End of Women

1

Social Exclusive

Hammer and thongs, fire and brimstone. In summary, Gene Wilkes was the most charmless brute the State Commission ever employed. Even more notable was the careless manner in which he had been elevated to Police Commissioner within the first three months of his tenure. By anyone’s standards, that was tactless. Only the most dim-witted of his subordinates could fail to see nepotism at work.

Still, you had to hand it to the guy, he knew how to throw a party.

I was in my sixth year of membership in the Society, and that meant a lifetime trip on the gravy train. You need two things to get in; a penis, and the kind of fortune most human beings don’t even know exists in private hands. I made mine the hard way, building and selling oil tankers. I bet against myself just before the gulf spill and made billions overnight. My first party invitation came a week later.

Now its all second-nature, but that first visit made me question my sanity. The only reason I agreed to come was, well, you don’t say no to the richest and most powerful men in the world. I had my ideals, but I also planned to have a son one day. One party with these guys would ensure he didn’t just inherit my billions and buy a pacific island to coke himself to death in luxury. These guys had a mission.

At the time, I had no idea what that mission was.

First night I arrived at 3PM, so I guess it wasn’t really night at all. The house belonged to Wilkes, way up in the Appalachians where you dont expect to see anything but rocks, trees and camper vans. His was the entire valley, surrounded by a fortification of mountain ranges. I never asked how much of it he actually owned. Maybe it didn’t matter. Where he built, he owned.

Nobody came to the car. I expected – well, I didn’t know what to expect, but people on the decking, swapping stories, topping off colourful drinks, that sort of thing maybe? None of it. Nobody outside. I had that pissed off, embarrassed feeling that I’d come to the wrong place. No party atmos? Strike one.

Saying fuck it, I walked right up to the door and rang the bell. I didn’t hear anything inside. That was strike two.

I have no idea how long I waited but the door opened. Strike three was coming, I knew it.

‘Welcome Mr Greenwich. Please find your personal effects in the Lancaster Room.’

Two sentences making up for two strikes. I was relieved.

‘Um... thanks.’

Wilkes’ butler bowed toward me and removed his hat in deepest respect. When he straightened up he ran the hat along its rim up to his elbow, then popped it up in the air to land neatly back on his head, like an old vaudevillian show-finisher. I clapped awkwardly.

He led me through the entrance hall, and for the first time that evening I did see what I expected. Hunting lodge decor, log and branch framing and furniture that might still be growing. It smelled like sequoia and embers.

Wilkes had his head in a book in the corner, trussed up in a velvet suit and dashing enough to put his butler to shame. In my toned-down Armani I must have seemed like a square, but I was glad to be the most masculine man in the room. I’ll admit, it was all starting to feel a bit silly.

‘Rufus!’ He jumped up and dropped Handling Water back on the nightstand. ‘Good to see you here. I must admit to some envy, the first night is an experience you never quite recapture.’

I had nothing to say to that, as I had no idea what he was talking about. I smiled and nodded politely.

‘Do have a drink!’

Almost an hour went by as I waited in the bar room. There was no real party; aside from myself there were only five guests, and I had no need to ask any names. Edward Falk, champion of the finance market, rich enough to buy out everyone else at the table; Ulysees Buck, weapons dealer from the south; John Merry, owner of the multi-national media enterprise Global News; Lucius King, political strategist and free-for-hire advisor to the supposed powers that be, and last of all Irnish Valadi, inheritant to the Valadi fortune, India’s wealthiest man. In one room, the men who make, maintain and change the world as they see fit. I was quiet when I came in because I was sure I would leave any minute. Now I was star-struck into silence.

Wilkes kept me company, introduced me to everyone. I had investments that make world-beating businesses signed and dated without opening my mouth. I had commitments to honour, bursaries and even political protection. It was too much to be real, and I knew I was being set up.

‘Tell me, Rufus,’ Wilkes had said when the chatter died away momentarily, ‘do you remember these?’

My stomach dropped out when he showed me crude drawings I made as a child. Women being whipped, violated, tortured and killed.

‘How... how did you...’

‘It doesn’t matter. How do they make you feel?’

This was it. They had something on me, and so they had me, fit for the kill. I was their bitch now, with their money. It all made sense. I squared my jaw.

‘What do you want?’ I asked him. Wilkes filled the air with booming laughter.

‘Only to show you your dreams, my friend.’

The entire consort of the table got to their feet and led me out of the room, down into an underground chamber. As each turn grew tighter in my insane evening I became less certain of anything, most of all my personal safety, and descending into a dark, albeit enormous, basement, that mortal fear did not subside in the least.

‘Welcome,’ said Wilkes, ‘to every man’s dream.’

Light flooded the room. My eyes slowly adjusted, and blood rushed from my lungs to a more southern region.

Rows and rows of cages, each containing a live, naked female were placed like supermarket shelves across one side of the endless chamber. Opposite them was a well-appointed torture dungeon, complete with every sharp, tight, burning and piercing implement of misery imaginable.

‘What the fuck...’

The others laughed, no doubt remembering their first encounter with it. Wilkes could not hold them back any longer, and they ran to the cages to pick out their favourite girls.

I held back, stunned, and Wilkes beside me.

‘This... this is what the Bluenorth Society does?’

He clapped a hand on my shoulder.

‘Take a look at that first drawing again.’

I did. The woman I drew at sixteen had her enormous tits trapped in a metal vice. I had taken the time to sketch her out in fine detail. Despite the subject matter, it really was one of my better drawings.

As I raised my head again, Wilkes had a woman in tow. He dragged her on her hands and knees by a leash around her neck. Instantly I knew he had picked out a woman that so perfectly resembled the one in the sketch that it would drive me wild with need.

