Rachel groaned as the guards lined up behind her. To welcome, in their own way, the new girl.

She choked down a scream, gritting her teeth, when the first guard entered her -- her vagina, at least, not her rectum, but in the absence of lubrication, it hurt equally badly. Nothing, it seemed, remained of the baby oil with which she had coated her vaginal walls half a day earlier. Luckily, the slimy semen he left behind did reduce the friction for those taking their turns after.

Surprising her, the third guard, rather than taking her immediately, reached under her into her cell and brought forth that metal ring, of the type she had seen used last night. After securing it behind her teeth to hold her mouth open, he'd climbed up onto the roof of the cell, spread out his already-pantsless legs in front of her, used his hands on either side of her head to direct it and pulled her open mouth down on his hardening erection. While he lifted her head up and down, the next guard took his place behind her, slamming her hips against the edge of the cell roof while her head continued to be forcibly bobbed up and down. She almost gagged each time the penis in her mouth made its deepest penetration. Shortly after the guard behind her finished with a triumphant grunt, she felt the hot, sticky ejaculate of the one in front splash onto the roof of her mouth. As he disengaged, the fifth guard was already taking his position behind her -- and penetrating her anus, the only one of the six to use that already-sore opening.

Boris went last -- vagina -- and after he finished, he patted her butt and laughed. "You like dis room now better dan one wit' Alina?"

Rachel was almost numb, just vaguely aware of her surroundings as Boris opened the padlocks holding her outstretched arms at last, and the ones at her ankles, unbuckled and removed the ring gag, and re-established the normal configuration of her chains. Rachel hadn't been able to swallow while gagged, and did so now in disgust, afraid spitting the ejaculate out would anger the guard who had used her mouth.

Boris shooed Rachel into her cell and locked it, afterwards letting the pixie girl, waiting patiently all this time, into her own.

Lying alone in the safety, such as it was, of her cell, at last the feelings of helplessness and violation crashed like waves against Rachel's mind, and she sobbed, her shoulders heaving, her head pounding.

The guards, satisfied with the evening's entertainment, departed in camaraderie and laughter, leaving the dogs behind as they had the night before.

Rachel continued crying as the dogs made a quick preliminary scan of the cells before withdrawing to the head of the aisle to do whatever it was they did with their time -- probably mostly nap.

Rachel, over the sound of her own crying, heard a very quiet nearby jingling. She choked back the sobs to hear better.

She saw, in the bottom left corner of the barred door of her cell, eight fingers curling around the wall her cell shared with the pixie girl's.

Sniffling to clear her nose, Rachel worked to sit upright, though it hurt all across her bottom, and wriggled her buttocks closer to the front of the cell. Drawing her ankles up tight against her butt to create sufficient slack in the chain holding her handcuffs, she reached forward to take the offered hands. She curled her fingers through the girl's, leaned against the side wall, tears still streaming from her eyes. She didn't think she needed to say Thank You again. She was sure the girl could feel, in the tight grip of Rachel's hands on hers, how much such a gesture of friendship meant to her.

As Yelena took her seat again opposite the general and the doctor, the latter said without preliminaries, "I have some ideas."

Yelena looked at him with sudden hope. "Tell me, please."

The doctor nodded. "As you said earlier, we found the 'button to push,' as you put it, for yourself. You were presented with a choice between alternatives: the one that we preferred that you choose, and an alternative you saw as worse. In your case, the 'button' was your horror at your daughter's fate if you chose the worse alternative."

Yelena sighed. "Of course. I understand all that. Probably better than you can possibly imagine."

The doctor nodded again. "Just so. Well, we can't use the same motivation in your daughter's case. Far from being concerned about anything that might happen to you, I don't think she even likes you, right at the moment."

Yelena gritted her teeth, and under her breath muttered, "Tell me about it."

The doctor went on, "We had thought the pain of the electrical jolts from the collar would be sufficient incentive. It appeared to be, at the beginning, but in the end it was not."

Yelena sighed again. "Yes, that's exactly the problem. I didn't expect that. Marya has gone through her life without much pain, and when it does come she reacts very vividly to it. She hates it. Well, of course, few people like it, but when she went past the point of caring about it, I just couldn't believe it."

"Yes. Now, it's always possible to threaten still greater pain, but in some sense I'm worried that Marya has been inoculated against it now. She knows she stood up to you and defied the pain. That makes her more likely to go to even greater such lengths in the future."

Even now, thought Yelena. All that jerking against the chains she's been doing for hours has to hurt. But she's ignoring it. Yelena's shoulders slumped. "You said you had ideas. All you're telling me is what won't work."

"Well, there is a principle that George Orwell makes use of, in his book 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.' Any person may indeed steel himself, or herself, to stand against pain. But in many cases, there is one thing they cannot bear thinking about, something they could never stand in defiance of, under any circumstances. A fear that surpasses all other fears. It's a different thing for each person. What is Marya most afraid of?"

Yelena wrinkled her brow. "I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Everybody is afraid of various things."

