Into the Hands of Men

"What are you doing?"

"Rachel's over there alone," Emma said, "so I'm going to make sure she stays safe."

Sara blinked. "Let her be unsafe, she's picked her side," Sara said, but Emma shook her head and already began to walk.

From where she was sat it was easy to beat the two boys there, letting her swing the door to the women's room open and find a single stall occupied.

"Rachel?" she asked, lightly rapping a knuckle on the door.

"Uh, yes?" came the reply.

"It's me," she said, "Emma. Just making sure you're okay, you shouldn't be wandering alone."

She could hear the sound of a stream hitting porcelain but pretended she couldn't as Rachel replied.

"I'm fine, don't worry about me," Rachel said, voice as cheerful as ever, and then the toilet flushed.

The stall door opened at the same time as the door leading out to the canteen did, and as Rachel stepped out by her side Emma grabbed the girl's wrist and stepped back, glaring at the faces of Connor and his friend who stepped inside. Connor would have been good looking maybe, if not for the awkward crop of patchy hair on his chin and his perpetual sneer, but his friend was shorter, fatter, uglier, the exact type of guy who Emma knew sat around wishing for the Bill to pass, knowing it was the only way he'd ever get half as many girls as his friend.

"What a surprise," Connor said, "we get one each."

"Oh fuck off," was Emma's immediate response, gripping Rachel's hand and squeezing it, hoping the girl would realise the pair of them could walk out of here, that there was no need to let anything happen she didn't want to.

"Fuck you bitch," spat the shorter boy, on whose shoulder Connor placed his hand.

"Rachel," Connor said, turning to her and ignoring Emma, "get in the stall."

Rachel immediately moved to step towards it but Emma pulled her sharply back.

"She's not going anywhere just because you tell her to," she said, and Connor laughed.

"It's okay," Rachel tried to say, but Emma gripped her tighter still.

"Rachel," he repeated, voice stern, "go in the stall with Brad," gesturing to the boy beside him who eagerly stepped forward.

Emma tugged Rachel's arm back but the girl placed her own hand on Emma's shoulder, looking her in the eyes and smiling, her eyes heavy with something Emma couldn't place. Sympathy, maybe? But whether she was acting to protect her, or feeling bad that she too hadn't just given in to this, Emma couldn't say.

"It's okay, really," Rachel said again, and Emma let her hand go as she stepped into the stall she'd come out of, and the shorter boy practically skipped in behind her.

The door slammed shut and the lock clicked, and Emma turned to face Connor who closed the distance between them, backing her up against a sink.

"There's another stall right there," he said, putting a hand on Emma's shoulder that she quickly shrugged off. "You want a taste of your future? Spoiler alert, it tastes like cock."

Emma could have laughed, but instead she just tried to push him back, but his hands were quickly on her, holding him close up against her.

"Let go of me," she said, pushing at his chest again but he gripped her wrists, letting him press right up to her, and Emma realised she could feel the bulge of his cock against her stomach.

"You should do you friend a favour," he said, and Emma could hear the sounds coming from the stall beside them - the sounds she heard so many times through her bedroom wall, of Rachel softly moaning, of the guy in there with her grunting, and now of the stall wall shaking as he fucked her up against it. "You could suck my cock right now," Connor said, "save her the trouble."

"I'm not sucking anything," Emma said, trying to wrestle free from his grasp again but failing. Instead all she managed was to spin around, and found herself facing the mirror - staring at the reflection of herself with this man pressed up behind her, hands held tight behind her, his hard cock pressing into her back.

"You sure?" he said, grinding up against her from behind. "You suck my cock and I'll go gentle. You leave, and Rachel sucks it, I guarantee I make her choke on it."

"You can't make me," Emma said, and realised how stupid it sounded.

"I won't make you," he said, "not today. But as of tomorrow I can make you do anything I want, and believe me I will."

For a moment Emma stood frozen, hearing the girl crying out beside her, the sound of her being pounded up against the wall, but as she felt Connor's hands let go of hers and slide down, felt one of them slip beneath the waistband of her jeans and grab her ass she yanked herself away from him, watching him laugh as she rushed out of the toilets, leaving the three of them behind, pushing aside thoughts of what she was allowing to happen.

