{"loaderData":{"4":{"story":{"id":"4264ad33-5bd6-40b6-b3c5-bac5964501c9","seriesId":null,"seriesName":null,"currentUserId":"00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000","added":"2018-09-22T13:50:13.937Z","title":"Penny\\'s Cage.","slug":"pennys-cage","shortId":"QiomR2y8","authorNote":null,"disclaimer":null,"type":"Novella","paidUrl":null,"synopsis":"A young woman is quietly abducted from a suburban street in a provincial town for reasons never explained to her but which become apparent over time. The story begins about eighteen months into her imprisonment.","partCount":2,"parts":[{"partId":"82f2023c-af2d-4198-9b5a-e8c0503c6c5c","title":null,"summary":"\n\n\n\n\n\n \"Penny's Cage.\" \n\n\n\n In the warm, stuffy","wordCount":5599,"readTime":28,"number":1,"state":"Published"},{"partId":"305d440c-15a9-4d5b-8508-67dece1ea892","title":null,"summary":"\n\n\n\n ","wordCount":1846,"readTime":9,"number":2,"state":"Published"}],"currentPart":1,"contentTitle":"Chapter 1","content":"\n\n

\n\n

\"Penny's Cage.\"

\n\n

In the warm, stuffy darkness of the Shed,\nPenny stirred on her bed of straw, drowsily feeling its familiar prickly\nscratchiness against her bare skin. She reluctantly opened her eyes to see the\nfirst, faint hints of dawn turn the skylights far above her a dim grey. She had\nenjoyed another of the occasional long and death-like sleeps which came upon\nher at regular intervals. Sitting up, she raised a front paw and swept back\nfrom her face the curtain of tangled, matted hair which had fallen over her\neyes. For a moment she wondered when one of her 'Keepers', as she now mentally\nreferred to them, would notice the length of her hair and cut it short as they\nhad once before; or at least tie it back in a pony-tail for her.

\n\n

By now there was enough light for her to make\nher way on all-fours to the corner where her shallow litter-box lay to squat\nand empty her bladder, and, after relieving herself, she walked, still on\nall-fours, the tiny distance over to the curved steel trough in which lay the\nusual inch of murky water.

\n\n

Penny lowered her head and drank neatly and\nefficiently, remembering as she did so her first days in this place. Then she\nhad quenched her thirst by dipping one of her maimed and shapeless hands into\nthe water and licking it off. Since then she had learnt to lap like a dog, aided by a tongue which seemed\nsomehow to be longer and thinner than it had been before she was Taken. She\nfrowned at the thought; she couldn't remember, but surely she hadn't always\nbeen able to lick out her nostrils with her tongue? Raising her head, she shook\nthe water from the long hair which had fallen into the trough as she drank.

\n\n

Slaking her thirst had its usual effect of\nincreasing her hunger. She glanced up at the nearest skylight and saw that it\nwould be several hours before she was fed her only meal of the day. But Penny\nwas by now used to the hunger which crept upon her only two hours after she'd\neaten and which increased steadily until she was fed again. Anyway, she thought\nhopefully, the Keepers would be passing in and out of the Shed shortly, and\nsome of them might bring her scraps from their morning meals.

\n\n

Penny rose to her feet and stood upright for\nthe first time that morning to walk the few feet to the bars of her cage.\nPressing her body against the hard, cool steel, she stared out into the dim\ninterior of the Shed as the light steadily grew, her mind going over yet again\nthe circumstances of her Taking, and their subsequence.

\n\n

Her abduction had been simple, swift and\nunnoticed. Penny had been walking down a familiar deserted suburban street in\nher native town when the car had pulled up silently and smoothly alongside her.\nGlancing down, Penny saw the worried, smiling face of a motherly-looking\nmiddle-aged woman looking up at her, a street-map in her hand. Penny remembered\nstooping to examine the proffered map, then she'd heard a faint hiss as if of\nescaping gas, and then nothing until she'd woken up in the cage where she'd\nbeen kept ever since. Absently she wondered how long she had been here. With no\nway of recording the passage of each day, Penny had no knowledge how much time\nhad passed. But her hair, which had been fashionably short when she was Taken,\nhad once grown so long that one of the Keepers had shorn it, and now it was as long again.

