Savannah's Chance

by D. A. Maddox

  This Neutral was male, and they seemed to know each other. Scott recoiled from him, but the line kept urging him forward.

  “Na, man, that mess is going to bug you until someone gets it. You want to walk around with a shot glass worth of jizz drying on your junk?” And with that, he pulled forward the front of the jockstrap by the elastic and used the loose front of Scott’s shirt to mop him up.

  “Nothing … personal … Corky?” Scott said, scarcely to be heard, his voice catching as Corky cleaned his unit up and down, up and down.

  “Well,” Corky said with a shrug, using a separate swath of shirt to wipe down his fingers, “maybe a little. File it under it under one-time bromance extension. Just bein’ your friend, man, especially after that … incident on the bike trail.”

  The line crept on.

  Then, compelled by the inexorable pull of the coffle and its chain, Savannah passed under the shadow of the door, and their attentions turned to her. She closed her eyes. Tried to meditate as unseen flesh ran over hers. Tried to ignore the guy chuckling as he poked at a breast. Tried to tune out her voice from three years ago:

  “Yeah, so, ah … I’m Savannah! Yeah. So … um, my parents have been saving up for this a real long time, hoping to get me in a better school than they got to go to.”

  She failed. She knew what was coming in that video. It was supposed to have been a private plea, an admittedly desperate plea that only responsible, post-transitional adults would ever hear. A plea she didn’t really have to make, her father had assured her from behind the camera. Savannah had graduated valedictorian in a class of 1,800.

  A voice in her ear, a stranger, a man—licking first, then saying, “Open your eyes, pretty thing. Don’t shut us out.”

  She opened her eyes. He had a goatee, tickling whiskers. He sniffed her, nibbled her earlobe.

  Her projection, speaking uncertain words—brave words, for Savannah Miles: “My mother wanted this school for me. You turned her down, back in the day. I’ve worked really, really hard to get this, especially since … since … she passed. You said a daring question to answer would be ‘What’s your biggest fear?’”

  A woman, squeezing her upper arms. “Oh, my, you poor thing.”

  She sounded sincere, not mocking.

  “My biggest fear is … disappointing her … from wherever she’s watching.”

  “You made it, Savannah,” the woman said, brushing away her tears, thumbing a nipple under the robe. “You’re here, you’re Bridgemont, and you’re with us.”

  Another voice, another man: “Almost.”

  Hands at her arms, passing up and down her legs…

  The man with the goatee, still at her side, touching her sex over the robe, which was damp right on through.

  Don’t offer to clean it, she thought, close to panic. Please, please don’t do that.

  He didn’t.

  On the whole, by the time they arrived at the Ballroom, Savannah thought she’d had an easier go, as far as this leg of the journey was concerned, than Scott.

  ****

  The Ballroom, Scott decided, was sick.

  Like this whole thing is.

  At the end of the hall, the touchers had desisted. Each successive passage had narrowed until they’d gotten to the stairs. Those were high and narrow, too, and led through the back of a wide supply closet where Tabitha had unlinked their coffle chains from one another and gathered them in a bag. But she’d left on the neck rings, kept them magnetized, and she hadn’t removed the handcuffs, making Veronica’s promise of unshackling a flagrant lie.

  Corky felt you up, man, he thought, remembering the reluctant comfort in it, forcing himself not to get all blubbery about it. He hadn’t cried hard since he was a kid. He was the master of his own ship and didn’t like wasting his time on shit like that. He took care of you, and it felt good.

  So what if it did? Corky was a friend … maybe. Just trying to help him get past this ordeal and making himself an un-painful part in it. If Corky swung both ways and had taken advantage of him in an awkward moment, they’d drown it in a beer and forget it later—after Scott cleared this test and went back to normal life.

  The important person in all this unreal, twisted dream was Savannah. She’d accepted his inadvertent orgasm at the hands of female strangers, which shouldn’t have been too surprising, considering what Melody had put herself forward for. None of this was love, only a trial—

  Only fun, the back of his brain whispered. It’s everything the world denies you.

  …and all he had to do was get through it, help her through it.

