ready to sprout antlers, then loose her on some guy and watch the fur fly!"
   "Okay," April allowed. "Let's try it once..."
   "Right. Tie her up, duct tape her ankles to her wrists," May Lin broke in. "Then cram a ball-gag in her mouth to frustrate her orally. Then a couple of big dildos, asshole and pussy. By the time we get back, she'll be as hot as a babboon in a broiler."
   "Get back?" Mark asked. "Where you going?"
   "To get a man," May grinned. "Have the cameras ready, Manny."
   "Gotcha, Boss-babe."
   -----
   They drove through the twilight along Seventy-eight away from Harper, until they came to a small gas bar with nothing but a set of pumps.
   'Jeez, there are still people on the road," the young man said as they pulled in. "It was so dead tonight I was about to close early."
   "Not much business on a Friday?" May asked.
   "Not going out of town. People have already gassed up before they left at the cheaper city prices. I keep telling the Powers That Be we should only open on Sundays for the return flow."
   "Can't wait to get back to the Missus, eh?" April asked.
   "Don't have a Missus," the man said, undoing the lid on the van's tank.
   "Good looking guy like you?" May said. "I find that hard to swallow."
   "I gotta girl-friend though. Almost a live-in."
   "Then it's her you can't wait to play with?" April grinned.
   The young man shook his head glumly.
   "She's old-fashioned. Saving herself for marriage," he said.
   "In other words, you aren't getting any," May said.
   "Tell me about it!" the young man snorted.
   "Maybe we could help..." April turned to May.
   "Maybe we could," May nodded.
   "You...offering...something?" the man asked slowly, almost as if he were afraid to ask and risk disappointment.
   "That's not for us to say," May answered. "But we have this friend, Jassie, visiting us."
   "Yeah, and all she's done since she arrived is bitch about the lack of action around here," April added.
   "And, knowing Jassie, you know exactly wat kind of action she means," May said.
   "Hey!" April said as if the idea had just occurred to her. "I wonder if this guy..."
   "Jeff."
   "I wonder if Jeff would like to meet Jassie?"
   "Would I!" Jeff exclaimed. "You tell the world! When?"
   "How about tonight? Right now."
   "Close up and we'll drive you there," April grinned.
   Five minutes later, they were on the road back to Clareville.
   -----
   They ushered Jeff into the Drawing Room where Jassie was already lying on the sofa bound and gagged and plugged with ball-gag and dildos. Immediately, as might be expected, he did a startled double-take.
   "Hey, what's with the Bondage thing?" he asked.
   "Just Jassie's way of turning herself on when she doesn't think she's going to get any," May explained. "Take off your clothes in front of her and you'll see her start to struggle to get free."
   "Particularly if you have a hard-on," April said.
   "Not much doubt of that," Jeff said hoarsely. "I've had one all the way here."
   "Then hope it lasts," May laughed.
   It took Jeff maybe a minute to strip to the buff - only a second or so longer than it took April to free Jassie. And then Jassie literally threw herself at him. 
   In the next two hours, Jassie forced Jeff to invade every available orifice of her body with his cock, fingers, fists and tongue. She even shoved his spurting weapon in her ear and shook with a simultaneous orgasm. Then she forced every part of her body into every one of Jeff's apertures, sticking her nipple in his rectum, her tongue up his nostril, her toes down his throat. 
   Watching them, April soon lost track of the number of contortions they achieved and each one seemed to bring on a new howl of orgasmic ecstasy.
   Finally, as the two lay, absolutely spent on the floor, April found that, somewhere along the way, the whole scene had become disgusting to her. What should have been a glorious and wonderful meeting of two bodies had, at some point, become a distasteful display of bestial lust.
   She was so turned off, in fact, that, hours later, after they had dropped Jeff off with the usual warnings about the tape and as she and May Lin crawled into bed, she found herself incapable of making love to the little Oriental.
   "I'm sorry, May," she said, "but something about tonight has left me feeling vaguely uneasy."
   "About what? Not about us?"
   "Oh, no," April assured her quickly, "not about us."
   "Then it's all right," May said, turning out the light. "Anything else will pass. Things do with time."
   But, as she lay there in the dark and listened to the muffled sounds of Mark and Jassie rutting in Mark's upstairs bedroom, April wondered if it wasn't about them...and if time was, indeed, the cure for whatever ailed her.
   -----
   In the morning Manny announced they needed more videotapes for all the projects they had on the go and Mark volunteered to drive all the way to Hagerton which was the first town with a video store. 
   This left May, April and Manny free to plan an all-girl breakfast of microwave waffles and reheated coffee. And, not to leave anyone out, they decided to invite their newest stars, Helga the Slave Girl and Jezebel Jassie to the breakfast party.
