1970s, Levinston

Charlotte had been pacing back and forth in the living room, waiting for her boyfriend Tony to pick her up for prom. She was stress-drinking soda pop, which only made her jumpier, which only made her drink more soda, which sent her down a fizzy whirlpool of paranoia.

“What if he doesn’t come!?” Charlotte was shaking like popcorn on a hot plate. “What if Tony ditched me?”

Charlotte’s mother Kate looked up from the cooking magazine she was reading on the couch. “Lottie, would Tony leave you now? On prom night? After five years together?” She looked at her daughter’s miniskirt and cleavage revealing shirt. A bit risqué for Kate’s taste (she preferred ankle length floral dresses) — but, hey! it was the 70s. “Tony’d be crazy to leave a pretty thing like you. And besides — he’s only due in an hour!”

Charlotte was chewing through her nails like a woodchuck. “But if he would leave me, he’d be crazy to do it, so it would be now, on prom night, after five years, and that’s logic—”

“Lottie, look at mommy’s finger.”

With Pavlovian immediacy, Charlotte swung her eyes to her mom’s pointer finger.

Kate traced circles in the air, grinning at how easily Charlotte’s eyes followed the circle. “That’s it, Lottie. Your eyes follow the circle. Your thoughts follow the circle. A circle with no beginning, no end.”

Charlotte’s soda pop shivers had vanished. Her arms dangled by her sides. Her mouth drooped open.

“Good girl,” said Kate. “Now, come to mommy’s side.” She patted beside herself on the couch.

Charlotte sat at Kate’s side, letting her head rest on Kate’s shoulder as soon as her bottom hit the cushion, eyes sleepily staring at nothing.

Charlotte was so susceptible to hypnosis. Some of the other girls in Levinston could hold out against hypnosis for a few minutes, but not her Lottie. Even if Charlotte was in a shouty huff, Kate just had to spin her finger. In a few seconds, Kate could have Charlotte bucking like a chicken.

In Levinston, it was the mother’s duty to hypnotize her daughter as preparation for womanhood. From Charlotte’s eighteenth birthday onwards, Kate had dropped her into deeper and deeper trances. A grown-up Levinston woman needed to be easy to hypnotize, otherwise how could their husbands manage their behaviour? It was thanks to a long tradition of hypnosis that Levinston hadn’t succumbed to those silly women’s libbers on the coasts.

(A few women’s libbers had come to protest a few months back, but the League for Feminine Virtues had a very soothing talk with them. Soon enough those protesters were on their hands and knees, barking and howling as the mayor paraded town them about on leashes. Oh, Kate still chuckled at those protestors’ red faces as they boarded the bus home.)

“Now, Lottie,” said Kate to her dazed and drowsy daughter, “when I count to three and snap my fingers, you will wake up, very relaxed and very calm.”

Charlotte blinked, looking only slightly less drowsy than she was a moment before. “Thank you, mommy.”

“Don’t mention it, Lottie. I know when my daughter needs mommy to think for her.” “Did your mom have to hypnotize you before prom?”

Kate was silent, her warm grin now frozen on her face. “I,” she began. “I never went to prom.”

“What?” said Charlotte, that bombshell waking her up fully. “Why?”

“I… I was once a very naughty girl…” Kate’s eyes glistened. “A real punk criminal…”

Charlotte laid her hands over her mother’s. “You don’t have to say anything.”

“No,” said Kate, eyes still glistening, but now smiling too. “My criminal years may be hard to think about, but my arrival in Levinston, of being tamed… why, it always makes me smile.” She grinned into her daughter’s eyes. “Would you like to hear how mommy, and Auntie Lucy, and Auntie Ashleigh became happy housewives?”

“Do I!?” chirped Charlotte.

“It all started twenty years ago…”

**

The 1950s, Levinston

The three girls blazed down the main road, their motorbikes barking and belching smoke. The Levinston locals prayed to God these greaser gals were just passing through. The local barman’s stomach dropped when those three girls parked outside his bar. Those leather-jacketed, denim-jeaned, greased-hair viragos knocked down the bar door and chased every Levinston customer out.

The Levinston men could easily have fought back, but they were gentlemen. They’d never fight a lady, no matter how unladylike she was being. Luckily, the ladies of Levinston were particularly good at handling unruly girls.

The three greaser gals, Kate, Ashleigh, and Lucy were each four beers down.

Ashleigh collected the fifth round from the bar. “Nice of you to put it on the house.” Ashleigh sneered at the trembling barman with sadistic glee, fingering the hilt of her holstered knife.

Ashleigh carried the mugs to the booth, where Kate was already getting miffed at Lucy.

“Luce!” Kate said. When Lucy just kept fingering the splintered wood on the wall, Kate banged the table. “Luce! Did you or did you not get the bikes checked in the last town?”

“Slipped my mind.” Lucy tried to keep Kate out of her eyeline as she reached for her beer.

Kate grabbed the mug and splashed the beer in Lucy’s face. Lucy didn’t even wipe the beer from her eyes. She just kept laying on the bench.

“Don’t think you can mooch of us,” said Kate, standing closer to Ashleigh. “I can survive without you. I have survived without you. I’m twenty, and half of my life I’ve spent without you — without anyone. But you? You need us.”

Lucy took a long inhale. Whether she was going to say something didn’t matter, because a deep female voice addressed the three of them.

“Well, aren’t you girls horrid.” The woman was the very image of suburban housewifery, wearing a floral dress, carrying a short-stranded handbag, and sporting a bouffant hairstyle. The only thing that spoiled the image was that she didn’t have a wedding ring. And she was six-foot-two. She had an F-cup bust and child-bearing hips. The only small thing about the Amazon housewife was her waist.

She stood at the head of a bouquet of florally-dressed housewives.