\n\n

Penny thought back to her awakening on that\nfirst day, of her surprise and outrage at finding herself naked in a cage, then\nof her horror and despair on seeing her maimed hands. People, both male and\nfemale, some in farm-workers' clothing and some in the white coats of\nscientists and technicians, were walking past her cage on all sides. The cage\nstood in the centre of the floor of a large\nbuilding, and Penny had crouched sobbing in the middle of the cage as the men\nand woman passed by on either side at random, occasionally sparing her an\nindifferent glance as if she was a caged animal.

\n\n

It took only a few days for Penny to realise dully that a caged animal was exactly what the people\nof this place thought of her as; she even discovered that they'd put a collar\naround her neck. Exploring it as best she could with her now useless hands,\nshe'd decided that she wore an ordinary leather dog-collar – it even had a\nname-disc dangling from its 'D' ring – and it was fastened by a simple buckle\nand tongue in the traditional manner; a simple method of securing it that she\nwas no more able to circumvent than could the dog it was meant for. She had\nnever seen her collar, of course, but she'd become so used it that she was able\nto forget she was wearing for long periods.

\n\n

Even the door of her cage – a door which was\nusually only opened when her litter-box was emptied and refilled – was fastened\nby a simple arrangement of sliding bolts. In the early days Penny had spent\nlong hours fumbling with them, sobbing with frustration at the sheer\nuselessness of the blunt, thick-skinned, insensitive clubs of flesh that the\nKeepers had made of her hands.

\n\n

In those early days she'd tried to plead with\nher captors, discovering in the process that the only sounds she could now make\nwere soft and breathy whines and whimpers. But the people outside would either\nignore her anguish, or, worse, they would stop and stare at her with\nindifference. But now Penny no longer tried to open the door of her cage, nor\nto make hopeless appeals for release. It had become only too apparent that the\npeople outside really did consider her a caged animal. They certainly treated\nher like an animal in a Zoo, caring for her simple needs with an insultingly\ncasual indifference. There was no need to give her water – somehow they'd\narranged that her trough held a constant and unvarying inch of lukewarm liquid\n– but they fed her from a bucket on scraps and leftovers, tipping them into her\ntrough and walking away. And what food! At first she'd had to force herself to\neat the mess jumbled together in her trough; the remains of apple pies mixed\nwith baked beans and bacon rinds, gritty potato peelings and carrot scrapings,\nstale bread crusts and soured milk, so much resembling the pig-swill to which\nshe'd contributed the remains of her own meals at school. But now Penny gobbled\nit down eagerly to satisfy the aching\nvoid in her stomach.

\n\n

And yet they weren't cruel to her, they didn't\nmock her helplessness or stare at her nakedness; in fact, Penny could find no\nreason whatever why she been abducted and kept here. She had come to believe\nthat this place was some sort of farm where scientific work of some kind was\ncarried out, but, as far as she knew, no experiments of any kind had been\ncarried out on her, and although sometimes she was aware upon waking that she'd\nenjoyed a sleep of infinite deepness –like the one she'd just woken from\n-- she could have no way of knowing\nwhether or not she'd been removed from her cage, experimented upon, and returned. She remained healthy, her shapely young body,\nwith its firm little breasts and taut buttocks, retained its tone, and her\nperiods came and went with undiminished regularity; the skin of her face and\nbody, despite being unwashed and unbathed since she'd been caged, was soft and\nsmooth under its eternal coating of dirt and by now she'd become accustomed to\nthe sour, pungent reek of her body, even when she sweated during her endless pacing back and forth behind the\nbars.

