“Don’t cry,” I think in loops like a mantra. “Don’t cry.” I watch them pull my rusty Toyota onto the tow truck with practiced ease and strap it down. I try to tell the officer again that I can’t go back, that others have already moved into the house I lived in until last weekend, but he ignores me.

The house had been great, and my one-and-a-half years at college had been a blast, but then the landlord raised the rent after the new year and Rita and Clare, my housemates, decided it was too expensive. Hell, I barely made enough from waiting tables to keep myself afloat. Then, right after we canceled our lease and our landlord signed a new one, Corona hit and the college and dorms were the first thing closed down.

“Here’s your card back, Ma’am,” the other officer says behind his face mask and holds out my card with gloved fingers, then quickly steps back to bring the required six feet of space between us. “Stay put until you are fetched for repatriation.”

“We’ll be keeping an eye on you,” the other officer says.

“Why can’t I at least fetch some clothes?” I ask desperately and point to my car.

“It’s the rules,” she tells me.

Don’t cry. Repatriation! I’m treated like an illegal immigrant, and I suddenly feel a lot less sure about my views on that matter. Every car rolling into the gas station is held up and the driver’s license gets checked.

With the lease expired, lectures canceled and the dorms closed, my only chance is to travel back home. I can’t make money after they laid off all the waitresses, since the staff behind the counter is enough to hand out takeaway. And now I stare at the letters in my hand and tell myself again not to cry. I’m broke, now that they deducted the fine from my debit card, and the words “Repatriation Order” scream at me at the top of the other letter.

“Here’s your ride,” the female officer shouts and points behind me. My shoulders slump and I climb into the back of the van. Someone closes the door. There’s an opaque window between the driver and me.

Don’t cry, I try to tell myself again while the landscape I had just passed flies by in reverse, but it doesn’t help.

“It’s listed as her address, so this is where she needs to shelter,” the driver tells them. I’ve seen them a few days ago when we were removing our stuff from the house while they filled the garage with theirs. The Browns are a couple in their early forties. The husband is tall and muscular, with short brown hair and a light stubble. If I had met him at the diner, I would probably have flirted with him, but I saw him staring at me every time I walked by with a box or suitcase. His wife is only two inches shorter and also wide shouldered. Her tight string top is sweaty and clings to her chest. She could at least wear a bra. I don’t like the way she stares at me like I’m a trespasser. It’s not my fault!

“How long?” the husband asks.

“However long the shelter in place order stands. The health department will call you about that and-” Her phone beeps. “My next repatriation is already waiting. Stay safe, Sir, Ma’am.”

Don’t cry.

“Where are your things?” the wife asks.

“They took them,” I tell them with fresh tears in my eyes. “To minimize the risk of contagion.” That’s what the letter in my hand says.

Their names are Frank and Jane. They moved back here after a few years in Canada, and I can barely believe it that Frank retired at forty-three. “It got repetitive,” he says, “and once you have enough money, what good is earning more of it? Oh, hi Sarah, honey, you’re finally here. This is Lucy. I think you saw her when we viewed the house. She’ll be living with us as long as the shelter in place order is active.”

What is it with the strange looks? Sarah stops in front of me and looks me up and down as if she’s evaluating me, but for what, I don’t know. Then she sticks out her hand.

“Nice to meet you,” I say and shake it, and I hurry to explain my situation.

“So they just delivered you back here, and without all your stuff?”

“The way they treated me, I felt like I was in the middle of that outbreak movie.”

She makes a sympathetic sound and sits down on the table, and while we eat salad with chicken breast, they ask questions. I tell them all about myself, growing up on the other side of the states, about college and living here in the house, about the neighbors and shops in the vicinity. I try to get in questions of my own, but I’m too slow most of the times. It’s past eleven when everybody gets tired.

“You can sleep on the couch tonight. We’ll figure something out,” Jane says.

I assumed that Sarah is their daughter, but she can’t be, because if she is, what I am seeing is extremely disturbing. Yet, if she isn’t, then Jane has to be aware of this, and it makes no sense to me either. I was on my way to the upstairs bathroom, the downstairs one still filled with boxes waiting to be unpacked, came past her door and heard the sounds. At first I thought in my sleep-addled brain that she might be having some kind of seizure. But the door wasn’t completely closed, and so I looked and froze.

