Sapphire's Place - Valerie Hope's - " Career Opportunities "

Career Opportunities

Part Four

By Valerie Hope

The recovery period wasn’t long – only about twenty-four hours. They were returned to their rooms later that afternoon and allowed to come out from under the anesthetic at their own speeds.

Joe was the first awake, groggy and disoriented as he moved stiffly in the bed. A low, high-pitched moan escaped his thick, full lips. She rubbed the grit from his eyes with extended fingertips. They were back in their original prison, but it didn’t seem quite as bad anymore. It was like a great weight had been lifted from Joe’s heart. He didn’t have to fight anymore. He could get down to the business of living his new life, and enjoying himself.

He reached to his bedstand and fumbled a long, slender Virginia Slims 120 into his mouth, lighting it with a disposable lighter and sending a plume of bluish smoke towards the ceiling. Taking a moment to simply savor the flavor of his cigarette, he found a bottle of pale blue glitter nail polish and an emery board and set to the business of shaping and polishing his long, beautiful nails.

He had all the fingernails on his left hand shaped with soft square corners by the time Steve and Hollis woke up, and they came to in much the same way as Joe had, fumbling for a cigarette (Steve his Marlboro 100’s Ultra Lights and Hollis his Misty 120’s). They chatted softly about clothes and music, cute orderlies and how they planned to spend their points. There was very little left of the masculine in them. The pain of their transformations and their newfound dependence on cocksucking had shattered something in their already-fragile minds. But there was a healing of sorts, as well.

Joseph Hargreaves, the former business manager, now a green-eyed ash blonde beauty with a sexy Georgia drawl, had lived in terror, confronting feelings of letting all the others in the room down. His tireless work in the service of Endotech, Inc. had not been enough to keep the doors open, and he read a silent disapproval into everything the others had said and done towards him. He was able to convince himself he was imagining things, but at night – when reason leaves and the demons come – he constantly measured his performance, his effort, and consistently found himself lacking.

Now that freedom from ‘he’ and ‘his’ was gone forever, she was able to see that she was an integral member of the group, a vital part without whom the group would be less than it was. She hummed the melody to John Prine’s "Angel from Montgomery" as she painted her nails, giggling with her girlfriends, happier than she’d been in a long, long time. Strange that now the line from the song – "When I was a young girl/I had me a cowboy" didn’t make her feel awkward and embarrassed anymore. Her heart, broken as it had been, now held only happiness and camaraderie. Kelly had tried to destroy her. Instead he’d healed some deep, painful scars. And Joe could only feel gratitude and relief.

Hollis Wainwright, the former Chief Financial Officer, was another case of unintentional healing on Kelly’s point. Before the transformations, he had been angry at the world, hateful and burning inside. He had been a successful investor in long lifetime, having grown and cultivated several thriving, large companies with his guidance and capital. But he convinced himself that he wanted one more gamble, one more wild ride with a struggling start-up company like in the days of his youth. He’d sunk everything into Endotech, relying on the brilliance of Stephen Randolph and Hale Gregory and the unerring leadership of Corey Taylor and Joe Hargreaves to provide his retirement and legacy in the twilight of his life. And he’d lost everything. He’d left the office building that day destitute, penniless and too old to begin again.

But the green eyed redhead with the bombshell body that sat in Hollis’ place, puffing on a long cigarette and leafing through a copy of Mademoiselle while he waited for the shiny white polish on his long nails to dry wasn’t poor. Nor was he in the waning years of his life. He had youth, he had better friends than he’d ever had, and he had hope again. If the cost of that new beginning was his genitals and use of masculine pronouns, it was not too high a price to pay – besides, Hollis was the consummate gambler. The possibilities of her new body and youth were staggering. And she intended to make the most of it.

Stephen Randolph looked over at the sleeping form of his partner and friend, Hale Gregory, and thought with a brief sadness about the lost glory that he’d had at Endotech. His research and hard work, he’d believed, had him on the fast track to a Nobel and a place in the textbooks as the father of retrovirus research. He’d pictured himself on the cover of Omni or Scientific American a hundred times, a way to be famous and respected for a boy who’d never excelled on the football field, basketball court or baseball diamond. In his life, the only thing Steve had going for him was his mind. And that was essentially gone.

The blue-eyed chestnut brunette with the bee-stung lips and perfect 36 DD’s who was painting his toenails a liquid rose pink, cigarette smoldering sexily between fingers with long, square-cut nails of the same rosy color, didn’t have much of a mind left. Kelly’s conditioning had left him a giddy, bubbleheaded thing – unable to concentrate on anything for an extended period of time and with a near-inability to organize thoughts or ideas into anything coherent. The knowledge was still there – his memories hadn’t been altered at all. And the efforts his mind made to make any use of that knowledge were beyond frustrating, since the tiniest distraction had him off on a tangent, thinking about clothes or shoes or Britney Spears songs or something equally inane. It was like being locked in a room with the most fascinating book in the world and only being able to read at a first-grade level. It was enough to make him want to pull his waist-length, shimmering chestnut hair out by the roots sometimes.

But there was something that Kelly hadn’t counted on that lived inside Steve Randolph. Now that he had no more claim to manhood or masculinity, he refused to kowtow to the deep-seated urge to excuse himself from his inabilities because he was ‘just a girl.’ So she was a vain little featherbrain, more tits than thoughts, but that didn’t mean that she had to stay that way. She might only be able to read that wonderful book at a first-grade level, but she wasn’t illiterate. And she could learn to read again. It would just take time. And in the meantime, if she couldn’t be famous on the covers of Omni or Scientific American, she certainly had the goods to be famous on the cover of Cosmopolitan or Playboy. And in her heart, her woman’s heart, that suited her just fine.

