'Oh my god, I swear something just moved,' Tara said with more than a hint of horror in her voice.
'Shut up,' Priya replied. 'You're just imagining it.'
'Oh, no, I'm afraid she's right.' This third voice crackled into life via some unseen speaker. 'They're probably left over from last time. It's a pain in the ass to get them all out of there.'
'Get all what out of here?' Tara asked.
'Don't worry though, there's plenty more where those came from,' the disembodied voice answered, ignoring her question.
'Worms,' said a fourth voice -- the third female one. This one was calmer than the other two, but in a resigned way. Stacey had been through this before and, although she didn't like it, she at least knew vaguely what was going to happen.
The other two women turned to face her -- an awkward movement in the confined space they currently populated which meant their barely-covered chests all came into contact -- with their mouths agape.
'You're joking, right?' Tara asked. 'Winding us up? I'm not really in the mood for your particular brand of--oh god I felt one move!'
Tara instinctively pulled her leg out of the shallow water and held onto Priya's arm. The three of them were packed into a tiny square space, with barely enough room for them to fit in a clustered triangle of flesh and latex. A few inches of dark, grimy water covered the floor, obscuring it entirely. It was cold, and there was just enough of it to reach the calves of the three women currently wallowing in it. There really wasn't enough room for what Tara had just done, and it hadn't helped the tense atmosphere.
'Shut up,' Priya yelled back, swatting Tara's knee away from her own thigh.
Like her fellow captives, Priya wore a one-piece swimsuit made of latex. Hers was white, Tara's black and Stacey's a dark shade of blue. All three were unusual in design, hardly fit for swimming whatsoever, since the low-cut neck meant that each woman was showing a ton of cleavage. Appealing to the eye, certainly, but far from the most streamlined styling.
The three of them were so tightly packed into the enclosed space that the aforementioned cleavage was almost constantly pressed together. Their friendship was already being stringently tested and, as Stace knew, things had only just started. She didn't tell them, of course, thinking to herself that it would only make matters worse if they knew what Master had in store. Instead, she adjusted her uncomfortable wedgie for the fifth time already and tried to find a position that would stop another one from forming between her thick, round buttocks.
'My name is Master,' the disembodied voice went on at last. 'You will be my entertainment for the next, um, however long it takes. Don't worry. I'm not going to hurt you or anything, but at the same time, you might not enjoy everything that happens. Stace has been here before, so she knows the deal, but I'll give you the gist before we begin. Some unpleasant things are going to happen, and some stuff that may or may not be pleasant, depending on your disposition. You will endure them all the same, because, as you can tell, you're stuck there. After you've endured, the idea is that you will be a stronger team. Enjoy. Or don't.'
Stacey rolled her eyes and silently mouthed a curse as the other two turned to face her, incredulous looks on their faces.
'You've been here before?' Tara asked.
'Did you organise this?' Priya demanded.
'Sort of. Not exactly. Look, it's best not to worry about it.'
'How can we not worry about it?' Tara asked.
'Well, you'll have other things to worry about fairly shortly.'
'What other things? There is something in here with us isn't there?'
Stacey weighed this question up for a moment before answering. 'If there aren't, there soon will be.'
The response of the other two women was drowned out by mechanical grinding and whirring, but it was plain from their faces that whatever they said had featured several expletives. Several more were then uttered as the water level began quickly rising, but they too were drowned out by the noise of what was presumably some kind of pump.
Stacey knew they were in no real danger, and her calmness seemed to be somewhat infectious, but even she was unnerved by the combiStaceion of a confined space and rising water. Then things got a whole lot worse.
The water stopped rising at around about chest height, but a panel in the roof opened up instead and out fell a mass of -- something. It was impossible to tell at first, and the terrified shrieks of her colleagues made it difficult to concentrate, but it soon became obvious that they were being joined in their watery box-room by some kind of worm or eel-type creatures. Hundreds of them cascaded into the water, bouncing off the heads and chests of the three women and splashing them with dirty water.
The near-deafening noise finally stopped and Master' voice took their place for a moment. 'Meet your new friends, the hagfish. Oh, and here, I almost forgot these.'
Three pairs of goggles fell from the same gap in the ceiling, landing on the surface of the water.
'What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck?!' Tara squealed as the grimy water splashed her.
'Stace, what the hell is going on?' Priya asked, only slightly more calmly.
Stacey didn't know what to say. The hagfish squirming around on the floor of the tank said more than she ever could. Even she, somewhat used to this kind of treatment by now, and so rarely unnerved, squirmed internally when she felt the fish wriggling around her bare feet and legs. Slime was already oozing from the creatures, excreted from their worm-like bodies and now filling the water completely.
It was like nothing any of the women had ever felt before, even Stace. It was vile, slimy, and impossible to shake off, and yet somehow it still felt as though nothing were there. It didn't feel sticky, but it clung to their naked skin like sap. It had an almost velvety, silky texture to it, but not in a good way. Combined with the unseen wriggling feeling around their vulnerable legs, feet and thighs, it made for an utterly bizarre sensation and there was no sign of it stopping any time soon.
Priya looked horrified and Tara was barely keeping a lid on her own terror, it seemed. Stace knew she had to try and be the strong one here. She suggested they slip their goggles on, by way of a distraction more than anything, but the idea backfired when Priya found a hagfish clinging to the pair she had been given. She threw them up in the air with a shriek and they landed with another splash, floating between the trio of women. Tara had slipped hers on, fish-free, in the meantime. Stace offered hers to Priya, making sure the fish had dislodged itself from the pair she had just thrown away.
'D-don't we need snorkels or something?' Priya asked nervously, trying to distract herself.
'No, I think it will stop there. He just likes goggles, I guess.'
Priya and Tara both raised an eyebrow at that, but had nothing else to add. Of all the things they had heard in the past five minutes, this was probably the least bizarre. Both of them still looked understandably uncomfortable but the fear seemed to have subsided into disgust for the time being. Stace couldn't blame them -- she felt exactly the same, just hid it better. The slimy movement around their breasts and stomachs was alarming, but at least they were able move enough and see enough to do something about it. Several inquisitive fish were swatted away from the low-cut tops of their swimsuits but there was no way anyone could stop the slimy creatures from squirming and wriggling around their more sensitive areas.
With the swimsuits on, and the water resting at breast height, Stace knew the girls were safe from more intimate invasions, but she also knew that wasn't going to last.
'Now you've had time to get acquainted, you ladies are going to put on a show together.' This was Master on the speaker again.
Immediately, a panel in front of the women opened up, revealing a large glass window. At the same time, the murky water started to drain out of the cell via a grate in the floor and the left and right walls separated, allowing the trio some room in which to manoeuvre and spread out. They did so, reluctantly, expecting some kind of trap. None was forthcoming, at least not yet, so they pulled away from one another, glad to be disentangled from their nearly-naked colleagues and gladder still to be mostly free of the vile hagfish and their slime. There were still a few of them flipping and wriggling on the grated floor, but it was nothing compared to the situation just seconds ago.
Then Tara peered through the window and saw someone watching them with a cocky grin on his face. Master, she assumed.
'That's him,' Stace confirmed.
Priya pounded on the glass, 'let us out of here!'
Master pointed to his ear, tapped silently on the glass and mouthed 'I can't hear you,' earning him a groan of frustration from Priya.
'So we're stuck in here,' Tara asked, 'and he controls everything?'