Despite their weariness and hunger, the two girls lifted themselves up, and walked out into the open. Behind them they could see the line of the border defences and, beyond, the battered landscape of Buggery. Ahead was just more desolate, broken ground, broken by the odd copse and decaying tree, and no evidence of human settlement. But they walked on, their feet aching on the harsh uneven ground, their skin burning in the morning heat, and their hands clasped desperately together.
It was only after several hours of wandering, broken occasionally by rests on the odd boulder, where Tracey felt acutely her lack of cigarettes, that they came to anything that resembled habitation. And a sorry squalid landscape it was too. A kind of shanty town of tents and buildings of cardboard and corrugated iron. And amongst it they could see the odd figure wandering naked amongst the buildings. As they got closer, they realised that all the figures they could see were women, all of them naked and all looking a little scruffy even in their nudity.
Buttercup bravely approached one woman, letting go of Tracey’s hand, who reluctantly relinquished her grip. The woman had long poorly combed hair to her waist, a very hairy vagina which stood out as a broad triangle of fur between her legs, and had shaved neither her legs nor under her arms. She made the two girls seem peculiarly even more naked than she, with the short stubble of hair on their own vaginas, and the slowly growing hair on the rest of their body.
“Greetings,” said Buttercup. “We’re refugees from Buggery. We’re looking for somewhere to live.”
The woman looked at them without surprise, and not especially welcomingly. “I guessed as much. You’re not the first refugees to come this way. And I guess you’ve also been made suitably welcome by the border guards.” She brushed her nose with the back of her hand, leaving a small smudge on her nose. “Heaven knows why you should come here. To Gomorrah. There are women from Gomorrah who are so desperate to leave, that they become refugees in Buggery. But at least you’re alive. And you’ve still got all your limbs, I see. You don’t know how lucky you are. Many refugees who come here, came off much worse for wear than you have.”
“Can you help us? Do you know anyone who can give us food and shelter?” persisted Buttercup, despite this rather unencouraging introduction.
“Yeah. Sure. I know how to help. But don’t think I can help that much! I don’t know what you foreigners expected, but you’re not gonna find much luxury here.”
She led them through a maze of tightly packed huts and makeshift dwellings to a rather larger wooden shack near the centre of the settlement. They walked past small dogs, innumerable chickens and several cows and goats; along paths worn down by feet; past other women similarly naked and unshaven. This was a village in desperate need of a hairdresser, Tracey reflected. She was also aware that there were no shops or even market stalls. What sort of dump was this? The woman left the two girls outside the shack while she went in. “I won’t be long,” she promised.
A few minutes later she emerged with another woman who was probably in her early forties, and who, like all the other women they’d seen, was naked, hairy and unkempt. She had a proud bush of hair obscuring her crotch which crept onto her thighs and half the way to her navel. Her dark brown hair was long and bushy, and showed no evidence of having seen a brush or comb. She smiled at the two girls with rather more warmth than the woman they’d first met.
“Hello. Glad to meet you. I’m Delta Seven Oh Nine Three, but you can call me Delta. I’ve been elected Welfare Officer for our village. I guess you’re refugees here. Come inside out of the sun. Please.”
Buttercup and Tracey followed Delta, lowering their heads as they passed through the rather low door. The room inside was very sparsely decorated, with just a wooden frame bed and a few cushions scattered about on the floor. Delta sat on the edge of the bed and signalled to the girls that they should recline on the cushions.
“So?” Asked Delta after the formalities of introduction were over. “What brings you to Gomorrah?”
Delta did not appear at all surprised at Buttercup’s account of why she had escaped from Buggery, but was quite startled when she discovered that Tracey had been a tourist. She needed a little explanation as to what a tourist was. It was clearly neither a word nor a concept familiar to her.
“So people from your country regularly travel to other countries and then leave after only a week or two. And you visit places like Buggery. I don’t think we have any ‘tourists’ in Gomorrah. In fact, we don’t have many visitors at all. Gomorrah’s a kind of international pariah. I don’t believe it has very many foreign friends at all.”
