Monica was the first to react, flying at Serina and catching her off guard.  Serina had been watching Emma get subdued and had let her guard down long enough for Monica to seize the stainless steel wire with her cuffed hands and give it a furious pull.  Serina screamed in panic and went hysterical, pulling her skirt up and desperately trying to dislodge the tube that was well embedded and secured with the stainless steel crotch and waist wires.  The rest of us were all forgotten in the momentary pandemonium that followed. 

In hindsight it was evident that Serina had managed to appraise both Madam Wong and Serina of her predicament at some stage of the evening, for the women clearly knew what was happening.  Madam Wong rushed to her aid while Portia, wit great presence of mind, seized Monica’s leash and hauled her back into the drawing room,  grabbing Emma by the arm as she tried to  make a break past her.  It took Portia only a moment to pass the leash through Emma’s linked arms and she had both girls trapped.  Jill and I had made for the French doors, only to find them locked. 

“Stay where you are!” Portia commanded in a voice that made us freeze.  “You can’t get away,” she continued.  “The doors are all locked and there are security men outside.  You can forget any ideas of escape.”

In those few moments we lost any advantage we might have had.  Eying Jill and I like a sheep dog staring down its charge, Portia towed Emma and Monica across to where Jill and I stood.  Moments later we were secured with the leash passing through our still handcuffed arms and tied back to Monica’s collar.  We stood by the French doors, a dejected group now caught in our own failed plan, while the hysterical screaming from the foyer continued.  I glimpsed Madam Wong hauling away a frantic and crying Serina.  I didn’t know where the pair were going or what they were going to do, but I hoped it would take them a long time.

Portia turned to her four prisoners and smiled.  It was a smile devoid of warmth for us.  It was a calculating expression that suggested she was  looking forward to what lay ahead for her in dealing with us.  Then she spoke.  Her voice was scathing.

“Just how stupid you think we are?  Even before Serina told us, we had you people ID’d.  You overlooked the fact that we’ve seen your video.  I recognised you, Emma, from that little masseuse cameo in your promotion.  It wasn’t hard to figure that two non-Chinese-speakers under leather hoods would be your friends.  This was the best plan you could come up with?”  She shook her head in wonderment while I felt sick to the stomach as our world collapsed.  How could we have missed the likelihood that our video would have gone beyond the front men to the Wong household?

At that moment the there was the heavy rap of the knocker on the front door.  Portia spun on her heel and strode to the door with a faint squeak of latex  from the red catsuit.  If I thought things couldn’t get any worse, I was wrong, as Portia opened the door to Halter-neck.  She had evidently ditched her slave and had come back to keep and appointment with Yours Truly.  The thought of the beating I was due for had been banished from my mind with the rapid turn around of events.  Now, it seemed, I was in for the double whammy – without knowing what the second part might be. 

From there on I knew things were going down the toilet in a major flush – one that would reach tidal proportions if we didn’t get at least Baz and Emma clear.  I had no doubt that Serina would blab and there would quickly be a private armada out searching for the Doris H Bonkers, in whatever form Serina described it, based on what she had seen from the inside. 

Portia had strung Monica’s leash through Emma’s left arm, then mine, then Jill’s, before retying it on Monica’s collar.  As Portia answered the front door I whispered to Emma:

“We must phone Leila!  We must warn her, before they find your mobile!”

Emma fished her tiny mobile out of the pocket of her skirt and flipped the cover open, turning to shield her movements from Portia and Halter-neck in the foyer.  She pressed the quickdial buttons with some difficulty because of the handcuffs, and lifted her arms to raise the phone nearer to me.  I bent my head to listen, willing Leila to answer quickly.  She must have been sitting right beside the phone, for it had barely completed one ring when she answered.

“Leila!  It’s me! Listen – major problem.  We’ve all been found out! Serina’s blown the whistle.  Get the boat to a safe place where you won’t be spotted – they’ll come looking for you – we’ll –“

The phone was dashed from Emma’s hands as Portia returned.  It clattered on to the marble floor with a sound that suggested it would not be usable in the near future.

“You seem to be having trouble with a lot of things tonight, Steven.  It is Steven, isn’t it?  I thought so.  Running, talking… can’t seem to get things right.  Mistress Nightshade is so looking forward to giving you your punishment.”  She inclined her head towards the woman in the black pvc skirt and the halter-neck top, who gave me a malicious smile that made chills run down my spine.  So that was her name : Mistress  Nightshade.  Deadly Nightshade.  Pretentious?  Surely not.  But it gave me no comfort, having her stand guard over us while Portia clattered away on her heels to attend to something.

