‘As you will,’ said Topper.
Suzanne embraced Alice and kissed her on the lips.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Alice said. ‘You look out for Juliet and the White Queen. There’s a good chance they’re still around here somewhere.’
‘I will. And I’ll try to see you again.’
‘Bye.’ Suzanne kissed her once more, then was led away by Martes.
Alice watched them go. She was pleased for Suzanne. How such bonds formed between beings so different she could not explain, but clearly they belonged together. Lepus’s next words brought her back down to earth.
‘Now, how should we punish this ungrateful girling?’ he wondered aloud.
‘Wait a minute,’ Topper said thoughtfully. ‘She might be more use to us unmarked. She does look most distinctive now, you must admit.’
‘What of it?’
‘We still need a special feature for the big event. She might provide it.’
‘How do you mean?’
Topper smiled mischievously at Alice then drew Lepus aside and they talked together for a couple of minutes. When they turned back to her, Lepus looked amused.
‘You’re lucky, girl,’ he said. ‘We have something in mind that requires you to be presented before the public at your best. This limits the severity of the punishment we may inflict. However, you shall not escape without a token of our displeasure to cherish. A ride on our pogo-pricker is called for.’
From the racks at the back of the chamber, they brought out a curious device that did indeed look a little like a pogo stick. It consisted of a stout rod about waist high, crossed at right angles by two hinged and spring-loaded arms close to its bottom end. On the ends of these arms were what appeared to be combination ankle cuffs and stirrups. On the upper end of the vertical rod were mounted twin phalluses ringed by integral prongs. Just below them was an array of thinner upward curving springy metal arms, on the ends of which were spiked wheels, each free to rotate. Linking rods connected them to the lower pair of sprung arms.
With Alice still suspended they cranked the winch that controlled her chain, lifting her a little higher. Then they pulled her legs apart and slid the twin phalluses up into her vagina and anus, plugging her tightly. Placing her feet in the stirrups they secured them with the ankle cuffs.
Suddenly letting go of Alice she wobbled and swayed, pulling on her manacled wrists while trying to balance on the lower end of the pogo rod, which was capped by a rubber ferrule, even as its forked upper ends impaled her. As she did so she discovered painfully the function of the spiked wheels. As she twisted about, pushing down with her left or right feet, the motion was transmitted through the connecting rods to the upper set of arms, which caused the wheels to run their spikes up and down the tender inner flesh of her thighs, around the heavy undercurves of her buttocks and even the feathered pout of her pubes. After a minute of gasps and whimpers she managed to find her balance, controlling her swaying and thereby reducing the spiked wheels at least to static points of pain.
Of course they did not permit her to remain like that. Bringing out broad rubber paddles, Topper and Lepus gave her a thorough smacking, working methodically across her breasts and stomach, back and bottom, front and back thighs. Her flesh shivered as it took on a bright rosy hue. Alice cried and yelped as she swayed and twirled about on her cruel mount.
The relentless pricking of the rolling spikes, the plunging and sucking of the twin phalluses and the stinging of her abused flesh had its inevitable effect. After what she had been through in the Slithy Wood earlier that day she would not have believed her body could still respond so readily, but somehow it did. She felt the excitement bubbling up from her loins and surrendered herself to its rising tide.
Alice came loudly, appreciating as she did so the irony of the situation. She was chained and helpless, suffering pain and pleasure at the hands of Topper and Lepus. After a long and very strange journey she was right back where she started when she had first come to Underland.
Topper rested his arm, admiring Alice’s helpless writhings and the discomfort she was inflicting on herself. ‘At least you haven’t lost your taste for this sort of treatment, girl,’ he said with a smile.
‘We said when we first imprinted you that you’d never forget it,’ Lepus reminded her.
Toper found a gag and stuffed it into Alice’s mouth. ‘You’ll stay like that till morning,’ he told her. ‘And tomorrow you’ll tell us how pleased you are to be serving us once again.’
