Savannah's Chance

by D. A. Maddox

  “What about the lottery?” Scott asked, rubbing Savannah’s back. “You missed putting your name in.”

  Ritchie shook his head. “No way Veronica will let me slide on that,” he said, looking around. “Where is she, anyway?”

  Good question, Savannah thought. Something about this is not right.

  More than one something, it turned out. Huey had been returned to the reforming sub line at the left-hand wall, which he now leaned against, arms out and on his knees, his battered, welted ass a warning sign for any to read at their leisure. And that freed up Nurse Sustrick, who now stood on the other side of the stanchions, openly regarding her and Scott with a cauldron mix of pity, anticipation, and excitement.

  “Aren’t you two a darling young couple?” she said. “How are you holding up?”

  Savannah stared back at her, not speaking, summoning the will to betray nothing in her expression.

  “We’re good, Nurse Sustrick,” Scott said. “Happy Friday. How are you?”

  She snorted. She departed. She went to the chairs in front of the stage and sat there, waiting.

  For what? Savannah wondered, even though she knew.

  The others. And then, after that, the drawing.

  But first, before that, the voice of Veronica—this time echoing off the walls from the speakers. She was on the stage, at the microphone. “All right, motherfuckers,” she said. “Let’s get this party started!”

  Chapter Fifteen:

  Drawing

  The lights dimmed again, so far this time that the room went nearly black. From the ceiling, the glitter ball descended as the music kicked back in, Mad Jack and the Thousand Ghosts with their one hit wonder from a year or two back, “I Repent”. Strobe lights on towers at the four corners of the Ballroom synched with the bass and drum line. In no time at all, the dozen or so bean bag recliners scattered throughout the hall were occupied by couples, some obviously prearranged, others choosing partners at random. More than one couple among the Neutrals were longtime paramours that Scott either knew, or at least knew about, who kept their own company but didn’t seem to mind expressing their … affection in front of others.

  Those who didn’t score the love seats danced while waiting their turn, many on their own, others with their waiting fuck buddy. Some formed small groups, little mosh mobs of three to five that danced like they wanted to hurt themselves, convulsing at the waist, flinging their hair around in violent circles to the thump and crush of the subwoofers. There was a fair line at the spiked lemon and lime punch bowls as well—and most of the subs being taken, getting fucked, right out in the open on the hard floor, with only the “love furs”—actually just ordinary red blankets—between their naked flesh and the oakwood.

  Huey, still on his knees but facing away from the wall, was servicing a male Neutral with his mouth and a female Neutral with his fingers.

  Missy and Courtney were lying flat on their backs next to each other, looking into each other’s eyes, holding hands as Rusty and Zeke pounded them in time.

  Melody and Malcolm—they were also holding hands while Tabitha sat on Melody’s face, hiking her skirt up at the front and giving commands while Malcolm cored a young male sub hard and repeatedly from behind.

  As Scott watched, horrified and fascinated and burning with his own heat, the short, freckled Dom named Freddy propositioned the other new female sub—Tess, the one he had eaten out on the back lawn, earlier—by grabbing his crotch and pointing between her legs. Under the flashing strobe lights, he saw her shake her head “No”. Reading her lips as best he could, Scott thought she said something like “…sorry … Master … not ready”. He didn’t force her, didn’t fuck her—but thirty seconds later, the two lay side by side, masturbating each other and kissing each other deeply.

  Clothes were scattered everywhere. Bodies blinked in and out of Scott’s vision, painted in blue and red light, yellow and pink, green and lavender and amber.

  All the while Veronica observed them, smiling from the stage, and Nurse Sustrick sat in her wooden chair, her back to the crowd. Veronica didn’t engage with anyone, not even her two blond subs of choice, who by then were already claimed by others.

  She was content to watch.

  What’s the matter, “Ronnie”? Scott thought. You shy?

  And when he turned back to Savannah, he found her already looking up at him. She opened her mouth to say something—to ask something, judging by her eyebrows and the tilt of her head—then shut it again. She ran her hand up his arm and tried again. Failed again.