The light chatter slowly brought Hale Gregory around from his recovery, wasting no time in lighting up a Virginia Slims 120 to get the morning’s fix. He blew out a feathery column of smoke and yawned wide, the slight ache in his jaw reminding him of what he’d been forced to do earlier, just in order to survive. And now he’d be doing it every day until he either died or discovered a cure. He, too, had entertained dreams of glory and fame similar to Steve Randolph’s and the constant fight in his head to retain focus, any sort of mental clarity had consumed him, taking his considerable mind off of the toils and indignities he’d suffered at Kelly’s hands. Thank God for Corey. If not for the CEO’s rock-hard stubbornness to put his back against, Hale had a hard time believing he would have been able to hold on to so much of himself. As it stood, the broad ‘Jersey Girl’ twang that greeted his ears every time he spoke and the compulsions to dress in flashy, skintight clothes and tease his hair out big warred for the number-one spot in his attentions. The conditioning made him want to give in, to just be the brassy, loud-mouthed Italian girl with big hair, empty-headed and vain, like the character Marisa Tomei played in My Cousin Vinny, the character he’d dreamed about the night they’d been programmed with the templates for their future personalities. In some ways, Hale couldn’t fight the personality – it was who he was, now, that loud-mouthed big-haired Italian bombshell from Brooklyn. And maybe Seventeen magazine fascinated him more than the American Journal of Medicine and he found himself more entranced by music videos and Skechers ads than he ever was by medicine or biological research.

But that didn’t mean that he had to give up everything he’d ever worked for! Kelly’s procedures were tough, but they were not impenetrable. Just his and Corey’s ability to fight off the insidious creep of the feminine traits told him that. And if he could just figure out a way to get his concentration back, to maybe find a way to get Steve’s help, he could find a way to get those damned enzymes out of their stomachs and the cursed implants out of their noses. In the meantime, he planned to fight the battles that he could win, keeping a perimeter around his mind of the things he most wanted defended and leaving the rest to Kelly’s manipulations. So he had to smoke and paint his fingernails. So he was obsessed with clothes and really liked DJ Encore now. These weren’t important. So it wasn’t ‘he,’ ‘him’ and ‘his’ anymore. That didn’t matter, it was only semantics. All that mattered was that Kelly didn’t win over, that the part of her that stubbornly refused to be anything other than Hale Gregory remained untouched no matter how many cocks she sucked or how she pronounced the words ‘beer,’ ‘here’ and ‘dear.’ No, Hale was going to defend what was intrinsically himself while letting what was herself take as much as it wanted elsewhere. It seemed the best way to survive.

Corey was the last one awake, groaning softly at the soreness between his legs from the surgery and fumbling on the side table for his super-skinny Capri 120’s to get his morning smoke. Corey tried to convince himself that he smoked those particular cigarettes because he was hopelessly, medically addicted to nicotine and those were the particular brand he was given, instead of the fact that they looked sexy as hell between his long-nailed fingers and he looked glamorous and provocative when he smoked.

He greeted his friends in his customary, bubbleheaded cheerleader way as he stretched out the morning’s kinks, making his perfectly formed breasts stand out alluringly from his ribcage. He bit back a heartfelt sigh. There was no escaping it – there was so much native sex appeal built into his new body that he could fall down a flight of stairs and men would probably get hard-ons from watching. At least his reflection didn’t make him want to run and hide anymore. He was used to it – as used to it as he could be, given its newness – and already beginning to associate the image of the buxom, pouty platinum blonde with the disarmingly big and innocent sapphire-blue eyes was him. The image had a frightening kind of attraction to him, for when he saw his reflection he found himself, sometimes, staring closely, imagining that face and that body on the covers of magazines or billboards, continuing the line of buxom, platinum blonde Guess! girls and Playmates of the Year founded by Anna Nicole Smith and Victoria Silvstedt. A part of him wanted to be with them so badly, to be among them and have nerds arguing in pizza parlors and office cubicles about which of them is the hottest. It was a great deal of effort to fight his way back to normal.

But then, what was normal anymore? When Endotech had folded, Corey believed that all of his hard work and sacrifice, the loss of his girlfriend of two years and a good inch from his hairline to say the least, had gone for nothing. He’d been back where he started, a young buck entrepreneur whose first real try had been a dismal failure, just like so many others. He thought he would be different than those other clowns. But he was no better, no different at all. And now he had less than nothing. Unrecognizable to himself, his friends or his family, all he had was the four other men-turned-women – no, he couldn’t call them that anymore, there were no vestiges of manhood left in any of them, they were 100% girls now – in the room with him. His brain had been damaged so that none of the information of his schooling or his experience in the industry could be readily accessed, organized or employed since he had real trouble reading anything more complicated than an article in Cosmo or watching something more involved that MTV’s Road Rules or Jackass. He giggled uncontrollably and went off on wild tangents, found himself absorbing pop-culture references and using them in everyday speech rather than expending the effort to express himself originally. He cringed inside every time he caught himself saying "Yeah, baby" or referring to something as "shagadelic," feeling those words more acutely than he’d felt any cramp or surgery Kelly had given him.

Only two things kept him focused. The first – and most urgent – was revenge. Corey was young again, and alive and able. He had an entire lifetime to dedicate to vengeance. And if Kelly didn’t think retribution was possible, then he never should have turned them into women, who could easily be mistresses of vindictiveness. Outside of the certain things he was compelled to do, Corey intended to devote every second of his life to evening the score with Kelly, ruining the man’s life as thoroughly and completely as Kelly had ruined his.

