It's My Party

Another sigh. "I think I was really expecting to die. But Chico looked embarrassed, more than embarrassed, ashamed of himself. I was surprised. And he did stop, I'll give him credit for that, and his cock deflated like a punctured balloon. He did not try to touch me again. Still, he penetrated me, and he knew I was being coerced. I still think of him as someone who raped me. I guess that's all I have to say."

After a moment, Jada tried to pick up her conversation with Brandi. "So Chico decided to stay with the frat?"

Brandi nodded and frowned, trying to remember her earlier conversation. "Yes. Toro and Diego stuck around too. A lot of other people moved out though…"

"Ah. How well do you know Toro?"

"Toro is a very old friend of both Chico and me. He's a couple of years younger. He's a… He was a sophomore. He's okay, more than okay. Just try to get to know him Jada. You'll like him. And Diego, yeah, maybe Diego has some goodness in him too. He reminds me of Bambino a bit, a quiet guy but without the nervousness."

Brandi sighed and concluded. "All the others though, the frat men that are still alive, they're old friends of Uno and Gilberto. They're one nasty bunch of hombres. Alfredo and Alfonso were juniors. Hernando and Jenaro were sophomores."

Allison added, "I agree with your opinion about the last four. They were all raping us hoof pussies with gusto."

Jada sighed. "I'm sorry to hear it. There are so few men left. I don't see how we can afford to lose so many."

Brandi shook her head. "Jada, the true loss comes with having them around."

Allison piped up again. "It's true Jada. I hate condemning people, but from my experience as a slave, I have to agree."

Jada shrugged. "Okay, you know these men and I don't. I'll accept your opinion. And what about the three women still at Black Mall?"

Brandi thought for a second. "Oh, Amber and Whitney are okay I guess, much better people that Neto and Pancho were, that's for sure. I'll never understand why they hung on to those two. They seemed to me to be tough survivors, and I'm hoping they're doing okay. And as for Jessica… " Brandi shuddered. "Wow. Jessica is one sick puppy. Allison, why don't you take this one?"

Allison looked pale but nodded to her old taskmistress. "Brandi, I don't blame you for not stopping her. There was nothing you could do."

Allison then turned and spoke to Jada. "Jessica is the one that started the contraband inspections, full inspections with latex gloves. I'm still having nightmares about it, and it's almost a week since she had her fingers inside me. It was all a sick joke. Jessica would use ten times the amount of lube needed, and then just slide around forever inside me, vagina and rectum, back and forth, pretending to search for something she knew wasn't there. I think she just wanted to see how far she could dilate me, that and get me to cry. She wouldn't leave my butt until she had broken me."

Allison paused and gave a soft whimper. "And Nadine! Nadine had her fingers up Britney's butt moments before Ricardo caned her throat. That horror is going to stay with me forever. The image of Britney choking with Nadine dancing around in gleeful laughs, her awful maniacal laughs, still wearing her slimy latex gloves…"

Allison shook and said nothing more. She just sat there looking miserable. Brandi came over and hugged Allison and then turned to Emily and Jada. "I'll say this in defense of Jessica, not defending her actions but her motives. Nadine and Tiffany, this past month, they were the closest thing to pure evil as I can imagine. They relished their power to dominate. Jessica though, sometimes…"

Brandi paused to collect her thoughts for a moment before continuing. "I got the impression Jessica was terrified by the evil around her, and she joined it as an escape, so the evil wouldn't prey on her and make her a victim too. She's a woman of quick, nervous jumps. I get this feeling of barely controlled panic when I'm around her. Deep down, she's terrified."

"Terrified about what?" asked Emily. "The evil around her, or by what she's allowed herself to become?"

Brandi shrugged. "I don't know. She doesn't talk much. Maybe both."

Simultaneously in the terminal store of Green Mall…

Chico sat back in a very plush chair at the Hilton Executive Conference Center, waiting for the meeting to start. It was a few minutes before 7 PM, and besides Toro and himself there were a dozen women in the room, and they were all waiting for Jada. His understanding was that their acting leader was with the three women who were staying with Cassidy.

