Standing behind her lectern at Featherview University, Dr. Bella Ramble was nothing if not impressive. Her eyes were dark violet--nearly black--and they perfectly complimented her shoulder-length black hair and bangs. Over six feet tall in the spike-heeled pumps she favored, she seldom smiled, but she knew she had the face of an angel, and the figure of a goddess.

That bothered her in younger days--since she generally despised men-- but since then, she had learned how to use her beauty as a weapon. Dressed in a tight purple suit and skirt, she took a special delight in the squirming discomfort of the few young men who had managed to last until the end of the semester.

Of course, most of her students were female--hard-core feminists who eagerly gobbled up her man-bashing Feminist Lit seminar. Most of their wardrobe was ordinary--the standard melange of T-shirts, jeans and sweats--but a few of them were picking up the art of power-dressing, which gratified the 28-year old Dr. Ramble.

"In sum," Bella said, "history is the story of woman's exploitation by man. Men fear us--they see in our vagina the wound of castration, and they see in our womb the power of creation which they lack--and that is why they seek to enslave us. But patriarchy is an aberration--a quirk of history shifting the locus of power away from the fertile Earth Mother, and into the sterile impotence of bankrupt, male-dominated ideology. This is a condition our generation will correct, and those who oppose us will be emasculated accordingly."

Pausing dramatically, Bella took a secret pleasure in the squirming discomfort of the young men--unwittingly lowering their hands to shield their genitals.

"That is all. Have a nice summer."

A moment later, the young women arrayed before Bella erupted in applause, and she absorbed their acclaim with token modesty. Inwardly, she was pleased to be in her element--influencing the minds of impressionable young people--and she let them continue applauding for several seconds before she finally stepped out from behind her lectern to take a bow. The clapping let up after that, and the students began to drift out the twin exits.

It was only then that Bella noted a familiar figure rising to stand up from a seat near the back of the room. It was Lydia Wilder--the dean of the School of Feminist Studies--and Bella frowned slightly at her dress and demeanor. For a woman in her late forties, Lydia was not bad-looking--she had curly-red hair and a figure that was classically Rubenesque--but Bella found her wardrobe excessively feminine, currently comprising a navy-blue skirt and blouse, with cork-soled sandals. But what was worse, some of the young men actually paused to speak with Lydia-- something they never did with Bella.

"I see you're fraternizing with the enemy," Bella said, coldly, after the students were gone.

"Oh, Bella," Lydia said, approaching the front of the class, "sometimes, I think you take your militant feminism a little too seriously."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Bella said; "I wasn't aware the male patriarchy had been overthrown during my lecture."

"Well, I'm not saying you're not popular with the students; I just wish you'd tone it down a bit. I was looking at your syllabus, and your lecture titles are a little strong, don't you think? 'Castration as a Theme in World Literature'? 'Impotence as the Impetus of Modern Society'... ?"

Bella crossed her arms, shook her head, and sighed.

"I see that women of your generation don't understand the modern dialectic. You seemed to think that burning your bras, and marching for the ERA, was somehow going to magically overthrow the male power structure. I say this is a war between the sexes, which must be fought accordingly."

Lydia shook her head, half-awed by Bella, and half-shocked. It was no wonder that Bella's boyfriend was a nervous wreck; Lydia had only met Bernie Wigglebottom once, but the mild-mannered banker almost fainted when Bella started talking about how small his penis was. Of course, Lydia could understand Bella's attraction to Bernie--the ultra-feminist Bella was not overly fond of being deeply penetrated.

"Well, anyway," Lydia said, "I was wondering about your plans for the summer. Going off with Bernie somewhere?"

"Please," Bella said, "that worm already benefits enough from my presence. No, actually, I was planning on visiting Bountyville."

"Bountyville? What, that polygamist town out west?"

"I see you've heard of it--a wicked den of pro-male proselytizing."

"What do you mean? I heard it was just a farming community..."

Sighing, Bella reached into her book bag and pulled out a novel. Lydia recognized it, of course; 'My Pussy, My Friend', was written by Hera Decopolis--a former professor at Featherview University.

"This pathetic work," Bella said, "illustrates the danger of Uriah Bounty. As I'm sure you know, Ms. Decopolis produced this gushing, pro-male pabulum after being brainwashed by Uriah Bounty. I understand she's even had six children by the bastard..."