It did not take long for her to return, this time with a length of rope that she tied to Monica’s collar, then mine, then Jill’s, then finished it with several loops around Emma’s neck.  I noticed there was no slack in this last action, and that Emma began breathing through her mouth as Portia tightened the knot at her prisoner’s throat.  Portia removed the leash from it’s restraining journey between our arms and used this to tow the procession of four handcuffed captives into the foyer, dominated by the grand staircase and the chandeliers.

Here Nightshade gestured for Portia to halt us, at which point she grasped the steel gag strap that hung loosely round my neck, raising it and forcing the rubber ball into my mouth with strong controlling hands.  I mmphed at the surprise attack and at the clicking of the ratchet lock at the back of my neck.  I suddenly had the horrible realisation that the key was in Serina’s backpack…  As if sensing this disaster, the woman clicked the lock a further notch.  I panicked momentarily, mmphing as best I could and making a futile attempt to reach around with my cuffed hands.  How pathetic that was.

Moments later the four of us were being woman-handled by the pair, down a set of stairs hidden behind the fancy ones.  Our stairs were of stone, narrow and getting darker as we went down.  We turned left at the bottom and were marched along a vaulted corridor off which there were a number of doors.  Clearly these were the old cellars - to be expected under a Portuguese mansion, and no doubt at one time used for storage of sherry and fine wines from the motherland.  Now, I feared, they were about to be used for the punishment and storage of miscreant slaves. 

We were pushed into a cell near the end.  It looked to be the equivalent of the Bilboes dungeon room – slightly smaller but containing some very unpleasant-looking pieces of equipment.  The door banged shut with an ominous thump.  Portia untied the cord from Monica’s collar and tethered the leash to a steel ring in the wall.  It was an entirely superfluous gesture, of course, for there was no way the hooded and gagged Monica was going to escape with her hands locked in steel cuffs behind her. 

Emma got the same treatment - the rope tied to the steel ring – followed by a red ball gag worked behind her teeth and strapped over the top of her black tresses.  Then came Jill, and Portia was obviously pissed off with her for some reason and set about buckling a black leather head harness in place over Jill’s blonde hair.  She did not do it up very tight to begin with, and no gag was attached to it.  Once it was in place, however, Portia forced an inflatable gag into Jill’s mouth.  Jill tried to protest. 

“No – no Mistress!  Please! I don’t understand what I’ve done wro-garghh!  Urff!”  That was when the squeeze came on the hand pump.  Several squeezes later Jill was effectively silenced, struggling to deal with the bladder growing inside her mouth.  Portia tightened the straps to the harness under Jill’s chin and over the top of her head, locking her jaw against the opening pressure of the gag, then gave the pump several more squeezes.  Jill made a muted “Urrgh –grff” sound, her cheeks bulging as much as the harness let them, her eyes pleading for mercy.

“You can wear that all night,” said Portia callously, doubling over the protruding tube and securing it with a plastic cable tie, before disconnecting the hand pump.  “Since you haven’t learned to speak our language properly yet, you will be denied all freedom of speech.  You silly girl!  How dare you make a birthday speech and suggest that Madam Wong was a lady of great charm and total ‘putrefaction’!  And then you said she was approaching her birthday with an air of grace and ‘exhaustion’!  You’re a waste of space!  Your grasp of our language is abysmal!  You have embarrassed and humiliated me.  Since you are incapable of speaking properly, you will stay completely silent until I decree otherwise, and you will go hungry as well.  In addition you will wear some new ornaments I have had made.” 

She went to a cupboard on the wall and returned with what looked like clothes pegs except that they were made of stainless steel and looked to be slightly shorter than a standard clothes peg.  Portia placed one on each of Jill’s nipples, smiling as they jutted out jauntily. 

“Oh they won’t seem too bad now, but after a day or so you will beg for them to come off.”  I decided that Portia was quite frightening in her intensity.  Nobody would ever impose this duration of punishment at Bilboes.  “And they won’t come off until I unlock them,” she added.  Jill’s eyes widened even more as Portia inserted a small padlock through a hole drilled in each.  As she snapped the locks closed, they must have tightened the jaws even further, for Jill screwed her eyes shut and made a faint whimper.

