**Zita**
These are the episodes of Royal Citadel High, and you can´t keep up with their turbulences!
Barbara was hanging out somewhere, asking for trouble, and we didn’t want to needle in our Androcentrism lesson. Half-sitting, I stood guard between Lydia and her desk so that I could serve her as a chair in a wink of an eye.
Previously curvaceous Miss Pignon had to humble herself as well but passing through the door at Weatherby’s side, she beamed and repeated something under her breath, congratulating herself given the tone.
She nudged all members of our Shieldmaiden gang in a friendly way and pointed behind herself. “Paladins dispatched a representant of masculinity.”
Whom? I had a vague feeling that Johansson might be interested in our class. He had already sent out a circular presenting the barely usable costume under which he imagined a report card. It’s just that when I saw them at the table, only his height and beard seemed masculine to me.
The class was starting, and I could distort my neck to recognize the mysterious emissary. It was an understandable mistake that I expected one of the Paladins. Weatherby greeted him appreciatively -the Asian guy in a rumpled suit with one hand rubbing his sleepy eyes. The influx of new people wearing pants tended to be limited, so I made a guess he is the fabled fiancée of Nicole, ragged by the usual fiancée traditions.
“Mind your betters, stinkers,” Weatherby said. “Miss Xiong is a gold standard of those tasting the bittersweet rations of the reform. Her progress and marks endowed her with the courting of many interested men.”
*That interest culminated in her flogging out of jealousy. She was Euridice, and none of her Orpheus rescuers was a man. Johansson doesn´t count. He can barely be considered a big boy.*
“Mr. Yoon was betrothed to her, and he bought her. For a reasonable price, no more, no less. Mr. Yoon, how much is my class worth? Tell them.”
Yoon watched the teacher’s expression even as he spoke to us, his arms swinging, his feet unable to avoid each other. “I, I, I… I’m not doing estimations. I’m buying all of you. Girls!!” He turned to our desks. “I dislike white flesh, but it is on the menu. My dad liked it, and grandpa was a cannibal. North Korea was bad, while we are excellent.” Student girls were struggling to suppress bursts of laughter. A dull knock sounded more and more regularly in the classroom, but I didn’t know who is doing it.
People… Perhaps substitutes for them recently humiliated Stacey with the alcohol, but then it was an immediate intention. Barbara needs to tell me if she went to White or he to her.
We wondered if Yoon had something else on his heart. It might have been the case. He was taking his time inquiring what it should be.
He gasped, and the girls in the front row covered their noses. “If you ever want to run a business, realize that the company won’t be yours, but no one is taking away your intellect. You’ll use it, even if it’s sharper than your legal protector’s…” His feet disentangled, and he landed flat his crotch on the floor, one leg pointing forward, the other backward. Weatherby tried to help him up, earning a punch to Adam’s apple.
“The class is canceled!” shouted the teacher, throwing us a bag of keys to the chains. Yoon wouldn’t stand up even by using his strength and kept grabbing onto the desks.
We all left hastily, with the irrational exception of one person. I finally understood the knocking. Louisa Polivka’s fist was banging on her desk. She behaved bizarrely, repeating the same movement with her hand without breaking the rhythm, and did not utter a word until most of her classmates were gone. “Take a picture of him! Stick him on the front page of the Announcer!”
Afraid of Weatherby’s reaction, I joined the girls in the hallway. I was running to catch up with Barbara, slowed down by her own rambunctious looking around. I wanted to make it up to her. In the hypothetical case that her actions wouldn´t be sanctified by a more acceptable educator – the Sapphic matron Brunkow.
“So it was all your idea?” asked the teacher, waiting for the availability of the classroom.
“I went to Mayson’s and found Yoon sleeping under his TV. White was giggling after hearing my suggestion! Mayson wasn’t going to upset him after that.” And I did not mean to turn Brunkow against me.
“I haven’t had fun like this in weeks,” I told her. “Speaking of fun…Fellow Weatherby’s having trouble in class. How about doing a VR biology lesson again?” Brunkow sighed.
“I’m surprised you don’t know. Kane took virtual reality today for herself. She wants to finish a video game – Bold Barry and Saucy Nancy. I don’t know the details, but it’s supposed to be an erotic adventure game with a male and female character. She says that maybe it will make someone think, that is, it will stimulate the organs from the bottom up.“
Jeez, I have to check it out! But who would I play it with? Although I have to admit that originally I didn’t just want a distraction. I was striving for a piece of space where I wouldn’t be forced to talk in riddles and ambiguities. “Stacey agrees to your terms,” I informed her of the pragmatic decision. Brunkow struggled but finally smiled. “She deals fairly,” she said. “I’ll tell her something important in time.”