   Which seemed to be the ideal occasion for April to reveal a plan that had been kicking around in her mind for some time. Besides, there was a chance that a whole new direction to their endeavours might rekindle her enthusiasm for what seemed to have become a sordid business.
   "I'm not quite sure how to begin this," she said as Jassie served their coffee, but May Lin and I have been called partners in this outfit for several days now and it looks as if Jassie and even Helga are going to join us but, you know, I haven't the slightest idea of how we stand financially."
   "You mean cash on hand?" Manny asked.
   "That and other assets, like those numbered accounts we hear so much about."
   "Okay, it's simple really. For daily expenses, there's a cash box in Mark's room, containing usually thirty or forty grand at any given time. Money collected from dealers we sell the tapes to."
   "How can you be sure, I mean even within a range of ten thousand clams?" May asked. 
   "Because I put the money in and take it out."
   "You have the key to the box, then?" April asked.
   "There's no key. No one goes in that room but Mark or me," Manny said. 
   "I was in his room last night," Jassie said.
   "You were in his bed," Manny corrected her. "There's a big difference. Then we have an account in Hagerton where the Internet accounts and the bigger purchasers deposit their payments to us."
   "Who has signing power on that?" April asked.
   "Mark and me." 
   "Both sign?"
   "No, either sign."
   "So you, in effect, control that money too," April concluded.
   "Right.
   "And the numbered accounts?"
   "Don't exist. They're a smokescreen."
   "But why...?"
   "In the first place, most fathers refuse to be victimized by extortionists, so they just don't pay, figuring we'll get desperate and show our hands. Others pay only in the hope of being able to trace their money. But it just vanishes into limbo, leaving us with lily-white hands. Besides, our real income is from Independent Adult Video Dealers and our Internet contacts."
   "And Mark handles those," April assumed.
   "Actually, I handle those," Manny said.
   "So what exactly does Mark do?" April asked.
   "Directs our films and supervises the tapings. He's our Cinematographer, calling the shots," Manny said.
   "Which you can do now," April said.
   "I can use the cameras and the mixer, yeah," Manny allowed. "That's a long way from directing a film."
   "But May can do that," April pointed out. "I mean, she did for the Helga tapes."
   "And she was right by my side for the one with Jassie and the Road Crew," Manny nodded.
   "What are you driving at?" May Lin asked suspicously.
   "What I'm driving at," April said slowly, "is what do we need with Mark?"
   There was a long moment of silence.
   "What do you mean?" Manny asked at last.
   "Exactly what I say," April answered, taking heart from that stunned silence. "I'm the Dungeon Mistress, Manny's the technician and knows the business end inside-out, May-Lin's the Cinematographer and Exterminator when we need one. Jassie can fuck guys 'til they drop."
   "And you haven't even tried me on girls yet. I was the Domme in my school Dormitory," Jassie grinned.
   "I'll just bet you were. Even Helga here can play a credible submissive when we need one."
   "May Lin has but to say the word," Helga said so humbly it was hard to tell if she was acting.
   "So what are we doing keeping a man around?"
   "He's a good fuck," Jassie said.
   "Hell, we can get you another construction crew if that's all you want," April laughed. "And if, as you say, you're bi and bi, May Lin and I are too."
   "I was Carol's lover," Manny confessed.
   "So it seems we could be one big happy family, with fewer latent jealousies, if one number in our present equation was removed."
   "Mark," the chorus chimed.
   "Exactly," April's solo answered.
   And the rest of the day - until Mark's arrival back from Hagerton with the videotapes - was occupied in planning the logistics of doing just that.
   CHAPTER ELEVEN
   Just after eight that night, they heard the old van sputter up the driveway and stop outside the front door. That was the signal for April and Jassie, the two strongest girls, to position themselves on either side of the front door.
   In a few moments, the door opened and Mark entered, carrying a large bag of tapes and calling,
   "I'm back!"
   And Jassie and April leapt.
   The bag of videos went flying as the girls each took one arm and spun him around, April kicking the door shut behind Mark, so that they could shove his face and chest against it.
   "Hey1 What...?" Mark gasped out.
   But that was as far as he got, for May Lin's usual length of rope slipped quickly around his neck, twisted once and pulled tight.
   "Kill him!" April cried hoarsely through gritted teeth.
   But May Lin merely held her rope taught until Mark's knees sagged as he lost consciousness.
   "Take him and string him up on the rack in the Green Room," she told Jassie and April. "When he comes to, we'll start. No point torturing a man who's out of it."
   "Hold on!" April said. "Nothing was said about torture. We agreed to kill him, sure. But torture was never mentioned."
   "But don't you see?" May said. "This is our best chance to make that Fem-Domme- Male-Submissive Tape. And we can even combine it with a Snuff video. You're talking millions."