It was time for the attention to be turned to me, and here Portia and Nightshade consulted in rapid Cantonese, with various hand gestures that I did not like the look of.  My tormentor-in-waiting obviously had liked the look of the clips that had been locked on Jill, and had evidently – I surmised – requested another pair, something that Portia was evidently only too pleased to accommodate.  Moments later I was looking on with trepidation as my own nipples were imprisoned in the jaws.  They were serrated and clearly were not going to fall off in a hurry.  Portia had placed them with plenty of flesh inside the jaws, so that they would have a bulge of nipple to get around before being pulled free without opening.  And once the locks had been clipped into place it was plain that they weren’t going to open.  They were not the fiercest I had ever experienced, but I could imagine how they might feel after a few hours.

I was led to one of the stout wooden posts in the room and made to lie on the floor with my backside next to the post.  I hated lying down with my wrists handcuffed – it was really uncomfortable and I squirmed them into a cross position in the small of my back as the least painful way that I could manage.  Portia and Nightshade consulted before binding my legs together at the ankles and then the knees with considerable lengths of white sashcord.  This done, they lifted my legs up and positioned them against the post so that I was bent at a right angle at the waist, my butt hard against the base of the post and my legs pointing upwards.  Out came the duct tape and my legs were rigidly secured to the post so that all I could manage was a toe wiggle.  I was now grateful that Monica had shaved me before we left the boat.

I wondered what was going on.  They made me sit up as best I could and unlocked the cuffs before lying me down again and binding my hands palm to palm in front of me.  My wrists were then hauled over my head so I lay along the floor, my wrists tied by a length of cord to something out of my field of vision.  At this point I was pretty much unable to move and was wondering what was going to come next.  As I said before, all I could manage was a toe wiggle – something that was next to be denied me, as they tied my two big toes together with twine and pulled the ends of the twine down to be secured to the ropes at my knees. My feet were now pulled into a taut and painful position and I was totally immobile.

Throughout all of this I had not been addressed at all, so preoccupied were the two women with whatever they had planned.  Not that I could have taken part in any dialogue, but I thought it might have been polite of them to at least acknowledge me.  Portia turned to Jill.

“You’re a part of this.  You can share his pain by proximity.”  I wondered what she meant, and found out when she unlocked Jill’s cuffs and made her sit on the floor on the opposite side of the post.  Her arms were brought round to wrap the post and my legs in a tight embrace, with her wrists being crossed and bound in that position.  I could barely see Jill’s head behind the post, only the shiny locked nipple clamps on her breasts on each side of my bound legs.  Her legs stretched alongside my body, her feet nearly at my armpits.

“The punishment fits the crime here,” Portia said to me.  “Just like Jillian has a speech problem, you have a running problem.  You are slow.  Your feet are slow, and need encouragement.”  Shit!  I had secretly had a nasty feeling about this – one that I had been afraid to acknowledge in the deep recesses of my mind.  Nightshade was going to beat the soles of my feet!  The Spanish called this torture bastinado, and I knew it to be a favourite Asian form of beating, one which I was now about to suffer, and which Jill would experience with me through the contact of her arms wrapping around my legs. I felt this part was a particularly subtle and insidious punishment, for they had somehow recognised that she would share my pain simply because of the warm and outgoing person she was.  Portia obviously knew her well.

A discussion followed, with the two women evidently debating the finer points of which items of Portia’s arsenal to use.  They settled on a nasty strap-like thing with a leather handle.  Halter-neck thwacked it against the post with a frightening crack that echoed round the cell.  I would have flinched but I was incapable of movement.  Or so I thought. 

When the first stroke hit my taut, no doubt inviting, soles I still managed to jerk and let out a long ‘mmmmnnn!’  The pain was awful.  The woman stood over me so that I was treated to a long look up her short skirt to the naked pussy underneath – something that at most other times I would have been quite amenable to.  At that particular moment I was conscious only of the burning sensation from my southernmost extremities. 

I took six blows from the strap down the length of each foot – twelve strokes in all, by the end of which I was sweating profusely and making plaintive noises into the gag locked immovably in my mouth.  It was like being in the dentist’s chair and wishing you had opted for the anaesthetic.  I reflected how the whole thing had gone horribly wrong.  Instead of rescuing Jill, all four of us were now prisoners and any chance we had of pulling off the mission was blown totally.  Things had reached a complete nadir, I thought, until Nightshade decided to swap the strap for a thin whippy cane.  No, I thought desperately!  You have to be kidding!

