As Yelena arrived at the general's door to examine her schedule for the evening, she saw that same tall blonde girl coming out, shuffling in those same chains, led by a leash again. Yelena wondered why this girl was the only prisoner she'd seen. Maybe, she thought, the general himself is using her. That would make sense, Yelena thought. She's so pretty.

Yelena was about to greet the girl -- she was beginning to feel they were old friends already -- but stopped when she saw the girl's face: the face of someone completely destroyed, her heart torn out of her. Yelena didn't think the girl even saw her. She was lost in her own nightmare world.

A flash of anger coursed through Yelena. They do that to everybody here! she thought. Yelena had believed she herself had reached the apex of human suffering, but she looked at the blonde girl now and was no longer sure.

In the general's office, Yelena now read the schedule. It took all of her professional instincts to stifle the moan that wanted to tear herself out of her throat.

Somehow she had not anticipated this.

She had accommodated to the concept of willingly offering her body to every man on the staff of the prison on a regular basis, several per day. She had even, despite the agony in her soul, accepted that she must also let them all have her daughter. It was the only way to protect Marya from far worse.

She should have realized that, even within the context of the illusion she had created for Marya -- that Yelena was in charge of the situation and giving herself freely in "gratitude," and that Marya should do the same -- some of the men would find a way to take the president's disgraced wife and daughter in a non-consensual way.

Yelena crumpled the schedule, and threw it on the floor. Let someone else pick that up, she decided. Jail me for littering.

She sighed and asked the general's aide for details on preparations and arrangements, and waited while the man went to check. She blanked her mind as she waited. There was nothing pleasant to think about.

Returning from the general's office, arrangements now made, Yelena closed her eyes tight before opening the door.

As she entered, Marya was already running towards her, beaming. "Hélène! I missed you so much!" As if they had been separated for weeks rather than an hour, Marya hugged her mother tightly and kissed her passionately, mouth wide open, tongue probing urgently. "You won't leave again today, will you?"

"I don't think so, Hélène dear. Now, this man," Yelena indicated the corporal trailing her, "Will help me set some things up before our guests for tonight arrive. Oh, put it there, Mr. Vassilyev, please -- wait, turn the front this way just a little -- there, that's perfect. Now just wait there, please." She pointed off to the side, and directed a sunny smile to the corporal, who, in addition to having brought the wooden sawhorse which was the subject of Yelena's instructions as to placement, also had a satchel full of the necessary supplies slung over his shoulder.

Marya was looking with big eyes at the sawhorse. Its wooden crossbeam was about five centimeters wide, but along part of its length rested a wider wooden platform, about forty centimeters across. Yelena smiled at Marya. "Just climb up on that, Hélène darling."

Marya looked dubious, but not, of course, to the point of resisting. Refusal was unthinkable. "You mean, just lie along it?" She gestured along its length.

"Yes, exactly. Put the bottom of your stomach right about here." She patted the edge of the platform nearest one end of the sawhorse.

Biting her lip, and then trying to cover her hesitation with decisive movement, Marya draped herself over the platform, which was just long enough to support her stomach, with her breasts hanging over the front edge on either side of the wooden crossbar. The crossbar itself ended just short of her crotch at one end, and near her neck at the other.

Yelena reached out without looking. "Hand me one rope at a time, please, Mr. Vassilyev."

Yelena showed Marya where she wanted the girl to hang her arms -- straight down the legs at the front of the sawhorse -- and tied each wrist in place, securing the rope to a ring near the bottom of the leg. She went to the other end and had Marya extend her legs down each of the sawhorse's rear legs, and tied her ankles in place with two more ropes.

Marya looked up at her mother, doing her best to smile, and Yelena bent to kiss her as a "reward" for her patience. Then Yelena took the ring the corporal had handed her from the satchel.

Marya's eyes went wide when she saw the ring gag. Obviously it had to remind her of the one she had worn in the snake pit. The one that had kept her mouth open in invitation for any adventurous snake to crawl in.

Marya was breathing fast, and more tense than Yelena had seen her since her rescue from the pit. Yelena stroked Marya's back and said in a soothing voice, "It's all right, Hélène dear. This isn't for what you're thinking. You're not really scared, are you darling? You don't need to be."

