Chapter 5: Well Begun Is Half Done

Rick showed me through the door marked "Orientation" into another featureless corridor.

"I'm not sure we really need a separate area for this," he said. "We could just as easily do their training down in the reception block. Still we've got the space so I guess it doesn't matter. Anyways, it's just the basics they get put through here; learning to cope with simple commands, that sort of thing. Have a look at this one." He pulled open one of the doors. "She's been here a few days now. Just starting to get the hang of things, she is."

Hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room was a small cage, barely larger than the girl it contained. Inside it knelt a girl, blindfolded and naked, her wrists and ankles shackled to the bars of the cage that held her. It was only as she lifted her head in response to our arrival that I saw her collar and tag and the stewardess cap. I realised it was Rebecca and I saw at once from Rick's grin that he knew who she was as well. "A friend of yours, Mr C tells me," he said.

I nodded. Rebecca, confused and traumatised by her experiences, barely registered our presence. I looked at her feeling sympathetic in one sense but curiously detached in another. Only a week before we had been sharing a bed and yet now, somehow, it seemed quite reasonable to see her like this.

"They all spend some time caged, just to get the hang of what they can look forward too if they don't behave," said Rick, interrupting my thoughts. He swung the cage around. As he did so I could see that a pair of vibrators had been pushed into her and then fixed rigidly to the bars of the cage. He flicked a switch on the side of the cage and the vibrators sprang into life. As they did so Rebecca gave a soft groan and began to wriggle in time with the motorised thrusts. The cage swung right around. "No gag, you'll notice," Rick went on. "She's learning to keep quiet. If she manages to take an hour or so of this without too much moaning she'll be allowed out of the cage for a while."

"Isn't it, well, a bit brutal? I mean is it really necessary to treat them like this?"

"Nah. The way I see it, if we get them orientated properly they get an easier ride with their owners. We can't change the fact that they're going to be owned, but this way it should go better with them. By the time they leave here they've left their previous lives behind. They can cope with what comes next. I tell you, if your paths cross again she won't even recognise you."

"OK," I said, "maybe I just haven't got used to this business yet."

"I know how it is. I was the same at first but there's been a lot of thought put into this whole process. If you like I can have her put in a room for you afterwards. Nothing like getting close to the product for seeing the benefits of the system."

I thought about it for a moment but shook my head. It didn't seem like a great idea just then.

"Please yourself," Rick said. "I might have a go myself, Clegg doesn't mind if we take the odd hour off, providing it benefits some of our guest in one way or another. Anyway, that's basically how we do it. Simple tasks with rewards to reinforce appropriate behaviour. Let's have a look at the next one."

We left Rebecca swinging in her cage trying to cope with her simple task of keeping quiet with the vibrators pulsing away in her pussy and her arse.

"Here's an interesting one," said Rick. He said opening the door to another cell where a naked, girl was kneeling, chained by her collar to a steel pillar in the centre of the room. "This one was a librarian," he ushered me into the cell. "Turned out to be relatively sexually inexperienced when we interviewed her and while that's attractive to some folk most buyers want some basic skills. We use this to train the ones that aren't very capable at oral sex. Look at this."

As we walked around the post I could see that her mouth was round a large artificial phallus that projected from the pillar. She was sucking at it enthusiastically. "Looks to me as if she's learning what she needs to here," I said.

"Yes," said Rick. "And as long as she keeps that up she'll be all right." He saw my puzzled look. "Check out our little book worm's titties," he went on. She had clamps on her nipples which wasn't unusual for the girls in the Prep Centre but from each ran a cable that disappeared into the pillar. Her pace slowed as she tired. Almost at once she squealed and bucked as an electric current shot down the cables. She set to again, using her mouth with renewed energy.

"And if she doesn't there's an electric shock to reminder her what she's supposed to be doing? Ouch! How long does she have to keep that up?"

"She'll do an hour today, a bit more tomorrow. We'll increase the time and increase the voltage over a few days. She may not develop much technique but she'll at least develop some stamina and it should cure some of her gag reflex."