The other thing that kept him on track was the four other men – no, women, Corey reminded himself – in the room. Even though Corey was now completely vapid, scatterbrained and vain, the other girls looked to him as a leader. They depended on him for guidance, decisions and focus more heavily now than when he’d been Endotech’s Chairman and CEO. He’d been duly elected the sergeant of a platoon of buxom cocksuckers, but sergeant he was. And because these women needed woman’s guidance and decision-making, then Corey found himself responding to their needs as the best woman he could be. And that was her saving grace – she couldn’t be a man in a woman’s body and help and support his friends – his family – adequately. In order to be their Rock of Gibraltar, the way they needed her to be, Corey had to become as much of a woman as she could, down to her marrow. And she planned to do it for as long as they needed her.

Corey looked at them all, in turn, her eyes the slightest bit moist with emotion. She tried to contain her feelings the way she’d done as a man, but she no longer had the wherewithal or the desire to keep it bottled up the way she had.

"I totally love you guys," she said happily. "I’m so glad we’re together."

"Oh, honey," Hollis said. "I love you too!"

"Yeah," Hale chorused. "I love all you guys. If I had to go through dis shit, I’m glad it was wit’ you. You guys are awesome."

"Oh, Ah’m gonna cry," Joe said, fanning her eyes with her fingers like a Miss America finalist. "I love y’all too."

"And you know I love you guys," Steve finished. "I couldn’t have done this with all of you. But, Core – what brought that on?"

"I was just looking at you girls and it just, like, popped out," Corey said, smiling through tears that clung to her long, thick eyelashes.

"I liked it just then when you called us ‘girls,’" Hale said.

"Well, that’s what we are, ain’t it?" Joe giggled.

"Yeah," Hale said, patting the surgical dressing between her shapely thighs. "No doubt about that now, baby. Girls to the core."

* * *

They arose late, slipping into their super-high heeled platforms and showering carefully around their surgical dressings. They washed and conditioned their hair and wrapped it in the "towel turban" that all women seemed instinctively able to do, each shimmying into a pair of loose ‘granny’ panties to cover their dressings and lacy, satiny matching bras for largely unnecessary support of their firm breasts. All of them felt a pang of remorse that they weren’t able to wear their sexy, bright tee-back thongs because of the surgical dressings, whether they expressed the sentiment or not.

None of them noticed that they were following their ‘morning routines’ instinctively, without the benefit of the woman on the monitor. Soon the long dressing table was alight with the starlet bulbs around the mirrors and the countertop was a flurry of hair flapping in blow-dryer winds and cigarette smoke, curling irons and brushes. Makeup and hair arranged, they picked out some of the looser clothing (which had thankfully been provided while they were recuperating) to wear – still very chic and sexy. They settled down to their individual monitors for the day’s shopping spree, going one at a time (since they all had individual selections, they all wanted to see what the others chose), smoking cigarettes and complimenting one another on their choices, expressing what they wanted to borrow from the buyer and giving their opinions.

They were all looking forward excitedly to the delivery of their new ‘purchases’ in the evening before lights-out. And whatever delivery man who got tapped to push the dolly was going to have a night he’d never forget if he ate the mint that Kelly gave him.

They exercised as best they could with their stiffness and soreness, careful not to split any sutures. They also didn’t have the energy they used to – they were sweating and winded long before their usual three hours were up. Shivering tingles of sensation exploded in their new sexual organs as the nerves began to knit back together, causing some of them to yelp and shift suddenly as a fresh ‘zap from downstairs’ would momentarily steal their breath and concentration.

"Damn, if this is just side effects, I can’t wait till the damn things are working," Hollis verntured. The other girls agreed.

Hale took Corey off to one side. "You don’t seem so enthusiastic," he accused.

"About having a brand new pussy?" Cole said. "I can’t say I’m, like, over-enthused about the whole thing. It just, like, reminds me that I’ll never be a man again."

"So what?" Hale said, smacking his gum in an unbearably sexy way. "Bein’ a girl ain’t that bad, Goldilocks, is it? I’m startin’ to like getting’ turned on lookin’ at my own reflection in the mirror."

"Well, I can go as crazy as I like, baby, looking at y’all’s sexy bodies and stuff, but I can’t fuck any of you," Corey said.

Hale’s look was nearly smoldering. "Sez who?"

"How can I be a dyke if I have to suck cock every night?" Corey shot back, a little flustered and taken aback at the directness and sexuality of his friend.

"Hey, what am I? I have to do it too, sweetie. So does every girl in this room. It doesn’t mean we have to be in love with the guys we’re blowin’, and it doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun with each other, neither," Hale said matter-of-factly. "’Cuz I been lookin’ at that body of yours, too, and there’s still more than enough guy in here – " she tapped her forehead with a long fingernail " – to want you real bad."

Corey took a long, steadying breath. "That’s, like, assuming that we’re ever gonna get any time to ourselves. Let’s get out of here, and then, we’ll talk and stuff."

"Deal," Hale said, toweling off her damp forehead with a bright smile. "Who’d’a suspected, huh? The chief of research and the CEO talking about becomin’ a couple’a sexy little dyke bitches together. It’s a fucked up world, boss."

Corey hefted her considerable tits in her small hands, the skin of her firm mammaries spilling over the top of her green unitard. "Tell me about it, Brooklyn," she said.

* * *

The girls skipped the bulk of their lessons for the day – they’d learned much about pop culture and the mechanics of womanhood, and their decreased attention spans left them largely uninterested. They sat through a forty-five minute video on hygiene and cleaning of their new feminine plumbing and an hour-long "how to flirt" video by a very distinguished panel of anthropologists, sexologists and psychologists. As the credits on the latter rolled, their lessons devolved into a marathon gab session over the ever-present cocktails and shots. But something strange did happen, one that caused them some discomfort right at first but they quickly got over it. Whether it was something from the implants or from deep within their own minds, they couldn’t tell, but they suddenly felt very itchy and uncomfortable sitting there smoking, drinking and bullshitting and felt an overwhelming urge to take off clothes. Joe – as usual – was the first one to succumb to the feeling, stripping off her short plaid "schoolgirl" skirt and white half-blouse tied beneath her breasts, sitting on the couches barebreasted wearing only her shoes and underwear. Her relief was visible, and the other girls followed suit without too much hesitation. There was something wonderful about sitting there barebreasted, something that appealed to them on more levels than just that of comfort.