\n\n

Penny turned her thoughts to the people who\nvisited the Shed, some to fetch and replace various items of agricultural and\nscientific purpose, and some to work at the keyboards and monitors scattered\nabout on various work-benches along the walls. She had come to know many of\nthem by sight, and she had her favourites\namongst them, those who brought her scraps or stayed for a moment to talk\nsoftly to her in their incomprehensible language. One of these people was a\nyoung woman of Penny's own age to whom Penny had, for some obscure reason,\nallotted the name 'Lorna'. She would nearly always bring Penny scraps from her\nbreakfast; toast crusts, fruit peel and\ncores, and the like, and she always took a mid-morning snack of a sandwich and\nan apple and throw the apple core to Penny and feed her the tattered crusts of\nthe sandwich on the palm of her hand.

\n\n

At first Penny had been deeply embarrassed,\nand she had writhed inwardly at the humiliating spectacle she presented\nvis-a-vis the other young woman, the one upright and clothed, her scented skin\ngleaming with cleanliness, on one side of the bars, and Penny herself, naked\nand dirty, with a dog-collar around her neck, eating from the clean\noutstretched palm on all-fours like a dog. But Penny's hunger could never be\ndenied,and she even went so far, in a mood of defiance, to adopt the stance of\na begging dog, balancing on the balls of her feet with her legs folded beneath\nher and her upper body and head raised with her mutilated hands dangling down\nfrom her wrists held at the height of her breasts. In this manner she obtained\nthe attention of the passers-by, although it came to possess the drawback that\nmany of them wouldn't feed her at all unless she begged them first.

\n\n

Penny turned around and rested her back on the\nbars to look around at her familiar surroundings. Her cage was quite large (she\nwas not to know that it was the minimum area for an animal of her size,\nalthough it totally lacked any area providing the privacy Zoo-keepers now deem\nnecessary for a higher primate like herself) at seven feet wide and high, and\neleven feet long. Its stained concrete floor was covered with an inch of chaff,\nand the heap of straw which was her bed was piled in one corner. Diagonally\nopposite was her four feet long, two feet wide litter tray, unfortunately sited\non the same side as her trough and only three feet from where she must eat and\ndrink. At the far end of the cage, in the corner not occupied by her bed, a\nchain about a foot long had been welded to the thick corner post some six\ninches from the floor. The free end of the chain held a simple spring securing\nclip, of the type used to attach the leashes of dogs to their collars, and it\nby this that Penny was tethered, as helpless as any chained dog, before her\ncage door was opened. And she hated the experience. In training her to come and\nbe tethered, the first and only pain had been inflicted upon her and now she\nobeyed the curt gesture to come to the person standing outside her cage at that\ncorner instantly, dropping to all-fours and holding up her chin at the bars for\nthe chain to be clipped to her collar. That pain, at her first and only\nrefusal, had been the most agonising and\nintense that she'd ever known, and Penny no longer dared to entertain the least\nnotion of disobedience. Unfortunately for Penny, once she was safely secured\nand the door opened for her litter-box to cleaned, she was often forgotten by\nthe person who'd tethered her, and she could spend hours on that cruelly short\nchain until her frantic whimpers attracted someone's attention. But far worse\nwas that her Keepers took this opportunity to examine her skin, possibly for\nsigns of disease owing to her unwashed condition. Then they would run their\nhands over her body with such an insulting indifference to her sex and\nnakedness – as if she was a 'real' animal – that would make Penny sob with\nhumiliation and rage.

\n\n

Penny's attention was caught by the sound of a\ntractor engine starting in the yard beyond the shed, then by the sounds of\napproaching footsteps. Eagerly she turned and hugged the bars, staring at the\noutline of the enormous sliding doors of the Shed, now about to open.