‘You have fun, my friend’ he said, handing the leash to me.

And oh my, but I did have fun.

You might be forgiven for thinking, in all that time, I was just a naive kid happy to get off with some guys having good old-fashioned jollies at the expense of a few innocent girls. In reality, I knew two things; one, my life and the direction I was taking had changed forever, and two, there is no such thing as an innocent girl.

2

The Plan

You do get those days, occasionally, when everything seems to be working out. All your aspirations and expectations are delivered and you mark that rotation of the earth as a positive in your life’s calendar.

Now imagine youve had a month of those days in a row. One after the other. Do you start believing in luck, then? Is that when you book yourself into the nearest church and thank God?

How about a year? One solid year of total one hundred per cent success in every endeavour. Maybe its wearing thin now. Maybe you start to expect it, and little insignificant failings start to seem so much bigger, so much worse. You become a perfectionist.

I think thats how we imagine it, because none of us live it. I imagined thats how it would be, its how I was raised. Appreciate what you got. Dont expect everything to go your way. Be happy with six out of ten. Good is good enough.

Well, here’s the thing.

FUCK, THAT.

The Bluenorth Club doesn’t just host parties for a night. The guys dont go home the next morning with beer soaked jackets with a thousand-dollar debt and a missing eyebrow. Bluenorth do it right.

It might seem easy, given they’re all basically zillionaires with total impunity from any government or police force. They are, as they would say, ‘invisible to the cosmetic authorities’. If that’s too vague for you, it means they’re rich enough that they can get away with anything.

And what they choose to get away with is not illegal arms trading, hardcore drugs, reality television or any of the usual evils. What they do is capture and cage women for the purposes of a short, very painful life sentence.

I blew cigar smoke out over a perfectly trimmed lawn. Wilkes’ butler was running a manual mower over the emerald plain as the others raised slowly, moving from room to room with a gentle grunt of ‘hey’ and ‘good night last night’.

I absent-mindedly drew an imaginary square around the lawn with my cigar. I repeated the action a few times, trying to get it right.

Wilkes opened the patio door and gave me a nod.

‘You got stuck in well last night. The boys were impressed.’

I shrugged off his compliments. Never did too well with those.

‘Not like it was an effort.’

I made the same shape again with my cigar, around the edge of the lawn. Wilkes noticed and smiled.

‘Trying to work it out?’

I nodded. Wilkes jumped up to his feet and paced out ten yards from the door to the verge of the grass.

‘Staircase.’ He said.

He then took off his shoes and walked across the carpet-like lawn, pacing out a rectangular shape about as long and wide as the one I had been imagining.

‘Edge of the dungeon.’ He confirmed, then pointed toward a trickling marble fountain, ‘torture equipment,’ he palmed at the far side of the lawn, ‘women’.

Years as a construction worker had left me with an itching need to know the exact layout of his underground male heaven. I already had it sussed that it was lain under the lawn. I watched the butler continue to run the grass with what I had thought was a mower, now realising it to be a movable electricity generator.

‘Right,’ Wilkes clapped his hands together, shaking his bushy beard against the brisk morning air, ‘time to get to work again!’

My body may have been aching beyond belief, but at the prospect of more, I leapt up and made it to the dungeon before Wilkes even had the key out.

As I approached the corridor of cages the girls flinched back into the deep recesses of their tiny prisons.

‘No, no no!’

‘Please not again!’

I checked each terrified face for the ones I had already tried. In my first night I had worked through about half of Wilkes’ inventory.

Reaching about two-thirds down the first corridor of cages I came across a black-haired pale little cunt, about 5’1. The girl shook her head and begged, but I had made my choice. Fresh meat for grinding.

Wilkes tossed me the electronic key and I swiped her open. Some of them scramble to the back of the cage, some lash out, kick, bite and scratch. Others try to push past you and run for it. They watch each other do it and fail, and still they try it.

That morning’s girl was a hider. She stuck her body so firmly into the far corner of the cage that I had to half climb in and grab her by the ankle.

As I pulled her out she clung on to the rungs of the cage with such panic that i had to yank her free, dislocating a finger in the process.

‘Thanks for getting me started,’ I told her as she wailed at the pain.

Hoisting her cheerfully over my shoulder I slapped her pert little white backside and carried her to the Chamber. Riding her over the horsebox got me into my rhythm, as pounded into her unbroken asshole, feeling the tears expand and her little voice grow hoarse from begging and screaming. Her tension enveloped my shaft as I hammered harder with every cry, loving the spasms that added extra tightness with every thrust.

I pulled out to spread my explosion of cum across her shivering thighs, listening to her voice crack and quake as her breathing slowed back to a normal rate.

‘Is that the end?’ she asked faintly.

I laughed, picked her up off the horse and dragged her by the wrists to the table, shoving her down onto her back. Her hands were behind clamps before she could think, and I was standing between her spread legs.

Her little face erupted into screams the moment she saw the metal canister, rounded at the tip to allow a smoother shove into her shivering cunthole. As I slid back the latch at the base an array of spikes jutted into the walls of her cunt, hair-thin and excruciating. Her thighs slapped against my sides trying to fuse together. Her crotch muscles contracted, desperately trying to force the canister out. With ease I held it inside, the traction on the spikes causing only more agony with every clench.

‘PLEASE!’

Her back arched and her arms twisted in the clamps, desperate for relief. Only ten minutes since cumming and I was already rock hard once again. Turning to the kit, I pierced her clitoris with a hook-edged needle and tugged repeatedly, watching the tears stream from her face, her mouth agape in a silent scream.

At once I pulled the hook free and had her on her feet, against the wall. The whip flew in my hand back and forth, ribboning her back with welts. Wilkes re-entered the dungeon and sounded an air-horn in my direction, drawing me out of my torpor.