What a feeling of relief. Cassidy was going to be okay, as least that's what Paige said, provided the woman named Emily was reading that fantastic gizmo table correctly, the one the women were calling an autodoc. Cassidy was going to be okay, as least physically. But what she would think when she woke up? Did she even know that her boyfriend Bambino was dead? Probably, but there was much they still didn't know.

Chico looked at the huge monitors on the wall opposite the magical elevator. They spanned almost the entire length of their large room. And there was so much they did know. Lynn and Akiko plus another woman whose name Chico couldn't quite remember were making rapid process connecting their mall monitoring system to this central facility. Currently this room had push-button access to the entire surveillance systems of Green and Black Malls, with more soon to follow.

Chico looked around the room sheepishly. A few of the women from his old group would give him stiff nods of recognition and then turn away. They were obviously still unsettled by the idea of giving Chico amnesty. And Chico didn't blame them a bit. He had spent a torturous time alone with himself while the others had an evening meal. He finally forced himself to see what a monster he had become, clearly raping two women, Mandy multiple times and Allison once. And he had almost raped three.

He had intended to rape Toshi. He had brought her to his room fully intending to have sex with her, perhaps being friendly with her at first, chatting for a while before petting her and hoping she would be a willing partner, but in the end having sex with her regardless of her feelings.

She had not resisted holding hands with him as he checked her out of the pussy barn, and Chico had taken that as an encouraging sign. And he gave admiring glances to her required state of dress, a skimpy bra and thong panties. But when he got her to his bedroom and sat down beside her, he noticed she was staring listlessly at the floor as he petted her breasts through the bra. Before he undressed her, he tried to smile at her. With his massive hand, he tilted her chin to look at him as gently as he could.

Her eyes! The sadness and despair! Her eyes touched his mind and then his heart, reminding him of Allison. Chico suddenly felt humiliated by what he was about to do. He looked away in shame, and after the moment it took to recover, he was surprised to see his erection had completely disappeared. Chico got up and got the shivering Toshi a couple of blankets and allowed her to curl up and take a nap on his bed while he sat nearby and read a book, unknowingly practicing the ritual Toro had been doing night after night.

For the first half hour Toshi didn't believe him. He would look up from his book and see her staring at him with wet and mournful eyes. But then their eyes met for a long moment, and somehow a degree of trust became established. Toshi fell asleep, and when he woke her two hours later to return her to the barn, she went on tip-toe and kissed his cheek before he led her out of the room.

Chico blushed with the memory. If only he would have done the same with Allison and Mandy. Mandy! He had raped her repeatedly, night after night. Chico never felt more ashamed in his life. He had told himself she sort of liked him, sort of liked what he was doing, and it was all delusions. Chico felt he deserved punishment, severe punishment, and yet these women were offering him amnesty. He felt completely unworthy of it.

And not just amnesty, true forgiveness and acceptance. Jada had been very clear on that point. Chico would even be on the next shift watching Cassidy, along with Mandy and a very smart woman named Aggie. Chico closed his eyes for a moment and thought, "Mandy, my God Mandy. What have I done? I convinced myself you had more or less gotten used to me. But it was rape. It was rape every time." Chico wondered if he could ever do anything besides apologize.

And Toro! Chico couldn't help but compare his interactions with the former slaves to their relaxed acceptance of Toro. Chico had learned today that his closest friend had never raped anybody, had just taken the women to his bedroom to give them a night of rest, giving them the bed while he slept in a chair. It was quite a risk. Uno would have considered it a gross abuse of privileges and a direct challenge to his new world order. Uno's goal was to beat the slaves into absolute obedience and submission. Toro had risked his life to be kind to the slaves, and he was now getting many nods of gratitude in return.

It was the eye contact that made this all possible. Unbelievable stuff, and a part of Chico was terrified by it. He suspected it made lying absolutely impossible. Maybe you could hide a thought, he wasn't sure, but lie? The feeling was like being the sole black cockroach in the center of an acre of a pure white kitchen floor, right after someone had snapped on the lights. There was absolutely no place to conceal emotional desire, and to Chico that presented a profound question. How could you ever hope to hide your true desires and emotions from yourself if you couldn't even hide them from others? In the brave new world, people would no longer be able to ignore their own moral flaws, not when the people around you could inspect your soul.

