Welcome and enjoy your stay!
Denise sat on the carpet in the lounge of her empty flat and felt the warmth of the sunlight coming in through the open drapes of her large front window. Nothing that hadn’t been in the flat when she’d moved in a year ago remained in any of the rooms or cupboards. Her life, the physical part of it at any rate, was gone; given away, sold or simply thrown out. Aside from what she wore, even her clothes were gone. She’d closed her bank accounts and settled all the bills she could manage with what money she had. It hadn’t been enough, of course, but the unpaid debt would soon be as irrelevant as Denise literally not having a penny to her name.
One the carpet in front of Denise lay what few documents she had that proved her to be who she was; passport, driver’s license and the like, as well as the keys to the flat. She sat there and looked at them and felt a curious lack of emotion about letting them go, about letting herself go. Yes, there was fear in her, hard and cold and undeniable, but it was a fear of what was to come, not of what was being left behind, and Denise had chosen the fear of the unknown over the soulless existence of the life she’d led.
At 11am the unlocked door to her flat opened and Denise sat, still and silent, as the man in a long, black coat came in, gave her the briefest of nods, and then checked the place over. He was thorough and deliberate but still, it didn’t take long. Satisfied, he made a call on his phone.
‘Everything’s ready here. Come on up.’
A few minutes later, the door opened again and two men dressed in dark blue coveralls came in, one carrying a black canvas bag over his shoulder and the other pushing a heavy duty hand trolley. Strapped to the trolley was a crate big enough to hold an average sized fridge/freezer though judging by the ease with which he moved it around, Denise guessed it was empty.
‘Not for long, though,’ she muttered, a look of unease spreading on her face at the thought. She bit her fear down and resolved to see this through.
‘Sorry?’ said the man in the coat.
Denise shook her head. ‘Nothing, sorry. Just thinking aloud,’ she said.
The man nodded and squatted down on his haunches before her. He scooped up the small pile of documents, leaving the keys, looked briefly at each in turn and then looked at Denise.
‘Denise, this is the point of no return. Throughout this process, you have always had a choice of taking another step forward or turning round and going back. This, right now, is the last time you will have that choice. Once I put these in my pocket, these two men will take you out of your life and put you into another, and they will do it regardless of if you fight or scream. And once that happens, there’s no going back, regardless of if you find your new life is to your liking or not. Do you understand?’
Denise smiled at him and nodded. ‘Yes, sir, I understand.’
He breathed in, seeming to weigh her somehow, and then scooped up her keys and stood, pushing her documents into the inside pocket of his coat. He walked to the far side of the room and watched the two men prepare Denise for her journey.
They treated her with utter indifference, which Denise rather enjoyed. She was an attractive girl but had never taken pleasure in the fact because no matter what she did, almost everyone, men especially but some women too, looked at her the way someone starving might look at a steak. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy the attention; it was that the attention was so pointless and trivial. There was no substance behind it, no purpose beyond simple desire and blind lust. They didn’t want to fuck her, they wanted to fuck her body and she despised both them and her equally as a result.
And now here she was, standing between two men who were undressing her with a detached efficiency she found more validating than a hundred longing looks. Even the man in the coat paid her no attention, instead talking in a low, confidential voice into his phone when he wasn’t swiping and typing on the screen.
Once naked, the canvas bag was opened and a variety of things were laid out side by side. The two men worked almost silently and Denise wondered how many times they’d done this. One of them held up something that reminded Denise of a potato gun she’d had as a child. It had a plastic and steel body and, when squeezed, Denise saw with something like terror that a heavy gauge needle pushed out of the end. Before she could react, the other man had pulled her hard against his body, holding her as the other crouched down by her side. She felt the cold metal barrel push hard into her hip and then there was a sharp pain as she was injected with something. With that done, Denise was released and the gun put away. She rubbed her side with a frown on her face, wondering what had just happened.
Next the men opened out a latex bodysuit, dusted both it and Denise with a light rub of an odorless powder and then fitted her into it, rolling it up legs and arms, tugging and adjusting where needed until it was zipped closed up the back. The suit was tight and left only her head exposed, but it didn’t restrict Denise from moving.
One of the men knelt and pushed her latex clad feet into heavy high feels that encased the whole foot and ankle. When she was allowed to stand upright again, Denise almost toppled, the boots forcing her feet to adopt a position she was utterly unused to. She felt absurd, laughable really, swaying like a new born deer and one of the men reached out a hand to steady her.
The other man fastened wide, supple leather belts of a deep, rich brown around Denise’s ankles and thighs and then wrapped a posture collar around her neck that held her head in an unnatural, if noble, position.