***

As Sara and Emma stepped into the dorm hallway, she could hear the sound of conversation from the kitchen. For a moment Sara seemed intent on pulling Emma towards it, but seeing the look on her face she relented and let Emma lead her into her bedroom.

With the door shut and locked Emma collapsed onto a chair, unsure whether to scream, cry, laugh at the insanity of it all.

She looked at her friend perched on her bed, and for a moment thought about asking again that hopeless question, what are we going to do? But there was no point, she knew. Instead she just stood up, sat beside the pink haired girl, and took her hand.

"Will you stay with me?" she said, "I don't think I can fall asleep alone."

"Fine," Sara said with a dramatic roll of her eyes, but then a smile too. "But I'm leaving once you're asleep, I'm not spending the whole night listening to you snore."

Emma just nodded gratefully, unhooking her bra and pulling it out from beneath her t shirt, kicking her jeans to the floor and laying down next to the other girl who cuddled up behind her.

She knew what would happen tomorrow. Not just the way the vote would go, although she was certain of that. But she knew what the Bill meant, she'd read the details of it. Hadn't wanted to, but had made herself. Behind the fancy legal language, all the clauses and subsections of the pages and pages of it, it was all pretty simple - every girl over 18 would become public property, would lose the right to consent, the right to privacy, would have no right to refuse anything a man asked of them. It didn't matter who they were, what they did, what their life had been like so far - they were, on the morning after the Bill passed, no longer entitled to the same rights as men.

Of course, there was a little more to it than that, although only barely. A ten day period where a man could register his wife or girlfriend, as his own property of course. That had quietened down the initial wave of men's complaints - 'don't worry, just register your wife as your slave if you don't want other men fucking her every time she goes to the supermarket!' But once that ten days was up, the only hope anyone had left was being bought - the Bill made that process clear, that someone could apply to buy a girl, and after a handy little public auction he could walk away with her as his and his alone. At least, unless he decided to share her, or sell her, or rent her, or any of the other things the Bill didn't say but everyone knew would happen. And obviously, the money went straight to the government's pocket, the girl got nothing for this.

Of course the Prime Minister took his supposedly neutral stance, refusing to say which way he'd vote on it, but half his Cabinet helped write the damn thing, the other half only spoke out about ways to make it "more compassionate", as though such a thing was possible. All they'd succeeded in doing was making sure every girl not yet 18 would have the first opportunity to be bought by one of the men in her family on her 18th birthday - assuming they could afford it, that was. But Emma had turned 18 over a year ago - she was unmarried, single, like almost every girl at this university. It was hopeless for her.

"You could always go to Harry," Sara whispered to her, as though reading her thoughts. This hushed moment was, Emma realised, the first time her friend had done anything close to admitting the Bill would pass, but she didn't know what to say in reply. "If- you know," Sara said. "You should go to Harry."

And so Emma drifted off to sleep thinking of her ex-boyfriend, wishing she had a better option, and praying tomorrow wouldn't come too soon.

***

When the alarm clock went off Emma awoke with a start, quickly reaching behind her to find the bed empty just as Sara said it would be. She jumped up, slid the open lock on her door back shut, and with trembling fingers picked up her phone from beside the bed, daring herself to look at the screen. It wasn't even a minute past 7, but there were dozens of texts, and it only took reading a few to know what had happened, to toss her phone away at the sight of the first headlines.

She had expected to cry, to lie down and sob and never want to stand up, but although part of her did want to do that Emma found herself surprisingly calm. Maybe it hadn't sunk in yet, she thought, maybe she was in shock, numb. Or maybe she'd just seen it coming, so there wasn't anything to cry about she hadn't done already.

Either way, she didn't really know what to do now. Her first lecture wasn't for another two hours, but she hardly cared about that now. She thought about the need to text Charlotte or one of the other girls, to ask them to walk her to it, but she couldn't bring herself to. It was pointless, she knew, even if it had sounded like a good idea yesterday.