Sarah is kneeling on the bed completely naked, and the whimpers and slapping sounds aren’t because of any kind of seizure. She’s rocking back and forth, her tits swaying under her, and Frank is driving his cock into her pussy from behind. It’s debauched enough already, but he’s pulling her head back by her long red-blond hair. There’s a mirror above the headboard, and I can see her face in it. Her expression is totally wild.

“You’re too large!” she gasps, but she doesn’t even try to escape, and Frank’s movements get even faster. “Shit!” she cries out.

“Cum for me,” Frank gasps and reaches under her body. I can’t see what he’s doing, but I’m pretty sure that I know where his fingers are.

I see her muscles tighten, and for a moment, she’s totally still. Her eyes meet the mirror and I almost yelp in alarm. She has seen me! I try to move, but I’m frozen to the spot.

Her body arches even more than it already is and she screams, “Yes, yes, fuck yes!”

Frank yanks her upright and kisses her while she cums.

I feel like fainting, but I finally manage to stumble away from the door frame and sneak back downstairs, certain that I’m going to hear footsteps any moment and face the most embarrassing confrontation of my life. I lie awake for two hours, faking sleep while the urge to pee gets worse and worse. I think I hear a door clicking shut and the patter of feet on carpet, but I’m not certain, so I stay like this some more. Finally, though, I can’t keep it in anymore. When I tiptoe upstairs again, everything is silent and all doors are closed.

“I’m broke,” I confess after a long, uncomfortable breakfast when Jane suggests I could order some clothes online.

“Oh, dear,” she sighs. “Well, Sarah isn’t that much taller than you, perhaps she would lend you a few things. Why don’t you wake her up and ask?”

“I don’t want to disturb her,” I quickly say. Facing Sarah is the last thing I want to do right now.

“Nonsense. She’s slept in long enough, and she still has a lot of unpacking to do.” She leans over me and picks up my empty plate, putting one hand on my shoulder. “How long have you been wearing your panties by now?”

“Okay,” I say. She made her point.

“She has asked you a question,” Frank chimes in. I stare at him. He’s not serious.

“It’s a rule in our household. When someone asks a question, you answer it.” He stares hard at me.

I gulp.

“How long?” Jane asks again, back from the sink, and puts both hands on my shoulders.

I feel caught and hear myself admit, “Two full days.” I blush madly. God, why did I have to tell them? I could have at least lied a bit, but then, I never was good when I was put on the spot. I spent the day before I left helping Rita squeeze her stuff into her car, and then I overslept a bit and had to hurry stowing my own stuff back in my Toyota if I wanted to get moving at dawn. I had planned to take a shower and put on fresh clothes, but in my sleepy state, I had buried the box with the underwear at the very bottom of the pile.

“Wake her up,” she tells me.

“Okay.”

I stammer like a nervous schoolgirl and gently shake her shoulder.

“Hmm?” she groans and turns to the other side.

I shake her again, and she turns onto her back and stretches her limbs. “How late is it?” she asks with a yawn.

“Close to nine,” I say.

Her eyes snap open. “Oh. Hi,” she says. “Did Jane send you up?”

Jane, not “Mom”. “Yes and no,” I tell her. “Uhm. Well, you know I couldn’t bring my stuff?”

“Yeah. You told me.” She sits up, and the blanket falls down. I quickly look away when her naked breasts come into view.

“C-could I borrow some of you?”

She’s silent for a while. “You saw us, didn’t you?” she says.

Shit. It’s what I dreaded. Maybe she’s going to let it slide if I don’t react.

“I asked you a question. And you should look me in the eyes when you answer. Really. Have you got no manners?”

“I’m sorry,” I say and look up, which I immediately regret because she has pulled away the blanket. There’s not a single hair on her pubic mound. I force myself to move my gaze and shift it past her breasts. I think she’s a bit larger than me. She’s grinning, and I could grill steaks on my cheeks. She’s having fun at my expense.