Bella shuddered.

"Well, so what?" Lydia said. "Hera always was pretty uptight. If Uriah's half as well-hung as they say he is, I can almost see why she'd want to stay with him."

Bella was appalled.

"Please say you're being facetious."

Lydia sighed.

"Okay, so I'm being facetious. Now what is it about this novel that's got under your skin?"

"This novel," Bella said, shaking the book accusingly, "is nothing less than a bald indictment of Uriah Bounty's corruption of countless innocent women. Unfortunately, since it's a fictional account, it doesn't carry any legal weight, but I intend to remedy that. I intend to gather the evidence necessary to bring Uriah to trial for bigamy, then be there when they hang him by his balls from the nearest tree!"

"You know," Lydia said, "I'm no lawyer, but I don't think that's a legal punishment."

"We'll see," Bella said, tossing the book back in her bag.

"Perhaps I'll just castrate him myself."

At first, Bella wasn't sure quite how she should dress for her trip west; if nothing else, she expected a lot of dust and dirt, but she couldn't quite pull herself away from the look of a cultivated bitch she had worked so hard to achieve. Thus, Bella settled for a loose black blouse, tight blue jeans, and a (relatively old) pair of black leather pumps, polished up to a shiny finish.

She knew the look--complimented with dark sunglasses--was effective when she saw a male gate attendant at the airport shift his pants with an obvious erection. She knew she looked good, and that was gratifying; although she was certain that Uriah Bounty must be personally repulsive, he was still a man, and ought to be influenced by her appearance.

Unfortunately, there was little real information available about the current state of Bountyville, but Bella had managed to reach the proprietor of the "Happy Lamb Hotel" by phone a few weeks earlier, and learned that there was at least one room available. The proprietor--a woman named Sarah--seemed surprised at first by Bella's interest in tiny Bountyville, but then appeared suddenly understanding when Bella dropped a reference to Hera Decopolis's novel.

"Oh, yes, I've read that," Sarah said; "but really, it's not quite as perfect here as the book makes it seem."

"Still," Bella said, "I'm curious about your little community. Do you suppose I could actually see Mr. Bounty himself?"

Sarah just chuckled at that.

"Oh, I'm sure he'd be glad to see you," Sarah said, "if he can get away from all us girls."

Bella wasn't sure quite what to make of that, but she was soon winging her way west aboard a 767, taking the opportunity to work on her laptop revising a paper addressing the sword wound as a vaginal symbol in Shakespeare. A few hours later, she landed at the airport closest to Bountyville, then headed into the desert in a rental car. There was no doubt the country was starkly beautiful--jagged mountains were soon visible jutting up beyond the desert plains--but Bella's thoughts were dark and brooding. Switching off the radio (and the blathering commentary of some right-wing fanatic, on the only channel that came in clearly), she drove in silence, remembering her numerous unhappy connections with the opposite sex.

Bella's first lover--if that was the word--had been Bobby Bredwell, her high school's star quarterback, and already the father of several children by the time he turned his attention to her. In their senior year, Bobby laid on the charm with the sole objective of spearing Bella's virgin pussy, but Bella was loathe to be penetrated, even then. It was not until the night before the homecoming game that Bobby finally got through to her. Plying her with beer, Bobby pleaded with Bella to "go all the way" for the good of the team--if Bobby was out on the field the next day, thinking about how he hadn't been able to fuck her, he might actually blow the game.

Of course, that was silly, but Bella figured that was as good a time to get laid as any, and she duly lifted her skirt and spread her legs for Bobby in the back seat of his father's car. In the event, however, Bella was startled when she saw how small Bobby's cock actually was--no more than five inches long, fully erect! Somehow, drunk as she was, Bella managed to keep her giggling in check while Bobby pushed his cock inside her and popped her cherry, but it really was funny to realize that the big strong quarterback had such a tiny penis. Despite herself--even as Bobby started humping her--Bella started chuckling.

"What's so funny?" Bobby asked, pausing in his ardent sucking of Bella's 38D-cup breasts.

"I'm sorry," Bella tittered, "it's just your penis--it's so tiny!"

Bobby was taken aback--especially since he seemed to think he was doing pretty well, smacking his cock into the sticky-tight cunt of the virgin scholar.