  The supply room had led them back to the ground level common area of the front of the Student Union building, thence through more familiar passages, then the cafeteria, then the table room to the Ballroom itself.

  The Neutrals brought them in, holding them by the arms, not giving orders, patting rears, chatting freely with each other and politely reminding them to keep silent. When the double doors swung open, Scott was assaulted by blaring, bass-heavy music pop music, along with an open display of depravity, and also his first look at “The Pen”.

  The Pen was a simple square defined by movie theater style rope barrier stanchions, four golden posts with blinking red lights on the top, linked by furry tendrils of black velvet—the side facing them open, furry tendrils flat on the floor. At its gap was Veronica. In her hand was a stylus and something like a fat palm com.

  He hardly saw it. Hardly saw her. Instead, his eyes locked on Malcolm and Melody, on a fancy four-poster bed with white and red mattresses and pillows, all framed in dark, polished mahogany. There was a silken canopy, too, also red. Over the front of it had been hung a white sign with black lettering that spelled out, “Deflower Bed: Volunteers ONLY.”

  He. Was. Fucking. Her.

  Part Three

  In the Ballroom

  Chapter Thirteen:

  Penned

  A pause between songs. Malcolm’s dark velvet voice cut through the shocked silence of the pigs. “Does it hurt?” he asked, plunging into her again. And again. “Is Master hurting sub-Melody? Master doesn’t want to hurt her. He doesn’t want his new toy broken.”

  Melody shook her head vigorously, her mouth alternating between wide Os and clenched teeth, toes curling and uncurling, arms and legs spread. He had her hands pinned at the wrists. He pushed into her slowly, repeatedly, pants around his ankles, dreadlocks draping his bared back.

  “Is this what sub-Melody wants? Is this what she asked for?”

  The next song kicked in with a snarling guitar riff.

  She nodded, eyes shut.

  “Then you tell me again, what does sub-Melody want?”

  She took breath, her ample breasts rocking in time with his slow, deliberate thrusts. “Please, Master … fuck your sub.”

  “Is tonight the first time you’ve said that word?”

  She nodded, eyes glistening.

  “Mommy and Daddy didn’t want you sayin’ that word, did they? Told you it was wrong? Didn’t want to hear that word from their prettiest princess?”

  Again, she nodded. She crossed her ankles over his back, panting, not speaking.

  “Say it again,” he commanded, drilling her faster. “Scream it, loud as you can.”

  “Fuck me, Master!”

  “Oh, yeah. You asked for it, and you’re getting it. This is happening to you. This is real. How does it feel?”

  Before she could answer, in a single, fluid movement, he drew her arms in, rolled her on top of him, and grabbed her hips with both hands. “Ride your Master’s rod, sub. You do it to me, and to yourself. Fucking impale your wet cunt on that pole, much as you want.”

  She obeyed. She pounded herself onto him, hands pressed flat on the bed at either side of his head. She kept rhythm with the heavy bass-thump of the music, even hummed a little along with it. Savannah recognized the song, “First”, from a Euro morta-jam metal band called Scrythe. There weren’t any lyrics to it, but voices both male and
female moaned and wailed, more or less on key, all through it. Melody became just another voice in the mix.

  A thin trickle of blood ran down her inner thigh.

  That’ll never be me, Savannah thought, looking away. She fully anticipated sex, sooner rather than later—Scott would likely be agreeable to that, she supposed, regardless of how tonight played out—but…

  There’s nothing down there to break, Nurse Sustrick had said.

  It would probably hurt anyway.

  An arm around her waist—Rusty again, leading her to the center of the Ballroom, to the Pen, where Veronica waited for them, palm com in hand. As she and the rest of the pigs were guided toward her in a tight, nervous clutch of shackled humanity, Tabitha and Zeke came to stand at Veronica’s either side, each bearing a bowl of black iron. Tabitha’s was labeled with the Greek symbol for female, and Zeke’s the Greek symbol for male.

  This is the lottery, Savannah realized. Okay, girl, deep breath. Let’s get this over with.