   "Not me!" April said emphatically. "I'll have no part of that!"
   And she stamped out of the front hall with May Lin's threat only vaguely heard as she went.
   "Careful, sweetie. I might just decide that those who aren't with us are against us."
   -----
   April threw herself on her bed and tried to get to sleep before May Lin came up from the Green Room.
   But there were too many thoughts warring in her mind to let sleep come.
   When, she wondered, had she begun to lose control of her life?
   Oh, sure there was a logical reason to say it was when Mark and Carol had nabbed them off the street at Northmount High. But she had still maintained a sense of control until...
   Maybe it was when she lost herself while whipping May Lin and had that terrific orgasm? Certainly she'd not been the same woman since then.
   Or when she'd wrapped that bullwhip around Carol's neck and heard the bones snap?
   Or was it when she found she was a lesbian in May Lin's arms that night?
   Or when she totally lost control while whipping Helga and Jassie and had to be lterallydragged away?
   Or was it when she realized that May Lin was now running her life, running Mark, running the whole "store," as Mark put it?
   All she knew now was that she couldn't go on this way much longer. She couldn't continue living with the feeling that her life was no longer hers to decide.
   The mattress sagged as May Lin crawled onto it.
   "I...I'm sorry, May," April almost sobbed. "I can't make love tonight. Too much on my mind."
   "It's okay," May's voice said. "I just came to tell you I'm going to see if Jassie is really as bi-and-bi as she says. I'll see you in the morning. If you're up before me, you might drop in to the Green Room and see how Mark is doing. We girls had a little fun with him tonight."
   April heard the door close behind May Lin.
   -----
   It was perhaps an hour later that April decided her curiosity would never let her rest and she took her sneakers off, so as not to be heard, and padded barefoot down to the Green Room.
   In the subdued light from the kitchen, April could see that Mark was hanging naked by the wrists in the Whipping Rack. However, from her angle, there didn't seem to be a scratch on him.
   "Mmmphh!" he grumbled as she came in, "so the bitches have sent you to be the first to cut me up with your goddam whip, have they?"
   "What do you mean the first?" April asked. "May Lin said..."
   "Apart from this rope burn on my neck, all it's been so far is threats," Mark said. "But those were quite enough, thanks. They've got me ready to shit my pants, if I had any."
   "What kind of threats?" April asked.
   "See those pliers over there/ The needle-nose ones? Manny got them from the tool box in the van. May said she'd pull my fingernails out first. And then my toenails, one by one."
   "Jesus!"
   "There's a bigger pair, too. See?" Mark shivered in the heat of the room. "They said they'd pull my teeth with those. And use the nipple clamps on my cock. And May's binder-twine trick around my balls the way she did around Helga's breasts. Oh, Jesus, just the thought of my balls..."
   "Don't worry," April said, suddenly making up her mind. Or had she made the decision hours earlier. "They aren't going to do anything to you. Where are your clothes?"
   As she spoke she began to lower him from the Rack.
   "Over there in the corner."
   "Put them on. Are the van keys still in the pocket?"
   "Should be."
   "And your cash box?"
   "I saw it in the Kitchen. Manny and the others must have been counting their assets tonight."
   "We'll pick it up on the way out," April said.
   "On the way out?" Mark gasped. "Are we...?"
   But before April could even nod, May Lin's voice broke in.
   "Afraid you're not. I've been worried about you, April, for some time now. You seem to be losing the zest for what we're doing."
   "What...what do you mean? It was me who..." April stammered.
   "Do you deny you virtually kicked me out of bed tonight?"
   "You said you were going to fuck Jassie!" April gasped.
   "Did too. She was great."
   "May said I was even better than you," Jassie said.
   "So, you see," Manny added, "we girls have decided more than Mark is expendable."
   "You've lost your taste for torture," Jassie said.
   :"So your only use," Helga added, "is as something to be tortured. Aaagh! Jesus Christ!"
   She screamed as April's long, braided whip lashed across her face, cutting her mouth another two inches wider.
   "Grab that cash box and run!" April shouted.
   And they did just that. Through the Kitchen, up the stairs, through the front hall, out and across the porch and into the van. Then, with April at the wheel, they roared down the lane to the dirt road and turned toward the Highway.
   "Wooooweeee!" April hollered in a new-found elation. "Oh, Mark, thank God! I feel as if my life's my own again!"
   "Don't be too sure of that," Mark warned. "That Manny is a canny bitch. And she'll be after us.
   And April realized, with a sinking feeling, what he said about Manny held true in spades for May Lin. 
   God help her! She didn't ever want to see that Oriental deviate again!
   Those thoughts flashed through April's mind. However, what she said was,
   "We're free for now! For God's sake, let's make the most of it!"