"I'm not small," Bobby protested feebly--even as he continued pumping her; "can't you feel it?"

"Yeah, I guess so. Haven't you done this before... ?"

"Well, yeah--lots of times."

"Well, maybe it's an off day. Don't worry about it."

But Bobby was rattled--half in love with Bella's clutching cunt, and half embarrassed by his awkward shortcoming--and he finished in awkward silence. Whereas he'd been slamming her hard a moment before, he went slower now--perhaps afraid to embarrass himself even more--and he almost seemed ashamed when he came. Trembling and shuddering, he pushed in deep to squirt his sperm into Bella's belly, then abruptly pulled out and rolled over.

"So you couldn't feel it?" Bobby asked. "Not at all?"

"I'm sure it'll get bigger," Bella said, trying to smooth over the awkward moment. "They say you've got lots of girls pregnant, so you must have something."

But Bobby just curled up defensively, and Bella sensed it was best to go. Later, when she sobered up, Bella feared she might be pregnant, but that was soon the least of her worries. The next day, Bobby lost the homecoming game, and virtually the entire high school somehow learned that Bella was responsible for Bobby's lack of confidence. Bella became an instant outcast--shunned by boys and girls alike--which far outweighed the relief she felt when her next period came.

For Bella, the whole male sex seemed like a bizarre joke. Men were always joking about their conquests, but Bella had never met a man with equipment that was even remotely impressive. Of course, several of her dates in college had suddenly found it hard to get it up when she started talking about her research on castration and impotence, but surely a real man would not be intimidated by something so trivial...

"Men," she muttered, finally spotting the turn-off to Bountyville; "who needs them."

Although 'My Pussy, My Friend' focused on a fictionalized version of Uriah Bounty, the book did indicate that there were other adult males with wives of their own in the area. And sure enough, as Bella caught sight of the farms on the outskirts of Bountyville--where the desert suddenly turned to green, and corn was starting to sprout from the soil--it was the men of the town whom Bella saw first, working in the fields. Women--and disturbingly large broods of children--were more evident closer to the middle of town.

Although Bountyville was hardly large--a rather old sign gave a population of 250--it was clear that the women were more than a little fertile. They were not a flashy lot--the women seemed to favor simple cotton dresses and aprons--but Bella felt her stomach turning when she saw more than one young lady leading a string of children down the street, many with an obvious family resemblance.

In fact, it gratified Bella to see how weather-beaten the town looked--somehow confirming her belief that the women must be living in a virtual hell on earth--although it wasn't nearly as decrepit as she would have liked. If she were more disposed to be generous, she might have admitted to herself that the town was actually well-maintained for its location on a high and sun-baked plain. Along with simple houses, she spotted several stores, a battered old garage, and both a church and a school that were surprisingly large (doubtless because of all the babies people were having). What she didn't spot immediately was the great Victorian mansion where Uriah Bounty must live, which the novel described as being near the center of town at the edge of a large plot of farmland. However, she was more interested in finding her hotel at the moment.

When she found the hotel, Bella was immediately discouraged. There were few motor vehicles in Bountyville--mostly just pickup trucks for the farms--but none were parked at the hotel, and Bella realized it must be closed when she noticed that the whole front door was missing. Indeed, when she went out to take a closer look, she saw that the building must have been vacant for years, with the only occupants proving to be the hens and roosters of a slapped-together chicken coop.

"Goddamn it," Bella swore, kicking at the ground with one of her pumps. After a long moment spent scowling at the chickens, she then went looking for help.

Happily, help was soon at hand in the form of a young man about fifteen, who tipped his baseball cap upon seeing her.

"Hello, ma'am. If you don't mind me saying, you're awful purty."

"Er ... yeah. Look, I'm looking for a 'Happy Lamb Hotel'; you happen to know where that is?"

"Well, that's that building right there."

"Thank you," Bella said, with irritation. "I spoke to a woman named Sarah--she said she was the proprietor."

"Oh, you must mean my mom," the boy said. "Sure, she used to run a hotel, but we don't have near as many visitors nowadays. Nowadays, she just keeps a room ready in Pa's house, in case of kin dropping by."

"And your pa would be... ?"

"Well, Uriah Bounty, of course. Of course, he's most near everybody's pa, come to think of it ... but I did get Ellie May--that's my girlfriend--in a family way myself."