Marya shook her head quickly. "I'm fine, Hélène. I'll do anything you want me to do. Always."

That's my girl, Yelena thought grimly. She inserted the ring behind Marya's teeth and fastened the buckle to hold the gag in place.

Yelena petted Marya's head and kissed her again, running her tongue around the edges of Marya's open mouth, rubbing it across Marya's teeth. "Now it's my turn."

There were already leather wrist and ankle straps in the room, in a drawer, and Yelena retrieved them, sat on the edge of the bed and buckled them on. The original chains that had held Marya were still hanging down from the four corners of the bed, and Yelena picked each of them up and laid them along the bed, pointing away from the corners. She only needed the corporal's help with the padlocks.

Yelena lay on her back on the bed and stretched out her arms and legs towards the chains. "If you would, Mr. Vassilyev."

The corporal secured her wrist and ankle bands to the chains, then went to the crank at the foot of the bed, turning it to remove the slack from the chains, leaving Yelena stretched in a spread-eagle. He asked, "Are you ready for the gag, ma'am?"

"Let me think a minute." She really did need to decide whether anything had been left undone. As far as she could tell, there wasn't. "Okay, nothing left I need to say."

The corporal put the thick penis-shaped gag in Yelena's mouth and buckled the straps. Yelena hadn't been subjected to this type of gag before, and took an instant dislike to it. Yelena would have preferred a ball gag, such as she had worn for a couple of earlier "guests," but the men had insisted on this. A ball is sufficiently regular that often one can speak around it in a semi-intelligible way, but Yelena found that the phallus filled her mouth and pinned her tongue in such a way that she could only make mmmmmm sounds.

Yelena nodded at the corporal, who saluted... and then gave the crank one more turn. Yelena, her eyes suddenly opening wide, grunted as she felt the unexpected strain in her arms, shoulders, and legs. She hadn't told him to do anything like that, but gagged as she was, she couldn't protest. If she had been able to say anything, he would have had to ease the tension in the chains, to prove to Marya that Yelena was in charge. The men who had planned this scene had known that, of course.

The corporal reached into the satchel one more time, and Yelena's eyes bulged again as she saw what he held: two phallus-shaped vibrators, which immediately hummed loudly as he clicked their On switches. She had not been told anything about those.

Yelena bitterly cursed the evil creatures who had arranged this, playing on the cover story in which Yelena supposedly wanted to please them to their hearts' desire out of her "gratitude." She watched as the corporal slid one of the humming vibrators into Marya -- luckily, due to her use of baby oil, it slid in easily. Marya let loose a long, high-pitched wail, and immediately started twitching her hips. Yelena could tell from the jerking of Marya's buttocks that she was desperately trying to eject the device, but couldn't find the right combination of muscular contractions.

Yelena watched helplessly, not allowed to stop pretending this was all part of her plan, as the corporal slid the second vibrator into her own opening, almost completely frictionless due to her latest dose of the aphrodisiac drug.

Yelena lost track of Marya, completely absorbed in the sensations pulsing through her own body. She barely heard the corporal say, "I believe that's everything you asked for, ma'am. Your guests should arrive in about an hour."

An hour! Those horses' asses! She couldn't take this for five minutes, let alone an hour!

Every muscle in her stretched-taut body was quivering, her hips caught up in helpless violent twitching. She could already sense an unstoppable freight train of orgasm coming on.

She looked towards Marya, and saw her daughter's eyes squeezed shut, her entire body shimmying in waves, her breath coming rapidly with a high-pitched moan accompanying every exhalation.

Suddenly Yelena squeezed her own eyes shut as the first orgasm ripped through her, seeming to extend the mechanical vibrations in her vagina outward to every tissue in her body. As it receded, the steady vibration from the dildo inside her became no longer arousing but maddeningly irritating. At about that time Marya had an orgasm of her own, her scream accompanied by muscle spasms that actually seemed to make the legs of the sawhorse bounce on the floor.

Yelena tried hopelessly to get herself loose, and then felt the irritation gradually start changing back to arousal once more.