"Yes, but there's often one truly paramount fear. It could be fire. Or drowning. Being buried alive. In the case of the book, it was rats. It might..."

Yelena jumped slightly, and blurted out, "Snakes."

"Excuse me?"

Yelena leaned forward. "Marya goes nuts at the possibility there might be snakes around. When she was little, she saw a snake in one of the gardens, and ran inside screaming. We couldn't get her out of her room for the rest of the day. It's not something she's grown out of, I think. Just a couple of years ago, I guess she was sixteen, one of the cooks mentioned chasing a snake out of the kitchen. Marya ran to her room, wedged a towel under the door so nothing could get in, and stayed there long after the cook told her that the snake was gone. And she didn't go near the kitchen for a month, I think. Stopped making midnight snacks for herself."

The doctor, his eyes alight, sat back and folded his arms. "There. We could do something with that."

Yelena bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut tight. I'm sorry, Marya, I'm so sorry, so sorry. But I'm still protecting you. You will never know that, but I am.

She looked into the doctor's eyes, and said slowly and emphatically, "Non-poisonous."

"Of course." The doctor stood. "General, we probably should put the girl under sedation now. This won't be something we can do on the spur of the moment. It will take at least a few days to set up." The general nodded and made a "go ahead" gesture.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, thought Natalya. Incredibly stupid.

At least now I know never to attack a guard again. My poor stupid brain at least learned that much.

The violent twitches of her hips, stomach, and chest muscles had subsided, and that was good. Natalya tried to relax, praying the twitches wouldn't come back. And that nobody would touch her anytime soon.

She had thought nothing mattered anymore. That she could handle whatever punishment they threw at her. The whippings always hurt, of course, but one gets over the pain. In a way, she even welcomed the pain, as a sign that she had enough spirit remaining in her soul that she could still muster some defiance. It told her they had not conquered her yet.

Well, she thought, now they have, I'm pretty sure. I will never, ever put myself through this again.

How much time remains? How many days? It was impossible for her to keep track of time, even during those intervals when her physical need calmed to the point she could think about time again. Or anything else.

She remembered the day it had happened. The guard had carelessly stood too close to her while whipping one of the other girls. Natalya had thrown an elbow at his gut, an easy target, and she had the thrill of seeing him rocked back on his heels, seeing the look of astonishment on his face, and the pain in his eyes. What can they do to me? she'd thought. Whip me some more? Hang me up by my wrists? The pain goes away eventually.

They had dragged her sullenly in front of the commandant, that General What's-His-Name, and described her crime to him. Only briefly glancing up, then back to the papers he was signing, he'd said, "One month, in The Farm."

The farm? she'd wondered, as they dragged her back out. They're just going to have me work in that greenhouse? I've been there before. I didn't like the heat, but I can handle it.

That was not what The Farm was.

Natalya had accompanied the guards through several corridors and around turns, until arriving at a door that looked like any other door. The room inside was smaller than she'd expected, and certainly wasn't any kind of greenhouse. She'd blinked when she saw what was inside.

It looked more like an art museum. The first thing she saw seemed to be a partial sculpture of a female nude, in flesh tones, torso only: from just above the breasts down to the upper thighs. No arms, no legs, no head. Natalya could not imagine why they had brought her here. Do they want me to model for them or something? Are they going to create a sculpture of me? How bizarre.

The torso was in a recess in the paneled wall, a bit like a built-in bookcase, serving to display it as an artwork. Farther into the room there were two other torsos just like it, not identical to the first, in their own display cases. Obviously different girls had been models for the three pieces of art. For some reason, each sculpture had two plastic-looking tubes coming out of its crotch, running down between its spread partial thighs, disappearing into the base of the display case. Natalya couldn't make any sense of that.

There were also empty display cases, five of them. Altogether eight display cases, four on each side of the room.

Natalya had gasped then, her hand flying to her mouth, and looked more closely at the first torso. It was breathing.

So, she saw with mounting horror, were the other two.

These aren't sculptures, her inner voice had screamed, they are real, living girls!

Laughing at her reaction, one of the guards reached out and softly stroked the stomach of the nearest girl.

Natalya saw the stomach expand instantly, the girl taking a sudden sharp breath, as if desperately trying to reach out for the touch. The guard stroked the girl's breasts then, and finally drew his finger slowly along her labia, from back to front, then lightly brushed across them from side to side.

The activity this produced in the girl was stunning to watch. Her taut stomach wriggled in waves that looked like a sail in a strong gusty wind. Her nipples came erect as Natalya watched. The breasts suddenly flushed, and bobbed up and down from the muscle contractions above and below them. And the girl's hips went wild, the buttocks tensing and contracting, throwing the hips forward again and again. There was no sound at all from the girl. Only the wild, frantically erotic motion, which held Natalya's eyes with hypnotic fascination.

Natalya felt the blood suddenly drain from her face. She was about to faint. This is The Farm! These girls are... planted, here! And they're about to do this to me!

