by Daniel Six
The thrill of risky ambitions and the journey of pursuing them had brought Ione and Emma closer than they had been since their time in the Lap. On their last visit to Manassa’s clothing boutique they had made love in the dressing room with an urgency that left them both shy and giggling afterward. With Emma’s arms around her waist, the burly mass of the cycle between her thighs and danger in the air, Ione was happy on her own terms for the first time in the metropolis. They had already informed countless people when the party would take place, though not where it would be held.
Now they were undertaking what was potentially the riskiest part of the whole undertaking; finding a way into the warehouse and surveying the interior. After some last-moment alterations to the plan, they had dressed as agreed and dispersed to the street. Manassa walked around the perimeter of the park, which she often did anyway, and the others arrived at different times on the gnomecycles. Dean had gone with Mark, Emma with Ione.
Ione was pelted by a few worryingly thick droplets, and she wondered if the weather would hold much longer. Most days there was some precipitation, which was the reason gnomecycles weren’t that popular in the first place.
Had they found a way in? Ione and Mark were on lookout while the others tried to locate one of the lock-releases hidden on every dwelling unit or building. The warehouse was large enough to have several, but only patient exploration would identify one, and they had to avoid notice while they were about it. If there was trouble Ione and Mark would swoop in on the cycles, grab the others and flee. That was the plan, anyway.
Ione heard a soft noise from the sidewalk and turned, expecting to see a late-night reveler. She almost yelped at the mannerman staring back.
He was tall like them all, as big as Mark or Dean, and stolidly impersonal added to that. His eyes carefully scanned Ione top to bottom, seeking any defect of presentation, memorizing her dress, her shoes and accouterments and the huge machine she straddled as her pulse hammered in fear. Then he turned away without a word, crossed the street and disappeared into the forest. She exhaled slowly, glanced behind her to verify she was alone.
Ione wondered as many times before who the mannermen reported to. As far as she knew, every denizen of the City ultimately belonged to the hierarchy of either the Gnomon or Dowser. But the mannermen could not be readily connected to those organizations, seemed to promote an almost antithetical philosophy in their unflinching enforcement of dress codes. Manassa had referred to a shadowy figure called the Merkin that held sway in the “tent” she reported to for training, but the building really seemed little more than a warehouse, and no one Ione questioned had heard of the man. Few people came and went from this “tent”, and Ione thought it unlikely that anyone with the authority of a judge operated from within, despite Manassa’s puzzling insistence that it housed many busily populated levels and a huge theater, all reached by a hydraulic tube accessed on the lowest floor. The “tent” comprised five stories at the most—it wasn’t much larger than the warehouse they were canvassing now—but she claimed it took a long time to make the ascent to the top using the flooded tunnel. It made no sense.
She returned to the problem of the missing power. Her experience in the Gnomon’s service had confirmed the suspicion that he didn’t actively cooperate with the Dowser. Everything was done through intermediaries functioning at the boundary of their organizations. The rivalry seemed absolute; each man was convinced he had founded the City! So how did they sidestep the majority-rule mechanism that legitimized the notion of individual equality anchoring their civilization?
Ione blinked, let the mystery slip away. She had more important things to worry about, like partying with her friends in dangerous places.
Which suddenly seemed more likely to happen. Ione stared at the near side of the garment warehouse, unseen by the glow gnome hanging further down the street and blotted in darkness.
Yes! Someone was waving a flag.
Ione hastily verified there was no one lurking behind her, then drew a foot up to the cranks and got the gnomecycle moving silently down the road. She angled up onto a grassy escarpment bounding the foundation and wheeled over to meet Dean.
“We’re in,” he whispered. She could feel his tension, the excitement of reaching a major goal, and grinned back uneasily. Mark rolled over to them a moment later and Dean ushered them through a service entrance wide enough to pass the cycles without difficulty, then shut and barred the door behind them.
“Look at this place,” Mark gaped. Manassa was positioning a glow gnome, thumbed it on to issue a reddish light about the big, atrium-like staging area they had entered. A series of heavy girders spanned the ceiling, dangling big canvas baskets by chains. Over to the right a huge sliding door allowed trucks to enter directly. The three floors surrounding the atrium were jammed with racks of apparel haphazardly ranging away into darkness.
