Alice In Chains (26 page)

The Queen was about to ride though when Albinous suddenly pointed up at the sky in the direction they had come. ‘Look, Majesty!’

At first Alice thought it was a bird he was pointing to silhouetted against the low band of bright sky, gradually flapping its way towards them and into the shadow of the perpetual overcast. Then the White Queen laughed loudly as she realised what it was.

The Red Queen was coming. Her cloak billowed behind her as her legs pumped away in their improbable distance-devouring strides that drove her through the air.

‘The strength it must have cost her to travel so far and fast!’ The White Queen said, with a hint of admiration. ‘A last sad reminder of how we used to bestride this world, but a careless move. She found the wood empty and she must know Sir Rubin has been taken. Even if there was one to hand, she cannot carry another girling with her to breach the barrier. And, once within, you will be beyond her control. She has lost!’

She rode through the brook between Alice and Juliet with Albinous close behind her. Alice had a last glimpse of the Red Queen swooping desperately down out of the sky like a vengeful eagle, before a tug on their leashes jerked her and Juliet into the gloom of the final square.

Eleven

THE WOOD WAS
vast and gloomy, its trees straight and tall, their lower branches mostly lying broken and fallen to the ground. Those that remained spread into a tangled canopy high above their heads. This further muted what meagre light the sky delivered, filling the hollows with shadow. And over all this was the sense of an unseen and malicious presence.

These threatening new surroundings did not please their horses, which began to toss their heads and scrape their hooves nervously. Albinous held his mount on a tight rein while the Queen gave hers a warning tap on its head with her sceptre. Sir Blanche bent forward and patted and stroked his charger’s neck, and whispered reassuringly in its ear, ‘Don’t take fright now, Snowdrop.’

He drew a long slim cylinder from out of the baggage pack slung behind his saddle and tucked it under his arm. There was a click and hiss of greased metal, and the cylinder expanded into a tapering pointed shaft four or five times its original length.

Even through the churning fear that was consuming Alice’s mind, she recognised it as a telescopic lance. Neat trick. She glanced at Juliet, hoping she was showing a brave face. But she was staring blankly ahead of her and did not notice.

As the party made its way deeper into the woods the horses’ anxiety became worse, until both the Queen’s
and
Albinous’s mounts were threatening to unseat them. Finally the Queen said, in a voice less assured than Alice had yet heard, ‘Leave them here, else they will alert the beast before we are ready. We must continue on foot.’

They all dismounted. Albinous slung a pack over his shoulder and then unhitched Alice and Juliet’s leashes. In his free hand he held a sword. The Queen grasped her sceptre tightly, her small chin thrust out in a show of determination. Only Sir Blanche hung back, his face pinched with worry. Suddenly he said: ‘I cannot countenance what you are going to do to these girlings, Majesty. I will have no further part in it.’

‘What!’ The Queen spun round to face him with a look of disbelief rapidly shading to anger. Alice was sure it was only the knowledge of where they were that prevented a titanic outburst. As it was her words were hissed from between clenched jaws as her pale cheeks flushed. ‘Do you know what you’re saying? You would sacrifice your honour for a pair of girlings? This is treason!’

‘I stand upon my honour,’ Sir Blanche said resolutely. ‘That is why I can continue no further.’

Alice saw Juliet watching him with an expression of sad pride, in contrast to the fuming rage of the Queen. When she found her voice again she spat out, ‘Then stay here and mind the horses. When this is over I will deal with you!’

He bowed stiffly. ‘As you will, Your Majesty.’

The diminished party continued onwards, Albinous dragging the girls by their leashes as he followed after the Queen.

They reached a thorny thicket that seemed to extend like a wall across their path. Albinous hacked a way through with his sword. Beyond the wood seemed even darker. Alice began to notice half-seen things in the shadows. Here was a discarded spear and there a helmet, and were those white sticks actually bones? How
many
had passed this way before them … and how few had returned?

A clearing of sorts opened before them and the Queen called a halt. ‘This will do,’ she said softly to Albinous. ‘Have you sufficient for the both of them? They must be secure, yet the beast must also be able to carry them off easily.’

‘Yes, Majesty. I bought additional materials in case of need while in Brillig.’