  As before, she and Scott were in the middle of the procession—it couldn’t be called a line anymore—and they did what everyone did. Grimly determined and scared, they just went with it.

  “Get your future wife over here for key duty before someone enlists her in a suck job,” Tabitha growled to Zeke.

  Zeke set down the bowl and snapped his fingers, a sound that was wholly inaudible under the music. But he raised his voice when he called out, “Courtney, off your knees and over here.”

  The sub line, minus Melody, knelt facing the wall on Savannah’s left. Courtney rose and turned from the middle of it, then jogged over to her boyfriend. Zeke tilted his head in Veronica’s direction, and Courtney went to her. Again, she knelt, proffering both hands to her, palms up.

  Veronica dropped a small key into them. “You know the drill. Double tap, then unlock. One at a time.”

  The first one up was the girl from the bar, Dawn. As Courtney came to her, Savannah instantly recognized another one of the Neutrals: Lorna the waitress, Dawn’s girlfriend. She was clapping excitedly, hopping up and down as Courtney double tapped the circlet at the back of Dawn’s neck, demagnetizing it. Savannah read Lorna’s lips as Courtney slipped the key in the cuffs: So proud of you.

  Hands free, cuffs discarded on the floor but still wearing the circlet, Dawn blew her a kiss, then stepped forward when Veronica beckoned to her.

  From a thin cylinder on the side of her palm com, Veronica withdrew a stylus.

  “Sign on the screen, pig-slut,” Veronica said, painting the words with a tone of flight attendant courtesy. “Then show me the card so I can be sure you wrote your actual name—Dawn Covington.”

  Dawn took the stylus and signed the palm com. A card then printed out from the top, which she took and—resigned and with a sigh—presented for examination. Veronica glanced down at the card without lowering her head. She pointed to Tabitha, who wiggled the girls’ bowl at her.

  Crossing fingers on one hand, Dawn dropped her name into it, then stepped through the temporary gap in the stanchions to await her fate in the Pen.

  “Next!” Veronica chirped happily.

  The next was a brown-haired man Savannah did not know by name. He came with his head lowered. He’d seemed terrified all night—one of the better bets to have quit earlier, when that was still possible, trying to cover his ass with his hands all the way up until they’d cuffed him. He—

  He’s a future sub, Savannah thought, instantly aghast at the offhandedness with which she had mentally labeled him.

  “Drop it in the man-hole, shy boy,” Veronica said, indicating Zeke’s bowl.

  The song ended. The soft lighting of the Ballroom brightened by a degree, as though a concert performance had just ended. And indeed, Malcolm and Melody—who’d had quite the audience of Neutrals for their show—were off the Deflower Bed. Like a stack of textbooks, Malcolm carried her under an arm back to the sub line and gently set her down at one end of it. He patted the side of her face and whispered something in her ear that made her smile.

  When I have sex, Savannah thought, I’ll … I don’t know, want to stay in bed a bit? Enjoy a little afterglow, maybe?

  The bigger guy-Doms around here sure enjoyed lugging women around. She wondered if Scott was capable of carrying her like that. At five-foot-eight(ish), he was only a few inches taller than she was, but she thought it might be possible. Uncomfortable as hell, but possible.

  Then, under the better lighting, her eyes took in the stage.

  Well beyond Veronica, at the far end of the room it loomed, different than Savannah had ever seen it. There were two rows of twelve wooden chairs in front of it—utterly insufficient to the number of Neutrals and Doms in the Ballroom—all currently empty. Savannah guessed that only the Doms would get to sit in them.

  Upon the stage itself were various props on twin A-frame racks upon either side. Among the props she could see everything she’d already been hit with, but there were whips, too. Balls on strings, rings dangling at the ends of chains, plastic rods, massive pink feathers at the ends of leather handgrips, fake rubbery penises of … well, optimistic proportions … and a whole catalogue of stuff she couldn’t identify and didn’t understand.

  From the ceiling dangled an elaborate harness of cord and leather—including four studded leather restraints—most of it festooned with fluffy pink trailers and bedecked with fake black orchids.

