Esha 2.0 and The Ovipositive Princess

by

Tom diCentauri

Caryn Deborah Cummings' last memory of Earth was an image of Blusterbob the Pimp leaning forward and leering at her as she lost consciousness. She had been meeting with Blusterbob at his insistence to discuss the possibility of his freeing one of his girls into Caryn's care. The girl in question had been one of Caryn's high school classmates and, though Caryn hadn't known her very well, she had seemed like the kind of girl who would get herself into trouble and have to be rescued. So Caryn had accepted a meeting with Blusterbob at a place that she felt was safe. But it wasn't safe, as she found out when a strong hand pressed a cloth dampened with sweet-smelling liquid over her nose and mouth.

Startled, she could only cry out, "Wha...?" and then, "Mmpff!!"

"Just a little liquid lullaby, my dear," Blusterbob had said in that gay, smug tone of his, the one that she had grown to hate.

Struggling against the soporific effect of the chloroform, Caryn remembered the time her own mother had betrayed her to the aging, mysterious Mr. X as a birthday present. She had awakened on a lounge chair in the anæsthesium on Mr. X's estate, Somnium, and found her mother in her Esha costume reminiscing with none other than Mr. X's alternate identity, Captain Chloroform. Although she had been delighted at being chosen as the bearer of Mr. X's gift, she had been miffed at not being warned. "But," the jolly captain of snort-n-snooze had protested, "one never warns the victim." Those words echoed in Caryn's memory as she gained the impression of a dark figure looming over leering Blusterbob and then passed out.

When she woke up she was lying on a cot in a small cell. Feeling no ill effects from the chloroform, she got up off the cot, looked around, and quickly deduced that she was in the forbidden zone of a Kunapri starship. Caryn knew that no one had ever gone into the forbidden zone of a Kunapri ship; at least, no one had ever gone in and then come out to report on the experience. In an effort to fight off panic she tried to recall to mind all that she knew about the Kunapri.

There wasn't much to recall. The planet Kunav, presumably Earth-like, revolved about an orange star about 200 light-years from Earth. That distance represented several years' voyage for a Terran starship and so far only a single survey expedition had gone all the way to Kunav. Even the much faster Kunapri ships took several months to make the crossing. In the twenty years since the Kunapri had first made contact with the United Planets of Sol only a handful of ships had come to Earth and those carried mostly diplomats and scientists with a small minority of traders. They kept pretty much to themselves when they were not conducting business and in all fairness it must be said that most people showed little curiosity about them. Compared to the one other alien race humans had met the Kunapri were actually boring; they looked almost exactly like Terrans, except that they averaged six inches taller, had totally paper-white skins, and had cement-gray lips. When she had first seen a Kunapri, Caryn had formed the belief that their flesh must be hard and cold, a thought that was not reassuring now.

Caryn was shaken from her reverie by two Kunapri women approaching her cage. One opened the door of Caryn's cage and the other ordered Caryn to come with them. Caryn felt a sick quivering in her stomach and her legs felt rubbery weak as she followed the woman who had spoken to her, careful to avoid the Kunapri's touch. As she walked down the corridor she saw what looked like all the prostitutes in Blusterbob's stable sitting or lying in the other cages that lined both walls. "Damned shithead musta sold out every last one of them," she muttered. But in the last cage in the corridor she saw Blusterbob himself sitting naked with a dazed expression on his face. The sight of the pimp in a state of complete helplessness transformed Caryn's anxiety into bewilderment: what could the Kunapri be up to?

Caryn soon discovered, to her immense relief, that she was being taken for a medical exam. The examination was conducted by an older woman who had her hair piled up in a beehive style that made her appear all the taller. She told Caryn to remove all of her clothing and jewelry, which she then threw into the trash. As Caryn stripped, she noticed the two guards standing by the door sniggering and chortling. Caryn blushed and one of the guards began laughing hysterically. Wondering why the Kunapri found her body so funny, Caryn tried to appear nonchalant by lifting her hair up on top of her head and asking the doctor how she might form it into a beehive style like hers.

"You will never shape your hair in this style," the doctor said as though reproving a child.

Caryn let her hair down and tried to look bored as the doctor went on with the examination. What the doctor found was a woman in her early twenties who stood nine inches over five feet tall. Caryn's body was of medium build with firm peach-sized breasts. Her skin was clear, pale pink, her shoulder-length hair was chestnut brown, and her eyes were pale blue. She was in excellent health, except for some recently acquired bruises, and she carried no diseases. She also seemed more than a little annoyed by the pelvic exam when she noticed that the doctor was fascinated by her genitalia.

"It's a cunt, Doc," Caryn said a little too sarcastically. "You're a woman. You've got one just like it. Or did Nature stick yours up your ass?"

The doctor delivered a firm but gentle slap to Caryn's left thigh, more an attention getter than a penalty. "When you speak to anyone of my status," she said in her child-reproving tone, "you do so only to offer relevant information or to ask what pleasure you may offer. You will not make demands and you will not chide us."

No threat was made or even implied, but Caryn still felt a chill sweep through her body. She understood immediately that the Kunapri didn't need threats: threats and violence were for scared, inadequate wimps, like Blusterbob, who need to maintain a pretense of strength to cover their lack of same. The Kunapri were honest-to-goodness powerful. Although she knew that she could push hard without getting seriously hurt, Caryn knew then that she would never test the patience of a Kunapri.

Before sending her back to her cell, the doctor gave Caryn a shapeless, one-size-fits-all black robe, a pair of fluffy black slippers, and a leather-like pouch. Back in her cell Caryn emptied the pouch onto her cot and found that the contents comprised a basic hygiene kit. They were all familiar, friendly items - a douche kit, menstrual pads, a comb and hairbrush, a toothbrush, a bath towel, and a shower cap, a simple beret made of soft, transparent-white plastic skin on which a colorful flower pattern was printed. She clung to these items as her last material links with Earth until she looked again at the pattern on the shower cap, realized that no such flowers had ever bloomed on Earth, and felt the objects seem to grow cold in her hands.

It was several hours later that the guards came, let all of the prisoners out of their cells, and led them to a large mess hall. The doctor stood on a dais at one end of the room and, as Caryn's group came in, warned the women not to begin eating until told to do so. Caryn took her tray of food, sat where directed by the guards, and looked around. She guessed that there might be as many as five hundred women in the room and she noticed that some of the women near her were sneaking bits of food into their mouths when it seemed as if none of the Kunapri were watching. Caryn was tempted to do the same, but a glance at the doctor, who was consulting what appeared to be a stopwatch, dissuaded her.

When all of the prisoners had been given food and had been seated, the doctor spoke. "You have all been warned not to eat until advised to do so," she said, "but some of you have chosen to disregard the warning." Her smile took on a malicious little twist. "You have prepared yourselves to provide us all a harmless if painful lesson and that lesson is that when a Kunapri tells you something there is virtually no difference between advice and a command." She glanced again at the stopwatch. "Shortly most of you will feel a slight disorientation."

A moment later Caryn heard three long chirps come from the ship's intercom and then she felt a wave of dizziness wash over her. She heard gasps and groans and saw that the women who had been eating had turned pale and were doubling over clutching their bellies while cold sweat seemed to gush from their skins to soak their robes.

"The process of breaking into or out of hyperspace always creates a minor discomfort," the doctor said cheerfully, "but the activation of certain body functions, such as digestion, can aggravate the discomfort intensely." She looked around the room. "This was the first of many lessons you must learn on this voyage. By the time we reach Kunav, something less than six months from now, you must be able to speak, read, and write fluent Gilliwhump, you must know all of the social customs of our nobility, and you must know enough about our culture to be able to serve your noble families well."

A deep moan went up from the group. "Oh, God! Back to school!" someone groaned.

The doctor waited for the complaining to subside. "Many of you believe that you are too stupid to succeed at such a task," she said, "and normally you would be right. However, we will be helping you and your food will be prepared with substances that will increase your ability to learn." She went on to describe in more detail the training program that the captive women would follow for nearly six months and finally asked for questions.

"Yeah," one woman said, "how do you Kunipers think you're gonna get away with kidnaping us like this?"

"We have been making these slave runs," the doctor said, "for fifteen years without creating so much as a rumor. We have been careful to take only people who will not be missed, at least for several years. Your families either don't care about you or don't expect to hear from you. Even your customers don't expect to have a permanent relation with you and will not be surprised to find you gone. And even if your absence is reported to the authorities, they will take the double attitude that the world is a better place without you and that you have likely gone into hiding to avoid some trouble outside the law." She smiled confidently over the group. "And if your authorities did manage to discover what we are doing, can you really believe that they would jeopardize what they gain from Kunav for the sake of people whom they regard at best as worthless, especially when those people will end up leading better lives than they would ever lead on Earth?"

There were no further questions. The prisoners ate in silence except for the sobbing of several women who broke down and wept. That night even Caryn, who was regarded by all who knew her as a "tough cookie", cried herself to sleep in her cell.

The next morning the prisoners were issued their clothing - five each of a pair of black panties, a pair of fluffy black slippers, a knee-length black wrap dress, and an ankle-length full apron made of transparent-black plastic on which strange markings had been printed in silver. A large emblem with a line of what appeared to be Kunapri script was emblazoned across the top of the skirt and another, short line of Kunapri script was printed on the bib. The latter, Caryn soon found out, was the Kunapri version of her name. As soft as silk and as smooth as her own skin, the apron warmed immediately at her touch. The dress itself didn't have a belt: it took Caryn several minutes to get the knack of holding the dress closed while she tied her apron to secure it. Lessons in Kunapri language and etiquette began immediately after an early lunch.

The first time that Caryn came into the classroom she noticed that all of her fellow students were women. Apparently, she thought, the men get their lessons separately. Some time would elapse before she discovered how wrong that thought was.

The instructor, a six and a half foot tall woman with pale blue hair arranged in the usual bouffant beehive style, stood on a dais at one end of the classroom and watched the women come in and take seats. Once the Earthwomen were all seated and relatively quiet, she addressed them.

"For the purpose of instruction we will be playing roles," she said. "For the duration of this voyage we will pretend that I am your mistress and that you, all of you, are my personal slaves. Your aprons have already been decorated with the clan logo and name of your mistress, as will always be the case from now on. Though you will never speak it yourselves, you must be able to recognize your mistress' name when it is spoken to you."

Caryn got the impression that the instructor was bracing herself to endure something unpleasant.

"You all owe your service to," the instructor said, "Lady Shittipu."

Howls of raucous laughter filled the classroom. Even Caryn chuckled.

"Hey," someone called out, "does she have a sister named Snottipu?"

"How about Sleazipu?" someone else suggested.

"Or Sluttipu?"

The women were in hysterics. Keeping her expression neutral, the instructor scanned the class. Waiting for the laughter to subside, Caryn got the impression that the instructor's gaze lingered on her just a trifle too long before passing on. Eventually the wave of laughter ebbed, leaving only a few isolated snickers.

"We understand," the instructor said, "that you find some of our names humorous. We have intentionally chosen one that you seem to find especially funny for these sessions so that you can work on controlling your laughter. Never forget! Laughter is ridicule. Ridicule is disrespect. And you must never show disrespect for a Kunapri. Today your laughter will be forgiven. Beginning tomorrow it will not. I can fairly guarantee that after tomorrow the first time you laugh at a Kunapri will be the last."

The room had gone completely silent. Caryn felt as if the temperature had dropped twenty degrees.

Then the lessons began in earnest. That first day the women were taught the basics of slave etiquette and introduced to Gilliwhump, the Kunapri language. Pung-wah, the not quite alphabet in which Gilliwhump was written, was more difficult. All day, with a break for lunch, they practiced what they had been taught and then were taught more. They were issued several books and carrying cases for them. That evening in her cell Caryn skimmed all the books to gain an impression of what was coming.

The next day they began with a review of the previous day's lessons. One of the proctors assisting in the teaching addressed the instructor as Lady Shittipu and got not so much as a giggle from the class. The instructor then took the opportunity to ask whether anyone in the class knew when they might be allowed to pronounce her name. She was looking around for a particular student to call on for the answer to the question when Caryn raised her hand.

Acknowledged by the instructor, Caryn said, "Milady, the correct answer by what we are taught is 'never' so long as we are in milady's service. But consider the following possibility: milady and her friends are on an outing in the forest and I see a mevli preparing to pounce on my mistress. If I use the proper forms of address, the mevli will attack and my mistress may be killed. However, if I scream mistress's name and the words 'mevli! Behind you!', my mistress will be quickly alerted to the danger and may save herself. It also may offer an additional advantage in startling the mevli. Would that use of milady's name be a forgivable error?"

"That's ... an interesting scenario," the instructor said. "Let us, as you suggest, consider ...." Her gaze shifted suddenly to someone behind Caryn, she changed her stance to that of service alert, and she said, "Great Lady Tashipu!"

Caryn and the other Earthwomen stood up, though not in unison. Caryn turned to face the high noblewoman who had come into the classroom and saw the woman staring at her. Though only a teenager, Tashipu stood three inches taller than Caryn (it might as well have been three feet as far as Caryn was concerned) and her pink hair in its bouffant style with the sides curled up in short wings made her appear taller. She was dressed in pale blue with gold trim and stared at Caryn through pink eyes.

"Speaking your lady's name always warrants punishment," she said. "There are no exceptions."

Caryn lifted her skirt, half knelt, and bowed in courtesy. "Milady, even if it results in the saving of my mistress's life?"

"Yes," Tashipu said. "But we also take intent into account in assessing punishment and reward. In the situation you have described the punishment would be mild. Also you would be rewarded for saving your lady's life."

"But, milady," Caryn objected, "wouldn't the punishment and reward sorta cancel each other out?"

"You do not yet understand our concept of moral balance," Tashipu said. "We do not conceive error and achievement as debts and payments. Error is always punished and achievement is always rewarded, even if we must do both for the same action."

Caryn executed a courtesy and said, "I understand, milady. Thank you ... I mean ... uh ... your wise counsel has improved my service."

Tashipu raised an eyebrow, then nodded in acknowledgment, turned, and walked out of the room.

Caryn was trembling as she turned around and sat back down in her seat. She had not anticipated how intimidating a confrontation with a Kunapri noble might be. But her unconscious mind was fully aware of the authority that the nobility wielded, even over other Kunapri, and its inherent creativity had already devised numerous horrifying scenarios that it could use to instigate fear within her, even though those scenarios were not based on solid evidence.

"You have been reading ahead in your books," the instructor commented.

"Yes, milady," Caryn replied. "Last night I skimmed the books to see what we will be learning."

"I see," the instructor said. She thought for a moment and then added, "This is not a command, so you are not obliged to act on it. It is only advice. You should try to stay well ahead of the class in your studies of high etiquette."

"Yes, milady," Caryn said. "Your, uh, wise counsel is a blessing to me ... and a gift that I will not disparage."

The instructor nodded and seemed pleased.

For reasons that she could not articulate, Caryn did not find that reassuring.

Among the things the women learned that first day were the two strictest taboos that they were to observe. The reason for describing them at the start, the instructor explained, was so that "constant repetition of them for the longest available time will make them such a strong part of you that you will not easily get yourselves into trouble."

The first taboo forbid them ever, under any circumstances, to speak or to write their owners' names. They could use the names of other Kunapri with the proper honorifics, but never those of the people who owned them. One woman asked what to say if someone asked who her owners were and the instructor explained that when they were sold their owners' emblems would be printed on the bibs of their aprons. The woman then asked what would happen if someone insisted that she identify her owners verbally and the instructor told her to say only "I belong to my apron". Caryn, who had been absent-mindedly stroking her apron's soft plastic as she listened to the lecture, felt a strange quivery sensation run through her and kept both of her hands on the table for the rest of the lecture.

The second taboo was one that Caryn thought would be easy to obey. The prisoners were told that they were never, under any circumstances, to touch a noblewoman's hair or anything pertaining to it. Even something as trivial as a noble lady's shower cap was not to be touched. "Well, at least we won't have to be their hairdressers," one woman quipped and all the prisoners laughed. Even the instructor seemed amused, then she went on to remind the women that they were never to set their own hair in anything resembling a noblewoman's beehive style and she pointed out Caryn's shoulder-length pageboy as the ideal style guaranteed to keep them away from conflict with Kunapri law and custom.

The lessons went slowly at first and then accelerated as the drugs in the food raised the prisoners' IQ's as high as 300. For nearly a month the routine went unbroken. During that time the pimps were kept separate from the women and the women only saw them asleep in their cells. One day it was made clear that the Kunapri weren't going to sell any male slaves this trip.