   
   CHAPTER TWELVE
   They drove on to Hagerton where Mark drew another six hundred in twenties from the ATM - the cash in the box from dealers being mainly in hundred and thousand dollar bills. Then, about twenty miles out of Hagerton they spotted a Motel with a restaurant and bar and, most of all, a VACANCY sign.
   "Let's pull over here," April suggested. "I could use a beer, some food and a hell of a solid sleep."
   "Okay," Mark agreed, "as long as they have a room at the back where we can park the van out of sight. I wouldn't put it past Manny to steal a car and take off after us."
   "But how would she know which way to go?"
   "She knows what's in the Cash Box. So she'd figure we'd need small bills. Only ATM is in Hagerton."
   "Then tomorrow, we get up at the crack of dawn and double back, past Clareville," April suggested.
   "And past Harper. The cops'll be looking for the van there by now."
   "Right. But, for Christ's sake, let's get some sleep tonight."
   "Okay! Okay! We need it, I agree.
   -----
   The Motel indeed had a room at the back where the van could be parked out of sight of the Highway. And, despite the hot and sticky night, the beer was cold and the salad crisp while the hamburger was passably fresh and hot. However, when they crawled naked in between the crisp sheets of the Queen Size bed, they found that their eyes had snapped open again.
   And they lay there for maybe an hour, staring at the stains on the ceiling and - in April's case - wondering what they could be.
   Finally, Mark broke the silence, saying,
   "I owe you my life, you know."
   "If we get away," April responded.
   "We will. And I'd like to thank you."
   "How?"
   "In the only way I can," Mark said. 'That is, if you'll let me. I still think you're the best I ever had, you know."
   "Jesus, Mark." April suddenly felt embarrassed. "I...I don't know what to say."
   "Then don't say anything. Just put this on me."
   "What is it?"
   "A condom. There's a dispenser in the washroom."
   "I know," April answered.
   "How come you noticed?"
   "I bought one too.Pink," April giggled like a school girl. Jesus, she thought, it wasn't really that long ago, was it? She'd sure as hell done a lot of living.
   "Then, ladies' choice," Mark laughed. "Put the pink one on me. With your mouth."
   "How do you do that?"
   "I don't. You do. Just follow my instructions."
   "Yes, Master."
   "Jeez, don't ever let me hear that phrase again! Unwrap it first."
   "Yeah," April said sardonically. "That makes sense."
   "Now place the little ring of rolled latex in behind your front teeth."
   "Uh...huh..." April mumbled.
   "Now, push your head forward, making my cock slip into your mouth, while your teeth unroll the condom down my cock. Ahhhh...jeeez, yesss! That feels nice!"
   "What led you to buy a condom?" April asked, raising her head and letting his shaft slip from her mouth with a wet pop.
   "I just didn't think, with everything else, you needed to have my kid," Mark said.
   "That's surprisingly thoughtful of you."
   "I'm pretty much a bastard," Mark smiled. "But occasionally I try not to be a total one."
   "You know, when you're not kidnapping girls and fucking them, you're kinda cute," April laughed. 
   "Stand behind those words woman," Mark said with mock fierceness. "You're a free woman now...so fuck me."
   April took a deep breath and lowered her head willingly to its task.
   Again, she sucked Mark's now slippery cock into her mouth, rolling it around in her mouth, her tongue savouring the unusual flavour of her saliva coating the latex condom. There was something vaguely medicinal and phony about that taste, she found, one that almost made her gag, and she raised her head again.
   "What's the matter?" Mark asked hoarsely.
   "I don't care," April gasped. "I'll take my chances. I want to taste your naked cock, suck on its salty drops of pre-cum. Then I want to feel your hard, naked flesh up my pussy. Not some rubber-coated dildo! Jesus, Mark, pull that damned condom off!"
   "Thank God!" Mark breathed. "Thank God! I want to feel you too. I thought you'd never...Aaaahhhhhnnn."
   His talk was cut short by April swallowing his shaft halfway down her throat and sucking on it, working it with lips, cheeks, tongue and gullet.
   "Oh, God, God, God, God..." he moaned over and over. "Don't stop! Don't ever stop!"
   "You good for two?" April raised her head and levelled her dark eyes at his.
   "Just try me, bitch," Mark challenged her.
   And she sucked his rigid, member down her throat again, milking it with all she had.
   Then she felt his cock began to swell as his testicles constricted, forcing the semen up his shaft until it burst into her cum-hungry mouth. And she sucked and lapped at the spurt after spurt of creamy scum that squirted from the fissure in the tip of Mark's cock, swallowing and swallowing as Mark moaned his orgasm arhythmically to the Motel  walls.
   Then she sucked his flaccid member into her slimy mouth again and fell onto his belly where she lay while her laboured breathing returned to normal.