  So, he asked the question for her.

  “If we get the chance it can be just us, would you do it if I asked you to?”

  Terrible wording, Shakespeare, he thought. And he had to almost shout it just to be heard.

  She pulled his head forward, slightly down, and answered more quietly directly into his ear. “If I said yes right now and the time came,” she said, “could you do it without asking?”

  That nearly knocked Scott flat. The way she put it sounded one hell of a lot like—

  “No,” she said, cuing into him, yet again, without effort, “we’re getting permission out of the way right now. That’s all. If it happens tonight, I want you to just … claim me, sort of. If I don’t say anything, it’s okay—and if I say no, you stop.”

  Those upturned eyes. That sweet face. He kissed her, first on the mouth, then on the cheek, holding her at the shoulders as she held him first at the waist, then lower, cupping his ass with both hands. They ground into each other until the song ended, then separated.

  “I can work with that,” he said, half out of breath—and finally admitted the truth, both to himself and to her. “That’s exactly how I want you, Savannah.”

  I don’t want to hurt you, he didn’t add, but I would not mind making you squirm.

  She crossed her fingers and—keeping them crossed—wrapped them around his neck for another kiss.

  ****

  The rest of the arrivals trickled in starting at eleven o’clock. Savannah noted that asshole Professor Krantz right away. Then came another Savannah didn’t know by name, and a third she didn’t even recognize. They might not all have been “profs” at all. But they were older than the students, in some cases much older—as in, men and women who were probably in their fifties and beyond. “Old bones,” quite literally, in comparison to the current torchbearers of The Select.

  Some were entirely unfazed by the music and the hectic lighting, striding through the maelstrom of sensory overload and sex as though it were nothing, a day at the proverbial park, offering greetings, shaking the occasional hand. Others showed up with earplugs already in place. Most were rogue, but there were a few couples as well. All eventually found their way to the seats set in front of the stage.

  By 11:15, the chairs were half-filled.

  Don’t let Doctor Kubilus be one of them, Savannah kept repeating in her mind, until it became a mantra. Don’t let Doctor Kubilus be one of them. The mere contemplation of her revered Religion as a Source of War and Peace teacher seeing her in her current predicament was enough to make her sick to her stomach. Could there be ramifications on her essay’s referral to Nat Geo?

  Don’t think about it. She won’t be here. She’s not one of them, and she never has been.

  Veronica was back among the masses. Savannah and Scott were both watching when she returned to the party proper through the front Ballroom doors, tawse in hand. About her waist dangled one of the immense, strap-on prosthetic penises from the A-frames. Without breaking her stride, she put the tawse in her teeth, unclipped a thin, clear plastic bottle from her belt, and lubricated the fake cock—which actually extended it, and caused it to point upwards at a seventy-five-degree angle. She went straight to the left-hand wall.

  The first sub she fucked was a woman they didn’t yet know by name. Veronica kept her tawse in her teeth the whole time and didn’t hit her with it. She rode the girl while fingering herself, hands up her own skirt under the s
trap-on, revealing none of her secret self to the onlookers.

  The second was Huey.

  “Does sub-Huey want Mistress Veronica to core his asshole?” she asked, beckoning him over even as her prosthetic cock remained sheathed in the female sub’s pussy.

  Tremulously, he came to her, legs still wobbly from his beating. He either couldn’t or wouldn’t speak. But he nodded.

  “Are we done?” Veronica asked the weeping, seeping fem-sub before her. “Did you come yet?”

  “If it pleases Mistress Veronica. And—yes, Mistress. Thank you, Mistress.”

  Veronica patted her shoulder, then her ass, encouraging her to be off. “All right, man-bitch,” she then said to Huey. “Hands and knees. And if I hear so much as a peep out of you, I’ll give you a reason to fucking cry.”

  He cried and moaned all through it, never making actual words, his organ sticking out in front of him like a divining rod that had just found gold. With every helpless little noise he made, she struck him across the back with the tawse and heaved into him again.

