Kitty woke from troubled dreams to the sound of something going bump in the night - a bump that knocked her green dragon dildo to the floor with a dense thud.
"Shhhh, be quiet ye spindly git."
"Quiet yeself, you'll wake the pigeon."
Cold horror settled into Kitty's belly. Her eyes strained against the darkness of her room but saw nothing and she didn't hear another sound. Maybe she was still dreaming. Ellie hadn't barked, and she barked at everything, so it must be nothing. She thought about turning on a light but was too afraid to reach for the bedside lamp. Instead she willed herself invisible beneath the covers, and waited for her heart to stop hammering in her chest.
Kitty had just about convinced herself she was alone in her room when a pair of forms loomed over her out of the darkness. Well, perhaps they didn't loom, since their heads barely came up to the level of Kitty's trembling body, but they terrified her all the same. She drew in a breath to scream but before she could exhale a sweet smelling mist puffed in her face.
"Oi lass, none o' that now."
Kitty coughed once and then her head began to spin. She had an odd thought about her mother warning her to wear clean underwear in case she was ever kidnapped, and then remembered that she slept in the nude, before rolling away under a wave of oblivion.
***
Kitty woke in a muzzy fog, but she quickly became aware of two things, she was still very much undressed and her hands and feet were bound in rough cord. It was the second fact that jolted her awake and banished any notions that her previous experience had been merely a nightmare. She tried to sit up, but her muscled weren't cooperating and her bones felt like jelly. She made do with twisting her neck to scan the dim room, her vision spinning with the effort. She seemed to be in some sort of cabin, with roughhewn, unfinished walls and a low fire in a stone fireplace. Kitty had a panicked thought of cannibal rednecks playing banjos, but what came through the door was even stranger and more frightening.
Three creatures entered the room. The first was almost comic - a very short man, a little person, with a long white beard and a pointed red hat. He looked like a lawn ornament come to life. The other two were not much bigger, but not at all jolly looking. One had a round, hairless head that reminded her of a toad, including warty gray-green skin, though no toad had the mouth full of pointed, snaggly teeth this creature did. It was dressed in rough spun clothes over a stout frame and she shuddered at the thought that its oversized hands may have touched her bare skin. The last creature was thin and wiry, dressed in dark, oily leathers. It had huge bat-like ears and its pointed nose and chin were each so long they nearly touched.
The thin one spoke first and Kitty recognized the voice from her bedroom, "What'a ye think boss? Will the master like this one?"
The gnome-like fellow came close and Kitty instinctively drew herself into a ball. "Well she's awake already, so she has spirit." He tugged his beard in thought, then leaned over to pinch Kitty's round ass. She let out a terrified squeak. "And there's more meat on this one than the last scrawny thing you caught." He straightened. "She'll do."
Tears blurred in Kitty's eyes as fear and indignation battled inside her. She opened her mouth to speak, to protest, to scream for help, but before she could decide which, the ridiculous gnome produced something resembling an old-fashioned perfume bottle and gave her a puff of now-familiar sweet smelling mist. Kitty's head dropped back immediately, her fear fading with her consciousness.
"That's better," said the gnome. "The master don't want us to get you worked up and screaming. Likes to do that himself."
Kitty drifted off to the sound of their hideous laughter.
***
Kitty was getting tired of waking up in strange places. This time her eyes fluttered open to a sea of green. She squinted and blinked against bright daylight until she could see that she was in a forest. It took her a moment to realize she was sitting upright, but it was a woozy lean to her right and the resulting jolt of pain in her shoulder that alerted her to her true situation.
Her wrists were bound with crude ropes that each led to a stout sapling. She'd been sleeping with her arms suspended up and out to her sides and her shoulders protested every move she made. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, willing herself to stay calm. Panic nipped at her bare heels, but she managed to keep it at bay while her head continued to clear. She got to her feet, relieving the strain on her arms, and surveyed the situation. Her wrists were wrapped a dozen times each with a rough cord as thick as her thumb. She pulled experimentally at each and found that the saplings had just enough give to sway a little, but not nearly enough to bring her arms close to her body, she couldn't even bring her hands near enough to gnaw on the ropes with her teeth.
Kitty gave up trying to escape for the moment and tried to think. She was in a clearing in a denser wood. The ground was rocky beneath her feet, but cushioned by a thick layer of moss. Dappled light fell though air that was scented with earthy forest mulch, tinted with wildflowers. Water flowed musically in some nearby stream accompanied by an assortment of songbirds. If she hadn't been kidnapped and left bound and naked for some unknown fate, it would have been an idyllic setting.
Pausing in her survey of the environment, Kitty had a moment of dread thinking about what her fate might be. References to a master suggested she wasn't going to be alone for long. But what did this master want with her? And why did it involve her being tied up in the woods? The most obvious answer was terrifying enough, but the monstrous appearance of her kidnappers as well as references to her "meatiness" made other horrors dance through her head.
Panic had just about overtaken her when a faint sound made her freeze like a rabbit. Had that been a stick breaking? Maybe a squirrel alighting on the forest floor? Her heart hammered while ears and eyes strained. A shush of leaves behind her, a scritch of claw on stone. Kitty held her breath, didn't dare to blink, and wished she could silence the heartbeat that surely echoed from her chest all the way to the tree tops. The scent of apple blossoms wafted through the air, the pleasant sweetness at odds with Kitty's terror. She felt the creature before she saw it, a creeping buzz along her skin, followed by a shadow moving in the corner of her eye.
When the creature finally crept into sight, Kitty's brain had trouble making sense of what she saw. It took several moments before the disparate parts - the shiny deep green scales, the sinuous neck, the flashing golden eyes, the enormous curved claws - finally coalesced into a coherent image. A dragon.
The creature circled to her front, its sun-bright eyes fixed on her in a predator's stare. Kitty backed up as far as she could, her arms straining against the ropes. Again she wished she was dressed, not that any clothing short of steel armor would help her now. When the dragon's forked tongue lanced out in her direction she finally let out the scream that had been threatening to burst forth since she first heard something bump into her bedside table.