   Finally, she raised her head.
   "You were lying, you know," she said, wiping her chin with the back of her wrist. "There's no way you're good for another."
   "I may be a liar about lots of things," Mark said from between her legs."About sex, I never lie."
   And his tongue popped out to flick lightly across her clitoris.
   Now it was Mark's turn to help April scale the heights of their peak of ecstasy. His tongue worked over her clit and labia until she was almost ready to scream, then his lips moved up over her belly to find her nipples, hard and sore now with the sexual stimulation. Then he opened his mouth to allow his teeth to nibble gently at her nipples, until her breath was coming in short gasps. Then it was down to her pussy again and this time his tongue plunged directly in, like a rising cock, to sworl around her passage, making her drive her whole abdomen up against him. He could taste her trickles of pre-cum now and was on the verge of driving her over the brink with his tongue. 
   But April suddenly cried out,
   "Please, Mark! Your cock! I must have your cock inside me!"
   And he quickly shifted on the bed, spread her legs as she raised her hips to him, stared down at her sex-flushed face for a split second, and then drove his penis into her up to the hilt.
   "Ahhhhhnnnnn!!" April let out a sound that was halfway between a gasp of shock and a moan of joy, and then immediately began bucking her hips up against his ever deeper strokes.
   Faster and faster they went, each time his rigid shaft digging deeper, until their bodies were both lathered in sweat.
   And, then, finally, in a great shuddering, roiling convulsion that seemed to last forever, it came for both of them.
   -----
   It was much later that April raised herself to her knees, pulling his slick cum-covered shaft out of her and began to lick it clean.
   She did pause once to ask,
   "Good?"
   And he looked up to answer,
   "Good."
   And then they slept.
   -----
   In the morning they grabbed a hearty breakfast of steak and eggs - something had made them ravenous - and then, as April had suggested, reversed their tracks. 
   They stopped briefly in Hagerton for Mark to withdaw the million and a half he and Manny had stashed there and drove on, past the Construction Camp and Harper and onward. The Road Construction slowed their progress the other side of Harper so that they were able to put on only about seventy miles before Mark figured they were both tired and had better pull over as soon as a likely motel came up.
   The - hopefully - not aptly named Motel Hello (on whose neon sign the "O" had burned out) was the first to appear with all the right qualifications: Restaurant, Bar and VACANCY sign. It also had two paralell banks of rooms, one blocked from the Highway by the other, and they managed to find a room in the sheltered bank of rooms.
   Here they had a quick supper, for Mark was beginning to feel his libido rising again and April kept licking her lips and staring at a point beneath the table top where his crotch would be.
   Thus, without even ordering coffee, they rushed back to their room and undressed each other feverishly.
   But suddenly, April halted.
   "This is no good, Mark," she said.
   Mark's face fell.
   "You mean not tonight?" he asked.
   "No, I mean, we've got all night. Why rush into it? I think I'd like a shower first. Wash that construction dust away."
   "Good idea," Mark nodded. "But I've got a better one."
   "Like what?"
   "Like why don't we make love in the shower?"
   "You're right," April smiled sensuously. "That is a better idea."
   "You get started then and I'll join you."
   "Right."
   April went into the bathroom, adjusted the water, turned the spigot to "SHOWER" and stepped into the stall, closing the frosted glass door behind her.
   She soaped herself all over, relishing the feel of the hot water rinsing the grime away. 
   And then Mark tapped at the door.
   "You don't have to knock," April laughed. "You're expected."
   "Am I now?" a voice that wasn't Mark's answered.
   And the door slid open. 
   It was Brad, the Vice-Forman, at the Road Construction Camp and through the open bathroom door she could see at least a dozen more construction workers. 
   And Mark who was bound with baling wire lying in a corner
   "Wanted some more of your friend, Jassie," Brad said. "Tried the Clareville House. No one was there. Then Pete saw your van goin' this way with you at the wheel. Figured you was all out for a picnic or something."
   "You got it wrong, then. There's just me and my boyfriend. Better try the house later."
   "Sorry, we can't wait," Brad smiled grimly. "Besides, we figure you owe us something."
   "What, for Chrissakes?" April said, the panic beginning to rise in her.
   "Tapes. Videotapes. However many there are."
   "I don't have them," April protested.
   "But you can get them," Brad backed her into the shower stall.
   "Not any more. I've split with Clareville."
   "That's what you say. Maybe you'll sing a different tune when we finish with you."
   "I tell you..."
   "Ahhhhshadddup!" Brad's hand lashed out and knocked April against the back wall of the shower stall. 
   The world swung crazily counter-clockwise and went out.
	-----
   When April came to, she had a hell of a headache and she was lying on the Queen-size bed in the Motel Room of Motel Hell, her wrists tied in front of her with baling wire. 