What would another girl or two matter? There could be a dozen of them, and they could still run into a dozen guys and find themselves all bent over up against some wall, fucked in public view. For months the government had prepared for the Bill not just by stripping back human rights legislation, but scrapping criminal offences too - in countless interview government ministers would insist publicly that the Bill didn't just suddenly mean women would be stopped on the streets, stripped naked, assaulted in broad daylight. But their supporters certainly knew that's what was meant when they whittled away laws about public indecency, that there was now nothing stopping her from being forced to her knees in the middle of campus and having her dress torn off her if someone so much as decided they wanted to see her naked, let alone do more to her.

Still, the thought of going out alone did make Emma feel sick, so stupid as it might be she knew she would want Sara with her for moral support at least.

Quickly pulling on a skirt and a clean t-shirt, Emma grabbed a pair of shoes in one hand and pressed her ear to her bedroom door, opening it when she heard nothing on the other side. The hall was thankfully empty, and a quick knock on her friend's door didn't get an answer. Emma knocked again, louder this time, and her heart began to race as she waited for a reply. Had Sara gone to stay with Grace? It would have made sense, she supposed, although the idea of being left alone here made her feel ill. Well, alone except for Rachel, but that was almost worse than being alone she thought, trying not to think about whether the beauty even cared that the Bill had passed, or if worse she was grateful for it.

Trying the handle of Sara's room she found it unlocked, and flipping and switch revealed the bed empty, covers strewn across the floor along with piles of clothes, the same as it always looked but without her friend there amongst it all. Slowly pulling the door closed, trying not to awaken anyone else, Emma closed her eyes and took a breath, hoping to figure out what to do.

A distant squeak of a chair pulled across the floor made her jump, and staring down at the kitchen door left open a crack she breathed a sigh of relief. Of course, if there was one day Sara would already be up it would be today, and Emma made her way stepping softly down the hall with her bare feet making hardly a sound, only worried she'd find her friend sat tearfully realising she had spent weeks denying the inevitable.

Emma pushed the door open and was grateful it didn't creak, although the little relief she got from that was quickly dwarfed by the sick feeling she got as she stared into the room. For a moment it barely registered, what she was seeing so hard to believe that it seemed as if her vision blurred, but as it cleared she realised she was staring at her friend's body, naked, exposed, chest and stomach pressed against the seat of a kitchen chair. Behind her, head turning to grin at the sight of Emma there in the doorway, was Kyle - boxers at his ankles, his hands gripped Sara's waist as he slammed his cock into her from behind, every other thrust scraping the chair legs along the tile floor, his handprints left red and shining on the pale girl's ass.

Emma felt her stomach turn, wanted her friend to look at her and explain this somehow, but realised in horror that she'd only taken in half the scene - that Sara's held was held in the hands of Marcus, the boy whose door was directly opposite Emma's own. His shirt was off, exposing a chest of defined muscle, dark skin dripping with sweat, and in his hands the tear-streaked face of Sara with her lips pushed apart, between them a cock big enough that Emma almost felt an ache in her own jaw staring at it as he forced it deeper into the girl's mouth.

Not for the first time in the last few days Emma found herself frozen, her stomach churning in panic but her body clueless as to what to do, staring as her friend turned and spotted her, before the thrust of a cock deeper into her throat made her choke up and her eyes water. Behind her Kyle laughed, and waved a hand towards Emma.

"Come on in," he said, "don't be shy. We're more than happy to give you a turn next."

Emma's mouth fell open but no words came to her, and as she watched Kyle's hand strike down on her friend's ass and heard the girl's muffled cry of pain she bolted from the room, the boys' raucous laughter following her as she stumbled into a wall, tripping over her own feet as she tried to shake the image from her head.

To her right a door opened, and she saw the face of another one of her dorm-mates peek out, a boy named Jake who stared out at Emma picking herself up from the floor and began to ask what she was doing before she dashed away from him, throwing herself out the doors of the dorm and into the harsh embrace of the morning breeze.

Her eyes darted around her, but in the early morning the campus was empty, the canteen not yet open for breakfast, lectures not yet beginning, and so tucking herself behind a wall out of sight of anyone who might follow her out of her dorm Emma tried to slip her shoes on, choking back a single sob before resolving to hold that in, at least until she could do what she needed to.

