She usually, mistakenly, chose a man as a failed escape route, ending up broken and beaten and crawling back on her knees in the end. Women like her… like me, Middy thought… we spend our lives on our knees in front of men.

There had never been anything better for her mother. Why would she think there would be anything better for her? Middy sighed, pulling a blade of grass and splitting it up the middle with a long, red fingernail. Using her mouth, she whistled a tone through her grass harp, as if she could call something new, something different, something other than an endless parade of cocks and cum and cash.

So when the light appeared above her, as suddenly as a spotlight turned on a startled doe, she froze in surprise and fear, but there was an element of expectation, too. Where have you been? I’ve been waiting so long! There was no time to run, to scream, or even to grab her shoes discarded next to her in the long grass. One moment she was staring up, wide-eyed, into the light, and the next, she was strapped, each limb restrained, to a cold metal table.

“Haven’t you ever heard of sheets?” Middy shivered, her nipples so hard they hurt. Maybe that was the reason they kept it so cold, she mused, feeling goosebumps rising on her exposed flesh. Her clothes, such as they had been, were gone, and the hooded figures moved around her, not touching, but she knew they were looking, curious, at her body.

“Nice masks,” she murmured, blinking at the brightness. More lights above her, so bright they left spots behind her eyelids when she closed them. “You guys do Halloween?”

She felt as if she were floating. Drugged, she decided. Is that why I feel so calm?

She should be panicked, struggling, begging. Instead, she was her usual sarcastic self.

Although it occurred to her that her smart mouth might get her more than a smack across it up here. Up here. She shivered again, this time not from the cold, and wondered where they were, exactly. Home wasn’t necessarily where her heart was…but at least it was familiar.