‘What?’

‘Its dinner time.’

I looked at the clock, then at the broken, exhausted creature hanging in the wall brackets, barely able to draw enough breath to scream. I had been torturing her for five hours.

Wilkes had a knowing look in his eye as I returned the girl to her cage, practically folding her up like a suit to pack her away, so weak was she.

‘I was the same when I started,’ he told me as I slid the cage shut again, ‘you better watch how you go.’

‘Why, d’you think I might kill one of them?’

‘Two of the ones you used last night died.’

I froze on the spot and checked Wilkes’ eyes. He wasn’t kidding, but nor did he seem to be annoyed.

‘Women tend to do that when you shove an iron spike through their cunts, just saying.’

‘I guess so.’

‘How do you feel about it?’ He asked me.

I had no answer for him; at least none I was ready to say out loud. Lets just say I had no trouble sleeping that night.

Bare ass and hogtied, pinball number 7 slid at full speed down the watery slip-slide, crashing back and forth between her fellow female hopefuls. She knocked number 4 into reverse just as she slid off the polythene sheet and over the finish line.

Our convoy of delegates broke into a mixture of elated cheers and disappointed groans.

‘And its 7 in the lead!’ Wilkes announced as he marked the score on a digital card. That winning girl’s allotted team, a band of tycoons from India, shared a congratulatory high-five.

Girl 4, coming in last, was yanked up and carted off to the side-chamber where Wilkes’ butler stood waiting, burning iron poker in his right hand and a look of hunger in his eyes. The girl struggled and begged with all her remaining breath before the chamber door closed on her, and moments later screams washed over us.

‘Dartmouth falling off the race again,’ Wilkes commented to me under his breath, ‘too bad the old man can’t make the effort to show up in person.’

Wilkes sided his head at the video-conference screen where an elderly, besuited gentleman was throwing up his hands, bemoaning the poor performance of his girl.

‘Maybe if he showed, he could throw her himself, and stop blaming others.’

‘He lives in the Midwest, and he’s 107.’ I pointed out.

‘Folks from India make it here on the red-eye.’

‘Touche.’ I replied, as I watched the respective teams head to the far end of the wet slide to pick up their women for the next event.

The crowd moved onward, and I made to follow, but instinct held me at bay just moments before I heard the reason for it.

‘Sir! Sir! Message for you!’

Wilkes’ PA, a whippet called George. Already the bane of my life, but far be it from me to criticise another Male.

The kid had an air of caution in speaking to me.

‘There is a message, Sir. It appears that... well, it appears news of your... involvement here, is no longer secret.’

Wilkes heard this. In truth, he didn’t need to eavesdrop. George had barely bothered to keep his voice down.

‘Is that so?’ I asked calmly.

‘Y-yes, Sir.’

I smiled, and George backed up half a step. Little did he know he had just elevated himself in my estimations.

‘And who was it, then, who printed this news?’

Live, Love, Laugh.

A delicate rolling blend of words spelled out in ornament form hung above a pretty lace-pink tapestry of a lake house. Beneath that a window adorned with bracelet charms that overlooked the corner of Soho Street, the axis of her muse, the space in which she could think, and write, as freely as she chose.

Ruth Esther-Narrow, penwoman of the year. Entreprenneur of thoughts, bastion of feminine consciousness, elemental Goddess of the opinions that matter. Yes, those things she wore, graciously, humbly, and earnestly. She took her stand in her seat, there at the desk that was a theatre of war, and opened her air-thin laptop to begin her latest conquest.

Ruth’s thin fingers wrapped around a tube of pale lipstick which she applied via the vacant blackness of her computer’s loading screen. When the desktop appeared, she promptly hitched up her Kitch skirt, folded one leg over the other and tickled the keyboard.

This one was nothing new or special. Today, she had already decided, would be an average day. Just a quick vent on EverydayWomYN and perhaps a tap-update on TweetR, but no new stuff. She had lanced a boil in the last few days worthy of a thousand days’ slacking.

As her fingers flew back and forth she pursued the usual steps; the failure of man, the future of woman, the potential for woman’s administrative and organisational skills, the redundancy of man’s futile maintenance and engineering, followed by a brief foray into the injustice of women’s denial in STEM subjects and the evidence of boy’s failure in the classroom as further proof of the unstateable, but worthy of a smirk or two.

An e-mail popped up as she was in mid-flow. She cursed it immediately, knowing any break would fracture her continuity. It was from the man who was unfortunately her boss, so a break would nevertheless have to be made.

She popped it open and slipped two fingers into a bag of raisins.

       MEET SOON. ABOUT LAST ARTICLE. DO NOT PUBLISH AGAIN BEFORE MEET.

The raisin hung over her frozen mouth between her chopstick-like fingers.

What on earth was that about?

She immediately punched in a reply.

       No clue wot u mean? :S ??

She had barely swallowed the raisin by the time his reply came.

       I MEAN IT. DO NOT PUBLISH AGAIN. TODAY, 2PM.

Ruth shook her head. No, you do not just order me to meetings like that, little boy. She promptly sent back her reply stating she was taking a personal day, and switched off her inbox.

It took a full fifteen minutes to get right back into the swing of the thing. Five more minutes of free typing on female businesses before there was a knock at the door that threatened to break her carefree mood.

‘I swear to god...’ she uttered, pulling on a nightgown and straightening a framed photograph of Ruth and three girlfriends at the Cape.

Peeping through the hole she saw Justin, recognisable by that ridiculous, sexist beard. She rolled her eyes and opened the door.

‘You came to my house?’ she demanded incredulously.

‘Its serious,’ he said, and something about his urgency made her forget her contempt for him for a moment, ‘You can’t publish again, at least not until this blows over.’