The hour has to be nearly up, Yelena told herself, feeling desperate. Her hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat. She felt totally exhausted, yet was unable to stop her hips from gyrating. She could see Marya, equally spent, every square centimeter of her body shiny with sweat, still trying to push the vibrator out of her somehow. Yelena had had at least four orgasms, though her befuddled brain could easily have lost track. She thought Marya might have had five. Marya's climaxes had had a quality different from the ones Yelena had witnessed in their sex play together. The latter, though relatively well simulated, had necessarily been faked, with Marya showing no physical signs of actual arousal. Her orgasms here, Yelena felt sure, had been real. Relentless vibrational stimulation directly inside the vagina, Yelena told herself, will do that.

Suddenly the door opened, and three men entered, in high spirits. All of them undressed quickly, with no comments addressed directly to Yelena or Marya, only a few jokes about how good the two women looked and how much fun this would be. No matter how debauched the sexual contact, all men on the prison staff knew not to call Yelena or Marya by their names, or mention any connection with the president. No hint of any kind was to be dropped that the men were there for any reason other than to accept the favor bestowed on them by Yelena.

All of them naked now, they moved by obvious prearrangement, one to the bed where Yelena lay helplessly spread-eagled, and two towards Marya -- one in front of her, and one behind.

The one taking Yelena crawled onto the bed, pulled the vibrator out of her and tossed it aside, lay atop her and quickly entered her -- his erection at the ready. As he began thrusting, the man in front of Marya put his own male unit inside her mouth, while the other removed Marya's vibrator and replaced it with his penis in the same hole, as far as Yelena could tell -- Yelena silently thanked the heavens that her totally drained daughter wasn't subjected to anal sex. The men thrust into Marya in alternation, making her body jerk back and forth on the sawhorse between them. To Yelena's fury, she saw that the man using Marya's mouth was anchoring himself by firmly holding her breasts, not her head. The sounds of Marya's moans were bumped up and down in pitch as if she were riding a runaway horse.

Yelena had a sudden insight that the one-hour vibrator preliminary was an especially evil inspiration under the circumstances: it ensured, no doubt intentionally, that Yelena's and Marya's completely exhausted nervous systems couldn't possibly derive any sexual pleasure from the men. It was intended that both women feel dehumanized, mere sex dolls, inanimate objects to be used for sexual gratification. From Yelena's point of view it was completely effective: that was exactly how she felt.

Within minutes each of the men stiffened and voiced a loud grunt, slowed their thrusts and withdrew. They turned away, dressed, and headed to the door. Yelena mmmmmmm'ed weakly, and one of the men slapped his forehead at the last second, said "Sorry, Ma'am," pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the four handcuffs holding Yelena's limbs. All three men then gave casual salutes, said "Thank you, Ma'am" not quite in unison, and left, closing the door.

Yelena lay for several minutes without moving, then finally untied the straps holding her gag, and forced herself to get up to free Marya. She wasn't able to remain standing, and wobbled around the sawhorse on her hands and knees untying the ropes, reaching up with shaking hands to unbuckle Marya's gag. Marya more or less fell from the side of the sawhorse, with Yelena partly supporting her and easing her gently to the floor, where she lay unmoving for several minutes.

Yelena went to the sink for water, drank several glasses and brought one to Marya, then returned to the sink to get her another. She filled the bathtub with lukewarm water, and she and Marya both struggled over the side and into the water.

Marya recovered sufficient energy to sit upright in the tub first, and helped Yelena sit. They held each other for a time, kissing listlessly, and finally started washing each other with cloths, Yelena being carefully gentle around Marya's bruised breasts.

By the time they crawled to the bed Yelena felt a little better, and saw that Marya did too. With neither of them disposed towards lovemaking, they just lay cuddling in each other's arms, their legs entangled, with their lips close enough to kiss occasionally without effort, until they fell asleep.

Rachel jerked awake at the sound of the air horn, and found that her eyes were stuck shut from dried tears. I have to bury those feelings today, she reminded herself. I can't let Anya see that I feel anything.

Today, Rachel knew, was going to be the most emotionally painful day of her life. Until tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that. And, she thought with a stifled moan, I can't show any of it.

She stared straight ahead, her face blank, as the guards got her team lined up. Anya's head, of course, was considerably below Rachel's sightline. That was a lucky thing, Rachel decided. I just have to look straight ahead.