   "Can you understand me?" Brad was asking.
   April nodded.
   "Then try not to struggle. That wire cuts like shit. All right, just so you understand. First, you can stop this whole thing by going with us back to Clareville and giving us all the tapes. Got that?"
   April nodded but she knew she and Mark could never go back to Clareville. Manny and the others would kill them just as soon as Brad the boys left.
   "Second, there were twenty of us there that night. And we figure you'd need to make a mininum of two tapes each for sale. That means the one we got already and thirty-nine more. So you owe us for a total of thirty-nine tapes. Got that?"
   April nodded numbly.
   "Our price is two fucks per tape. How many's that?"
   "S...seventy-eight," April stuttered.
   "Right. So, unless you stop us at some point by agreeing to go to Clareville with us, we get to fuck you seventy-eight times, right? Any way we want to. Right?"
   "You...you'll...Christ, I'm not Jassie!" April shrieked in full-fledged panic now. "You'll kill me!"
   "So what?" Brad shrugged. "We just go find her and start again."
   "Or fuck that cold Oriental bitch," a second man suggested.
   "So, sweetheart, since I don't hear no deals pouring from your ruby lips, heed the words of the wise old Philosopher. When rape is inevitable..."
   He guffawed coarsely without finishing the sentence.
   ----- 
   It was terrible. Worse than anything April could ever have imagined.
   Brad took her first, his teeth gnawing hard on her nipples until she cried out with pain. Then, when she did, he struck her alongside her face, snarling,
   "Shut up, bitch!'
   and hit her again.
   Then, without further foreplay, he entered her, his cock like a ramrod, pounding and pounding her.
   "Uhhh...uhhhh...uhhh!" she groaned in pain as he thrust deeper and deeper.
   Then, when he finally came, he pulled out and spurted his volumes of cum all over her face and into her eyes, holding her hands out at her sides so that she had to try to blink it away. It stung her eyes like hell, and April was afraid for a moment it was going to blind her.
   Then the others took her in every way it was possible to imagine, one, two, three, four even five at a time, refusing to count a multiple penetration as more than one count. By the time they had reached thirty multiple and single rapes, April's pussy and rectum were raw and bleeding and her mouth was slimed with coat after coat of glue-like cum.
   Yet, when Brad asked,
   "Ready to take us to Clareville?"
   She knew she couldn't and she had to numbly shake her head.
   And they started in again. 
   It was only when Brad counted,
   "Seventy-eight,"
   that April dared to relax for a moment and try to calm her ragged breathing.
   "Now you've paid us for the tapes we know of," Brad grinned. "Now suppose we start on the ones we aren't sure exist. There must be hundreds..."
   "God, nooooohhhh!" April sobbed in despair.
   "Leave her be. She's had enough," a new voice interrupted, and Brad wheeled around to confront the speaker.
   May Lin, with a forty-five revolver in her hand. Backed up by Manny, aiming a shotgun at his sweaty belly.
   "Shit!" Brad said. "The've rescued the bitch."
   But April knew that was far from being the case.
   
   
   CHAPTER TWELVE-TWO
   "How did you follow us?" Mark asked as April drove the van with Manny, literally, riding shotgun.
   "Rented another van."
   "But I withdrew all the money in Hagerton."
   "I know. That's when I figured you were doubling back. That Hell place was about the right distance from the time you made that withdrawal."
   "But I didn't leave anything..."
   "And you think I'm too stupid not to keep a nest-egg aside?" Manny snorted. "Guess you shoulda learned while it would have done you some good."
   They pulled up in front of the Clareville house.
   "Here we are," Manny said. "The last home you'll ever want...or need."
   -----
   They duct-taped Mark and April to two straight-backed armchairs in the Drawing Room, placing an extra piece over April's mouth to muffle any distracting cries she might make on Mark's behalf. And then, even though it was almost dawn, they started right to work on Mark.
   Jassie began it by sucking Mark's phallus to an unwilling erection, and then holding it in her closed hand while May Lin slipped a hose-clamp down its shaft to just above the testicles and screwing it tight. Then they put another one - this one made for a Dryer Hose - around the testicles themselves and tightened it as far as it would go.
   "You'll find," May Lin told him, "that those clamps will keep you in a permanent state of erection for as long as they are in place. Many men dream of having what you're going to have...an eternal hard-on. But if they only knew that dream was a nightmare. You'll find soon enough that it's a very painful reality."
   She turned to pick up something from an end-table beside her.
   "Fortunately, we have several things to disttact you from that pain."
   She held up two paper clamps, the kind which hold the paper between jaws welded to a strong spring. 
   "These, for instance, form quite a nice distraction when they're attached to the nipples, like this."
