Saving Martha

Saving Martha

By Brewt.Blacklist

July-September 2010

Sometimes Down One

Woo

"OH GOOD god. Whoever designed this place had no idea what he was doing," thought Martha as she looked up to her right. Through the open door of the women's room, she could see all the way to the front door of the crappy twang bar she'd landed in than night. "But then, he is kinda cute. Maybe the guy knew what he was doing after all." There stood John, looking in at her, intently.

Martha was lithe, almost waif-ish, wearing a little dress that in all rights should have been black, but instead was a dark designer gray usually reserved for foreign cars attempting to look expensive. She smiled almost sheepishly, suddenly conscious of the ten inches of thigh she was showing, and totally not paying any attention at all to the woman next to her. Not that she would have possibly recognized her the next time she saw her.

The lip gloss was close enough to be close enough, in Martha's estimation, and she felt John's stare right through the door. Again, though, that was a mis-direction on the part of the other woman in the ladies room with her, who was staring at her much harder than John had been, with the face of the intense discretion one would have trying to understand a painting in a gallery best friends rave about, but is beyond one's own understanding. Martha didn't even notice that she had let the door fall into the woman on her way out.

Twenty minutes later, John and Martha left together. Forty minutes after that, John had finally found what he was looking for, and had forced important promises from Martha, among other things. Noisy things. Not that she wasn't willing to have these things forced from her.

An hour to change their lives. The Reverend could take lessons.

Fuse

THE REVEREND stopped talking, looking up.

The back of the chapel was flooded with the police. Uniforms, plainclothes, swat, bureaucrats, secretaries, there didn't seem to be anyone left at the station.

"John."

John looked to the back, and his shoulders collapsed. One of the plainclothesmen was walking forward. An impressively ugly man.

"You have the right to remain silent. C'mon, say it with me," he said as he turned to face the back of the room, lifting his arms as though conducting an orchestra. Or rather, a choir, which was only occasionally together, with no sense of key. The entire back room chimed in together, like they were in church, reciting a creed or a prayer, "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you."

The choir was cut off, and the conductor finished the litany: "Do you fucking understand these fucking rights as they have been fucking read to you, you fuck?" The cop whipped out the handcuffs with a flair and a twirl that should have been in the movies. A western with Randolph Scott playing the part of Jimmy Stewart as a cocky Jimmy Cagney.

"Sweetie, you don't know how lucky you are, that the bad guy is being taken away, and you have been saved from whatever horrible fate he had in store for you. You can thank me later."

As he was being cuffed, John said "Mary, finish this."

"Really? Mary? Oh, I still worry about you. Lose this creep, wouldja?" said the cop as he forced John from the altar. The trip down the aisle wasn't quite right. The crowd erupted in a mumbling murmur of a secret bubbling roar that faded like driving away from a stream, until it was hushed and vacant.

"Mary. What do you want to do?" The Reverend asked after obviously praying in the quietude. Martha spun to look at him, incredulousness confusing her disbelief.

Martha had been introduced to Mary a scant few minutes before, as the witness for the paperwork.

"Let's finish this," Mary said, suddenly to the right of Martha. Martha glanced sideways to Mary, not quite recognizing her. "It's okay. I can do that."

It was only then that Martha noticed that Mary was wearing a dress the same color as the one she was wearing in the bar with John, but an entirely different cut; less thigh. It couldn't have been the same dress anyway, that dress no longer existed, having been destroyed the night before by John in his demands. Martha's current dress was the color of bone, mid-calf, all smooth lines that allowed the modest bouquet to be the standout part of the ensemble. The best fit Penney's could do on their way over. The clerk had a great story that night, about the naked girl needing a dress to get married in.

The Reverend picked right back up where he left off. When he asked the question that should have been for John, Mary answered, "I do. Erp. He does."

And when the Reverend asked the question that should have been asked to Martha, Mary looked over to see her mouth hanging open. Mary dipped her head forward, and nodded twice. Martha's eyes continued to widen as Mary mouthed the word "C'mon," widening her own eyes to match Martha's. The Reverend had to catch himself from laughing before Martha stammered "I . . . do . . . ?"

Mary gently put the ring onto Martha at the right time, and seemed to look a little lost when Martha didn't know what to do with the ring she had, which was also from Penney's. On sale. The jewelry clerk didn't have as good of a story.

The reasons why this shouldn't happen had already left the building, no one put anything asunder, and the power was invested. "You may kiss the bride."

Mary took Martha in her arms, and inched her way toward her lips. Martha could only back away as far as her spinal column would let her. When Mary got just past that far, she proceeded into a soul-shattering kiss. A kiss for the ages. It was the kiss little girls dream of happening at their wedding. It was a kiss men pay women to see. Martha tried to crumple, but Mary had already caught her in the spinning drowning sparkler room.

The Reverend and his erection presented the couple to the empty chapel. Mary grabbed Martha's hand and dragged her down the aisle, with Martha stumbling the entire way, due to the badly fitting heels from Penney's. The shoe clerk's tale was the same as it always was, and involved the usual tapping of feet of impatient men and the mis-read hopeful stares of waifs.

The bouquet scored some points with Mrs. Reverend that night, as there was an erection that needed something to be done about.

Trek

MARY WAS a dishwater blond, with hair that would have come to the middle of her back but for the ever-present ponytail. She had an athletic build, delicate fingers, feet that were too big for modeling, and a face that was unique: she seemed to have an extra set of musculature and control nerves that made her face morph dramatically with the different expressions she had. When she smiled, she didn't look like the same person who wasn't smiling a moment ago but now was, she looked like an entirely different person. A grin wasn't a bigger smile, it was an entirely different face. A frown wasn't just an upside-down smile, snarls were not simple changes in the postures of her lips, surprise wasn't limited to higher-than-usual eyebrows.

Out in the world, Mary had near-perfect camouflage. No one could describe her in a way that could be matched to any other description of her. John was one of the only people who could see through all this.

"Who are you?" asked Martha, once they were four blocks from the church.

"Oh. I'm John's wife."

"Excuse me?"

"He didn't tell you?"

"That he'd been married before?"

"No-no. I'm not an ex-wife. I'm his current wife. And, well, until today, his only wife."

"I don't understand."

"I am Mrs. John, and now you are Mrs. John, too."

"Wait. What?"

"Wife. Wife. Wives."

. . . "Oh god."

"You didn't find out too much about the person you were committing the rest of your life to, did you."

"Stop the car."

"Oh, sweetie, it's going to be okay. Really. We're going to be sisters."

"Please. Please."

"No. I can't let you go, honey. John can't let you go. He needs you. I need you. We need you. And I like you."

Martha turned away, and started working on hyperventilating.

"No, not like that. I prefer guys, and the interesting bits they have that we don't. Do you . . . like girls?" Mary reached over and petted Mary's hair. Mary shook her head and shrugged away.

"Ok. Yes, I had to do that to you in church. I was filling in, and I couldn't ask the Reverend to do that for us, could I? That would have been weird."

"Weird?" asked Martha.

"Honey, I'm sorry, I just wanted things to be the best they could be, under the circumstances. I really was trying to knock your socks off, because I thought it was important."

Seven seconds of road noise set it. "Did you see the holy boner there at the end?" And they both broke into laughing. Martha turned back into the car to see that Mary had changed faces again, from a fearful worried mother hen into the relieved joy of finding out a loved one had survived a wreak.

Mary went on to explain faith, polygamy, love, rules, life, the universe, everything. For around forty or so more minutes, give or take a couple, as they drove down the road.

Martha had recognized when they crossed the state line; the color of the road changed to pink, because of the choice of road building materials used by the neighboring state, which relied heavily on crushed red granite. But now she realized she had no idea where she was; she'd never seen this landscape, despite having traveled all around her home.

"Look. Please please please come stay with us for at least a while. I'm sure you'll find that this is actually the right thing."

"Us?"

"At the ranch."

"Ranch?"

"The excitement of love sometimes does funny things, huh."

"I don't want to live on a ranch. What kind of ranch?"

"You know, a ranch."

"What do you raise?"

"We, honey. You're a part of this, too, now."

"Fine. What do 'we' raise?"

"Uuhhh . . . Lllivestock."

"Livestock. yes, I understand. That's what's raised on a ranch. Livestock. What kind of livestock? Cows, pigs, sheep, horses, what."

"Yes. That's a good way to put it."

"What?"

"In a way, yes. Cows, sure, pigs, definitely, sheep, well, sorta, but ponies, not horses. And we do have kennels."

"There's something you're not telling me."

"What the hell is that?"

"Huh?"

"Did you see that guy?"

"Don't change the subject."

"No, really. Didn't you see him? Now that was weird."