She did have a peripheral view of Anya down there, and could make out Anya's sunburst smile. Maybe the last one that will ever be directed at me, Rachel thought morosely. She quickly slapped a gag on her mind, trying to make it completely blank. She couldn't afford to start crying now.

From below she heard a cheery, "Goood moar-nihng, Retchell."

Rachel worked hard at not changing the direction of her attention. It wouldn't do to look away, to put on a show of ignoring Anya. She had to make it seem she simply hadn't heard her.

She did see Anya's puzzled look, at the bottom of her range of vision. Now Anya had to turn and face the front, as Igor began putting on the connecting chains.

In the big picture-window room, today looked as bad as any other. At least there didn't seem to be any new snow, and the existing snow had been packed down by all the girls walking through it yesterday. But that just meant it would be more slippery, and Rachel and the others would have to work harder to keep their footing. There was also no sun today; it was hiding behind thick, though not threatening, clouds.

Rachel wandered the room aimlessly, keeping track of Anya's location out of the corner of her eye so she could drift off at a slight tangent, not letting Anya get any closer while not looking as if she was running away from Anya.

Rachel was actually relieved during her times outside, and made a previously unimaginable wish that she could stay out longer. Outside, everything was simple: shiver convulsively, rake up straw with arms, carry back to bin. Occasionally eat snow when thirsty. Squat to pee when necessary. She didn't have to watch for Anya.

After Rachel's third trip, Anya made a sincere effort to elbow past the women surrounding and warming Rachel, but they automatically elbowed her back. She did the same on Rachel's next two returns.

Rachel sometimes swept her eyes across the room, not stopping on Anya but storing a mental picture in her short term memory so she could see Anya afterward in her mind's eye. Anya's expression looked progressively more hurt during the day.

All of that hurt was echoed in a stabbing pain in Rachel's heart. She found it as hard to breathe indoors as it was outside.

At the end of the work day, as they trudged to the shower room, through the shower and back to the cell block, Anya was behind Rachel in the line. Rachel didn't have to see her. Rachel did hear Anya hiccupping at one point, as if she was working her way towards crying. That almost set off the tears in Rachel.

This won't get easier, Rachel told herself. It will just get worse.

Rachel had no appetite for dinner, but made herself eat. She found that the effort helped her stop thinking about Anya.

She winced as she bit down on something hard. She assumed it was a small stone, but after she fished it out of the glop of half-chewed food in her mouth, she found it was a small ball of metal. Looks like a shotgun pellet, she decided. Okay, she thought, that settles it. They do their own hunting here for the meat. That was what that gunshot yesterday was.

It occurred to her she hadn't seen anything, during her many times outside, that would qualify as a game animal. She knew she was at fairly high altitude in rugged mountains, and recalled the wall that appeared to enclose the whole prison area, at some distance down the slope, which probably kept most large animals out.

A small alarm bell started clattering in Rachel's mind, as if trying to warn her about some connection she was missing. But it was quickly muffled by the heavy blanket of woe that had surrounded her all day. She finished the food, and set down the food bowl and pushed it away, tossing the pellet down the waste hole. Tears started to flow again.

And then it was rape time, and she wearily rose up to the Present Breasts position. Igor used Rachel for oral sex. She barely noticed. She could hear Boris doing Anya -- vaginal, it sounded like -- and imagined herself scratching Boris's eyes out for... so many things. For raping Anya right now. For having told the commandant about the relationship between her and Anya. For having set up the surveillance devices, one of them inside Rachel's own cell, where she so desperately wanted to peel it down and smash it, but couldn't. For... the list of reasons couldn't all fit in one poor girl's aching, miserable head.

Rachel and Anya were both ignored for Play Time. Rachel wished she could be chosen to beat someone up, other than Anya. She wished she could somehow, some way, have an outlet for the anguish.

As she lay down in her cell at last, and heard Anya doing the same, Rachel heard Anya make one last, despairing attempt at making things the way they had been, a choked, "Goood niyet, Retchell."

A minute later Anya was crying. It wasn't a cry of pain, or mere sadness, but pure heartbreak.

Rachel's ear rested in a growing puddle of tears. But somehow she managed not to make a sound.

