“Goddamn it.  You fucking cock suckers!  Get the fuck off me!!”  The three men were collectively six times my size.  My hands were cuffed behind my back.  They were surprised at the effort it was taking from all of them to drag me from the van inside the barn.  I use my low center of gravity and balance to negate some of their strength advantage.  

“Leverage is a bitch named Tina,” I think and allow myself a quick smile.  I’m going to have to remember that for a T-shirt one day.

Suddenly, thug number one, who I know is named Harper because I’ve been paying attention while they thought I was merely cowering, gets smart and lifts me up in a bear hug.  Cuffed as I am, there isn’t anything I can do about it.  At least not to Harper.  But I use the momentum from him lifting me to drive my heel directly into the groin of thug number two.  That’s Topper.  I don’t think Topper is his name but that’s what they’ve been calling him.  

Topper drops to one knee and groans.  Thug three laughs.  His name is Wes.  Wes is a fucking idiot.  He’s positioned perfectly parallel to the level of my hips thanks to Topper hoisting me up.  I could head scissors him between my legs and pass him out in 5 seconds by cutting off the blood flow.  Or I could just snap his neck and be done with it.  But I give him a pass because I have an agenda here.

“Help Harper control that bitch,” Topper grimaces as he grinds out the command.  Wes doesn’t exactly snap to attention, but he falls in line and grabs my legs at the knees.  Harper has me at the waist.  They’ve regained control of me for now which makes me wish I’d have actually used full force and blunt force castrated that sick fuck Topper instead of just grazing his pencil dick.  Your lucky day Topper.

“Leeettttt Goooooo!!”  I fall into damsel-mode and thrash my head around.  My hair is a lion’s mane whipping around as we struggle.  It’s in their faces, obscuring their lines of sight.  They can’t see the way I’m taking in the scene.  Studying.  Absorbing.  Making calculations at the speed of the ass kicking I could give them any given moment.

“Get her inside!”  Topper is back.  He hooks his arm through mine and helps Wes and Harper.  My feet are back on the ground and dragging.  I feel concrete.  What the fuck!  A poured concrete floor in a fucking animal shed?  If the weak-ass goon squad hadn’t already clued me in on the fact that this was not everything it was advertised to be, the fucking concrete barn floors sure as shit does the trick.  

But then I see it.  I see THEM. It’s like time stops and all of my resistance along with it.  The three thugs instantly sense how my body relaxes and misinterpret it as a “freeze” response to fear.  They press their advantage and force me another five meters into the center of the bizarre scene.  The perimeter of the barn still retains the now vacant stalls that previously served as home to the cows that were once raised on the property.  But the center of the barn is now hosting several rows of shiny, steel “frames” that are curved and shaped to support the dozen or so bound and naked women strapped and manacled onto their structures.  The women are like bicycles locked into a macabre bicycle rack.  

The women are bent over at the waist so that their chests areparallel to the ground.  Each “milking frame” includes a device that appears to be some combination of clockwork and pumping machinery.  Hoses run from each of the pumps to cups that are adhered, apparently by way of suction, to the nipples of the dangling tits of the women.  Large, cloudy plastic vessels are mounted on the sides of the pumps to receive the fluids harvested.  

I’d seen everything I needed to see.

“No!  NO!  Get off!  Let GO!  Let me go!!”  I make my struggle look good.  It takes all three of them to dump me on the ground and start preparing me to be locked into one of the empty frames.  It’s solid.  Sterile.  Mounted onto the smooth concrete.  Modern.  Robbing all of the savagery from the nightmare I’d hoped to find here.  

“Careful.  Get her up but don’t break her.”  Shit, that was Topper.  The pussy whose nuts I cracked is telling his boys to ‘be careful,’ with me!  That’s it.  These losers don’t have it.   This isn’t what I came for.

“AaaarrrghhhhhHhh!!!” I roar and thrash kicking up dust and straw.  My frustration sounds like desperation to their ears.  The desperation they’ve surely come to expect from repeated exercises of delivering fresh captives to this so-called hu-cow farm.  I reduce my struggles, feigning fatigue.  I see no point in dragging things out.  These morons are used to the docile, defeated victims.  The sooner I can slide into their expectations, the sooner they’ll leave.  

But now, something unexpected happens.  I make eye-contact with one of the hu-cows.  It’s not accidental.  She tilts her head toward me.  The bit gag in her mouth doesn’t completely conceal the hint of an expression.  It’s something of a concerned grimace.  

“Interesting,” I think.  I’m being hoisted up and onto a frame.  I don’t need to resist much to maintain the charade that I’m helpless.  Which is good because I’m still able to observe the curious hu-cow with a dash of clarity still glinting in the corners of her mostly glazed eyes.  There’s just a bit of tension in her thighs and shoulders, as though she’s steadying herself.  Maybe readying herself?  Her head can no longer turn enough to see me as I’m further down the row, but she gives off a sense of attention that the others do not.  She is listening.  She is remembering.   She’s been served up a steady dose of identity breaking brutality for longer than most of the others, but UNLIKE the others, this one isn’t completely gone.

The thugs have finished with me.  I’m whimpering and whining, meeting their expectations.  I should be contemplating the best exit point based on the height of the moon and where it will cast shadows for when I expect to escape.  I WANT to be considering the best ways to murder Harper, Topper and Wes. But I’m not.  Instead, I’m thoroughly distracted by this one special woman that has no reason whatsoever to remain intact but somehow is.

I’m realizing now that I may not achieve what I came here for, but I might still have found something of value.

(To be Continued)

(Based on a story by @KatieBlake with art by @Zwangjacket and @JohnTzee )