When dinner arrived, the orderlies bringing the food were quite pleasantly surprised to be greeted by a cheerful group of shirtless, statuesque young beauties who jiggled and swished on their skyscraper heels to the table. The brazen girls – who were starting to feel the ‘need’ to satisfy the enzymes in their stomachs – quickly overcame their aversion to their forcibly adjusted sexuality and started using their newfound knowledge of flirting to inflame the orderlies as much as they could. By the time the very attracted and aroused men left, the girls were feeling quite drunk – both on the alcohol they’d consumed and their own power as women. The intoxication left them giddy.

Dinner was an extravagant, high-point-total affair, filet mignon and roast duck and chicken florentine, fresh vegetables and several bottles of high-quality French wine. There were fresh fruit crostada for dessert with excellent Colombian coffee doused liberally with fine Irish whiskey and some fat Honduran cigars – one of Hollis’ favorite things in the world as a man, and she saw no reason to quit just because of a little case of breasts. By the time they swept all of the dishes aside, the five statuesque beauties were well and truly in the bag drunk, and the five lucky orderlies that delivered their morning’s ‘purchases’ were the happy recipients of some incredibly spirited fellatio from some very turned on, horny young women.

Kelly stepped in just as the satiated women were settling down to cigarettes and the last of the wine, tearing into their newest purchases. Clothing and shoes lay across all their beds. Kelly watched them, both amused and amazed at his work, for a silent moment before gathering in their attention.

"Good evening, ladies," he said. "I trust you’ve enjoyed your hundred points."

"Totally," Hollis said, wearing nothing but her new thigh-high, black stretch vinyl boots with the seven-inch heels over two inch platforms, a white-and-black feather boa and a wide innocent smile. "What does a girl have to do for another hundred?"

Kelly smiled. "Simple. All you have to do is give me Project Hestia."

Joe didn’t look up from where she was vamping in her new pink sequined tube dress and matching skyscraper heels. She was busy tucking her hair up under the adorable little zebra-print cowboy hat she’d bought with a pink sequined hatband and holding up earrings to see what went with. "Got a pen, baby doll? There were four encrypted file servers with the research and test results. Password for ‘John’ was ‘t7we923k.’ Password for ‘Paul’ was ‘uut40387rls.’ George’s password was ‘as8fle9823’ and Ringo’s password was ‘43siw334k.’ Got that, sugah?"

Kelly was writing furiously as Hollis jumped in with, "The safe deposit box is, like, in the downtown branch of First United Savings. It’s, like, box number 8831. The key for it is buried in the gravel at the bottom of the aquarium at my old apartment."

"Um, my notes are, like, in the safe in my house," Steve said. "It’s hidden behind the painting with the sailboats in the master bathroom, the combination is 23-8-17."

"Mine’r in my personal safe deposit box at my bank," Hale twanged. "Box number 47, at the Hobson Creek Road branch of Wells Fargo, out in the ‘burbs. The key is on the keyring I had on me when you guys nabbed me."

"Miss Taylor?" Kelly said, proferring a thick document stapled to a blue backing. Corey just opened a long-nailed hand. Kelly passed it to Hale, who passed it to Joe who passed it to Corey. Corey signed and initialed with her old, pre-transformation signature – she would’ve dotted any I’s with little hearts just to be spiteful, but there weren’t any in her name – and passed the document back up the line to Kelly.

"I’m so happy you all decided to see reason," Kelly said. "You’ve turned into excellent patients, and your progress is remarkable."

"So, like, V.I.P. is gonna be on in a few minutes," Hale said. "You wanna stay and watch."

"No thank you, Hale," Kelly said. "I should run down this information you gave me."

"We get to like, spend all our points tomorrow?" Corey asked.

"Of course," Kelly said. "In fact, I’m giving you all three hundred points each instead of just one hundred. I’m so thrilled at your progress, it’s the least I can do."

"So like, how soon before we’re gonna be, y’know, um, back to normal?" Corey asked, for once free of his usual frustration at being unable to make it through a sentence without resorting to works like "y’know" and "like."

"Ah," Kelly said. "You were actually guinea pigs once again, this time for a radical new surgical method. You haven’t been sutured or stitched, so you won’t have to heal any incisions. We used technology and drugs based on skin grafting. Instead of healing any traumatic cuts and slices, we just administered a biological adhesive that will accelerate the growth of your natural cells and the transplanted cells together, naturally. It will even work for splicing nerves."

"In English, please?" Steve, the bleeding-edge medical research, asked cluelessly, winding a strand of chestnut hair around one long-nailed finger.

"He means we didn’t get sewn back up," Joe said. "We got our pussies glued in and it’s gonna heal faster."

"And the nerves’re, like, gonna be just like we’d been born with them," Hollis added. "That means they’ll be nice and sensitive."

"Extremely sensitive," Kelly concurred. "We grew them with the nerve endings in the vaginal walls and clitoris 50% denser. They should be half again as sensitive."

"Oooh!" Hollis cooed. "I can’t wait!"

"So, like, when we’re healed up, what then?" Corey asked.

"Once you’re through recuperating, we will alter your identities accordingly and you’ll be released. You can’t stay here forever, after all."

"But where are we gonna live? What about a job? How do we get those mints to give to our boyfriends?" Hale spat out all at once. The other girls nodded their concern as well.