"And so you have to choose," Chico thought. "Face and overcome the vileness, or surrender to it. The middle ground has all but disappeared." He looked again in Mandy's direction, hoping she was okay and wondering how he could ever possibly make amends. She saw his glance and stood up immediately and came over and sat down in a vacant chair right next to him. She turned her face straight towards him, and Chico had been taught the new mannerisms well enough to know that she was both offering and requesting eye contact. Chico gulped and accepted.

"Mandy, I'm…"

"You! Can you feel what it's like now, to have you forced inside me when I don't want you?!"

The waves of revulsion made Chico wince. This close together, the mind connection was superb, incredibly detailed, and Chico allowed Mandy to push her full raw and emotion-laden experience to him. Chico was almost female, his/her body was almost being violated in a terror that previously had been completely beyond his/her comprehension. Chico was almost being raped by himself. A large powerful man was holding his/her legs apart and was forcing his erection into his/her vagina. Chico could even feel the slimy lubrication on his anus and vaginal folds.

Chico's jaw clenched and he struggled not to wince and break the connection. His revulsion of the lubed fingers sliding into his vagina was so extreme, he felt like vomiting. But Chico pushed the bile back down into his stomach and maintained the mind link. He reckoned Mandy deserved that much, that much and more.

And the rest of the world seemed completely motionless. Locked in the link, both Chico and Mandy realized their emotional content must be in the stratosphere, so high that a few seconds of outside time were giving them subjective minutes to communicate. And what would they do with all that time?

Chico as overwhelmed with contrition. "If there's some way you want to punish me, I will accept it."

"Do you think that helps me?!"

"Mandy, what else can I do?! Seriously, kick me in the balls, as many times as you want. Or if you want to do it with a whip, I'll find a whip for you."

"You idiot! Don't you think I know that?! Your sorrow and shame are like an open book to me! That's what's making this so difficult!"

"Huh?!"

"It would be so much easier to hate you! But I can't, not when you're begging me for mercy!"

Recognition dawned in Chico's mind. "My sincerity is infuriating you."

"Exactly!" It was Mandy who hiccupped and broke the connection.

Jada entered the room and without formality started the meeting. She first gave an update on Cassidy, saying the autodoc was showing her progressing nicely from a coma to restful sleep, and that it was miraculous how quickly the autodoc was repairing the damage to her face and pelvic area. The topic then turned to the main item for tonight's discussion, whether to continue with the death sentences of the three men trapped in Green Mall.

Ernesto had been abandoned by Segundo and Geraldo within a few hundred meters after they started their trip home. There were never any formal goodbyes. The two uninjured men had simply kept up a walking pace that Ernesto could not match. And he seemed to realize the finality of their decision. He never called out to them, not when they were five meters ahead, not when they were twenty, not when they were pulling out of earshot, and not when they disappeared around the curve as two tiny dots. Ernesto had collapsed to the floor shortly afterwards, having walked less than two kilometers from the sky-bridge and dripping blood all the way.

And now he was a motionless pile of humanity, lying in a coma about halfway between their two sensor nodes at spiral marks 35,468 and 36,145. The reasons he was thought to be still alive were the elevator census counters were still at 015:100, and the mall cleaners had not begun to dismember his body.

Meanwhile Segundo and Geraldo were doing an admirable job pacing themselves for their long trek home, walking with a determined pace and covering six kilometers an hour for the last four hours. To their advantage, the Mall was cool, about 18C. But the air was also quite dry, and both their throats and lips were complaining from the lack of moisture.

Jada put the issue of Ernesto's death sentence on the table. The newly freed slaves were very interested in seeing how the meeting would be run. They had accepted the Red Mall group's government that Mark and now Jada could rule by decree during the crisis, but Jada was also following Mark's intention of trying to build consensus and not rule against the majority of the group. And everybody at the table had an equal right to express themselves and vote, including the two men. It was a large leap of faith.

And the moral issues were profound. Ernesto could die at any time, and Segundo and Geraldo would be passing the Barnes & Nobel of the Green Mall home complex in one hour. It would be simple for Madison to hold them off with the pistol, ensuring their deaths.

