For Emma P.
I left the pub in a daze, my tummy seemingly filled with a riot of moths worshipping the flickering candle of my fear; my everyday self reduced to mere helpless observer as my brain's capacity for rational thought melted away, drunk on a cocktail of nameless desires and nervous excitement, set ablaze by the pure white heat of animal lust.
My cunt oozed its approval.
As instructed, I followed Georgina in silence through a maze of narrow backstreets, hanging back until we reached a tiny car-park where I was shepherded towards the rear of a battered red van with the scratched-out remains of the words 'Royal Mail' on its sides -- a retired mail-van bought cheaply at auction only weeks before, I later learned, but worked into the ground ever since.
I remember a blast of hot air almost searing my exposed skin when the rear doors were opened, an hour or more parked in the hot sun having turned the van's interior into an oven. Then the stench hit me -- the stink of rotting compost and fresh manure, rendered piquant by the tang of engine oil, creosote, piss and stale sweat.
"I really must get round to giving it a good clean out one of these days," Georgina mused, seeing my nose wrinkle its disgust. "But then farms are just naturally smelly, so you'll just have to get used to it."
"I'll take that," she snapped, her tone firm but still amiable as she all-but snatched my little suitcase from my hand. "You won't be needing it and it will be quite safe with me up front. Best to start as we mean to carry on, don't you think? Livestock travels in the back."
A sharp intake of breath as I watched Georgina unlock the sturdy wire cage that had once been used to secure the more valuable items of mail. Was I already reduced to a mere beast?
"Shoes off!" Georgina continued. "We don't want you breaking a heel. Love your dress by the way. Shame to ruin it though, so let's have that off as well, shall we? In fact, seeing the time, you may as well take everything off while we're here. We're running late."
Georgina rummaged through her satchel-sized handbag and handed me a large, black, plastic sack and a stout manilla envelope.
"Footwear and clothing in the sack. Phone, jewellery, purse and any other valuables in the envelope. Make sure you turn off your phone and seal the envelope when you're done. I'll give you a receipt when we get to the farm. You'll get it all back when you leave.
"Well? What are you waiting for?!!! Undress and hop in!"
I still can't believe how matter-of-fact Georgina sounded. She reminded me of my Job Centre Advisor whenever the system set me a task we both knew was a complete waste of time -- that same vacant smile; that same patient raising of the eyebrows while she waited for some sign of compliance; the silent assertion that it was not up for debate, just a box to be ticked: 'This is what we do now or there are consequences'.
Even so, Georgina's instructions hit me like a punch in the stomach. I hadn't prepared for the possibility that my 'holiday' might begin before we reached the farm. And she had been right about me being painfully self-conscious about my body -- a still weeping wound left by the merciless teasing I endured at school when I developed breasts while my peers still had at best only puffy pectorals. The one and only time I was induced to go on a beach holiday as an adult, I spent the entire week hiding under a beach-towel. Yet there I was being asked to strip naked, not just in front of a woman I barely knew, but in broad daylight and in public.
"What?!!! You mean here?! Now?!" I stammered. "Oh fuck! Please no! You are joking, right? Can't we wait until we get to the farm?"
"You asked for this! No limits remember?!" Georgina reminded me. "So be a good little piggie, take everything off and hand it over ... NOW please!"
So I was a pig and this my Rubicon -- my point of no return! A sudden wave of panic threatened to engulf me, leaving me frozen like a rabbit trapped in the headlights of an oncoming juggernaut, unable to take my eyes off the trickle of passers-by traversing the car-park's road entrance less than fifteen metres away; one or two glancing in our direction.
"Oh, poor piggie!" Georgina mocked. "Are you shy? Surely you must know that pigs don't wear clothes and you, my dear, are now a pig.
"Or are you thinking you are somehow better than the last sow I transported? One rule for you and another for us peasants? Is that it? Oh my God! And here was I thinking you were joking about being a stuck-up posh bitch!
"So let me explain how this works. I have to get back to the farm now. I can leave with my van empty, or I can leave with a pig in the back. Your choice! Just stop wasting my fucking time! Either do as you are fucking told or fuck off and find your own fucking way home!
"Nobody forced you to make the promises you made and I won't force you to keep them. But it will be your loss and I doubt you will ever forgive yourself if you chicken out and break your word and you know it!"
She was right of course. I had asked for this. Or rather, implicit in my acceptance of a place on Monkswood Farm was the understanding that my promise to submit to whatever might be demanded of me, without question or complaint, was a sort of plea to be dragged, kicking and screaming if necessary, so far beyond my comfort zones that I could never go back.
"You want this," I told myself. "You need this," I told myself. "It's for your own good and you know it," I told myself. And as my panic abated, I found myself silently chanting the mantra my best and only friend at school had taught me when she first showed me how to orgasm: "Fear is the enemy, the destroyer of dreams. Listen to your body. Dare to be happy. Dare to be yourself!"
I was still shaking like a leaf though. In fact, my hands were trembling so violently my fingers proved incapable of undoing more than the top three of the nine buttons that held the front of my calf-length, cotton dress closed, obliging Georgina to step in and undo the rest for me.
"No, you have to take it off and put it in the sack yourself," she added, seeing me waiting for her to finish the job. "If I do it, you can claim you were forcibly stripped against your will. This way confirms your consent."
Why oh why had I chosen to wear my sexiest, semi-sheer, black lace bra and matching frilly French knickers?
"Nice! Very nice!" Georgina purred once my dress was in the sack; her sly smile leaving me in no doubt that it was not just my underwear that she was admiring. "Keep going! Pigs don't wear undies, now do they, sow?!"
Shaking from head to toe, I took a deep breath and forced myself to slip my bra-straps off my shoulders, but that was as far as my spinning brain would take me in terms of what to do next. In the end, it was left to Georgina to undo the clasp at the back. My heart stuttered, feeling her hot breath on my neck and bare shoulders.
Then she stepped back, shaking her head in mock disbelief, making no effort to conceal her amusement as she witnessed the embarrassingly comic spectacle of me attempting to deposit my bra in the sack with both arms clamped across my chest like an Egyptian mummy -- an utterly futile attempt to cling to modesty I realised, seeing her then nod towards my knickers, knowing I needed both hands to remove them.
That was when I really lost it! Cowering between the van's open doors with my thumbs in the waist-band of my drawers and my bare tits hanging free, I just happened to look up and immediately dropped to my knees, stifling a scream as I curled up into a foetal ball, having realised my strip-tease was being performed under the unblinking, ever watchful eye of the CCTV camera on a nearby lamp-post.