***

The third time she awoke in her cell after being cloth'd Caryn recognized the faint mellow feeling that she experienced when she regained consciousness. It was the soft fading afterglow of an intense sexual arousal and climax. Whoever had cloth'd her had apparently done something that had gotten her sexually hot while she was unconscious. The fact that it was a Kunapri woman who did it made it seem all the weirder. That is was a Kunapri woman who was doing it Caryn inferred readily from the last sensation she had noticed before passing out - the pressure of firm, well-shaped breasts pressing into her shoulders.

As she tried to puzzle out this mystery, she recalled from memory a story that she had read in her mother's diary. Of course she wasn't supposed to be reading her mother's diary, but she had inherited her mother's low threshold for boredom and the consequent desire for thrilling adventure. Her mother, understanding that fact, had made a safe place for Caryn to scratch that particular itch by strictly forbidding her daughter certain activities and then turning a more or less blind eye when Caryn engaged in those activities anyway. She caught Caryn at those transgressions just often enough to keep the anxiety level and thus the reward level high, at the same time giving Caryn valuable lessons in the fine art of sneakiness. One of the forbidden activities, as you might guess, was reading the original Esha's diary, so of course that's just what Caryn did, once coming across her mother's account of working as a wrangler for a new supervillainess who popped up in Delta City one day - the vile Milk Maid (Golly, I wonder what her evil shtick might be! - TdC).

We know that women who manifest the aphrodite mutation possess a toughness and a resilience that transcend the merely mortal, but when such women are exposed to certain catalysts even weirder powers blossom within them: with her power belt snug around her waist Ms. Americana gains super-strength, super-speed, and an invisible entity that shields her from high-energy impacts; Got Gal, stimulated by her enchanted emerald, can defy gravity, levitate herself, and fly; and so on. But the aphrodite is a mutation and - heh, heh, heh - not all mutations are good. Such was the case with Latrina Drittman.

Daughter of the founder of Drittman Pharmaceuticals, biggest producer of drugs (legal and not) in the State of Hamilton and beyond, Latrina learned of her mutant status at the delayed onset of puberty when her breasts blew up "like fucking watermelons", as she oh-so-delicately put it. No, they didn't actually get that big, but they did put considerable stress on the G-cup bras that she had to wear thereafter. After that it wasn't long before she was discovered by the shadowy, behind-the-scenes group that may or may not have created the aphrodite mutation and the spooks began the search for the catalyst that would unlock her special powers. If only they had failed!

But they succeeded. They found the key that would unlock Latrina's hidden powers. So, as every aphrodite does sooner or later, Latrina got a letter. In this case the letter laid out the formula for brewing up a potion that, when drunk, would make Latrina's latent powers blossom and stay blossomed until she drank the antidote. The antidote was simply aphrodite milk; her own would do. Unfortunately nobody thought to acquaint her with the consequences of drinking weird potions as expressed in Roberta Louise Stevenson's little horror story "The Strange Case of Mrs. Jekyll and Miss Hyde":

Henrietta Jekyll: But ... but, Doctor, I simply cahn't be knocked up! I ... I simply cahn't!

Doctor: I'm afraid it's true, Mrs. Jekyll. It seems you've been a very naughty girl.

Henrietta Jekyll: No! No! It wasn't me! It was that filthy slut, Joan Hyde!

With free access to a fully equipped chemical laboratory (we mentioned that her father owned and ran a big drug company, right?), Latrina brewed up a dose of the potion. She figured that she would only need the one dose, because once she gained her special powers she would not shut them down. At home, in the privacy of her bedroom, she drank the potion.

At first nothing happened. But then a kind of warm glow began to suffuse her body. Her heartbeat speeded up and she trembled all over. Her nipples and clitoris got hard and she felt a quivery pressure building up inside her. Quickly she stripped off her clothes, laid herself down on her bed, and played with herself. Within a minute she brought herself to a throbbing, shuddering climax that had her writhing on the bed and uttering quavery squeals. And then she passed out.

When she woke up she first noticed that the pale, creamy-smooth flesh of her belly was swollen as if she were pregnant. Then she heard someone say "Whut in tarnayshun ...!" in an oddly cracked voice. She figured immediately that the voice was her own: she sounded like the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz speaking with a hillbilly vocabulary. She got up off the bed, caught sight of herself in the mirror over her dresser, and froze in horrified fascination. Her eyes had become wider and her lips blobbery thick, a thick spray of freckles went from the top of one cheek across the bridge of her nose to the top of her other cheek, and her upper jaw protruded in an unmistakable overbite. She tried tentatively to smile and saw in the mirror a bucktoothed grin that made her look just plain goofy.

Well, she thought, at least I won't have to wear some stinky old mask when I display my superpowers.

Ah, yes, superpowers. She found out rather quickly that she didn't have any. Superstrength? No. Superspeed? No. Super-vision? No. Superhearing? What did you say? Invulnerability? No, that pin really hurt. Flight? Yes, but only if getting both feet off the ground for a fraction of a second qualifies. No, she was superpowerless. The aphrodite mutation and the catalyst had given her nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. The only superpowers that she had, aside from her standard aphrodite resilience, bore the names Null and Void.

No, she soon realized, that wasn't strictly true. She had gained one amazing superpower. She now had the power to turn herself into a superdork.

She was appalled and outraged. She was supposed to become a superheroine, not a circus freak. She seethed and fumed and if those metaphors had come real she would have filled her parents' mansion with so much thick, toxic smoke that the fire departments of Delta City and five surrounding counties would have responded. It took her an hour to cool down ... and to realize that there was one thing she had yet to do.

Fortunately, she was not a complete fool. She had prepared for the possibility that her new superpowers might have to be shut down for any number of reasons that she could not anticipate. So now she opened the kit on her dresser, took out the injector, and injected a dose of lactifacient serum into her arm. She had to wait a few minutes before taking the next step, so she took the time to clean the injector and put it back into its case. She then got a towel from her bathroom and laid it on her bed so that it would soak up what she was about to produce. Then, trembling all over, she went to her walk-in closet and brought out her special plastic prisoner, her Jungle Babe punching bag.

She lay on her bed and gazed up at the life-sized image of the female Tarzan standing boldly against the inflated-firm forest-green plastic of the bag. Looming over her, the Jungle Queen appeared to be gloating and Latrina took that as a cue for her masturbation fantasy:

She had been captured by Jungle Babe and was kept naked in a cage in the bigger woman's bedroom in her treehouse deep in the forest primeval. The first night Jungle Babe had taken her from the cage, wrestled her down onto the bed, and mounted her. "You think that I am just a punching bag for you to play with?" she said. "Well, you're no match for me in a fight ... but you're a perfect match for me as my pleasure slave, my big, hot sex pillow!" Then she began to move, intensifying the sexual excitement heating up both her and her prisoner.

Soon Latrina came to a hot, shuddering climax. After resting for a minute, she wiped herself with the towel and sat up on the edge of her bed, reaching out and idly stroking the plastic of her punching bag. Hormones that her climax had generated swirled within her and interacted with the lactifacient. After the elapse of a short time Latrina felt a swelling sensation in her breasts. She looked down and saw that her breasts were blowing up like balloons. Bowing her head, she lifted her breasts one at a time and suckled herself, trying very hard not to think too clearly or in too much detail about what she was doing. She drained herself and then felt the desperate excitement of a hot sexual arousal grow within her.

She gazed up at Jungle Babe looming over her. "Ah wahnt yew so much!" she panted in her hillbilly drawl. Then she laid herself back down on her bed and tickled and caressed herself until she climaxed in convulsions as intense as if she were suffering a grand mal seizure. Then she did it again. And again. And again. She dissolved her consciousness into her sex fantasies so thoroughly that her connection to reality went almost completely away.

Only an intense thirst brought her out of her sexutopia. Gasping for breath, she saw that the towel between her legs was soaked and was beginning to wet the bed. Picking the towel up, she got up off the bed, and went to her bathroom, where she tossed the towel into the dirty clothes hamper. At the sink she washed her hands and then, cupping her hands to hold the water, drank from the faucet. She was still hot inside, still wanted to tickle her crotch to make her excitement detonate in an orgasm. Quickly she went to her closet and grabbed her opaque-white plastic air mattress off the shelf. She took it into the bathroom and inflated it, laying it into the bathtub when she had it blown full and fat. Then, trembling all over, she went to bring her punching bag into the bathroom.

She was just too hot. Before she could get into the bathtub she took the punching bag in an embrace, leaned it against the wall, then kissed and hugged it until she climaxed still standing up. She set the bag, crotch drool oozing down the front, by the bathtub, laid herself down on the air mattress, and resumed her visit to sexual fantasyland. Hour after hour went by as she filled the bathroom with squealing grunts. Crotch slobber ran down the channel between two of the air mattress's air chambers and drooled into the bathtub's drain. Periodically Latrina would have to sit up, turn on the cold water, rinse her hands, and again slake the thirst that came over her as she depleted her body fluids. Numerous times she brought her punching bag into the tub with her, pulled it down on top of her, and embraced it and hugged it to make Jungle Babe masturbate her.

Eventually, though, the fire burned out. As she lay in the tub, sweat-soaked and panting, aside from feeling a little sick, she felt ... magnificent! She had never felt so good in her life. And she understood that the sick feeling came from the fact that her body had shed more than moisture during her labor: she needed only to consume the foods that contained the appropriate ingredients and her aphrodite resilience would quickly restore her to full health.

Slowly, unsteadily, she got up. She lifted up the air mattress and leaned it against the rear wall of the bathtub's alcove, then she brought the punching bag into the tub with her. She closed the shower curtain and turned on the water. She rinsed off her toys first and then bathed herself completely. When she stepped out of the shower to dry herself she caught sight of herself in the mirror over the sink and saw that her normal appearance had been restored. After drying herself she went to the kitchen and killed off a big bag of potato chips and a full pint of ice cream. By the time she got back to her bathroom the sick feeling was gone. She then dried her toys and took them into her bedroom, pausing only to hug and kiss the still-warm plastic of her punching bag.

Throughout all of this, lurking under her consciousness like a crocodile, a great sinistrosity grew. Cold, hard, and bitter, like hops-flavored ice cream, it drove her desire for revenge on the Powers That Be. Consciously she simply wanted to enjoy more half-day orgasmathons, though she was less than thrilled by the idea of kicking off the joy by playing cow to herself. The sinistrosity exploited that latter fact. From that day onward Latrina regarded the superheroines of Delta City as her own personal, free-range dairy herd (Yeah, like we didn't see that coming a mile away - TdC). Thus began the career of the heinous Milk Maid.

She had preparations to make, such as setting up her own parody of the Batcave, but as daughter of the owner of a pharmaceutical company she had the resources she needed. First, she took over a long-disused store-room in the basement of the Drittman Pharmaceuticals Building and, after covering up a certain door, she brought in crews to rebuild it as an apartment/laboratory. Certain crated goods were delivered and sat unopened during the rebuilding. Finally, a strong security door was put on the sole access point, ensuring that only Latrina could enter the place.

Alone in her new hideaway, she opened the crates and assembled their contents. Then she uncovered the door that she had previously hidden and, with some effort in spite of the help of the power tools at her disposal, replaced it with a tighter security door. That door led out of what had become a combination bathroom and mud room.

And that door led into the miniature freight subway that ran under downtown Delta City and the city's industrial area. Resembling a similar system used in Chicago in the early part of the Twentieth Century, it had been abandoned, sealed up, and forgotten, all to Latrina's advantage. Now her special door opened onto a small loading dock beside one of the tracks. She found one of the small trains nearby and managed to tow a locomotive and two flatbed freight carriers to her loading dock. She cleaned the little train, repaired it, altered it. The locomotive gained a reclining pilot's chair. One of the freight carriers was fitted with a gas-turbine power generator to provide electricity to the locomotive (thereby freeing Latrina from having to power up the entire subway, possibly drawing unwanted attention to her project). And the other freight carrier was fitted with a cradle large enough to hold an unconscious superheroine. With her little train and a map of the system, she could now pop up essentially anywhere in Delta City and then disappear without a trace. Batman never had it so good!

It had taken her a few months, but the time had come to celebrate. So Latrina activated some clandestine contacts that she had nurtured. She availed herself of the services of that infamous thief, Esha.

Among the chemicals required for the synthesis of pharmaceuticals we find trichloromethane, commonly called chloroform. Drittman Pharmaceuticals certainly used its share of that sleep-inducing substance. If accurate records had been kept, they would have shown that every month a certain quantity simply disappeared. A suspicious mind might come to some unfortunate conclusions had it been informed that the same quantity appeared on the black market under Ol' Cap'n Chloroform's own Huff 'n' Snooze label, the one bearing the image of a startled superheroine gazing down in wide-eyed horror at a sinister hand clamping a moist cloth over her nose and mouth. Brown-glass bottles were the bread crumbs marking the trails that Latrina followed to set up contacts with the various villains who made life in Delta City "interesting". Following one of those trails put Latrina into extremely discrete contact with Esha.

In the moral calculus we find that activities fall into two sets, actions that are legal and actions that are right. Those sets do not overlap perfectly. There are actions that are legal but wrong: Delta City's oligarchs and plutocrats had pretty thoroughly staked out that moral sewage farm. And there are actions that are right but illegal: among others, Esha enjoyed exploring that gray bizarroland or, as she put it, "taking from the greedy to give to the needy" (Yeah, a regular Robbing Hood, she is - TdC). That practice, of course, put Esha into direct conflict with anyone and everyone who was dedicated to upholding the law, regardless of how wrong its results were for honest people. Esha had seen far too many examples of people whose labor created wealth compelled to give the fruits of their labor to people - parasites, actually - who had done nothing to earn it. She wasn't going to let a few super-bimbos stop her from righting the real wrongs of society. To that end she always carried a small bottle of Huff 'n' Snooze and a thick cloth "applicator" with her. And she was not adverse to the practice of trapping and cloth'ing superheroines for the sole purpose of keeping their humiliation fresh and hot.

Thus it happened that one night Esha delivered the unconscious form of Got Gal to something that looked like a circus clown and sounded like a hick. Shortly thereafter Got Gal, naked, bound, and wearing a gas mask that kept her in lights-out mode, lay in the cradle on the Milk Train (and you thought the Batmobile was cool! - TdC). Latrina brought her prisoner to her private loading dock and carried her limp form into the place she called Lactopia. She had thought about unmasking her prisoner but decided against it: if she knew Got Gal's other identity, she might recognize her at the wrong time and thereby expose her own secret.

Got Gal regained consciousness and felt herself lying on a bed with her wrists and ankles held down by straps. With her hands held down at her sides, she was able to lift herself up enough to examine her surroundings. She saw that she was in a place that looked like a combination of a laboratory and a villain's bachelor pad from a James Bond movie. A movement caught her attention, she looked to her right, and froze, not knowing whether to laugh or to scream.

The woman had the goofiest-looking face Got Gal had ever seen. Her chestnut-brown hair had been braided into two pigtails that fell out from under the Charlotte Corday-style shower cap, made of rubbery opaque-white plastic, that she wore. She wore a blue-and-white checked gingham dress that reminded Got Gal of the dress that Judy Garland wore in "The Wizard of Oz". Over that she wore a big, ruffled full apron made of transparent-white plastic on which a checkered pattern had been printed in transparent-blue vinyl ink, making the apron mimic the pattern of her dress. And on her feet she wore bobby socks and maryjanes.

"Who are you?" Got Gal asked.

"Ah am Miylk Mayd," the woman replied, "and ah own yew."

"Wha ... why have you brought me here?" Got Gal asked.

"It's miylkin' tahm," Milk Maid said as she gently patted one of Got Gal's huge breasts. "Tahm ta pull some moo juice outa these udders."

"But ... but I'm not lactating," Got Gal protested.

"Not yeyt," Milk Maid said with a evil smile made to look all the more sinister by her clownish appearance. She held up a hypodermic syringe and cackled wickedly (Yes, villainesses are required to cackle wickedly. It's in the standard Wicked Witch's Contract with the Powers of Evil, section II, subparagraph 5.7 - TdC). Seeing Got Gal's wide-eyed look of horror, she said, "Don't be afeared none. Ah ain't gonna harm ya. Yer valyubble lahvstock." Deftly she slid the needle into the flesh of Got Gal's arm, injected the lactifacient serum, and then withdrew the needle. "Now we gotta wayt a few minutes," she said as she went to dispose of the syringe.