Yelena groaned and closed her eyes, still holding the latest note. At least Marya wasn't here, watching Yelena receive her latest special instructions. Yelena couldn't have afforded to let Marya see her reaction.

What better evidence could there be, Yelena thought, that Dimitri really has been watching us? Not that I really had any doubt that he would. At any rate, here he is, now, demanding that we fill in a gap.

It was something Yelena had not thought of doing with Marya, because she really didn't like that kind of sex. She had pushed Dimitri away when he wanted to do it, until eventually he gave up. As Dimitri was well aware, Yelena thought it was nasty, disgusting. And she certainly had never imagined doing it with another woman. Least of all her daughter.

Yelena sighed heavily. Let's get it out of the way, she said to herself, and just do it right now. It was no use putting it off. The visits from various "gentlemen" were finished for the day. At least there will be no trouble getting some sex play going. Marya knew she always had to seem ready for that.

As Yelena entered the room she shared with Marya, Marya, as usual, ran to her and threw her arms around her before she had closed the door behind her. Marya kissed her, her tongue flicking against Yelena's, and exclaimed, "Hélène, I missed you so much! I never like it when you leave."

Okay, thought Yelena, here we go. Again. She ran her hands down Marya's sides, giving the girl's buttocks a squeeze, and playfully bounced her mound against Marya's. "I missed you too, Hélène darling." She licked a circle around Marya's open lips.

This morning, waking after the exhausting, orgasm-filled vibrator scene the night before, they had had sex before breakfast, and Yelena had vaguely felt something was different. She could not identify quite what it was. The feeling was much stronger now. Something definitely was different. Kissing Marya was becoming automatic and took little of her attention, so Yelena devoted some of her concentration to solving the mystery.

Her eyes shot open when it came to her: that muscular tension in Marya, and those miniscule, barely millisecond hesitations as she steeled herself to behave as she must... Yelena wasn't sensing any of it. Marya was still behaving as excitedly, as insatiably demanding of sex, as she had since the snake pit. But below the level of that, she seemed relaxed, at peace.

Marya eagerly pulled Yelena towards the bed. She was moving towards the side, but Yelena gently changed her course and pushed Marya back across the foot of the bed, making her lie down so that her head was just past the middle, a little nearer the head of the bed than the foot.

Yelena swung onto the bed beyond Marya's head, leaned down and kissed her, her face upside down relative to Marya's. After a prolonged battle of tongues, Yelena moved beyond Marya's mouth, kissing her chin, licking her neck.

When she reached Marya's right breast and took the nipple in her mouth to suck, Marya lifted her head to do the same to Yelena's breast. Marya used to nurse from my breast all the time, thought Yelena sadly, and there was no erotic content to it; it was just feeding. But now everything we do together is all about sex.

Yelena moved still farther down, trailing her tongue down Marya's stomach, pausing to run her tongue in and around Marya's navel.

As soon as Yelena went past the navel, Marya sucked in a quick breath, obviously guessing the ultimate goal of Yelena's tongue. She spread her legs in encouragement.

Yelena trailed her tongue through Marya's pubic hair, sharp, bristly, and visibly longer than a few days ago. Marya took in several more sharp breaths, whimpering in a tone different from what Yelena had become accustomed to.

There it is, thought Yelena, looking at Marya's crotch below her. Her next thought: Hmmmm.

Yelena had not really had a view this close before, but she knew what she had expected, what she had been seeing before: flaccid, dry folds of skin. Now Marya's labia were growing puffy, more so by the second, and Yelena saw a tiny sparkle between them, a liquid highlight that grew as she watched.

That's not baby oil! Yelena exclaimed internally. She's not just getting wet, it's already leaking out of her! And I haven't even touched her there yet!

At last Yelena, wrinkling her nose, knowing Marya couldn't see that, ran her tongue along Marya's sex.

Marya gasped while her whole body spasmed, and she lifted her legs, drawing her knees back to rotate her hips, making her sex more easily accessible to Yelena's tongue.

I don't think she's faking this at all, thought Yelena. If she is, as good as she was at it before, she is suddenly a whole lot better.

It was the very first time Yelena had had any sense that Marya's desire was real.