“I’ll lend you something for today,” she says and gets off the bed. She walks to one of the boxes still cluttering the floor and leans over it while she rummages through it. I can’t help it. She totally shamelessly bends forward, and her firm buttocks part and give me totally unobstructed view of her pinkish pucker. “I don’t mind you looking,” I hear her say and realize she’s looking back and caught me staring.

“I’m not...” I start to stammer.

“Really, it’s okay,” she says and continues rummaging. “Ah, here it is.”

She turns around and throws a fire engine red bundle of fabric my way. I barely manage to catch it and stare at it.

“Do you have any hobbies?” she asks and rummages through another box.

“Uh. I like to draw. And write.” I freeze when she walks towards me.

“Cool. I like writing too. We can compare stories.”

I almost sob in relief when she walks past me to the door of the en-suite bathroom and closes the door after stepping inside.

The bundle of fabric unfolds into a flimsy bikini and I gulp.

I nicked my skin twice until my bush was gone. I tried to remove only what was necessary so the hair wouldn’t stick out of the sides, but in my attempts to get it symmetric, more and more hair succumbed to the razor until the only sensible thing left was to do away with it completely. It feels strange to be hairless down there again after so many years, and the bikini bottoms rub a little with every step, making me incredibly aware of my depilated pubes. I’ve never worn such a small top before, and I hate that I can see the pale shapes of my regular bikini tops. So can the others. It looks awkward. I feel awkward.

“Let’s get some sun,” Sarah says and pulls me outside where she has already spread towels on the lawn. “At least we aren’t locked in a flat with no garden,” she says, and I agree with her.

I can finally relax. And I manage to reach my parents on the phone after numerous attempts and wondering why they didn’t try to call me when I didn’t show up as planned.

“Oh, good to hear that you’re doing okay,” Mom says after questioning me about my whereabouts. Okay is a bit of an exaggeration in my opinion. “We tried to go to the cabin yesterday because your dad, you know how he is when he doesn’t have his secretary with him to remind him where he put his head, forgot his computer there, but they held us up at the park entrance. We spent hours there until they finally got around to checking our papers, and then we were told to go back home. Those officers were horribly impolite!”

Tell me about it, I think.

“Then there was an accident a few miles back while we waited, and we got stuck in the holdup for nine hours without reception. Your dad was livid, and I had to do what I could to calm him down. When we got back in the middle of the night and you weren’t there, we thought you probably got stuck too, and we were both so tired.”

“Well, at least you got back home,” I say. “I’m stuck here with total strangers and had to pay five hundred dollars.”

“Really?” Mom gasps. “So much?”

“It’s apparently a major offense now if you try to get past the state border,” I tell her miserably. “It was the last of my money too. Could you lend me a bit? They took my clothes and everything away with my car.”

I expect to hear her say, “Of course, honey. How much do you need?” But she stays silent.

“Mom?” I ask. “Are you still there?”

“Thing is ... oh, I’ll let Jake explain it to you.”

There are a few hurried whispers, followed by my father’s voice. “Hello, buttercup.”

“Hi, Dad.”

I hear him take a deep breath. “I’ll be upfront. I should have received a major sum today, an advance for a large scale project. The contract is already signed. But I can’t start to work because almost all of the staff is locked away in their homes, and so the customer is withholding the payment.”

“But...” I say.

He cuts me off. “Your mother and I decided a few months ago that it would be the perfect time to pay off our remaining mortgage in one go. We had that money, but not much more, at least not in liquid assets.”

I don’t like where this is going. “You’re broke too?”

“If I could get to my computer, I could transfer some money from our overseas account or sell some stocks. Without it, it will take a few weeks. We have just enough in cash to tide us over until then. You’ll have to hang in tight, buttercup. I’m sorry.”

I stare at my cellphone and quench the desire to throw it against a wall. “I see,” I say.

“These are trying times, buttercup, but I’m sure you’ll make do. You don’t know the people you live with yet, but they are people too. Get closer and try to be helpful.”

“I will,” I say.

“We need to get going if we want to make it back from the grocery by lunchtime, buttercup. Stay safe!”