Stacey had an easier hand in dealing with the cards. *”Alice will be best suited to upload the video to the browser. Thanks to Barbara, we know who Damasio can send it to.”*
*”You are welcome,”* Barbara signaled.
*”Therese, you are to team up with Roberta and Larissa. You three will be searching for Jenine. If you find her, make her flee the premises, I can´t stress this enough. I will be looking for clues and report them to you.”*
She is right that Jenine does not exhibit a rational mind, but I have a feeling Stacey envies the plucky nature of the other savior.
I haven’t received even the second fiddle until much later. Therese acknowledged me in her supplementary proposition. *”Zita might have befriended Neumann himself. We put him on the line for our falsehoods.”* Stacey opened her empty palm and slightly shrugged. Recounting my forum venture was not going to convince her effectively. And even if it did, what would I be mystifying moderator of Sleipnir Neighs about? The prose of the final Gormenghast part?
I gestured to Therese in gratitude. I´ve had tears in my eyes just looking at her lately. She and Lewandowska managed to arrange the release of several women from Princess Tower without being able to dictate the names because it was up to Lolle Manderville, or, more precisely, Prefect Green. Therese was said to be so strong that she forbade Lewandowska to mention her in front of the co-lector.
“So we are staying in place,” I said the words that made sense in the context of my internal dialogue. I laid in bed, at once reminded about the unique tomorrow.
“Stacey! You must have heard today about mine and Barb´s Paladin interviews!”
“Fine, Zita Ha… I mean, Shitball. You will do your Homemaking and go to Graham. Barbara has a meeting with Romano in the dining room.”
There were no solutions to my dilemmas. Do I wish to go to that interview, or not, meaningless as that question is? Would I like herself to be attractive to Graham? How could he be handsome to me?
If he likes me and it is two-way, he will not sleep with me. He is going to reserve me for later at most. I lifted the blanket. You won´t betray me, little fingers. You know your seedbed and plowing.
The methodical peeling of the potatoes banished the butterflies from my stomach and made my lower abdomen all the more sensitive as they led me from the kitchen to the Holy Submission Lounge. Graham, I mean Hubert, was sitting there on the sofa. What a sight! Not only would I give, I don’t know what, for his red beard to shimmer me in all the best places for a lover’s hands, but he also wielded a genuine cane. One of the local pieces, as he was looking at it with curiosity. Maybe, he wants to use it on the gals he didn’t like or, on the contrary, liked?
Sadly, he put the cane on the sofa next to him. “Have a seat, Ms. Woodroof.” He didn’t sound very strict, but I was happy to obey him because he definitely cared that it happened as he said. On the other hand, it would be interesting to see how he would deal with me if I remained standing.
“You’re looking at me a bit too much,” Hubert suggested.
“Still unsure of what you’re going to do with me.” I almost snapped.
“Ms. Woodroof, I’m telling you to be completely honest to benefit my study of relationships!”
He spoke to me like I was a five-year-old, then a bolder tone crept into his voice.
“I don’t think you’re afraid of me. You probably think I’m worth your sin.”
I was proud of myself for responding. “You are a truly remarkable man. Although not quite knight-like.”
He looked towards the cane again. “I love my school, but I hate the Paladin stuff. You see, I think they had to found three Paladin institutes in France so they could name them after Charlemagne, Roland, and Napoleon… That one is going to have a rivalry with our Horatio.”
“You didn’t come to save me then?” Oh god, have I flirted with him?
He shook his head.
“You are not bad looking. I would shag you here and now. Not that I´ll do it. I saw the top-notch piece of your age group.”
I didn´t count on it.
“Well, it´s nice you will subdue your pedophilia instinct.”
He sniffed loudly. “Pedophile? Do you consider yourself a child? I´m hebephile, hussy. By the way, show me your legs whole.”
I crossed my legs and moved my skirt at a snail’s pace, rolling it up with mechanical distaste. I stop-ped just below my ass and pushed it back into the chair. “You are a victim, my friend. You think you have a right to my body because they teach you at school that you are the center of the universe.”
He stayed calm. “No, they do not tell us that we are the center of the universe, but its architects. Nourishers and maintainers.”
His aroused stare was scratching me. I had to feel like I am fighting back. “So you are taught to chan-ge lightbulbs or install solar panels?”