Got Gal watched with growing concern and then horror as she saw Milk Maid take off her shoes and socks, then her apron, then her dress. Futile though the effort was, she struggled against her bonds as she saw Milk Maid take off her bra and panties and then come to stand over her.

"Yer already eksahted fer this, ain'tcha?" Milk Maid said as she lovingly ran her right hand over Got Gal's belly and right thigh. "Well, it's tahm to cook up some whore moans," she said as she put her right knee between Got Gal's legs and mounted the helpless superheroine.

"What are you doing?" Got Gal asked in horror.

"Gonna gitcha hot," Milk Maid said as she slid her arms behind Got Gal's back and took her in a full sexual embrace. "Jist as soon as ah gitcha ta pop yer cork yew'll start perducing miylk fer me."

"I'm not that kind of girl!" Got Gal said indignantly. "You won't be able to mmpf...."

Milk Maid silenced Got Gal by the simple expedient of kissing her. She kept her lips pressed firmly against Got Gal's as Got Gal turned her head from side to side, desperately trying to break away from Milk Maid's affection.

Then Got Gal became the first person to discover that Latrina had acquired a superpower after all - a big, fat, blobbery-lipped kiss that would fill even the straightest of women with a fever-hot passion to engage in steamy, pulse-pounding, boob-to-boob, mutual-belly-rubbing, my-clitoris-on-your-thigh-and-yours-on-mine lesbian sex. The rational part of her mind screamed No! but her body betrayed her. Her nipples and aureoles swelled and hardened against Milk Maid's breasts. Then her clitoris swelled and hardened, slid out of its sheath, and poked into Milk Maid's thigh.

"Hoo-wee!" Milk Maid crowed as she went cheek to cheek with Got Gal. "Yer hotter than uh inner tube on uh summer's day and uh lot more fun ta rahd!" She began thrusting with her hips and panting in Got Gal's ear.

Got Gal moaned as sexual excitement swelled within her. Shortly the moans turned into desperate sounding grunts and then into sobbing squeals. Soon both women were climaxing onto each other, convulsing against each other as if they were having a synchronized epileptic fit. Then the passion-storm abated and they lay together panting.

"Suhmday we gotta have uh sleeypover," Milk Maid sighed. "Ah'll keep ya tahd up in mah bed so ah kin sleeyp on yew and play with yew awll naht." Then she felt Got Gal's breasts starting to swell and she got up.

With a small hand towel she wiped the wetness off her crotch and thighs and then did the same for Got Gal. She flipped a switch on the side of the bed, a motor hummed, and the bed moved back on its curved track, tilting up until Got Gal was standing about ten degrees shy of upright. Milk Maid locked the bed in position, turned off the motor, and flipped another switch. The soft rhythmic thumping of a suction pump filled the room and Milk Maid took from behind the bed a pair of rubber tubes that had been bound together with tape over most of their length. She put the suction cups at the tubes' ends over Got Gal's nipples and held them long enough for the suction to pull the nipples and aureoles in.

"Think yew kin give me uh galluhn?" Milk Maid asked.

Got Gal merely groaned in dismay.

It only took a few minutes for the milking machine to drain Got Gal's breasts, leaving them to return to their normal state. Sensors in the milking machine detected the lack of flow and the suction cups dropped off Got Gal's nipples with soft pops. Milk Maid returned the rubber tubes to their holder, then took in hand a thick cloth pad. From a brown-glass bottle she poured a small amount of fluid onto the cloth, just enough to dampen it without soaking it.

"What in the world do you want my milk for?" Got Gal asked. "I just do - mmpf." Her words were cut off by a moist cloth clamped over her mouth and nose. She struggled, trying to get away from it (Yes, superheroines are required to struggle in circumstances where struggle is futile, in accordance with the standard Superheroines' Contract with the Powers That Be, section V, subparagraph 3.13 - TdC).

"Dompf?" Milk Maid said. "Is that uh wurd? Kin ah look it up in thuh dick-shun-air-ee?"

"Bmft mpmmnd," Got Gal mumbled as her eyes rolled up and she passed out.

After making sure that her victim was truly unconscious, Milk Maid put the blackout mask back on her, after topping off its chloroform reservoir. She ran her hand over the woman's body and contemplated playing with her some more. She even gave some thought to keeping her for a few more hours, to use her as a masturbating toy during her orgasmathon, but decided against it: she simply wasn't prepared for something that risky. Someday, though, some hapless superheroine, bound and blindfolded, was going to spend half a day in Lactopia as Milk Maid's love pillow, like a big self-heating rubber sex doll. She was starting to get hot just thinking about it.

She put her clothes back on, rebound Got Gal, and then put her back "out to pasture." Then she returned to her Lactopia for her special fun.

Some time later Got Gal woke up in an alley. She found her costume and her enchanted emerald in a cloth bag tied to her wrist. She put them on, then lifted herself into the air, and flew home. She would need to warn the other members of the Bra-Busters' Battalion of the new threat in town (for all the good that will do! - TdC).

Back in Lactopia Latrina was in ecstasy. She stood naked in the romance area of her lair, an area separated from the milking area by a partition. She had just gulped down the last chilled glass of the quart of milk her machine had sucked out of Got Gal and she was getting hot. Everything was ready for her.

She had a bed that tilted down slightly and a big, fat air mattress made of transparent-blue plastic lay inflated on it. The foot of the air mattress hung an inch over the edge of the bed so that Latrina's crotch slobber, running down the channel between two of the mattress's air chambers, would drool into the trough set on the floor under it. A table shaped like a half a hexagon embraced the head of the bed and bore piles of fresh hand towels and a large keg of lemonade. A flexible tube would allow Latrina to drink from the keg without getting up, thereby allowing her to keep her thirst quenched and to replace the other substances that her climaxes would take out of her: never again would one of her orgasmathons leave her feeling sick. On one side of the bed, standing six feet tall, a punching bag made of opaque-gray plastic bearing a life-sized image of Got Gal stood fully inflated, waiting to serve her mistress's pleasure. On the other side of the bed lay a thick slab of foam rubber that had a deep, six-foot long depression cut into it: it had been covered with a plastic sheet and when the punching bag was laid into the depression Latrina would be able to mount it and perform mock intercourse with it. Warm and inviting, Latrina's play palace was ready for her.

She laid herself down on the bed, quivering with excitement. She savored the feel of soft, smooth plastic warm under her buttocks and back. She stroked the air mattress a bit and then began stroking herself. Hour after hour she played with herself and her punching bag. At times she would bring the bag onto the bed with her, pulling it down on top of her, hugging it, and bouncing it with her belly to make its plastic rub and press her clitoris. At other times she took the bag down onto the foam-rubber block and "married" Got Gal. Hour after hour she writhed and squirmed, rubbing herself with an intensity that would leave a normal woman's vulva raw and bleeding. Hour after hour the gentle swish and occasional squonk of human flesh rubbing against inflated plastic mingled with gasping and panting, grunts and squeals. And then the room fell silent.

Lying on her bed with a towel tucked into her crotch, breathing with long, deep inhalations and slow, satisfied sighs, Latrina turned her head to gaze at the cage she had built up against the wall. The cage consisted of three shower-curtain rods suspended from the ceiling in a way that defined a rectangular area against the wall and suspended from those rods were shower curtains made of clear plastic on which vertical black stripes had been printed. Inside the cage Latrina's special prisoners stood fully inflated - roly-poly punching bags bearing the life-sized images of Ms. Americana, Liberty Girl, Green Specter, Azure Angel, Lady Midnight, Jungle Babe, PMS, and Shield. Half dozing in the afterglow of her inner explosion, she idly contemplated which of them would be her next victim.

That she had a next victim was due largely to Esha (and the sheer luck of her having chosen Esha as her first wrangler). As an unmentored novice at supervillainy, Milk Maid had made some subtle mistakes and as a consequence the much more experienced Esha had been able to learn all of her secrets. Not that Esha had any intention of betraying Milk Maid, mind you: she simply wanted to be sure that Milk Maid would not betray Esha. Satisfied that she was safe and delighted by Milk Maid's shtick, Esha secretly mentored the new girl to ensure that she would survive in the rough world of supervillainy. She became the fairy godmother who ensured that Milk Maid would be humiliating superheroines happily ever after.

Coming out of her reverie, Caryn wondered whether she was being victimized by a Kunapri version of Milk Maid.

***

Caryn and the girls who had belonged to Blusterbob were taken to what the instructor called the Transformer Room. It was here, the instructor explained, that their clothing had been made from paper paste-ups. The paste-ups had been put into the machine and a teleportation-like process had replaced the paper with the appropriate substance - a soft, almost satiny cloth for their dresses and soft, smooth plastic skin for the aprons. Even the women's slippers and hygiene kits had been made by a similar process in this room. But there was more to today's lesson, horrifyingly so, and the women were not kept waiting long to find out what it was.

Flanked by two guards, Blusterbob was brought into the room. He was stark naked and Caryn saw that he had been fattened to a soft roundness and that he seemed to be in a drugged daze. Commenting that she thought the women would take special interest in what was to happen here, the instructor pushed Blusterbob into a small cabinet, pressed something against his neck, and pushed and prodded him to make sure he was standing properly. Then she stroked his penis to erection, closed the cabinet door, and pressed a large button on the control panel next to the cabinet. A moment later the cabinet beeped, the instructor opened it, and she took Blusterbob out, picking him up easily, as though he were weightless, and tossing him lightly to one of the women.

Recoiling and putting her hands up in a protective gesture, the woman caught the pimp, let out a shocked squeal, and tossed him to the woman next to her. The next woman caught the pimp, held him for a few seconds, then passed him to the next woman, tossing him as lightly as a beach ball. He was passed last to Caryn, who held him and took scant pleasure in the realization that the man who had brutally abused her friend and betrayed her into slavery was now a soft inflated plastic doll. Before she could return the pimp to the instructor she heard someone call the crew to attention.

The instructor and the proctors all stood at service alert as Great Lady Tashipu came into the room in full hauture. Caryn noticed, with sinking heart, that Tashipu was coming toward her with an annoyed expression on her face. The other women offered the required greetings and edged themselves away from ground zero.

Tashipu seemed to loom over Caryn as she said in glacial tones, "Nobody ever plays with a noblewoman's toys."

"Yes, milady," Caryn said. "I assume you want your toy." She proffered the pimp.

Tashipu ignored the hapless balloon. "You know my desires better than I do?" she asked.

"No, milady. I was only guessing." Caryn was trembling now and struggling not to cry.

"You know me well enough to guess at my desires?"

"No, milady. How ... how may I please you?"

"You may give me my toy," Tashipu said. She took the pimp then and examined him, patting him and fondling his penis, although Caryn noticed that she seemed even more interested in examining his buttocks.

Caryn took the opportunity to draw in a slow deep breath to calm herself and then said, "May I please milady further?"

"Yes," Tashipu said, "you may go about your own business." She walked away from Caryn, paused to tell the instructor to come to her quarters in a few hours, then left.

Caryn nearly collapsed with relief. "Boy," one woman said, "for a moment I thought she was gonna have you put in that cabinet and turned into a punchin' bag." That's when Caryn broke down and cried. Shortly she felt a strong hand on her shoulder.

"You did well," the instructor told her.

"She acted like I was rude to her," Caryn said.

"You were," the instructor said. "You were afraid and lost your composure. Everyone saw your fear. Certainly Great Lady Tashipu did. But you did not panic. You regained your composure, you corrected your behavior, and you served Great Lady Tashipu's pleasure in the right way. Your courage did not break until your companion made a cruel and unnecessary speculation."

The instructor's words filled Caryn with a warm calm feeling, a sense that she might survive this ordeal after all. The next morning she wasn't so sure again.

Back in her cell Caryn thought about what she had just witnessed. Shivers of horror prickled her skin, but she also felt a frisson of sexual excitement that recalled to mind a rumor that had once fascinated her. She remembered coming across it in her teens. The superheroines of Delta City, secretive creatures that they were, made perfect grist for the rumor mill and when people started to notice that they had not seen or heard from any of the members of the Mighty Milk-Mounds Militia the rumor mill kicked into high gear and ground out the most wonderful fantasy.

It began with a report presented by the Korean-American twins, Audie and Vidie Oh, on television station WUSS, the Delta City affiliate of the Pox Network. Now, given the drastic decline in supervillainy and the ability of the Delta City Police Department to deal with what was left of crime, a reasonable person would have inferred that the superheroines of the Large Lactators Legion, starting to feel middle age creeping up on them and seeing that their special powers were no longer needed, had simply gone quietly into retirement. But truth and reason cut no mustard with the folks who run the Pox Network: the ordinary and the mundane do not keep eyeballs glued to television sets (and, boy!, do those television sets look funny with all those eyeballs glued to them! - TdC); only the bizarre and the degenerate can do that and those who own stock in an eyeball-glue factory will do what it takes to keep sales of the product high. After all, wasn't it the Pox Network that was once "falsely" accused (wink, wink. nudge, nudge. know what I mean? know what I mean?) of paying petty crooks to lead police on high-speed chases on the freeways in and around Delta City? So the Oh twins' report got "edited" with the Pox News special spin (as in spinning a yarn - TdC), the rumor mill processed the result, and here's what eventually came oozing out:

South of the little town of Flojisston, west of Delta City, a strange country club lies on the west bank of the Orichalk River. With greens on both sides of the river, the Hottaire Country Club hosts many of Delta City's elite. Indeed, the name is taken as a reference to the many politicians who have memberships and even those benighted souls find the name amusing. They wouldn't be so amused if they knew the truth. In fact, the club's owner, Dorlie Keveannah, was a super-villainess whose nom de crime was The Balloonist. No, she didn't put on a trick-or-treat costume and go out with a gang of henchthugs to make trouble; she merely served those who did, as a kind of fence. Her moniker came from the fact that she made hot-air balloons, very special hot-air balloons, extremely expensive, special hot-air balloons: she made them out of people.

Somehow Dorlie had acquired the means to turn people into living inflatable plastic dolls and most people familiar with the rumor assumed that the "somehow" had involved the acquisition of a highly-advanced alien technology. However she had obtained it, Dorlie had available to her the means to turn people into toys, perfect slaves. With that ability she provided a valuable service to the super-villainesses of Delta City. Those, such as Dragon Queen, Mysteria, or Queen Bee, who engaged in the white slave trade found it most convenient to ship their product if they could simply deflate their prisoners and pack them into boxes of the kind used to ship inflatable punching bags. Indeed, so convenient and safe did she find this service, Dragon Queen captured celebutante dimbo and party girl Brussels Marriott (not to be confused with Madrid Ramada, London Sheraton, or any other dim-bulb, party-doll heiress whose name consists of a European capital city and a major hotel chain and who might just as well be an inflatable toy - TdC) and had her delivered, bound and gagged, to Dorlie as a gift to express her appreciation: the hapless heiress now stands fully inflated in Dorlie's private rooms and serves Dorlie as her maid, punching bag, and bedwarmer.

It didn't take long for even the dimmest of criminal bulbs (and you can figure out how dim that is from the fact that the typical criminal mind works at speeds in the dekaflops range, hence the term hourglassed-over eyes - TdC) to figure that Dorlie had the solution to the superheroine problem. So, working together, the super-villainesses of Delta City, over a period of months, captured the superheroines and delivered them, bound, gagged, and properly chloroformed, to the Hottaire Country Club, where Dorlie worked her magic on them. The deal was that the victims would not be sold: instead, Dorlie would keep them as her personal punching bags and as the inmates of a very special, very secret brothel conveniently located on the grounds of the Hottaire Country Club in the relatively inaccessible realm of Dorlie's private apartments.

Rubbercop was the first of the mask-and-cape set to get the early retirement package. Once she had been cloth'd and the gold-plated uranium badge that catalyzed her special powers had been removed from her skimpy dark-blue costume, she could no longer stretch and deform herself. Now the Ultimate Contortionist stands inflated in Dorlie's private prison. In order to catalyze Rubbercop's transformation, Dorlie made her put on a beret-style shower cap made of transparent dark-blue plastic on which the gold image of a badge is printed, a parody of her policewoman's hat. Otherwise naked, she wears a full-length raincoat made of transparent dark-blue plastic that had images of gold discs printed on its magnetic patches to mimic the buttons on the woman's uniform and the gold image of a badge covers the nipple and aureole of her left breast. Her huge breasts press against the limp, skin-smooth plastic and pull it taut over her chest while her swollen belly tautens the raincoat's plastic farther down.