The first blow landed across both feet, for my tormentor was now standing to the side.  I went crazy, mmmphing and struggling as further stokes cracked across my soles with a sickening sound.  Jill held my legs in the desperate embrace of somebody powerless to help a friend in pain, but I was barely conscious of her presence and the muffled, high pitched nasal screams of protest that came from behind the inflatable gag in her mouth as she tried to plead on my behalf.  I could also hear the desperate mmming protests from Emma and Monica, and I was aware of momentary movements in between the stars I was seeing, as the pair jerked and strained at the leashes tethering them to the wall.  I was yowling into my gag, of course, chewing down on it and gripping the rope holding my wrists with a frenzied intensity.  Five more times the thin cane caught my upturned soles, before the woman abruptly tossed it to one side, said something to Portia and the pair laughed. 

“Your party’s over,” said Portia to me, and Nightshade said something further that made Portia smile, before they kissed each other on both cheeks and Nightshade gave me a satisfied smile before leaving the dungeon.  I was shaking and making pathetic whimpering noises, the tears streaming from the corners of my eyes as I lay in agony on the cold stone floor.  My feet were on fire.  I was convinced they must be bloody and pulped.  Somewhere far off I could hear Jill’s muffled sobbing.  Looking back I guess the only good thing about it was the fact that the pain from the nipple clips now seemed insignificant.

“Now we look after you two ladies,” Portia said, turning to where Monica and Emma stood against the wall.  I shall go and consult with Madam Wong and Serina.  I wonder what they will think up for you…”

Again the door slammed and I simply lay there, panting through my nose in a haze of pain.  I was exhausted from the beating and the stress we had been under and felt I had no fight left.  I glanced at where Monica and Emma stood silently against the wall, their cuffed hands behind their backs, and their gagged mouths lowered in dejection.  It was not a happy time and we were all wondering just what on earth was in store for us now.

In contrast, Madam Wong, Serina and Portia were all smiles when they returned, maybe a quarter of an hour later.  Serina still wore the same skirt and pvc top along with the boots laced up to her thighs.  She also looked a lot more together than we had last seen – together and thirsting for revenge, I guessed. 

They entered with Portia pushing a wheeled box about the size of a small television.  I recognised it as a TENS unit of the kind we sometimes used at Bilboes for electrical stimulation of muscles and other parts of the anatomy, but always with due care and attention.  Somehow I did not think this would be a high priority here at Chez Wong.

“I hope we are all comfortable,” Madam Wong began breezily.  “I expect you are wondering what your future will be.  It has of course yet to be finalised, but I think it will nevertheless be most exciting and interesting for you all.” She paused and looked at us all in turn, before resting her gaze on me.  “You…” she said thoughtfully, ”- you have a talent.  I think I am going to be very happy with you and Jillian.  I think you will become permanent residents here to both pleasure me.”  I stared at her, uncomprehending.  Jill choked back a sob. 

“As for you two,” Madam Wong continued, turning to the two standing girls, “I think you will be in great demand in the fleshpots of Schenzhen.  You, Emma, have lovely tits.  You will be a hit with the Chinese men.”  Madam Wong walked across to Emma and pulled the black lycra top up to expose Emma’s breasts, which she caressed and cupped as though considering their value by weight.  Emma closed her eyes and looked a picture of despair.  Then it was Monica’s turn.

“And of course there’s Monica.  Serina tells me you were particularly nasty to her.  I would like to see what you look like under that hood before you get sent to the mainland.  Serina!  Take it off, please.”

Serina snipped the cable tie that secured the bottom of the leather around Monica’s neck and unbuckled the gag strap before untying the laces up the back.  She removed the hood, pulling it over the gag still embedded behind Monica’s teeth, then rebuckled the strap at the back of her neck. I saw Monica wince as Serina appeared to make the gag an extra notch tighter. Monica’s hair was damp from perspiration and she glared at her captor.  In one way I was glad she was left gagged, for she was not past speaking her mind, and right then such an option was not a particularly good one.