Oh God, Bella groaned inwardly.

"Anyway," the boy carried on, "I'm sure Pa wouldn't mind having another purty girl like you around."

"Okay. So where is your pa's house?"

"Oh, its right up the street, around the corner--a big old mansion. You can't miss it, really; the front yard's probably all full of kids."

Sure enough, the young man's directions were uncanny. Back in her car, Bella soon came across a looming two-story Victorian mansion, with no less than a dozen children cavorting on the front lawn. They seemed to be all ages, from teen to toddler, but the one thing they had in common was an obvious family resemblance.

Awkwardly for Bella, her sudden arrival before the house was just as startling for the children as it was for herself. Even as Bella stepped from the car, the children stopped in their tracks and turned as one to stare at her, reacting as if they had just seen a creature from another world.

"Now what's got into you?" a woman's voice said, from behind the children. A moment later, the woman herself waddled through the children, scuffing through the dirt in a pair of dusty platform sandals--and Bella was utterly amazed; hugely pregnant--perhaps with twins--the graying woman was Hera Decopolis!

"Oh, I see," the gravid woman said; "we got us a stranger."

"Pardon me," Bella said; "are you Hera Decopolis?"

"Well, I reckon I was once," the woman said. "Of course, I'm married now. Now I'm Hera Bounty."

"Jesus," Bella said, "you'd have to be--what--45?"

"I'm 48," Hera said, laying her hands on her stomach, "and God be praised, not too old to give Uriah another couple babies."

"Well," Bella said, "this is quite a surprise. I almost thought you'd be..."

"Dead?" Hera guessed.

"No ... it's just hard to imagine you're actually a real person, after all I've read about you."

"Well, I'm real enough," Hera said, with a smile. "Would you happen to be the person who called Sister Sarah about getting a room?"

"That's right," Bella said, finally venturing to offer a hand. "My name is Bella Ramble; I'm a professor at Featherview University."

"Oh, Featherview?" Hera said, shaking her hand. "Is Lydia still there?"

"Professor Wilder, yes."

"Well, we'll have to talk. In the meantime, why don't I take you in to see Sarah?"

In her mind, Bella Ramble was prepared to confront a miserable community, suspended in time as it perpetuated the nonsensical notion of polygamy. However, the inside of Uriah Bounty's home was neat and tidy, and Sarah--an attractive blonde in her thirties--was quite congenial. Not obviously pregnant at the moment, Sarah guided Bella upstairs to the spare bedroom, and Bella was surprised to see that it, too, was neat and tidy--if excessively feminine. Somehow, a bed dressed in pink satin with frilly lace pillows was not quite Bella's style, but it was a deal at $10 a day.

"You are awful purty," Sarah said. "You got a boyfriend?"

"Er ... yes."

"How about a girlfriend?"

"Excuse me?"

Sarah simply smiled, and opened a drawer to pull out a 12-inch dildo.

"Holy shit!" Bella said.

"Well, a girl can get lonely," Sarah said, "without her boyfriend."

Sarah then proceeded to rub the dildo between her legs--pushing her skirt down between her legs to do so--and Bella suddenly felt dizzy, indeed doubly so on her spike heels.

"I'll bet you've got a purty pussy, Miss Bella."

"Aren't you married to Uriah Bounty?"

"Well, sure," Sarah said, sliding over next to Bella, then rubbing the dildo against her groin, "but Uriah's kind of busy; he can't be with every girl, every night."

"Well, that's nice," Bella said, pushing Sarah back as politely as she could. "Maybe later."

"Well, okay," Sarah said, with a wink. "I'll look forward to it."

As it happened, there was a lot that was strange about Uriah Bounty's house. For one thing, the closet in Bella's room was filled with sexy lingerie, skimpy dresses and fuck-me sandals--hardly casual wear for a hardscrabble farming community. And yet the women of the house were not outrageously intimate in public, limiting their contact to the odd sisterly hug.

From Hera, Bella learned that Uriah now had 14 wives and over 70 children, but only a handful actually lived in the mansion. Uriah himself was not there--ever the dutiful husband, he was currently visiting other wives in other houses--but the four wives lucky enough to live at the mansion were all very eager to see him return. Along with Hera and Sarah, the other wives at the house were Ruth (a buxom woman in her twenties) and a young but shapely girl named Betty (age 15).