"How come?"

"There's a sensor in the tip of the phallus. As long as she keeps it pressed against the back of her throat the shocks take a little longer to develop."

"Impressive engineering," I said.

"Well, that's one of Freddie's personal contributions. He's good at that sort of thing. Seen enough of this?"

"Yes, sure," I said. As we left the cell I heard the girl give another squeal and whimper.

"OK, here's another of Freddie's engineering solutions," he opened another door. Inside four running machines were lined up facing the room's one way mirror. On each a chained, corseted, girl was walking slowly and carefully. "This," Rick said, "we've had to install because girl's today just don't know how to walk properly."

"It's not a problem I've really noticed myself," I said.

"No, you wouldn't, but it matters to our customers. Look what they've got on their feet."

Each of the girls was wearing shoes or boots with extreme high heels. Two of them had on shoes with thick platform soles.

"Most of the girls we pick up spend most of their time slobbing around in jeans and wearing trainers. They just don't know how to walk properly in heels and they'll all need to do that when they come up for auction. We don't want them falling off their shoes like Naomi Campbell do we? So we give them some acclimatisation here. They've rarely had any experience of being corseted either. That changes their whole posture so they need to get used to that too."

"I presume they're chained to those treadmills," I said peering more closely. Every so often one of the girls would slow her pace and then give a gagged yelp before stepping out again.

"Uhhuh," Rick responded. "And you'll see that their tits are wired up just like the last girl."

"OK. So how does that work?"

"Do you see - at the back of each treadmill there's a little black box on either side? That's a photo-cell and lamp arrangement. If they slow down and get carried back by the belt they break the beam and zip."

"Zip?"

"A quick shot of electricity through the tits gets them going again. They don't have to be fast, they just have to keep up a steady pace. It seems to work."

"Our Freddie is an ingenious soul." We left the room as the girls walked on.

Rick showed the way to another room. It looked more like the bar of a comfortable hotel than a dungeon cell. Rick sat down on one of the deep padded armchairs. "Strictly speaking this is part of 'Orientation' but it's also somewhere for us guys to take a bit of time off — we give the girls a chance to practice their service skills here. Do you fancy a drink?"

I nodded in acceptance. "Why not?" I said, "I've been in stranger looking bars than this." To myself I thought, stranger looking maybe but probably not, actually, stranger. Remembering what Clegg's club had been like in London, I hardly thought that this would be any less bizarre.

I wasn't disappointed. Rick pressed a button. I response a door swung open and one of the girls teetered in on stilt high heels, evidently she had at least succeeded in completing that aspect of the training. In front of her she pushed a trolley containing an array of drinks and glasses. I guess "high fetish" would describe the look. Her head was encased in a skin tight hood of latex so thin that her features could be clearly made out beneath it, as could the fact that her mouth was filled with a jaw-breaking ball gag. Her head was held erect by a broad leather collar locked about her neck with her number tag tangling from it. Her breasts were bared, her only other garments, a waist cinching corset and a leather single sleeve binder that held her arms locked behind her back.

As she came up beside our couch I realised that she was pushing the trolley by means of a bar that was fastened to a dildo that was strapped into her, penetrating her vulva.

Another girl followed her into the room. Similarly dressed she also appeared to have a plank strapped to her back. It was only as she knelt in front of us that I realised it was her role to act as our drinks table. Rick picked a beer bottle and glass from the trolley and stood them on the table. "Help yourself," he said waving to the trolley girl. I assumed he meant drink, although the girl's reaction suggested that she was equally expecting me to take advantage of other services.

I restricted myself to joining Rick in a beer. He took a sip from his glass. "These two have been here a couple of week's now," he said. "They're fairly docile. They've learnt to do as they are told, although this one," he reached forward and pinched one of the trolley girl's nipples, "this one still thinks she can decide when she's going to behave and when she isn't. Don't you?"