“Why’s that? Is it a horrible regime like Buggery?” wondered Tracey.
“Well, in fact it’s a democracy. And quite a free democracy. But women aren’t allowed to vote, and whichever government comes in seems to compete with each other to maintain the state of sexual apartheid which distinguishes this country.”
“Sexual apartheid?” queried Tracey who’d never heard of the word before. “What’s that mean? Is it some kind of kinky perversion?”
Delta frowned. “You seriously don’t know what it means? But that’s why no one in the world recognises the Gomorran Republic. It’s when women don’t have any rights, and men have all the rights they care to elect for themselves.”
“Rights?” wondered Buttercup who was having quite different difficulties in understanding what Delta was going on about.
“You know: the right to own property; the right to vote in state or local elections; the right to education; the right to roam freely without help or hindrance; the right to travel on men only public transport or to enter men only zones; the right to bear and bring up your own children; the right to protection by the law from abuse and harassment; the right to be treated the same as a man.”
“You mean you have to rights for all that?” wondered Tracey whose knowledge of politics was limited to knowing who the prime minister was, and even then she wasn’t always sure. “I thought that was just natural.”
“It obviously is where you come from. And it’s because women in Gomorrah don’t have rights that all the other governments in the world won’t ever talk to the Gomorran government or even recognise its right to exist. We don’t have the rights to possess anything: not clothes, not land, not anything. They just about tolerate us living in villages like this, because otherwise all the women would die from exposure and starvation. And then the men wouldn’t be able to have sex, bear children or have cheap labour. And even then there are some who’d begrudge us even this much.”
“So, how do you live?”
“Well. We can live off the common land, which is all the crap land that the men don’t want. We can sell our bodies. And we can work in the factories and as servants doing all the chores which men think are beneath them. But we have to be careful where we go and what we say. And we mustn’t ever complain. That’s about it. Anything else we do is strictly speaking illegal.”
“What sort of things are they?”
“There are unofficial schools which we’ve set up to educate the girls as soon as they’re dumped on us. Which is from birth, where they just get left on the ground for us to find and look after. The boys, of course, are immediately looked after by the state. No one knows who their real mothers and fathers are. Once a woman’s given birth, she’s turfed out of the state hospital and expected to fend for herself. There are unofficial committees which look after our own welfare, and make sure women aren’t left to die when they’re ill or disabled. There are unofficial hospitals, unofficial local governments and unofficial housing committees. We women look after ourselves. After all, if the men won’t do it for us, who else is there for us to turn to except ourselves?”
“What do the men do? Don’t they ever want sex or anything?” wondered Tracey. She couldn’t imagine how men could get by without the basic things in life.
“Well, there’s always prostitution if they want sex. Most women do it at least some of the time. It’s the nearest t
o proper loving sex that you can have with a man here. And it’s more remunerative than working in a factory or as a servant. Women aren’t allowed to own money: and anyway there’s nowhere we can spend it. So all you get is food. When you sell your body you can get hold of drugs, alcohol, medicines and all the other things you can’t get hold of otherwise.”
“So the only way men have of having sex is by going with a prostitute?”
“Well, they can have sex with each other. The Republic of Gomorrah actively encourages men to do that. They regularly have big campaigns where they try to persuade men that that is the right and proper thing to do. The more purist male separatists clearly find heterosexuality somehow offensive and threatening. But however much propaganda there is, most men seem to prefer fucking women. And, I guess, even though it’s not often very pleasant, even most women somehow prefer it that way. Of course, they can just rape us. There’s no law preventing them doing so, and there are clearly quite a few men who actually prefer rape. And, of course, rape usually involves other kinds of violence as well. Most of us have been raped once or twice a year: and some unlucky ones, much more often than that. It doesn’t help to be too attractive to the men. They somehow think it’s some kind of provocation.” She smiled sympathetically at Buttercup. “I’m sure you’ll find out all about that when that bruise on your face goes down.”