Oh, yes, Rubbercop is indeed pregnant. Dorlie discovered early on how to make plastic women pregnant with copies of their raincoats and/or aprons. Now every time one of Dorlie's specially privileged clients squirts his latex into Rubbercop, the blue raincoat in her womb grows a little bigger and comes a little closer to being born. Indeed, this process so delights Dorlie that she has forbidden condoms in Hottaire Heaven.

And Rubbercop does not suffer her humiliation alone. In their shower caps and raincoats Ms. Americana and Liberty Girl also occupy Dorlie's plastic harem. They were joined by Green Specter and Specter Girl in their transparent olive-green plastic decorated with gold images of their gee-ess and ess-gee emblems. Shield had been made to put on a shower cap made of transparent-white plastic on which images of gold stars and red swirls had been printed, was turned into plastic, and now she wears her own transparent-red plastic raincoat with gold stars printed on it and sits on the extra-fat air mattress where she sleeps when she is not warming Dorlie's bed. Night Raven, in black plastic, and Azure Angel, Got Gal and Lady Midnight, Wolf Woman and, most dangerous of all, PMS - all waited, inflated and helpless, to serve Dorlie's pleasure and that of her clients.

Ah, such a lovely rumor and such a pity that it's not true. Caryn knew that it's not true because she knew someone who would have been intimately involved with such an escapade - her own mother. The original Esha would not have been one of Dorlie's victims: instead of getting cloth'd, she would have been doing some of the cloth'ing. With her well-honed skills, she certainly would have been able to get her beloved teenaged daughter a real blow-up superheroine to play with, to bounce around her bedroom and then stick between her legs. Perhaps not Ms. Americana herself, but her bimbo sidekick, Liberty Girl, would be almost as much fun to play with and humiliate. The thought of bringing a real superheroine out of her stupor by blowing air into her helpless body got Caryn intensely hot and made her clitoris swell up like a broomstick.

Even though she had known from the beginning that it wasn't true, the rumor had made her fall in love all over again with her Ms. Americana punching bag. She remembered when she had first gotten it she had moistened a dishrag with water, pretending that it was chloroform, and cloth'd the hapless bag, feeling a strange thrill at the idea of having the big superwoman helpless in her grasp. And sometimes, when she knew that she was alone and would not be disturbed, she would lie naked on her bed and bring the punching bag down on top of her, hugging it while making it rub her crotch. The sight of the superheroine looming over her stimulated a twinge of anxiety that quickly mutated into a sexual thrill as she felt soft, smooth plastic press against her bare skin and as she felt the bag's warmth and pneumatic bounciness seeming to press her down onto the bed. She imagined being Ms. Americana's prisoner and sex toy as the plastic, slick with her crotch slobber, slid up and down over her clitoris in time with her breathing.

After she heard the rumor something shifted inside her. From that time onward whenever she put on her own transparent-pink plastic shower cap she felt self-conscious in the way that she believed slaves feel when they're on the auction block. Often that sensation would get her hot enough that she would take her punching bag into the shower with her and masturbate with it while fantasizing over thoughts of being prepared to become Ms. Americana's inflated plastic slavemaid.

Even now, when she really was a slave on board a Kunapri ship, such fantasies had the power to arouse her libido and fill her with sexual excitement. Tonight, though, she couldn't bring herself to full arousal. Seeing a person, even one as vile as Blusterbob, turned into an inflatable toy aroused too much horror to leave room for lust. Nonetheless, Caryn wondered what it would feel like to play with Tashipu's new toy.

***

She was taken from her cell with all of her clothes, her books, and her hygiene kit and taken to the instructor's office. There the instructor took her black aprons from her and gave her five aprons made of bright opaque-blue plastic on which Tashipu's emblem was printed in gold and white. She felt a quivery flutter in her stomach as she put on one of the blue aprons and listened to what the instructor told her.

For the remaining five months of the voyage Caryn was Tashipu's maid, attending to Tashipu's needs in the morning, going to her classes, and then going back to Tashipu in the evening. She never got over her self-consciousness at wearing Tashipu's apron and once her fear of Tashipu subsided she actually looked forward to getting out of class and away from the hostile stares of the other Earthwomen. Her first task after leaving class was always to go to the officers' mess, prepare a small pot of skuzzwuk, and take it to Tashipu on the ship's bridge.

On the afternoon of her first day serving Tashipu Caryn got an inkling of the despair that must have overcome kidnaped Africans centuries ago when they found themselves trapped aboard "giant canoes" in the middle of the ocean. On her first day of captivity she had heard several of her fellow captives talking about "taking the ship", but what she saw on the Blompafoom's bridge impressed upon her what an exercise in futility such an effort, even if successful, would have been. True, one group of kidnaped Africans had revolted in those long bygone days and taken over a slave ship, the Amistad, but because they didn't know how to navigate or to sail it they drifted helplessly on the Gulf Stream until they were rescued by Americans, themselves only recently freed from an oppressive overlord. No, the Kunapri technology was advanced so much farther beyond that of Earth than the technology of the Europeans had been advanced over that of Africa that even if the humans achieved the essentially impossible task of taking over the Blompafoom, they would find themselves adrift and completely lost in something infinitely vaster and colder than any of Earth's oceans.

As soon as class was dismissed for the day Caryn went to her new quarters, dropped off her books, then boldly went whither no human had gone before - the command decks of a Kunapri starship. Intensely aware of how much smaller than the Kunapri she was and of her swishy dress and pretty apron, she had to resist the mischievous impulse to skip gaily down the corridors like a little girl. Tashipu had shown her that morning the route that she was to follow and she had memorized it easily

All frivolous thoughts fled her consciousness when she came to the entrance into the ship's command module. The wide oval entrance wasn't so big as to be intimidating, but its ornately carved, yard-wide rim bespoke an almost religious reverence. Solemnly Caryn followed a Kunapri officer through the opening and then she noticed that the woman took a position standing on a bull's-eye-shaped mosaic on the deck and saluted an elaborately carved, brightly colored bas relief on a narrow free standing wall in the center of the space beyond the portal. She had no instruction in this matter, so she waited for the officer to move on and then she stood on the bull's-eye and offered a courtesy to the bas relief. As she stepped off the mosaic she noticed the officer staring at her with an odd look of wonder on her face.

She curtseyed to the officer and said, "Milady, I hope that I have not done something improper."

"You have not," the Kunapri said with a smile. She nodded to acknowledge the courtesy and then went on her way.

Caryn went to the senior officers' mess and retrieved Tashipu's skuzzwuk service from its locker. She brewed a pot of skuzzwuk, set it on the tray with the service pieces, and then carried the tray to the bridge.

When the doors of the lift slid apart flabbergastation nearly froze Caryn on the spot. She had to force herself to move forward and attend to her business. Among the wonders that she noticed was the fact that Tashipu was sitting in the captain's chair while Captain Schnokkerbompen himself stood a bit behind her on her left. As she approached the command chair from its right Caryn offered the captain a half curtsey and said, "My Lord Captain", then, when he acknowledged her greeting with a nod, she served Tashipu.

Tashipu was smiling over something and did not sound unfriendly when she said, "Your service to me takes precedence over all other considerations, including greeting the captain."

"I understand, milady," Caryn said. "Your instruction will improve my service."

"A benefit to us both," Tashipu commented in acknowledgment. "You are uniquely privileged," she added. "You are the first of your kind ever to see the bridge of one of our ships. Take some time to look around and see what we have here. I will call you if I want your service.

"Yes, milady," Caryn said. "Thank you ... I mean, your generosity is a blessing to me." She lifted her skirt, then half knelt and bowed in a full courtesy, holding her position until Tashipu nodded in acknowledgment. Then she stood up and looked around her.

Caryn found the bridge awesome. Female officers with tall beehive hairdos and male officers, their hair swept up and lacquered into stiff razorback crests, tended vast arrays of instruments and controls with calm efficiency while in hyperspace, directly visible through the forward transparency, luminous clouds that stretched billions of miles in all directions appeared to drift majestically past the ship.

More awesome yet was Tashipu herself. She was only an officer trainee, a mere teenager, but Caryn always found her sitting in the captain's chair while Captain Shnokkerbompen stood. Daughter of a highly placed family with a long tradition of service in the Kunapri interstellar navy, she would, by the time she was Caryn's age, command one of that navy's most powerful battleships. Even the fact that Caryn was Tashipu's maid was impressive: an officer who had shared quarters with Tashipu had been moved elsewhere and now Caryn had her own very plush bedroom and bathroom connected to Tashipu's suite by a thick door that Tashipu opened in the morning and closed again at night when Caryn had finished her chores.

***

Several mornings a week Caryn found herself performing an extra chore. She would come into Tashipu's bedroom to make the bed and she would find Blusterbob lying face down on it. What she had to do then was to clean a large gob of thick yellowish slime out of the pimp's anus and rectum, sponge bathe him, and then put him into a plastic bag hanging in Tashipu's closet. She wasn't happy with the fact that the bag was made of the same blue plastic and bore the same emblems as her aprons. She didn't dare ask Tashipu what she was using the pimp for, but she made what she thought was a reasonable guess. She tried to imagine what Tashipu and her presumed lover looked like playing out their lust with the blow-up pimp between them and she concluded that there was a delicious ironic justice in the fact that Blusterbob was being used as a condom to keep a teenaged girl from getting pregnant. It was to be almost a year before she discovered how wrong her guess was.

Cleaning Tashipu's "doll" reminded her of a movie she had seen once. It was a minor entertainment called "Child's Prey" and it was a hoot.

Rodney Reibbiste was on the run, as always. The cops just wouldn't believe him when he said that he hadn't raped that bitch and tried to strangle her. People were always blaming him for bad stuff and just couldn't figure, as he did, that women were always to blame. So now the cops were chasing him again.

Shot, bleeding, and with the cops on his trail, he broke into a toy store. In one last desperate act he activated a charm he had bought from an old Gypsy, one that would let him inhabit an inanimate object and, as far as possible, bring it to life. All he had to do was to find a large enough doll and the Good Gay doll that was popular at the time seemed a good bet. He found the Good Gay display and with his dying act uploaded his vile soul into one of the toys. But as he lost consciousness and fell to the floor, he missed the box containing the Good Gay doll and brought his hand down instead on a box containing the giant inflatable Good Gay bop bag. Strange twinklings migrated from his hand into the box and then he died.

A few days later Karen Wackenoff bought the bop bag and took it home to her teenaged son, Andy. To say that Andy was delighted would be to understate the case: he was ecstatic. At last Good Gay was going to be his very own helpless prisoner. He thanked his mother profusely and then took his prize to his bedroom and closed the door. Carefully he took the punching bag out of its box and unfolded it on his bed. Then he knelt down and began to inflate it through the valve between Good Gay's feet. When he had blown the bag full enough that it began to rise off the bed, Andy picked it up and set it on the floor. He resumed blowing into the bag until it was full and the plastic was taut. He allowed the bag to come fully upright then and gazed up at it.

What Andy saw standing before him then was a five-foot, ten-inch balloon made of opaque-lavender plastic in the form of a more or less tapered cylinder, rounded at the bottom. A weight at one end kept the balloon upright and Andy saw printed on the plastic the image of Good Gay. The blond and slightly plump young man was completely naked, except for a calf-length party apron made, apparently, of transparent-blue plastic on which the words "Punch Me" were printed in big, blobbery red letters that almost obscured the image of Good Gay's erect penis seeming to press against the apron's plastic. Good Gay himself stood with his hands pressed against the sides of his thighs, in an attitude of abject submission, and he had a happy look on his face, as if he enjoyed the prospect of being Andy's punching bag (kinda like the smiling cow you see at your local 'burger joint. True masochism. - TdC).

Yes, Good Gay, standing fully inflated, looked just like an erect penis, just like the one visible behind his apron (he really did look forward to being bopped and bounced around. - TdC). And it didn't take long for Andy to get the hint. Alone in the house, he quickly stripped down to his underpants.

He thought he felt the bag squirm as he took it in an embrace and kissed Good Gay on his big, fat lips. He knew, of course, that it was simply an illusion due to his shifting his arms as he hugged his love toy. He pressed his growing, stiffening erection against Good Gay's apron as he squeezed and caressed the bag. Then his right hand, sliding over soft, smooth plastic, found the deep dimple between the image of Good Gay's butt cheeks. At that instant Andy had no doubt: Good Gay bucked and writhed in a futile effort to escape.

Startled, Andy leaned back and looked into Good Gay's eyes. Of course, the image didn't move, although the bag continued to squirm. Then Andy turned the bag around, pulled down his underpants, and pushed his fully erect penis into Good Gay's butt....

(You see? In spite of what you read in the Submission Guidelines, you can actually get Mr. X to post your brain farts on his website. All you need to do is to sneak them in by hiding them inside a well-crafted, fully-developed story. ... D'oh! - TdC).

Being Tashipu's maid was an extra burden, but Caryn found that it made life easier for her in many ways. The luxury that she lived in was only one example. While the other slave women were required to acknowledge every Kunapri they encountered, Caryn was required to acknowledge only those who spoke directly to her and she found the Kunapri oddly reluctant to address her without compelling reason. Caryn discovered the reason behind that reluctance when a crew-woman sent her on an errand that made her late bringing Tashipu's skuzzwuk to the bridge. That evening Tashipu made her watch from behind a curtain as she berated the crew-woman. At one point Tashipu even threatened to turn the woman into an "Earthgirl" and, while she took the threat to mean that the woman would be made to perform maid service, Caryn noticed that the woman instinctively made a protective gesture toward her groin. Caryn realized just how seriously the Kunapri took their taboos and she remembered what Tashipu had told her at Blusterbob's inflation: nobody plays with a noblewoman's toys, including her maid.

But someone did.

Caryn had just come into the senior officer's mess to prepare Tashipu's skuzzwuk. She noticed a Kunapri officer in the room, one she recognized as Minor Lord Huputdabompen, the very officer who had been moved out of the quarters she now occupied. As she approached the locker where Tashipu's skuzzwuk service was kept, he confronted her.

"Tell me your mistress's name!" he demanded.

"Milord, I serve my apron," she responded, as protocol demanded.

"I didn't ask about your damned apron," he said angrily. "Tell me your mistress's name!"

"But... but, Milord, it's forbidden!" Caryn stammered.

"I don't care," Huputdabompen said as he loomed over the trembling woman. "You will obey my command or you will be sent to the punishment center."

Caryn felt weak. The punishment center was the place where people went to be tortured. One woman who had defied her captors had been sent for two units of punishment and had been as docile as a puppy ever since. "But, Milord, your command is improper," she complained.

"Don't tell me what's improper, slave!" he yelled in her face. "Tell me your mistress's name! Now!"

"M... my mistress's n... name is G... Great L... Lady T... T... Tashipu," Caryn said.

"Pronounce it correctly!" he yelled.

Struggling to control her voice, Caryn said, "My mistress's name is Great Lady Tashipu."

"And don't ever forget it!" Huputdabompen said. Then he gave her a sharp slap across the face and stormed out of the senior officer's mess, leaving Caryn alone.

With tears running down her cheeks and sobs wracking her body, Caryn took Tashipu's skuzzwuk service from the locker and brewed the skuzzwuk. She used the time that it took to get everything ready to regain her composure.

When she came to the bridge, she set the skuzzwuk service in its place and greeted Tashipu, then greeted the captain, as she had gotten in the habit of doing. This time, though, she thought that she detected signs of worry in Captain Schnokkerbompen and the look that he gave her was filled with sadness. She set the thought aside as she took her usual position and engaged the Zen exercises that her mother had taught her to calm herself.

Tashipu straightened herself up in the captain's chair. "Minor Lord Huputdabompen," she called out, "I require your advice."

Huputdabompen came to stand before the captain's chair and bowed to Tashipu. "I will offer what I have, Milady," he said. He avoided looking at Caryn.

"I'm sure it will satisfy my desire," Tashipu said. "Tell me, what is the appropriate punishment for a slave who has abused her mistress's name?"

Caryn felt sick, but maintained her composure as Huputdabompen gave her a brief glance.

"I would say twenty units of pain, Milady," he said to Tashipu.

Caryn blanched. Twenty units of pain would leave her barely alive.

"That's rather harsh, don't you think?" Tashipu said.

"It's entirely warranted, Milady," Huputdabompen said. "Knowing the sheer wantonness of the act, rectitude demands it."

"Yes, I believe you are correct," Tashipu said. "Very well, then, report to the punishment center for twenty units of pain!"

Trying not to break down and cry, Caryn lifted her skirt in the required curtsey and then froze. She realized that Tashipu had not spoken directly to her and noticed a bewildered look on Huputdabompen's face.

