This is a story. It never happened and never will. The General Disclaimer is incorporated herein by reference.

BR&T date: Thursday, 7 March 1996

Little Nicole sat in the van, head down, hands folded, trembling slightly. She knew she was on the way back to a stage she'd shared with the rest of her Brownie troop a little over a week earlier. She kept her crying as quiet as she could, letting only an occasional soft whimper escape, as she sat between Principal Winters and Sheriff Glasscock, buckled in by a seatbelt supposedly to keep her from being hurt. Her poor bottom silently but insistently reminded her that she had already been hurt, by those very men, just before they'd buckled her in. She expected them to hurt her even more, unless she did everything they demanded of her. She wasn't sure what that might be, but from what she knew of them, she felt sure she wouldn't like it.

She knew she had been in that van before, too, at least once. She had spent one horrible... no, one terrifying hour on stage with the eight other Brownies of her troop (though no one could tell they were Brownies by sight, since all of them were out of uniform), then she had been released. When her hope had evaporated down to the last persistent drop, some men had unexpectedly and unexplainably come and released her - and only her - and taken her off the stage. She thanked them and thanked them, but no one answered her. For some reason that they never did tell her, they were all very irritable about releasing her, and certainly weren't doing it willingly or graciously, let alone out of mercy.

In the time she had been there with them, though, a couple other Brownies of her troop had sobbed out the story of what the horrible horrible men had done to them the day before, and what they said they were planning to do to them all.

Little Nicole didn't know if the men had actually done that, but she had no reason to doubt it. She couldn't ask the other girls if the men had done what they said, since she hadn't seen any of them again, not even her classmate, Georgia. They all just disappeared. Everyone told little Nicole she was the sole survivor of the accident by the river, and no one believed anything she said about the other Brownies or the stage or the principal or any of it. They all said she was delirious, or delusional, whatever that meant, or they punished her for lying and told her not to say anything about it again. So she hadn't.

But she knew what had happened to them and to her. She knew it was real. This very van had taken her away from that terrifying fate. Now... it took her back.

That time, she'd been on the stage with eight other girls. This time, she'd just been told, she would be on the stage in a solo performance for some special visitors. She wasn't sure exactly what they meant by that. She desperately hoped they wouldn't do to her what she'd heard from the other Brownies they were going to do to them... what they did do to them all, as far as she knew, and would have done to her, too, if she hadn't been released in time.

The van rushed down the road. Little Nicole, trembling fearfully, sat very still, silently miserable, suppressing all but a single sob. She despaired, knowing how unstoppably nasty they were. Whatever the men wanted to do to her, she knew, she'd have to be their little toy, just meekly let them do it. She couldn't stop them, and any resistance would just get her spanked again. She dreaded another spanking greatly. She couldn't fight them. Nothing she did could deter them either; she would have to let them do it, and try to be a docile little puppet for them to play with. Whatever the men wanted to do to her, no matter how cruel, was inevitable, she knew, feeling hopeless. She sobbed once, then stifled it. Suffering soundlessly, frozen in place except for her frightened shivers, Little Nicole endured the rest of the trip in the speeding van.