Ione stared onto a silent domain of laughably outmoded clothing.
“I never really knew what happened to all the stuff we used to wear,” Dean mused, pensively twirling a drumstick. “Guess it had to go somewhere.”
“It’s weird… Gives me a sort of vertigo just looking at it,” Ione murmured, touched by a hollow sentiment she diagnosed as sadness a moment later. “But first things first,” she charged, shaking off the effect. “Let’s make sure we’re safe.”
They split up to examine the warehouse floor by floor, wall by wall, cataloging all possible entrances—which were helpfully minimal in number due to the fact it functioned as a storage facility. Every breach was verified to be securely locked from within, not merely rigged to a hidden catch like their point of entry.
Ione wound up in the basement, where the disheveled orderliness of racked and baled clothing on the higher levels gave way to a chaos of unsorted garb piled up to her waist. She could barely see by the thirdhand light issuing down a wide ramp, and a dank odor permeated the level.
She waded along the perimeter, searching the wall for any sign of an entrance. Big cloth trundle dollies were strewn about, still heaped with laundry never destined for attention.
At the farther end of the chamber her right foot sank precipitously and she stepped back, peering at a faint, circular sag in the mounded clothing underfoot. Kicking some away from its boundary she revealed a steep declivity in the stone. A big wash basin was set in the floor.
“That you?” Emma whispered from somewhere near the ramp.
“Yeah…”
“This is creepy.”
“No doubt. Great atmosphere, though,” she decided as her lover tramped over to hand her a bottle of plum stillwater.
“Thanks.”
Ione sat down, back braced on a dense drift of laundry packed up against one corner of the room. A chute in the ceiling above ran up through the floors. Emma molded to her side, reflexively kissed her neck. They could hear the others chattering on the higher levels, words laced with anticipatory thrill.
“We could set the drums up over here,” Dean mused. Manassa said something Ione couldn’t make out and Mark weighed in.
“She’s right. They would swing better this direction.”
Emma nibbled on her ear and Ione drew a deep breath of the little blond’s fragrant hair. “I’m kinda turned on by all this danger,” her lover decided.
“Hmmm…”
“Wanna do something about it?” Emma teased, slipping one hand under Ione’s hem.
“Ohhh…” she gently suspired as the other woman languorously circled her clitoris. “Harder.” Emma complied.
But their friends came scuffing down the ramp shortly, chattering boisterously about their expanding social horizons. “You slippers down here?” Mark blustered.
“Yeah…” she reluctantly acknowledged as Emma withdrew from her crotch.
“Now that’s a fuckload of laundry,” Dean remarked.
Manassa reached down to pluck a sock, thoughtfully fingered the article. “It’s really damp here.”
“Find anything?” Dean wo
ndered. Ione shook her head. “Looks secure.”
“You see this thing under the ramp?” Mark wanted to know.
They rose, clambered over to join them. “What the fazzuck is that?” Emma inquired.
Ione laughed. “It’s a chaffer. Sex toy. Friend of mine worked on the design.”
Mark circled a waist-high cylindrical cabinet on high legs, breached by three padded, neck-sized apertures. “Sex toy, you say?” he thoughtfully confirmed.
“Yeah. Or instrument of discipline. You get some achingly dumb slippers to put their heads in it and they bargain with each other about whose turn it is to get twat-smacked.”
“What’s it doing here?” Dean was interested.
“They use’em on laundry women in the ‘tent’,” Manassa explained, raising the top. “For when they get too friendly with each other.”
“Huh.” Dean was clearly aroused by the notion.
“Get in,” Mark goaded, smiling thinly.
“Fuck you,” Ione snorted.
“I’ll make sure you get a happy ending out of it,” he tantalized.
“I’ll take that,” Emma decided and bent at the waist to settle her neck in a half-circular indentation. Manassa joined her with a giggle, inadvertently rendering Ione’s compliance a matter of courage.