"So," said Jada. "Let's talk about Ernesto first. I'd like to begin by letting the people who think we should rescue him speak. I open the issue to the floor, free discussion unless it gets out of hand. You don't have to wait to be recognized." There was a long and painful period of strained silence. It lasted more than a minute as the people searched their consciences. Hannah kept fidgeting in her chair but said nothing. Jada finally gave a long sad sigh. "Anybody?" she asked.

"Well," said Hannah who was still looking very uncomfortable, "I'm not sure I'm advocating this, but I'm not sure I want to kill someone either. I suppose we could treat Ernesto in an autodoc. Maybe use the one at Green Mall and then lock him up."

"For how long?" asked Paige.

"I don't know. For life without parole if we have to," Hannah answered and then wondered out loud, "Could we do that?"

"I'd like to say something," said Holly. "Ernesto charmed me into coming with him and his frat brothers the Friday before Christmas. Over the last month, I've thought of that decision and the biggest and perhaps the last mistake I would ever make. All three of these men are the cruelest people imaginable. I was often low-pick on the totem pole, the last girl checked out of the barn for night shift work. I was gang raped by… sometimes by all three of these men at the same time…"

Holly's voice caught in her throat and her eyes were suddenly flooded with tears. "Sorry." She took several deep gasps. "Sorry. It went on for weeks…" She gasped again and couldn't speak. She waved her hand to show she was finished.

Aggie spoke very quietly. "I was monitoring the autodoc when Holly was being treated. The damage to her rectum was severe. And you all know what happened to Cassidy."

Holly nodded and twisted experimentally in her chair. "My God, what a relief now. I thought the rest of my life would be spent in pain."

Fatima reached within her clothing and placed a short piece of metal rod on the table. "This is the cutoff half of the pistol Ernesto fired. He tried to shoot me in the back."

Jada looked at Toro and then at Chico. Chico accepted the eye contact. Jada thought, "You two are the ones that have known these men the longest. Do you want to speak in their defense?" Overlaid with the verbal question was emotional gentleness. Jada did not want to put Chico in an embarrassing position of either condemning or defending his former frat brothers.

And Jada let Chico into her short term memory. Toro had just declined Jada's offer with apologetic thoughts. But Chico decided as vice president of their old fraternity, he couldn't remain silent. But what to say? And then the answer came to him. Speak from the heart. The women around him deserved no less.

He cleared his throat and gave himself a moment to think by sipping his glass of water. And then he began. "I don't know how to run a prison. I don't think any of us do. Perhaps we could learn. I guess we could give these people their lives, but I'll say this. All three of these men will be holding a death wish for us. Maybe we'll get lucky the first time we try to run a prison. Maybe with a lifetime of diligence, we will never let our guard down, never be deceived by a fake illness, never provide an opportunity for them to escape."

Chico sighed heavily. "But if they do break free, be prepared to watch your back. Be prepared for ambush and sabotage and anything else their vengeance will come up with. Be prepared for attacks against you and against your children."

Hannah tried one more time to argue her uneasiness. "But people aren't all good or all evil, are they? Isn't the ability to torture within all of us? Are we so sure these men will never be able to change?"

Fatima looked at Hannah with a kind but dismissive expression. "Hannah…"

"Oh Fatima, I know! But for us to become executioners…"

Hannah could say no more, and for a moment everyone sat in silence. Then Jada looked up and gave a short gasp as she saw that the elevator-counter had counted down to 014:100. As a confirmation, the servo doors in Green Mall around Ernesto's body were opening, and a host of large spidery robots were emerging. "Lynn? Akiko?" asked Jada with a strained voice. "Would one of you kill the video?" Akiko nodded and typed at a console near her chair. The monitors on Ernesto's position switched to other locations.

Jada looked around the room and asked, "Would it be okay if I say a short prayer?" Hearing no objection, she bowed her head and reached out to Paige on her left and Heather on her right to hold hands. Soon all fifteen people in the room were holding hands in a great circle.

Chico felt Mandy give his hand a brief squeeze. He turned and saw her offering eye contact. He accepted the link, and then his breath caught in his throat as Mandy thought the words, "I don't hate you Charles." She then bowed her head, breaking the connection.