Chapter 25: Onto the Stage

When the four girls were finished in Cell Ten, and Nina and Holly had disappeared, Kelly helped Sheila get redressed and re-handcuffed. They ascended one flight and, from the Main Floor hall, they entered the first door on their left.

The room was small, and dimly lit, with only a single overhead bulb. Sheila recognized the other girls from the ship. All eleven of them were in the room, seated on wooden chairs that lined the four walls. Despite the dim light she could see that all had been dressed and made up, more or less as she had been. Each girl's wrists were, like her own, manacled to her collar. Several of them held shot glasses that were either full or partially filled with a liquid.

The guard in the room was leaning against a door that was in the wall directly opposite the door that Sheila and Kelly had just entered. Seated in a chair on Sheila's right just beside the door was another blue girl. On her lap she held a clipboard on top of a cardboard box.

"Are we late, Polly?" Kelly inquired of the girl.

The guard across the room responded. "We've been waiting for you two for half an hour!"

"Ignore him, Kelly," the seated girl said. "There's no rush."

She tipped up the bottom of her clipboard, to reveal in the box under it several shot glasses filled with liquid. She held one up. "Drink this," she told Sheila.

"What is it?" Sheila asked, uneasily. She put her nose to it. It smelled of lemon.

"You'll find out soon enough," Kelly said. "Drink it down."

Sheila hesitated.

"It's orders from Master Crane," the girl said; drink it: it's alcoholic. You'll feel a lot easier during the bidding if you're a little intoxicated. Crane doesn't like new girls to be too scared and stiff during the auction."

Anne, the wife of Jerry of the big cock, was seated across the small room opposite Sheila; she held an empty glass. She smiled at Sheila. "It's alcoholic, all right," she said. "They said it's called 'limoncello' and it's imported from Sorrento. It tastes a bit like a whiskey sour. Actually, I'd like another one."

The blue girl beside Sheila shook her head. "Crane doesn't want you drunk, just mellow."

Sheila tasted it. She'd never had a whiskey sour. She didn't know if Anne's description was accurate or not; it did taste of lemon, and it left a bitter aftertaste. She drank it down. She could feel the heat of the alcohol coursing down her throat. It warmed her stomach. During Sheila's year in New York, she'd grown accustomed to white wine with dinner, but this drink was much stronger. It immediately went to her head.

While Kelly collected empty glasses, Sheila looked around the room. Her face was growing pleasantly warm from the drink, and she felt herself relaxing. She looked at the other girls. She saw the petite coed Robyn with the long black hair and oversized--for her small frame--tits and her auburn-haired roommate, Mia. Eighteen years old, both of them, if she recalled correctly. Jane, the blonde with breasts as large as her own, was beside Mia. She was just sixteen. No, seventeen. She remembered thinking that Jane acted younger than her age. None of the male captives were in the room; the only man present was the guard who was across the room leaning against the door.

She suddenly noticed Wendy, her apartment mate, seated over against the left wall. Wendy smiled back at her. Sheila hadn't recognized her on first entering the room.

Someone had performed an amazing transformation on her friend. She looked gamin-like now, and much younger than earlier in the day. Her hair had been trimmed and swept to one side, boyishly. Her breasts looked small through a sky blue blouse, but that only added to her youngish appearance. She was twenty- eight, but--at least in the dim light of the room, she looked of high school age.

Her skirt was a black mini that nicely displayed her slender but shapely legs, and it contributed even more to her appearance of youth. In place of stockings, she wore blue bobby socks that matched the color of her blouse. Her feet were enclosed in black felt slippers.

Sheila glanced back at Anne. The two of them had conversed on the ship after Sheila's dreadful episode with the four men, and the brunette had helped her clean up. Now she was dressed in a strapless black evening gown. It displayed the cleavage between her ample breasts fully as well as Sheila's dress did her cleavage.