Ann’s eyes flew back, but it was so dark– so black– she had to touch her face to be sure she was actually awake, not hallucinating. The last thing she remembered was the hospital– the pill they gave her.

She bent an elbow but her hand collided with something solid, unforgiving, and Ann was forced to scraped the back of her hand along, a mere inch from her face. Was this a nightmare? No. She was awake and she screamed– a long and terrified scream that rebounded unnaturally, back to her ears. Her insides swooned and she felt about wildly. It was wood, on all sides and Ann screamed again– the sound dulled, contained. “I’m alive ... I’m alive...”

Her heart began to pound and she gasped at a breath. She fought to control the panic but it was impossible. “I’m not dead,” she cried piteously. “Please. Let me out. I’m alive.” And she began to scrape at the inside of her box with bloodied fingernails. “I have to get out ... Please Lord, I have to get out,” she sobbed and Ann tried to lift the lid. But, she found, it was simply hopeless.

The realization that there may be six-feet of soil between her and the sunlight numbed her thinking.

“Did the shipment arrive from the hospital?”

“Yes sir. The van is just backing up to the loading dock.”

“The Gerard girl?”

“Mmm. I’ll need a signature.”

“Of course. Thank you.” His Executive Assistant was a tall, gaunt-looking woman who had seen her fiftieth birthday come and go. But that’s not to say that Doctor Judith Mendez was unattractive.

In her youth, Director Cummings thought, she must have held the undivided attention of many eligible men of note, and her looks had not forsaken her in middle age, though the men who had pursued her endorsement must have long since departed and settled for less bitter-minded conquests.

Mendez was like a bite of crab-apple, or a swallow of battery acid and he had to wonder about her past. What could have happened that would turn an attractive, intelligent woman like Mendez into a total sour bitch.

Doctor Mendez favored black, knee length dresses under a starched lab coat which revealed narrow hips in the opening– and decent breasts above, supported by good shoulders. Indeed, admiring her trim calf muscles, all shiny in silky black nylon, he found himself once again wondering what it would be like to lower himself into her scrawny body.

Mendez held out a clipboard. “I’ll just go down and check on her. I assume you’ve seen the photographs. She’s very attractive.”

The Director cleared his throat. “Yes. Well...”

“Then you are planning on visiting her...” Mendez stated, her tone blunt.

God, the woman was right in his face, the accusation blatant, and he eyed Mendez carefully. Her hair was black with a shock of silver at each temple and Mendez wore it slicked straight back behind the ears where it was severely hacked off at collar-length leaving one with the impression she had been unable to locate her blow dryer after stepping from her morning shower. With deep set eyes and arched brows, one couldn’t help but be reminded of a dark bird of prey.

Director Cummings cleared his throat once again. “Yes. I’ll be down shortly. You’ll assist.”

“Of course, if that is your preference.” Mendez ran her eyes over her clipboard and without looking up, said, “I’ll just go prepare her.”

I wish you’d go down and prepare yourself– along side– he was thinking. He had a vision of the two women, side-by-side, bums in the air. He felt out his cock, a hand beneath the desk, and rubbed the length into a lovely erection. What a pair they’d make.

Her background was veiled. Judith Mendez had never entertained the thought of marriage, and she vehemently guarded her private life, though Director Cummings was quite certain the boundaries separating her personal life from her professional life were ill-defined, the fact of which was not accidental, but her preference.

He studied the length of her thigh for a moment, following it up to where the curve of her pubis bone disturbed the lay of her skirt.

All he really knew of Doctor Mendez was what was spelled out for him in her job application. She had graduated summa cum laude from John Hopkins and interned in the trauma ward at Mercy Medical Center. In plain English: She was immensely over qualified to be working as his Assistant in the County-run public crematorium and could easily command a high ranking position, with salary to match, in any for-profit medical facility in the major urban center of her choosing.

The air suddenly chilled. Doctor Mendez pulled her lab coat tightly about her torso and held out the clipboard for his signature. She had caught him perusing her body and understood all to well his intent– he was contemplating her vagina, contemplating the look and feel of the mound, and wondering what it would be like to squeeze up inside, between her legs.

But that was not about to happen. Not because he was her co-worker and boss, but because he was a man. And men, all men, no matter how they presented themselves as honest, trustworthy gentlemen ... devoted family men ... defender of women’s virtues ... all men were slime and were only interested in experiencing the slim body which had become so notorious, years ago, when she was just twenty-four years of age.

They had stalked her.

They were aware of her work schedule, knew where she parked her car, had followed her along the half-block route she walked to her apartment in the three-story brownstone, and they had taken the time to remove the locks from the door of the abandoned shoe factory.