They left the big room through a back door, dimming the lights as they went. As Alice balanced precariously on the pogo-pricker, she could hear a few whispered conversations from the girling hutches, but soon they faded away. How she envied them their comfortable beds of straw. She thought of Suzanne, who even now might be happily chained to some even grander bed while her master reasserted his dominance over her.
Hours dragged by. A few times she actually dozed off as tiredness overcame her, only to jerk awake as she shifted her position and set the spiked wheels moving once again. She felt her inner muscles clutching and squeezing at the phalluses she was mounted upon as though by reflex. Was it perhaps no longer possible for her to have anything pushed up her front or rear passages without wanting to feel it moving inside her, whatever the consequences?
Slowly, marvelling at her own perversity, she stimulated herself bit by bit with little wiggles of her hips until the inevitable happened. This time her spasms were accompanied by a stream of urine as her full bladder, already compressed by the phalluses stuffed within her, could no longer be contained. Naturally the gag-stifled outpourings of her orgasm dramatically upset her balance and began the cycle once again. It was a long night.
Stiff and aching, Alice was woken from the depths of utter satiated exhaustion by a few brisk slaps from Topper. It was morning and the other girlings were already being taken out of their hutches. Alice was ungagged and the pogo-pricker unbuckled and pulled out it of its now red and sticky twin sheaths. The chain was lowered and Alice slumped to the floor, her legs incapable of supporting her, while her arms were numb and useless. Nevertheless she was made to squirm on her belly over the floor, still wet with her own pee, and kiss Topper and Lepus’s feet.
‘This poor girling begs forgiveness for all the trouble she has caused you, Masters,’ she said, thrilled by her sense of humiliation even as she spoke the shameful words. ‘Please make use of me in any way you wish.’
She was fed with the other girlings, chained by the collar to a long trough into which food was tipped, which they ate without using their hands. It reminded her of being fed in Topper and Lepus’s house at the start of her first visit to Underland. The food had been provided by the Dormouse, she recalled. She hoped he had not come to Brillig as well, as he’d been a mean-minded and spiteful creature.
After breakfast the other girlings were assigned their tasks, and Alice realised they were not merely pleasure slaves but labourers. Under the supervision of Topper and Lepus, together with a couple of other animals, they were soon hard at work cutting fabric, painting canvas and measuring wood. It was a strange sight to see half a dozen naked girls industriously hammering nails or sawing timber, some chained to their workbenches. She suspected this was one workforce that would never contemplate going on strike.
Alice was given a much more demeaning task, which she suspected was a continuation of her punishment.
The first part was easy. It soon grew warm in the big shed and as the girls were working hard they soon began to sweat. Alice was fitted with a hobble chain and given a large can of water and a tin cup, which she was to take round to give to any girls who needed it.
The second part was less pleasant. In one corner was a raised tiled plinth into which were set six squat toilet holes with buckets underneath them. At certain fixed break times the girls were allowed to use this simple facility to relieve themselves. Of course all this took place in plain sight of anybody else in the workshop, but then girlings did
not expect privacy. This was different from the old arrangement Alice recalled where each hutch had a toilet bucket, or else the Dormouse had gone round with a can and a funnel into which they could pee. But then they only had half a dozen or so girls in training at any one time. This way was no doubt more practical.
But since girlings often had their arms secured by harnesses, they could not clean themselves afterwards, and even if their hands were free they had been ordered not to attempt to wipe themselves. It was, Alice knew, another way of increasing their dependency on others. However it meant somebody had to wipe their bottoms like babies, and that task now fell to her. She stood on the floor behind the toilet plinth watching the squatting girls and, as each finished, made sure she was clean and dry.
Alice soon decided, in an attempt to be philosophical, that there were worse things in life than rubbing a wad of tissue paper into moist plump pubic mounds or tightly puckered bumholes set between smooth soft rear cheeks. This and her water-carrying duties also enabled her to snatch a few moments’ gossip with the girls as she worked. She had wondered about the odd assortment of items they were making and where the cart, which shuttled in and out of the yard beyond the big double doors, took them when each was completed. Piece by piece she found out what was going on.
