Alice In Chains (20 page)

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’ll survive.’

A small door set into the larger double service doors opened and a new figure was ushered in. At the sight of him Suzanne called out excitedly, ‘Master!’

The newcomer ran over to Suzanne who twisted round in her chains, arching her back and parting her knees as though trying to kneel before him.

‘There you are at last, girl!’ he exclaimed with feeling, patting and stroking her affectionately. ‘I thought I’d lost you for good!’

Martes was, as Suzanne had said, a pine marten and evidently well to do. He wore a black top hat and well-cut tailcoat, a short waistcoat, white shirt and bow tie. Like other sentient Underland animals his snout and
keen
black eyes displayed that peculiar degree of mobility and expressiveness that set them above their common kindred. In addition he had a distinctly commanding and assured manner, and though he only came up to Suzanne’s nipples, there was no doubt about who was the master.

Topper and Lepus came over to the happy pair. ‘Good evening, sir, I am Mr Pelus,’ Lepus said, ‘and this is my partner, Mr Popert. I’m glad to see you received our message, and I take it this is indeed your girling?’

‘Of course she’s mine,’ Martes said impatiently. ‘I can produce my ownership documents if you doubt me.’

‘Not at all,’ Topper said quickly. ‘Clearly she belongs to you. Now there is just the small matter of stabling, transportation costs –’

Martes cut him short. ‘I posted a reward of ten pounds for her safe return.’ He took out a wallet and unfolded a large, elaborately engraved banknote. ‘I understand she has only just come into your possession, so I should imagine that will be adequate compensation for any slight expense you have incurred.’

He’s no fool, Alice thought. She saw Suzanne looking at her master in starry-eyed gratitude, and realised that ten pounds was a lot of money here. He really did care for her.

‘Most generous of you, sir,’ Topper said, taking the note. From the faint look of surprise on his face Alice suspected he had been planning to ask for less.

‘Now release her,’ Martes said.

The cuffs were unfastened. Immediately Suzanne went down on her hands and knees and kissed Martes’s sturdily clawed feet. He patted her bowed head. ‘Good girl. Now chin up. See, I remembered to bring your favourite leash.’

Suzanne lifted her head and he clipped a leash of braided red leather to her collar ring. ‘Now let’s get you home,’ he said.

She leaned forward and whispered urgently to her master, glancing at Alice as she did so. After a moment, Martes looked round at Alice, then Topper and Lepus. He took out his wallet again. ‘I understand this girling is also recently arrived and you have no legal claim to her. I will pay you five pounds for her.’

Alice’s heart lifted momentarily and she smiled her thanks at Suzanne. Then she saw Topper’s expression set.

‘I’m afraid the girl is not for sale,’ he said. ‘Besides which we do have an old claim on her and, like your good self, we can produce the declaration she signed of her own free will. She escaped from our care after we spent considerable time and money training her, so I believe our moral right is inarguable.’

Martes looked regretfully at Suzanne and put away his wallet. ‘You will permit my girling to say goodbye to her?’ he asked.

‘As you will,’ said Topper.

Suzanne embraced Alice and kissed her on the lips.

‘Don’t worry about me,’ Alice said. ‘You look out for Juliet and the White Queen. There’s a good chance they’re still around here somewhere.’

‘I will. And I’ll try to see you again.’

‘Bye.’ Suzanne kissed her once more, then was led away by Martes.

Alice watched them go. She was pleased for Suzanne. How such bonds formed between beings so different she could not explain, but clearly they belonged together. Lepus’s next words brought her back down to earth.

‘Now, how should we punish this ungrateful girling?’ he wondered aloud.

‘Wait a minute,’ Topper said thoughtfully. ‘She might be more use to us unmarked. She does look most distinctive now, you must admit.’

‘What of it?’

‘We still need a special feature for the big event. She might provide it.’

‘How do you mean?’

Topper smiled mischievously at Alice then drew Lepus aside and they talked together for a couple of minutes. When they turned back to her, Lepus looked amused.