"The living arrangements are nothing I can help," Kelly said. "I’m no real estate agent. But we’ve provided some opportunities for a job that can give you a comfortable living and keep you close so that we can provide you the counteragent for your conditions in perpetuity. You’ll all be working for me, but other than that you might like it."

"That sounds pretty cool," Steve opined.

"We can talk about it later, once you’ve recuperated," Kelly said. "Now, ladies, I should really be going. I’d like to get to these banks before they close for the evening." He smiled broadly at them and left quickly, tucking the notebook and the transfer documents into his coat pocket as he went.

"Before the banks close?" Hale asked. "I thought it was already after dinner."

Steve tapped his full bottom lip with a perfectly French-manicured fingernail. "They’ve probably been using sleep deprivation on us, y’know? It’s like, totally harder to resist brainwashing when you, like, don’t get to sleep at normal times. And we just automatically get up when the chimes ring, like a bunch of dumb bimbos."

"We are a bunch of dumb bimbos," Joe said. "Pay attention."

"Oh, well. I think I’m just gonna try on my new clothes and then think about buying some more," Hale said. "I finally have enough for those cute leopard-print capri pants and that yummy black corset."

"You’re all like, totally unconcerned," Corey accused. "We just signed over all our hard work for a bunch of stupid clothes."

"A bunch of really cute stupid clothes," Hollis corrected, giggling.

"Not so big a deal, baby," Hale said cheerfully. "It’s been the funniest thing about this whole thing. Hestia wasn’t going to work."

"What?" Corey blurted, covering his mouth in shock.

"Totally," Steve said. "It was a bust. We couldn’t, like, get the transfer RNA sequences right, the virus totally died after replicating only once."

"You mean all of this was for nothing?" Joe Hargreaves said.

"No," Steve said. "I mean, like, our research is like way, way more advanced than anybody else’s. But it still doesn’t work. Kelly’s going to get a bunch of useless shit when he gets all that research."

"Why didn’t y’all say somethin’? Maybe Kelly would’ve let us go!" Joe accused.

"Ya really think so?" Hale snapped back. "That sonofabitch enjoyed this. Ya really think he’d’a let us go when he found out Hestia was a bunch of crap? No, he’d’a finished this one way or the other, or maybe he woulda just fuggin’ killed us."

"She’s totally right," Steve concurred. "If anybody’d found out that he was all like, stealing our research and stuff his career would’ve been totally over. He had to get us out of the way."

"So we get totally pussy-fied over a bunch of useless numbers and charts and graphs?" Corey asked in total disbelief.

"Basically, yeah," Hale said.

Corey dissolved into high-pitched, tinkling laughter. The rest of the women weren’t far behind.

* * *

The next days were a flurry of clothes, cigarettes, cocktails, expensive food and blowjobs for the new girls. All of them, in their own time, discovered that they really liked their new lives. It was a shocking realization that they were able to be satisfied with a morning spent shopping and doing their hair and makeup, an afternoon spent chatting, flirting, drinking and dancing, and the evenings spent tipsy and horny with a hard dick in their mouth before winding up with a wild party of sorts as they wound up their days and tried on their newest acquisitions. All of them had their armoires stuffed full of clothing and shoes, their vanities covered with all manner of cosmetics and perfumes, expensive imported moisturizers and other skin care products. All of their hair-care products were salon quality and all their styling tools gleaming and top-of-the-line – all of the girls had, over the course of their captivity, acquired extremely expensive tastes.

The ‘career opportunity’ offered to them by Kelly – who was still largely unaware of Hestia’s failure as he sorted through the massive amount of data and research – was much what they thought it would be. He and some of his silent partners – the woman from the monitors was one of them – had pooled resources and bought a strip club called ‘Dream Angels’ on the main drag of the city. It was almost guaranteed to be wildly popular, especially if the five girls agreed to become dancers there. Once per day, several persons of some value or importance to Kelly or his partners would be fed a particular chocolate mint and would end his day in a very special way. All the tips from their dancing would go to the girls, of course, their only tie to the club would be the mints which would keep them from suffering the horrible cramps and nausea of withdrawal.

And their lives were basically structured around the strip club anyway. Their work day wouldn’t begin until after noon, all their drinks would be paid for and they would be encouraged to shed clothes and wear skyscraper heels anyway. It seemed a perfect fit.

All of the girls agreed at once, hoping to get themselves set up before Kelly discovered that Hestia was a total dud. They intensified their lessons as their new ‘equipment’ healed, watching videos bought over the internet which taught them the basics of pole dancing, stage work and lap dancing. They talked to the woman on the monitors and had her arrange for a makeshift pole and stage to be set up in their room, as long as some chairs with CPR dummies in them so they could practice. They also began the process of changing their identities so that they would withstand a credit check, so they could get an apartment and a couple of cars, drivers’ licenses and bank accounts.

Their last night together in the room was a celebration, spent in happy recollection with the teams of orderlies they’d serviced on their knees, exchanges of phone numbers and a sumptuous dinner which used up the last of their accumulated points. Huge steamer trunks were stuffed with everything they’d acquired, boxes of beauty and hair care equipment and products, all the books, CDs and magazines they’d used to fight off their boredom and inactivity in the early part of their capture. Hale had even packed away one of the CPR dummies they’d given their first lap dances to as a memento.