In two days’ time, Topper and Lepus, alias Popert and Pelus, were putting on a big event in Brillig’s Central Hall featuring commercial displays and stalls of girling-related merchandise. There would also be various novelty girling contests, but its concluding event, and star attraction, would be a boxing match between the lion and the unicorn to determine the supreme champion of all Boardland. The ‘Fight of the Century’ they were calling it. Of course, Alice thought as she heard this, she was caught up in a twisted version of the Looking Glass story again. They were re-enacting the battle that went with the old nursery rhyme about the lion and the unicorn fighting round the town. But presumably it would be a more serious affair than it had been portrayed in the book.
She also tried pumping the girls for any information about events back in Redheart country, but they knew little apart from vague rumours about unrest. One girl did pass on something she had overheard Topper and Lepus discussing. They had mentioned a friend called ‘Ory’ whom they had learned from a traveller had been officially denounced as a ringleader in the continuing underground movement to overthrow Queen Redheart.
This startled Alice. The Latin for rabbit was oryctolagus cuniculus, from which was derived ‘Ory’, the White Rabbit’s Underland nickname. But how had such a timid, and often drunken, animal become mixed up in the revolution? What had got into him?
In a frantic last minute flurry, which involved several girlings’ bottoms being tanned to encourage them to work faster, the preparations were completed in time. As the tired workers, who would also perform in the great event, snatched a few hours’ sleep, Alice was bathed and groomed for her role. Seeing herself in a mirror for the first time in weeks she had to admit she looked striking.
Golden feathers had entirely replaced her hair now, even down to her eyebrows. A crest swept back from her forehead in a smooth graduation from the smallest and finest to the largest and thickest, which hung down over her shoulders. Her pubic feathers had also thickened into a fluffy delta, and a line of them was growing up towards her navel. In addition a small triangle of feathers had appeared on her sternum just above the divide of her cleavage. Slowly but surely, superficially at least, her bird transformation was re-establishing itself.
It was not uncomfortable, but it did not feel right to her, even in Underland where it was merely a curiosity. She had feathers while she flew as a bird, which had seemed perfectly natural to her adjusted instincts, and it was almost trivial in comparison to what Ruddle had done, but she was a girl now and wanted to stay that way. However, for the time being she would have to accept her hybrid form. And it was true that it had tempered Topper and Lepus’s revenge, which she supposed was something to be grateful for.
As the morning of the great fight dawned, Alice was locked into a new collar, ball gag and cuffs all made of gold, or at least some golden-seeming metal. Then she was loaded into a cart and taken off to the Central Hall.
Though she had been there for three days, it was her first chance to see Brillig properly. As the cart trundled along wide streets flanked by three- and four-storey buildings with tall roofs, some half-timbered and others of brick, she realised it was more like a small city and by far the largest settlement she had yet seen in Underland. There was a sense of energy about the place and it bustled with life. No wonder Topper and Lepus had come here. Where there were people there was money to be made.
The Central Hall was a grand affair with a fine portico entrance guarded by tall columns. There were people already queuing to get in, but the cart went round the back and Alice was led in through a rear door. Inside the main hall was bustling, and Alice could see how all the signs, banners, screens and display podia made in the workshop had been put to use. Mingling with the crowd were girlings from the workshop now prettily chained and handing out leaflets, or else decoratively on display mounted on the walls between the hanging banners.
Topper and Lepus, both now wearing top hats and dressed in smart suits, took turns leading Alice round to greet people and show her off. As many eyes looked her over with varying degrees of approval and desire she felt her nipples pricking up in excitement and helpless anticipation, though of what she had no idea.
‘Yes, she is unusual, isn’t she?’ her masters said in response to several enquiries. ‘But then originality is the hallmark of all Popert and Pelus promotions. I do hope you enjoy yourself …’
There were many stalls ranged about the sides of the hall, whose products all in some way related to girlings.