It had been a crappy day at Mercy, starting with a gunshot wound at six in the morning. Doctor Judith Mendez had been on her feet from thereon, doused in vomit, soaked in blood, lost a little girl to the whims of a sadistic parent and hadn’t eaten since– well since sometime yesterday. It was ten at night, now, as Judith dodged puddles on the rain soaked pavement. She was so tied she couldn’t see straight and completely missed the fact the door to the old shoe factory hung open, until it was too late. Judith was body slammed from behind, forced through the doorway where two more men grabbed her by an arm each. The door banged shut behind.

It happen so quickly she hadn’t had the presence of mind to cry out and was now herded, her coat flapping and her shoulder bag banging about her knees, into the room where leather hides had once been hung from hooks. A room where screaming would do her no good. But that hadn’t stopped her and Judith emptied her lungs until she was bodily hurled against a wall.

The storage room was a dank, dark cell, the wooden beams still reeking with the smell of leather. Judith realized she would never again be able to enjoy the purchase of a new pair of shoes without being forced to relive the horrors she would encounter at the hands of these men in this hellhole of horrors. There was an electrical snap and a brilliant shaft of light knifed through the air exposing the spot, in high relief, where she stood trembling.

“Who are you? What do you want?” Judith rasped at the shadows mulling about beyond the circle of light.

A man moved forward, his features obscured in darkness. “Your dress ... take it off.”

“W-what...” Her voice trailed in shock and disbelief and she tried to read the movements beyond his shoulders. How many men were there? Certainly more than the three who had forced her from the street. Many more. Maybe six or eight, her thoughts clouded in dread. Maybe eight or ten. “You can’t mean...”

He did mean and in the hailstorm of a crushing reality that landed heavily about her shoulders, Doctor Judith Mendez understood. Understood all too well what she would have to endure: the humiliation of the sexual assault, mutilation, then possibly– execution. In a blind panic, she ducked down and made a valiant bid for freedom. She bolted for the door but her escape was instantly cut off by a fist to the stomach. Brought up short, she was slammed back against the wall where she struggled for breath and fought down the vomit.

“No,” she cried, swiping at the tears that welled up from fluttering eyelids. “No, please ... you can’t ... you can’t do this.”

“The dress,” he said smoothly. “Take off the dress and your underwear.”

“Oh God no,” she wavered under the weight of what was being demanded of her.

“You’ll do it,” he said, “or tomorrow the dogs in the alleyway will be skirmishing over the remains of your severed breasts.”

Judith crumpled. If she didn’t give them what they wanted, she would die here in this deserted shoe factory, her young body fed to street dogs. She was only twenty-four, a doctor, at the start of a promising career, and she would never again feel the warmth of her parent’s love. If she let the men, maybe they would go easy on her. And maybe let her live.

“I promise not to tell,” Judith blurted out and fighting to control her fingers, she loosened the buttons at the neck of her dress. “I won’t go to the police,” she added and shrugged the dress from her shoulders and pushed it lower, past her hips. Her dress fell about her ankles and stepping from its confines, she toed off her heels. The men crowded closer as she forced fingers beneath the elastic of her pantyhose and forced them down slim thighs. Judith played her last card: “I won’t even tell my mom.”

One of her captors grew impatient and loomed up before her. “Enough.” And forcing her back into the wall, he dug his fingers under her bra and jammed it up about her neck. Her breasts bobbed free. Her underpants were ripped down and in a sudden landslide of groping hands, Judith was upended and slammed hard onto the floorboards. Two men, struggling to control her flailing ankles, held her legs apart. In their exuberance to gain access to her rectum, they wrenched one hip and cracked her pelvis.

The men kept Doctor Mendez until well after midnight, taking turns with her– one at a time, two, and sometimes three at a time. And when they stopped to pass around the cans of beer they pulled from a cooler, they hung her naked from the rafters and watched her skinny body slowly twirl at the end of a rope. It was three hours of a hellish nightmare where she was abused repeatedly– in every way it was possible to abuse a woman. And then they had ... oh God...

When they finished, they took turns urinating on her face, then laughing, they stepped over the pile of oozing human excrement they left behind on the bare floor, hurling insults in their wake. Judith lay still. And, for endless minutes, tried to take hold of her sanity. She had been raped– worse– gang raped. And by how many men? She wasn’t sure why that was so important but she racked her brain for details, groping for facts that had been obscured in darkness.

One of them had been short, another tall. A hairy back, an appendectomy scar, one testicle. Bald, bearded, calloused, boney ass– God, it was hopeless, she finally concluded. The only thing for certain was there had been eight or more, she was hurt but had been inexplicably spared, and her life had been changed forever.

She wanted to go home, deal with being raped on her own terms but she needed medical attention, and with doctors came reports. And with reports came the police. And with the cops, came reporters.