Hubert tilted his head. “When we are not listening in lecture halls, we are supposed to survive in the forest, ride on horses, hunt, and learn crafts to make useful things. Or fight.”
“So you have one giant ongoing Renessaince fair?
He grinned. “We have some innovative courses too. One is the humiliation of women.”
I was lost at words, and my mouth had to be twisted into a crooked worm because Hubert looked delighted before he changed his expression to a thoughtful image.
“None of us chose to be natural leaders, Ms. Woodroof, but we are. Paladin institute is reminding us to be wary of what we were born as, and part of that is enforcing lower positions on our designated subordinates. Because we live too close to the recent equalist age, we must give orders in our communities and marriages, never forgetting that red should be the natural color of girls’ bottom.”
Lacking control over the lower, naughty half of my body, I saw my calves and waist getting closer to him. The phantasm of him slashing my bottom for the misdemeanor of my mouth fully formed. Him holding the rod, a cord, or wood. Anything, that would come in handy. Maybe that was why I dared to be impudent.
“I don´t know if you still see us as persons. By your logic, we should be divided between our husbands and children, never caring about ourselves.”
“Having allocated place and role doesn´t make you less of a human.”
“That is Jim Crow philosophy, and you know it! You are giving one set of people a better standing in life, and they will be the establishment´s favorites in any situation! To qualify as a person, one has to have the right as a citizen and respect as an individual who is part of the same species!”
Hubert seemed to be startled. “Ms. Woodroof, I enjoy the company of intelligent women, but when did this turn into Charlotte Brontë’s novel?” When he asked like that… “It turned into one out of necessity! You think you will cut people from their choices and freedoms, and they´ll brush it aside?”
“No!” Hubert´s annoyance deepened, but he looked aside and regained his cool. “The world knows better now.” He inhaled before continuing.
“You should see the reaction of powerful women in Iceland after our annexation there. They wanted to repeat their Feminist protest event – The Long Friday – on its anniversary, October 24th. They planned to abandon their duties, just like in 1975. Total defeat. They were taken from the streets, the living rooms, from their offices. If they had daughters, police stuffed them in jail too. I´m not sure what they suffered there. Who is for grim details? Authorities convinced them in a week. All of them were spoon-fed without clothes, mostly walking on four, the bells sometimes hung from their necks. Often, they had the Brotherhood seal branded on their butts. Cops gave them a little switching in front of the threshold of their houses and then locked them in.”
I froze. “Holy mac… What can justify such a thing?”
“Miss Woodroof, such acts don´t happen very frequently.”
“If it happens once, it is overkill! And for what? Because they didn´t want to surrender, what was theirs? You guys have a problem, don´t you? At the moment women were given the jobs, the sexual harassment started on the same day, I guess.”
“That was the price for your freedom, isn´t that so? You were proclaiming you don´t need to be protected and punished. However, when you came out of the house, you saw that you can´t defend yourself, not really. You demanded special apartments, clucking about perverted powerful bosses…” I listened to him lecturing me. Those arguments, thoughts, they would be stronger if my stomach would lay against Hubert´s knee, my skirt fan out, panties… Panties ripped open during the pointless struggle, Hubert raising his hand high and finishing every sentence with harsh butt-slapping.
Whack!
The heated rear would make me respect him, I would be unsure when his voice went lower because he would hit me twice more for a good measure.
Whack! Whack!
My twitching would only convince him of my unusability, and he would hold me like a giant crab´s claw, tearing my skirt too. That´s how strong he is! He would help me to find a balance after pushing me away from his knees. The lower half of my body shamelessly bared or not, I would compose myself to leave, but he would pull me and say: “Don´t dare to think, I´m finished with you!” and bend me over the table. I would look back, hearing him unbuckle his belt and looking as he folds it – the moment when it becomes the true disciplinary instrument! My cheeks would be pulsing in the dread of being tanned with that leather.
“Ms. Wodroof, why is your mouth open?”
“I think you’re right,” I blurted out.
“More sensible than I’d guess,” commented Hubert.
“I’ve thought myself a thousand times since I got here, how many women would be happy to get into a time machine? To see what it was like… When male arms protected. When ladies accepted it unconditionally.” The itching between my thighs betrayed me prematurely. I wanted to reach an important “but”. “Modern times – and this is not in any way inconsistent with the Announcer – they also offer men to understand women through their view of the world.”
“I’m not going to have surgery.”
“I was talking about VR games.”
Hubert closed his fingers. “I’ve played a few of those before but always as a male character.”