In fact, Betty had yet to sleep with her husband--and thus was very nervous in anticipation of him coming back--but the other women already seemed to have more than their share of children. Of the twelve children living at the house, two were Ruth's, three were Sarah's, and an incredible seven were Hera's.

Not surprisingly--given the fact that Uriah was often away--it was the children who did a lot of the manual labor on the farm, supervised by one or another of the wives. Although the work was hard--fixing fences, slopping hogs, weeding fields--the sheer number of hands available made it less onerous than it might have been, and there was plenty of time for the children to goof off and play, as they had been doing when Bella arrived. At any rate, the children seemed healthy enough, and Bella was secretly disappointed that she might have lost a potential legal angle--siccing the state's child welfare agency on Uriah.

"So," Bella asked Sarah delicately, while the latter was starting dinner for the house, "does Mr. Bounty actually do any work in the fields?"

"Sometimes," Sarah said, "mostly around planting and harvest time. It's the summer time, though, so this is the best time for Uriah to do his lovin'."

"Well, of course."

A short time later, Sarah had a tasty stew on the table for her sisters, their children, and the one curious visitor from the east. The children were a little rowdy at first, but a stern look from Hera put an end to that, and raised a logical question for Bella.

"You know," Bella said, "in your novel, I recall one wife being senior over all the others. Is that your role, Hera?"

"Not technically," Hera replied; "I'm just the oldest that can still make babies."

"And she can sure make babies!" Ruth said, leaning in close to Hera and giving her closest boob a squeeze. To Bella's surprise, the children didn't seem surprised by that.

"I just wish I had boobs like that," Betty pouted. "Maybe Uriah would pay more attention to me then."

"God almighty, girl," Sarah said, "I'd say your titties are right purty enough already."

"She just likes to complain," Hera explained for Bella's benefit. "She could have had her own husband--there's plenty of young men about--but no, she had to have Uriah."

"Now you're making fun of me!" Betty complained.

"Not to be rude," Bella interjected, "but how long will it be until Uriah returns? Can I see him before that?"

"Probably a couple of weeks," Sarah speculated. "It wouldn't be right to go interrupt him, though, while he's lovin' up the other sisters."

"Er ... yeah," Bella muttered.

In fact, a plan was formulating in Bella's mind even as she sat at the dinner table; if Betty really was 15, she was under the legal age of consent in this state. All she would need was a birth certificate, and she would have the entree for legal action against Uriah Bounty.

But to get that, Bella would have to be as polite and sociable as she could manage. With exceptional patience, then, she listened as Hera explained the theory and merits of polygamy (or more specifically, polygyny), and helped the pregnant woman with little tasks around the house as she did so. According to Hera, God very definitely endorsed polygamy in the Bible (did the King of Israel not have multiple wives? And did God not fail to chastise the king for polygamy, even as He chastised the king for his other sins?). Further, polygamy was good for women because it lightened the burden of work for each wife in the household. It was a woman's destiny to make babies, "to be fruitful and multiply", and this was infinitely more satisfying to Hera than any cold and sterile life as a professor.

Bella kept her rebuttal to herself--that men were inherently weak, and had no business asserting dominion over women. Bella liked toying with men in general, and teasing Bernie in particular; on the odd occasion she let him fuck her--always outside her window of ovulation--she took a special delight in making him pause, right in the middle of his ardor, to roll on a condom. Of course, the Pill did not appeal to Bella, as it obviously did to Lydia; given a chance, Lydia would happily prattle on about how much she loved to fuck her husband Eli, and loved to feel his sperm squirt away inside her. For Bella, that was just bizarre; even when she wasn't fertile, it made her skin crawl to think of untold millions of male sperm cells swimming away inside her, defiling the perfect temple of her body.

Strangely, though, Bella could feel her simmering rage toward Uriah starting to ebb as the days went by. At first she couldn't quite place the cause of it, but more than once she woke up in the middle of the night, hearing what sounded like people humping in the bedroom next door. The first time Bella heard it--resting under the pink covers in her black satin nightshirt and panties--her heart raced with the thought that it might be Uriah himself (the great bastard!) humping one of his wives. But no, the voices were clearly female. And, as this continued night after night, Bella soon realized just who was doing it--Ruth and Sarah.