‘This is about the DynaCorp thing? The CEO is a sexist?’

‘Yeah, that. Its not good.’

Ruth pulled her nightgown a little tighter over herself.

‘What do you mean, not good?’

Justin was not a bad guy. In fact by many standards, he was a ‘nice guy’. But he had a streak of arrogance about him Ruth just did not like to see in men.

‘Listen, you have to understand... its fine when youre talking about some teen heart-throb or the latest hip-hop jackass but... this is a powerful person. And I mean powerful, the kind who can do, well... anything.’

Ruth had to stifle a laugh. Was Justin seriously this stupid?

‘Let them come at me, Jay. I’ll happily see him in court. If he wants me on Kimmel, I’ll do it, no problem. Just give me that chance and I’ll show that misogynist what a real woman can-’

‘No,’ Justin interrupted her, ‘no, Ruth. Its not like that. I’m not talking about a debate, a media-publicised fracas. He’s not powerful like, he’ll sue you. He’s powerful like, he will kill you.’

Ruth felt a shiver at these words that she blamed entirely on Justin’s melodrama. Typical man.

‘Trying to scare me into silence won’t work’ she stated with a tone of finality, ‘I will continue to fight for women as long as I live.’

Justin sighed and got to his feet to leave.

‘I know that. The trouble is, he knows that too.’

Justin left, closing the door behind him and leaving a much colder-feeling apartment than Ruth remembered. She didn’t take the gown off as she sat back down at the desk.

After a few minutes contemplation, she reopened her inbox.

Justin had not emailed again, but it was overflowing. Endless emails from countless sources, every one of them crammed full of repulsive vitriol. She could barley read one before twenty more arrived, all from different addresses.

‘Keep an eye on your back, bitch!’

‘Men are the masters!’

‘Build a civilisation and fuck off to it, if you don’t like ours!’

She closed it again, colour drained from her face, and somehow from her entire apartment. It felt less pink, and more grey.

A final message appeared, a programmed update from her home news page.

       CEO’s OF MAJOR CORPORATIONS SHOW SOLIDARITY WITH

‘No...’ she shook her head slowly, ‘no, thats not meant to happen...’

I hung up the phone and rubbed my neck. A two-hour conversation that felt like a year, but worth it. I knew she would not give up that easily, but that was not the point. Whether she knew it or not, I had now handed her the tools with which to deepen her own grave.

4

Late one afternoon, I volunteered to help Wilkes with one of the more mundane chores available in the Bluenorth facility; cage reallocation.

The simple fact was that our membership numbers had swollen enormously in the space of a few short months, and as a result our supply of women was running dangerously low. Some of the girls who were there when I arrived had been captive at Wilkes’ place for nearly two years. Since my arrival, any that had been there more than six months were considered outdated.

A quick head count told us that around half the cages in the basement were now empty. What girls were left were the less attractive non-screamers, the sickly-looking. Wilkes checked his list as I loaded fresh water from a can into a bottle that fed into a girl’s cage.

‘Four hundred and seventy-seven,’ he announced finally, ‘with the rate we’re moving at, that won’t last another year.’

‘Yeah, but population took a big hit on game day,’ I pointed out, watching the pathetic creature behind bars now lapping at the watery spout, ‘in hindsight, maybe Throwing-Ax St Andrews Cross Darts was not an economically sound final event. I found so many pieces of woman on the lawn yesterday I reckon Dr Frankenstein could build himself a girl from scratch.’

The runtish female lapped up her fill then retreated from the cage door, breasts bouncing with delight as she licked her lips.

‘Funny,’ Wilkes raised an eyebrow, clearly too pressed to be amused, ‘but we need to be more careful. Even with the power in this house, we can’t keep this quiet for much longer.’

I stepped up to the next cage, choosing my words carefully.

‘Well,’ I said slowly, ‘maybe we don’t have to.’

Wilkes continued checking his lists, though a change in his energy suggested he was no longer taking any of it in. Maybe he knew this had been building in me for a while. It could be he had known about my scheming, my liaising with other members behind his back, but if he did, he hadn’t let on a thing.

‘Fifty-six barrels of Protenate needed.’

‘Seriously, its like you said, the most powerful men on earth are here. Why can’t we change things, if only just enough to keep this place safe?’

‘...not to mention salary for gamekeepers, they all want a raise now they know we’re off the grid, legally speaking...’

‘I know its risky, but I also know you didn’t build this place just for a bit of weekend fun. This has taken up every free waking moment you’ve had. You’ve lost sleep to make this happen. And if you didn’t want it to go further, you wouldn’t have invited me here.’

Wilkes ran out of reasons to ignore me.

‘Right,’ he still wasn’t looking up, ‘well... right. Except it just... can’t happen. It can’t happen.’

I seriously considered backing down, but I had come to believe that without change outside, Bluenorth would soon disappear. It was only a matter of time before it was exposed. All I could do was hope there was enough political and fiscal leverage inside that house to change the world so that when we were exposed, it just wouldn’t matter. A fool’s hope.

‘Why?’ I asked, ‘why can’t it happen?’

Wilkes smirked at me, unable to argue, unable to agree. He ticked his last box and headed back upstairs, leaving me with my thoughts.

One of the girls in that row started rattling her door, sobbing as she ached to be released. The padlock barely budged at her feeble attempts.

‘You want to come out?’ I said. The deep voice terrified her, and she shrank back into her cage. I proceeded towards her, tapping my fingers on the thin bars. The tubes inserted into her urethra and asshole that dealt with waste were no doubt currently in use when she saw me approach.

‘Little bitch wants out?’

She shook her head, throat closed with fear. I held up the base of the padlock and swiped my card across it, unlocking the small cage. She shrank back even further, but in a six-foot-deep cage, there is not much retreating space even for a female.