\n\n

A flood of sunlight and an inrush of pure,\nclean air accompanied the opening of the doors and the lights of the shed came\non, dazzlingly bright to Penny's eyes. Some forty people of varying sex and\nages entered to go about their errands, passing on either side of Penny's cage,\nmostly ignoring her as she clung to the bars. Some of them were still chewing\non fruit, and bread rolls with various fillings, and Penny looked at them in\nsupplication. Two elderly men in white coats stopped by the bars and regarded\nher with detachment. Penny dropped into a begging position and one of the men,\nafter addressing a brief phrase to his companion, tossed the end of his roll to\nher. As usual, Penny tried to catch it in her mouth like a dog; as usual, she\nfailed dismally and the thrown morsel struck her upon her left shoulder and\nfell to the floor. Instantly she went down on her elbows and grubbed about in\nthe straw with her mouth to pick up the scrap of bread and swallow it in a\nsingle gulp. The core of the apple the other man had been eating followed, and\nthe two men walked away together.

\n\n

People were coming and going all the time now,\nand Penny stood up and hooked her forearms through the bars to help her step up\non to the the lower of the two flat horizontal bars which linked the vertical\nones of the cage eighteen inches from the floor and the same distance from the\nroof. There she looked out into what she could see of the wide yard outside in\nsearch of Lorna, completely regardless of the spectacle she presented to the\nmildly curious gazes of the people walking by her cage.

\n\n

Lorna came hurrying across the yard. She was a\nlittle late this morning, and the fingers of one hand were fumbling with the\nbuttons of the clean white coat she wore over her short, summery dress while\nshe took huge bites out of the thick sandwich she held in her other hand. A\nman, evidently superior to her in position, spoke to Lorna irritably as they\ncrossed paths in the wide doorway, and she made some sort of conciliatory\nreply. Then she was striding past Penny's cage while Penny made little mewing\nnoises to attract her attention and kept pace with her to the end of the cage.\nAt the last moment, Lorna turned and threw the remains of her sandwich into the\ncage. It separated into two pieces, both of which landed on the dirty floor.\nPenny pounced on them at once, gobbling them down one after the other and\nspitting out the tiny pieces of chaff which had stuck to them.

\n\n

After swallowing the last fragments, Penny sat\nup on her haunches like a dog, a position she could now keep for hours without\ndiscomfort, and looked about her, licking her nose and chin with her long,\nsinuous tongue. Though people continued to pass her cage on all sides, as they\nwould do all day long, none of them was eating. With no prospect of begging a\nfurther snack, Penny came to all-fours and went to her trough to drink, fully\naware of the casual glances being cast on her and ignoring them as she'd trained\nherself to do. Then she walked, still on all-fours, to the middle of the cage\nand lay down full-length on her stomach on the prickly chaff. Propping her head\non her ruined hands, she stared out into the sunlit yard and waited patiently\nto be fed.

\n\n

Penny's mind went back in time to the early\ndays of her imprisonment. Then she'd spent most of her time curled into a\ndefensive ball on the floor of her cage, and when she was forced to move she\ndid so on all-fours, instinctively seeking to protect the most intimate parts\nof her naked body from the eyes on any onlookers. Whether knowingly or not, her\ncaptors had struck a deep and continuing blow against her morale as a woman by\nnot permitting her the least privacy. Isolated in her cage in the centre of the huge Shed, Penny could never be sure that some\nof the many people present weren't watching her. The function of the\nlitter-tray was obvious, but using it in the full view of the outsiders had\nbeen torture. But she had to use it, and she would squat over it wretchedly,\nher whole body flushed with shame and embarrassment. But now, after so many\ndays in her cage, Penny emptied her bowels and bladder in their view without\nthe slightest hesitation, even with a certain defiance as though she really was\nthe animal they took her for. She was spared embarrassment to some extent by\nthe obvious lack of sexual interest in her displayed by the men who stared at\nher, and she even found herself harbouring a\nslight resentment at their indifference to her as a woman. Sometimes she even\nwondered if her body had been altered in some grotesque way without her\nknowledge, but a brief examination would always confirm that she still\npossessed the same trim and attractive figure she'd attained in her late\n'teens, some four years ago. And then there was the expression in their eyes\nwhen they looked at her. She had seen it before, this expression, and she'd\neven worn it herself, and she knew where she'd noticed it for the first time.\nHer thoughts went back to that day at the Zoo when she'd been standing amongst\na small crowd of people staring at some animal in its cage. She'd raised her\neyes for some reason, and she'd seen in the eyes of the other human beings that\nsame expression with which she was now regarded, a mixture of mild curiosity\nand the unconscious superiority of human beings towards a caged beast.