Yelena's mound was hovering over Marya's face. Marya reached up for Yelena's buttocks and pulled Yelena down, and with another moan, forced her tongue into the cleft in Yelena's crotch. Yelena, like Marya, was displaying extreme arousal down there, but unlike Marya's, Yelena's was drug-assisted.

Yelena rolled to the side, and Marya went with her, adjusting her legs to hug her mother's head between her thighs. Yelena pushed her tongue inside her daughter, feeling Marya's tongue invade her in the same way. They both began moaning louder, moving convulsively against each other.

Yelena found the act not quite as disgusting as she had always imagined, disregarding that she was doing it with her own daughter. Somehow a true excitement grew within her in direct proportion to Marya's. Because of Marya's. All through these past days, Yelena had never stopped being conscious of the agony Marya must be going through: forced to behave in a way unimaginable to her because of her terror of what would happen if she failed to do so. And Yelena had been supremely conscious that every time she had sex with Marya it was rape, because it was always so clear Marya would have pushed her away in shock if she had been free to do so. Now Yelena sensed that the equation had changed. Whether it was due to the real orgasms Marya had felt on the sawhorse, or because oral sex, cunnilingus, created physical sensations in her that excited her beyond her ability to deny them... both of those things, one of those things, neither of them, something else entirely... All Yelena knew for certain is that Marya was reacting differently from any time before.

And almost equally certain, Marya wanted Yelena's tongue inside her.

Yelena pushed hard, feeling her tongue part the walls, tasting the slippery cream inside. She felt Marya's tongue within her at the same time, entering, exploring, massaging.

Yelena, who usually took her time building up to orgasm and always saw it coming before it hit, was almost blindsided by the most intense climax she had ever felt, shaking her body the way one would shake dust out of a rug. She heard Marya's cries at the same time, felt the convulsions surrounding her tongue as well as everywhere else their two bodies touched.

Yelena knew that Marya's orgasm was real, in the same way she had known the orgasms on the sawhorse were real. They were that much similar to each other, and that much different from any before.

Yelena's body seemed to drift back to the here-and-now like a feather gently descending on air currents. She heard Marya working as hard to catch her breath as Yelena herself was.

Yelena started to move away, but felt Marya's arms tighten around her, holding her where she was. Without a word spoken, she sensed Marya's need to keep this moment alive. She remained where she was, her ears squeezed by Marya's thighs, feeling Marya's head between her own thighs.

I have to think this through, Yelena told herself.

The scariest explanation, it suddenly occurred to Yelena, is that Marya has, under the pressure, gone just a little crazy. It must have been so hard for her, Yelena told herself, pretending to be head over heels in lust for her own mother, that it came to be too much, more than she could handle -- but she couldn't afford to fail in the pretense. Not with the snake pit looming so real in her memory. So Marya's mind has given her a little help. It has pushed her into an imaginary world where she really is in love with me, Yelena told herself, so that she doesn't have to pretend anymore. And that makes it so much easier for her! Marya was willing to live in that world, because the alternative was too, too far beyond horrifying. She would do anything to stay out of the snake pit. Her mind showed her the way.

That really would make a lot of sense, Yelena thought, feeling queasy. People have cracked under much less pressure than Marya has faced.

But... if she's happy in this new world, is there anything wrong with it?

Just for a moment, Yelena thought she should ask the doctor whether her theory about Marya was correct, whether it was possible, but a voice inside her suddenly screamed No! No! Yelena realized she could not, must not, reveal to anyone what was happening. Dimitri might consider driving Marya crazy to be a worthy goal, Yelena told herself -- except not if the result is that she is truly at peace now. No matter what the underlying reason, if Dimitri, if the general, if the doctor, if any of them start to think Marya is content, then it's all over. That's the last thing they'd want to see.

Luckily, Yelena thought, Marya has been pretending so well. I'm her mother, and nobody knows her better, and nobody is nearly as close to her all day, every day, as I am. I can tell something is different now, but it's likely nobody else can. We have to keep it that way. She may not need the baby oil anymore, with her own body supplying the lubrication, but I can't let her stop using it -- I can't let anyone see that she's stopped using it. I'll remind her to do it every day.

Yelena could tell Marya had fallen asleep, still with her head between Yelena's thighs. Yelena closed her own eyes, but sleep was a long time coming.