“So men are free to rape us whenever they like?” gasped Tracey, who was still feeling acutely the bruises and humiliations sustained during the border crossing.
“Well, yes,” admitted Delta. “But not all men. Even though they can, most men don’t. They prefer paying for sex. It’s more pleasant for them as well as for us: even if they are a bit clumsy and awkward. And all they ever seem to know about is fucking. They never do anything else. Up the cunt. Up the arse. A hand job or a blow job. It’s pretty predictable, doesn’t take very long, and it means you can do quite a few men in a single night. Even quite a few in a single hour. Some women complain about men’s lack of imagination and sensitivity, but it does make it easier and more profitable.” Delta smiled conspiratorially, and then leaned under her wooden-framed bed to reveal a bottle of whisky. “Look what one of them gave me the other night. And all I had to do was let him piss on me. Do you fancy a sip?”
Delta passed the bottle over to Tracey who greedily gulped down a mouthful. Fuck! Alcohol! She’d forgotten how fucking good it was! Now all she needed were some ciggies and a cheeseburger and she’d really feel fine. She passed the bottle to Buttercup who politely declined, and then back to Delta who pointedly took a rather smaller sip, and carefully placed it back under the bed.
“Well, now we need to find somewhere for you to stay. And tomorrow I’ll take you to one of the factories near here where you can get a job. That way you can at least get something to eat. We don’t have enough food to spare for very long, I’m afraid. You can last till tomorrow can’t you?”
Buttercup nodded, although Tracey felt her hunger quite acutely. The taste of alcohol had aroused her appetite, and she was now acutely aware of how little she’d had to eat since she’d left Throb. She sighed to herself, but accepted that she was now totally indebted to Delta.
Delta led them through the village, introducing the girls to other women, similarly hirsute and naked, who all had names with numbers. It seemed to be a Gomorran thing. Epsilon Nine One Two One. Omicron Five Six Seven Two. Tau Seven Three Two Three. These apparently were the names that the girls had stamped on them at birth just before they were abandoned to the elements and whichever woman took pity on them. It was also the only kind of name that the Gomorran men would use to address them: if it ever crossed their mind to use a name at all.
A young girl called Theta Seven Six Seven Five showed the girls to a small hut made from cardboard, corrugated iron and brushwood. She had long blonde hair, blue green eyes and a slightly twisted nose. She smiled continuously. “I only built this hut, yesterday,” she said proudly. “I’m in the housing committee. We’re always building huts and repairing other huts. I get food from the other women for that, so it means I don’t have to go to the Men Only areas for work or sex.”
“Do you prefer that?” asked Buttercup gently.
“Oh! Very much. I’m always getting raped when I go to work. It’s really horrid. I wish I was older or not so good looking. The men are always doing horrid things to me. Last time, one man made me eat his shit and then he kicked me in the face and breasts. You can see what he did to my nose. I hate men! I never want to see one of those bastards again. If I could, I’d kill every fucking last one of them! They hate us and I hate them!”
Theta continued smiling as she spoke, expressing her strength of feeling only by her choice of words and not by her expression. “I hope this hut’s to your taste. It faces the sun in the morning, so you should be up early to go to the factory. You’ll be going with my lover, Zeta. Zeta Four Seven Three Seven, that is. She works at the chicken packing factory. So we always have chicken in our hut. Every day.”
Theta led Buttercup and Tracey to a hut through whose shaky walls rays of light from the sun easily entered and whose roof offered the barest protection from wind and rain. It was secure enough for either girl to lean against the wall for it not to collapse on top of them, but clearly a storm of any strength would smash it to pieces. The floor was covered in straw and grass, but otherwise it was wholly bare. However, the girls were so tired and exhausted, that this was more than adequate. Tracey smiled at Buttercup and held her to her chest.
“Oh! We’re here at last! Safe and sound and together!”