\n\n

Penny stirred restlessly. Coming to a sudden\ndecision, she stood up and walked to the bars nearest her where she climbed on\nto the lower transverse bar and began to walk upon it, moving each hooked\nfore-arm around the bars in turnas she made her way around her cage.

\n\n

Exercising her body, either by this method or\nby pacing back and forth, was now for Penny, just as for any other caged\nanimal, virtually her sole diversion. (Although she did have a soft toy, a\nstuffed rabbit someone had given her, and which she kept hidden under the straw\nof her bed. Occasionally she would disinter it and play with it, batting it\nfrom one front 'paw' to the other, or taking it in her teeth and throwing it up\nin the air with a practiced flick of her head and neck.)

\n\n

Clambering around her cage in this fashion\nattracted much more attention to her; people would watch her for minutes at a\ntime, smiling almost tenderly, pleased that their captive animal was enjoying\nitself, as Penny often thought with a certain bitterness.

\n\n

Finally, the muscles of her arms and thighs\naching with exhaustion, Penny stepped down onto the floor where she found she\nhad ended her exercise at the same time as the mid-morning break.

\n\n

All around her cage, the denizens of the Shed\nwere leaving their keyboards and workbenches and streaming past her to stand in\nthe sunlight outside in the yard where a large tea-urn on wheels had appeared.\nPenny watched them enviously; she hadn't felt sunlight on her face all the time\nshe'd been kept here, and she was given nothing but water to drink. Lorna came\nby; she had her little snack with her, and she fetched a mug of tea and pulled\nup a stool to eat and drink by Penny's cage.

\n\n

Two feet away on the other side of the bars,\nPenny sat like a dog in the straw and watched the other young woman at her\nmeal. First, after a gulp of tea, Lorna took a small pocket-knife and pared her\napple neatly, succeeding in detaching the peel in one long spiral. She smiled\nin self-congratulation, and Penny shifted eagerly. Lorna tossed the apple peel\nthrough the bars, and Penny fell on it.

\n\n

The core of the apple followed in due course,\nand Penny took it from the floor in her mouth and crunched it down before\ntaking up her sitting position and watching Lorna eat her sandwich.

\n\n

Lorna smiled into the wistfully pleading eyes\nof the caged woman. Tearing a scrap from her sandwich, she leaned forward and\nproffered it on the palm of her hand. The caged woman came to all-fours and\nlowered her head to take the morsel in her mouth neatly and without touching\nthe clean, pink flesh with her lips.

\n\n

The process was repeated until the sandwich\nwas eaten. Lorna stood and showed the other woman her empty hands before\nextending a hand through the bars and patting her on the crown of her head. Taking\nher stool she walked off to her work-station, followed by the creature on the\nfar side of the bars until she was prevented from going any further.

\n\n

Penny sat again and licked her lips, still\nenjoying the taste of the sandwich filling. Then she sent to squat over her\nlitter-box, ignoring the glances of the people now streaming back into the Shed\nto resume their work.

\n\n

Afterwards she lapped some water, than went to\nsit in the corner of her cage nearest the door. There she gazed across the yard\nat the far wall where the big waste food bins stood, willing the appearance of\nthe farm-workers who would take them away and return later to feed her.

\n\n

Penny had not long to wait before a tractor\nand trailer pulled up by the bins, and the two men riding upon the trailer\njumped down and wrestled the swill-bins up on to the load bed. They re-mounted\nthe trailer, the young girl driver revved the engine, and the combination\nrumbled away out of Penny's sight.

