'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.