The first thing anyone learned about living in the swamp was that it was never truly silent. The sun had set over the tangled groves and twisted waterways hours ago, yet at the helm of the Pontipee, Dolores remained surrounded by noise; the splash of water lapping against the riverbanks and the decaying hull of the barge, the rattling cough of its engine, the chirp of a billion insects, the creak of wood as the night winds rustled the branches of the trees poking out of the muck. Forty years’ hard living in the swamp had made it a familiar, comforting symphony, and she loved it, just as she loved every bit of life in this hard, remote part of the country.

Pity the gagged screams of her captives kept disrupting it. “Now, you two settle down!” Dolores proclaimed, gesturing threateningly at the barge’s other passengers with the wooden club she kept as her side, a weapon as hard and stout and unforgiving as the woman who wielded it. “Ain’t no call to be raising such a fuss, so quit your moanin’ ‘fore I tan your hides.”

“Mmmpppggghhh!” the two young women screamed in answer, their protests rendered inarticulate by the balled-up cloths stuffed into their mouths and kept in place by stray lengths of rope. What had brought such a pair to Jackson’s Creek in the first place, Dolores neither knew nor cared; visitors to the region were rare enough, but a pair of beautiful women from college even less so, and she’d been quick to seize the opportunity. A few drops of her patented knock-out formula in the beers they were served at the local tavern were enough to render them insensate, and her neighbours had been happy to provide the muscle to carry them off in return for an invitation. When both awoke on the uneven, battered deck on the river barge, they found they’d been thoroughly bound, ropes securing their elbows, wrists and ankles, with a final short length connecting the last two points of contact into a stringent hogtie, leaving them squirming helplessly like worms on the hook.

Shame a couple o’ city-slickers are all I gotta work with, the swampwoman groused inwardly, examining the pair of captives with obvious disapproval. The first was pretty enough, she supposed; a tall, leggy blonde with eyes of bright blue, her feminine bounty on tantalizing display thanks to the low-cut tank top and denim shorts she wore. As for the second… Dolores had little time to spare for people from the neighbouring counties, let alone a foreigner, and she certainly looked the part with her fair skin, almond-shaped brown eyes and long, glossy black hair, her bright yellow sundress accentuating her slight curves. Probably laughed at us swampfolk behind our backs, the little tarts. “Ain’t gonna be long now, so you two listen up and listen well. I got a pair of sons long in need of some womenfolk to take care of ‘em, so that’s gonna be you.” Cruel fingers knotted through dirty-blonde locks, and Dolores was rewarded with a muffled cry of pain from the first captive. “You gonna cook and clean for my Benji; he don’t know how to look after himself. And you!” she spat, offering the Asian woman a filthy look. “How you do things where you come from don’t matter. You gonna be obedient to Jedediah and raise his children right. Doubt either of youse are proper ladies, but you’re gonna act like it for my boys. I get any complaints, and I’ll make you both wish you was never born, y’hear?”

Muffled, horrified screams rose in answer. “You hussies oughta be grateful you’re getting such fine husbands in my boys. First thing tomorrow, y’all are getting proper church married. You’re livin’ in this here swamp now, and you’re gonna like it.”

Predictably, this statement led to further mumbled pleas, and Dolores put their protests out of her mind, focusing instead on keeping the barge from running aground in the shallows. After all, she’d fought and begged and screamed and struggled in bondage much the same when she first came to Jackson’s Creek, and she wound up taking to the swamp life well enough…