"Weird what, weirder than that sign back there on the hill? Now stop that. Talk to me."

"No, we have to go back." Mary started slowing the car down.

"What are you doing?"

"We can't leave him out here. We're fifty miles from anywhere. He could die." Mary finished turning the car around.

"What guy?"

"That guy we passed. Something's wrong."

"Wrong? You want to talk about wrong? Polygamy is wrong. Livestock that isn't livestock is wrong. Picking up a guy in the middle of god-forsaken nowhere is wrong!"

"There. See? Look. There he is."

As Mary again slowed the car down, Martha finally saw him. He was dressed in Sunday casual, with shoes that were utterly impractical for walking. His hair was long, but not as long as Mary's. And he had a sunburn. A bad one, like he'd been out here a long time. Only then did it dawn on Mary that they hadn't passed another car since they left town, running or not.

"Mary, this is scaring me. Please don't."

"I'm not kidding. He'll perish out here, tonight if we don't do something. He can't possibly get anywhere, and it's going to get cold over night. We have to show a little charity; remember what we've been talking about: faith, hope. What's the worst that could happen, we save a guy's life?" And she was out the door, trying to get his attention.

"He could kill us all," said Martha to the otherwise empty car.

MARTHA WATCHED Mary walk up to the man who was more like a upright freezer with limbs. She watched her talk to him, but it took a few minutes of straining to realize she couldn't hear anything. Mary motioned to the man, and the car, both directions, as they danced around each other. The man looked over toward the car exactly once, and as near as Mary could tell, never said anything. They finally settled with the man's back to the car, and Martha caught glimpses of a hand poking out here and there, but she couldn't actually see Mary any more. At one point, she thought saw a hand flash around his neck, which was gone by the time she blinked, and as the time bore on, she realized the man was shaking forward and backward slightly, with no sign of Mary at all. Martha tried to open the glove box for what turned out to be no good reason at all, as it was empty, and when she looked back up, the man's upper torso was twisted, and Mary was bent over to the left, and straightening up. The man turned and started heading toward the car, and Mary got around him, and managed to get into the car before he did.

"Ready?"

As the domelight of the car dimmed out, Mary thought she saw something reflected in the window on the side of Mary's face before the image faded.

The back door closed without a sound.

"Martha, this is Mark."

Mary said quietly, "H-hello." Mark did not look at her, and said nothing.

Mary turned the car around again, and as Martha started to say something, Mary smiled slightly and shook her head, reached over and held her hand the rest of the way. Martha tried to control her breathing stress in the dampened interior as the sun went down.

Chords

IT WAS dark when Mary said, "We're here." The floodlights on the house came on as they were pulling in. "Home sweet home."

Mary ran around the car and let Martha out after she had held the door open for Mark. Mary and Martha pranced up the steps and opened the door, but Mary held Martha back until the man was inside. "We're home!"

Two women appeared, and Big Thing had already disappeared.

"Martha, this is Mary. And this is Mary, too. Yes, I know."

"Uh, hi?"

"Is dinner about ready, girls?" They nodded their bowed heads in unison, having never looked up at Martha. "We need to set an extra place. Go go." The two extra Marys fled the foyer.

"Please come in and sit down. Can I get you a drink?"

"Oh, god yes."

"Be right back."

Martha sat and surveyed her surroundings, and took stock of her situation. The house was old, much older than she expected with lots of woodwork. Foyer, Living room, dining room, that must be the kitchen back there, hall, doors, maybe stairs. A house. Normal, right?

She heard Mary saying something like "Please go take care of him. He looks like he's badly burned."

Mary came in with two glasses of wine, handing one to Martha. She perched on chair, having transformed into a school marm. "I'm sure you have a million questions, and I swear I'll answer them all. We just don't have time for all of them before dinner, so pick one to start with."

"Who are they?"

Realization dawned on Mary. "No, no, they're not wives, like you and me." She took a breath. "You know how we talked about . . . livestock?" Pause. "They're . . . two of the cows."

Pause. "I don't think I was expecting that for an answer."

Mary laughed. "I don't know how you could have."

"You raise . . . people?"

"No. Not people. Sla . . .”

"Dinner's ready!" One of the Marys bounced into the room. "Dinn . . . oh god." She fell to her knees when she saw Mary and Martha obviously being interrupted. "P..Pl . . . Please forgive me." Her head was bowed, and she was visibly shaking.

A muffled moment. "They really are good cooks. Too, you know." Martha misunderstood that to be 'two'. Mary stood and pet the kneeling Mary on the head as she walked by. The shuddering had just about stopped when Martha passed her.

DINNER WAS indeed fabulous, but the conversation was tilted and odd, mostly about the weather, and national news events, and the meal itself. Not a word was said about the big events of the day. The wedding, the arrest, revelations about polygamy, John's industry, or the ever-grave Mark simply didn't come up, as though they were all the normal things, like shoelaces or doorknobs or light switches.

After it was over, Mary whisked the other Marys off to do the dishes and make up the beds and to be quick about it. She then joined Martha and Mark in the other room. The living morgue room.

"Martha, honey, I know it has been a big day here for you, and I know how important a wedding night is, and I really want this to be special for you. I'm going to answer one more question that I know you have." Mary took Martha's hands as she balanced next to her, dipping her head and lifting her eyes, her face seductive, supplicative, and invoking magic.

"Our husband, John, is a Master. He's not a master of things, or stuff, he's a Master. He's our Master. He's our husband, too, and I know how much it hurts to not have him here tonight of all nights, but it's going to be okay, because . . . Mark here is a Master, too."

The chair got knocked down, the table turned over and Martha dropped her wine when she was grabbed up kicking and screaming. Mark careened his way down the hall and first threw the door at the end open, and then threw Martha onto the bed. She tried to scramble herself out of harm's way, but he was upon her before she could even get to the headboard of the bed. He forced her into the bedsprings with all of his weight, restricting her breathing to almost gasping as he started ripping her clothes. He grabbed too many layers at first that wouldn't give way, and he struck her in frustration; then he peeled her.

When he found the skin of the top half of her body, he started pinching and slapping what he could, licking and chewing the rest.

Martha's struggles diminished as she felt her sense of reason slip away and her body started to respond sexually. Mark found his way to her skirt and started yanking on it until it, too, ripped out of his path. What little underwear she had on amounted to little more than paper in his massive hands.

Once she was naked, he began extracting kisses from amidst her whimpers. She realized that approximately twenty-four hours earlier, John had done pretty much the same things the same way to her, and that she had no reason to not offer this mammoth the same gifts she had offered her now-husband-now-gone-husband, and maybe she should marry Mark tomorrow. Mrs. Martha Mark Monster Man.

Mr. Mark Monster Man gathered she had stopped struggling, and backed up off of her enough to start throwing his own clothes off. No sooner had he gotten no more than a foot off of Martha, when she recognized the two Marys were now there at her side, naked, voluptuous, snaking their lips toward her nipples, attacking them simultaneously.

Mary, the other Mary, sister-wife Mary was at her ear, cooing. "Oh, baby, you're doing soooo good, give him everything he wants." Martha's head fell to the side to see a face in Mary she didn't recognize; something about a parent being proud of a child for discovering masturbation when bragging to friends at the bar after too many drinks. Martha looked up toward the headboard, and her legs fell apart.

And with a howl, Mark was suddenly inside her, and she was drenched, and the mountain was fucking the waif with the force of Titans behind him.

AFTER SHE had quit fighting it, because she realized she had nothing to fight with, all of the Marys' fingers and lips were everywhere the walloper wasn't. Mark made the rounds of the sundry ports to Martha, and the girls were swamped with helping him come again, and trying desperately to get Martha to come. But she didn't. And she continued to not. Mary realized her lack of response had nothing to do with her lack of desire, or her lack of experience. She whispered into the fucking machine's ear as he was negotiating yet another repeated round of change of entrances into Martha. He glanced at Mary and nodded. Mary reached down and whispered into Martha, "Honey, do what he says."

The Master threaded his fingers through Martha's hair, and held her head and her attention as he looked into her eyes and said half of the only eight words she ever heard him say the rest of her life.

"Martha. Come for me."

Mary thought Martha's eyes were about to pop out of the back of her head, she was squeezing them so hard. The other Marys stopped what they were doing. Mark felt a quivering around his cock unlike any he'd ever felt before, as the tensions in Martha ratcheted up and she started moaning.

Mary broke the still and the tension that was so thick it was like honey fiilling the room with a whisper, "Do it now."

Martha detonated.

She almost threw Goliath off of her. The Marys grabbed on and held her down. The relief of childbirth finally being over washed over Wife Mary and Wife Martha screamed and ranted and thrashed and came and came and came.

Everything the four of them did to her the rest of the night made Martha scream out another orgasm.