"Milady?" he said. "Surely you mean for the slave to go to the punishment center."

"I am not looking at the slave," Tashipu said in the quiet, calm voice that Caryn had learned to dread. "I am looking at you. A reasonable deduction is that I am talking to you. But let me be clear. You, Minor Lord Huputdabompen, are to report to the punishment center for twenty units of pain and you are to do so now."

A stricken look had come over Huputdabompen's face. He bowed, said, "Milady", and hurriedly left the bridge.

Tashipu turned to Caryn, still frozen in mid-curtsey. "You will not be punished," she said. She picked up her cup of scuzzwuk, took a sip, and added, "It seems that you have finally found your occasion when you make speak your mistress's name without being punished."

Caryn dropped her skirt and stood up straight. "Milady, I did not want to do it and I want never to do it again."

"I know," Tashipu said and then turned her attention back to commanding the ship.

After that incident Tashipu became more demanding of Caryn, giving her extra books to read and quizzing her repeatedly on their contents. Caryn simply assumed that the extra discipline was Tashipu compensating the fact the Caryn had not been punished. Even though reason had guided Tashipu's decision, subconscious programming demanded that Caryn suffer some discomfort for violating Kunapri protocol, whether the violation was forgivable or not. But Caryn also gained the impression that she was also being subjected to an advanced course in serving a Kunapri mistress, one of the uppermost social order of Kunapri society. It wasn't her place to question why, so she just did it.

***

When the ship came to Kunav it was too soon for Caryn's taste. She had gotten used to serving Tashipu and had even come to like her: she didn't relish being thrown back into the unknown again.

She was standing beside Tashipu on the bridge, ready to serve her as-yet-untouched skuzzwuk at her command. She saw that the ship had flown straight into a cloud of orange light and suddenly she felt dizzy. She saw the cloud seem to collapse in on itself and shrink down into the orange sun of Kunav as the ship broke out of hyperspace. Kunav itself was visible only as a thin orange crescent. The ship would dock at the orbital spaceport in the middle of the night.

All that evening and part of the next morning Caryn and Tashipu packed. Caryn's packing was simple: she would take with her only her hygiene kit, her notebooks and books on etiquette and language, and the clothes that she was wearing. She returned four aprons to Tashipu and took her extra clothing back to ship's stores. When she returned to Tashipu's quarters with the black apron of an unsold slave Tashipu took it away from her. Tashipu gave Caryn a powder-blue dress to wear with her blue apron, instructed the porter robots to take care of their luggage, and then, after a large breakfast, took Caryn with her on the officer's shuttle down to the main spaceport in Kunav's capital city, Saifutsoi.

Commandeering a naval staff car, Tashipu had Caryn and herself driven to a large building set in a wide park. The sign on the building identified it as the Yipikipi Center. For the most part household robots and other appliance were sold here, but there was a very special section of the building where other goods were sold. Caryn saw Terran women in black dresses and black aprons disembarking from a bus and being led into that part of the building. As if avoiding them, Tashipu took Caryn in through another entrance.

They came into a large, well-lit, high-ceilinged room that was ornately decorated with mosaics and sculptures. Here and there special displays featured robots going through demonstrations of their skills. They went up a series of escalators, passing through a barrier at the entrance to each one. Only when they came to a level on which the crowd consisted entirely of nobility did Caryn see slave women in the sales cubicles. They went up one more escalator, one for which Tashipu actually had to show identification to the robot at the barrier, and Tashipu found an empty cubicle and took Caryn inside.

Once they were inside the cubicle Tashipu told Caryn to take off her apron. Deftly Tashipu folded the apron, hid it inside her blouse, and fastened up her jacket. She took another apron from her purse and gave it to Caryn to put on. Caryn saw that it differed from the other apron in that Tashipu's emblem was now crossed by a bright red void mark with Tashipu's signature on the left side indicating honorable service.

"Milady, are we doing something illegal?" Caryn asked.

Tashipu shook her head. "It's quite legal, but highly unethical. You should not be here wearing a voided apron, because I never legitimately owned you. You should be with the others being sold to the lower nobility. But if all goes well, you will be sold to one of the top hundred families on Kunav and my family will gain honor from my audacity. Especially," she added with a wicked grin, "when my full motive becomes clear."

"I wish you could keep me," Caryn said.

"So do I," Tashipu said. Then she patted Caryn's fanny, wished her luck, and left.

Caryn soon discovered that being sold into slavery on Kunav was more like being interviewed for a job. Potential buyers came into her cubicle and inquired about her service as she served them skuzzwuk in the formal kuv ritual. Several couples interviewed her without success and Caryn began to feel apprehensive when one woman told her in exasperation that she seemed to have the finesse of a "black apron". It was with considerable relief that Caryn found out that she had been sold.

The young man who bought her, Prince Aynurpompen, was governor of Kunav's smallest moon, bö-Gur. Caryn was told that she was to be a gift for his wife, Princess Sondipu. Because he was away from home for long periods of time, Aynurpompen wanted to give his wife a maid who could also be a companion.

Aynurpompen led Caryn to a room where her hygiene kit and all of her clothing were taken from her. She tried not to fidget as she stood naked. Shortly the clerk brought out her new wardrobe, new hygiene kit, and her blue apron neatly folded and put inside a transparent pouch with Tashipu's emblem and void mark showing. Her new wardrobe consisted of ten each of panties, wrap dresses, and fluffy slippers, all lime green, and ten aprons made of smooth, soft opaque-forest-green plastic with Sondipu's emblem printed on the bibs in bright yellow and gold. There was two of everything in her new hygiene kit, everything made green and bearing Sondipu's emblem in gold and yellow, from two toothbrushes to two shower caps made of transparent-green plastic with forest-green stretchbands.

Dressed in one of her new outfits and carrying a suitcase containing the rest of her wardrobe and belongings, Caryn went with Aynurpompen to be driven to his palace on a mountainside overlooking Saifutsoi. On the drive up to the palace Aynurpompen told Caryn everything that he thought she should know about Sondipu so that she could begin immediately to please her new mistress. She was fascinated to learn that Sondipu was a renowned sculptor who worked in smölp, a translucent green-and-gold material similar to jade. When they reached the palace Aynurpompen helped her carry her luggage as he snuck her up to the private quarters on top of the building.

Like some tropical jungle, Aynurpompen and Sondipu's private quarters were a study in shades of green. Aynurpompen showed Caryn the room on the lower level that would be hers, a plush bedroom with a double bed, a wide window with a view of Saifutsoi, a private bathroom, and a small kitchen. Then he took her up curving stairs to one of the two bedrooms that, with their bathrooms, made up the upper level of the house. Vastly more plush than her quarters, this bedroom also had a wide view of the city below. Aynurpompen left to get Sondipu and Caryn stole a few moments to look into the spacious adjoining bathroom and the walk-in closet, then she quickly returned to the spot near the door where Aynurpompen had left her and waited.

She was about Caryn's age and for a Kunapri she was petite, only an inch taller than Caryn. She was looking over her shoulder at Aynurpompen when she came into the room, so she nearly ran into Caryn. When she did notice Caryn she jumped back in surprise. Caryn saw gray eyes and white hair with a tinge of glacial blue and immediately thought of her as the Ice Princess. Looking Caryn over and noticing her apron, Sondipu clapped her hands and squealed with delight. She poked Caryn in the belly as though making sure she was real, then she ran to Aynurpompen, hugged and kissed him, and whispered something to him that made his cheeks turn dark gray. It was the first time Caryn had seen a Kunapri blush and she realized that she still had a lot to learn about these creatures.

Happily, like a little girl with a new toy, Sondipu showed Caryn her new home. Her bedroom came first and as she showed Caryn where everything belonged Sondipu told her that she wanted her to take over the keeping of her and Aynurpompen's bedrooms and bathrooms from the housekeeper robots. In her bathroom she showed Caryn the one area that she was never to touch, her hair-grooming table. The table and its mirror were set against the back of the bathroom next to a window with a view of the mountain on which the house stood. On the table, neatly arrayed, Caryn saw Sondipu's hair dryer, its transparent plastic bonnet folded neatly on top of it, a shelf of shampoos, conditioners, rinses, and setting sprays, a rack of combs and brushes, and, resting on a tall stone mushroom, an egg-shaped shower cap made of almost-opaque white plastic on which dark-green fern patterns were printed.

Aynurpompen's bedroom was virtually a mirror reflection of Sondipu's. The only noticeable difference was what Caryn thought was an odd hobbyhorse: it had a wide base that looked like it functioned as a shallow rocker and on that base was a foot-and-a-half high, one-foot wide body that elongated into an upward curving headless neck. The first time she cleaned it Caryn discovered that it was softly padded and was covered with a soft, smooth opaque-white plastic skin. In Aynurpompen's bathroom Sondipu again pointed out the taboo hair-grooming table.

Downstairs the space under Sondipu and Aynurpompen's suites was what Caryn considered a living room, albeit a vast one. Some of Sondipu's sculptures were on display around the room. Further in was a plush conversation pit that sloped down to a glowpit at the base of the high window that looked out over Saifutsoi. To the right of the living room was the kitchen and dining room. To the left was Caryn's suite, the elevator that was the main entrance, and, behind a sliding panel, the utility room, where the housekeeping supplies were kept and where Caryn would wash and dry laundry. Here, too, there was a taboo area - the cabinet containing hair-grooming supplies.

Between the kitchen and the utility room, along the rear of the house, with a wide view of the mountainside behind the palace, was the library. Here Sondipu proudly showed Caryn her collection of books from far-away Earth. Remembering Tashipu's remarks about audacity, Caryn wondered whether she might please her mistress by translating some of the books into Gilliwhump. Sondipu admitted that she couldn't read English, pulled two books on Chinese jade carving from their shelf, and laid them on the table. "These first," she said. Then she continued giving Caryn a tour of the house. It was too much, of course, so for the first few days, Caryn figured, she would have to follow the housekeeping robots around, watch what they did, and discuss it with them.

It was only on the third day as Sondipu's slave that Caryn found enough spare time for translation. She felt that she was starting to get the hang of being Sondipu's maid (she refused to think of herself as a slave), so she decided to give herself a break. On her first session of translating she thought simply to skim the books to get acquainted with their topic. She returned to the library with notepad and pen and got down to work.

As she opened the first book she found a comic book tucked, long forgotten, inside it, just inside the front cover. It was an old edition of The Justice Legion of Asia. At the center of the story sat Japan's favorite Chinese-American superheroine, Sue Shih, Aquaman's Pacific Ocean female counterpart.

In this adventure she teamed up with The Rabbi of Osaka, who would defeat his enemies with dazzling displays of Jew Jitsu. He would face his oldest and deadliest enemy - The Nazi.

Tennis Woman and Ball Boy also joined the team. A few flash-bang balls served right after a volley of tear-gas balls would bring their opponents out into the open. (Yeah, take that, Green Arrow! - TdC).

SeePee'ay, a woman from the faraway planet Audit-1040, would play an important role in this adventure. With pale white skin, pale blue eyes, and blond hair, she looked like a Swedish goddess, but her people had evolved the ability to do arithmetic as fast as any computer. Stranded on Earth when her flying saucer crashed, she brought to the team the ability to solve financial crimes at lightning speed.

And rounding out the team came Stanley Tuffo, better known to the world as The Piston, whose power of... (OK, this is now officially ridiculous! This works as a pun if and only if you know that the Italian word for piston is stantuffo (and, yes, the Italians also use pistone because, like the other European languages, Italian has been seriously corrupted by English). What imbecile is writing this lame-o comic-book crapola (which is like granola, but without the gran)? - TdC). In this adventure he gets cloth'd by, you guessed it, The Carburetor.

Leading the villains was the vile puppet master of crime himself, the evil Chinese financier, Cha Ching. Yes, the leader of the Black Cash Register Gang had come up with a new scheme to siphon money from those who actually worked for it into his utterly useless hands. Like the greedy scumbags who had nearly collapsed the world's economy a generation earlier, Cha Ching knew how to "bundle" securities with worthless paper, sell the result, and leave a trail that no one could follow,... except for the Justice Legion of Asia.

Thus the superheroes, as always, would have to be removed from the scene. And, of course, Sue Shih and Tennis Woman were to end up enslaved in Cha Ching's bedroom - naked, bound and gagged, and always available. He even got a thrill out of thinking about giving Ball Boy to his bodyguard, Boo Hau (yeah, yeah, yeah. That's just Chinese for Not Good - TdC.). And of course he had special plans for SeePee'ay, only a small part of them involving using her computational powers to benefit his schemes.

The action began with two muscular young women cloth'ing Tennis Woman and Ball Boy. The unconscious heroes were slipped into double-walled rubber bags that were then inflated to hold the victims helpless. Then the captors put knockout masks on the pair to keep them unconscious and....

(Wow! Another brain fart snuck onto Mr. X's website and the X-man never even noticed! - TdC) [Yes, I did. - Mr. X] (Oops! - TdC).

Suddenly Caryn heard Sondipu calling to her with an expression of urgency. Quickly, with a twinge of guilt, she closed the comic book and put it back where she had found it. Then she ran to the lounge room and when she got there Sondipu told her to sit down and watch what was coming up on the Upper Class News.

Caryn sat down in a straight-backed chair and watched, noticing that the television was tuned to a channel that only the top echelons of Kunapri society could access. Very few people on Kunav would be seeing what she was seeing. She wondered what made Sondipu decide to show it to her.

On the ten-foot by five-foot screen Caryn saw a building that she recognized as a temple to the Kunapri Spirit of Honor. In the foreground, in the middle of the vast square in front of the temple, she saw a stone platform that rose about twenty feet above the surrounding square. The television camera floated higher than the platform and looked down on it, showing what looked like a short stone couch sitting in a broad bowl.

Caryn cast a glance at Sondipu and saw that Sondipu was watching her rather intently. She turned her attention back to the television, wondering what test she was being given.

She saw a figure emerge from the temple and stride toward the platform. Wearing what looked to Caryn like a monk's robe, he came to the foot of the stairs lead to the top of the platform, let the robe slide to the ground, and ascended the stairs. There was no narration, only silence. Then Caryn saw, at the bottom of the screen, a short statement - Minor Lord Huputdabompen expunges dishonor.

With a shock Caryn recognized her erstwhile tormentor. She noticed that his hair had been shaved off, his razor-like crest gone. This was clearly serious business and Caryn wasn't sure she wanted to watch it.

As Huputdabompen reached the top of the stairs and approached the stone couch he held up what looked to Caryn like a flute, but one that had been cut on a bevel to leave a wicked off-center point at one end. With no further ceremony and without speaking a word, Huputdabompen lay himself down on the couch, lying on his back, held the flute above him, and then suddenly jabbed it into his chest. Gray blood gushed from the holes in the flute in spurts and Caryn realized that the thing was not a musical instrument at all, but a suicide device. It was over in less than a minute: Huputdabompen lay dead on the stone couch and Caryn felt sick.

Sondipu turned off the television. "I have heard an interesting story about this case," she said. "Minor Lord Huputdabompen arrived back on Kunav from Earth on the Imperial Ship Blompafoom a few days ago. Rumor has it that on that voyage he abused one of the slaves and then, to compound the crime, sought to buy her so that he could abuse her some more. Do you know what that means?"

"Yes, Milady," Caryn said. "Under Kunapri law the abuse of a slave is a serious offense against the Empire. All of your people know this, so I don't understand how this Minor Lord came to believe that he could do such a thing without being discovered at it."

"He was insane," Sondipu said. "That's the only explanation that fits the facts."

Caryn stared at Sondipu in wide-eyed horror. "I... I didn't think that a Kunapri could go insane!" she said.

"It's very, very rare," Sondipu said, "but it can happen. In this case, I am told, Minor Lord Huputdabompen left Kunav on the Blompafoom sharing quarters with a daughter of an Uppermost Clan. He inferred that he was being tested to prove whether his own clan was ready for elevation and he strove to accumulate as much merit as possible on the voyage. But on the return leg he was moved to lower quarters so that his erstwhile cabin mate could take one of the slaves as her maid. He should have understood that this was another test that he had to pass, but he didn't and his mind broke. He then inflicted his insane rage on the slave girl."

"That's terrible," Caryn commented.

"Indeed so," Sondipu said. "But there's one other factor that makes this incident such a nice puzzle. The Lady in question was your own mistress, Great Lady Tashipu, who, for some well hidden reason, decided to sell you on the very day she returned to Kunav. Do you know why?"