  At 11:30, all of the chairs in front of the stage were filled—except one. The house lights came on and the music cut off, mid-song. By then, most of The Select were physically spent. Some of the beanbag recliners were now occupied by partners just pulling on their clothes. Across the floor were scattered socks and underwear, discarded empty punch cups rolling like tumbleweed. The Ballroom reeked of sweat and spunk and alcohol.

  Veronica pulled out of Huey, tapped the latex penis over the small of his back. “Stay on your elbows and knees, man-bitch,” she said. “Face on the floor. I want you to remain there, just the way I fucked you, until the drawing’s over. Then you may go back to the sub line. Say ‘Thank you, Mistress Veronica,’ without lifting your face up.”

  His floor-muffled voice answered, “Th-thank you, Mistress Veronica.”

  Savannah watched the rest of the party slowly settle. The other subs, not Huey, returned to the wall, facing out from it this time. The Doms reassumed command and took up positions throughout the ballroom, while the largest group—the Neutrals—brought in cheap plastic chairs from the Uncommon Café and set them in rows behind the notaries of Select alumni.

  There were plenty of places for everyone to sit, now—even the pigs, who had never yet been allowed to step one foot outside their Pen.

  Veronica came to them, closely followed by Malcolm and Tabitha. She clipped her tawse to the back of her belt, where it once again dangled like a three-pronged tail. “Stand on the line,” she said.

  No one moved.

  “What? Don’t you trust me?”

  The line, Savannah observed, was actually four long strips of red tape just barely on the interior of the rope stanchions, making a square. It hadn’t been much worth taking notice of before. Savannah figured it was there to indicate where the stanchions had to go, and to prevent anyone from moving them. Standing on the tape might be an excellent way to get one’s self collar-shocked.

  “I said, ‘Stand on the line’. It’s not close enough to fucking electrocute you, pig-sluts.”

  Still, no one moved—and no one among the Doms spoke up to support her, nor to threaten them with her.

  No, Savannah thought. We don’t trust you, Veronica. Not one bit.

  From the front of the stage, some of the alumni were turning in their chairs to watch.

  “Oh, fine,” Veronica spat. “Malcolm, go turn off the lightning.”

  Malcolm inclined his head in assent and recovered the control switchbox from Rusty. He tapped around on it. One at a time, the solid red glow at the top of each stanchion reverted to blinking, then went out entirely.

  “You can take off your collars now, pig-sluts,” she seethed at them. “Then maybe someone among you will grow a sack and do as you’re told before I make an example of one or two of you in the worst way I can think of.”

  Savannah turned the circlet in her fingers until they brushed over the tiniest hasp at what had been the back. It had probably been as hard-magnetized as the cuffs had been, but now it unsnapped with very little effort. Some of the others—not Scott, who was actually quicker getting his off—had trouble figuring it out.

  Malcolm and Tabitha collected the collars like giant bracelets on their arms, taking them from one pig at a time, waiting for Savannah and Scott to help out the stragglers, until every pig in the Pen was steel-free, many rubbing their necks in relief.

  “Now, stand on the fucking line!” Veronica screamed.

  Savannah put first one foot on the line, then the other. Scott followed right behind, keeping his place at her side. Then they all did it, even Phil—although he was slower than the rest and put himself on the line last.

  They were a perfect square defining the Pen’s perimeter inside the ropes, shoulder to shoulder, facing outward.

  “This, too, is tradition,” Veronica then said, striding along Savannah and Scott’s side of the square. “The former members of The Select—our beloved Old Bones, including many of our current teachers—sometimes request invitations to our little parties…”

  At this, Savannah heard the scraping of heavy chair legs over the polished wooden floor.

  “Don’t be too stressed out about it, pig-sluts. They’re only here to observe. The teachers do not touch. Some, such as the esteemed Professor Krantz”—was that sarcasm in her voice?—“seek only to preserve the integrity of our society. They do not wish to see its practices change with changing times. Some like to evaluate the new stock. That means you. Lower your heads. Hands at your sides. Be evaluated.”