“Yes, pretty.  You’ll be well accepted on the mainland.  I have some contacts who would pay a lot to have you in their stable.”  She slid her fingernails down Monica’s right breast and I thought I saw her shiver as Madam Wong played with the dark nipple, fondling it and teasing it erect before pinching it between her nails hard enough to make moan into the rubber ball filling her mouth.

“Oh dear, did that hurt, Monica?  Surely not.  That was nothing to what you’ll feel before the end of the night.  Serina told me all about how you punished her - something I really don’t think was warranted.  And that was before you released those awful cockroaches. I’m sure Serina will have nightmares for weeks.  It’s a good job we keep a set of bolt cutters for our experiments.  You ought to think strategically Monica – what goes around, comes around.  But let’s start with darling Emma first.”

Emma looked decidedly apprehensive as Portia and Serina removed the black leather skirt and released her hands long enough to take off the lycra top.  Madam Wong instructed them to leave the garter belt, black stockings and high heels, with the latter being secured in place with some duct tape wound under the instep and over her foot.  Her ankles were then secured in leather cuffs at the end of a steel spreader bar. 

Emma’s wrists were bound in front of her, with the hands palm to palm.  Portia, in the process of undoing Emma’s neck rope, said something to Madam Wong who evidently agreed, while Emma shook her head, clearly more in faint hope than expectation that she would be heeded.

“Portia was saying that it seems unfair that all of you other boys and girls have the pleasure of a buttplug while Emma is deprived of one of life’s little pleasures.  Bend over, Emma.” 

Again Emma shook her head, but only for as long as it took Serina to pull the tail from her wrist ropes under the spreader bar and to pull her into a bent-over position with far more vigour than was necessary.  Portia rummaged in a cupboard and came out with a chromed plug with two thin wires trailing from it.

“You get the extra special live version,” said Portia.  She spat on it and pushed it into Emma’s rear passage with barely a pause.  The minimal lubrication evidently barely did the job, for Emma squealed and whined in to the gag as Portia worked it back and forth before it was finally pushed home to the accompaniment of a loud groan and a lot of panting from the prisoner. 

“That’s nothing to what you’ll experience before tomorrow, Emma,” said Madam Wong ominously.

Copious loops of cord had been wrapped around Emma’s wrists before being cinched off, and now the tail was pulled over her head then down her back, forcing her to follow with her hands, such that her elbows ended up at the back of her head with her hands at shoulder blade level.  The cords travelled between her legs to emerged in front and be knotted at waist level.  Serina tugged hard on the cords, forcing Emma’s arms further down her back  while the cord drove the butt plug deeper inside her and embedded itself between the lips of her pussy.  Emma groaned and tried to hop from one foot to the other, but the spreader bar allowed only minimal movement.  The two cords bifurcated from the knot at her navel and ran around her waist, meeting again in front and being tied off there.  Emma looked very lovely, very helpless, very scared and very exposed. 

I thought they were almost finished with her until Portia lowered a rope from a pulley above the bound girl.  She buckled a strap around Emma’s elbows, behind her head, and tied the pulley rope to it as a cinch, before hauling on the pulley enough to place the poor girl almost on her toes and to eliminate any chance of movement of her body.  The increased tension pulling on her arms further embedded the rope into her crotch and she whimpered as the strain came on to her arms.

The dominant trio stood back and surveyed the results of their handiwork. 

“Yes, I like that,” said Madam Wong tilting her head critically.  “I’ll have another the same.”

That was the cue for the same treatment for Monica, after her slave harness had been first removed.  Fifteen minutes later she and Emma were a matching pair, standing immobile side by side, tightly and expertly bound. 

“I think Serina can have first go,” Madam Wong decided.  Serina walked over to a wall rack where a number of whips and floggers were on display.  She appeared to study the choice before selecting a light whippy cane and returning  to stand before Emma.

I hated what happened next.  If the pain from my own feet had been bad, watching Serina extract her vengeance on Emma and Monica made my blood run cold.  With their arms pulled over their heads and their legs held apart by the spreaders, the girls had their most sensitive parts left defenceless.  The thin cane struck again and again, criss-crossing Emma’s then Monica’s breasts as they screamed into their gags and twisted and spasmed as much as they could in their restraints. 