‘Then prepare them. And be quick.’

Selecting one of the few intact overhanging branches within reach, Albinous dragged across a fallen branch so that it lay beneath it. Removing their leashes but leaving their hands bound behind them, he made Juliet and Alice climb upon it so they stood facing each other a little apart and below the upper limb. He then threw lengths of chain over the branch and gathered up the dangling ends, which were fitted with large blunt hooks. A pair of these he slipped into their collar rings, ensuring they stood straight with their heads up. Grinning into their helpless faces, he secured the next larger set of hooks into the ready made sockets of their front passages, his strong fingers parting their pudendal lips as he slid the curving metal tips inside them. They gasped and squirmed as they felt themselves plugged, though they did so with hardly a squeak for fear of what a raised voice might call out of the menacing woods. As the chains were tightened the upper shafts of the hooks pressed against their clitorises even as the buried tips stimulated those sensitive organs through the walls of their vaginal tunnels.

Albinous then secured the third and last set of hooks into their rectums, forcing their anal rings wide and giving the hooks a tug to make sure they were firmly in place. Juliet was staring at Alice in mute disbelief that they could be so humiliated, but Albinous was not finished with them yet.

From his pack he brought out a reel of strong thin cord and two pairs of bulldog clips. He tied the clips in pairs linked by short lengths of cord and clipped them onto their nipples, making them whimper as the metal clamps bit into their soft paps. The rest of the cord was tied about the lengths linking the clips, passed over the branch above them and run off in the cover of some straggling bushes well clear of the tree.

‘Do you wish them gagged, Majesty?’ Albinous asked as the Queen inspected his handiwork.

‘No, the more noise they make the better. The beast is attracted to girling voices, but it does not understand speech, so they cannot warn it of our intentions.’ She smiled at Alice. ‘You see, it is in your best interests that we track the beast back to its lair and so find the Crown quickly. So do not stifle your feelings. Right, start them singing …’

Albinous heaved the fallen branch out from under their feet and then he and the Queen retreated to cover, leaving Alice and Juliet hanging like pieces of meat in a butcher’s shop with their weight supported only by their collars and cruelly hooked orifices. They yelped and whimpered as their vaginas and anuses were stretched unnaturally open, feet kicking about in mid air in a reflex attempt to find some new support. But that only made their discomfort worse so they soon desisted. Even with their legs still they wobbled wildly as they tried to find some point of balance, rocking and yawing about on their chains while groaning with the tingling pain in their clamped nipples. And with each incautious movement the hooks twisted inside them in a way no girling could resist. Inexorably their natural lubrication began to flow about the curving prongs of metal.

Alice could see the hook buried in Juliet’s cleft stretching it into a forced vertical smile, and felt her own anus similarly gaping, allowing the open air to enter her rectum, no doubt also carrying the scent of their arousal
through
the wood. How long before it reached the Jabberwock?

‘I was lying,’ Juliet said suddenly, blinking through her tears.

‘What?’

‘About not belonging here. I just wanted you to know that … whatever happens next.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Alice said.

‘What I said in Gyre about having a wonderful family and just wanting to get back to them wasn’t true.’

Alice shuddered in her bittersweet torment. ‘Is this the time for confessions?’ she gasped.

‘What else can we do?’ Juliet said. ‘Please listen. It may be the only chance I have. You thought I was being brave putting up with everything because I’m not a natural submissive, but it’s not true. I want you to know about the real me … aah!’

A sharp tug on the cords lifted their breasts by their clamped nipples making them into fat pink cones before they dropped down again with a bounce and shiver, sending Alice and Juliet swaying in their chain slings afresh and forcing cries of pain from their lips. It was a reminder that they were not going to be allowed to remain still or quiet. They were the bait in a trap and had to squirm like masochistic worms on fishing hooks.

But a new light was burning in Juliet’s eyes and she raised her voice defiantly. ‘Please let me tell you the truth about how I got here!’

Alice sighed. Juliet was probably right. What else was there to do? ‘Go on.’

