Gail stirred in the darkness and opened her eyes. Her room was familiar and comforting but something prickled in the back of her mind. Still fuzzy with sleep, she tried to marshal her thoughts, picking through her half-formed impressions, trying to place the feeling of wrongness. She listened, but the sound of her own heart in her head, pounding wildly, drowned out every other sound. She blinked, once, twice, trying to see through the gloom of the early morning hours. Her nose twitched, itching, as a faint miasma of expensive cologne, mingled with hay and dust assailed her nostrils. She sat up suddenly alert, straining to see or hear. Somebody was in the room. She swivelled her head from side to side, opening her mouth to speak, even to scream, as the bed dipped with the weight of a person sitting next to her. She drew a deep breath, ready to scream, as a cloth bag, musty-smelling and close-knit was thrust over her head. She screamed, but the cloth covered her mouth and muffled the sound to little more than a whisper.
Gail felt a cord being drawn tight around her neck, closing the bag so that she was blinded. She tried to untangle her arms and legs from her bedclothes but she was too slow and the next thing she knew, someone had ripped the sheets covering her, leaving her sitting on the bed, wearing only her pyjamas. Gail tried to shuffle away from the person sitting on her bed, but a hard hand reached out and grabbed the cotton of her pyjama top. She froze as the hand pulled her closer. Gail could smell a man's breath, soured by beer, through the mustiness of the hood. Fingers fumbled with the buttons of her pyjama jacket opening them and pushing the material aside to expose her tender, rounded breasts. Hard calloused fingers pinched and twisted her sweet nipple, making her gasp in pain.
"Careful," a deep voice growled from the other side of the room, "the boss said she wasn't to be marked or damaged and you know what he did to the last one who marked the merchandise."
"It'll fade," a voice whined in her ear, "and by the time we get her to the farm we can say she did it to herself."
The hands tugged at her pyjama jacket, tearing it off and leaving her breasts and belly uncovered. Gail shivered as the cold air played across her torso, chilling her nipples into hard erect points. The hard hand, that had grabbed her pyjama jacket, pushed hard against her chest, sending her sprawling backwards. She felt hot fingers hooking over the elastic of her pyjama pants and pulling them down, leaving her naked.
Strong hands grabbed her and rolled her onto her belly, pinning her to the bed. Gail felt fingers digging cruelly into her wrists and dragging them behind her back. She desperately wriggled struggling to break his hold, but her attacker was too strong and it took only seconds for his partner to join him and fasten her hands together. One of them pinned her legs and the other fastened her ankles to a short length of rope. Once she was pinioned they grabbed her arms and hauled her to her feet. Gail hobbled, blind and naked, their hard hands holding her upper arms tightly, along the landing and down the stairs as her captors dragged her out of her house. She could feel the gravel of her path, cutting painfully into her feet and then she was lifted and flung into the back of a van. She could smell dogs and the sour smell of old vomit on the rough sacking that padded the floor. Doors were slammed and the van pulled away from the kerb.
The ride seemed to last forever. Gail was jostled and bounced across the floor of the van, banging her elbows and hips painfully against the lining of the van walls. The sour-sweet smell and the heavy musk from some animal made her stomach roil and cramp painfully. The van jerked to a halt, brakes screeching and the rumble of the diesel engine died. The doors were flung open and a wave of cooler air washed over her naked body. Even through the hood, Gail could feel the change in temperature and taste a sweeter aroma than the tainted air of the van. The inside of her hood was slick with sweat that had run down her face to sting her eyes and goosebumps popped up over her body as the draught cooled the sheen of moisture on her skin.
Gail was hauled roughly out of the van and set upon her feet. She gratefully gulped huge breaths of the fresher air, catching the smells of hay and horses, with a sharper tang of freshly sawn wood. A hard finger prodded her in the back, pushing her forwards. She tottered along; her normally long stride shortened by the rope between her ankles, feeling smooth, varnished planks beneath her feet. The smell of sawn wood got stronger and she heard the sound of a lock being opened. A hard shove in the small of her back sent her sprawling, she felt a weight on her back and the cold kiss of a knife blade as it sliced through the cords around her wrists. Before she could move, the weight was gone and a door slammed behind her.
Gail clawed at the cord around her neck and pulled the hood off, then reached down to unfasten the rope around her ankles. The room was brightly lit by fluorescent lights in wire cages on the ceiling. The door had no handle and the walls were white-painted blocks, with no window. A narrow bed, with a thin mattress, occupied one wall and a covered bucket stood in the opposite corner. The ceiling was about ten feet high, well beyond her reach, even standing on the bed. The floor was bare, varnished, planking. There was no other furniture, no bedclothes and only the hood and the lengths of rope that had been used to bind her had been left in the room with her. In the corner of the ceiling, a blind, opaque glass eye marked the location of a video camera and a black plastic grill hid a speaker and microphone.
Gail crossed to the door and pounded her fists against the wood. The door stayed tightly shut, the frame unyielding. She thought of screaming and yelling, anything to attract attention, but deep down she knew that the only people who would come would be her captor and, thinking about what they might do if she became too troublesome, she decided to wait awhile. Crossing to the bed, she sat on the edge of the mattress and looked around the bare walls. The bed was narrower than an ordinary single bed and fastened to the floor, with a gap between it and the wall. Gail noticed that the bedposts had stout metal eyelets fitted into the wood, almost at floor level and another set, close to the top of the posts. She reached out to touch the smooth metal, feeling the cold smoothness against her fingertips, realising that the loops had been spaced to conform to her precise measurements. A frisson of fear streaked through her nerves as she realised that they must have watched and followed her for months.
Gail heard the click of a key being turned and the door swung open. A tall slender brunette stood in the doorway, watching for a moment, moved into the room. She was naked and carried a tray with a plastic bowl of thin oatmeal. Gail made to move towards her as a tall, muscular man stepped into the opening. In his hand he carried a cattle prod that crackled menacingly. The brunette placed the tray on the floor, picked up the hood and remains of her bindings and backed away. Both of them stepped into the corridor and slammed the door closed. Gail picked up the tray and forced herself to eat the cold, tasteless slop in the bowl. The brunette had not spoken or even looked at Gail, paying her less attention than an insect.
Gail finished the food and placed the tray on the floor. She could still feel the griping pangs of hunger and her throat was parched. Her mouth had the gritty feel and sour taste of dehydration and she could feel her thoughts becoming woolly. She tried to shout, to attract attention, but all she could manage was a weak, rasping croak. She lay on the narrow bed and closed her eyes against the hot, stinging tears of despair.
Gail had no idea how long she had been kept in the room. The lights burned continuously and, no matter which way she laid on the bed, the mattress was too short and narrow for her to rest comfortably. Even the bowls of thin oatmeal that were the only food offered to her, were brought at irregular, varying intervals. The brunette who brought and collected the trays neither looked at her, nor spoke to her. Gail tried to concoct schemes to overpower her captors and paced her cell and performing abdominal curls and press-ups on the narrow strip of floor.
Gail felt that three or four days had passed when her captivity changed. The door opened and, as always, she stood quickly. The door swung wide and, instead of the brunette who brought her food, two of her guards stood in the corridor. One of them swung his cattle prod menacingly, while the other stepped into the room and smoothly covered her head with a coarse canvas hood. She felt the tightening of a cord around her neck and then rough hands shoved her through the door and into the corridor.