Caryn admitted that she did. Trembling inside, she told Sondipu of how she came to be on Kunav, told her of what had happened aboard the Blompafoom, and what Tashipu had done.

When Caryn finished Sondipu sighed in satisfaction. "At first I thought you might have been a childhood gift," she explained. "But that would not truly explain the lack of more voided aprons in your collection. This scheme makes more sense. Yes, I must send a message to Great Lady Tashipu and congratulate her on such an exquisitely audacious scheme. Perhaps she will even come here and join us for skuzzwuk."

"I would like that very much, Milady," Caryn said, still shaking.

"And you needn't worry overly much about your own future," Sondipu added. "I don't plan on sending you back to the Yipikipi black section. Great Lady Tashipu taught you well and by keeping you I reflect honor upon her house."

"Yes, Milady," Caryn said, "and perhaps add to the honor of this house as well?"

"We shall see," Sondipu said and then added, "You may return to what you were doing."

Caryn got up, curtseyed to Sondipu, and went back to the library.

***

On her fifth day as Sondipu's slave Caryn felt confident that she could take care of Sondipu's bathroom herself, so she sent the robot away. She was just finishing up when she felt a compulsion to stare at Sondipu's hair-grooming table. Realizing that she was alone in the private quarters and would often be alone, she felt the lure of forbidden fruit. She dismissed the idea of using any of Sondipu's combs or brushes: a single dark hair lodged in them would betray her. She wondered idly whether there was any kind of surveillance on the taboo table and decided that she would have to think of an unobtrusive way to find out. She felt a small warm thrill run through her as she fantasized about wearing Sondipu's shower cap. The warm thrill turned into cold shock when she heard Sondipu call to her from the bedroom.

Trying not to let her guilty feelings show, she went to the bedroom and saw that Sondipu had put a plastic bundle on her bed. She beckoned to Caryn. "I want you to blow air into this," she said pointing to the bundle.

Caryn knelt at the foot of the bed and inflated what turned out to be a five-foot-nine-inch punching bag with an exact likeness of her printed on the plastic. The life-sized image of herself appeared standing with her hands pressed against her thighs in an attitude of abject submission. She wasn't sure she liked being represented as a round-bottomed balloon that would bounce eagerly upright for more when punched. Hiding her shock as best she could, she picked the bag up and set it on the floor where Sondipu indicated.

"It is considered ungracious, even cowardly, to hit a slave," Sondipu explained. "But you will sometimes be stupid and I will get angry, so I will come and punch my plastic Caryn until my feelings are soothed."

Caryn admitted that it was better than the more direct approach and found little reason to change that opinion for several months.

"Thank you, Caryn," Sondipu said haughtily. "You may return to your regular duties now."

"May it please Milady," Caryn said as she half knelt in a courtesy. She turned and left. As she closed the door behind her she heard a rubbery thump and then another. She was trembling inside as she walked down the hall and she remembered another of her mother's stories:

As usual something had gone ever so slightly akilter in Delta City and as boringly usual that mighty-mammaried medler, Ms. Americana, had swung, bounced, and jiggled into action. It seems that some weird voodoo cult (uh, isn't that a redundancy? - TdC) ... some weirder-than-we-normally-expect voodoo cult had sprouted through some of the cracks in society and the much vaunted "Queen of Justice" was on the case.

OK, so the voodoo cult wasn't actually as harmless as that makes it sound. Consider the fact that Vodou originated in Haiti in a syncretistic blend of African and European religions as a means of giving powerless people at least the illusion of wielding some power over their own fates. It certainly provided the emotional fuel that drove the Haitian revolution under Toussaint L'Overture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century. Some decades later Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau introduced (some would say infiltrated) the religion into some of the spookier parts of Louisiana (Hey, that's not a redundancy; there are non-spooky parts of Louisiana. No, really. - TdC), where it was embraced (and kissed and fondled) by African-Americans (obviously) and the displaced Acadians commonly called Cajuns. From there it spread (some would say metastasized - TdC) throughout the United States. And now a strange... OK, OK, stranger-than-usual version had come to Delta City.

The cops had picked up some petty crook who had sneered at them and told them that he was a Voudouisant Plastique, as if that fact should intimidate them. The cops merely shrugged and continued beating the crap out of... er, interrogating the perp, dismissing all the punk's talk of Mambo Misté as the ravings of a lunatic. However, those ravings were just sinister enough to pique the cops' interest without offering any real justification for applying actual DCPD resources to satisfying that interest. So they called in the Big Boobs Brigade and found that of the Titanic-Titted Termagants, only Ms. Americana was dumb enough... er, dedicated enough to take the case (Come on! Am I really responsible for the way Esha tells these stories? - TdC).

She began with a late-night investigation of certain properties owned by the Sacred House of Vodou Plastique, the sorta-kinda voodoo church run by Miss Veau DuBoppe. Now, you might think that a superheroine on the prowl would be intensely aware of her surroundings and of any potential dangers; you might think that supersenses would alert said superheroine to the approach of any potential danger; and you would definitely think wrong. As she explored the darkened area at the rear of the Sacred House she was surprised by a gloved right hand suddenly clamping a thick, moist cloth over her nose and mouth as a strong left arm wrapped itself around her chest just below her breasts and pulled her off balance.

"Mmph!" she complained. Her startled gasp had huffed sweet-smelling vapor deep into her lungs, so she didn't have much time to free herself.

"Hi, there!" an all-too-familiar, all-too-irritating voice said softly into her left ear.

"Gmpm Gm'fm!" she mumbled angrily. She felt steel-spring muscles turning into soft rubber and her icy will melting into a squishy puddle. She gazed down in wide-eyed horror at the gloved hand that was cloth'ing her.

"At your disservice, my dear," Captain Chloroform said with a chuckle. "Nightie-night!"

Reality turned hazy for Ms. Americana, then faded to black as she lost consciousness. As she went limp the Sinister Clothman could no longer contain his mirth and Ms. Americana heard the infamous howl: "Hmp hmp mbwah ha ha ha...."

Consciousness came back slowly, even a little reluctantly, as it always does. Lying still, Ms. Americana gathered some basic information about her situation. Just by feel she could tell that, except for her mask, she was completely naked, her hands were tied behind her back, and she was lying on a big, fat, fully-inflated plastic air mattress. Her sense of smell told her nothing since it was still numb from the chloroform and that thought made her wonder idly how much the little weasel got for her this time. She heard soft sounds indicating the presence of people. After waiting a moment to let the wooziness fade, she opened her eyes.

She saw that she was lying on an opaque-red plastic air mattress inside a cage set against one wall of a large windowless room that had the feel of a basement. She rolled over onto her back and saw a beautiful woman with curly raven-black hair cascading to her shoulders standing outside the cage, looming over her.

"It's about time," the woman said in a thick accent. "That-a Capitan-a Chloroform, maybe he give-a you a little too much of-a the sleepy-cloth, eh?"

The woman's huge breasts stretched the fabric of a costume that looked more like a one-piece bathing suit that displayed red, white, and green stripes in what looked like a parody of the flag of Italy. A chill shuddered Ms. Americana's spine when she saw that the woman was also wearing a calf-length ruffled half apron made of soft, smooth, transparent-gray plastic on which an image of the rod-bound axe, the fasces, was printed in brown and silver with the binding ribbons depicted in red. Yes, Ms. Americana was now mask to mask with Fascista (pronounced fash-EEST-uh), the woman whom certain crude types called Wonder Wop.

(The technical term for those crude types is moral imbeciles. Of course, neither Ms. Americana nor any other member of the Jumbo Jugs Justice League condones the use of ethnic slurs, the reason being that the denial of another person's humanity lies at the rotting, reeking core of evil. So, unless you want to find yourself in serious trouble, Bunkie, do not ever let a member of the Heavy Hooters High Command hear you make any snide remarks about the Dynamic Dago. - TdC).

That's right! Fascista! A big-breasted beauty with the strength of a Roman legion, the morals of a Mafia don, and the ability to make trains run on time. Fascista! Who gains her powers from pasta prepared with radioactive olive oil, mutant garlic, and cursed tomato paste. Fascista! Who can knock her opponents flat with devastating performances of Italian opera; who can.... What? The story? Oh, right!

Anyway, Ms. Americana, lying helpless in a cage, found herself looking up at the Italian Blockbuster, who was lovingly stroking her apron. Something about that apron bothered Ms. Americana: she seemed to feel a strange warmth emanating from it.

"Soon, Ms. Americana," Fascista gloated, "soon you will-a kiss-a my apron in-a submission to me."

"Never!" Ms. Americana snarled defiantly.

Fascista chuckled. "We shall-a see," she said.

As Fascista moved away from the cage Ms. Americana became aware of the room's other occupants. An elegantly beautiful black woman was clearly the person in charge, Mambo Misté. She wore a black satin dress with a transparent-white plastic raincoat and an ankle-length full apron made of silk-soft clear plastic on which voodooistic emblems had been printed in a rainbow of colors. Like her male counterpart, the houngan, Mambo Misté moved and spoke slowly, as if in a trance. Her companions, two big, burly black men, were her hounsies, her assistants. And from the fact that they were ignoring her naked body Ms. Americana inferred that they were also zombies, men who had been subjected to a faux death and then revived stripped of their free will (kinda like getting cloth'd and waking up tied up in a cage, she thought). The two men thus served Mambo Misté as her hands would.

Now Mambo Misté unlocked and opened the cage door. "Come," she said. "There is something I want you to do."

"I don't know what your game is," Ms. Americana told her, "but I won't play."

"Bring her," Mambo Misté said to the hounsis.

One of the hounsis stepped into the cage, grabbed Ms. Americana's left arm, and pulled her up off the air mattress. As he pulled her out of the cage the other hounsi grabbed her right arm. Carrying her between them, the hounsis brought her to a strange apparatus spread along one wall of the room.

She saw that she was standing before a knee-high cylinder, perhaps a foot and a half wide, on which lay a deflated toy made primarily of opaque-white plastic. Thumb-thick cables led from the base of the cylinder to the left and merged into the base of an odd little bush made of transparent wood. She noticed her costume and her power belt hanging on the bush.

Mambo Misté stood by the cylinder holding a thick milky-clear rubber belt that was attached to the cylinder through more cables. She fastened the elastic belt around Americana's waist and then the hounsis pushed Ms. Americana down into a kneel before the cylinder.

"I want you to blow up Fascista's new toy," Mambo Misté said. Then in a kind of sing-song utterance she added, "Just do what I tell you; don't say you won't. You'll be glad if you do; you'll be sad if you don't."

Feeling more than a little silly, Ms. Americana took the toy's valve stem in her teeth to hold it, wrapped her lips around it, and blew into it. Slowly the toy filled with air. It was huge and soon Ms. Americana was feeling the effects of hyperventilation. She soon came to understand that she was inflating a large punching bag, an elongated, heavy bottomed balloon that would bounce back upright when knocked over. And as it filled with air it began to rise, like a giant penis coming erect.

"'Atsa some nice-a blow job there, Americanita!" Fascista jeered.

Ms. Americana's face burned with the humiliation, but she kept on blowing. She wanted to stop, but found that she couldn't. Something was compelling her to continue blowing up the bag. Only when she had blown the bag full and firm did that compulsion release her. She sat back on her heels and tilted her head back to ease her breathing as she panted from the exertion.

"Yes, of course," she muttered sarcastically as she saw a life-sized image of herself on the bag.

Now the hounsis pulled her back onto her feet and Mambo Misté removed the rubber belt. The hounsis took her back to the cage and Mambo Misté locked her back into it. Still a little out of breath, she sat down on the air mattress.

"So," Fascista said to her, "are you hot and-a ready to kiss-a my apron yet?"

"No!" Ms. Americana said in an annoyed tone. Something about that apron was bugging her, but she couldn't quite figure it out.

With a sneer on her face, Fascista went to the newly inflated punching bag, slid her hands under its base to pick it up, and carried it to the center of the room. Ms. Americana felt a strange vertigo and took several deep breaths to banish it. Then with a wide-swinging roundhouse punch Fascista walloped the bag. At the same instant Ms. Americana felt a blow to her face that rocked her back onto the air mattress. The punching bag bounced up and Fascista punched it again. Ms. Americana felt another blow to her face. Then Fascista punched the rebounding bag lower down and Ms. Americana felt as if someone had just punched her in the belly.

After watching Ms. Americana writhe on the air mattress for a minute, Mambo Misté said, "Perfect!"

Fascista stopped punching the bag and came to stand by Mambo Misté, looking down on their prisoner. "So the infusion," she said, "she was-a successful!"

"How could you possibly doubt it?!" Mambo Misté said in slow astonishment. To Ms. Americana she said, "You are now permanently connected to your own hoodoo poppet."

"A blow-up voodoo doll," Ms. Americana commented.

"That is the crude term used in the popular imagination," Mambo Misté said, "but we have advanced far beyond sticking pins into dressed-up corncobs. The infusor made the connection while you were inflating the bimballoon and it can never be broken. It will fade whenever Fascista lets the air out of the bag, so you will not be able to trace her movements, but it will come back to full force when she reinflates the bag and she will play with you again. The bag is indestructible, so you will be Fascista's toy ... forever!"

As Mambo Misté had spoken Fascista had arched her back slightly and thrust her hips forward, as if offering her apron to be kissed. Ms. Americana was horrified to notice that the idea was beginning to appeal to her.

"Come," Mambo Misté said to her companions, "it's getting late." To Ms. Americana she added, "Fascista will play with you some more tomorrow."

"Let-a your lips be warm and-a willing!" Fascista added.

Then, preceded by Fascista and the two hounsis, Mambo Misté left, turning out the light before closing the door. The room went completely dark and silent.

Ms. Americana tried to figure out what time it was. It had been about ten when Prince Not-So-Charming had cloth'd her. She likely would not have been out for an hour, especially since she was clearly inside the building that she had been investigating. And the confrontation with her captors hadn't taken long - perhaps half an hour. So it was not yet midnight by her reckoning. Now she simply had to figure out how to untie her hands and get out of the cage.

The rope binding her hands felt like quarter-inch diameter nylon; thick enough that she couldn't simply break it, yet thin enough to curve snugly around her wrists. She couldn't reach the knots, so untying them was out of the question. Then she remembered seeing that the casing containing the cage's lock was square. She got up, turned her back to the front of the cage, and sidled along it to the door. Sure enough, she discovered, the lock casing was indeed square and one corner was sharp. She leaned against the bars and began using that corner to pick at the rope. It might take a few hours, but she was sure that she could cut through her bonds and free herself.

Time passed and she could only guesstimate that she was making progress. Suddenly a faint sound alerted her and she quickly laid herself down on the air mattress and pretended to be asleep.

She heard the door open and through half-opened eyes saw the glow of a small flashlight and a black-clad figure coming into her prison. The intruder went straight to the punching bag and carefully picked it up. Ms. Americana felt a slight vertigo then as the intruder left the room with their prize, pausing only to close the door. Still feeling a little dizzy due to the movements of her hoodoo poppet, she got back up and resumed her effort to cut her bonds. A few minutes later the dizziness went away and she braced herself as best she could to get beaten up again by remote control.

Suddenly she felt a hand press against her back while another one stroked her chest and belly. It actually startled her more than being punched would have. She continued working her bonds on the corner of the lock casing as she puzzled out what was happening. She felt the hand on her belly slide around to her back and then felt a woman's naked body pressed against hers. She quickly understood that the warm pillows that she felt pressed against her chest were breasts every bit as big as hers. With a shock she understood: Fascista was masturbating with her. "I am not a sex toy," she muttered. Then she felt sensuous lips pressed against hers, kissing her passionately as she felt a very stiff clitoris pressed against her right thigh. The arms around her back tightened their embrace as the woman rubbed her clitoris up and down Ms. Americana's thigh through the punching bag and continued kissing her. She nearly lost her balance when she felt her invisible assailant jerk and convulse in climax. Then the woman stopped moving and a moment later the sensation of being touched went away. A brief sensation of a cloth wiped over her right thigh preceded a long period of quiet. Then she felt the dizziness come back. Again she paused in her labor and laid herself down on the air mattress to feign sleep.

Again the door opened and the black-clad intruder came in. She simply replaced the punching bag and left.

Ms. Americana got back up and resumed her attack on her bonds. She figured that she didn't have much time left. She was feeling frustrated; she didn't seem to be making any progress. It seemed to her as if she had been at this task for hours. Then suddenly she felt something break. The pressure on her wrists diminished. She worked the bonds, feeling them loosen until she was able to free her right hand from the rope coil. She removed the rope from her left wrist, dropped it onto the floor, and faced the next step in her plan.