The story was splashed across the front page of a local gossip tabloid the very next day, along with a photo of an earnest looking girl, pretty in a dark gown and holding a bouquet of roses. There was even a side bar outlining her curriculum vitae.

Unfortunately for Judith, it had been a slow news week and not one but three scandalous follow-up stories appeared during the coming days.

She phoned after the second story broke. “Enough is enough,” Judith complained to the Story Editor.

He laughed. “You’re news, Doc. And if you hadn’t noticed, that’s what we do around here: print news. And remember,” he simpered piously, “we have an obligation to warn other innocent women.”

Innocent, she felt scorned. Where were you three days ago when I was innocent?

“Now. if we’ve got some of the facts wrong,” he continued, “then that’s entirely different. I’d love to meet with you and discuss what happened, in detail.”

“I’ll bet...” Judith mumbled into the phone.

“And we could use a new photograph of you, to illustrate the story,” he chuckled.

“One with my bra jerked up around my neck?” she blurted out. His greasy laugh filled the channels of her mind and she angrily disconnected.

The third story came out and people began to notice. Men would stare, taking an unhealthy interest in her body and women whispered behind her back:

*****“Did you hear what happened to the Mendez girl?””Oh yes. It’s all over the papers. What must her mother think? You bring a girl up to be a respectable young lady and this is all the thanks you get. Deplorable.””Well she was asking for it, wasn’t she ... Did you see her photograph?””Yes. Very pretty. Too pretty for her own damned good, I’d say.””And uppity. I could see it about her lips. If she had been content with nursing, this would never have happened. But that wasn’t good enough for our Miss Mendez. She had to be a doctor. Men notice when a woman gets out of line and they don’t like it.””Well she has found her new station in life, in no uncertain terms. You think she might have a baby?”The woman covered her mouth with a hand. “A little brown bastard? Mmm. Wouldn’t that be delicious...” she giggled.

But more titillating fodder for the gossip mill was about to arrive in the form of a printed interview. The rag announced that one of the men who had assailed Doctor Mendez had come forward and the tabloid had an exclusive interview. And what’s more, the man claimed to have documented the assault with his cell phone. He had photographs.

Suddenly Doctor Judith Mendez was the talk of the town and the juicy name on everyone’s lips. Release of the upcoming issue was heralded as a major media event and anticipation ran high.

Doctor Mendez suffered in silence. They couldn’t possibly publish the photograph. They couldn’t. But when the magazine finally hit the news stand, her worst fears were revealed for all to see. It was on page four. A full size color photograph of her with the Alsatian squatting over her face. The tabloid had made a halfhearted attempt at hiding her features, but there was no doubt as to the identity of the nude woman down on her back, or to the location of the dog’s engorged appendage.

Several lawyers attempted to contact her with glorious plans of retribution and financial reward but Doctor Mendez had a better idea: She packed her bags and moved north.

What was the bone of a dog doing mixed in with his wife’s ashes?

Ken stood before the Gerard family-mourners with the urn containing his wife’s remains gripped in sweaty palms.

Ann’s parents were there, her father, Colonel Gerard, somber and erect in his brown tweed suit and displaying all of the stoic traits of his military background. And Mother, also cool and very collected, stood by the Colonel’s side, not daring to portray her innermost feelings.

Mother Gerard– a trembling volcano, Ken thought.

He had long ago formed the opinion that Mrs Gerard had been as hot as a chili pepper in her youth but matrimony to Colonel Ramrod Gerard had stifled all that. Ken harbored the belief that Mrs Gerard had secreted off with the Colonel’s sample and been inseminated in a private clinic somewhere. Looking at them together, it was hard for Ken to imagine the Colonel atop his wife, humping stoically, humping long enough to conceive not one, but two beautiful daughters both of whom had been lucky enough to grow up in their mother’s image.

Ann’s younger sister stood beside her parents, silently whimpering, a tissue pressed to the corner of an eye. The only emotional family member left, Ken thought. Sissy was a lovely child and being she was only a year younger than Ann, the two sisters had often been mistaken for twins. But looks were deceptive, Ken knew.

But the Colonel’s women, mother and daughters, were breathtaking, something that seemed to be completely lost on the Colonel. When Ken had first met eighteen-year-old Ann, he had secretly fantasized about having both sisters, and maybe even Mrs Gerard, in the same bed at the same time.

But the fantasy was short-lived. Ann got serious about their future together and Sissy started running around with the guy with the tattoo on his neck. Ken couldn’t remember his name but he was there now, behind Sissy, a girl well above his station in life, Ken thought, and one the oaf didn’t much deserve. The guy stood, shuffling his feet aimlessly, looking distracted and bored with the proceedings. “Lucky bastard,” Ken muttered under his breath while running his eyes over the thrust of little Sissy’s perky tits.