Jumbo became exhausted and fell off the bed asleep after his fourth ejaculation.

The two Marys found a pair of strapons and tried to see if they could double-team her to oblivion. After two hours of non-stop exertion, they staggered out of the bedroom and collapsed in the hall.

Sister-Wife Mary started to become concerned when no one was doing anything at all to Martha, and she was still orgasming more intensely than any orgasm Mary had ever had herself. She reached over and tried to hold Martha's hand. Martha came again.

"Martha. Sweetie. Can you stop?"

"Oohhhh. Goooooodddddd. Nooooooooooo! Uhh! Uhh! Uhhhh!!"

Mary tried to hold her to calm her down. Martha responded like a woman in heat, obviously coming again.

Martha watched for a few seconds. "Baby, I'm sorry," and she slapped Martha across the face. Martha came. Mary hit her again, as hard as she could. Martha came again, as hard as she could.

Mary was fighting off having to panic. "Mark. Mark! MARK! Wake up! We're in trouble!"

The Mass groggily raised his head off the floor only to have Mary try to pry him up further. She pointed him at Martha. "Look! She can't stop coming. We have to do something!"

Mark snarled, and may have muttered at Mary something about her education; Martha never heard it. She was busy.

He crawled back up to the surface of the bed, and caught Martha through the hair again. "Martha. Stop coming now."

The scream she was in the middle of when he started that sentence changed in nature when he finished it. There was no question as to what was happening now. The girls in the hall ran into the doorframe in a panic, sure that Martha was being assassinated.

Mary observed to herself 'the expression on her face may look the same, but there's no question that now it hurts, and it hurts a lot,' which she snapped out of when Mark, a man of action, took his next one. He put up with the cry for 6 seconds before he hit her on the head as hard as he could, blessing the room with the first hush in 11 hours, except for the noisy motions of lungs and throats.

"Have any of you seen anything like that before?" All the heads in the room that were not flat against the pillow seesawed back and forth.

It only lasted four minutes, which they wasted in shock and oxygen exchange, until Martha came to, warming up from a sigh to a whine to a caterwaul of the blood curdling variety. The thug started to wind up to clock her again when Mary caught his hand back. "There's been enough damage here tonight, don't you think?" She had to shout. "Girls! Go get some sleeping pills and some vodka! Run!"

Hard as it was to think in the racket, the light came on for Mary. She reached down and took Martha by the head and the hair, and said as loudly and as forcefully as she could "Martha! Come for me!" And her hunch paid off. The noise, though no less annoying, was at least not as guilt-ridden as the previous one.

Once the girls got back and they forced the substances into Martha, it took about 10 minutes for her to calm down and finally pass out.

They discussed it amongst themselves for 2 hours before the squall started up again. Mary sent the other two in to put her out again, but obviously, by the changes in the din, they played with her until Mark pounded his fists into the wall to get them to do what they'd been told.

"I have no idea what to do," Mary said as she was getting dressed and looking for keys. "Keep her out until I get back."

Advent

"NO, NO, no, no, no. Look, I don't refuse you anything. But I do refuse you this."

"Do what I say, Mary. It'll be all right. Call Thomas, right over there, so I can watch. Do it now."

Mary stood looking like an antebellum maiden being accused of the vapors because her lifestyle was about to change. As she got to the stand, she looked back despondently across the jail's visitation room at John who nodded, and began dialing. She had to remember how to use a rotary, but eventually she heard the phone rattling on the other end.

Even though John couldn't hear her, he knew she was doing what she was told. Not that it would stop her from being punished. He was sure she'd forgotten how to pronounce the word 'no'.

THREE AND a half hours later, Mark was splayed out on the wine-stained sofa, with the two Marys attending themselves onto his needs. One was trying to get her tongue further into his asshole than she could, while the other was trying to get his balls to follow his cock into her mouth. They hadn't bothered to dress since yesterday, and had managed to get The Creature to join in the fun. It was a self-preservation act on the girls' part, as it will prove they are good at. As Mary caught the look in his eye, she turned away to keep him from seeing that she was still crying, and she hid it by keeping up her pacing.

"Lord, I hate this."

Mark grunted.

"No, not that. Was that out loud? I hate that Thomas is now involved."

Mark grunted again later as the car pulled up.

Thomas got out, trudged up the stairs to the door, and simply walked in, like he owned it. Which he thought he should.

He wasn't surprised to see Mark there, nor was he surprised to see what was happening. He was surprised to see Mary on her knees by the door, head bowed, in position.

"Hey, Mar'. What's goin' on?" Mary stifled, except for the sniffling.

"C'mon, get up. Get me a drink, wouldja? Hotter'n shit out there."

Mary rose with a practiced graceful ascension, and turned toward the kitchen.

"Oh, hi, big guy. Havin' fun?" Mark's head lolled toward Thomas, and his vocabulary skills pulled through as his head rolled something that could have been 'no' but had to mean 'yes', considering what the girls were doing.

Mary returned with a tasty malt beverage in hand, her eyes never leaving the angles of the men in the room where the interesting bits were. As was her duty.

"What, a light beer? I come all the way out here and all you have for me is a fuckin' light beer?"

Mary's head never looked up, but it wagged back and forth as panic changed her face to a little girl who'd been caught with her hands down the pants of the little boy down the street. Which she did often growing up.

"Oh, lighten up. I'm just screwin' witcha. Let's go to the kitchen and talk. Here, drink this shit." He handed the beer to Mark whose diminishing motor skills at least kept him from crushing the can and dribbling it onto the Marys. It spilled onto him all the same, which the girls proceeded to lick up.

Mary waited until he was seated and started to kneel when Thomas stopped her, pointing to the chair. "All righty, now, spill."

Mary proceeded to tell the tale of Martha not coming, then not stopping coming, then screaming, and the various back and forths. She left out the whole being married to John part. Thomas indicated no interest in who was screwing her at the time.

"And I think she'll be waking up soon. Everything we've been doing to keep her quiet will eventually kill her, between the drugs, the alcohol, the concussions, and letting her exhaust herself to death." Pause. A lengthy one. "Is this something you can help with?" she asked, trying to not look like she was gritting her teeth.

"Maybe." The Marys were blathering loudly in the next room by this time, as the Siren of Martha started warming up. "Oh. That must be her now. Lemme take a look." Mary started to get up with him. "Unless you have something else to tell me, you can stay here."

Mary fell back into her chair, brimming with hatred and frustration and helplessness, and doing a lousy job of hiding any of it.

Thomas disappeared down the hall.

OVER THE next hour, the Marys had gotten The Giant to come once and had him well on his was to time number two. Martha's squeals had changed in flavor thrice, but had settled into the less enjoyable variety to something akin to non-stop. Mary had resumed her prowling, and her ground speed matched Martha's pitch. Her top was drenched from her tears, but Mark decided it just had to be sweat; he hadn't seen her cry this year.

Martha's fireworks were escalating up to sound more and more desperate, and the howls were becoming more and more frantic when Mary snapped a decision, and started from the room.

The Ogre growled. The Marys poured themselves in between his legs.

"I would like to get a drink, please. Can I bring you something? Or them?"

He groaned something Mary hoped meant 'no'.

She hustled across the kitchen, drank from the faucet with her hand, as there was no reason for her to dirty a glass, and darted a detour into the garage to try to get back before the Brute came to.

The Marys were putting on their best show for the Tremendous as he was about to be where he wanted to be, trying to match Martha's shrieks with singing of their own, the kind men pay for.

Martha was up to shrill, with her voice starting to break. Mary appeared at the doorway, having made up her mind that she was going to solve the problem, and as the barbarian neared joy, she started to cock the gun.

The bedroom door latched shut, and Mary whirled with murder in her eyes.

THOMAS HAD been in this situation before. Lots. With a well-practiced movement he picked up from a Jet Li movie, he ducked under Mary's gun totin' arm, proceeded to dismantle the gun with one hand, twisted her other arm behind her and shoved her face into the wall, congratulatin' himself for pullin' that off yet again.

When the gun's pieces smashed onto the floor, Mark startled up and was dribbling semen across the Marys as he tripped his way past them.

The Marys both concluded, and rightly so, that their best course of action would be to continue the show and lick the sperm off each other and the floor. Before the colossus got across the room, they had gathered up enough to put on a snowballing routine, which they included into the act. Also, the right conclusion.

Mary had no solid memory of how she was suddenly so uncomfortably mashed with Thomas' face breathing onto her own. Her own respiration resembled running the steps at the stadium.

Mark, naked, was of no use and by the time he had finished his lumbering, the gray cells had gotten the message to his feet that he had missed the excitement. Other parts of him missed the excitement, too, and now he was pissed. As he turned back, the girls' well-decided course of action was the only thing keeping them from getting beaten into the hospital that night.