The transition to normal life was difficult to say the least. They made an arrangement with Hart-Pearson through Kelly to stay on at the facility for a while until they had the paperwork processed on an apartment – much to the delight of the well-entertained orderlies and staff – and with the help of an apartment locator, they were able to rent both sides of a duplex, two three-bed-two-bath units that would hold them. They were able to take pay as drug research subjects through Hart-Pearson (which was entirely true, from a certain point of view), enough to get a security deposit and the first month’s rent together and have enough left for a run to the grocery store (which had all the eyes of the ‘supermarket bachelors’ in the sleepy suburb popping to the girls’ infinite satisfaction) and a whirlwind weekend tour of the garage sales around town to get beds and furniture. It was nothing spectacular, to be sure, but it would do. For their own security, they didn’t want to rely on public transportation to get to and from work – who knew what kind of creep might follow the girls home, and their personal safety was a huge concern to them now, more than it had ever been in their previous lives. So Kelly and his partners agreed to release the captured automobiles of their previous lives – Steve’s shiny little silver WRX Impreza, Hollis’ candy-apple red BMW Z3 roadster, Hale’s black Corvette drop-top, Corey’s over-uscled 4x4 Dodge Ram and Joe’s Mercury Sable. The girls got a big kick out of getting their cars back, jokingly referring to them as "all that was left of Endotech," since all of the automobiles were bought using money from exercised stock options when the company went public, shortly before Hart-Pearson forced them under. Still, it was strange to get back pieces of their old lives that way. It unnerved them all more than they cared to admit when they discovered how far forward they had to adjust the seats, how far down the mirrors had to be pulled and how low the adjustable shoulder belts had to be brought, that they could no longer keep spare change or gas receipts in their ashtrays, since they would soon be full of long, skinny cigarette butts stained on the tips with little roses of lipstick. The empty bottles and cans of Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper in the floorboards would be soon forced out by empties of Diet Pepsi and Snapple, and they had to keep the front seats marginally clean or there would be no place to keep their purses while they drove.

But still, their departure from Hart-Pearson was a happy time. They had a few days to settle in to their new place, just long enough to get clothes and hair dryers and books out of their boxes, the television and VCR set up on upended milk crates and their silk stockings and bras drying over the shower rods. Several delighted young orderlies and custodians were given their chocolate mints and asked to visit the little duplex at 2203 West 34th Street to supply the young women with what they needed. The woman in the monitors, a physician and clinical psychologist named Kathleen Quinn (the girls venomously referred to her as "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" behind her back) generously provided a stipend from her own shares of the research budget to let the girls get set up a little better – hooking up the gas and electric, buying cell phones and rate plans for their personal use, even donating a couple of laptop computers and an Internet connection so that the girls could shop online and those who had them could check up on their lost families. Once they got their new, amended identification in the mail (set up with bogus birth certificates issued from one of Hart-Pearson’s research hospitals), they were ready to start work at "Dream Angels."

So the girls showed up for their first day, dressed in some of their sexiest street clothes, anxious to put their newfound freedom and their brand new, unexplored pussies to the test in what would probably become the rest of their lives.

The day manager, a shaven-headed fireplug of a man in a middling-expensive suit and a gold nameplate which said simply, "Kevin," greeted them warmly as they came in. The clatter and clang of the waitstaff setting out candles, ashtrays, salt and pepper shakers and sugar for iced tea and coffee sounded just beyond the glass door at the back of the foyer. Several parking valets were setting out a key board and a podium outside while a gardener with a Weed Whacker straightened up the abbreviated lawn just outside the front door. The door closed and the outside sunlight disappeared, replaced with the garish neon and mirrored reflections that seemed to be the trademark of all strip clubs.

"You must be the new girls," Kevin said. "Dr. Kelly told me you’d be coming. Welcome aboard. I’m Kevin, the day manager. I’ll introduce you around."

"Hi," the statuesque, big-breasted platinum blonde who led the pack said brightly. She wore her hair in two luxuriously long and soft pigtails over her ears, huge hoop earrings, a pair of second-skin low-rise jeans with huge 70’s sunflower designs embroidered down the left leg from pocket to flared bottom, some tall black platform wedge sandals and a skin-tight pink lycra baby tee with the words "Lil’ Angel" picked out in rhinestones across her lovely expanse of chest, doing nothing to disguise her semi-erect nipples. She set her pink-framed cat’s-eye sunglasses in her bangs and stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray on the doorman’s podium.

"I’m Courtney," she said brightly.

She touched the girl next to her on the arm. The former Hale Gregory was a taller woman with a salon tan and enormous doe-brown eyes. Her dark hair was streaked with auburn highlights and teased into an immense throwback to ‘Eighties "big hair," easily as wide as her shoulders with bangs nearly as tall again as her face. She cheweed noisily on a piece of gum, occasionally blowing an incredibly sexy bubble through glossy red-lacquered lips. She wore a curve-hugging bodysuit of rib-knit black, a fauz leather skirt which only barely covered the top three inches of her luscious thighs, smoky opaque stockings with embroidered lacy patterns and a cropped black bolero jacket. A belt of enormous silver circular links cinched her narrow waist and a clatter of plain silver bracelets clinked and clanked on her wrists. She smiled broadly, sizing him up none too subtly as she greeted him with an upwards bob of her head which set her huge silver hoop earrings jiggling along with her luscious breasts.

"This is my best friend Haylee," Courtney said.

"Hey, how’ya doin’," Haylee said in a thick Brooklyn accent.

Courtney turned to the third woman and put an arm around her slender shoulders. The woman who had once been Hollis Wainwright was dressed to thrill, a skin-tight button-up snowy white blouse hugged a divine set of curves, clearly showing a black lace bra through its contours. Although a bit shorter than Courtney, she made up for it by spectacular muscled legs. Her milky-white thighs could only loosely be described as covered by the little pleated red-and-green plaid schoolgirl skirt she wore, and her jacked-up high-heeled Mary Janes over white ruffle socks made an already spectacular ass even more legendary. An adorable spray of reddish freckles spread across her little button nose and sexy green eyes sparkled from a nest of long, feather-soft lashes. Her abundant coppery curls were gathered up into a ponytail high on her head (even gathered so high the ends still dangled between her shoulderblades), leaving only mischievous little girlish tendrils of bangs to feather across her forehead and eyes.

