Chapter 10

Sharon eventually got to sleep after tossing and turning in the dark fetid heat, crammed between Sweetness' and Tracey's own hot bodies, and long after the moaning and gasping ceased from the mattress where Buttercup was sleeping with Joy. When she awoke it was on a lumpy mattress sodden with sweat and the strange sensations of a slobbery tactile probing in her vagina. As she blinked in the dark, her legs were wide open and she was enjoying the sensation despite herself. What was the feeling? It wasn't a prick. Not unless it was a peculiarly small and versatile one. And it wasn't fingers - the feeling was quite unlike that. As the sensation spread up her labia to her stomach, she established that it must be a tongue. No man had ever sucked her there before, and it was a pleasure she felt peculiar about enjoying. But who was it? There was no light at all in the dark store-room; no silhouetted figures, nothing but a frightening absence of sight.

"Tracey. Is that you?" Sharon wondered, thinking that her friend had perhaps mistaken her for Buttercup.

"You what?" answered Tracey in a sleepy voice. "What you want?"

"Are you fucking licking me?"

"What the fuck do you think? I'm your mate, not your fucking whatsit."

Sharon leaned up and groped at the head of whoever's head it was between her legs, secretly hoping that it was Buttercup (though why she wasn't sure).

"Ooh! That hurt! That's my eye!" shrieked Sweetness.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

"Don't you like it?"

"Don't fucking ask! Just get the fuck off me!" Sharon yelled into the dark.

A match was struck, and a candle lit. Joy stood up in front of them, with a strange leer. "Don't you like my darling Sweetness?" She asked with amusement.

"I'm no fucking dyke!"

"In this world, you get what you fucking get and you've got no fucking choice!" Joy said. "However, it's time me and Sweetness went to work."

Buttercup was still asleep on the mattress, but Joy rudely shook her awake. "Come on, my darling. We need to get some daylight!" After some very minor preparation, Joy led the way up the store-room rungs to the world outside. Actually, it was Sweetness who really led the way, bounding up the rungs, knowing exactly where to place her bare feet. She pushed up the hatch, Joy extinguished the candle she was carrying, and the girls were exposed to the harsh bright light of the morning sun through the slats of the bombed roof.

In the light, Sharon was at last able to see Sweetness more clearly. She was very thin, her ribs showing clearly through the stretched skin of her chest, and her pointed nipples prominent on otherwise uncontoured breasts. Her dark brown hair was matted and fell over her sharp angular shoulders, and unlike almost everyone else they had met she had no stud in her cunt. Her eyes had a haunting vacancy about them, the pupils and cornea spooky and undefined, and she never faced whoever it was she was speaking to or whoever it was speaking to her. She had prominent pinched cheeks and clearly defined cheek-bones, which gave a strangely puckered look to her mouth.

It was Sweetness who rushed ahead, clearly familiar with every bend and contour of the corridors in the ruined factory, with Joy and the three girls following. On the way, they passed other figures in the half-dark who looked up at them without much curiosity as they went by. They seemed to be preoccupied in other business which was mysterious and unidentifiable to Sharon and Tracey, but presumably had some purpose.

"What does everyone do here?" Tracey asked Joy as she dashed onward.

"Fuck knows! Stitching clothes. Grinding wheat. Rolling tobacco. How the fuck should I know? You do what you fucking can out here!"

"And what does Sweetness do?" Sharon found herself wondering, the sensation of liquid tongue still a vivid memory between her legs.

"She fucks," snorted Joy. "Or more precisely she gets fucked. We've got a stall, and when I'm not out scavenging in the woods, she takes whoever wants to take her."

"So she's a prostitute, then?"

"I haven't the smallest fucking idea what that is. Whatever you want to call it, it's all Sweetness can fucking do. But she's fucking good at it. Aren't you, Sweetness? You're a fucking good fuck, aren't you!"

Sweetness turned her head round and gazed sightlessly at Joy. "I do my best."

The girls soon exited the factory, and found themselves in a broad area where other people in the settlement were busy. Most like Sweetness had no clothes at all, but some had rags which hid some of the unsightly scars and wounds which was a common feature in the encampment. A man staggered past them hobbling on a large branch on the one leg and half a set of genitals that were left to him. His skin was tattooed all over with strange khaki-like splodges. He greeted Joy, and hobbled onwards.