Alice was led past an apothecary selling what he called ‘Girling love philtres’, which he demonstrated on his captive girls. Within a minute of being made to swallow the drug, one girling was squirming with lust, which she only relieved by masturbating herself frantically on a large floor-mounted dildo, much to the onlookers’ amusement. A second girl, strapped spreadeagled to a frame and unable to touch herself, got so aroused and frustrated that she began pleading with the crowd to put her out of her misery. All it took was a few strokes from her master for her to orgasm, producing a remarkable quantity of lubrication, which almost sprayed out of her.
The love philtres reminded Alice of the special cakes Topper and Lepus had used on their girls, except these seemed much more potent. She examined the stall hopefully for any sign that the apothecary dabbled in metamorphic potions, but saw none. If any existed this would be the place to find them. It looked as though the Red Queen’s offer was still the best she had, but how was she to rendezvous with her or Sir Rubin now?
There was a harness shop stall, exhibiting numerous ingenious means of restraining and controlling girlings. Half a dozen female bodies stood, lay or hung within tight webs of leather, chain and rope. Next to it was a furniture maker of corrective devices such as stocks and racks. An unfortunate girling was strapped to a chair supposedly designed to ‘stretch her orifices for deeper penetration’. The seat was cut away under her crotch, and through this gap large wooden screw plugs could be inserted. Her gag-muffled cries were already quite loud and the plugs were not yet halfway in. A whip maker had racks of different implements designed to inflict various degrees of pain close to or from a distance. A girling had been strung out on a frame for demonstration purposes. A liberal number of blushing stripes and blotches already patterned her body and her eyes were moist with tears. What would she be like by the end of the day, Alice wondered? Then came an agricultural equipment manufacturer selling girling ploughs, yokes and other devices. There was a carriage maker displaying a beautiful team of six girlings in full harness with plumes on the headbands. A pet shop was selling girling-sized baskets and bowls. For a consideration an artist could paint a portrait of your favourite pet. Training courses were available to teach di
scipline and unusual tricks. The more wealthy owners could purchase girling body jewellery from a specialist supplier. A very beautiful olive-skinned girl with the most soulful eyes Alice had seen was on display within a slowly rotating cage. She had been pierced through her ears, nose, lips, nipples, navel and labia with jewelled rings, which then supported hanging baubles or fine chains linking them together. Some owners were having pets they had brought with them fitted on the spot, and their brief shrieks and whimpers of pain rose above the background hubbub.
After a while Alice noticed the smell of warm flesh and female arousal seemed to permeate the hall. How could all this be for girlings, supposedly the lowest creatures in Underland? Was it an inversion of values according to the crazy logic of the place, or was there actually a rational explanation? Perhaps humans here were inhibited from keeping non-sentient animals as pets while rubbing shoulders with their larger talking and thinking cousins, so girlings were a logical substitute. And sentient animals kept girlings because, as she had discovered during her first adventure, for some mysterious reason there were no female animals so naturally the males wanted some release for their sexual urges. But underlying all that, there was always the desire to control and dominate others, common to a greater or lesser degree in most beings. Girlings, specially selected for their submissiveness, were admirably suited to fill such positions.
The centre of the hall was given over to something resembling a large stepped trading pit, on the floor of which a raised platform very much like a conventional boxing ring had been erected. In the middle of the ring was a large colourfully painted wooden disc, mounted on a frame that was in turn suspended by chains from one of the heavy ceiling beams. The face of the disc had straps and buckles bolted to it laid out in a large ‘X’.
Although it was still some hours until the fight, the lion and unicorn were already in the ring to promote the bout. They were limbering up, shadow boxing, talking to admirers and even signing autographs. Half expecting something close to the illustrations in the book, Alice found them instead very impressive. They were both big, powerful animals, as large as the local adult humans. Both walked on their hind legs, of course, and had human-shaped hands. They wore loose silk gowns and boxing shorts, the lion in red and the unicorn in blue, which might have made them seem ridiculous but somehow did not. In fact they looked like serious fighters. Nobody would dare drum them out of town, as in the rhyme.
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