"This is Holly," Courtney introduced.

"Hey, baby," she said throatily, in a raspy purr that would have done any 900 number proud. "What’s up?"

The woman who had once been Stephen Randolph stepped up without being introduced. Her lithe, tight aerobics instructor body did incredible things to the little fuchsia sleeveless mock turtleneck with a peek-a-boo cutout which exposed the inner slopes of her perfect, spherical breasts, the low-slung hipster pants in black leather and the oh-so-sexy ankle-high platform boots. She wore a faded brown leather bomber jacket low, exposing both of her creamy shoulders and a pair of aviator sunglasses. Her long, glossy chestnut hair glowed with golden-red highlights, framing her face with wispy little tendrils before spilling down her back, except for one tiny pencil-thin braid which hung in front of her left ear. Her waist, neck, wrists and ears were bedecked with silver and turquoise Navajo-looking outdoorsy jewelry, and her Marlboro Light 100 dangling from sexy, pouty bee-stung lips that seemed to be begging for a kiss. She’d painted them a bright, frosty pink with glitter.

"Hey, sweetie. I’m Stephanie. Totally looking forward to working with you."

Courtney smiled and turned to the last of the women, the tallest of the lot, even without the tall black platform heels in shiny black patent leather. She wore skin-tight leather-look pants with a flared leg and a fake snakeskin pattern in a pale pink and a little midriff-baring white cotton baby-tee with pink three-quarter sleeves and a pink Playboy Bunny head nestled between her generous breasts. Her sparkling green eyes regarded him flirtatiously over the tops of her Wayfarer shades and she gave a little secretive smile with her seductive, pouty lips. Her wavy and soft ash-blonde tresses were gathered up into a wrist-thick French braid which fell halfway down her back. No vestige of maleness left, the luscious sexy girl who had been Joseph Hargreaves licked her lips very subtly when her emerald-green eyes fell to the not-inconsiderable bulge beginning in Kevin’s tailored trousers.

"And this is my friend Josie," Courtney said finally, giving her a little hug.

"Hey, there, sugah," she breathed in a melt-you Georgia drawl. "Nice ta meet you. Where do we go to get dressed?"

"I’ll show you," Kevin stammered. "It’s, uh… It’s… It’s, um, in the back." He gestured absently with a thumb over one shoulder, unable to take his eyes off of Josie’s prominent nipples tenting out the front of her tee-shirt.

As he led them into the blackened interior of the club, through the tables and chairs, he stopped and turned back to them, trying to hide his erection with his hands and also trying desperately to affect an air of seriousness.

"Look, uh… Dr. Kelly, he told me about y’all’s… um… ‘arrangement.’ About the ‘special guests.’"

"Uh-huh," Courtney prompted.

"And I just wanted to say… I mean, I ain’t no fucking pimp. I don’t care if he’s one of the owners or not. If you girls don’t want to do that, you don’t have to do that. I’ll call the cops on his ass if he tries to make you, all right?"

Haylee grinned broadly and gave his arm a friendly squeeze. "Don’ worry about it, baby. We want to do it."

"You, uh… you want to?"

"Hell, yeah," Stephanie said. "We like it."

"You do?" Kevin stammered.

"But it was totally sweet of you to offer," Courtney said, threading her slender arm through his. "Enough to get you a freebie if you want one."

"A free…"

"All you have to do is eat one of these where we can see you," Courtney said, pulling two or three mints from her purse and putting them into his hand. "That tells us you’re, like, interested and stuff. Then we’ll meet you after work and have a little fun together."

"Any of you?" Kevin blurted before he could stop himself. He hung his head when he realized that it could be taken as an insult. To his relief, all the women giggled.

"Of course, any of us," Stephanie told him. "But the way Josie was looking at you, you’d totally be in trouble if you don’t ask her."

"Damn right," Josie said satisfiedly.

They filed past him into the dressing room, favoring him with a brilliant smile as they went. Josie paused just long enough to lick her lips again and favor him with a look of purest lust.

"Ah think Ah’m really gonna enjoy workin’ heah," she told him brightly.

* * *

Once, their lives had been full of research, strict deadlines and business crises, cutthroat competition and striving for excellence. They thought they’d been happy.

Now they knew what a lie that had been. Now they had real happiness.

Their days were a party – sexy clothes in every color of the rainbow which would be wadded on a tabletop in the flash of a twenty dollar bill, and they were abandoned to their newfound sexuality, undulating on stages, rubbing their oh-so-sensitive crotches and nipples against chilly chrome poles, feeling the soft itchy feeling of the dollar bills in their panties, squirming sexily in men’s laps and rubbing their soft breasts across stubbly cheeks. The days were full of flirting, camaraderie with the other dancers and the ever-present cocktails. The days ended with expensive dinners bought for them by the high-powered men that Kelly sent to them, German and Japanese investors and researchers, the top minds in the field of medical research and pharmaceutical development, anyone who was being wooed by Hart-Pearson. These men began every meal with a tiny chocolate mint and ended with the sweet, hot release of their vitality deep in the willing and wanting throat of a young woman too beautiful to be believed. Their bank accounts fattened quickly with the benefits of their lithe, firm bodies and bountiful breasts.

Sundays and Mondays – their only days off – were spent shopping and socializing with their friends from the club. Quick visits to the Hart-Pearson research facility to appease the enzymes in their stomachs only briefly interrupted their rich schedule of wild parties, raves, shopping excursions to the local malls and boutiques, club-hopping and time spent with cute guys who captured their interest at the club. Their bountiful incomes were supplemented by wet T-shirt competitions and bikini pageants at local nightclubs and modeling shoots for catalogs and catalogs and appearances at car shows in the region.