‘You’re lucky, girl,’ he said. ‘We have something in mind that requires you to be presented before the public at your best. This limits the severity of the punishment we may inflict. However, you shall not escape without a token of our displeasure to cherish. A ride on our pogo-pricker is called for.’

From the racks at the back of the chamber, they brought out a curious device that did indeed look a little like a pogo stick. It consisted of a stout rod about waist high, crossed at right angles by two hinged and spring-loaded arms close to its bottom end. On the ends of these arms were what appeared to be combination ankle cuffs and stirrups. On the upper end of the vertical rod were mounted twin phalluses ringed by integral prongs. Just below them was an array of thinner upward curving springy metal arms, on the ends of which were spiked wheels, each free to rotate. Linking rods connected them to the lower pair of sprung arms.

With Alice still suspended they cranked the winch that controlled her chain, lifting her a little higher. Then they pulled her legs apart and slid the twin phalluses up into her vagina and anus, plugging her tightly. Placing her feet in the stirrups they secured them with the ankle cuffs.

Suddenly letting go of Alice she wobbled and swayed, pulling on her manacled wrists while trying to balance on the lower end of the pogo rod, which was capped by a rubber ferrule, even as its forked upper ends impaled her. As she did so she discovered painfully the function of the spiked wheels. As she twisted about, pushing down with her left or right feet, the motion was transmitted through the connecting rods to the upper set
of
arms, which caused the wheels to run their spikes up and down the tender inner flesh of her thighs, around the heavy undercurves of her buttocks and even the feathered pout of her pubes. After a minute of gasps and whimpers she managed to find her balance, controlling her swaying and thereby reducing the spiked wheels at least to static points of pain.

Of course they did not permit her to remain like that. Bringing out broad rubber paddles, Topper and Lepus gave her a thorough smacking, working methodically across her breasts and stomach, back and bottom, front and back thighs. Her flesh shivered as it took on a bright rosy hue. Alice cried and yelped as she swayed and twirled about on her cruel mount.

The relentless pricking of the rolling spikes, the plunging and sucking of the twin phalluses and the stinging of her abused flesh had its inevitable effect. After what she had been through in the Slithy Wood earlier that day she would not have believed her body could still respond so readily, but somehow it did. She felt the excitement bubbling up from her loins and surrendered herself to its rising tide.

Alice came loudly, appreciating as she did so the irony of the situation. She was chained and helpless, suffering pain and pleasure at the hands of Topper and Lepus. After a long and very strange journey she was right back where she started when she had first come to Underland.

Topper rested his arm, admiring Alice’s helpless writhings and the discomfort she was inflicting on herself. ‘At least you haven’t lost your taste for this sort of treatment, girl,’ he said with a smile.

‘We said when we first imprinted you that you’d never forget it,’ Lepus reminded her.

Toper found a gag and stuffed it into Alice’s mouth. ‘You’ll stay like that till morning,’ he told her. ‘And tomorrow you’ll tell us how pleased you are to be serving us once again.’

They left the big room through a back door, dimming the lights as they went. As Alice balanced precariously on the pogo-pricker, she could hear a few whispered conversations from the girling hutches, but soon they faded away. How she envied them their comfortable beds of straw. She thought of Suzanne, who even now might be happily chained to some even grander bed while her master reasserted his dominance over her.

Hours dragged by. A few times she actually dozed off as tiredness overcame her, only to jerk awake as she shifted her position and set the spiked wheels moving once again. She felt her inner muscles clutching and squeezing at the phalluses she was mounted upon as though by reflex. Was it perhaps no longer possible for her to have anything pushed up her front or rear passages without wanting to feel it moving inside her, whatever the consequences?

Slowly, marvelling at her own perversity, she stimulated herself bit by bit with little wiggles of her hips until the inevitable happened. This time her spasms were accompanied by a stream of urine as her full bladder, already compressed by the phalluses stuffed within her, could no longer be contained. Naturally the gag-stifled outpourings of her orgasm dramatically upset her balance and began the cycle once again. It was a long night.