  And in front of either A-frame arose two ebony totem poles—four in total—each seven feet high, each equipped with short-chained shackles for hands and feet, and each with three faces. From the bottom up: laughing, crying, screaming. The two poles on the left had distinctly male features; the two on the right, female. They were polished black except for bright, opaline eyes without irises or pupils, and they all bared bright white teeth in each frozen expression: mirth, misery, anguish. Between them, at the very front of the stage, was a microphone in a mic stand and a low altar of polished alabaster with nothing on it.

  “Oh, look,” Veronica said. “It’s the Amazing Premature Splatter Man.”

  They were up. Scott stepped forward with his head high, even as the entire Ballroom laughed at him.

  Savannah could only watch—and wait for her turn.

  ****

  You didn’t say that to her, Malcolm tried telling himself, absently directing various men and women among the Neutrals to slide in a dozen bean bag recliners from the Society Room of the Student Union, calling for the punch bowls to be filled and mixed, reminding his fellow Doms Brandy and Colt to bring in the love furs as soon as the pigs were all penned.

  But he had said it. Worse than that, he had meant it.

  I’ve never fallen for anybody, sub-Melody. I might just fall for you. Damn you, you pretty thing.

  And she had smiled, eyes downturned. She’d said, I’m so sorry, Master.

  It wasn’t the sex, although that had been as hot as he had ever had, despite her inexperience. It wasn’t her vulnerability and enthusiasm, also fucking hot. It wasn’t even her looks—her face still pretty under all that mud-dried hair, her tits a perfect fit for his hands, neither too large nor too small, her larger than average nipples so pert and responsive, so pink and tender.

  No. None of that was it. The truth was, from the start, he’d wanted a piece of both Savannah and her boyfriend—and he still planned on getting it, maybe, if they gave it up to him. Strictly speaking, objectively speaking, they were the best-looking pigs in the pigsty.

  It was the way that Melody looked at him when he made eye contact with her. It was the trust, the tenderness. No one in all of the three and a half years Malcolm had been in The Select had looked at him that way. Eyes of surrender, he was used to. Acceptance, the order of the day. Fear—he’d had that, too, and either helped them through it or let them go, knowing the game wasn’t for them. But Melody saw in him what no one saw: a human being, a teacher of forbidden pleasures, a guy with feelings of his own.

  And in her, he saw someone he might … o
h, hell, take to the movies or a concert or some lame ass shit like that, and still have a good time.

  Stop it, man, he warned himself, setting up a fresh mix at the board by the subwoofers and hitting play. You got other shit to be worrying about right now—crazy ass shit that could blow up in your face, big time, if you don’t get it just fucking right. No time to go soft in the head. No time for distraction.

  There would be one more soiree after this one before he graduated, after all—and he wanted that one done right, without having to worry every ten seconds about Veronica taking it too far. That bitch tended to forget that this was a game, that these were human beings with futures. That this was about discovery and fun, a bit of pain sprinkled with a hearty heap of college-style hazing and humiliation, well outside the norm but still not destructive. Mostly, Origins was about grown-ass adults finding out what they were into, often to their own surprise, unleashing that hidden self regardless of what the outside world thought. It was not about wrecking people.

  Given the chance—no, taking it—he’d get this train back on its rails.

  When the bowls were full, Tabitha and Zeke would take them out into the hall and leave them there until it came time for the drawing, when they’d be placed on the altar. By then, Veronica would have ruined yet another thing in The Select.

  We do not cheat, Malcolm thought with bitterness. But tonight, by necessity, he would allow it. He had to. And it absolutely had to happen in that particular hall, in the exact place he’d directed Tabitha and Zeke to place the bowls—where Veronica could rig the lottery without being seen by the incoming old bones and profs.

  They wouldn’t see. Not tonight, anyway. But the security camera in the ceiling would.

  Tabitha, eager for her own skull and as much a traditionalist as Malcolm was, had kept as close to Veronica as she could all night long. The electric eye in her choker—a same-day acquisition from Golden Tech as Veronica’s palm com—was an excellent approximation of faux ruby, very cheap looking, very post-modern white trash gothic. The quality of picture was yet to be observed. It didn’t have to be great.