\n\n

It wouldn't be long before she was fed now,\nand hunger raged in her stomach. The few scraps she'd begged or been given had\ndone nothing to assuage it; on the contrary, they'd tended to increase it. She\nfound her mouth watering, saliva drooling from her slightly-parted lips.

\n\n

Penny waited patiently, picturing in her mind\nthe pig-sties where the tractor now stood, the bins on its trailer being\nemptied into their troughs. She had no idea if this was indeed the case, or if\nthe pigs really existed. But this place was, after all, a farm, and she fancied\nshe'd heard the sounds of squealing pigs and lowing cattle in the past, even\nthough the only animals she'd yet seen were dogs and the occasional cat.

\n\n

Her food would be brought\nto her in a bucket when the imaginary pigs had been fed, and she thought that\nit would be composed of the scraps remaining the bins, judging by its usual\nvariety. But Penny didn't care about that; she would eat the mixture, whatever\nit was. She continued to sit, her eyes fixed on the yard, until a figure\ncarrying a bucket came into view.

\n\n

Penny came to all-fours in anticipation. The\nslight figure of the young girl-driver walked briskly around the cage, the\nbucket dangling from her hand, and Penny followed on the other side of the bars\nto her trough where she sat and looked down at it, licking the saliva from her\nlips and chin.

\n\n

The bucket clanged against the bars, and the\nmess inside it slithered between them into the trough. Penny's head was already\nlowered even as the last scraps fell into the trough, and she gobbled down the\nfood hastily, ignoring the long, heavy curtain of her hair which fell from\neither side of her head and draped itself over the contents of her trough.

\n\n

She ignored, too, the glances of the people\naround her cage, whose attention had been caught by the clang on the bucket on\nthe bars, and even the stares of the three people – two men and a woman, for\nshe could see their feet just beyond the bars whenever she lifted her head to\nchoke down another mouthful of food – who had stopped to watch her eat.

\n\n

Penny, once the edge of her appetite had been\nblunted, ate more slowly. Now she had the time and the inclination to see what\nshe'd been fed, though it would make little difference. The people had eaten a\nsalad last night, she thought, for there was lettuce dressed with vinegar and oil,\nand cucumber, and sliced tomatoes. There had chocolate cake too, and the rinds\nof cheese; and then some of the remains of their breakfast, for there were\nbacon rinds and half-eaten sausage, and sticky baked beans, and segments of\nfried tomato, soft and greasy. Porridge had been served too, she noted, as it\nusually was, and there was milk-sodden breakfast cereal mixed in. She ate\neverything, irrespective of what it was, as she'd learned to do, and when she\nraised her head for the last time she belched noisily, walked off to her bed\nand snuggled down into the straw.

\n\n

This had become a familiar routine; after\neating, she would take a brief nap to help digest her heavy meal. And then,\nwhen she woke, she would empty her bowels in her litter-box.

\n\n

All around her the work of the establishment\nwent on; people passed her cage on all sides, many glancing down at Penny where\nshe sprawled in her straw, but she slept on regardless.

\n\n

Lunchtime came, and most people left the Shed\nfor the refectory, but a group of Bridge addicts, disdaining mere food, dragged\nup chairs and a table to the doorway and began a rubber.

\n\n

Penny stirred on her bed. She rose to\nall-fours, took a few paces towards the middle of her cage, then stretched and\nyawned. She shook her head violently, send her long, tangled, matted hair\nswirling about her shoulders and feeling her collar sliding around her throat.\nThe increasing pressure in her colon sent her to the litter-box where she\nsquatted and relieved herself noisily. She took a drink from the trough, then\nwalked on all-fours over to the bars to sit and watch the card-players.

\n\n

Time passed; the work resumed, and Penny\nwatched absently. She was about to get to her feet and take some exercise when\nthere came a diversion, followed quickly by another.