   "Ahhhhh..." Mark cried out. 
   "That's it, Mark! Cry out like that again. Give his nipples a twist, Manny!"
   "Aaaaaaaahhhh!!"
   May Lin's right hand moved like lighning and her left clamped a third paper clamp halfway down Mark's tongue.
   "Aaaaarrrrr!!" he gargled in pain. 
   "There. Now we've got you comfy," May Lin said soothingly, "it's time for the real pain to begin. Fetch me the needle-nose pliers, Helga."
   "Yes, Mistress," Helga bowed.
   Jesus, April thought, she really had become May Lin's slave.
   "Here, I'll show you what to do with his left hand," May Lin said like a kindly teacher. "Then I'll grade you on how you do with his right. Each mistake is two strokes with the cat. Verstehe'?"
   "I understand, Mistress."
   "Then take the finger you want between your thuinb and forfinger, like this."
   "I see."
   "Then make sure you hold it very still as you slip the bottom point of the pliers under the nail. Stick it in under until you're sure you can get a good grip when you clamp down."
   "Ahhhnnnn..."
   "See how he tries to pull away as the point goes under? You must be careful at this moment not to let his finger slip. Then, when you think you're far enough in and under, close the top down tight and test your grip on the nail by giving a little tug."
   "Aaaaaagggrrrrr..."
   "Yes, see" It's solid. Then the next has to be swift and all one motion. Twist and yank straight out!"
   "Aaaaaaiiiiieeeeeaaaaaghhh!!!" Mark screamed.
   And May Lin held the bloody-ended nail up for Helga's inspection.
   "There, see?" she said.
   "Very nice job, Mistress."
   ----
   April watched with stunned horror as May Lin bloodied every finger of Mark's left hand, but she determined that she could not stand to watch the inexperienced Helga mutilate his right one.
   Not watching, however, turned out to be infinitely more horrible than actually viewing the bloody carnage.
   For Mark's screams through his now-bleeding tongue were even more horrible than the sight of Helga tearing his nails out at the quick.
   Then, finally, there was silence, and April opened her eyes.
   Mark was sitting with his head slumped on his naked chest, blood from his mouth trickling across his stomach, all ten fingers torn to bloody stumps. And his testicles were bloated into a grotesque empurpled balloon, which almost dwarfed his swollen erection.
   And, worst of all, he was still conscious for he moaned weakly and continuously.
   Meanwhile, May Lin was standing above Helga who was kneeling submissively on all fours.
   "Two fingers botched," the Oriental said coldly. "Four strokes of the cat, right?"
   "Right, Mistress."
   And the little blonde set her jaw resignedly and closed her eyes.
   Her back was already stained with brown stripes from past whippings, but she took the four new strokes of the six-tailed whip without a whimper, even though at least six of them were weeping blood and all were raised, red and raw as May Lin finished.
   But when the Oriental counted "Four," the little blonde merely said,
   "Thank you, Mistress," and knelt there, humbly awaiting further orders.
   They were not long in coming.
   "Helga," May Lin said, "I want you and Jassie to help Manny carry Mister Mark out to the shed where we park the van. There's a sturdy beam there should easily hold his weight. In the tool box in the van...well, Manny knows what to do once you get him there."
   As the three women carried the moaning, half-conscious Mark out, May Lin turned to April and ripped the strip of duct tape from her mouth.
   "Now, former lover," she said, "until the girls get back we have a few moments to talk."
   "Please, May Lin," April gasped, "please show a little pity and let us go. You've so much to Mark already..."
   "But you're the worst sinner," May Lin sneered. "He merely tried to steal our money. You betrayed my love. Your only choice is not whether but how quickly you die."
   Suddenly, a bone-chilling shriek filled the country air.
   "Yes, that was Mark," May Lin nodded. "I imagine you would like to know what Manny is doing to him that would make a grown man cry out like that. Well, to satisfy your curiosity, in that toolbox, I found a hammer and some three-inch nails. Right now..."
   Another shriek cut theough the air.
   "Right now, they have nailed both his feet to that beam I mentioned. He'll hang there, upside down, until his testicles burst and he bleeds to death...which I figure should be some time tonight. Would you like to be hanging beside him when that happens? Maybe watching your breasts bloat up like Helga's did? Waiting for them to burst too? You have that option."
   "Bitch!" April snarled.
   "Then - ah, here come the others - there's another option you might like."
   She turned to Helga, Jassie and Manny who were just coming in, spattered in blood, with Manny still carrying the hammer and nails.
   "Take April down to the Kitchen," May Lin ordered.
   -----
   They led the brunette, stumbling and in shock from what she had just seen and heard down to the Kitchen where May Lin had them move the chairs away from the dining table. 
