Steel World Inc. Chapter Twenty Two

 

On reflection now, looking back, I may have underestimated the degree of shock and terror a woman might experience when she was suddenly woken up in the dark, in the middle of the night, with an intruder’s hand roughly covering her mouth. 

 

It’s a lesson learned.

 

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please, Arabella, I didn’t mean…”

 

She was crouched with her arms about her knees on the edge of her bed, as far away from me as was possible. She held a tabletop lamp in her right hand as some sort of weapon, and if looks could kill…

 

“How dare you! How dare you, Simon! And how did you get in here?” She suddenly noticed Emily standing to one side. “Miss Whitlock? What are you doing here?” Arabella’s eyes narrowed. “What are you wearing?” She blinked again and suddenly focussed on the steel collar locked on Emily’s throat. “Is that a slave collar?!”

 

“I need to borrow some clothes,” said Miss Madison, as she ignored the flurry of questions. “Do you mind?” She indicated the wardrobe.

 

“What is going on?! What are you both doing here? Why did you scare me like that? I was terrified!”

 

“I can explain everything, Arabella, but we have to go, right now. My car is outside.”

 

“You don’t have a car!”

 

“I do now. It’s a BMW M3, actually, with 425bhp,” I added with some pride, though the quality of the vehicle seemed to be lost on Miss Whitlock for the moment.

 

“I’m not going anywhere until someone explains what this is all about!”

 

“You’re about to be abducted by Gorean slavers,” said Miss Madison, without a trace of concern in her voice. “So you can stay here and end up in a cage on a ranch in Montana with a cattle brand burned deep into your thigh, crying your eyes out, or you can come with us. Does this pair of jeans have any stretch in the waistband?” She held up a pair of Miss Whitlock’s skinny jeans for inspection.

 

I felt a bit frustrated that Miss Madison had said all that so soon. I had wanted to use the line, “come with me if you want to live,” which is a famous line from the classic 1984 film, The Terminator, spoken by the character Kyle Reese, who is a bit like me in the way he reacts to situations, but now I couldn’t use it. I regarded Miss Madison with a measure of annoyance that she didn’t seem to notice.

 

If pressed on the matter, many people would probably opt for Terminator 2 as their favourite film of the franchise, but for me the first film stands out as the superior piece of cinematic art, for establishing the world building and surprising the viewer with its plot twists so early on in the movie. It also benefits, I feel, from the smaller, tighter budget and therefore the writing has more room to breathe as the film can’t rely quite so much on glossy special effects and has to stand or fall based on its narrative and integrity, both of which are impressive.

 

I suddenly noticed Miss Whitlock was crying.

 

“Please make this stop,” she sobbed. “I can’t take this anymore.”

 

I eased her hand down – the one that was holding the bedside lamp as a weapon, and I cradled her in my arms, though I felt still a note of resistance. How lovely she felt in my arms, with me the strong male protector, and she the helpless girl. I nodded briefly as Miss Madison exited the bedroom with a handful of clothes to try on in the adjacent living room, and I set to stroking Arabella’s hair, whispering to her that she was safe now.

 

“Someone broke into my flat, Simon,” she wept.

 

“Shh. I know. I believe you. I’m sorry for when we spoke earlier.”

 

“What is happening to me?”

 

“Men want to abduct you, but I won’t let them.”

 

“Why? This is insane! I haven’t done anything to anyone. I haven’t!”

 

“You’ve been reading about Gor?”

 

She blushed and buried her face against my shoulder.

 

“Yes…” she whispered.

 

“Why?”

 

“I was trying to make sense of what is happening to me. The books were left in my living room. They weren’t there before.”

 

“And?”

 

“The books scare me, Simon.”

 

Of course the books scared her. She was a Free Woman with a low sex drive, and the prospect of female abduction must be horrible to her. She must have read the accounts of women taken by slavers and forced to please men. How horrible that would seem to her gentle bedside manner. 

 

“The important thing is you’re going to be safe. There are powerful men who will protect us both. You have nothing to fear.”

 

“Miss Madison wears a steel collar, like the girls in the books,” she said.

 

I nodded, but as she couldn’t see me doing that, I added, by way of explanation, “Miss Madison has been enslaved.”

 

I felt Arabella’s body stiffen in fright against mine. How lovely she felt. How right this felt. 

 

“She’s a…”

 

“For all intents and purposes, yes.”

 

“This is madness. How can she be a slave?”

 

“Well, she wears a slave collar that is locked around her throat, and she can’t remove it.”

 

“This is London! London, England! There are no slaves in London, Simon!”

 

“Apparently there are. Arabella, we can’t talk here. There isn’t time. Can you get dressed please? We have to go.”

 

To my surprise she slid further back away from me until she was resting against the wall. “Wait! How did you get in here? How did you get in to my flat?! I locked all the doors!”

 

“I have a device that can open any door with a light beam in the lock mechanism.”

 

Arabella suddenly screamed, which alarmed me considerably.

 

“You! You’ve been the one entering my flat! Like in the book!”

 

“What? No! Of course not!”

 

“Did you drug me? Did you undress me? Did you dress me in that underwear? Did you leave those books?!” She was growing very hysterical and she flailed her arms when I tried to reach for her. 

 

“That wasn’t me. That was Karl Magnus’s men.”

 

“Oh my God, what is happening to me?!” she began crying and covered her face with her arms. 

 

“None of these clothes are any good at all!” Miss Madison stormed angrily into the room and threw a bundle of clothes at the far wall. She looked frustrated. She was also still dressed in that lovely slave tunic, the one that did so much for the slave curves of her body. “Doesn’t she buy anything with some stretch to the fabric?! This is all fitted and I can’t pull the zips up!”