Instead of fainting, she screamed, turned and tried to run, to escape back out the door of the room, to get away from this horrible place. The guards closed on her and held her tight. Struggling with them, Natalya felt the sharp prick of a hypodermic syringe in her buttock. She fought with the approaching cottony vagueness as well as the guards, for a minute more. Then everything went away.

When Natalya awoke, she was here. She knew she was in one of those display cases.

She still had arms, as far as she knew. The left and right walls of the display case reached up into her armpits, and her arms hung down outside the walls, hidden behind the wood panels of the room. They seemed to be encased in some sort of stiff foam, as best she had been able to judge. The foam hugged her arms and hands tightly. She couldn't even wiggle a finger. Her legs, down below the bottom of the case, were trapped in foam as well. They, and her feet and her toes, were completely immobilized.

For a time, she had felt the foam, and sensed its resistance to her movements. But the sensation was too constant, too unvarying, for her senses to bother noticing now. She no longer felt her arms or legs. It wasn't like numbness. It was non-existence. Only by remembering them having been there, when she'd first been planted, did she convince herself they must still be there.

And her head was encased in the same foam, down past her neck to her shoulders. Natalya had decided there must be some cloth patches taped over her eyes, to protect them when the foam had been applied. In any case, she couldn't open them. Or didn't think she could, anyway. All around her head she had felt the foam holding it frozen in place. At first. Again, it was too constant, and her senses had stopped noting it.

They had inserted breathing and feeding tubes down her throat before sealing her in the foam. Natalya was never aware of eating, but she never felt hungry or thirsty.

If she decided she wanted to die, there was absolutely no way to bring it about. It is impossible to stop breathing indefinitely, and she had no way to stop eating either.

She couldn't produce a sound -- the tubes passed through her vocal cords and wouldn't allow them to function. Nor could she hear any sound either. Her ears, like her eyes, were covered, in the case of her ears with thick padded muffs that surrounded the ears and rested flush against her head. The muffs were actually headphones, broadcasting a white noise hiss that covered any sounds that might make their way through the muffs and the foam surrounding them, a hiss that was, in turn, too steady and unvarying for her to perceive anymore.

Natalya understood what those tubes had been, emerging from the girls' crotches. A catheter carried her liquid wastes away through one of them. The other was for solid wastes -- not so solid, it seemed, and she suspected there must be a laxative in her food. She had been aware, at first, of dribbling into both tubes constantly. As with all other sensations, her awareness of it had faded.

Nothing to see, nothing to hear, taste, or smell. Her entire world of sensory awareness was limited to the nerve endings on the skin of her torso.

Natalya bitterly remembered her belief that she could handle pain, because it went away. Well, she observed, the tingles and twitches in this place go away too, after awhile, but they stay with your mind like a heavy glue.

Every so often -- Natalya had no idea how often, and could never predict it -- someone touched her skin. Then she would feel an instant avalanche of sensual need. The craving in her brain for something to feed her senses exploded, and her body tried frantically to reach out for the source of the sensation, seeking more! more! of the touch. They always touched the parts of her that awakened sexual desire -- her breasts, or those points between her sex and hips on either side, or on her sex lips themselves -- and the sensation had a sexual intensity to it, but it was more, much more than that. It was like a tiny breadcrumb to a starving woman. It was like a single sip of water to one dying of thirst. It was beyond all those things, a need for something she had taken for granted all her life. All set off by a touch.

It was the exact opposite of pain. The body perceives pain as something to be avoided. But anytime fingers brushed her skin at any point, especially on those points of sexual arousal, those brief, soft touches... suddenly the wanting would explode within her, a desperate, all-consuming need to have the touches continue. The muscles in her stomach, her hips, around her breasts, felt as though they were jumping out of her skin, reaching out for the touch, demanding it, begging for it, offering to die for the touch if it would just come back, please, please, please! The craving swamped all other thoughts, made consideration of anything other than the need impossible. It gradually subsided, but slowly, so, so slowly. She guessed it might be hours, but she really had no idea.

And the need, the want, the craving, often suddenly came back even without any obvious stimulus. It might, she suspected, be a tiny insect landing on her skin. It might even be a random nerve ending firing for no reason, as they sometimes do, that set the avalanche off. She'd had a lot of time to think about it, during the breaks between attacks of need, the only times she could think at all.

It surprised Natalya a little that they never stuck pins in her, or burned her with cigarettes. But no, she thought, that is not the purpose here. The goal of this place was to show that there are things far worse than pain. Yearning and need for sensual, sexual stimulation can be far more agonizing.

How long? she wondered again. She had been sentenced to The Farm for a month. With her ability to think clearly so broken up by interruptions of her body going crazy, she had no way of reliably measuring the passage of time. She couldn't even count seconds or heartbeats. She couldn't perform any rational process during the attacks of wanting. She was not completely sure as much as a single day had gone by yet. And she was doubtful it could have been as much as a week.

She felt a sudden twitch that instantly spread through her entire body. No!! It's starting again oh God oh God!!...

She would have moaned if she could. She would have screamed if she could. But she took it in absolute silence.