   "Kneel down at the end of the table with your back straight," she told April.
   Looking around at the four stoic faces, April realized any protest was futile. She kneeled as she was told,
   "Now slide your left hand along the panel that's just under the top of the table. No,  just your left one and as far as it will go," May said coolly. "That's it. Manny?"
   She turned her head toward Manny who stepped forward, holding the hammer and one three-inch nail.
   "Noooohhhh!" April moaned, as the realization of what she was going to do exploded on her.
   "Now, Manny," May Lin said quietly.
   And Manny drove the nail through the back of April's hand and into the side panel of the table.
   "AAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrr!!!!" April shrieked pain that was more terrible than she had ever dreamed of in her wildest nightmares.
   "That's just to see you don't try to pull away," May Lin explained in an emotionless monotone. "There's worse to come, my love."
   She turned to Helga.
   "All right, Slave Helga, you know what to do."
   "Yes, Mistress."
   The little blonde reached around April's quivering body and cupped her hands under her breasts. Then, she lifted them and laid them on the table top.
   "They look bigger that way, don't they, lover? Held out like that rather than hanging down, or trapped within some confining bra. A girl's breasts should always stick out like that, don't you think?"
   April made a sound, but it was only an inarticulate jumble of pain as her nailed hand began to throb in anguish.
   And then her eye caught Manny approaching again with the hammer and nails.
   "Why don't we see if we can make her boobs stay sticking out like that?" she said.
   "Why don't we?" May Lin answered. 
   Manny placed the point of the metal spike just over April's nipple.
   "A little further back, I think," May Lin said with the coolness of a surgeon. "Just where the aureole meets the pale flesh."
   "Nooohhhh...you can't..." April sobbed.
   With one swing of the hammer, Manny drove the nail clean through April's breast and into the table top.
   "We just did," she said.
   "She's out to lunch," Manny said.
   "Then wake her up," May Lin snapped.
   And Helga dumped a pitcher of cold water over April's head.
   And, strangely, April watched Manny nail her other breast to the table, feeling totally divorced from what was happening to it. 
   It was only minutes afterwards that her conscious mind snapped into gear again, shed its dispassion, and she shrieked her torment to the heavens.
   Then she let her head slump so her chin rested on the table and began to sob without constraint.
   "I'm going to fuck you now, lover," May Lin said. "With that big strap-on that you love. But, this time, you better not get too excited when you come, or you're likely to tear your nipples off."
   And April felt the hard snout of the latex dildo prying her rectum open.
   "I'm not going to come... I'm not going to come... I'm not going to come... I'm not going to come..." she told herself over and over as May Lin worked the massive cock inside her.
   But, in spite of her resolve, her belly constricted with the familiar excitement and she came, evety muscle in her body spasming into a cramp to prevent her from suffering her usual convulsion.
   Still, she pulled hard enough against the pinioned nipples, that a terrible pain shot from her belly to her head, her breasts bubbled blood around the nail heads, and the world greyed to blackness.
   -----
   It must have been hours later, that May Lin woke her from her faint.
   "If you feel something new about your position, lover," she told her, "let me tell you that there is indeed something in your pussy that was not there earlier. We have taped your right hand to your inner thigh. It is holding that forty-five you saw me with earlier. That cold thing in your pussy? That's the barrel of the pistol. Your thumb is taped to its trigger.
   "It is two a.m. now. I will give you until dawn to consider your options. After that..."
   She shrugged.
   And then she left April alone.
   From the outset, it was clear to April that she had only two options.
   Hanging by the feet in the shed until she bled to death.
   Or squeezing the trigger under her thumb and blowing her belly apart.
   Still it took her 'til daybreak to act upon the only obvious one.
   At six a.m., the quiet of the Clareville house was shattered by the sound of the forty-five discharging.
   The last thing April heard, however, was the sound of Manny's camera whirring.
   
   EPILOGUE
   "April Lane and her friend Karen - I don't think I ever knew her full name - were in my English and Business Classes," Todd explained. "I went out with April a few times, but Karen didn't know I existed. Anyway, April always thought that Karen was the sharp-looking one and she was 'mousy,' she called it. Karen, I guess, was pretty enough, though mostly she just had great blonde hair. However, though you couldn't tell it from that tape, I always thought April was by far the sexier. 
   "However, Katen got a job at a model agency before we'd even graduated, so that seemed to prove her right, at least in April's eyes. April decided to take two years of Business rather than compete with Karen in the looks department. After classes were let out, though, they both just disappeared into thin air.  I never saw Karen's face in an ad or anything, and a guy I know says April never turned up for class at the Business School. Always wondered what happened to them, 'specially April. I liked her."
   Todd paused for a long time, staring at the dark TV screen.
   "Now, I guess, I know," he said.
   
   The end.