She realised what that was now, as she ran across campus, leaving her best friend behind, abandoning her there to be fucked like a slut. She needed to see Harry.

***

Her heart pounded as she pushed through the doors to his building, praying she wouldn't come across anyone else, that his dorm-mates would still be asleep, and that he would even be here himself - and that he'd talk to her if he was.

It had been only a week since she'd last seen him walking across campus, but months since they'd last spoken. Their breakup hadn't been terrible, not compared to those of some of her friends, but things hadn't exactly been left on a good note between them. Immature, she'd called him, warned him that he wouldn't have any hope of keeping a relationship unless he grew up. He hadn't exactly taken that well.

Of course, it was that immaturity that had drawn her to him at first, his carefree attitude - always grinning, laughing, joking. It had been during fresher's week that she'd met him, seen him from across the floor of a club - tall, a little gangly even, but with a mess of blonde hair and an oversized t-shirt that gave off the exact laid-back vibe his personality did.

If there was one person she would have wanted to go to in a time like this, it wouldn't have been him. He'd never been good with the serious stuff, never cared for politics, or even real emotion. It had been nice at first - he was an escape from the world, there to make her smile, make her laugh, to toss her onto his bed and fuck her. All of that he'd been very good at, she remembered. But she'd needed more, she thought, so she'd ended things only a week after their one year anniversary. He just hadn't been someone she could see herself spending her life with, not when his response to everything was just a shrug, a joke.

What exactly was she expecting to have changed? As she tiptoed down the hallway to the door of his room Emma wasn't certain. She didn't expect he'd have matured suddenly, that he'd suddenly welcome her in, apologise for everything going wrong between them, and tell her he had some plan to... To what exactly?

She froze before his door. What was she supposed to hope he'd do? What exactly was she asking of him? To get back together with her? She didn't even really want that. And to what end - so he could register her as what, his property? So she could be owned by him?

But then what was the alternative? The image of Sara back in the kitchen flashed in her mind and sudden rush of panic shot through her, and Emma rapped her fist against his door before she had the chance to back out.

A painful few seconds passed before the door was opened, and there he was. Harry, once her Harry, stood in only his boxers - blonde hair a ruffled mess, his toned body towering over her in a way that, even now, even months after they'd broken up, made her feel safe. His eyes widened at the sight of her, he opened his mouth to say something but Emma just threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his stomach and pulling him into a tight hug. Whatever had happened between them, she knew he must surely feel the same as her, happy to put it behind them in light of everything going on, surely still feeling some love that would never pass.

"Woah," he said, grabbing her shoulders and pulling her back from him, "is this..." Harry trailed off, then with a glance at the still open door behind her quickly moved to shut it, twisting the lock shut. In this privacy, he asked, "I'm guessing this is about this morning's news?"

"You heard already?" Emma was surprised by his quick nod, and the wave towards his open laptop screen, scrolled halfway through some news article about the bill's passing.

"I've been following it for months," he said, "but I didn't think it would actually manage to pass. The PM wouldn't even speak out in support of it, I figured it would be voted down, but..."

The shock in his voice was clear, and Emma thought it must have matched that on her face. She collapsed down to take a seat on the edge of his bed, staring up at him. His voice had trailed off again as he stared blankly at the screen, but then his head snapped back to face her.

"Did you-" He paused, sitting next to her. "Did anything happen to you this morning, did any guys-" Fighting the tears that welled in the corners of her eyes Emma shook her head, and saw relief wash over Harry.

Maybe she'd underestimated him when they'd broken up, maybe he'd always been capable of more. Or maybe the breakup had been just what he'd needed, maybe that space had given him time to grow. Whatever it was, something told her this was not the same Harry she'd been with.

"Okay, good, good," he said, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. "So you came to me, because, well - I take it you're not seeing anyone else?"

Emma shook her head. "You?" He shook his too, and she felt her breathing steady a little.

"I mean, I can guess why you're here," he said, and Emma felt her cheeks heat up, face flushing red, the shame of that hitting her. She was here to ask him to claim her, here to beg a man she'd dumped to save her by making her his property. But with the way he was looking at her, she didn't think he was likely to refuse.