And it wasn't like they were just cuddling, either; Bella could hear the cunt-slapping sex right through the wall (evidently, both were taking turns using a strap-on dildo)-- and the shuddering screams when both women came to climax.

The strange thing was, it was actually very arousing for Bella. At first--in her paranoia--Bella suspected a pair of old stereo speakers, hung in the corners of her room, might be broadcasting subliminal messages to break down her willpower. However, that did seem a little far-fetched. It was more likely that her own sexual frustration--compounded by the slap-happy pleasure of the wives next door--was to blame. And indeed, it was not long before Bella found her hand sneaking into her own panties; the very situation was arousing--while the hugely-pregnant Hera, Betty and the children were sleeping downstairs--Ruth and Sarah were going at it like a pair of horny teenagers.

As if the situation wasn't arousing enough, though, Bella soon discovered that she could actually watch the sex through a peephole in her closet. And--although Bella had heard that watching sex was only arousing to men--the sight of Ruth spearing Sarah with an eight-inch strap-on dildo was enough to make her cream her panties on the spot. To Bella's amazement, both Ruth and Sarah were dolled up like proper sluts--Ruth in a red corset and Sarah in a black push-up bra, with both in high-heeled sandals--and Bella startled herself with the force of her own climax, blasting a flood of vaginal juices across her thighs as she rubbed her clitoris. It was only by a sheer force of will that she kept her climax quiet, stuffing her wrist in her mouth, and she was careful to creep back into her bed while the women were still fucking, so the sound of the floorboards creaking would not be so obvious as she made her way back across the room in the dark.

In fact, it was hard for Bella to pretend she didn't know what was going on during the daytime, when Ruth and Sarah both dressed in dowdy farm-wear, and were almost demure in their conduct. This was puzzling, but Bella started to understand a little after the next Sunday service at the Bountyville Church. Bella herself was not allowed to go; Sarah politely explained that the "uninitiated" were not allowed inside the church. To an extent, this was disappointing; Bella knew that Uriah himself was a minister of the church, and it would have been a nice opportunity to finally meet him, but she satisfied herself with a fruitless search for Betty's birth certificate while the rest of the household was gone. On returning from church, it was clear that all the wives were giddy from their latest close encounter with their husband.

"That was some testifying!" Ruth said.

"I'll say," Sarah agreed; "I especially liked that part about the Song of Songs."

"Oh my," Betty said, bashfully, "all those breasts!"

"Pardon me," Bella said, "I don't mean to intrude, but what was that about the Song of Songs?"

"Oh, that's Uriah's favorite scripture," Hera said, fanning herself; "it's all about the pleasure a man takes in his wife, and vice versa. Some people say it's actually about Christ's love for his church, but we know better..."

"Really."

"Uh-huh. In fact, Uriah believes it's natural for a woman to have pleasure--even if her husband isn't handy."

Betty blushed at that, and Bella got the sense this was not an appropriate subject to be discussing in front of the children anyway. Leaning in close to Hera, she whispered her next question.

"Are you talking about ... masturbation?"

"Well, that. But it doesn't hurt, sometimes, to make it a sister act."

"I see," Bella said, glancing at Sarah and Ruth.

Much as it pained Bella to admit it, it was clear that Ruth and Sarah were enjoying some pretty hot sex--and she wasn't. Of course, to be honest with herself, Bella had never had any really good sex, but it flew in the face of her theory of oppressed polygamous wives that they were having so much fun.

If nothing else, Bella could watch, and she took every opportunity to do that. Although it was clear that the women missed Uriah--more than once, they giggled as they recollected getting skewered by his baby-maker, clearly anticipating his return--it was also clear that this was more than just a substitute for his absence. In addition to using the strap-on dildo, they also ate each other's pussies, and nuzzled each other's ample bosoms, and sometimes they kissed like lovers. What was more, Betty and Hera were both brought in on the action at least once while Bella was watching--Betty in a jet-black teddie, and Hera buck-naked; in fact, Hera had described scenes somewhat like this in her novel--explaining that a loving husband would not begrudge his wives their own pleasure while he was away--but still it was stunning to see the aging lady lying there beside Sarah, with a plastic cock in her cunt and her babies visibly kicking in her belly.