Daddy's Little Girl

by William Malmborg

  “What?” Bitsy asked, caution building.

  “Does she have one?”

  Though she had no idea how answering this question could impact Misty and the Daddy-man, she bit her tongue and stayed silent.

  “Never mind,” Katie said. “That’s not important.” She held up her phone. “Smile.”

  Bitsy tried.

  She always did.

  Misty liked it when she smiled for the pictures, though given the things she liked to take pictures of, Bitsy wasn’t always able to produce one. Today was no different, though this time it wasn’t pain that was keeping her lips and cheeks from producing a grin. Instead, it was fear.

  “Ta-da!” Katie said, lowering the phone. “Would you like to see?”

  “Yes,” Bitsy said.

  “Come take a look.”

  Bitsy did and frowned. “My dress is really dirty.”

  “You know, it really is, and I’d hate for the blood and mud stains to set in. How about we bring you some fresh clothes so that we can have the dress cleaned? And mended.” She pointed to the sleeve that had torn. “That way it will be good as new once you’re ready to wear it again.”

  Bitsy didn’t know how to reply to this.

  “Of course, we can’t have you putting on clean clothes with your hair and face all muddy, so first things first, I think I should show you where the showers are. How does that sound? Would you like to get all cleaned up and then put on some fresh clothes?”

  Bitsy felt her jaw dropping a bit, but then realized this could be a trick.

  Play along.

  “Yes, I would like that,” she said.

  “Well then, come with me.” Katie held her hand out.

  Bitsy reached out her hand so that Katie could take it and lead the way, an awkwardness developing since she wasn’t used to being led like this. Normally, Misty would put a leash and collar on her and she would either crawl on all fours or walk with her hands behind her back, bound. Now, with one hand in Katie’s grip, she didn’t know what to do with her free hand and simply let it hang limply at her side.

  From the room they took a left and soon entered a hallway she hadn’t been in yet, one that had rows of pictures of people in uniform.

  A heavy-looking door loomed.

  Would there really be showers beyond it, or was she being taken to a stairway that would lead down into the torture room, one that would likely be even more extensive than the one they had back at the house given the funding places like this received?

  Fear returned with the thought, and for a moment Bitsy stiffened.

  Katie must have felt this reluctance through her hand, the grip she had tightening, as did the force with which she pulled. It wasn’t much, yet was enough for Bitsy to know she would be no match for the woman if she tried to get away.

  They stepped through the door.

  No stairway loomed.

  No chains or torture items were present.

  Instead, there was a row of odd cabinet-like structures, each with a narrow door and lock on it.

  Is she going to put me inside one?

  Even as she thought it, she knew that wasn’t going to happen. They were too small. That wasn’t to say she had never been forced into a small confined area. Her box was one such item and she stayed in that every night unless Misty wanted to sleep with her, and some of the cages they had at the house were so tiny that she had to stay hunched over while inside, on her knees, unable to turn. Misty would typically lock her hands behind her back while in there, but even if she didn’t, Bitsy wouldn’t have been able to move.

  These cabinets seemed too small for that.

  And then she saw the shower area.

  Katie hadn’t been tricking her.

  Unless being able to shower was part of the trick?

  “Here you are,” Katie said. “You can simply put your clothes on the bench right there, and while you’re showering I’ll bring you some soap and shampoo. And a towel and some clothes will be waiting when you’re finished. After that, maybe we can talk some more.”

  Bitsy nodded.

  “First though, before you take a shower I have to ask you a very important question, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Did anyone touch you down there between your legs?”

  Bitsy backed up a step, hands covering her private area.

  “It’s okay, you can tell me if someone touched you,” Katie said.

  Bitsy didn’t reply, hands still covering herself.

  “Someone did touch you, didn’t they?”

  Bitsy nodded.

  “Was it a man?” Katie asked.

  Bitsy shook her head.

  Katie looked momentarily confused. “A woman?”

  Bitsy nodded.

  “And did she put anything inside of you?” Katie asked, voice soft.

  “No.” Not this time. I put things in her.

  “Has anyone ever put anything inside of you?”

  The answer was yes, but Bitsy didn’t want to tell Katie this. Couldn’t tell her this.

  “It’s okay.”

  Bitsy shook her head.

  Katie stared at her for several seconds and then nodded. “Okay. I’m going to step out so you can shower. If you need anything, I’ll be just down the hall.”

  Bitsy nodded again.

  Katie smiled and then left the locker area.

  Bitsy waited for several seconds, fearing that Katie might come back in once she was undressed and surprise her.

  No one came in.

  She was all alone.

  She began to undress.

  “You can’t simply stand all night long,” Ramsey said, sitting on the edge of a cot, hands struggling to put a small pillow into a pillowcase.

  Tess didn’t reply, thoughts on all the microbes that were likely crawling around dominating her mind.

  “Earth to Tess,” Ramsey said.

  “I don’t want to stay here,” Tess said.

  “Yeah, well, we don’t really have much of a choice, now do we?”