The cage was a simple structure: merely vertical bars attached to its floor and its ceiling. There were no horizontal spacers on the bars to prevent them from being bent. Ordinarily that would be sufficient, but Ms. Americana does not fit "ordinarily". She gripped one bar in both hands about midway between the floor and the ceiling. Then she lifted herself into a horizontal position, placed her feet on the bar next to the one in her hands, and strove to straighten up. At first there was no movement. Ms. Americana applied all the strength she could muster and slowly, painfully the bars began to deform. She kept pulling with her hands and pushing with her feet until the bars stopped moving. She was exhausted and could only hope for the best.

She let herself down, paused a moment to catch her breath, keeping one hand on the bar she had held lest she lose track of it in the dark. Then she tried putting her head through the gap that she had widened. It just barely fit, but that's all she needed. She had to contort herself to get her shoulders, hips, and thighs through the gap, but she was free.

Her best move would be to find the light switch and turn on the lights, so she used the cage to orient herself, lined herself up facing toward where she guessed the door would be, and slowly walked forward, holding her hands before her. Halfway to her goal she brushed against the punching bag and had to wait a moment for the vertigo to fade out. A few moments later she touched the wall, found the door, then found the switch and turned on the lights.

She was in bad shape. Muscles were starting to cramp and she was trembling all over. She didn't want to be found lying helpless on the floor as her body strove to heal itself, so she went to the weird transparent bush, ignoring the pain in her arms, legs, and back as best she could. Spasms were jerking her, threatening to take her down, but intense desire overcame weakness and she grabbed her power belt off the bush. Powerful cramps finally drove her down onto the floor and her arms quivered and twitched, but she managed to fasten the belt around her waist.

Abruptly the cramps and spasms went away. From some unknown, perhaps unknowable, source strength gushed into her. In less than ten seconds she was revved back up to full superpower. She looked around for something she thought that she had seen earlier. There! On what looked like a workbench on the opposite side of the infusor from the transparent bush lay a thin tube with a flange around the middle.

She took the tube to her hoodoo poppet, slipped it into the valve, and pushed it in. Air blew out of the bag and the bag began to go limp. Ms. Americana took a moment to go to the bush, retrieve the rest of her action costume, and put it on. Then she went back to the collapsing bag, shook it, and was gratified to feel no vertigo. Leaving the bag to finish deflating, she went to the door and turned out the light. She would come and retrieve the bag later.

After waiting a few seconds to let her eyes adjust to the dark, she opened the door and stepped into a stairwell filled with dim, early-morning light coming from frosted windows up near the ceiling. As she climbed the stairs she heard sounds of a commotion in the house. She prepared herself for action, jerked open the door, and ... found the police raiding the place.

She quickly found Sergeant O'Connor. "There's an Italian woman you need to find," she told him. "But tell your men to be careful. She's dangerous."

O'Connor spoke into his two-way and waited. A moment later he told Ms. Americana that no one had seen an Italian woman on the premises.

That didn't feel right and the Queen of Justice felt perplexed. She was certain that Fascista was still in the house. That certainty was based on the fact that women who manifest the aphrodite mutation seem to have a subtle connection to each other. Some call it telepathy; Einstein called it spooky actions at a distance; the members of the Swollen Sweater-Sweets Swat-team called it good fortune. True, it all too often brought them together only to get cloth'd en masse, but it also enabled them to rescue one another more often than not.

Now Ms. Americana went into a Zen-like trance and climbed the stairs to the building's second floor. The stairs came out where two corridors met in a tee-intersection. Ms. Americana strode down one corridor, then retraced her steps and went down the other corridor. She passed a room and then went back to it. The doorknob wouldn't turn.

"They've sent someone to get the key," the officer guarding the corridor said.

Ms. Americana thanked him and then in a blur of motion that no human eye could follow slammed the heel of her right hand against the door just above the doorknob. With a bang and the crack of splintering wood, the door opened for her. She strode boldly into the room ready for the trouble she was sure lurked inside.

There was no one in the room and the window was open. After a quick glance around the tiny room Ms. Americana looked out the window in all directions and saw no sign of Fascista. But she couldn't shake the feeling that Fascista was in the room with her. The phone-booth-sized closet held only clothing, so there was only one other hiding place available. Ms. Americana looked under the bed, but found only a large suitcase. She pulled it out, set it on the bed, and opened it.

Inside the suitcase she found Fascista's red-white-and-green "spumoni suit" costume, her plastic apron, and.... Yes, of course, she thought. "How could you possibly doubt it?!" Mambo Misté had said. Remembering that comment led Ms. Americana to understand why she still faintly felt Fascista's presence in the room. Mambo Misté had needed to make certain that the infusor would work on a woman manifesting the aphrodite mutation, so she had tested it on the only available subject.

Ms. Americana closed the suitcase, tucked it under her arm, and went back downstairs. She paused only to talk briefly with Sergeant O'Connor, then she went to the basement, turned on the lights, and closed the door. She set the suitcase next to her now-deflated punching bag, opened it, and set aside Fascista's costume and apron.

From the suitcase she took the deflated punching bag bearing the image of Fascista. She went to a clear spot on the floor, sat down cross legged, and set the punching bag's base in her lap. With her full powers restored she didn't have to worry about hyperventilation, so she inflated the bag as quickly as she could. When she had it blown full and bouncy she looked up at it and saw the image of Fascista seeming to leer at her and to offer her apron to be kissed. Something about that apron was still bugging her, but the solution of that little puzzle would have to wait. Taking the bag between her hands like a beach ball, she tilted it rapidly to and fro and from side to side, giggling as she did so. Then she set the bag on the floor in front of her.

She got to her feet and gave the bag a brisk punch. The bag rebounded from her fist as lightly as a beach ball and tipped over backward almost to the floor. When it bounced back up she punched it again. And she kept on punching it. The only sounds in the room were her little grunts and the rubbery thumps of her fists striking skin-soft, inflated-taut plastic. The sensations of her G-cup breasts bouncing and the sight of the punching bag bobbing back up at her like a giant penis coming erect filled her with a simmering sexual warmth. She would not come fully aroused, of course: she had something more important to do. For fifteen minutes she punched Fascista. Half an hour. She wasn't even breaking out in a sweat. She could have gone for hours. As it was, less than an hour had elapsed when she heard a sharp rapping on the door.

She went to the door and opened it just as Sergeant O'Connor raised his baton to rap again.

"We got her," he said as he slipped the baton into its loop on his gunbelt. "It was just like you said: she was reelin' like a drunk. Funny thing, though," he added as a puzzled look crossed his face. "The arresting officers said it didn't look so much like she was drunk as it looked like she was gettin' beat up by invisible thugs."

"That sounds about right," Ms. Americana said. Then to his quizzical expression she said, "Guilty conscience," and flashed a quick grin.

"Right," O'Connor said. "Yeah, we talk about people beatin' up on themselves. I guess you superwomen do a more effective job of it." He turned and went back up the stairs.

Alone in the basement Ms. Americana deflated the Fascista punching bag and the air mattress in the cage and packed them into the suitcase with her own punching bag and Fascista's costume and apron. Then she disassembled the infusor. She would arrange for it and any documentation pertaining to it to be shipped to the laboratory of one of the defense contractors her alter ego owned: the workers there would discover how it worked and try to develop countermeasures. Her work done, she picked up the suitcase containing her prizes and left.

-o-

That evening Brenda Wade, still wearing her shower cap, came out of her bathroom tying her bathrobe around her. Coming into her bedroom she gazed on the red air mattress standing re-inflated against the wall. She thought that it would feel especially good to lie on it when she masturbated, but not tonight. She had put Fascista's costume and both of the deflated punching bags on a shelf in the hidden walk-in closet where she kept her Ms. Americana gear, so she wouldn't be doing anything with them tonight. She sat down on her bed and contemplated the gray plastic packet next to her.

She picked the packet up, unfolded it, and shook it out. Holding it up before her, she examined the image of the fasces printed on the plastic, but didn't discern any clues in it. What was it about the apron that bugged her? Fascista had demanded that she kiss it and now she found that she did want to kiss it; it seemed to be stimulating sexual arousal in her. And then she understood.

With very few exceptions, those special women known as aphrodites cannot of themselves activate their full potentials. Some or all of their powers remain dormant until a key unlocks them and allows them to open out. Each superwoman had a unique key: Ms. Americana had her power belt, Got Gal had her enchanted emerald, and Fascista had ... her plastic apron. It was the apron that unlocked Fascista's powers when she wore it. But in any other aphrodite who touched it or came near enough to it, it unlocked lust. Brenda felt her heart beating faster as she understood that the apron was seducing her.

Dropping the apron on the bed, she got up, went to her bathroom to get a hand towel, and then laid the towel next to her pillow. She stripped off her bathrobe and laid herself down on the bed, lying on her back. Then she lifted her buttocks off the bed, slid the apron under them, then laid her buttocks down on the apron. She reached between her legs, gathered in the apron's plastic, and pulled it up over her belly. She played with the inch-wide ties, pulling them up over her chest and rubbing them over her breasts. Her nipples swelled up to their full half inch and hardened. Her clitoris swelled and slid forward in its sheath.

Her breath came in quavery gasps as she waited for the tip of her clitoris to emerge at the top of her vulva. She was trembling all over when it did and she put her right hand into her crotch and began rubbing the apron's plastic over it. Her grunts were coming out as tremulous squeals now. She didn't have long to wait. Up and down she rubbed the plastic over her clitoris and her labia, pumping up the hot pressure inside her. And then she climaxed, with hard spasms that shuddered her whole body. When it was over and she lay in the soft afterglow of her passion, she acknowledged to herself that she had at last kissed Fascista's apron, though not with the particular set of lips that Fascista had intended.

Later that night she lay awake, unable to sleep. There was one more thing that she wanted to try, but she felt intensely self-conscious about doing it. Finally, figuring that she wasn't going to get any sleep until she did the deed, she got out of bed, went to her secret closet, and brought out her specially personalized punching bag. She set it on her bed, knelt before it, and, trembling with anxiety as much as with anticipation, blew it up.

When she picked it up to set it on the floor, she felt strong, gentle hands on her hips and a slight sense of vertigo. She faced the bag in the semi-darkness, put her left arm around it and put her right hand on its front. She felt a ghostly arm press against her back and a hand fondle her left breast. She stepped closer to the bag, pulled it against her naked body, and ran her right hand over the plastic. She felt a soft, warm body press against her while a hand explored her. She slid her right hand around the bag and embraced it fully and then, heart beating wildly, she kissed it. She made little pouting motions with her lips and felt lips press rhythmically against hers. This was perfect and she was hot.

She threw back the covers on her bed and slowly, bracing herself against the vertigo, lifted the bag onto the bed, tipped it over, and pulled the blankets over it to hold it down. Then she went to the opposite side of the bed and slid herself under the covers. She knew that she couldn't mount the bag - it was too fat - but she piled up pillows to raise her head and torso level with the image facing her in the dark. Lying on those, she embraced the bag, resumed kissing it, and spent the night making love to herself.

As Caryn went about her duties she felt a guilty thrill over what she wanted to do. She knew that it would not be the same, that she would not get the sensations that Brenda Wade had enjoyed. But someday she wanted to make love to herself by masturbating on Sondipu's punching bag.

***

She was in the library finishing her translation of her third book when she heard soft footfalls behind her. She started to get up, then leaped out of her chair when Sondipu, wearing only her shower cap and a thick towel wrapped around her waist, yelled, "You are a stupid, uncivilized animal!" Without another word she turned and stormed out of the library as Caryn hurried to follow her up the stairs, through her bedroom, and into her bathroom, where she stood by the open shower and pointed to the soap holder. "Do you expect me to clean myself properly with that!?" she asked, referring to a bar of soap that had been worn to a quarter-inch thickness.

Caryn broke and ran, leaping down the stairs, and cursing the slowly opening panel on the utility room. Grabbing a fresh bar of soap, she ran back up the stairs, to the bedroom, and into the bathroom to hand the soap to Sondipu. Even in Kunav's softer gravity the run up the stairs left her panting. Sondipu put the soap into the holder and then jabbed a finger against Caryn's chest and pushed her into the bedroom.

Leaving Caryn standing in the middle of the room, Sondipu gave her the punching bag and ordered her to hold it against herself. Then she began punching it, bouncing back and lunging forward to slam her fist into the soft inflated plastic. Several times she sank her fist so deep into the bag that it punched lightly into Caryn's belly. Unable to return Sondipu's angry gaze, Caryn stared down at her bare chest, dazedly watching Sondipu's round grapefruit-sized breasts jiggle. Trying to distract herself from facing Sondipu's anger, she became suddenly aware of the prominent nipples and aureoles on Sondipu's breasts - they were shiny translucent gray - and, in spite of the hot passion with which Sondipu attacked the punching bag, Caryn shivered. Sondipu spent only a few minutes punching the bag before she walked away without a word to Caryn and went back into the bathroom.

Wrapping both arms around the punching bag and resting her cheek against it, Caryn leaned on it and trembled, her breath coming in quavering half sobs. Shaken by Sondipu's display of anger, she hugged the punching bag, swaying slightly from side to side, and lost track of time. She was still there when Sondipu came out in her bathrobe and demanded to know what she was waiting for.

"Uh ... I thought it might please you to punch me some more," Caryn stammered.

"Nonsense," Sondipu replied. "Go back to what you were doing."

Caryn acknowledged the command and left, closing the bedroom door behind her. As she glanced back to close the door she saw Sondipu embracing the punching bag, presumably to move it, though Caryn got the vague impression that Sondipu had opened her bathrobe before touching the plastic toy.

Some months later everything changed.

It started the day after Aynurpompen returned for his first visit in the half year since he had first brought Caryn to Sondipu. Caryn got up extra early to prepare breakfast. She went quietly up the stairs to find out if Sondipu and Aynurpompen were awake yet and noticed Aynurpompen's door ajar. She started to go into the room, but was brought up short by what she saw: Sondipu was lying naked upon the "hobbyhorse", her head resting on its neck and her arms wrapped around it, and Aynurpompen was sprawled across her back pronging her doggie style. As quietly as she could manage, Caryn backed out of the room and went down to the kitchen to make breakfast. She felt deep relief when nothing was even hinted about her unintended intrusion.

Aynurpompen left after a few days and Caryn thought that she could look forward to a return to normalcy. But the day after he left Sondipu came home early radiating a glow of sublime happiness and told Caryn to gain twenty pounds. When Caryn stammered that it would make her look fat, Sondipu said, "Things are going to change soon. I want you to be ready." Taking Sondipu's remarks to refer to a change in the weather, Caryn dutifully fattened herself up. It was two weeks before she found out what Sondipu really meant.

She was in the library slowly making her way through a comprehensive history of Kunav, struggling to understand all the nuances of literary Gilliwhump, when Sondipu came in wearing her shower cap and a thick towel wrapped around her. At first Caryn thought that she might be sick: she seemed ill at ease and her voice trembled as she said, "Go to your room, take off all of your clothes, and then bring your shower cap to my bathroom." Caryn wondered what was going on as she hurried to comply.

Sondipu was leaning against the frame of the door to her bathroom when Caryn arrived, self-consciously holding her shower cap over her chest. Ordered to bathe herself, Caryn put on her shower cap, went into Sondipu's shower, and soaped and rinsed herself as fast as her hands could move. She dried herself with the towel that Sondipu offered her and started to take off her shower cap, but Sondipu stopped her and used the towel to dab water drops off the plastic.

Following Sondipu, Caryn came into the bedroom and felt her heart start to beat faster and harder when she saw that the covers on one side of Sondipu's bed had been flipped over to the other side to expose the satiny sheet. She was shaking and her whole body felt weak as she obeyed Sondipu's instructions to lie down on the bed and spread her legs. Sondipu seemed to loom over her like a giant ice carving as she stood at the foot of the bed and stared down at Caryn.

"What I am going to do will not harm you in any way," Sondipu said in a tremulous voice. She loosened her towel, dropped it, and crawled onto the bed between Caryn's legs.

Caryn was horrified to see a thick, nine-inch-long tube of shiny translucent-gray flesh jutting up from Sondipu's groin. It was still lengthening and stiffening as a thick bulge bobbed slowly up and down at its base. Its tip ended in three stubby tentacles that were clasping together and flinging themselves apart like the blossoming of some obscene flower. A thick yellowish slime was beginning to ooze between the tentacles as Sondipu tenderly stroked the bulge.