Within two weeks all of the girls had packed ‘little black books’ and borderline drinking problems, but they considered it a small price to pay for the partying, devil-may-care freewheeling existence they’d discovered. Being strippers was like an answer to a prayer they hadn’t known they’d offered. For the first time in their lives, they were happy. Satisfied. Content. If they’d stayed men, it was doubtful they would have ever found such satisfaction from life. All of them secretly thanked Kelly for what he’d done.

All except Courtney. She loved her life, certainly, and had no aspirations to anything higher than the Playmate of the Month and the next erect cock she could shove into her insatiable mouth. But there was always the part of her that wanted to even the scales. The time might not be right, not right now, but the day would come when she would have her revenge on Dr. Kelly.

But how? she thought to herself as she sipped her Captain Morgan and Coke during the two o’clock lull in the club’s hectic schedule. She drew luxuriously on her Capri 120 and stared into space, thinking about her old dreams of revenge, of overpowering Kelly and beating him senseless, torturing him as he’d tortured her. But she could barely overpower anything now – her physical strength had been swapped for agility and flexibility and her killer instinct had been replaced with a softer, more feminine anger.

I can’t have my revenge the male way, Courtney thought. So I’ll have it the woman’s way. The female of the species was the one to fear, since they seldom attacked toe-to-toe and fought to destroy the man instead of his pride. A slow and not entirely pleasant smile spread across her Barbie-doll face as she began to consider new ways to exact her revenge.

The opportunity came three weeks later. Courtney had done a lap of the floor, looking to see if any of the club’s patrons were interested in a little company. It was just before payday and the pickings were slim – few of the men had the money to spend at three in the afternoon, and those that did already had laps occupied by pleasant curvaceous weight, and strict etiquette between dancers forbade ‘claim jumping’ if one of them had to get up for the bathroom, for example. None of Courtney’s friends – not Haylee, Josie, Steph or Holly or her new friends Lisa, Rachel and Kaytlin – had been able to talk their customers into a sexually overloaded ‘double dance’ with two dancers at once, so Courtney sashayed effortlessly towards the back bar to refresh her drink and have a cigarette.

A familiar face was at the bar, huddled forlornly over a whiskey sour.

"Dr. Quinn?" Courtney asked, disbelieving. She hadn’t seen the doctor since they’d left the facility. "What are you doing here?"

"Ah, Mister Taylor," Quinn mumbled, already three sheets to the wind and quite morose. "Leave me alone."

"Are you all right, honey?" Courtney asked. "Bill, get this lady some coffee, okay, on my tab, sweetie?"

The bartender nodded his consent and moved away. Courtney took the seat next to Quinn and put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Want to talk about it?" Courtney offered.

"Why would I want to talk to a bimbo stripper about my problems?" Quinn barked.

"Because I know where you come from," Courtney answered bluntly. "I know a lot about your situation and the kind of business you’re in. I wasn’t, like, always a bimbo stripper, y’know. You had a lot to do with that."

Quinn sighed. "I know. I’m sorry. I never should have agreed to that. It wasn’t until a month after you were released that I found out what was done to you was done against your will. I can never forgive myself."

"Is that why you’re here?" Courtney asked.

"I wish it was just that," Quinn said. "Actually, I’m just here to drown my sorrows since I can drink for free here. I’m still part owner. But I have to count my pennies, since I’m currently out of a job."

"Out of a job? What happened?"

"Kelly and his cronies," Quinn slurred, gesturing angrily. "Bunch of fucking hypocrites. Dedicated to the highest ideals of medical research, my ass. Like my work wasn’t groundbreaking. But it didn’t sell prescription medication. I couldn’t guarantee a return."

"So they cut you loose?" Courtney asked.

"That’s what they said. But I know why they really did it."

"Why?"

She cupped her breasts in her hands roughly. "These."

"I should’ve known from what they made you into," she went on, taking another deep drink of whiskey. Bill set down a cup of coffee and moved off, knowing a private conversation when he saw one. "I should have suspected that was how he thought about women. My work was important, goddammit, much more important than Phil Baker’s prosthetic foam or John Coates’ fucking hair restorer. They turned you and your friends into a bunch of cocksucking fuck factories with a truckload of tits just for the hell of it, and they felt guilty about it every time they looked at me. So they forced me out. Bastards."

"Kelly did that to you?" Courtney pressed, pulling a cigarette from her pack with long nails and offering one to Quinn. The inebriated doctor accepted and leaned into the candle on the bar top for a light, blowing an angry cloud of smoke into the air above her head.

"He screwed all of us, Mr. Taylor," Quinn said.

"Hey, it’s ‘Ms.’ Taylor now," she whispered. "Don’t, like, blow my cover."

"Ms. Taylor, then," Quinn slurred. "Whatever. He’s ruined my life as well as he has yours and your friends’. The son of a bitch should pay for what he’s done."

Courtney leaned forward suddenly, looking intensely at Quinn. "Do you really mean that? It’s not just the liquor talking?"

"Yeah, I mean it," Quinn said. "I’m not that drunk. Yet."

"If you really mean that, then you might want to stay sober a little bit longer," Courtney said conspirationally. "Because I have a few ideas that might totally help you see Kelly on his hands and knees."

Quinn’s eyes focused sharply. "What’s in it for you?" she asked shrewdly.

"Seeing Kelly flat on his ass, for one," Courtney answered. "Maybe some help getting these damn enzymes out of my stomach, or at least like, an unlimited supply of the counteragent so I don’t have to suck cock every day of my life."

Quinn rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "I’m listening…"

End of Part Four

since 11/19/02