I grabbed his elbow. “One would be helpful.“
It wasn’t just shots of my private parts that made my hips flutter. I invited someone to visit VR based on my wish. Not because of the class, the sycophantic, albeit creative project, or the schemes with Brunkow. Virtual reality was created to serve individual desires. The greatest tool of human entertainment and education, which long ago caught up, and in some ways surpassed the fictional Holodecks. To be clear, I’m not going to play a governess in 19th-century England.
I quickly led Hubert as soon as I let him find Alice. She was not hiding far away from us. In one of the dungeons, she hung her sketches of heavily edited female figures on chains. She was proudly showing her allurement in a strap harness to Hubert.
“When someone here programs a videogame, you can’t help yourself, nerd,” she stated as if there was something wrong with that.
“The girl is chiefly horny,” said Hubert, looking at the drawing with titanic tits.
“Breast enlargement. You couldn’t even call it extreme. Never.”
“The poor thing would have to roll on them,” Alice objected. “They would become its limiters, and we are building a society of restrains,” asserted Hubert.
Paladin liked fantasy concerning our bodies and sexist talk, but when we pulled on the virtual suits and Alice took us to her interface in the castle of Troyan Kingdom, he shuddered.
“What are you playing here? Sitting in the throne room, deciding who is the cutest Prince Charming?”
“No,” I refused. “If only because no reader of the Fables comic book series will take Prince Charming seriously.”
“I won’t take him seriously either. He was kissing a corpse.”
“Not in the original version.”
“Do you think they had that glass casket by their marriage bed?”
“Maybe Snow White kept that kink. But we are heroines. In our show, we fight the beastly hordes of the Werewolf Queen. You know, in fantasy there are three types of enemies – Animal people, Shadow people, and Dead people. And animal people look the best. Beastly is the best.”
Hubert blinked. “Who do you want to impress?”
“Guys, I want to assign characters,” Alice reminded herself. “Will Mr. Guest be Barry?”
“No, I’ll be Barry. Mr. Guest wants to understand the other side,” I explained. Most people would think I was naive at that point. I only knew the title of the game, and maybe the unsuspected transsexual tendencies, that I foolishly passed off as feminism, started creeping up on me. I relied on Alice, resourceful and able to change little into plentitude.
It was the very woman, who opened the cupboard that didn’t fit in a medieval castle, painted and out of place with its surroundings, as it was pictured in black and white. Alice’s hands fumbled there for a moment as if working on fuses. “The system has your numbers. I’ll keep the game running and try to track bugs.” “Ladies first,” I said to Hubert. I entered the adventure game under his cover.
**I fell not from a skyscraping height, just from the low roof, but I had to lay on my back, and above was nothing but the wide sign filling the horizon – Bold Barry and Saucy Nancy: Vigilantes in the land of the kidnappers.**
**I got warmer by something that I gradually recognized as buffalo hide. It tickled me funny, but I didn´t move to shake it off. The virtual suit weighed me down with a shell of Barry’s hard flesh. The program was not to conjure up a fresh breeze, but something cooled my earlobes. I craned my extended neck and saw the open balcony door interrupting the pale blue wall. Someone was setting her back to the view of the azure sky… Well, it could be none other than “Nancy”. The game assigned Hubert a figure with long legs in mouthwatering stockings. Nancy was sporting purple body underwear with a floral motif around the rest of her curves.**
**Giant glasses looked inappropriate on a heart-shaped face, but eyes liked what I was inert to when they looked at the mirror on the dresser.**
**”The jury agreed on the new Miss Monkey Island!” Hubert made some ape sounds in the voice of maturing Majorette girl. “Barry, how do you look? Are you a King Kong in the hairless skin?”**
**I already partially controlled one arm, so I pushed the hide and showed him my nakedness, which did not belong to me.**
**”I would bang both of us,” Hubert said, full of admiration.**
**”VR suits are still imperfect, I heard. They can simulate an internal pleasure during sex for women, even if they are playing as men, but guys can´t feel what ladies do.”**
**”That is gaming discrimination,” Hubert proclaimed.**
**”You have some ba… I mean, guts. It is not a coincidence you are the disadvantaged one, Nancy!”**
**I got up to look at myself in the mirror. Barry had one hell of a nose, which could be jumped from not only by Eddie the Eagle, and curls, resembling, in turn, a dark sea with its waves.**
**”You are cheerful in the game,” I remarked.