"I'm going to put my egg inside you," she said. "It will take from you only warmth and it will hatch so gently that you will feel no pain. Do you understand?"

Caryn's voice quavered so badly that she needed three tries to say, "Yes."

Sondipu leaned over Caryn, supporting herself with one hand on the bed and using her free hand to guide her ovipositor, its tentacles clasped into a slimy point, into Caryn's vagina. Caryn felt the ovipositor slide deep into her as Sondipu came down on her and, braced for an icy shock, she gasped in astonishment at how soft and warm Sondipu was. Seemingly in spite of herself she felt herself rise toward a sexual climax as Sondipu's ovipositor throbbed and squirmed inside her. Suddenly she became aware of the soft, smooth plastic of Sondipu's shower cap warmly caressing her cheek and she felt climax send wavelets of warm thrill rippling through her body.

She lay panting under Sondipu and thought of all the efforts she had put into arousing, heating, and satisfying her lust. She remembered: standing naked in her bathroom and masturbating with one of her aprons, luxuriating in the sensation of the soft, smooth plastic warming instantly at her touch; diligently searching Sondipu's bedroom as she cleaned, searching unsuccessfully for the inflatable man that she "knew" had to be there; several times sneaking Aynurpompen's transparent-green plastic raincoat down to her room, wrapping it around two pillows, and lying naked on it to masturbate; the one time she had half-lain, half-leaned her naked body on Sondipu's punching bag, masturbated by sliding her vulva on the slick, sweaty plastic, and wondered if she had discovered a new high in narcissism. By the time Sondipu had planted her egg deep in Caryn's womb Caryn had gone through two more shuddery, warm climaxes.

Sondipu lay on Caryn and rested for about fifteen minutes, then she pulled a napkin from under her pillow, raised herself up, and pulled her now-limp ovipositor out of Caryn, wiping it on the napkin and milking it to squeeze the last few drops of yellow slime from it. Then she folded the napkin and tenderly wiped Caryn's vulva. After going and dropping the napkin in the dirty clothes hamper she came back to the bed, knelt next to it, and leaned over Caryn, stroking her belly and fondling her breasts. "Oh, my pretty toy," she crooned softly.

"What's going to happen now?" Caryn asked.

"Everything will be as normal except that every night until my egg is hatched you will come to my bed. I will want you by me while I sleep. And every night and sometimes in the day I will lay on you and play with you." She kissed Caryn's left breast. "I have wanted you so much."

"I never even suspected," Caryn said. "You kept your desire hidden."

"I had my plastic Caryn to hold and to play with," Sondipu said. "I knew that I would overcome my shyness with you eventually and when I once felt her plastic still warm from your touch I resolved to create this opportunity."

She got up then, retrieved her towel, and wrapped it around her waist, tucking it into itself to hold it up. "Now let's get my lust for you hot again," she said. She went to her closet and took from it what looked like a large pullover sweater and a pair of culottes made of white cashmere. She tossed them to Caryn and told her to put them on. Then, leaving its beehive-shaped raincap on its padded hanger, she took out her transparent-green plastic raincoat and also gave it to Caryn to put on.

Caryn slipped her arms into the sleeves, wrapped the raincoat around her, and allowed the magnetic patches running down its placket to close. She closed the cummerbund around her waist and saw that the raincoat's full skirt hung to her ankles and that its hem rested on her feet. She stood, then, with her hands flat on the fronts of her thighs and saw Sondipu looking her over. Now I'm Princess Sondipu's passive plastic pleasure bag, Caryn thought as her mind got caught up in the fantasy of the pathetic fallacy, and now I'm sure that I know how inflatable toys feel.

"Now you're my plastic Caryn," Sondipu said as she took Caryn in an embrace. She took Caryn's left hand, broke off the embrace, and led Caryn to a love seat facing the window overlooking the city. She sat down with Caryn on her right, put her right arm around Caryn's shoulders, and put her left hand inside her towel to play with her ovipositor.

Caryn felt a quivery warmth fill her body: not the hot flush of humiliation, but a much gentler heat akin to it. It was the sense of being a much-loved toy of an intensely desirable person. As she felt Sondipu gently stroking the body-warmed plastic of her raincoat, she put her arm around Sondipu and used her right hand to begin a delicate exploration of Sondipu's breasts.

"Caryn!" Sondipu said in mild astonishment.

Caryn looked up at her mistress. "I don't want to be merely a passive toy for you," she said. "I want to please you better than any toy."

"You're being stupid," Sondipu said with a sigh.

"Test me. Tell me your fantasies. Tell me what excites your lust. I'll get you so hot you'll never want to get out of bed."

"What makes you think you can do such a thing?"

"You know what my profession was back on Earth. It was my job to give sexual pleasure and I was good at it."

"Why are you offering this to me? This isn't like translating books."

"Yeah, it's more like translating myself," Caryn said. She started to tremble and her voice quavered. "I haven't had much time to think about it, but I'm sure I'm right." She paused for breath.

"About what?"

"About you. You're so perfect and we get along so well. And now I've come to know that I want you. Intensely. I love you, Sondipu, and I want to be your wife."

Shocked to hear her own slave address her by name, Sondipu stuttered, "That's absurd!"

"No, it isn't. You laid on me and got me pregnant. That makes love appropriate."

"You're not pregnant. You're an incubator," Sondipu said as she recovered her composure.

"Makes no difference. We had something like sex together and now I'm carrying your child. That involves a level of trust appropriate to love."

"So what do you want from me?"

"Take all of me," Caryn said. "Let me be your wife. And maybe even tell me that you love me."

Sondipu seemed bewildered. Finally she said, "Yes, I do. I love you so very much, Caryn." She embraced Caryn then, engaged her in a long passionate kiss, and took her to bed.

So how did Caryn escape from this dire predicament? Huh! What makes you think that she did? What makes you think she wanted to?

-o0o0o-

References

Cummings, Caryn D., "The Diaries of Esha: a Daughter's Tribute", 2032, SHC Press, Delta City.

Forme, Claura and Klauthme t'Slieppe, "Lesbian Marriage Among The Kunapri", 2034, SHC Press, Delta City.

X, Mr., "The Villain's Handbook, 10^th Ed.", 2029, SHC Press, Delta City.

X, Mr., "The Secret History of Delta City", 2030, SHC Press, Delta City.

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From Exotic to Erotic

In 1996 Daryl Bem of Cornell University presented an hypothesis concerning the shaping of sexual preferences. He hypothesized that exotic peers, those who evoke in us the anxiety-like symptoms of trembling and rapid heartbeat, may seem offensive at first, but evolve later in life into objects that inspire sexual desire. Typically members of the opposite sex arouse such feelings due to being so different from us, but other factors may also come into play.

OK, suppose Bem is right. Does his hypothesis account for sexual perversions? Can it explain why a rather large number of people feel sexually attracted to plastic raincoats and aprons?

That particular perversion could only exist in people born after 1945: before then plastic film wasn't used widely in rainwear and other items on public sale. Of course, before 1945 we have perversions pertaining to silk, leather, and rubber, fabrics noted for their skin-like smoothness and warmth, so we have a clue in that fact.

Certainly in my childhood (late 1940's through the 1950's) plastic raincoats, shower caps, and aprons, as well as inflatable toys, were rare for me to see and, therefore, exotic. And I remember feeling anxious in the presence of plastic items, but it was an anxiety growing out of the concern that people might discern my special interest in those items and then embarrass me. That fact means that I already had the sexual interest: the anxiety only served, if Bem is correct, to reinforce that feeling.

Let me digress here for a paragraph or so. The Freudians tell us that in our sexual development we go through a latency period, extending from late infancy to the onset of puberty, when our sexual feelings go dormant. Having an abnormal sexual desire enables me to put that claim to the test and I have clear memories from my childhood that call it into question.

I remember a rainy Sunday in 1954 when I was obliged to wear my mother's Stormette™ plastic raincoat to Sunday school to protect my suit from getting wet. I remember being extremely self-conscious about it, anxious that someone might somehow discern my special interest in plastic. Even then, if I let myself go, contact with plastic would make my penis get hard, though I did not yet understand what that fact meant or what I might be able to do about it.

For Christmas 1955 I got an inflatable clown punching bag and I remember taking it into my bed and playing a capture and escape game. I was fully clothed at the time, but nonetheless felt a sexual arousal from the game. Unfortunately, part of the seam where the two sheets of plastic had been welded together to form the bag itself split and I could never inflate the toy again. I didn't get another opportunity to play with a plastic punching bag again until Spring 1967.

Apparently the latency period is not a period of the complete suppression of sexual feelings. The sexual feelings are available, ready to be aroused by the presence of the object of lust. But they don't come up by themselves, as they do so often after puberty.

By spring of 1959 (when I was 13) I was entering puberty and what I remember most clearly about the process was that I began deliberately and frequently devising fantasies about coming into contact with plastic raincoats or toys. I had not yet learned anything about sex as such; I knew that what I was feeling about plastic was somehow related to what men and women did together when they were naked.

Also, in the spring and summer of that year, on a couple of rare occasions when I was in the house alone, I retrieved my mother's raincoat from the closet where she kept it and took it to my bedroom, then I stripped down to my underpants, put on the raincoat, and savored the feel of the plastic on my bare skin as my penis hardened. I still didn't know what to do about my feelings then, but by the late fall of that year I had learned to masturbate to climax.

While I didn't think in the kind of sexual terminology that a Freudian would have needed to express the idea, I nonetheless knew that being near a plastic object of the right kind made my heart beat faster, made me tremble inside, and made my penis get hard. I also knew (and I don't know how I knew) that I would be criticized and ridiculed if anyone found out about this fact. So I had sufficient reason to suppress my urge to act out my sexual desires on things made of plastic.

That fact helped bring my love of plastic into the realm of Bondage and Discipline. That melding involved anxiety in several different ways.

First, we have the phenomenon of displacement. If, in early childhood, one seeks affection from a member of the opposite sex and gets consistently rejected, especially by members of one's own family, then the urge to seek affection will come to arouse anxiety. The desire for the most intimate affection will thus arouse the most intense anxiety. The human unconscious mind has a way of dealing with such anxiety, a way called a defense mechanism, by which it simply changes the object of lust from a person to something associated with that person. I first encountered vinyl film in aprons, shower caps, and women's raincoats, so the plastic acquired an indelible connotation of femininity and thus became the target of my displaced lust. (But I discovered the danger in fetishism some years later when I saw men wearing plastic raincoats and was horrified to feel what I would call a pseudo-homosexual urge).

Second, we have the anxiety of discovery. I knew from the beginning that I had to keep my lust for plastic secret from everybody. I could share that secret with no one, lest I be subjected to ridicule and condemnation. This led to the development of a new anxiety, one that made me feel terribly self-conscious in the presence of plastic. Again my unconscious mind devised a defense mechanism, one called projection. I simply assumed that many other people shared my desires and also kept them secret. Thus I set up the third step in the creation of my perversion.

And third, we come to B&D, using a putative someone else's lust for plastic to mitigate my own guilt over that lust in myself. Guilt comes over us when we believe that we have done something wrong, but we can eliminate it by shifting the blame to circumstances or to another person. I don't have to feel guilty over my lust for plastic raincoats, aprons, and shower caps if someone else compels me to use them in a sexual context. Of course, I couldn't take the actual risk of finding someone who would play such a role for me, but a fantasy does almost as well. And our culture offers patterns that can be adapted for such fantasies. In my case, most of my fantasies evolved from the story of Hansel and Gretel with the witch becoming a younger and prettier woman who turned her captives into plastic dolls that she could keep inflated in her bedroom.

Other cultural factors of the time also contributed to my fantasizing. Certainly my conception of the idea of plastic prisoners was aided and abetted by the imagery of the helpless hero depicted on a plastic punching bag. I had first seen plastic punching bags as early as 1952 and even then conceived them as the epitome of the plastic prisoner. The character stands helpless and submissive while his captor bops him and makes him bounce and wobble. The prisoner does not get hurt or injured, but merely humiliated. Again, because the characters depicted on the bags are typically male, this aspect aroused a pseudo-homosexual urge.

This gives us a fairly good look at what Freud called a neurosis. It is fundamentally a habit that is socially maladaptive, more or less fixed and resistant to modification through learning, and arising from the renunciation of an activity whose exercise would arouse anxiety. Of course, what we have here is only a mild form of the neurosis, which we use to "bleed off" that anxiety of confronting another person romantically.

So was Bem right? If the perversion comes from an effort to avoid arousing anxiety, then how can anxiety attract lust? We might think of anxiety as a dis-incentive, but think of skydiving or other anxiety-provoking activities: the successful completion of the activity transmutes the anxiety into exhilaration. Tension due to anxiety suddenly vanishes and the nervous energy that drove it gets expressed in a positive way. It explains how bridal anxiety enhances sexual excitement (and again many of my fantasies involve the wedding night of a newly plastified bride).

That transmutation stands at the center of Bem's hypothesis. My development of my perversion did not eliminate anxiety from my understanding of sex. It merely replaced the anxiety of rejection (which I could not control) with the anxiety of discovery (which, if I was suitably careful, I could control). Thus Bem's hypothesis seems correct. Sexual anxiety transmuted yields sexual pleasure from some very strange fantasies and objects.

But, finally, sexual anxiety leads in two slightly different directions. In one direction sexual anxiety produces a shyness that leads us into Bondage and Discipline (B&D). In the other direction sexual anxiety produces a hatred that leads into Sadomasochism (S&M). How does that split happen? In my opinion (and it's only an opinion) the B&D-adherent judges sexual anxiety as he does the weather, a natural part of his environment to which he must adapt, whereas the S&M-adherent is vastly more egocentric and thus regards sexual anxiety as the result of the wanton hostility of others to his interests, to which he must respond with appropriate rage. Of course, all of Mr. X's minions have followed the first path and want nothing to do with the second.

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On An Important Matter

Here I want to address an issue that was brought up at the end of August 2009 with the rescue of Jaycee Dugard from a paroled rapist and his wife (May they be raped in Hell forever!) who had kidnaped her in 1991 and imprisoned her in a system of tents and sheds in their back yard in Antioch, California, to serve as a sex slave for 18 years. That rapist (May he be raped in Hell by brutal 400-lb homosexual thugs!) might believe that he was merely living out a fantasy no worse than the ones we enjoy on this website; but Mr. X's minions all know that there is a significant difference between imagining, talking, or writing about something and actually doing it. When we read the comic strip Blondie and see Mr. Dithers sneak up behind dozing Dagwood and kick him in the ass, we laugh: but if we ever saw a real boss actually kick a real employee, we would call the police. Someone who enjoys watching war movies doesn't necessarily want to go to war or want to watch a real one. And, of course, Mr. X's minions do not want to carry out in reality any of the evil, even dastardly, plans that they see on Mr. X's website.

Fantasies are like waking dreams. And, like dreams, they have bizarre aspects that simply defy reality. It's not too hard to figure out why that's the case. Sigmund Freud discovered that the human unconscious mind contains the urges that drive our actions and that many of those urges, if acted on, would lead to bad consequences, from social disapproval to worse. We suppress the anti-social urges when they are stimulated, but, being urges, they don't simply fade away: we need to satisfy them somehow and one way of satisfying them is to act them out in fantasy, especially when we can add in some ritual that enhances the sensation of actually satisfying the urge. Thus, for example, we have the desire to enjoy the schadenfreude of seeing a lazy co-worker getting his butt kicked as one of the factors that made Dagwood Bumstead so popular in the comic strips for nearly eight decades. It is the use of such fantasies to divert our anti-social urges that can free us to develop and express our pro-social urges more fully. Thus we have the strange service offered by our own dear Mr. X with his collection of Bondage and Discipline fantasies designed to divert our anti-social sexual desires and thus leave our pro-social sexual desires free to develop.

We all understand those things, implicitly if not explicitly. We understand that these fantasies are not meant to be acted out in reality, such as by kidnaping an 11-year-old girl and raping her for the next eighteen years. Thus we also know something important about the scumbags (May they suffer the most hideous venereal diseases forever!) who kidnaped and raped Jaycee Dugard: that vile couple (May they never enjoy peace or comfort again!) is a pair of complete moral imbeciles. As such they would never, ever, be accepted into Mr. X's merry band of clothmen, plastifiers, rubberizers, ticklers, and other assorted pseudo-perverts and henchgoons. Our stories are meant for fun and the Antioch asswipe (May he be forced to give blow jobs to syphilitic demons forever!) is just no fun at all.

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