Sarah's Story

Prologue

Ned Fisher laughed loudly as he helped the stumbling 18-year-old girl out of the bar.  His girlfriend Miriam followed them out with a smirk on her face.  They caused some stares as they left; it was illegal for women to drink, and this girl looked like she had been drinking heavily all night.  In reality though, Sarah White would have never have broken the law like that; Ned knew that the drug he had being spiking her soft drinks with all night would make her `drunk', and then leave her comatose.
	Ned and Miriam were awful people, sexual predators and serial murderers of an insatiable appetite.  Miriam worked as a hairdresser at a posh salon in central Grand City.  There she had befriended this 18-year-old school leaver, who she told Ned was a little naive despite having an education.  They hatched the plan.  Miriam was to ask her new friend out for a night to celebrate her new job.  Ned had being spiking every drink he had bought for Sarah or had left unlooked at for a moment, which had been nearly all of them.  The plan from here was to rape the drugged Sarah, do awful things to her young body, and then force her to sign a slavery contract.  Then, they would, quite legally, torture and murder the young girl.
	They half dragged Sarah into the nearest dark alley.  Ned was hard; this girl's lithe body had being intoxicating his mind all night.  He pushed the nearly unconscious Sarah into the wall of the alley.
	"Not yet!" hissed Miriam.
	Nevertheless, Ned proceeded to the strap of Sarah's dress with his pocket knife.  He then slashed the side of her dress and began to grope her breasts through the material.
	At that point, there was the sound of running footsteps.  Ned and Miriam instinctively fled.  Sarah's limp body fell onto the dirty floor.



Loria and Francene stumbled about laughing.  They were underneath the statue of the Emperor in Coronation Park, a shady green space in Grand City.  The Emperor's statue now had `WOMEN RISE AGAINST THE EMPEROR' daubed across it in white paint.  The two girls collapsed against the pedestal of the statue, Loria holding a paint brush and Francene holding the near-empty bottle of spirit.
	The two girls had been friends for a long time.  They had been sent to expensive schools all their lives, only really seeing their parents at holidays.  Having a childhood mostly without control and without excess, they had essentially grown up as spoiled closeted snobbish brats.  They had objected to the most recent round of patriarchal legislation, mainly because the new alcohol laws stopped them having fun.  Without thinking, they had actively sought out an underground women's rights group, who only smelled money when the two blonde school leavers contacted them.  The two girls had been persuaded that they would need to graffiti as an act of initiation.  A bottle later for courage, and here they were.
	The two girls were very drunk now.  They dumped their stuff at the statue and stumbled away.  At the entrance to the park, they passed a newsstand with fresh copies of The Grand City Chronicle.  The state-funded paper was free to all, so Loria picked up a copy on the way past.  On the front page, there was a story about two members of another underground group who had been caught attempting to write disloyal graffiti on the walls of Justice Palace of all places.  Inside, there were pictures of the two rebels being burned at the stake for the heresies they uttered in court.
	Loria and Francene looked at each other in panic.  The seriousness of their crime was hitting them, and they were starting to sober up.  They flicked further through the paper, instinctively looking for page 10, where all public punishments were listed.  Their hearts skipped a beat when they saw pictures of a Lucilla Bache being flogged in Justice Square for drinking alcohol.
	"Shit!" exclaimed Francene.  "What do we do now?"
	"Run."
	The two girls ran into the nearest dark alley, where the promptly tripped over the prostrate body of an unconscious Sarah.  The two girls looked at each other as the same plan hit them at the same time.
	They struggled to lift Sarah's body across the road and into the park.  Once in the park they decided to drag Sarah across the grass by her arms.  Sarah's dress tore in several place but they didn't care.  Once at the statue, they sat Sarah up against the base.  Into one hand was put the paint brush and into the other the spirit bottle.  The two girls stood back.
	"Do you think this is right?" whispered Francene.
	"What choice do we have?" said Loria.  "This girl had clearly been drinking, and we found her unconscious in an alley; she must be a nobody who no one is going to miss."
	"Okay."
	"What time is it?"
	"Nearly four."
	"Right, we'll walk to the police station and report this crime."