‘We were well off and I did live in a nice house … but my parents weren’t in love. Maybe they had been once but that had all gone by the time I was old enough to realise what was going on. I don’t know why they had me or why they stayed together. Habit, maybe. It was all horribly cold and mechanical. I spent a lot of time out with friends or on the web. Then by accident I
found
a site showing S&M and CP images. It was really pervy and I felt repelled and yet fascinated at the same time, you know? Of course, my parents caught me watching it and for once in their lives agreed on something – they were both disgusted with me. I got angry and said I’d rather do something like that than stay at home with them any longer. They said OK, thinking I’d back down, but I left the next day … aaahh!’

Their nipples were wrenched upwards once again by the Queen’s unseen hand and they writhed and swayed, impaling themselves deeper on their hooks. Alice felt her juices soaking through her feathers and begin to drip to the ground.

Juliet fought to keep her voice even as she grimly pressed on with her story. ‘So I left home … but there had been an address on the bondage site which was only in the next town from where I lived, and I thought I could earn some money posing to get me started living independently … or maybe it was to test my nerve and shock my parents when I sent them a set of pics. I’m not sure now. Anyway, I found the studio and the man who interviewed me was a bit odd but friendly enough so I thought I’d risk it. In an hour I was trussed up like a turkey having a camera almost shoved up my pussy. I was scared stiff but really turned on at the same time.

‘They paid me enough to stay in a cheep hotel that night and said come back the next day. This time they wanted me to do a sort of jokey set of pictures with an actor dressed up as Humpty Dumpty.’

‘He’s also in the Looking Glass story,’ Alice said.

‘Is he? Maybe that explains what happened. Anyway, Humpty blamed me flashing my pussy for making him fall off the wall, so once he got put back together I got punished. There was heavier bondage mixed with a bit of CP, which really got me going. I think I must have come under all the pain and stimulation because I
fainted
. I don’t know it if was planned or not, but when I woke up I was down here in the square next to Ruddle’s garden. I wandered in and got tricked into becoming one of his flowergirls. But I felt so stupid for what I’d got myself into and ashamed of being a masochist, or whatever I am, that I pretended I didn’t belong here. I just wanted you to know the truth, that’s all.’

Alice forced herself to smile through the pain and mounting arousal in her hooked and clamped and helpless body. ‘If that’s the truth and you’re happy being what you are, don’t feel any more guilt. We’ll get through this by finding pleasure in pain, freedom in chains and be able to get off on whatever screws us, however gross he, she or it is. Nobody who isn’t a girling at heart can ever really understand, but that’s our secret strength …’

She faltered because she saw a light moving through the trees over Juliet’s shoulder. Juliet noticed her expression change and gulped. ‘Is it coming?’ she asked faintly.

‘Yes.’ Alice grappled for some final piece of advice, even as her own stomach was tying itself in knots. ‘Whatever he does to you, try to look as though you’re having fun.’

Two baleful glowing eyes emerged from under the treetop canopy, set in a bulbous tendrilled head that wove about on a sinuous neck. Fluttering batwings supported a green-scaled and lumpy body with vast four-clawed hands and gangling three-clawed feet. A long tail slithered across the ground in its wake. A vast absurd pink waistcoat covered its upper torso. It should have sent Alice into a fit of giggles, for who could take any creature seriously dressed in such a garment? But the waistcoat was streaked with the rust-brown stains of dried blood.

The Jabberwock’s pinched mouth opened to reveal two pairs of huge peg-like teeth and it vented a
snuffling
, braying siren-blast that made them jerk in their chains. Juliet’s yelp of fear became a shameful curse as her bladder cut loose and she peed messily over her cunt hook.

The beast came to earth with eerie grace and padded over to them, looming higher and larger. It was a literal monster, Alice thought, trembling in unashamed terror. The great head snaked down to peer at them through its featureless glowing eyes and the contents of Alice’s bladder joined that of Juliet’s on the forest floor. It snorted and the tendrils about its head shivered. Were they part of its olfactory sense? Alice wondered in a fleeting moment of detached curiosity.

Two clawed hands like mechanical grabs reached out and closed about them. Juliet screamed and screwed up her eyes. Alice wished she could do the same but hers seemed frozen in a petrified stare. The Jabberwock picked them up like rag dolls, their hooks sliding from their wet sockets and the chains falling away. The long cords tied to their breast clips were loosed and trailed after them.