  Footsteps, from behind: Old Bones. Savannah heard them fan out behind her at the other end of the square before she saw any of them. The first one to actually come into view was Krantz himself. Head lowered, through cautiously upturned eyes, she watched him approach. He was frowning, as ever, his ever-critical eyes passing head to foot over each initiate with quick appraisal, often disapproval.

  I am so glad that creep isn’t one of my professors, Savannah thought. The old, ill-tempered Making the Transition Teacher might have been ruggedly handsome in his day. A shadow of that handsomeness remained in his salt-and-pepper hair, the wiry thin build that suggested he still worked on maintaining himself physically. But his demeanor—which never varied—ruined it.

  Again, she wondered who the last chair by the stage was for.

  “Very often,” Veronica plowed on, “we receive requests for invitations from the Old Bones when they have current students up for selection. There’s a special delight in that for them, seeing their charges in the Pen—and a real fucking thrill if one of their own wins the lottery. To the pig-sluts in question, being presented in this way in front of their teachers, who already wield considerable power and responsibility over them, is often quite humiliating. Which makes it even better.”

  Through the corner of her eye, Savannah saw that one of the Old Bones—not really an old woman, per se, maybe in her forties—had gone straight to the sub-line instead of the Pen. She’d passed Huey, who still knelt face flat on the floor. She ignored him, and was now staring down at Melody—who stared helplessly back up at her, eyes pooling with liquid shame.

  “Your paper on the Realists is due on Monday,” the woman reminded her, then admonished, “Try not to forget, dear.”

  And from Melody, her voice once again that of the timid freshman in the locker room, hands pressed dutifully flat atop her mud-crusted head, naked breasts rising and falling with deeper-than-average breath. “It’s … already done, ma’am.”

  “Excellent. I’m sorry—is this awkward for you?”

  “May I … answer honestly, ma’am?”

  The woman leaned in close, hands on knees, head tilting slowly right, then left, as though memorizing her. “Please do. I wouldn’t have asked the question if I didn’t want an honest answer.”

  A hitched sob. “Yes … ma’am. It’s … very awkward. I’m so embarrassed.”

  “And you love it, don’t you?”

  �
�I … I d-don’t know, Professor Durst. I … didn’t think you’d be here. I … wish you wouldn’t stare at me like that.”

  “Oh, I do apologize, dear,” she said without averting her eyes, standing again, then circling her. “You’re just so delectable.”

  “Th-thank you, Professor Durst.”

  The rest of The Select alumni now encircled the entire enclosure. They chatted amongst themselves as they examined the pigs from a foot or less away. The shared old memories, inquired about families, argued over who Washington would pick in the first round of the draft—and discussed the half-dressed pigs’ physical characteristics as if the pigs themselves weren’t there, or couldn’t understand them.

  Krantz stopped in front of Savannah, but he spoke to Veronica. “You’re lucky this one stepped up to the line,” he said.

  Savannah thought that was fair enough. If she hadn’t done it first, perhaps none of them would have done it at all. And wouldn’t that have been awkward—Mistress?

  Veronica glowered at him, then at her. Being mad at Professor Krantz, Savannah understood. Questioning her power over the “pig-sluts” while assessing the pig-sluts—who could hear, after all—was decidedly poor form on his part. But what she might have done to earn a glower from the senior Skull in The Select, Savannah had no earthly clue.

  She’s a bitch, Savannah thought, and that’s all. It’s not just a role for her.

  “Head up,” Krantz said, his words clipped, devoid of emotion.

  Savannah lifted her head, thinking this guy wouldn’t know her from Eve. There was no reason for him to be interested.

  He studied Savannah’s face. Her neck.

  Don’t let him see the pendant, Mom. Protect it. Please. Protect us.

  Her hair was over it still, as well as the closed front of her purity rag. But the more Savannah saw of the goings-on here at the Origins Fete, the more foolish she felt for not stowing it in the locker back at the gym. One way or another, no matter what, no one was taking it from her.

  “Hands over your head. Make a V for victory, please.”