I opened the door and held my arm out.

‘Don’t you want to get out?’

She shook her head, lithe little legs scrambling against the damp floor of her cage, pushing her body as far from me as possible, still well within my reach. She had dark eyes, long black hair, matted and greased with blood and sweat (to be expected), but still, a beautiful woman. I had a sudden urge to ask where she came from, how she was caught. But then, it would be the same old story, sobbed up for pity’s sake. Would it be easier for me if these filthy creatures had backstories, or harder?

In the end there was only one thing I could do; the same thing I had done for weeks now.

I pulled the electroshock rod from my belt and sparked it in plain view of the woman.

‘Get the fuck out. Now.’

A torn-tinfoil heap of a building marred Ruth Esther-Narrow’s view of the sleek, modernised Financial District of Los Angeles. She passed the vulgar monstrosity with impeccable disdain and proceeded onwards to the silvery monolithic block that dominated the skyline, rented space for her latest freelance supporters.

Her pink-cased blackberry had been buzzing off the hook – metaphorically speaking – but for the first time in years she had the will to ignore it, bound by the knowledge of where here click-clacking heels were taking her. For the occasion she had worn a longer dress than usual, formal wear befitting her host, and perhaps keeping lecherous eyes off her legs for an appreciable length of time.

In the lobby of the great skyscraper she waited, expecting every emerging man from the elevators to be her appointee. Finally a woman in her fifties emerged, scanned the horizon, and found Ruth. A smile crossed her pleasant face as she approached with an extended arm and shook Ruth’s hand.

‘Ms Esther-Narrow, what a pleasure.’

‘Oh, please, call me Ruth! I think as women we ought to be informal with one another.’

Her host’s smile flickered slightly, and Ruth felt a ripple of unease before it returned winningly.

‘Of course, how lovely to meet you Ruth. I presume you know who I am?’

‘Are you kidding?’ Ruth felt herself about to gush, ‘I only got into journalism because of Yvonne Wyatt!’

‘Is that a fact?’

‘You had a wall to yourself in my first bedroom.’

Yvonne inclined her head modestly.

‘Please come with me, then, we are all eager to get started.’

The glass-fronted elevator propelled them several hundred feet into the air with full open view of the enormous fall beneath. To her horror Ruth began to feel queasy.

Fight it, girl! Youre in an elevator with Yvotte Wyatt!’

‘Is everything ok?’

Ruth hitched up a smile.

‘Yes, just a few bad memories.’

‘Oh, I’m sure,’ Yvonne pursed her lips in sympathy, ‘no doubt that nasty business with ____ must had left you feeling quite overwhelmed.’

Ruth nodded, not sure what to think about Wyatt’s choice of words. As they left the elevator she felt a wave of relief.

‘We are just through here.’

She opened a side-door that led into a narrow concrete stairwell.

‘Um...’ said Ruth, wildly wondering if Yvonne knew the way at all.

‘Don’t worry dear, the conference room isn’t directly accessible by elevator, for obvious reasons.’

Ruth nodded and followed Yvonne up the hard steps, not quite sure what those obvious reasons might be. She felt silly trotting up the slabs in high heels, and on noticing Yvonne wore flats, kicking herself for not bringing spare shoes.

As Yvonne opened the door at the top of the steps Ruth felt fresh outdoor air brushing over her body. Her long dress billowed out at the back.

‘What – where are – is that the roof?’

‘Its a lovely day, dear,’ said Yvonne placidly, ‘we thought we would meet outside, somewhere secluded. Where better?’

Ruth neglected to mention her debilitating fear of heights pre-interview, so in a way she only had herself to blame for this. Gathering herself, she crossed out onto the open roof.

The sun hit her hard and temporarily blinded her as she heard the sound of Yvonne closing the door behind. When her sight returned she saw no conference table, no benches or fresh coffee urns. There weren’t even chairs.

Five men, three of them enormously built bodyguards occupied the open roof space. They had not been in conversation but stood waiting expectantly for her. As her vision sharped on the two smaller, but no doubt commanding men, she recognised him and drew a horrified gasp.

‘Yvonne, what –‘

Her only female companion on that roof passed her by without a word of explanation and stood beside one of the enormous men. Then, in a move that made Ruth sick to the pit of her stomach, she knelt down and exposed her neck to the man, so that he could fit a collar to his slave.

‘You can’t... Yvonne!’

‘Its good to finally meet you, Ms Esther-Narrow.’

She returned his stare with open revulsion, as if she were addressing a pile of manure.

‘You... what have you done? That is not Yvonne Wyatt!’

‘Oh, I’m afraid it is,’ he said, pacing out of his flanking guards toward her, ‘you see, its amazing what pain will make a woman do. I knew she was your little hero, the perfect bait.’

Ruth had heard enough. She ran for the door and tried to kick it open, but it held firm. A moment’s hesitation in trusting Yvonne had cost her her only escape route.

‘Let me out!’

‘On one condition.’

He held up a single digit. Ruth turned to face him, trying to seem defiant.

‘You will work for us from now on.’

Ruth forced out a laugh.

‘You’re out of your mind. Why on earth would I do that?’

‘Because if you don’t, we won’t even have to explain why you died today. Yvonne will say that you interviewed for your dream job and failed dismally. In delirious devastation you ran to the roof and threw yourself to your death. A slam-dunk story, quite literally. Everyone will buy it, overemotional women, and all that.’

He winked at her and she was bidden by an urge to tear his eye out.

‘So...’ she said through gritted teeth, ‘you think I’ll just walk out of here today and stop writing about your freak shows? If you’re going to kill me, do it now.’