“You too.” I end the call and lie back. There’s not even a cloud on the sky to distract me.

“No luck?” Sarah asks.

“No,” I tell her dejectedly.

“It’s going to be alright.”

The rest of the day almost feels normal, if you forget about my flimsy outfit. I help lug boxes around and hand their contents to the others. Slowly, the chaos lessens, and we’re all sweaty and dusty by dinner time. I head downstairs to move my clothes into the dryer and almost start to cry when I pull them from the washing machine, not understanding what happened at first. They have changed into one sticky, stiff mess. I try to pull them apart, praying that it looks worse than it is, but everything is stuck together.

Like in a trance, I stumble back upstairs and hold up the mess. “I just pulled these from the washer,” I tell Jane.

She frowns at the ugly bundle. “Honey?” she suddenly shouts. “Did you remove that sealing stuff from the washing machine?”

There are footsteps, then he steps into the kitchen. “Not yet. Why?”

Jane nods towards me, and I show him my ruined clothes.

“Oh bummer,” he says. “These are ruined. The washer probably as well. Didn’t you check it?”

“It looked empty,” I say. My bottom lips starts trembling.

“It will take a while to get a new one,” he states. “I heard delivery times went up to three weeks or more.”

I whimper.

“You don’t happen to have insurance?” he asks me, and I finally start crying.

I feel like facing the inquisition, sitting on the kitchen chair in the living across from the couch and Jane, Sarah and Frank.

“We need to talk rules,” Frank says. “We wanted to give you a few days to settle in before we had this talk, but this new complication warrants that we get things straightened out right away. You surely understand that, Lucy, right?”

“Yes, Frank.”

“Jane, Sarah and I normally have a very structured relationship.”

I can feel the question marks in my eyes when he doesn’t continue right away. “I don’t understand,” I tell him.

“Each of us has a role with certain obligations and freedoms. My obligation is to provide the money and directions. Jane’s is to care for meals and fulfill her wifely duties.”

I gasp quietly. Rita would be jumping up and crying “sexist asshole” after that.

“Sarah’s is to be a good girl and do what she’s told to.”

I look at Sarah. Franks words sound strange, but she’s smiling.

“One obligation Jane and I have is also to discipline Sarah if she misbehaves.”

“Sure,” I say, finally getting the convoluted way of saying, “I make the rules.” Or so I think.

“Now we have you. You have no belongings, no money to contribute, and you are apparently not really adept at household duties.”

I feel like I’m slapped in the face. “But – but it was just this one-”

He cuts me off sharply. “Who pays for the roof over your head, the meals that you eat, the drinks that you drink, the warm water that washes you and all the small everyday needs while you are here?”

He really knows how to make you feel small, and there’s nothing I can say without appearing like a thoughtless, petulant child.

“You do,” I admit.

“The question is, Lucy, do you want to have all that or can you do without it? We can, of course, let you do your own thing. There’s a spare mattress in the basement, and you might be able to weave yourself some kind of outfit from the weeds in the garden. I don’t think the berries and roots you can find there will be enough to live on, but you could try, and if it rains, you’ll at least get clean.”

I’m rendered speechless for ages, breathing hard, staring at the three of them and searching for a hint of compassion, but there is none.

“What will it be, Lucy?”

“What do you want?” I ask back. I have a horrible suspicion, but I try not to think about it.

“Just like Sarah, you do whatever we tell you to. You’ll try hard to earn your keep in whatever way possible. You’ll agree to be disciplined for your mistakes. We will tally the expenses we have on your behalf and you will reimburse us in a reasonable time span once the lock down is over.”

“Can – can I think about it?”

“You have until breakfast tomorrow.”

I hear the footsteps and a door open. I’ve been wide awake every second since I lay down on the couch. I hear a slap and soft giggling. God. I turn to the side and try to muffle the sound with the cushions, but it’s dead quiet otherwise, and I still can hear their faint noises.

I tiptoe up the stairs. The door to Sarah’s room is open all the way, and the light is on. Just a small peek to see if what I saw last night wasn’t just my imagination, I tell myself and creep closer.

Oh my god.