She wedged her bottle into the massed clothing underfoot with a curse and joined them, drunk enough to suspend her caution in the name of professional interest despite the paranoia potentially lurking in the claustrophobic embrace of the toy. She could learn more about it here than anyone likely knew in the Gnomon’s Tower.
The top swung down, and their heads were trapped in place. A moment later Ione’s wrists were sashed together behind her back with a random piece of laundry. It felt like a man’s dress tie.
Inside she could hear little of the men’s activities. The other women giggled in anticipation, exciting loud echoes in the close confines of the cabinet. Ione settled her posture to present her body at an elegantly folded right angle, legs straight, back swept down to best emphasize the pert rondure of her ass.
She felt one of the men fondle her, then slowly raise her hem to expose her pantied derriere. She widened her stance reflexively, was treated to an affectionate labial rub. There was a pause, then Ione yelped as she was spanked between the legs, a firm upward stroke that deftly flattened her pubis. She grit her teeth as she was spanked twice again.
“They got you?” Emma needlessly inquired.
“Yeah,” she winced, hastily clamping her thighs. “You’re supposed to take turns. Someone else spread your legs.”
“Okay…” Manassa hesitantly offered. “Ow!” she cried an instant later. “That really-
Her voice choked off as she was smacked again.
“It hurts?” Emma anxiously demanded.
“Yeah,” the big woman confirmed in a strangled voice. “Oh fuck…” she whispered as another crotch spanking was administered.
Ione felt the cabinet shift slightly as Manassa clamped her thighs. “Your turn,” she suggested to Emma.
“Okay,” the smaller woman conceded, then yelped deafeningly. “That fucking smarts,” she moaned.
“Keep’em spread, Ione ungenerously advised. Emma took another cuffing between the legs.
“Fuck! I’m done.”
“Alright, I’ll go,” Ione said and hesitantly widened her legs again. She felt a hand settle on the small of her back and tensed for the swat.
“Ah fuck, you fucking skulks!” she screamed an instant later as a trio of punitively forceful remonstrations set her feet dancing.
“Be strong, Ione,” Emma selfishly encouraged. “You can take it.”
“Those assholes,” she whimpered as her clitoris was tagged, reflexively clamping her thighs. “I’m done. Someone else.”
“Okay. I’m open,” Manassa tenuously confirmed. She groaned as her hairless twat was spanked hard, but endured for another painful connection. “Awww fuck you!” she roared as the chaffer cabinet rocked from her agonized reaction to the third smack.
“Ione, you go next. Please?” Emma whimpered. “I’ll take one for you later,” she bargained.
Ione’s crotch was seething. Her panties were soaked, and she was glad the others couldn’t see the hot blush at her cheeks.
“Do your turn.”
“Okay,” Emma whimpered and Ione waited for the trebly indignance of her response to another round of punishment. But it was her own voice that emerged next as her lofted ass cheeks were viciously spanked. Emma and Manassa were wailing an instant later.
“You cheater!” Ione screeched. “Open up, Emma!”
“I can’t!” she blubbered.
“Fuck…” Ione hissed and widened her legs to stop the merciless ass-chapping to which they were all being subjected.
When her twat was stuck she instantly broke her private oath to remain silent henceforth. “Oh, fuck me fuck me fuck fuck fuck!” she sang as the men rigorously drubbed her pubis till she was prancing from the agony, balanced on one leg to send the other gyrating.
“You can do it!” Manassa encouraged.
“That’s it, love!” Emma wheedled, coaxing her perseverance.
Ione swallowed a tear and stanchioned her legs defiantly wide, determined not to submit. One of the men put a finger in her vagina then slid its lubricated length into her rectum, curled the digit and dragged her hindquarters taut for best access to the lips.
“Fuck!” she bellowed, all bravery vanished as her twat was muscularly clapped to agony. “I’m out,” she mewled after a half-dox of stiff blows.
“Not me, please not me,” Emma puled, vastly intimidated by Ione’s humbling.