The men seemed almost impressed by this, though she had only said it because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

‘The trouble is, Ruth, I don’t want to kill you. I want to use you. A change in your views will set off a chain reaction, a ripple that will run around the world. In case you hadn’t noticed, people are getting tired of feminism. Of women, as a matter of fact. How many failed attempts at female presidents? How many screw-ups of social systems, injustices, hypocrisies, in the name of your movement? All they need is one or two outspokens to have a change of heart and it will all come out. Right now you’re a plug holding back the tide of an ocean. I’m here to pull you out.’

‘You talk about injustice. What of the thousands you plan to enslave?’

‘When man liberated his fellow men he made the mistake of liberating women in the same beat. You were mistakenly given the liberty which confuses and torments your inferior species, and we are simply here to correct the disorder.’

Ruth had nothing to say to that, but still had no intention of giving in.

‘I refuse,’ she made herself say, ‘you can throw me off the roof if you want. I’m not doing it.’

She had called their bluff, she knew it. He looked angry now.

‘No,’ he said slowly, ‘we aren’t going to throw you off the roof.’

Ruth clenched her fist triumphantly behind her back.

‘You’re going to jump.’

Her heart sank.

‘Jump?’

‘That’s right,’ he went on matter-of-factly, ‘because if you say no to us, what we will do is publish everything Yvonne has on you. Your original – genuine – credit rating, your history with the IRS, your involvement in certain radical – and illegal – feminist networks. You will get a fair trial which will definitely end in imprisonment.’

He put his hands in his pockets and waited.

Ruth slid down the door and sat on the floor. He had won. Beaten her. It was over. If he could do that, then he was right... she would have nothing left but to jump. Her deepest fear was not falling to her death; it was the slow destruction of her life and everything around her.

‘You tell me what to write.’

‘Oh, of course,’ he nodded, ‘you won’t be required to actually do any writing, just publish what we tell you under your name. Yvonne will back you up and the dominos will start to fall. This will all be over soon, trust me.’

Ruth made no reply as she got back to her feet.

‘Its not that bad, Ruth,’ he plied her, helping her to her feet, ‘I bought your flat this morning, so forget about rent. In fact, you can forget about going outside at all for a good long while.’

You can tell a lot about a man from the way he keeps his women.

The man who locks them in the cupboard that came with his house, beats them with his fists and uses them as footstools is, in all polite respects, the sort of man who reaches for the bottom shelf in life. You might say that, given the man I had come to meet was a Senator, it was no great deduction of mine to say he was ambitious. More than that, the detail and care given to every aspect of the lives of his females was, for a man who held outward contempt for their inferior species, a sign of a chronic overachiever.

‘Good evening, Sir. The Master will be with you very soon.

’

She was bound by an elaborate lace bodice that kept her elbows bent behind her back and the most meagre of reach for her fastened wrists. Her breasts were utterly exposed, pushed outward in exaggeration by the forceful binding of her arms. What must have been a spring-operated contraption around her hips and waist prevented her from closing her legs fully, as if to deny her even the briefest moment of privacy. Her taught face was still quite pretty, graced with a kind of numbed pain of a woman who had lived like this for years.

Rising out of the couch I approached the woman, aware that without my permission she could do nothing but stand quietly waiting to be dismissed. I examined the bodice, its intricate and fascinating layers and coils – no doubt custom-made, nothing I had ever seen on the market was so perfectly designed for the practicalities of keeping women just as one chooses –

and found myself already unlocking the psyche of the man I was to meet.

I cupped one of her exposed breasts and found there were no whip marks, burns or bruises. Either he rotated his girls carefully – tortured only those in the basement, let the serving-girls off lightly –

or he only ever punished those areas of skin covered by the extremely tight bodice. Both possibilities told me something else. He was a man of careful planning and meticulous exection. He would likely never act impulsively, not even strike his women out of anger. Tempered, even and precise, I saw a die-hard misogynist with the mechanical thinking of a fighter pilot. A powerful combination

The girl whimpered as I felt her warm flesh, and for it she got a slap on the behind. Light – I did not want to spoil this ideal image he had created. Indeed, it was as if he saw his women as canvases on which to paint. At once I felt ashamed of my own brutal unleashing of rage on the women living – or otherwise – in Wilkes’

basement.

‘Quite the specimen, isn’t it?

’

Hobart held a tall presence despite not being a particularly tall man, a straight back and trim beard, a moderate voice. His eyes were confidently focused. Nothing about him was aloof.

I stopped my analysis long enough to clear my throat, and greet him.

‘Yes, she is.

’

‘Not the girl, the bodice. One of your chaps made it. Really quality work.

’

I became aware of two things; one, that my mouth was wide open, and second that my hand was still cupping the naked breast of the female. I withdrew both hand and jaw as Hobart took a seat on the magnificent rocking-chair beside the tall window and lit up a pipe. I vaguely registered the lawns outside where women were milling about in the illustrious gardens, carrying out meticulous pruning and weeding with inches of hand manouverability in the same restricting bodice the woman I had just examined was wearing.

‘I trust you didn’t just come here to take a look at my dickless servants, amusing though they are,’ said Hobart behind a haze of thick pipe smoke, ‘so I invite you to begin business.

’

I took a seat on the couch, acutely aware that it was not normal for the visitor to begin business negotiations with the man who had invited him.

‘Coffee’

he said without looking at the girl, and she turned to leave the room on command.

‘Thank you for inviting me here tonight.

’

‘You are welcome.

’

‘Grateful though we are, I just wondered what you want from us?

’

Hobart lowered his pipe and surveyed me carefully. I could almost hear the cogs whirring inside his articulate mind as a tightly framed girl bopped past the window, a pair of hedge trimmers clipping carefully between her prime tits at a rosebush.