"Yeah, I missed you, too, babe. Get me a real beer this time, wouldja?"

Thomas slipped into the kitchen as he released Mary and if she hadn't already been leaning against the wall, she would have needed to.

The bedlam of the house had downgraded to the light rejoicing of the Marys in the living room and the jackhammering of Wife-Sister Mary's heartbeat.

Martha was silent.

Mend

"HOW DID you do that to her?"

"We didn't do anything."

"Bullshit."

"I've told you everything. She couldn't come, we told her to, she couldn't stop, we told her to stop, she screamed. And back and forth."

"Well, it's the damndest thing I've ever seen."

"Is she okay now?"

"Sort of."

. . . "I don't know what that means."

"Well, she's got something like Chronic Pain Syndrome. Hurts all the time for no good reason. Except she has a verbal trigger to change it to orgasms. And back."

"Sooo . . . she's asleep now?"

"I'll show you."

Mary hadn't been frightened to enter that bedroom for years, since the last real mistake she made and had to confess to John that she had stolen some raspberries. John forgave her, but had to punish her severely for appearance's sake. It was brutal. She understood then what was to happen. Now the unknown was making her drag her feet, and her face looked like she was being made to watch profane horror films that she just knew were going to turn her stomach.

Thomas had to coax her. "It's okay. Come in."

Mary forced herself into the bedroom, and had to force her breathing to stop completely before she could force her sight onto Martha.

Martha was face down facing the back wall behind the bed. No covers, she was naked, and breathing slightly, almost not.

Mary had to convince herself she wasn't seeing a corpse, because the horror show drained the color from her face.

Martha's back was riddled with needles.

Actually, twelve.

"YOU'RE GONNA wanna tie her down like that. To the bed. Ya ain't gonna wan' any of them to dislodge just yet."

Mary had no words for a situation like this. So Thomas filled in.

"I've given her a neurological block. The acupuncturists would carry on about 'Chi' crap and nonsense, but I've actually just re-routed her neuro-pathways with the needles. If you pull any of them, it's back to screamfest. You can probably get her converted back to coming after a few minutes, but the exact amount of time before the trigger becomes available depends on which needle you pull, phase of the moon, you know, 'Chi' crap."

Mary looked at him like she didn't believe he had passed his history exam.

"Yeah, I can do that," said Thomas.

"Where'd you get the needles?"

"Wellll . . . I just happen have them. All the time. Just in case."

Mary turned to watch her breathe, convincing herself that it might just be all right. "I guess I better find some rope."

"I'll come back tomorrow, and we'll pierce her a bit more permanently. Then we can start discussing payment."

Mary whirled to see the wry smile on his face as the 'gotcha' set in, and the classic scary movie silent scream at the end of the show enveloped her face in ways she couldn't control.

Faith

MARY WAS a quivering heap after 9 solid hours of yelling and begging from the next room. That, and the things she knew that were going to be happening soon. The noiselessness now amplified the door closing to somewhere around deafening.

"All right. This is how she works. If that damn heroin addict can be believed, she's an extraordinary machine. Basically a 3-pole switch. Right now, she's off, with all the piercings in place. Turn around, bitch, and show her."

Martha's quivering was in synch with Mary's, as they kneeled in a 2-girl line.

Her back had a circle of pierces that were positioned like a drunk clock painted by Dali. Each piercing seemed to be disoriented from all the rest, with 2 patches of skin pulled up and a small pole going through it, and each end capped off. In the middle of each pole, another needle was directed in toward a central point in the middle of her body.

"If you pull out any of the pierces, she goes from off directly to sounding like she is in labor. After a period of time, depending on which plug you pull, the vocal trigger to change her to orgasms will work. You can switch her back and forth from pain to pleasure at will. To turn her off, she has to be in pain-mode, and put the piercing back in, oriented the same way it was when it came out. She'll turn off fairly quickly if you do it in this sequence. If you try to re-plug her in orgasm mode, she won't switch off, and you'll have to unplug her back to pain anyway to get the acupuncture point to work. And the holding time will be double between switches. Any questions?"

"Honey, are you all right?"

"No, I meant me. Do you have any questions of me."

Both women shook their heads slowly, out of synch, out of rhythm.

"I think she will be extremely compliant from now on. The threat of having her triggers pulled should broaden her limits pretty damn far. Shall we find out?"

The bobbling wobbling heads whipped up to him. "We've already played this game today, but now we'll show Mary, won't we?"

Martha sighed, and crawled across the room. When she got to Thomas, she reached up and seemed to have to observe where she put her hands as she opened his pants slowly. When his unerect cock was free, she swallowed and put it in her mouth and waited.

"She can't see what's going to happen like that."

Martha opened her mouth slightly, closed her eyes, and lowered her head, holding his cock, pointing it directly toward her mouth. Thomas started pissing, and she caught it all, and swallowed it all.

"To make this better, you should be smiling, cunt."

Martha forced the corners of her mouth up, but the tremors of her upper body announced the lie for all to see.

Thomas didn't have very much, apparently he had practiced more than he should have before the presentation.

"This is something she'll be good at now. I'd be careful, though, about putting genitalia in her mouth. Something bad might happen."

Thomas put his pants back together, and strutted across the room to where Mary was kneeling and laced his fingers through her hair. "Your turn."

She knew this was coming, but that didn't stop her from crying out as he pulled her to her feet and drug her down the hall. "Stay there, slut," he shouted at Martha.

The door down the hall slammed shut, and Martha straightened back up to kneeling, and stayed in the position it had become apparent was going to be considered her duty, and she sobbed gently to herself, fulfilling it.

THOMAS THREW Mary on to the bed and ordered her to strip. Mary hesitated.

Thomas was unflappable. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small leather case. "What, you ain't naked yet?"

Mary was trying to condense herself into the headboard. Thomas put the case down on the dresser, and was impressed with his own cat-like speed in getting Mary tied down to the bed with the ropes left over from Martha's turn with them. Then he cursed for outfoxing himself by leaving her dressed. Oh well. Live and learn.

Mary was struggling as he straddled her and started getting at least parts of her clothes out of his way. He almost fell off her reaching for the case.

"Know what I've always wanted you to do?"

Mary expressed no courtesy in answering him.

"I've always wanted you to beg me to fuck you."

The first needle he had extracted from the case was jabbed into her neck without warning.

"Ready to give?"

Mary shook her head.

The second through the seventh needles were merely annoying, and the thought of 'oooohhhhh, this is going to hurt sooooooo badddd', and visions of inquisitional comfy chairs almost had Mary laughing when the eighth needle hit, and the bottom dropped out. She knew that something was about to go horribly horribly wrong. Needle number nine got her attention, and still kept her reserved. Needles ten and eleven wrought the intended screeches, and as he waved the twelfth one in front of her, she realized her situation wasn't about improve, and she caved.

"Please please please please don't no don't yes, you can do it, I'll do it, please don't you don't have to no no no no NO NO NOOOOOOO!"

The twelfth needle went in right next to the first, the cycle was complete, and Thomas had his way with her; he got his fondest wish in her continually panicked offer of her various bodily orifices. She couldn't fuck him back fast enough---the unachievable promise of the relief of an orgasm kept her frantic and compliant and in constant motion until Thomas tired.

"That was great. I knew you had it in you."

He pulled the needles out at a different angle than they went in, but that amounted to merely an inconvenience to Mary, as it simply took longer. Compared to the hell she'd just been in, the pulling was just missing the mai tais and the cabana boy. Well, one she'd like.

He reached over, pulled on the ropes, and they fell away. Thomas used exploding knots, not the usual square and half hitches that take so long to undo.

He was no sooner out of the room, but she fell off the bed, and threw up onto the floor with everything she had.

As she craved nitrogen and tried to recover, she realized that all the men in her life would expect her to clean that up, and not dirty a towel. At least, the act of licking something disgusting off a floor was familiar territory. Lots of practice. She was grateful for hardwood; carpet is much harder to get this stuff out of.

So far, this had been the worst day Mary could remember. And she knew it was about to get worse.

THE CAR'S bad muffler faded out completely, and the grandfather clock made two of its quarter-hour reminders before Mary crawled back into the living room wearing nightclothes. A rare treat she thought she deserved on a day like this. Martha was right where she left her, still naked. When Mary reached her, she put her arms around her and started to apologize. Martha did not return the hug.

"I can't feel anything."

"What?" Mary asked.

"I'd tell you to take your damn hands off of me, but I can't feel them. Or anything else."

"Oh, sweetie . . ." Mary started running her fingers through Martha's hair.