A cincher was wrapped around her waist and laced tight enough to cause Denise to feel her breathing restricted a little and the cincher came with two cuffs mounted either side that secured her arms to her sides with.
Which left her immobile and, for the first time, Denise felt an edge of panic creep into her senses. The men lowered her to lie on the floor and then brought the crate over alongside her. One of the men lifted her up to watch as the other used a cordless screwdriver to get the lid off. As he did so, she saw what looked like vents on the sides and front.
Inside was filled with a single block of foam and the top half was lifted out with a rustling, hissing sound. Denise saw with increasing panic that the block of foam was hollow, the two halves forming a cavity that was, of course, person sized.
‘I can’t – No, really, I can’t. I’m claustrophobic. Really, I am. Ask Adam. Please, call him. This is wrong. Please,’ she said frantically but none of the three men there even seemed to hear her. And that was when the man who’d undid the crate pulled a hood from the bag.
By the time they’d zipped it up the back of her head, Denise was openly crying. There were no eye-holes and no ear holes but it wouldn’t have made any difference. Moist pads were taped over her closed eyes and plugs pushed deep into her ears even before the latex went on. All that was left uncovered was her mouth and there were also two nostril holes.
After the hood, a breathing mask was secured around her face and a wide rubber mouthpiece pushed home. Two thin tubes were fastened into her nostrils, held in place by the latex hood. In darkness, her hearing reduced to little more than distant, muffled nonsense, Denise was lowered into the box and, though robbed of much of her sense, was still all too aware of the top half being fitted over her. She understood the vents on the outside of the box now, guessing the breathing tubes connected to them as she found she could breathe easily. The air smelt bland and sterile and she wondered in a disconnected way of it passed through some filter on the way to her lungs, maybe in the vents.
So she couldn’t move, speak, hear or smell and her mouth was full of the chemical taste of the rubber. It was hell for Denise.
She felt herself lifted and moved, had a sensation of travel, felt herself going down, which she guessed was from the building’s lift, and then of being laid down and slid. There was a rumbling vibration and then the vehicle she was now in drove her away.
The man in the coat made another phone call, left Denise’s keys on the kitchen counter as per the real estate agent’s instructions, and pulled the door closed after him. By the time he got downstairs, the van carrying Denise was turning into traffic. He stopped, turned and took one more look around the outside of the building. No CCTV cameras, no-one in the mostly empty car-park and no-one watching from one of the flats that overlooked Denise’s flat. Satisfied, he walked to his car, got in and drove away.
And the webcam that for the last three months had been recording the view through Denise’s front window from one of those overlooking flats went unnoticed.
The van drove for three hours, though several lifetimes seem to have passed for Denise before it came to a stop. More muffled nonsense, more movement and then nothing. More time passed, more lifetimes, and in her cocoon, having stopped hyperventilating and crying, Denise just existed. She moved as much as she could, but after a while she wasn’t even sure she trusted that she’d actually done so. All Denise really knew with certainty was she was alive, the bass thud of her heart and the slightly strained rasp of her breathing filling her consciousness and confirming the fact.
There was a thump and she was moving again. The crate bounced and jolted a little and then she was lifted and there was another thump. A muted rattle, more light thumps, more movement and then she stopped again. Her world went silent until another rumble told Denise she was in another vehicle and her journey continued.
This was an even longer trip and Denise thought she might have fallen asleep at some point. But then there were more jolts and thuds, more movement, more unknown sounds and then another engine and more travel.
The van turned off the road and up to a pair high, intricate, wrought iron gates. A camera mounted high on one the tall, thick stone gateposts watched impassively as the driver reached out to press an intercom mounted on an angled steel post. Words were exchanged and a short pause followed then a buzz sounded and the gates swung silently apart. The van drove on, following the smooth tarmac road for a short distance, screened by high trees until it emerged in sight of a very stately looking home. Here the road split, continuing to the front of the house proper or heading off to the service buildings. The van took the turning drove through a large archway into a courtyard.
It stopped, reversed up to the high double doors of a large, long stone building that had been turned into a stable, and stopped. The driver got out as a man from inside the building pushed the doors open and then they began lifting the crates out one by one. In all, the van held six and the men stood them up against the walls inside the double doors alongside the ones that had been delivered earlier. A wide aisle stretched off left and right lined both sides with stalls, several of which held horses, their heads out over the stall door.
Empty, the van drove off and the man closed the doors to the old stable block. Later, he and his assistants would unpack the girls and get them settled ready for the weekend, but for now he was hungry. He wondered absently what the kitchens might have got in ready for the coming auction.