‘I had imagined we had similar ambitions. I thought it would be obvious after you saw my home.

’

‘Very obvious!’ I blurted out, unsure why I was so jittery, ‘You seem to be the only member of Senate who is outwardly anti-women.

’

‘You may be right, though its hard for me to speak from an outsider’s perspective.

’

His woman returned with a silver tray laden with coffee, balancing the set immaculately with trained fingertips that shook as she laid it on the table and then retreated, holding a position just out of sight of Hobart. I had a fleeting desire to measure the degree and distance between them, and see if it was the same next time.

‘I apologise if the way we behave seems... indiscipline to a man like yourself. You must think of us as pests.

’

‘The only pest around her is her kind,’ he said, jabbing a finger straight at his servant, ‘I admire you boys for your courage, even if you are a little overzealous. I have wanted to silence feminists for years, and then I see you go one better – turn them on their own kind. Beautiful.

’

I smiled in appreciation.

‘Now,’ said Hobart, tapping the ash out of his pipe, ‘I assume you’re ready to take the next step.

’

For the first time the girl just outside of his vision winced uncomfortably.

‘I think we are. Its just a question of whether or not we agree on what that next step should be.

’

‘I don’t see how we could disagree. You can tell me of all the things you plan, expanding the compound further, perhaps building new Bluenorth sites, putting ever more women behind bars and more men at the tools – but how can you do any of that without taking out your major obstacle, the laws that protect the pestilential female species?

’

I gathered myself as the conversation turned to planning. I knew now why I was nervous; I was star-struck, something I did not think was still possible.

‘If we can remove every law that protects them, we will. If we can make a few laws that do the opposite, we will do that too. But among us are no lawmakers, only businessmen. What can you offer us?

’

These were Wilkes’

words I repeated, and as such tempered more than mine would have been.

Hobart got to his feet, strode across the room and headed for the door. It took me too long to realise I was supposed to follow, but eventually I did.

His stairway broke open into an underground passage, and before he had even opened the door to his subterranean home I knew what was hidden there, so similar as it was to the dungeons at Bluenorth.

Sure enough when that door opened I smelled oil, burning and blood; I saw irons and brickwork hammered together; I saw sweaty female flesh crammed in tight against more female flesh with cruel sharp caging, and the unmistakeable squeals and cries of female suffering.

‘Nothing new to you,’

he said to me as I walked past a girl being skewed apart and rutted with a silvery shaft studded with red thorns.

‘The only difference is you have girls up top as well’

I observed, only half-hearing myself as I saw the girl writhe in agony, the studded shaft now making her womanhood a mockery.

‘The girls upstairs are here voluntarily. Well, they are now’ he added with a savage smile, ‘they may not all have come that way. The ones who serve well down here, and survive – and thats not most of them – get to serve me up there.

’

He stopped to watch a woman all wrapped up in ropes twisted into an agonising contortion by the tormentor. As he brought her body to the very limit of its stretching ability he paused, and pushed it further so the wretched woman tore apart in an explosion of screams and blood. He tutted.

‘No, no, that’s too much then...

’

‘I see not every girl gets an equal chance at survival’

I said subtly to Hobart.

‘Whoever said I believe in equal opportunities?’

he replied.

‘So this is your plan?’ I spoke loudly, fighting against the orchestra of screams to be heard, ‘nothing unlike what we do at Bluenorth.

’

‘I am just bringing you to a place in which you might feel a little more comfortable,’

Hobart winked, the first real candid movement he had made all day. I felt reassured he was actually human.

‘I appreciate the gesture’ I said, as a scream nearby broke into a gargle and something tore open, ‘So what is the plan?

’

A pair of male assistants appeared, dressed no less impressively than Hobart himself. Apparently when it came to his human servants, Hobart had a much more progressive attitude. The besuited gentlemen proceeded to wheel out a cage containing a bloodied, whipped female who winced at every movement. As they pulled her from the cage they shoved her ass-first onto the table between Hobart and myself, forced her legs open and showed me my first glimpse of the Vaglock.

Protruding from her cunt-hole was a chrome steel object the shape of a faucet. One of Hobarts black-clad workers reached toward the dial and turned it to the left; the girl squealed with pain.

‘The most efficient and simple form of subduing a female ever devised’

Hobart announced proudly.

Back then, of course, it was still a prototype, and the bloodstained counter-top and production-line of chained up girls heading into the testing area was enough evidence that Hobart’s boys hadn’

t quite worked all the kinks out of the tech yet.

The next girl, a supple tanned little filly, was hoisted legs-spread onto a wooden table, shackled up by wrist-and-ankle to each corner. She whimpered and twitched as if she wanted to struggle, but Hobart’

s training held her mind in place. Two of Hobarts black-clad workers busied themselves between her legs, the first of them working with a pair of what looked like small foreceps and the other brandishing what I knew now to be the vaglock, a pear-shaped expanding tool. I watched in fascination as they began to force the lock inside her, and stared in amazement as they applied a high-voltage electric shock to the pear that sent her legs twitching and her tongue hollering.

‘The shock overwhelms the muscles in the crotch,’ a jagged-jawed worker explained to me in passing, ‘stops her from pushing it out before it gets in.

’

Push, expand, shock. Push, expand, shock. It took seventeen rounds of inching forward until the vaglock was fully inserted and expanded. The girl trembled and shook, letting out a slow, constant whimpering moan as they lifted her back up off the table. She almost crumpled immediately, feet facing inwards and hands forming little fists of restrained agony at her hips. Her black hair hid her face as she sobbed.

‘What do you say, bitch?’

Hobart asked the girl.

‘T-t-thank-you, S-S-Sir…

’

Hobart flicked his hand through the air, signalling his workers to cart her away, presumably to sit in a cage until needed. The he turned to me.