"Please, stop. That's what the fucking needles in my back do. They don't turn off the pain, they turn everything off. I can't feel anything anywhere. I can't taste, I can't smell. I'm practically blind, and hearing is a bitch. I'm one step away from being a god damn pinball wizard."

"Oh, no, no. What did I do?"

"Yeah, I think you're right. You. The one thing I can feel is pissed off, and I am pissed as hell at you. You, bitch."

THERE WAS no question in Mary's mind as to what would happen next. "Wait here."

Mary stood up, and walked out to the garage. She came back in having shed her clothes on the way carrying a small suitcase, opening it on the floor, kneeling beside Martha.

"What are you doing?"

"I want you to do something."

"Fat fuckin' chance."

"I think you'll want to do this." Mary reached in the case and withdrew a whip, bowed her head, and held it out to Martha.

"Oh, just great. Now you want me to let you whip me?"

"No."

Long pause.

"You are so confusing."

"I mean it. I've been . . . bad. Real bad. I deserve it," Mary whimpered out.

"Okay, I'll bite. What's the gag? Why?"

"I . . . refused our master our husband something."

"He's in jail. Why should you care what he wants?"

"He..he . . . wanted me to call Thomas. Who did this to you. And I tried to tell him I wouldn't."

Martha said nothing.

"And I drew a gun on Thomas. That I intended to use on you. And I struck you. And I set things up with Mark."

Pause. Too short for Mary's comfort.

"You're right. I do want to do this." Martha lept up snatching the whip from Mary and raised her arm.

"Wait!"

"No." Martha crashed the whip into Mary.

"AAaaaaa. I mean it! You want this! Wait!"

. . . "What." Martha scowled.

Mary scrambled to the case and withdrew a set of manacles. "There's a hook in the rafters." She bowed her head, held the manacles out and waited.

"You are one seriously fucked up bitch." Pant pant. "I've never done this before." Mary put the manacles on with a deft well-practiced movement. She moved a chair in from the kitchen to where the hook was, stood on it, flipped the chain over the hook, and kicked the chair out from underneath her, leaving her dangling with a foot of air beneath her.

"Move the chair."

Martha drug it out of the way. "You're already bleeding."

"That's okay. uhhh. uhhhh. Thomas just raped me. Aaaahhhhh."

"When do I stop."

"You'll know when."

"Bet me." Martha swung and missed, and laughed. "This is harder than it looks." Mary started to laugh herself: "Haa aaa aaaahhha hhha aaarrrrggggh!"

Martha quit missing after that.

THE WHIPPING went on longer than any session Mary could remember. Not that she could remember her name after the first fifty strokes. Martha's new-found lack of feeling meant she didn't know how hard she was hitting Mary, so she compensated by giving every stroke everything she had. At twenty, Mary's squacks and grunts upgraded to shouts. At thirty, screams. At forty, the screaming was non-stop. At sixty, she re-vomited what she had licked up earlier. At seventy, the scarring began and continued all the way to the end. At ninety, Martha started shouting. At 127 strokes, Martha's fatigue caught up with her and the whip flew out of her hand and struck Mary on the foot. Martha couldn't pick up her hands. She staggered in front of Mary to look up at her, and both girls slowed down on the clamor until they could only rasp.

Once their breathings got down to triathlon recovery levels, Mary hoarsed out "Toldja you'd know." Martha disintegrated, and passed out. "Perfect. Just perfect." Mary didn't get the luxury of unconsciousness and had to wait until Mark happened by at midnight when he brought the Marys back from their duties that night in town.

Call

THE NEXT afternoon, after both Mary and Martha had managed to wake up and swallow a pot of coffee, Mary broke the dead air. "Thank you."

"You shouldn't be thanking me, after what I did to you."

"I'll be alright. You certainly can't thank me after what I did to you. I think you got the short end of the stick."

More coffee was finished.

It was Martha's turn to disrupt the awkwardness. "Is there anything that could make us friends?"

"Oh, yes, I'm sure. I mean, we both fell for John, didn't we? We at least have that much in common. Please?"

"This is truly weird, you know."

"Uh huh."

"I want to tell you something."

Mary's eyes dried out before she finished nodding.

"Thomas told me all about what this place is, what you do here, pretty much everything. It's going to take me a while to adjust to some of this."

"That's understandable."

"He showed me something, too."

Mary snickered. "His penis? Everyone's seen that."

"Ha. No, he, he pulled two of my pierces. And nothing happened. Except I could feel my fingers again."

Mary inhaled sharply.

"But he wants something."

'Here it comes,' Mary thought.

Martha took a deep breath, ready to commit. "He wants me to stage a rebellion. Here. While John is incarcerated. He wants the ranch."

Mary wished she smoked, she drank, she did meth, heroin, anything. Coffee just wasn't going to cut it.

"Will you help me?"

Slowly, Mary nodded.

PRISONER #2468WDWA picked up the phone in the visitor room in the trailer. Mary was breathless, wearing the face of a marathon loser.

"So. How'd that go?"

"As much as I . . . pant . . . hate to admit it . . . pant . . . you were . . . right."

"He helped her, then."

Pant pant pant. "Yes. Yes, sir." Pant pant pant.

Mary wheezed out the main events, on how Thomas installed an off switch on Martha.

"And . . . and . . . she whipped me."

"Really."

"I knew you'd want me whipped anyway."

"True. Show me."

Mary dropped her jacket to reveal the whip marks across the top of her back above her halter top.

"Impressive. She did quite the number on you---those are going to scar."

Mary nodded her head down to her chest.

"Tell you what. Put her in charge of discipline and show the stables the demo she did on you. That ought to make things easier for you for a bit. 'Cause it's gonna be a while, babe. Guess I shouldn'ta been thumpin' that cop's daughter, huh."

Martha turned back, with the looks of woe and worry and guilt.

"What. Look at me. What."

"You won't believe what else Martha said to me today."

MARY MADE a stop at Penney's to get some things for Martha to wear. No one recognized her.

As she was nearing the ranch, she noticed the sign Martha had commented on, and wondered who in the world would put up a black billboard with the word 'NARCISSIST' in white letters, here in the middle of nowhere. What a lousy message. Mary didn't enjoy her life the rest of the way to the ranch.

That night, the other Marys found themselves being threatened by Mark with Martha. Mary and her back made an impression. The girls had no questions or objections to anything the Fiend wanted after that, and only had to run to the bathroom to avoid embarrassing themselves once. Each.

After he left early in the morning, Martha found an opportunity to talk to the Marys. About the future.

Spill

"HEY, IT'S me. Did you forget about me? I know it's been a while. I think they're all ready. Yes. No, all of them. Tonight at 10:00. Come by the chapel. Remember what you said to me. Right. Yes. Yes. It'll work."

PUNCTUALITY WASN'T Thomas' strong suit. Neither was snappy dressing. Had something to do with the choices at the men's department at Penney's, and the clerk telling him how good he looked in the leftovers from last year. To get even with him for trying to screw her a year ago.

When he finally got to the chapel at 11:15, he was sure he knew what he was about to walk in on. This time he was sure it would work out.

The scene he walked in on resembled something Argento would have cooked up.

On either side of the altar, the Marys were suspended by their hair and their tits. They were both struggling to not move, and not succeeding.

On top of the altar stood Martha, handcuffed, with enough wires hooked up to the ceiling to light every Christmas tree in the county.

Thomas' hand suddenly felt lighter as he lost his grip on his gun. Then the room got dark and his knees hurt and his stomach turned from the downward motion. This sure was unexpected.

When Thomas came to, he was disoriented, bound, naked and suffering from his fear of heights.

As the room came into focus, he could make out the Behemoth banging Mary, hard, in what appeared to be her ass.

He could feel Martha behind him, but not see her yet.

"Hey," Martha whispered in his ear. He felt a tugging on his neck, and twisted his head up to see a rope extending up to the ceiling, amidst all the wires.

"Do you remember when you promised me you could fix me, make me normal, so I could grow old?"

Thomas nodded his head.

"I have no interest in growing old. You?" With that, she threw her arms around him, kissed him on his cheek and jumped off the altar. The wires tensed first, yanking Martha and Thomas horizontal, suspending her by her pierces. Thomas almost escaped her, but she wrapped her legs around him, kicking him in the crotch. Thomas considered his dinner, and whether or not he should continue digesting it. They swung back once, and on the return swing, the pierces started to rip out. Martha's ghost dance continued for a split second longer before they all gave out.

The blare Thomas heard directly in his ear as they fell toward the tension point of the rope around his neck scared him more than his fear of heights or failure or being swallowed by vaginas when he was 11.

Visitation

THE ROCKS crunched under her heels, and the temperature here was 10 degrees higher than it was over there. The stairs were about to fall in, and the door didn't actually close all the way. None of this deterred the dishwater blond. Once she was inside, the expression on her face was the one John had been waiting to see.