  Tess didn’t reply, mostly because she knew he was right. They didn’t have a choice. And it was all because of him. She had told him not to try to catch the storm, had told him it would be too dangerous, and yet here they were, car wrecked, stuck in a sweaty school gymnasium with cots that were still being set up as more and more families arrived, the pillows and blankets having apparently been stored in a basement storage area specifically for disasters such as this.

  “If you had listened to me, we wouldn’t be here right now,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Why doesn’t anyone ever listen to me? You, Mom, teachers, that bitch at the police station—”

  “Tess, come on.”

  She crossed her arms.

  “Tess, you’re being dramatic, and I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough drama for one day.”

  Tess thought about that and, after several seconds, let her arms fall back to her sides.

  “I’m going to go find a soda machine,” Ramsey said. “You want something?”

  “Shouldn’t they have food and drinks for us?”

  “They might, but they’re still setting everything up, so…”

  “This police department isn’t very good.”

  “What?” he asked, the change of topic throwing him off.

  “They should have kept our car.”

  “Why? It’s just the windshield that was busted.”

  “No, for evidence, just in case we were the kidnappers of that girl.”

  “Why would we have brought her to the police station?”

  Tess shrugged. “Criminals do stupid things sometimes.”

  He shook his head. “You sure you don’t want anything from the soda machine?”

  “I’m sure,” she said.

  With that, he headed toward the doorway of the gymnasium, which was right next to a gaudy mural that had been painted with a weird frontier setting and a man in a fur-skin hat and clothing. It was obviousl
y a silly mascot of some kind for the silly sports collective, but of what exactly she couldn’t decide.

  The sound of the metal legs of a cot hitting the linoleum surface of the gymnasium floor caught her attention.

  She turned and watched a family of five setting everything up about fifteen feet from where she and Ramsey had set up. Other families were farther away, creating their own spaces. Nothing was being organized it seemed. Cots were being handed out as people came in through the main doors of the high school, as well as the blankets and pillows and cases, but that was it. No direction was given. No one was in charge. At the moment, that was okay, but as the place got more and more crowded, it might start to pose a problem.

  It took several minutes for Bitsy to get up the courage to step beneath the hot water, not because she was worried about being burned by the heat, but because bathing with hot water without Misty’s permission was forbidden to her. Once she did work up the courage, guilt appeared but was quickly displaced by the soothing warmth that encased her body.

  Several minutes came and went, Bitsy doing nothing but standing beneath the spray.

  She didn’t want it to end, ever.

  Will Misty find out?

  The question caused a shiver to race down her spine, as did thoughts on how Misty would decide to punish her if she did, memories of past experiences plaguing her mind and knocking away any joy she felt from the hot water.

  She looked at her wrists.

  Hanging by them had not been part of a game like she had told the police, but punishment for acting like a boy, which Bitsy was sure would have lasted longer if the Daddy-man hadn’t arrived home when he did and found her dangling in the dungeon, barely conscious, lungs heaving as she struggled for each breath.

  He had been upset, though Bitsy had been too delirious to understand why. Whatever the reason, he had told Misty to take her down and put her away.

  Into her box she went, Misty not saying a word to her until sometime later when she threw open the box and instructed her to start packing their things, an odd franticness present. Anger was there as well, especially when Bitsy had trouble gripping things with her hands, the time spent hanging from her wrists having instilled a numbness within her fingers that wouldn’t fade away.

  Bags packed, they had headed out to the van, Bitsy sitting in the back beyond the curtain while Misty and the Daddy-man sat up front, Misty asking questions on where they were going, the Daddy-man answering them. Every now and then there would be a thumping sound as well, from the box that the Daddy-man had his new schoolgirl in, one that Bitsy hadn’t seen yet and probably wouldn’t until Misty and she crept down into the cellar dungeon while he was working.

  They were always so pretty, though not as pretty as Misty.

  Bitsy had made a point of telling her this many times, the most recent being when Misty had put on her new school uniform, one similar to those that the Daddy-man always made his schoolgirls wear, hair done up in pigtails.

  “Then why doesn’t he want to do this with me?” Misty had asked, hand motioning toward the screen where one of the girls was bent over the edge of the bed, wrists stretched forward toward the headboard frame with rope while her legs were spread wide, the Daddy-man putting his penis into her over and over again.

  “Maybe he doesn’t think you’ll like it,” Bitsy had suggested, her own mind having reached this conclusion based on all the tears and muffled screams that the girl was making.

  “But I liked it when you put things inside of me.”

  Bitsy didn’t reply.

  “And you like it when I put stuff inside of you,” Misty added. “Don’t you?”

  Bitsy forced herself to nod. “But I’m a toy, so maybe it’s different, and with you I only used toys. What your daddy is doing is different.”

  Misty had considered this for several seconds, her eyes going from the TV screen to the mirror and then back to the TV screen. She then looked down at herself, hands touching the white blouse where her boobs pressed against the fabric.

  Bitsy watched, jealousy making a brief appearance as she once again wished her chest would fill out like Misty’s had.

  “Come here,” Misty instructed.