 

I hadn’t realised quite how uncompromising women’s garments could be. Particularly their formal clothing which was designed to be worn with their support under garments shaping their body. How difficult it must be to be a woman. Not only do they suffer from periods, but they seem to be far more frustrated when shopping for clothes than men ever are.

 

“Go away! Leave me alone!” cried Arabella.

 

“What’s wrong with her now?” asked Miss Madison.

 

“She thinks I’m one of the men who have been breaking into her apartment.”

 

“Those were slavers working for Karl Magnus,” said Miss Madison, to Miss Whitlock. “Simon knew nothing about it.”

 

“You’ll be safe,” I added, “if you come with me. There are men who will protect us.”

 

“Who?” She sobbed. “What men? The police? WHAT MEN?!”

 

“Karl Magnus’s men, once I get word to Karl Magnus.”

 

Arabella screamed again. “The ones who have been breaking into my apartment?! The ones who stripped me naked? They’re going to protect me? Are you mad?!”

 

“I know how this sounds, but you have to trust me, Arabella. And please stop screaming. You have neighbours.”

 

“We have to go,” said Miss Madison. She picked out a thigh length coat from the wardrobe that she managed to get into without too much trouble. There were three buttons at the front and a belt that fastened around the waist. The hem of the coat was maybe an inch or two longer than the slave tunic and when belted tightly the effect was for the coat hem to flare out slightly around her thighs. “We’re running a risk every minute we’re here.”

 

“I’m not going anywhere, Simon! It’s almost four in the morning and you break into my home and wake me up with a hand suffocating me, and I can plainly see you’ve been spending the whole night with Miss Madison who is dressed like a prostitute, and now you’re telling me I have to go somewhere with you, and God even knows where that is…”

 

“Southend-on-Sea,” I explained.

 

“Southend-on-Sea?! Why would I want to go to Southend-on-Sea, at four in the morning?!”

 

“The fish and chips are pretty good there,” remarked Miss Madison, who seemed amused by the whole screaming fit, besides being anxious to get out of here. 

 

“I want you both to leave!” cried Arabella.

 

“You’ll have to tie her up and carry her out of here, Simon.”

 

“What?” I couldn’t believe Miss Madison had even suggested that. “I can’t do that!”

 

“Don’t you dare!” warned Miss Whitlock. “I’ll scream!”

 

Miss Madison suddenly bounded onto the bed and, as Miss Whitlock opened her mouth to scream, Miss Madison thrust a thick balled up pair of stockings into my companion’s mouth. She had apparently been holding the makeshift gag for a few minutes now. I stared aghast at the thrashing on the bed and the flailing arms and legs that accompanied the thrashing , and the knocking over of the Ikea bedside table, and the scattering of popular Chick Lit paperbacks, mostly written by someone called Sophie Kinsella, all across the floor. 

 

“Emily! Stop! There’s no need for this!” I cried, but Miss Madison soon had Miss Whitlock on her belly and, with her weight on the girl, fixed the balled gag in place with another stocking tied around Miss Whitlock’s mouth which she secured at the back in a tight knot. A further stocking was used to tie her wrists behind her back.

 

Now Miss Whitlock kicked angrily, but futilely as she lay on her soft bed. Her bottom was plainly uncovered as the silken chemise had ridden up in the struggle, and one spaghetti thin strap of the garment had fallen past her upper arm. 

 

Miss Madison brushed her hair back as she rose from the bed, slightly the worse for the struggle. “If she doesn’t come with us, Frick will get her, and then he’ll offer her to you in exchange for me, and frankly you’d go ahead with the swap, and then he’d kill you both, rather than honour his side of the deal, because that’s the sort of men they are.”

 

“I wouldn’t do a deal with Frick!”

 

“Yes you would.” She frowned as the buttons had been ripped from her coat in the struggle. The top half now hung open, though it was still semi-secured around her waist by the belt. 

 

Miss Whitlock was mewling, making piteous sounds, no doubt demanding her freedom, but muffled through the makeshift stocking gag. “There was no need to do that!”

 

“Yes there was.” 

 

“You can’t go doing things like that! I never should have freed your hands. That was clearly a mistake.”

 

There was more pathetic mewling through Miss Whitlock’s gag. Oh, poor Miss Whitlock! Bound and cruelly gagged in her own bedroom, and with her companion present to see it.

 

I watched her struggling, and found myself somewhat aroused, but I pushed the thoughts from my mind. Her naked bottom looked lovely with the silk of the chemise lifted away from it. 

 

“How is she supposed to get dressed when she’s tied up like that?”

 

“That window has gone and closed,” remarked Miss Madison. “Come on, Frick may have a car on its way here by now.”

 

“I should pack a few things for Miss Whitlock. She’ll need clothes and underwear and toiletries and…”

 

“Shall I just call Frick now and tell him where we are, because frankly he may go easier on me if I give myself up, rather than what he’ll do to me when his men arrive and seize us both, because you’ll still be filling a suitcase as if you’re going on holiday to the Canary Isles for two weeks!”

 

“She’ll need some things…”

 

There was more frantic mewling from my gagged companion.

 

“I swear to God, Simon, if we don’t go now, I’m going to pick up a chair and start hitting you with it.”

 

Women can be very irrational in times of crisis, never thinking or planning ahead, but rather just reacting to fear and uncertainty in a purely instinctive and ineffective manner. You see it in horror movies when the girl who has been chased by the psychopathic slasher goes down into a dark cellar alone with just a candle because she’s heard a strange noise. No man would do that. 

 

I hoisted Miss Whitlock over my shoulder and felt her body writhing, furiously. “I’m sorry, Arabella. But Miss Madison is right. It’s dangerous to stay here. I’ll explain more when we’re on our way to Southend-on-Sea.”

 

And then we headed back to the car.