Buttercup smiled more wanly. She was clearly troubled by all that Delta had told them, but she chose not to voice her concerns. She cupped her hands behind Tracey’s neck, her fingernails into her nape and pushed her face right up to her lover. She turned her head slightly to one side, probed with her tongue on Tracey’s lips and as her lover gave her familiar gasp of ecstatic anticipation, she clasped her mouth tightly to her lover’s. Tracey pulled Buttercup to her, her hands exploring the contours of the beautiful woman’s body underneath the long flowing, slightly matted, golden hair. The delicate contours of her shoulder blades. The precious and delicate nobbled spine, which descended from her slightly arched neck and sank down her back until finally sinking into a pit above her gloriously round, smooth golden buttocks. Unlike her own, these were buttocks ample enough to hide the contours of her hip, but not too ample to detract from her essential slimness.
Her hands grasped Buttercup’s buttocks, and then, inevitably, curiosity and desire and longing being what they were, her fingers sought out the mound of pleasure where her lover’s short stubble raised above her vagina. And with a gasp of delight and pleasure she discovered that, yes! Buttercup’s vagina was moist and welcoming. “Oh! Buttercup! Buttercup!” she gasped, easing her lover onto her knees and then onto her back, as her fingers pushed in and out of the moist, fleshy wonderfulness of it all. “I love you! I love you!” she cried again, as Buttercup swivelled round her body, so that she could lick Tracey’s vagina while Tracey was able to reciprocate from above.
Tracey parted the delicate golden lips and momentarily paused to wonder at what she could see, all the while feeling Buttercup’s tongue expertly lapping on her clitoris. Buttercup’s vagina opened like a fig. The clitoris emerged hard, short and majestic above the folds of her vulva, and there as her probing finger established again was the hole into which so many pricks had entered, and now was hers. She winced as she reflected on the border guards’ pricks who’d so recently violated her lover, as they had also violated her, and she fancied she could taste some of the caked blood and semen on her lover’s vaginal stubble. But now it was hers, as her own vagina was Buttercup’s, so she let her tongue rasp against the shadow of blonde hair that grew around her nose while a finger explored the caverns of her lover’s anus. Yes, she reflected, as she sniffed her finger after it had entered as far inside the tight pursed hole as it could, Buttercup definitely shits. And,
as the odd taste amongst the rich smells emerging from her vagina confirmed, she almost certainly pisses as well. But perfection is only human. And from her own lower regions she felt Buttercup’s own fingers, teeth and tongue explore her own vagina. She briefly reflected on her shit-smelling finger. Why do men like anal intercourse so much? The arse is nowhere as beautiful as the cunt. Nothing to it! A hole with a small puckered entrance and an unpleasant smell. None of the odour, delicacy, flower-like elaborateness of a cunt. Perhaps that was because all men wanted was a hole, and they didn’t appreciate the finer things.
As of course she did. Now she was with her lover, in the shadows of the hut, on the dry coarse straws of the hut’s floor, enjoying the best sex of her life with the best lover she could ever imagine.
Chapter XIV
It started as a day like all the others as far as Sharon was concerned. In fact, in her misery she had lost all concept of days. Life was nothing but boredom and fear punctuated by rape. Only a few hours earlier Sweetness and she had had to endure another assault by the Buggery soldiers. Again ones she’d never seen before with the exception of the sergeant who escorted them in. She was vaguely aware of the violence done to her through her tears and pain. Her arse hadn’t recovered from the previous assault which had already left a trickle of blood between her buttocks. Her vagina was similarly bruised and battered. And yet more pummelling. She could see Sweetness’ face pressed against the ground like her own, a leg hooked over her back while another soldier squeezed his penis into his arse. She could see the other soldiers fucking each other and could hear the gasps and pants of the soldiers as they penetrated her. She had long given up struggling. It only made it hurt more. All she could look forward to was the pain ending, and then being left huddled in a slump to nurse her sorrows. Sometimes she saw enough of the soldiers from the undignified positions in which they’d held her down to see just how young and sometimes mutilated they were. She knew that their sufferings in this war had also been considerable, and the scars and dismemberments were proof, if proof were needed that war was no more pleasant for the combatants than it was for innocents like her who had been dragged into its sphere.
Escape from Buggery Page 15