Before she even started across the room, he knew what had happened, and before he even got the phone to his ear, Mary was 2/3rds the way through her second sentence. ". . . and you won't believe what happened! They fell, and the rope broke, and he broke his shoulder and his collar bone and three ribs and . . ."

"Hang on, there, nelly. Slow down. Start over."

Mary was gulping air, she was so excited. "Oh, dearest lord, that was amazing. Even better than you said it would be!"

"Uh huh."

"Thomas got there, and we had the boobsy twins strung up by their breasts and their hair, and they were moaning and crying, and trying everything they could to keep from moving."

"IIIIiiiiii like it."

"Thomas looked up and saw Martha up in the middle. She looked like her hands were handcuffed behind her, but they weren't. All those wires coming out of her back made it look like we were setting to electrocute her."

"Beautiful."

"Thomas came in all in a rush, and stopped cold, like we had thrown a bucket of water on him. He even dropped his gun before Mark put his lights out. When he came to, he was up in the middle of the setup with the rope around his neck, right next to Martha, and she was crying, and playing her part just like she deserved an oscar, and when Thomas starting babbling about not knowing what was going on, Martha threw her arms around him, said something to him that turned him completely ashen. Then she kissed him like he'd never been kissed, and jumped off the altar. From ashen and spooked to utterly panicked in nothing flat! When the tension of Martha's wires hit, they jerked the two around, and she held on for dear life as they came out all at once, making her wail like a banshee. Her combined weight with his snapped his neck rope, and they both crashed to the ground, breaking lots of bones, and screaming like little girls. Which, they really both were. And at least Mark got to play his little games and put his penis into everyone's anus before the fire in the church got out of hand, including my stupid fucking brother. Did you know it burned?"

"And how is he now?"

"Mark?"

"No, your stupid fucking brother Thomas."

"Oh, mad as a wet cat without a bird for his troubles, swearing revenge, and frothing and foaming any time I come within range. I love this! It took Mark two whole days of experimenting with weights and how much to cut the rope to get it to break just right. Stupid fucking brother really thought we were going to hang him."

"It never ceases to amaze me how you won't use any form of harsh language, except when it comes to him. And Martha?"

"Oh, she hasn't stopped crying or howling or babbling for a moment. Whenever anyone tries to get near her to utter the code, she flies into a rage and makes it clear she will kill us all in terrifying ways if we interfere with her pains at all. We at least did get her gagged."

"Yeah, she does love that shit, a lot. Let her have it for a while, then turn her off."

"But how? Her acupuncture points are pretty much ruined."

"Well, uh, she has another trigger."

Mary went mute.

John nodded. "Yeah. And it's just like her."

"You knew all along."

"Oh, good god, yes." The guards started to force her up, as her time was up, and his lawyer was waiting. John would be coming home in a month.

"You're a smart girl. Hell, I had it painted up in the biggest letters I could get away with. But you'll have to say it like I do, and I know that it will bother you to have to swear. Sorry, babe."

ON THE way home, Mary was puzzling and puzzling and couldn't get that damn Dr. Seuss rhyme out of her head about puzzling. She missed going to Penney's, and had completely forgotten that until this morning, she didn't think John remembered how to pronounce the word 'sorry'.

It wasn't until she was inching up the only hill on the pink road that the sign made its appearance, and Mary suddenly knew John was right; all the turbulence Martha made amounted to 'look at me, look at me'.

Yes, it would pain her to have to refer to her master's possessions with blasphemy and profanity, but for this, she'll make an exception. She practiced all the way home.

Martha, You Fucking Narcissist.

The Crusade

The Pilgrimages of Idealism

"YOU'VE GOT to take her. They're doing things to her even I don't condone."

"Like what?"

"Some damn Skinnerian conditioning experiment, trying to get her to come on command, or torture herself on command. It's horrendous."

"She's too young. How can they do that?"

"Sometimes, I just don't understand these bastards. Please, get her out of here."

"You're coming, too."

"No. If I go, they'll hunt us. Besides, I just can't leave the other girls here behind. And I can't improve it if I'm not here."

"And just how do you plan on doing that?"

Martha's mother smiled. "I still have some tricks up my sleeve. You just take care of my daughter, and raise her right."

Martha's aunt took her hand. "I'll come back for you," and thieved the little girl into the night.

But she didn't. Things sometimes don't work as planned or intended. And Sarah found some of that out the hard way.

Years later, after a stint with a cult or two that did little to correct Martha's early-life conditioning, but much to instill a peculiar sense of justice and sacrifice, Martha found herself in a twang bar about to be approached by a man who now ran the ranch Martha was born on.

It was not a coincidence.

"ARE YOU sure you want to do this?"

"It's important, isn't it?"

"Yes, of course it is. And it's also very dangerous. What if they find out who you are?"

"I can handle myself. Don't worry about me. I'll call you when I'm ready."

"That's him. At least he's kinda cute."

"Love you, Aunt Sarah. I'm going to the bathroom. You should leave."

"Why?"

"'Cause I don't think you want to watch this. And I don't want him to notice you."

"Love you. Be careful."

John sat down. "Mind if I join you?"

"No, please." She smiled at him.

"Did I scare off your friend?"

She closed the space between them. "Not at all. I mean, she wasn't a friend; she was . . . just coming onto me. I prefer penises. Oop. Did I just say that?" Martha dipped her head and smiled sweetly, with a hint of blush. "I just have to powder my nose. Don't run off."

The Archaeologies of Love

"WHY IS there a graveyard?"

"It's a cemetery. Not a graveyard."

"Semantics. Why?"

"Things happen. Accidents, disease, old age, suicide, I think there's even a murder victim or two out there. And the Reverend won't let us take them to the cemetery in town."

"Now you're scaring me."

"Why? One way or another, sooner or later, we will all be there."

"A slave ranch with a graveyard? For maybe the ones that don't work out?"

"Cemetery. No, don't be silly. We don't kill anyone here. At least, not as a result of their slavery. Some of the girls, after they have left, ask that they be sent back and be buried here when they die. If their owners in the world do bad enough things to get them returned to us in a box, we can't stop them. Should we refuse the wishes of the girls?"

"I suppose not. Doesn't make it any less creepy. What do you mean 'left'?"

"The women here don't stay here forever. Sooner or later, one way or another, we all leave here."

'More than you know', thought Martha.

IT TOOK Martha a while to find it, but eventually she did. It was near a well. She broke down, every time.

"Oh, Mama. I found you."

"The women here are amazing. Just like you said."

"I can't leave them here. I just can't."

She went out often enough that Mary eventually caught up with her there. She marveled that Martha could even cry at all, and that she was crying for the dead here. It touched her.

"You know, if the asteroid comes to destroy the earth, I hope it hits right here."

She had startled Martha, who turned and tried to make it look like everything was allright. "Why, so we can all be spared the horrors of the aftermath?"

"Oh, no. The ground here is solid rock. There've been no earthquakes, no volcanoes, no shifts in the land here, ever. The earth is the hardest right here. It would just bounce off."

Martha saw the face of a high school debater making an obvious point, thinking it was a revelation.

"We'd had a geological survey done out here, to see if there was anything at all underneath this, and that's what the geologist said."

"So how long has the well been here?" asked Martha, stifling a sniffle.

"No clue. Long time before I got here. It's as dry as the proverbial bone; there's no water down there, and supposedly, never has been."

Martha's brow furrowed.

"That's why this place is so special. These shrines here at the well are the wives. No, they're not John's. Except that one over there. She died before I got here. This place has been here a long time. It means a lot that the wives got buried here, 'cause it's so impossible to dig. This is where I'll go. And you can, too. When the time comes."

She put her arms around Martha and gave her a hug, and Martha hugged her back. They held each other for a time. "Dinner'll be ready soon." Mary stroked Martha's face, surreptitiously wiped a tear or two, and left her there with a wink, knowing she wouldn't be long.

When Martha would leave, she wished she could feel the weight at the end of the rope that descended into the well.

The Arrowroot of Grackles

"I'M SURE you did. I would have been surprised if you hadn't. What did he say?"

"He said to trust you."

"Well, okay, he and I did talk a bit about some of this. Think of it as an elaborate plan to get even with your stupid fucking brother. Yes, I knew. And I have no intention of letting him or anyone else take this place away from you."

"So what do we do?"

"We have to make it look real, so in a way, it has to be real. I'm going to stage a rebellion."

"We're going to have to let Mark in on it. We'll need his help. Besides, if we don't, and he catches you, he'll kill you. Over a very long period of time."

"At least, he won't say anything, will he."

The women laughed, and had more coffee.