As the tears flowed down their cheeks I tried to shut out their cries from my head, but by now Serina was turning her attention to their pussies.  I was conscious of their bodies stiffening and jerking like puppets, accompanied by a high-pitched keening that was a pleading to start with, before dissolving into  muffled, incoherent panting screams.  I thought it would never end, and possibly it might have gone on had not Madam Wong signalled to Portia with a nod of the head that enough was enough and damaged merchandise cost money.  Portia seized Serina’s arm in mid-swing and spoke sharply to her in Cantonese.  Serina stopped and turned away, then came back for a last slash across Monica’s left breast.

“Uurrrnnnghhh!”  Monica screamed, biting down on the gag and screwing up her face.  I struggled uselessly against my own bonds and sensed Jill doing the same, but neither of us could move.

“Enough!”  Madam Wong declared.  “Serina!  Sit down!  You may watch from now on.  You’ve made your point, but I haven’t yet made mine.  Portia – you may continue.”

“This is where the fun really starts,” Madam Wong said with a smile that – while shared by her cohorts – was anything but friendly.  Portia now wheeled the TENS unit across to Monica and fussed around a mess of cables, untangling several pairs and laying them out on the floor.  At the end of each pair of cables was a steel clip, like a small version of that found on car jumper leads.

Emma was the first to be attended to.  She whined and snuffled as a clip was carefully  positioned on each bruised and tenderised nipple, squeezing her eyes shut with the pain.  When a further clip was placed on each pussy lip her pleas behind the rubber ball went up an octave.  Portia’s final action was to join the two wires hanging from Emma’s butt-plug to a further pair of wires, all of which were now plugged into a small junction box fed by a single cord from the TENS machine.  Minutes later Monica also sported clips on her nipples and pussy lips, but here the comparison ended, for the spreader bar had been removed from her ankles, and suspended from the pussy clips were two metal balls, the size of walnuts, from which hung further wires leading to the TENS machine.

“The setup is very simple, Monica,” Madam Wong explained with smug satisfaction.  The circuit is closed when those two balls touch.  When that happens you will get a shock to your pussy and your tits.  So too, of course, will Emma.  You know of course that a TENS machine primarily offers low and continuous current.  This one has been modified with a bypass switch, so the current is somewhat more extreme.  And while I think of it, it seems a shame to leave Jillian and Steven out of it.  Portia – you may include them in the output – it seems they already have the clips.”  She smirked as Portia bent down to where Jill hugged the post, and twisted an exposed end of a wire on to each of the clamps locked to Jill’s nipples.  Moments later Portia was grinning in my face as she repeated the process with me, not missing the chance to give the clamps a nasty twist as she did so.

“I think that should see you comfortably through the night, Monica,” Madam Wong said in a supremely self-satisfied tone.  “As long as you hold that position, feet well-spread, you’ll be okay.  Move more than a few millimetres and the balls will touch, and presto! Zap!  Just like this…” 

I watched, mesmerised, as the woman bent down to where the two silver balls dangled a handspan below Monica’s crotch.  They looked heavy enough to cause major discomfort from the weight alone, plus the clips themselves, never mind anything else.  They hung, barely a finger-width apart, like a pair of those desk-top silver balls that executives get to play with.  Madam Wong grasped one between her thumb and forefinger and pulled it to one side, holding it there for a long time, before letting it go.  It struck the other with a sharp clack, and at once I felt a small jolt of pain across my nipples, clearly flowing from one jaw of the clamp to the other.  I jerked, then a split second later a second pulse hit, then another, as the balls clacked against each other like a pair of pendulums.

As one, four gagged mouths cried out and our bodies twitched in response to the pain.  Poor Emma was getting shocked across her nipples, pussy and in her arse, but it was only Monica who could stop the pain.  With a supreme effort of will she let her full weight hang on the pulley rope so that her feet could slide apart that little bit further that would separate the balls and break the cycle.

For a full minute afterwards there was just the sound of hoarse panting and muffled sobs.  Madam Wong was evidently delighted with the arrangement.  “It’s been a long day, boys and girls, but an enjoyable one.  I’ve had a very nice birthday party, with lots of nice presents, but none as wonderful as what I have here.  But now I’m tired – though not as tired as you will all be.  The difference is that I’m going to get some sleep now.  And you’re not.”  She laughed.  “Come, ladies.”

I caught a last glimpse of Monica’s legs shaking as she strove to see how close the balls were to each other.  Her face was wet with tears and rivulets of perspiration coursed down her body as she willed her legs to cease trembling.  That’s when the lights went out and I knew we were all in for the longest night of our lives.