The Dildo Designer's Apprentice

To start with, he didn't just design dildos, but the name stuck. Alliteration, I guess. And there wasn't just one apprentice, but a bunch of them -- or so we figured. Women weren't, strictly speaking, barred from the workshop/club/restaurant/God knows what else on the edge of town, but I didn't know anyone who'd set foot in the place.

The ad was small and subtle. Classy, almost. "Hands (and other body parts) needed," it read in small elegant script in a little business-card-sized ad in the Harran Courier, "You know you're curious." And then it gave that infamous address no one talks about, Ehul Hall, and a phone number.

What can I say? A single lady of 40 doesn't get much attention out here. And I *was* curious.

The phone message didn't offer that many clues: "We demand total obedience," it warned. "Don't come unless you can deliver that. This is not an employment opportunity. But you will work hard."

The first available tryout session was on Saturday morning. What's the worst that could happen? I asked myself.

On Saturday, I stood with about eighty other women, ranging from early-twenties to mid-sixties, nervously milling around in casual weekend clothing in a barn-like outbuilding on the Ehul complex. To me, the most shocking thing -- other than how many of us were there -- was how many of them I recognized. Many must have come from out of town, sure. But others: I didn't *know* them, but I'd seen them in the A&P or in line at the post office.

After an interminable wait, a trim woman dressed all in black and carrying a riding crop closed the doors and told us to take a seat on the floor. "Not like that!" she barked, and there was something authoritative in her voice. We listened. She arranged us in a rectangle, in eight neat rows, and introduced herself as Barbara, a roving recruiter for The Designer.

They only needed about ten new women, she explained, but it usually took well over a hundred hopefuls to get "ten viable cunts," as she matter-of-factly put it. "Most of you won't make the cut," she said. "And so feel free to leave at any time. But remember: once you do, you can never come back."

A determined little voice in the back of my head said: I'm getting in.

"And now: strip. Come on, quickly!" She paced in between the rows. "What did you think this was going to be? A tea party? You were going to braid each other's hair and talk about boys?" With the end of the crop, she prodded women who were hesitating. We all hurried out of our clothing and tried not to look at each other.

Barbara blew a whistle, and the doors opened and a group of about twenty leering men streamed in. Several women gasped. One tried to cover herself. "You!" Barbara said, rolling her eyes. "Out! Obviously." The woman grabbed her clothes and fled. The rest of us kept our arms resolutely at our sides.

"Arms raised!" Barbara barked. "Legs apart! Silence!"

In twos and threes, the men began to work their way down the rows, making notes on clipboards. The first one to reach me grabbed my breasts and tweaked my nipples, hard. The second one took out a sling-type scale and actually weighed each breast, jotting down the results, while I blushed furiously. The next one opened my mouth, peered in, and then stuffed it with several fingers, impassively watching me struggle to accommodate them. Another one looked me up and down and then unceremoniously plunged his finger into my pussy and then sniffed it. Several had me bend over and spread my pussy lips or ass cheeks while they examined me with a flashlight. One ended the inspection by pushing the cold metal flashlight into my cunt, having me straighten up, telling me to try to keep the heavy object inside me, and counting the seconds until it slipped out. On the periphery, I noticed several other women fleeing, carrying their clothes; some in tears. I'll confess; I didn't have a lot of sympathy. What the hell did you think Elhul Hall *was*? I wondered. I mean, at that point, I didn't know, either. But I had *some* idea.

The men retreated. They handed their notes off to one man, who sat going through them, and observed us from the sides. "You." Barbara prodded a woman in the second row. "Stick your finger in her cunt." She lightly smacked the woman next to her. The first woman froze. "Out," Barbara said.

To me, she said, "on your knees. Lick her clit."

I'm not a lesbian. I've never been with a woman. But, almost without thinking, I dropped to my knees in front of my neighbor, who was fortunately a luscious young thing with milky skin and a fine golden down across her belly. Her lips were neat -- and slick. I had the feeling we were both going to get through. I ran my tongue down her cleft, momentarily nervous about finding her clit, but the hard nub rose to meet me. I encircled it with my tongue, breathing in her warm dampness and enjoying the mix of textures and her rough breathing. Barbara grunted, pushed me back, and moved on.

When the man had tallied the notes and ratings, Barbara came through the rows and dismissed the low-ranked. We were re-formed into eight rows of five, and told to sit.

Elhul Hall, we were told, was primarily a workshop for the Designer, but it also had to raise money. Much care and cost would be put into our training, and, if selected, we would be indentured and have to work it off. committing to a certain number of days in residence per month. The Hall was also a club for men from neighboring communities, and, if we wanted the privilege of serving the Designer, we would also have to serve the club patrons. In whatever way they wanted. While at the Hall, we had no right of consent -- the only choice was to be there or not, and to be there was to consent to everything. The only two things that mattered were absolute obedience while at the Hall, and absolute discretion while outside it.

This pre-selection, we were told -- or, as Barbara put it, "getting rid of the dregs" -- was done by volunteers, but the actual pool of women at the Hall was managed by a team of sadists chosen by the Designer. We would only make the final cut if a particular man chose to add us to his stable.

With that, Barbara opened the side doors of the barn and ushered us into the courtyard. While we stood there, shivering and blinking in the sunlight, the doms began to arrive. Each pulled up in a cart hitched to two women. No two teams were identical: some had long beribboned tails coming out of their asses; others had hooks in their ass that were attached to their ponytails and pulled back their heads. All had bridles and bits in their mouth, and most had tassels and weights on their nipples, and some were whipped as they pulled.

The second phase of selection was about to begin.