“I’ll go,” Manassa decided. The chaffer was abruptly suffused by the sound of her hissing imprecations. “No… nonono… screw you skulks, you assholes, you dickheads…”
“Strength, Manassa,” Ione willed. She was furiously aroused now, longed for the sensation of a big penis sliding deep in her sphincter, knew a short orbit on her clit would produce a sensational climax.
“Mmmnn hhmmmnnn hhhmmmnnn,” Manassa whimpered, shoving the chaffer about in her torment, and Ione felt a warm sympathy emerge for the other woman’s generosity as she endured a viciously administered crotch swatting.
“It’s time Emma. Open your legs,” she commanded.
“Please, love… take just one more for me?”
“Open!” Manassa ordered, doubling the imperative.
“I’ll make up for it,” Emma swore. “Just do one more–
“Hush!” Ione spat. Outside the chaffer she heard Dean muttering urgently.
“What was that? You hear it?” the drummer hissed.
“Yeah!” Mark whispered. “C’mon.” Ione heard them both vaulting up the ramp.
The basement fell silent, then the other women erupted with fearful exclamations.
“Shut up!” Ione belted. “We have to be able to hear.” There was no sound for a few pulsing moments, then she whispered almost inaudibly. “Can anyone get loose?”
“No,” Emma breathed. Manassa was no better off.
Ione inwardly cursed the men for securing them so effectively, though she knew the pain of her spankings would have otherwise induced her to wriggle free.
“We’re helpless down here. We have no idea what’s going on,” she fretted. “Can we lift this thing?”
“We can try,” Manassa offered. Emma muttered her assent.
“On three. One, two…”
They hoisted the chaffer cabinet by their pent necks. “Good,” Ione said between clenched teeth. She mentally diagrammed their position. “I’ll try to keep us oriented. Just don’t trip.”
A steady flow of muffled cursing remarked their wobbling progress over the mounded laundry of the basement to the base of the ramp. They paused to listen, heard nothing, then she bade them continue, trying to contain her anxiety. “Manassa, you go on the bottom,” she directed, counting on the strength lurking in the woman’s huge legs to
keep them from tumbling back down. “Go.”
They marched unsteadily up the ramp, managed to reach the top without losing their balance then set the heavy cabinet down.
“Alright. I hear something. It’s the guys,” Ione confirmed. Her neck ached. “We’ll head that direction.” They lifted the chaffer again and stumbled toward what she guessed was the front of the atrium.
There was a fearful shout from just ahead of them.
“Mark! What the fuck is…”
A moment later Ione heard their drunk cachinnations fill the air.
“It’s a six-legged pussy pantry!” Mark was choking with laughter.
“Just choose your flavor!” Dean added.
Ione kept the others moving and they planted the chaffer near the men with solemn dignity.
“I’ll let’em out,” the drummer chuckled.
“Wait. They might get hysterical, and there’s nothing we can do,” Mark decided, stepping close. Ione heard a dull clink overhead as he absently employed their presence for the ignominious utility of a place to set his drink.
Her rage-narrowed intellect delivered a lightning trigonometric solution from the aural cues available and one foot swept up to catch him between the thighs, smiting his manhood with gratifying accuracy.
“Bwuuuaaahh!” he howled, crumpling to the floor.
“Uh… I believe the lady has strong feelings on the matter,” Dean hastily decided, slipping the bolt. Ione was shortly free of the chaffer.
“What the fuck is going on!” she raged, rubbing her liberated wrists.
The drummer motioned to a wide front window as he untied the others. “Look.”
Ione delicately parted a wrinkled curtain. On the sidewalk fronting the warehouse four women were being undressed by a throng of mannermen, wailing drunkenly at the indignity of the procedure all the while.
“Oh, fuck…” she muttered, backing away from the window in alarm. After a moment she cautiously returned to observe the inspection.
Manassa and Emma joined her. Dean helped Mark off the floor and they all watched the mannermen strip the women naked. Two were found to be without panties—the most grievous violation of protocol after total nudity—and were promptly bound at wrists and ankles. Emma gasped as they were slung over burly shoulders and carried into the mist-cloaked forest across the street.