"YES, SHE believes me."

"No, the big galoot isn't going to be a problem."

"'Cause he thinks he's in on it."

"I'll let you know when I'm ready. We'll be able to get all of them out of here. I'll call you."

"Sure. Bye. Love you."

The Season of the Bitch

MARTHA WAS particularly difficult to wake when she was asleep. Mark finally gave up on shaking her and simply drug her from the bed by her hair. She finally came to when she was trying to roll over, and couldn't because she was being dragged across the compound toward the barn. She started yelling at him, what gives, what's going on, where are you taking me, and so on, when he finally got her into the building and dropped her on the floor.

In the center of the barn on a support pillar was one of the girls. She'd been tied to it, with her arms stretched around it, and a gag. She was struggling desperately.

Mark returned to Martha with a whip. He pointed to the girl with it, and then tried to hand it to Martha. It took a minute for the message to register, but she finally got attuned to her purpose for being there. As she hesitated, Mark growled with scary sounds, like a panther. An enormous hungry panther whose cubs were missing, and who believed you knew something about it.

Martha grasped the whip, remembering at last which end to hold. Mark pointed again to the girl. Martha couldn't see any of them, but she knew the other girls could see what was happening. No Mary.

In a last ditch attempt to stall, Martha asked Mark, "Are the cameras running?" He frowned, and shook his head. "Well, go turn them on, would you please? We're here to make money, are we not?" The elevator suddenly reached the top and went ding, and he got more exercise than he wanted, turning on lights, positioning several cameras, nodding and muttering in some unknown Markian language that seemed to indicate he was starting to like this idea.

Now awake, and considering what she was about to do, she began noticing things about the poor girl she was about to do them to. "Holy fuckweasel, it's bad enough that they tattooed her with all the demeaning terms for women she could think of, and several I don't even recognize, but did they have to misspell all of them?" thought Martha. The girl was large, so they had a lot of surface area to cover. Martha would have a lot of surface area to cover. As her eyes continued to focus, she observed that this had happened before to her prey, and whoever did it before had been vicious. The scars put little lines through the words, like 'kunt', and 'slutt', and 'hor', and what the hell was a 'sloont'? Jesus, they couldn't even spell 'fuck' right, and they seemed to have a different way to spell it each time it appeared. Who knew there were that many ways to screw that up?

He finally got back behind her, satisfied with the setup, and waited. And waited. Then he tapped his feet. And waited. Then he folded his arms and tapped his feet, loudly, slowly. Finally, he pushed her. With her choices evaporating, Martha drew her hand back, and swung. She had no idea how hard she hit the girl; she hoped it wasn't too bad.

Mark hit her. Obviously, not hard enough. Martha tried twice more, and got hit twice more, before she finally made the mark on the girl Mark and the cameras were interested in seeing.

Martha hit her again. And again. And she stopped, panting, trying to use catching her breath as an excuse for not hitting her.

Then, from outside of the pool of light made by the floods for the cameras, came the terrifying word.

"Six."

Martha dropped the whip.

"Six." Only this time, it wasn't one voice; it was several.

"Six!" A chorus.

"Six! Six! Six!" Chanting. "Six! Six! Six!" Martha was visibly shaking. "Six! Six! Six!" It got louder, and Martha's options zeroed out.

The entire room was doxologizing the number until she picked up the whip. Once she was upright, it stopped, and Martha knew she had to. She just had to. Damn it.

She let fly with her entire being, and girl screamed.

"Seven!"

Moan.

"Eight!"

Panicked sounds.

"Nine!"

Sobbing.

"Ten!"

And so it went.

THE GIRL whined and whinnied and whimpered from under the obstructions in her mouth. Martha didn't know the gag reached her esophagus. It was riddled with holes the further into her mouth it went, to keep her from completely choking and strangling on it. But gagging and retching was permitted. She hadn't been permitted to eat since late two nights ago, to keep her from throwing up. This night was a long time coming. And, as it turned out, would sell well.

The attack was well under way with the relentless count past several dozen from the unseen congregation, when Martha's sense of reason evaporated, and suddenly she was back in the house, whipping Mary. And all the reasons she whipped Mary came back, stronger than before, and Mark's encouragement was no longer needed. It dismayed her, and she started shouting obscenities, which counterpointed the metronome of the assemblage. She was going to make an example out of this girl so she would never have to do this again, as her own self-loathing got re-directed to the sacrifice, and she gave her everything she had. The count became meaningless, and fell apart because they couldn't keep up.

THE GIRL started out very weak, and was senseless long before Mark allowed Martha to quit. Actually, he had to; Martha could no longer hold the whip. He wouldn't let her go back to her room until he made her watch him fuck the bejesus out of the tranced victim's asshole, which was bleeding when he was done. A big finale. Then he did Martha, and she didn't feel anything then, either, not even when Mark finally came. An encore.

Martha didn't sleep for two nights. She looked like she felt. She hated Mark for getting her to do it, she hated Mary for not being there, she hated the girl for the unknown crime, and she hated herself worst of all for having anything to do with it whatsoever.

The next day Martha found her staggering around the compound, and realized she was going to have to really scare the girl to save her, and anybody else the girl would talk to. As if she hadn't done enough of that already. "I don't know who you are, or what you did or wouldn't do, and I totally don't care, but if he drags me out of bed to do that to you again, I won't use a whip next time. I'll use a chain."

"WHAT HAPPENED?" Mary asked.

Martha told her, but it took a while, around all the sobbing and digressions into guilt and shame and despair. The women held each other a long time that night. "What was her name?"

"Lois."

'How can I say I'm trying to save these women if I'm beating the snot out of them?' thought Martha. "This can't ever happen again. Please."

"Actually, you were perfect."

Martha looked up, bewildered.

"I think Lois is really in love with you now. She hasn't had a decent beating for a long time. And that remark about the chain? She'll follow you to the ends of the earth. Probably never get rid of her, and next time, we'll probably have to rip something off of her to keep her content."

"Wait, what?"

"Mark set the whole thing up. Pretty good idea, eh?"

Martha looked for answers on the floor. Didn't find any. "Two things. One, huh? Two, Mark can think?"

Mary pulled her hair away from her eyes and changed her face into a loving smile. "Actually, he's one of the smartest guys I know. Wouldn't know it by looking at him, would you. The point of it wasn't the beating. It was how reluctant you were doing it. As I say, perfect. You are now totally believable if you want to stage a rebellion. The girls will totally believe you when you bring up the ideas that things here aren't what they seem, and they should leave. You offer them something better. Even if it isn't true---what is these days?"

"I'm still having trouble with the concept that Mark can fire neurons."

"He's completely brilliant. You should see his poetry; very Sufi-like."

"I don't . . . understand this plan . . .”

"The important thing is that we get Thomas to fix you. And stick it to him, if possible, but that just might be me. The girls will be fine after, when we explain that to them. Might cost us a vacation. This place really is wonderful for them. Much better than anything they had before, and they can still do the things they like."

"They like being sex slaves?"

"I keep trying to tell you. The slavery thing is just part of who we are. 21st century slavery isn't anything like 19th century slavery. Back then it was about how hard can someone be worked to death for money for their owners. Now it's about service to human needs and desires that have been there since forever. The people who have slaves don't need them to make money. They need to fulfill themselves. That's different, and is very rewarding to the person who can get out of themselves long enough to do that for someone else. That's what the girls are being taught here."

"But the porn."

"It's part of training for the girls, so they can learn to do outlandish things, and find out it will really all be fine. The money isn't bad; the real money is when someone buys one of the girls. You do know we put the porn money into trusts for the girls."

"So they're still just a commodity."

"Honey, everyone is a commodity. Office workers sell their time and their skills to their employers for what, money? Benefits? Husbands sell their sperm to wives so they can become mothers and fathers. Clerics sell their lives and their souls to God. We all are involved in the exchange of ourselves to someone else anyway. The girls would still be in the sex trade if they weren't here. And this place is much better than where we got them. And this place is better than it was. Win, win, win."

The Privacy of Bowls

"CUT! GOD damn it, Cut!"

The Director stormed, the women moaned, and the sense of dread fell from the ceiling like rain.

"Playback! Where's the fucking Knotsmith? Get his ass out of whoever's ass he's in right fucking now!"

The grips scrambled in all directions. One of them got lucky. Of course, only one of them could.

The Knotsmith staggered toward the platform, casually re-assembling his pants.

"Would you like to explain this?" yelled the Director.

"Explain what. I tried to tell you."

"THIS!" The Director whirled the monitor.