‘Its based on a medieval instrument known as the Pear of Anguish. Quite the ingenious innovation, and more than mindless punishment for the sake of it. This is torture that achieves something other than satisfying your own urges. Do you understand me?

’

As the next girl was brought up, legs spread and pinned down, I realised that for the first time, I really could understand a man like Hobart.

5

Ruth had poured her life into the work, and now the work was undoing it all.

Every day she logged on, wrote, received hate mail, wrote some more and then logged off. Her windows gave no light now that they were barred. Her door was reinforced steel. It was the same five rooms she had made her goddess domain, now her prison.

She hated to credit Bluenorth, but they had done it all so well. There was no escape. Even if she was willing to kill herself and see an end to it, they had everything on her. They would destroy her memory just as efficiently as they had destroyed her life, and they made sure to remind her of that any time she objected to some new misogynistic post she had written for her, to publish in her own name. She was as close to property as it was possible to be, and as close to wishing she had never written a word in the name of equality as she ever wished she would be.

Ruth sat naked at the desk, one leg folded over the other tightly. She did that now, not because the cameras were on her at all times, but because the endless, endless misogyny had really started to wear her down. She was ashamed, and ashamed to know that she was ashamed, of being a woman.

They would watch her cry, whoever it was on the other end of those little black cameras, and let her lie there, so long as it was before or after the hours in which she had to write. They let her sob in solitude, let her stand in the shower for three hours staring into nothingness, but if she ever picked up a sharp object, got too near a window or dared to turn on the TV, the door would explode and six men would round on her, pin her down and… torture her.

Oh God, the torture… it was beyond anything she knew was possible. How her body still functioned, moved, and still bore almost no evidence of abuse seemed impossible to her. They knew how to cause a woman unimaginable agony with no scars outside her mind.

She finished typing her last sentence of the day, a long wax about how she had apparently read up on sexual dimorphism, and submitted. She closed the laptops, already hearing the cries of outrage. She wondered when they would simply lose interest in her, stop messaging. Maybe the forums would drop her blog. She reminded herself they, too, were probably run by Bluenorth.

She rose, breathed out and made for the bedroom. There were only three cameras in there, so she made it her home, hoping that at least once a day only one man would be looking at her naked body while the other two went for coffee. A single tear streaked her face every time she had the thought.

At the sound of locks sliding back in the door she jumped, backed into the wall and held her hands above her head. What? What had she done? What was it now?!

Three men entered, one of them the last man on earth she ever wished to see. Her jailer, the man who put her into this mess, and the one who she would take with her whenever they decided to finally end her.

‘You look good, Ruth,’ he smiled warmly at her, chest swollen with the satisfaction of seeing just how low they had brought her. In truth, she probably did look good to him, ‘I’ve been enjoying your work these last few weeks. A serious improvement.’

‘Yeah,’ she sniffed up the tears and made herself stand straight, ‘I guess a guy like you just loves reading his own writing. You’re that guy.’

Wilkes sighed and gestured toward her. His two henchmen took her by the arms and escorted her into what had once been her most prized possession, her walk-in closet, now a fully kitted-out torture chamber complete with strapped-up half-upright restraining table. She tried to struggle just like every time, but they were too quick, too used to doing this. Her wrists and ankles were chafing on the thick leather straps before she could get her eyes in focus to hit them.

Wilkes stepped towards her, taking a metal object from his pocket. It was shaped like a bulb with a screw at the base, and as he turned the screw it bloomed into four savage petals.

‘We have a new policy for our girls,’ he explained casually, ‘just a little reminder, every day, what the situation is.’

Ruth needed no more explanation. Sweat gathered around her tears. She shook her head furiously.

‘No, no God no please, PLEASE!’

One of the others grabbed her thighs and shoved them apart while she screamed. The other brought up a car battery and yanked down on each of her labia in turn. The pinch of the clips on her flesh was agony enough, but when he turned the key and the voltage hit she felt her skin catch fire. It was ten seconds of eternal pain later when her body slumped, her breath thrown from her body.

Please, please let me die. Do it too much. Shock me too hard. Kill me.

Between her legs it burned the most. She became aware of an ache there, like being aroused but with none of the excitement or appetite. It was a perverse thing, as if she was giving birth to a phantom.

Through tearful eyes she saw Wilkes crouching before her. Just as she had willed herself to die she put all her energy into wishing the same of him. She wished her eyes could bore a hole through his chest, stop that heart so full of hate from beating. Then she felt the cold steel, the sharp edges raking into her womanhood and all other thoughts vanished; it was beyond agony. It didn’t fit. IT DIDN’T FIT.

The battery hit her again. Her mind went blind, her bowels contracted, and when she came back it slid further into her. The horror of it consumed her mind, knowing what they were doing to her body, to her woman’s body… and that they could do it. They just did it. She never had a chance.

Shock. Push. Expand. Shock. Push. Expand. Soon enough she could see her chest rising and falling, hear her voice letting out a constant scream, but now she was outside herself, watching it acted out on another wretch. Inside herself she hated everything, even the woman on the table, that stupid, stupid girl who thought words on a screen made her powerful. The idiotic little bitch who really believed all the image, pose and propaganda. She, like all the rest, had danced for them, and she had danced outside the lines and got to see what life really was.

Ruth Esther-Narrow never returned to that body. When they took the straps off and those feet hit the ground, feeling the metal now fused between her legs that pushed against her insides like four swords in her belly whenever she moved, the girl that felt it was something else. Something new. Something they would not want to hurt any more.

‘How do you feel, Ruth?’ said Wilkes.

She coiled her feet inwards and held her hands at her sides in little fists, staring at the floor.

‘Thank you, Superior’ she said.