"What happened to him?" Sharon asked.

"Oh! He's that rare thing: a deserter who didn't get shot escaping. However, he got away through a minefield, which explains his injuries. But at least he's alive!" Joy caught up with Sweetness who was standing by a battered foam mattress next to a wooden board where the letters 'SEX FOR SALE' were carved into it. "Well, here we are! Lie down, Sweetness!"

The young girl stretched herself out onto the mattress, leaning herself up on her shoulders, with her legs open and her shaved vagina on prominent display. Joy sat on a rock by the side of the mattress, and smiled sardonically at the three girls who stood around. "I guess selling yourself for sex is an option you girls can go for. Buttercup'd make you all like fucking aristocracy."

"How much does it make?" Sharon asked, making a mental comparison with the cost of sex in Throb. "How much money do you charge for Sweetness?"

"Money! Money! There's no fucking use for fucking money here. What you gonna do with it? Clean your arse with it? No, all you'll get is food, candles, clothes if you want them, that kind of thing. But with fucking Buttercup you'll wipe up."

"Food, candles and clothes!" gasped Tracey. "That doesn't sound like it's fucking worth it!"

"Well, what do you fucking expect, dearie?" Joy sneered. "Cigarettes, booze and televisions? There's no fucking electricity here even if you could get those things. Anyway, you can just bugger off. I can see my first customer coming."

Sharon, Tracey and Buttercup stood discreetly back as a squat hairy man with a ragged cloak and a mangled arm approached carrying some turnips from whose ends were still dangling dried earth and roots. He gave the turnips to Joy, who examined them with a critical appraising eye. "Ten minutes!" she said to him, gesturing towards Sweetness. "Any more and it's on credit." The hairy man grunted, and handed Joy his cloak revealing some deep festering scars across his back amongst the long thick black hair. He then unceremoniously knelt on the mattress, holding out his tumescent penis towards Sweetness in the broad hairy hand that was left unmangled.

Sharon grimaced. Of all the men who'd ever fucked her, none of them had been quite as grotesque as this figure. For fuck sake, he only had one eye and an empty socket where the other should be. And she'd been fucked by some pretty fucking sorry specimens in her time! However, Sweetness had none of Sharon's aesthetic doubts, aided no doubt by her blindness, and guided by the hairy man's hands she plunged her mouth greedily onto his prick and gobbled and sucked it almost with desperation. As it came up to its erection, it really was not that splendid a specimen, no more than three inches long with the hair from the balls tangling with the coating of hair on its whole length. She pushed her head back and forth on its stubby fat length: the whole of it easily getting into her mouth. And then when she judged it to be as erect as it could be, she lay on her back and let him fuck her, which he did in a snorting, grunting way, his hairy arse thrusting up and down mechanically and not at all expertly.

"Have you ever been fucked by someone so horrible?" Tracey asked Buttercup as they watched.

"Well, not anyone scarred or disabled. They'd be sent off to fight in the war or whatever. But some of the people on the other side of the wall are pretty horrible. Fat and horrible, really. But you get used to it. One fuck's much the same as another when you don't think about it too much. How about you?"

"You fuck what you can," Tracey answered philosophically. She looked sadly at her new lover. "What about last night? When you were... doing it with Joy? Was that horrible?"

Buttercup looked directly into Tracey's eyes, and smiled sympathetically. She clearly recognised Tracey's concern. And also her jealousy. "Oh! It was really horrible! Not like it is with you. You're much nicer!"

Tracey felt a strange burning on her cheeks. This must be what it's like to blush, she thought, reflecting on this unusual sensation which she'd never felt since she was young and probably almost a virgin. She smiled at Buttercup in a way that she was sure was hopelessly soppy and stupid. But she didn't care, and anyway she couldn't help it. Buttercup turned her unbelievably beautiful body towards Tracey, put her hands on her shoulders and pressed her face towards Tracey's.

"Do you want to make love with me, Tracey sweetest?" she asked in a strangely low and reassuring voice.