  Bitsy did.

  Misty took her right hand and pressed it against her left breast, and then did the same with her left.

  “You like that?” she asked.

  Bitsy nodded.

  Misty shivered and then put her hands behind her onto the frame at the bottom of the Daddy-man’s bed, fingers gripping it so she could arch her back and thrust her chest out.

  Bitsy had an idea where this was going, the two having played games like this before, and without being told ran her hands down Misty’s body so that she could reach up beneath her skirt and touch the freshly shaven area between her legs.

  “No,” Misty said, voice somewhat firm.

  “Sorry,” Bitsy said. “Usually you—”

  “I want to do something different this time,” Misty said.

  Bitsy waited.

  Misty hesitated, surprising her, and then said, “I want to try what they’re doing,” while pointing at the screen.

  An unseen tremble raced through Bitsy’s body.

  “I want to be the schoolgirl and you be the daddy, but like that,” Misty added.

  “You mean—” Bitsy started

  “I need to find out once and for all if I’ll like it.”

  “But I’ll have to act like a—”

  “I know, and I want you to.”

  “Honey, you doing okay?” Katie called, startling her.

  Bitsy focused her attention back on the present and peeked her head out from beyond the curtain, barely able to see Katie in the steam that had filled the shower area.

  “Yes,” Bitsy said.

  “Okay, just making sure.” She held up some folded clothes. “I’m going to leave these on the bench for you.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “When you’re dressed, come on out to the main area again and we’ll see about getting something to eat.”

  Food.

  Given everything that had happened, Bitsy had not realized how hungry she was, the last meal she had eaten having been some of the leftover pizza that Misty had ordered for the two of them after the Daddy-man had left on his hunting trip.

  Two days.

  A piece of pizza, some soda, and then some quiet time in the playroom, looking at picture books while Misty was elsewhere in the house, her mind not knowing that Misty would soon come to her dressed in the school uniform outfit that she had ordered online and bring her into the bedroom to watch the video.

  She wished Misty hadn’t done that.

  She wished Misty hadn’t asked her to act like the Daddy-man.

  Not because Misty hadn’t liked it, she actually had, and not because she herself hadn’t liked it, because she had as well—more than she had anticipated. No. She wished Misty hadn’t asked because afterward they had gone to bed together, bodies curled tight, and it had been the most magical moment of her life, one that then was ruined hours later when Misty yanked her from the bed, screaming, and dragged her into the cellar dungeon to hang her up by her wrists.

  No reason for this had been given, Misty going back to bed after she had finished securing Bitsy.

  It had been horrible, not just because of the pain that hanging by her wrists caused, but because she didn’t know what she had done and thus couldn’t accept that the punishment was right.

  An image of Misty belted into the front seat of the van, unconscious, blood on her face, returned to her and made her realize that she might never know what it was that she had done.

  And here she was enjoying the hot water of a shower, all while Misty might be hurt or worse.

  Bitsy turned off the water and grabbed the towel.

  Once dry, she headed over to the clothes that had been left for her.

  Hesitation arrived.

  Wearing a T-shirt and a sweatshirt was fine, but the sweatp
ants were a problem because pants were for boys and thus forbidden for her to wear.

  Could this be a test?

  Why would the police do that?

  She didn’t know what to do.

  “Feeling better?” Katie asked, coming into the room.

  “Yes,” Bitsy said, quickly turning even though she had the towel around her still, hiding her nakedness.

  “We have some pizzas. Frozen ones since we can’t order anything with the town power being out—not everyone has a nifty generator like us—but they’re still tasty. Should be ready in a few minutes. And we have soda and ice tea and whatnot.”

  Bitsy smiled even though Katie couldn’t see it and then asked, “It’s okay if I wear pants?”

  “What?”

  She’s confused, Bitsy realized, which meant the pants likely weren’t an issue or a test. “Nothing, it’s okay. At home I’m not supposed to wear pants because I’m a girl.”

  “Oh, well, if anyone says anything, just tell them that I said it was okay. After all, I’m a girl and I’m wearing them.”

  “That’s different,” Bitsy said.

  “I see. We’ll say you’re an honorary police cadet trainee, and these clothes are your trainee uniform and you are required to wear them while training.”

  Bitsy turned a bit and asked, “Like a game?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it should be okay.” She smiled. “Thanks.”

  “No problem,” Katie said, smiling back. “Come out when you’re ready.”

  “I will.”

  With that, Katie stepped out.

  Bitsy waited a second just to make sure she didn’t duck back inside and then, when Katie didn’t, dropped the towel and put on the clothes that were waiting.

  Four

  Norman felt a wet impact within the darkness and opened his eyes, his thoughts murky and dominated by pain. Face, hands, back, shoulders—the only part of his body that didn’t hurt seemed to be his knees.

  Blood.

  It was in the back of his throat.

  Had been for a while, his mind somehow having registered it within the darkness of his unconscious state.

  Or had it?

  Confusion appeared.

  And then he vomited, all over his own lap, the mixture a horrible concoction of blood, snot, and stomach acid.