Stiff and aching, Alice was woken from the depths of utter satiated exhaustion by a few brisk slaps from Topper. It was morning and the other girlings were already being taken out of their hutches. Alice was ungagged and the pogo-pricker unbuckled and pulled out it of its now red and sticky twin sheaths. The chain was lowered and Alice slumped to the floor, her legs incapable of supporting her, while her arms were numb and useless. Nevertheless she was made to squirm on her belly over the floor, still wet with her own pee, and kiss Topper and Lepus’s feet.

‘This poor girling begs forgiveness for all the trouble she has caused you, Masters,’ she said, thrilled by her sense of humiliation even as she spoke the shameful words. ‘Please make use of me in any way you wish.’

She was fed with the other girlings, chained by the collar to a long trough into which food was tipped, which they ate without using their hands. It reminded her of being fed in Topper and Lepus’s house at the start of her first visit to Underland. The food had been provided by the Dormouse, she recalled. She hoped he had not come to Brillig as well, as he’d been a mean-minded and spiteful creature.

After breakfast the other girlings were assigned their tasks, and Alice realised they were not merely pleasure slaves but labourers. Under the supervision of Topper and Lepus, together with a couple of other animals, they were soon hard at work cutting fabric, painting canvas and measuring wood. It was a strange sight to see half a dozen naked girls industriously hammering nails or sawing timber, some chained to their workbenches. She suspected this was one workforce that would never contemplate going on strike.

Alice was given a much more demeaning task, which she suspected was a continuation of her punishment.

The first part was easy. It soon grew warm in the big shed and as the girls were working hard they soon began to sweat. Alice was fitted with a hobble chain and given a large can of water and a tin cup, which she was to take round to give to any girls who needed it.

The second part was less pleasant. In one corner was a raised tiled plinth into which were set six squat toilet holes with buckets underneath them. At certain fixed break times the girls were allowed to use this simple facility to relieve themselves. Of course all this took place in plain sight of anybody else in the workshop, but then girlings did not expect privacy. This was different from the old arrangement Alice recalled where each
hutch
had a toilet bucket, or else the Dormouse had gone round with a can and a funnel into which they could pee. But then they only had half a dozen or so girls in training at any one time. This way was no doubt more practical.

But since girlings often had their arms secured by harnesses, they could not clean themselves afterwards, and even if their hands were free they had been ordered not to attempt to wipe themselves. It was, Alice knew, another way of increasing their dependency on others. However it meant somebody had to wipe their bottoms like babies, and that task now fell to her. She stood on the floor behind the toilet plinth watching the squatting girls and, as each finished, made sure she was clean and dry.

Alice soon decided, in an attempt to be philosophical, that there were worse things in life than rubbing a wad of tissue paper into moist plump pubic mounds or tightly puckered bumholes set between smooth soft rear cheeks. This and her water-carrying duties also enabled her to snatch a few moments’ gossip with the girls as she worked. She had wondered about the odd assortment of items they were making and where the cart, which shuttled in and out of the yard beyond the big double doors, took them when each was completed. Piece by piece she found out what was going on.

In two days’ time, Topper and Lepus, alias Popert and Pelus, were putting on a big event in Brillig’s Central Hall featuring commercial displays and stalls of girling-related merchandise. There would also be various novelty girling contests, but its concluding event, and star attraction, would be a boxing match between the lion and the unicorn to determine the supreme champion of all Boardland. The ‘Fight of the Century’ they were calling it. Of course, Alice thought as she heard this, she was caught up in a twisted version of the Looking Glass story again. They were re-enacting the battle that went with the old nursery rhyme about the
lion
and the unicorn fighting round the town. But presumably it would be a more serious affair than it had been portrayed in the book.

She also tried pumping the girls for any information about events back in Redheart country, but they knew little apart from vague rumours about unrest. One girl did pass on something she had overheard Topper and Lepus discussing. They had mentioned a friend called ‘Ory’ whom they had learned from a traveller had been officially denounced as a ringleader in the continuing underground movement to overthrow Queen Redheart.

This startled Alice. The Latin for rabbit was oryctolagus cuniculus, from which was derived ‘Ory’, the White Rabbit’s Underland nickname. But how had such a timid, and often drunken, animal become mixed up in the revolution? What had got into him?