On it, the scene that had just been suffered through was repeating itself. 18 naked women were bound in a line on the stage with their hands above their heads, suspended off the floor, their legs bound apart. 18 men were behind them, caning them fiercely, in synch. Each strike was timed to all hit the women at the same time, at the same position on their backsides. The tempo increased, and the screams grew louder and more desperate until the final hit, at which time the knots holding them women up were pulled, and the women all fell. Just not together.

"Do you have any idea how much you just ruined?"

The Knotsmith waited until the screen went dark, just after the tirade began. "I didn't ruin a thing. I told you that wasn't going to work. I told you we needed to practice, especially if you weren't going to do it the way I said."

"So you're saying this is my fault." The Director scowled.

"Yes. You. But we can still fix it." He went back to the food table and got a handful of chips.

"Oh. What do you propose---we start over? Have you not been paying attention to what we're doing here?"

The Knotsmith looked across the platform at the pile of sobbing women. Their backs looked liked they'd all been in an automobile accident.

"Well, if you want. It will take a month for the girls to heal up enough before you could start over." The women's cries escalated. "Or, fade the last scene out, tie the girls back up, fade in, make a show of turning them around, whip their tits a while, and this time do it my way: use the winch to pull the knots. They'll fall simultaneously. Then we can wrap and start the after-party."

The women were starting to protest, using the word that was forbidden on the ranch.

"Mary, shut them the fuck up!"

Mary hurried over to the mass of pained women, shushing them. She beckoned for Martha to come help. The women settled a bit, amidst the assurances that it would be alright, they'd get through it all, that this was important.

"And, we should practice the release. At least once." He was speaking with his mouth full.

The Director stared at the Knotsmith, and finally inhaled. "Take five, people. We're gonna go again." The sobbing became weeping and gnashing of teeth.

FIVE MINUTES turned out to be fifteen before enough cigarettes had been smoked to start again. It took another hour and a half to set up to practice once, which went flawlessly. The exploding knots all exploded at the same time, being pulled by a winch, and the girls hit the ground together like a dance troupe. The Knotsmith gloated, and the Director sank a moment before he gave the word to go with it. Between setting it all up yet again, negotiating how to turn the women around, and getting the cameras repositioned, it was well after dark when the last "Action" for the last scene happened.

Even the men who were doing the caning were exhausted and had to exert themselves more than they thought they had contracted for. The fronts of the women hadn't even been considered at the planning meetings, and they were all shiny with sweat and clean and unmarked, situations the Director decided he just couldn't abide. The attacks on their sex and breasts and stomachs went on beyond what had happened earlier that day. The Director kept it going until blood had been drawn from all of the women; pity the poor girls who bled first and had to sustain the assault until the tissue structures of the girls who didn't have delicate skins finally broke down enough to vent hemoglobin. Someone at least had the sense to tube-gag them all when they were turned, so that even though their torments could be verbalized, they couldn't be articulated. The Ranch's reputation for excising the word "no" from women's vocabularies was maintained, and gagging them ratcheted up the anticipation to levels even Martha admired. The finale was the stuff of Directorial dreams, a magical solidarity of relentlessly tortured woman-flesh hurtling toward earth in unison, with the last cane stroke hitting them on their way down. The two Marys on the ends sprained their ankles when they hit, an added bonus from the Knotsmith who had casually positioned them slightly higher than the rest.

"That was a good idea. Maybe next time, we can get all of them to do that when they hit," praised the Director.

"Well, the girls all weigh something different, so they'd have to all be at different heights to get the same forces to go in the right direction correctly. Those two at least matched. Might mess with your production value. And it would be hard to practice." The two men laughed, and Mary glared at her brother.

WHEN EVERYTHING was just about packed up, the Director called Mary, Martha and Mark over. "Next time, we're going to do a strap-on train. Put the girls in a circle, all with strap-ons, and they'll fuck the girl in front of them in the ass. Maybe suspend them all by their tits."

"Some of the girls aren't big enough to do that last part," said Mary.

"Ok, fine, maybe we'll needle their tits up and pull them out, ghost-dance style."

Mark shook his head, and his eyelids narrowed.

"We'll work something out. Maybe they can somehow fist each other in the middle of all this. Anyway, have them start practicing. We want this to look like it's an everyday occurrence for them. So make it one."

Mark nodded at Mary and Martha, and the room finished clearing, leaving the wives alone to slump on the platform in the middle of the barn, amid the grieving coming from the women's stalls that lined the walls.

"This really how you guys make your living?"

"Well, it's more like the difference between hamburger and steak for dinner. Are you hungry?"

"Starving. Horny as hell, too, just wish I could feel something to fix that itch."

"Wish I knew how to help you there, sweetie. After we get a quick bite, we're going to have to dress some wounds for the girls, or they'll scar."

"Wives' work is never done, is it."

Mary smiled, stood, and reached for Martha's hand. Her face changed into a woman sharing coffee with her best friend. "We'll sleep good tonight, and probably most of tomorrow, don't you think? The new training will start maybe the day after tomorrow. Besides, we're going to have to go shopping; I don't think we have enough strap-ons to go around."

"Is that something Penney's carries?" The women giggled with their arms around each other as they found their way to the kitchen in the house.

When the first showing of "The Dance" finally came about, it was a spectacular hit, and money poured in, keeping the Ranch in business for another month.

The Knees of Angels

MARY PASSED the bus on her way home from the jail, thinking nothing of it. She was dreading being greeted by her god damn fucking brother who would want…things…from her.

When she pulled to the front of the house, she thought it quieter than usual. The house was empty. When she got into the barn, Thomas was on the floor, tied up, gagged, naked, struggling. Pretty much the way she liked him. But as the pains started crossing from the back of her head, deja vu kicked in until she felt like sleeping. She dreamt something about falling and landing on things that should have hurt.

When the lights started to come back up, Mary realized she was in a similar condition as her brother. Except she was standing. And breathing was hard, due to the rope around her neck. She could see across the room her god damn fucking brother, now standing on a stool, also roped at the neck. Martha materialized.

"Hi, Baby. You ok? I waited to do this, because I thought you'd like to see it." Martha crossed the room, and unceremoniously kicked the stool out from under Thomas. Mary screamed through her gag.

"No, it's gotta be this way, Baby. I know how much you hate him. This is good for you, really."

Martha crossed back to stand under Mary. "You just don't know the monster who actually runs this place. It isn't John. The bastard in charge crippled his daughter, and is having her tortured all day, every day. Right now. I can't save her, but I can save you." And Martha pulled the stool out from under Mary. Mary dropped, and dangled, and strangled, and watched her brother do the same thing.

"If he'd do that to her for just running away, there's no end to what he'd do to you for letting the girls go. And I can't let that happen." Martha pulled the stool she had just removed from Mary's feet to another noose dangling in the room. She climbed onto it, and put it on. "And they'll torture me until I tell them where the girls are. And I can't let that happen, either. I do love you, Mary. I'll see you at the well." And Martha leapt into the sky.

ONE MINUTE and twenty seconds after Martha took her leap, Mark broke the door down, and shot both Mary and Martha as they hung, bellowing. He then calmly proceeded to take Mary down, and an unconscious Thomas. After cutting Martha down, he drug the women from the room by their hair.

Once the three were outside, Mary shook her head as she came around, looked up and quietly whispered once the gag was out, "Ouch. Oh, dear lord, ouch. Are the cameras running okay?"

Mark nodded.

"Will she be okay?"

Mark showed her the blanks in the gun.

"God, I love you. Hate squibs---messy. We have to go."

As they drove off to meet the women, Mark reflected how he was getting used to seeing Mary's face with its odd mix of relief and joy on it. They needed a vacation.

THOMAS FELT himself being shaken, and then being patted on the face as the volume and lights turned up.

"Where are they?"

"Blkgbgfffmn."

The light pats elevated to hard slaps. He thought he recognized the Reverend.

"Where the fuck are they?"

"AGfha, ahfgabl, i'dnnflfff"

What little distance he had been lifted off the floor became a great one, until his head hit.

"Maybe this'll show us."

The Mrs. Reverend Sarah had found the video equipment, rewound it and pushed play. Thomas couldn't see the monitor, but he saw their faces melt from anger to sad as their shoulders got progressively droopier.

The volume was too soft for him to hear over the ringing, but the light playing across their faces had quit flickering, and was constant; apparently the action of the TV was over.

"Do we believe it?"

"Why would . . . I don't . . . what . . . oohhh. Shit."

"What should we do with worthless here?"

"Well, he didn't exactly earn his keep, did he?"

A WEEK later, when John got home in a stew, because no one was there to pick him up from prison, he stormed around the house a while until making his way to the barn. His eyes were watering from the initial hit of the stench: no building could ever be inhabited again, once that smell happened in it. He was having trouble seeing through the squinting.

One---is that rope?

Two.

Oh, dear god. Three.