\n\n

Penny didn't notice the arrival of the dog, a\nlarge and handsome Red Setter, until it sat down next to the bars and looked at\nher with mild interest. She had seen it often before, and she came to all-fours\nand walked over to it, hoping to be able to stretch an arm through the bars and\npet it. But it was just out of her reach, and she sat and looked at it, staring\ninto its deep brown eyes with her own blue ones.

\n\n

It was at these times that Penny would make\ndepressing comparisons between her own condition and that of the dogs. Like\nthem she wore nothing but a collar around her neck; unlike them she was penned\nin the few square feet of her cage. She envied them their freedom; limited as\nit undoubtedly was, to move around the place at will. She wondered where they\nwere kept, imagining the row of kennels to which hey were chained at nights,\nand she envied that too. The dog grew bored, and walked slowly away, out of the\nshed and into the yard, followed by Penny's wistful gaze.

\n\n

Hearing a sharp, short phrase of command,\nPenny turned her head to see the girl who had fed her standing by the corner\nbar to which the short tether chain was attached. Resignedly, Penny trotted\nover to the corner and lifted her head. The girl stooped, picked up the free\nend of the chain, and clipped it to her collar before moving away.

\n\n

Penny stood patiently in her cramped position,\nher head almost wedged into the corner making it impossible for her to turn it\nmore than a few inches to either side. Behind her she heard the click of bolts\non the cage door being slid back, and then the slither of leather boots through\nstraw. Penny's collar was grasped firmly at the nape of her neck, and she saw\nthe girl's check-shirted fore-arm and the large pair of scissors in her hand.\nThen her hair was cut short, raggedly and unevenly, the dirty tresses falling\nto the floor about her hands, Finally she felt the girl stroke her back\nreassuringly and then heard her departure. But she didn't hear the cage door\nbeing closed, and she continued to stand where she was tethered, waiting for\nwhatever came next.

\n\n

The brief but thorough examination of her skin\nbegan. Although she'd often endured it, she could never bring herself to get\nused to the impersonal way she was handled, at best like an animal, at worst\nlike some inanimate object. The capable male fingers, sheathed in thin plastic\ngloves, roamed over her body, concentrating on her back and buttocks, and the\nbacks of her thighs. Penny concealed her anger and revulsion as her thighs were\ngently parted and the fingers probed the tender flesh just below her vagina,\nsearching for signs of irritation of her skin. This was of the very few\nremaining occasions in which she was still capable of feeling humiliated, a\nhumiliation made deeper by the insulting lack of sexual interest in her body\nshown by her young male examiner. Finally the inspection ended, and Penny was\nleft to herself. But the door remained open, and she wondered dully if some new\nhumiliation was about to be inflicted upon her.

\n\n

Still she stood there, hopelessly trapped by\nher short chain, until her attention was diverted by the appearance of a dog, a\ndifferent dog from the previous one, but a dog she'd seen often before.

\n\n

The big black Labrador looked at her for a few\nmoments, then extended its narrow muzzle through the bars and licked her face.\nThen it trotted out of her sight. And then, to Penny's horrified disbelief, she\nheard the quick scuffle of its feet crossing her cage towards her.

\n\n

The dog, obviously intrigued by the rich smell\nof her unwashed body, probed her armpit with its cool, damp nose. It licked her\nright breast, then turned its attention to the cleft of her buttocks. Penny\ncould feel the dog's hot breath on her skin, but she was too afraid of its\nsharp teeth to lash out with her legs and feet to try to shoo it away. Its nose\nprobed between her thighs, high up where they joined her body, and Penny\ngroaned softly with disgust and humiliation.

\n\n

Then, to her immense relief, she heard quick\nfootsteps from behind and a curt command. The dog withdrew; seconds later she\nsaw it run past her and out into the yard. Then the unseen person behind her\nslapped her painfully hard on the rump, partially disguising the sharp sting of\nthe needle entering her flesh.