**
**”I used to read about old video games and watch playlthroughs,” Hubert explained. “But then I traded the gaming magazines for the sadomasochistic bedrooms print…**
**I’ve been thinking about using virtual reality for a long time, but it’s banned on Paladin Institutes grounds, leaving it to vacations for us.” A smile stretched Nancy’s face almost physically. “Do you want to get dirty, or are we going to test how the NPCs will react? It’s an adventure game, but we’re supposed to score in it.”**
**He was right that I would spend an hour examining the body under my virtual neck, from my shoulders to the long wormy creature between my new legs. I would pull on it and feel it up to… No, that would serve the main storyline. “You must have gotten used to being naked,” Hubert teased me, rubbing Nancy’s breasts.**
**”I’m like you. I like exceptions,” I said as my eyes landed on the civilian clothes scattered across the floor. A tiny little sparkling floated above them as evidence that they were objects that could be taken. “Put on what’s yours,” I admonished Nancy.**
**Before we knew it, Barry was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and tan pants, while his companion had slipped her tits into a black vest and her legs gracefully wrapped around her jeans. The bell buzzed as soon as we put on the last piece of clothing – Nancy’s scrunchy. We moved into a tiny office where it was not possible to take anything. However, Nancy could open the door. Our first NPC came to us – he looked like a college student and his sympathetic voice bounced between psychotic anger and horror. “I know you are private investigators, and at the same time avengers you know how to make sure that particular injustice never happens again. My mother, Gustava Adolpha, was kidnapped two days ago right from the mall. I was able to find out who did it, and it’s even worse because the gang of Maxim Swordfish that has been controlling the mayor for a long time is behind it. They want to take my mother and the other abductees on a ship to the Pacific tonight… You must free them and destroy the gang from within!”**
**Of course, the interface should ideally include our entire journey to the first location of the interactive story, but Alice must have wanted to save the player and herself from boring walks. In short, as soon as Hubert and I left the office, we found ourselves in front of a business whose lights could not displace the melancholy of the late twilight. Two crossed fish skeletons glowed in a neon light above the entrance.**
**”I would be happier if I could still sleep with them,” muttered Hubert.**
**In the halls, we joined the crowd of carefree people picking under the fickle spotlights. To the men with often scarred faces and dull looks, in stuffy tuxedos anyway, and the women who should be worried about their kidneys dressed like that. There might have been a bar somewhere, but the drinks were mostly served by girls and boys in short pink uniforms mocking police attire. Some people had gray names floating around that we should touch if we wanted to talk to them.**
**The music played quietly, and the NPCs didn’t speak too loudly either. We could find ourselves looking for the key characters to push us to the mission objective. I looked around until all I could concentrate upon was a conspicuous group of three behind the railing above. I went up half the stairs to get a better look at their names.**
**”Stephen Borghouse – the mayor,” I whispered to Hubert. “This is the villain squad. He is standing there with Maxim Swordfish and Molly Swordfish. Daughter, I think.”**
**”Pretty-pretty,” Hubert rated the last-named gothic girl.**
**”However, her design is sloppy,” I said. “That face… And the curves. Almost the same model as Nancy.”**
**”Wait!” Hubert snapped his fingers. “What if that’s my job? Impersonate Molly?”**
**I tried to get closer to the bad guys but the way was shut by two cronies with no dialogue options. “If you’re right, Barry should be tasked with bringing her down.“**
**“Barry is handsome, so she must look his way.”**
**It would be no trivial matter, as Molly got stuck in incomprehensible electrical gibberish. Now and then, however, she paused, eyeing the man in the corner and throwing darts. Barry practiced this pastime. I managed to hit some high numbers, sometimes with a mafia girl watching the scene. Following our expectations, she came down to me.**
**”I don’t know what is more melodious – her heels or her chains,” Hubert joked before disappearing out of sight and out of earshot.**
**No matter how fictional, Molly worked to make herself unmissable. In addition to the traditional bracelets with spikes, a pair of rattling chains, tied around her trouser-encrusted waist, crossed over a bandeau top, completed her image.**
**”Hi,” she said to Harry. “Don’t you want a more mobile and grateful target?” she even had a voice like Nancy.**
**”I’d have to be blind not to try your parts, hot goth,” Barry said without giving me a choice.**
**Molly flicked her tongue. “I have my own game for you. Tell me a few things, and I’ll reveal a little. If you see everything, I’ll give you something too.”**
*Continues in part b.*
Source: reddit.com/r/Erotica/comments/xs4trk/the_princesses_in_the_tower_chapter_5_part_4a