The Gerard family were gathered together to witness the scattering of Ann’s ashes along a woodland trail where she once ran and hiked.

Ken, standing in a grove of aspens, reached in and pulled out course, grainy bone-matter and reverently let the ash sift through his fingers. Then his fingers closed on something solid. He looked down at what appear to be a partial jaw, with a canine incisor still attached.

He hesitated.

What was a dog’s jawbone doing mixed-in with his wife’s ashes? Or were they indeed his wife’s ashes? Was he the butt of some crude joke? Should he turn to the family and say something?

But being he was already in bed with his wife’s kid sister, along with her on-again / off-again tattooed boyfriend, he figured he had better keep his friggin’ mouth shut. Leave a contented pussy to lap at her cream, he thought.

Ann’s younger sister was a willowy carbon-copy of his deceased wife. But that’s where the similarities ended.

Sissy was the dark-horse of the Gerard household and was dropping hints long before Ann’s sudden demise. Not because he was such a hotshot stud but because she just wanted to get her jollies. And also to enjoy the additional thrill of having her illicit sex at the expense of her sister. And Sissy had developed another taste for the unusual: An occasional two-fer-one.

Once Ken got over the idea of being naked in bed with another guy, he found he quite enjoyed sharing his sister-in-law’s genitalia with the dopey, tattooed boyfriend. They took turns, first him under Sissy’s slim body, then on top. If Sissy was into double-penetration acrobatics, who was he to complain?

And then there was Ann’s mother.

Mrs Gerard had been very consoling after Ann’s unprecedented death. Maybe a little too free and easy with the hugs and gentle soothing. Mrs Gerard had come to him, sobbing, after the memorial service. She clung to his neck and pushed a firm tit into his arm. And when she finally released him, her hand, with fingers reaching, had lingered low down on his tummy. Lingered a little too low and a little too long to be considered appropriate. But she was an attractive forty-something, well preserved, and, once again, he hadn’t complained.

He got hard, instead.

Mrs Gerard said nothing. But she had noticed. She looked down, assessed the results of her gentle probing and with the briefest look of approval, reached to squeeze his hand. He could only stand there, trembling, and wish she had squeezed something more important to him.

Had the emotional roller-coaster ride caused by the unexpected death of her daughter manifested itself into sexual anxiety? Something with which the Colonel could offer no assistance? She had been married to the crusty old bugger since she was a teen and Ken figured Mrs Gerard hadn’t been banged in years. At least not with gusto.

So Mrs Gerard would be forced to take care of it herself, he decided. Something she was aptly prepared to do, Ken knew. He had found the silicone thruster with the wide, tablespoon-sized, spade-shaped knob, and appropriately loaded with fresh double ‘A’ batteries, during a recent exploratory tour of Mrs Gerard’s underwear drawer. He also found she was in possession of a pair of pleasing C+ cups– something which neither of her girls had inherited.

Or perhaps, Ken fantasized, Mrs Gerard would be more inclined to turn to a family member for solace. Something that would ultimately provide a greater sense of satisfaction, if only she could find someone she could trust with her vagina. And, Ken thought smugly, he himself would be an excellent candidate. He knew how to keep a secret.

That brought all kinds of possibilities to Ken’s mind. A little impromptu get together one evening– Mother Gerard, Sissy, and a few drinks when the Colonel was out of town, attending one of his stuffy reunions. It could be a fun. A little slap and tickle, a pat on the rear, the snap of a bra strap, ending with a two-fer-one in the Colonel’s king-sized bed. Would the women consider it? Would they concede? Ken imagined two fine asses, two delicious tongues, two sets of tits, two sopping cunts. Hell, anything was possible, given patience and spiked alcoholic beverages.

“What the Christ?”

“She’s come out of it,” one the orderlies cried.

Doctor Judith Mendez was looking at a plywood box. There were unrelenting screams accompanied by sever pounding coming from beneath the lid. “Jesus. Those idiots at the hospital can’t get anything right. Get her outta there. I’ll prep a hypo.”

One of the orderlies rushed forward with an electric screwdriver and got to work on the lid. Ann, inside the box, heard the sound like a dentist’s drill and started to scream again, hysterically. Once the lid was lifted, Ann lurched up. She was still dressed in a hospital gown. Cool air and a cheap laugh told her that her bum was exposed and the male orderlies were delighted by the fact.

But the thought was of little concern. “Oh thank God ... thank you ... thank you. I thought I’d been buried alive.” Ann tried to stand but her knees gave out and an orderly had to grip her by an arm and haul her up.