\n\n

A few moments passed, and Penny became aware\nof a growing lassitude and euphoria. She hardly felt the coldness of the\nantiseptic being rubbed on the skin at the rear of her left thigh, nor the\nprick of the needle inserted into a vein. A few minutes later the needle was\nwithdrawn, the person left the cage, and the door was bolted shut. Penny's\nchain was detached; too sleepy to move far away, she lay down and fell into a\ndrugged sleep.

\n\n

The mid-afternoon tea break was long over when\nPenny woke. Feeling remarkably alert and full of energy, she took a drink then\nclimbed up on to the transverse bar and began clambering around her cage,\nignoring the amused glances from the various people around her.

\n\n

Even when her arms and thighs were aching\nunder the strain, Penny was not content. The working day was over, and people\nwere streaming out of the Shed when she began to pace restlessly back and forth\nin her cage.

\n\n

The Shed gradually entered until only Lorna\nwas left. After an interval, the young woman leaned back in her chair and\nstretched. Then she checked her monitor before saving her work. Putting her\ncomputer on 'Stand By', she rose to her feet and walked towards the wide doors\nof the Shed, eager for a cup of tea and a shower. The woman in the cage stopped\nher endless pacing and fell to all fours to butt her newly-shorn head softly against the bars in a bid to attract\nLorna's attention.

\n\n

Lorna stopped by the bars and looked down at\nthe other woman's bare, dirty back, an odd expression of tenderness mixed with\npity on her face. Stooping, she began to scratch the other woman behind her\nears and at the the hair-line just above her leather collar, wrinkling her nose\nat the rank smell of her body.

\n\n

“Poor thing!” she said to the\nuncomprehending ears. “Perhaps it was a good idea they insisted we trained\nourselves to think of you as an animal. We wouldn't have been able to treat you\nlike this, nor to do what we've done to you, if we hadn't. I wonder when you'll\nfind out we made you pregnant a fortnight ago?”

\n\n

Lorna continued to pet the other woman, now\nwriggling like a dog in ecstasy under her fingers. With pity in her voice, she\nwent on speaking.

\n\n

“You'll have the best of medical care, of\ncourse; and the labour and delivery will be quick\nand easy. The heads of the creatures you are carrying will be smaller and more\nstreamlined than the heads of fully human babies; I wonder what you will make\nof your offspring, half with your own genes, and half with the genes of the\nmale donor of another species?”

\n\n

She fell silent again, trying to imagine her\nown reactions on giving birth to two such creatures as she knew were in the\nearly stages of development in the other woman's womb. Lorna shuddered, then\ncontinued her soliloquy.

\n\n

“Your children will be healthy, for you are\na young and healthy animal, and they will grow much more quickly than purely\nhuman babies. The Prof. is confident that you will suckle them; he relies upon\nthe deep maternal instinct of mammals. And I expect you will, too. He already\nspeaks of breeding from you every eighteen months or so, and expects to be able\nto do so for another twenty years or more. You will become a very valuable\nanimal to him, and to Medical Research in general. If all goes well, you shall\nhelp to save the lives of thousands of people, all over the world.”

\n\n

Lorna gave a final sigh. She patted the\nwoman's back high up between her shoulder blades and withdrew. Her last sight\nof the caged woman was of her sitting in the corner of her cage, staring up\nthrough the bars at her in entreaty. Then Lorna turned off the lights and slid\nshut the Shed doors, securing them behind her.

\n\n

Left alone in her cage in the evening dimness\nof the great Shed, Penny sat and looked at the closed doors for a long time.\nShe went to urinate, and continued her pacing up and down until it was quite\ndark.Then she dropped to all-fours and walked to the heap of straw in the\ncorner. She lay down and fell swiftly into a deep sleep.

\n\n

And so passed another of the long days for\nPenny in her cage; the cage which had become her whole world, and which her\nsubconscious mind had already concluded that she would never leave.

\n\n

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