They are doing it again, but Frank is laying on the bed and Sarah sitting astride his groin. I can see where the end of his cock is entering her and spreading her pussy. The slapping sound, though, isn’t coming from her pussy. Frank is alternately slapping her boobs, making them bounce wildly, and Sarah is holding her hands behind her neck and wantonly gyrating her hips, almost as if she enjoys it.

I can’t imagine letting someone do that to my own sensitive breasts.

“Harder,” Sarah says. “Make me cry.”

Oh fuck!

The next slap echoes like a gunshot. A strange sound, half scream, half moan, comes from Sarah’s lips, but before she is finished, he swats her other breast and she gasps. Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack. She starts bawling.

“Now!” he snaps.

She reaches down, spreads her pussy lips and starts flicking her clit with her fingernail. Her sobs quickly turn into mewls, then into high-pitched little cries, and then she starts shaking all over and tilts her head back.

I hurry to the loo and avoid looking at the crotch of my soaked bikini bottoms. I pee, and wipe myself, and then I can’t resist the opportunity. I stroke my naked pubes and play with my clit, far gentler than Sarah did. My mind conjures up the horrible picture of myself in Sarah’s place, speared and slapped by Frank. I don’t want to cum with such a terrible fantasy, but I can’t stop either. I bite my hand as wiggle back and forth while a powerful climax explodes through my body.

“Nice!” I hear a deep voice say, and it’s a good think I’ve just emptied my bladder. “You should think of locking the door.”

I’m dying. Dying from humiliation. I don’t know how long he watched me play with myself, but there certainly wasn’t any doubt about what I was doing.

I have barely fallen asleep when I’m woken again. It’s still dark. I groan and rub my eyes, and I recognize Jane’s face in the faint moonlight.

“Jane?” I ask. “What is it?”

“I thought it might make sense to talk to you so you don’t freak tomorrow. Frank laid in on a bit thick, but he didn’t really put a name on things, and you didn’t ask. You have five minutes to ask the questions you should have asked.”

“I’m not sure I want to hear the answers,” I tell her.

“Probably, but that only makes it worse.”

I sit up and pull the blanket tighter around me. “Who is Sarah?” I ask.

“Ah.” I think she’s smiling. “A good question indeed. Sarah is our slave.”

“Slave?” I gasp and shuffle a foot back.

“She volunteered, Lucy!”

“She -” Gawd. “I saw her and Frank.”

“I know. He told me. He saw you too.

I expect the room to light up from the glow on my cheeks and take a few calming breaths. “This is so weird and embarrassing, Jane!”

“That’s just because it’s so new to you.” She pats my leg. “It will get better.”

“I’m not sure. Frank – he – he slapped her breasts. Hard.”

“The little slut loves that,” Jane says with a giggle. “But you should be asking instead of telling. Time’s halfway up.”

“You ... I mean ... If I...” I take a shuddering breath. “To hell!” I growl. “If I say yes, will I be your sex slave too? I mean Frank’s? Oh god, yours? You mean, you and Sarah...”

“Yes,” she says. “Yes to all.”

“Oh god. Hey!” I reach for the blanket, but she was too fast.

“I understand, of course, if you’re too uptight for that kind of fun.”

“I’m not uptight!” I hiss. “It’s just – it’s...”

“Let me demonstrate something.

“What?” I try to ask, but suddenly, there are warm lips pressing down on mine and a foreign tongue inside my mouth. I whimper and reach up to push her away, but I totally freeze when she pulls my bikini top up and touches my breasts. “Don’t!” I gasp, but that’s of course stupid. Her tongue rubs against mine and her skilled fingers twirl my nipples, and I gasp again. Then there’s pain in my nipples, and I gasp louder, and a moist heat wafts up between my thighs.

She breaks the kiss with a smack. “You should decline the offer,” she says and pulls the top back into position. “Unless you felt that in your pussy.”

Three pairs of eyes are focused on me, full of expectation. Blushes travel in waves over my skin. I could run. But where? If I only had my stuff, I could take the old tent, fill my backpack and camp in the woods. There’s bound to be berries and fish and all kinds of edible things. They aren’t checking the woods, are they, just the trail heads. Right?