Ashleigh said to Kate, “You want I should kick them out?”

Kate said, “Worst comes to worst, we take the big one together.” She turned to the woman who had spoken. Kate stood tall as she could, but the woman was still a head taller. “Piss off!”

The woman’s smirk never shrank. “My name is Miss Carmilla Marks, president of public relations for the League of Feminine Virtues.” She reached into her handbag. “As a gift of welcome to our lovely town, do please attend our cinema.”

Kate, Lucy, and Ashleigh eyed the three tickets Carmilla held out to them, as if she were a witch offering candy.

Kate asked, “Why?”

“It’s my opinion,” said Carmilla, “that a good movie can make you reconsider things.”

**

The cinema was empty. Ashleigh was disappointed that she didn’t need to throw anyone out. Lucy put her feet up on the seat in front of hers. Kate waited for the thriller to begin.

The curtain opened. The projector whirred, but there was something about the whirring that didn’t sound right. There was something… extra in it… like whispers.

*Relax*

*Don’t question it*

*Just enjoy the movie*

The projected film also had something slightly off about it. It was like every few seconds a frame was missing… or added.

*No worries*

*Don’t overthink things*

*Just enjoy the movie*

Probably just a shitty theatre, Kate thought before snuggling into her chair.

The film started, but it wasn’t what they’d come to see. The camera panned over women sitting in church, their eyes glazed over, their mouths drooping.

*Relax*

*Sleepy*

*Just watch*

Only when Kate started drooling did she realize she’d been staring at these drowsy ladies for minutes. It was so boring she’d lost track of time. She’d give the manager a piece of her mind. Carmilla walked onto screen, her smirking face taking up one half the screen. The other half still showcased the sleepy church goers.

*Listen to her*

*Trust her*

*Just accept her words*

“You might be wondering why these girls are so sleepy,” said Carmilla. “It’s the same reason you’re feeling so sleepy and heavy-eyed.”

*Sleepy* *Heavy eyes*

Carmilla had just plopped ten-ton weights on Kate’s eyelids, but Kate strove to keep them open.

“The answer is simple,” said Carmilla. “These girls, and you, are being hypnotized.”

That was enough to splash water on Kate. She was still so sleepy and dazed, but she started to shake her head awake.

“It’s too late to fight back,” said Carmilla. “You are hypnotized.” *You are hypnotized*

*You are hypnotized*

*You are hypnotized*

Kate stopped shaking her head. No point in fighting hypnosis if she was already hypnotized.

“Good girls,” said Carmilla. “You came to see a movie, but you’re getting something even better. You’re going to be the star of your very own movie. But first, close your eyes and go to sleep.” As Kate’s eyes drifted shut, a big dopey grin grew on her face. She was going to be a star.

**

*The Unbridled Cowgirl*

Lucy came slouching into Levinston on her horse. She was lazy and terrifying as a swarm of tumbleweeds. She wore black trousers, held up only by suspenders, and a white shirt, stained brown with ale, sweat and dirt. She’d stolen the clothes from a man she’d hospitalized in the big city. They fit her so loosely, you could barely make out her wide hips and swelling breasts.

She did what she did in every town. She stole food from farmers’ wagons, nicked material from general stores, drank ale direct from the bar’s barrel — and if anyone told her to pay for what she was taking, she would fire a bullet through their shoes. All Levinston lived in terror of this fairy-faced, plump-bottomed girl.

One afternoon, she was on the bar’s wooden floor, napping in a sunbeam like a well-armed house cat. Someone kicked her arm. He had to kick her three times before she woke up.

Lucy saw the sheriff’s badge, and the sheriff’s hand hovering over his holster. Her hand twitched towards her pistol, but he stepped on her wrist.

“In Levinston, we don’t take kindly to people leeching on the hard work of others,” said the sheriff. “Don’t matter what a pretty young lady you are. You want to eat, you better work.”

Lucy rolled her eyes and futilely tried to yank her wrist from under his boot. Work hard, work hard, work hard. Family, church men, law men had told her to work hard and get rewarded. Well, she cut out the middleman. Somehow that made her the bad guy.

“Big man,” she said. “Take a girl while she’s sleeping.”

The sheriff chuckled. “Name’s Andrew. And you’re right.” He took his heel off her wrist. “Shouldn’t be yammering about hard work when I take the easy way.”

Her now free hand rushed to her pistol, pulled the trigger six times. She’d never bothered to load it.

Andrew’s condescending smirk never left his punch-ably handsome face. “Standoff at noon. Give you an hour to prepare. I want to see how you do when you got a fire under your pretty, peachy butt.”

The heels of his shining boots click-clacked out of the bar. The barman cheered, until Lucy threw her pistol at him. She took her hour to prepare. She jumped the sleep out of her body, loaded her pistol, and resisted the urge to chug another mug of beer.

When midday came, she stumbled out of the bar. Andrew stood in the middle of the road, waiting for her, thumbs hooked under his belt. Lucy ran her thumbs under her suspender hoops, looking nonchalant. She wanted him to think she’d wait for him announce the duellist pleasantries.

She didn’t. She whipped out her pistol, only for a bullet to knock her pistol out of her hand. Andrew stood as he was before, only now he had a smoking gun in his fist.

Lucy turned tail and ran. Before she could make ten paces, two shots grazed her shoulders. Near misses, she thought, until her suspender hoops broke, and her pants fell around her ankles, tripping her onto her face. She ate dirt, sticking her long-john-ed butt in the air.

She scrambled to her feet, pulling her pants up, but a lasso fell from above and yanked her around the waist. Oh, she fought against the rope like an ornery pig, but Andrew’s arms had been bulked up by lassoing ornery bulls. He pulled the cursing, swearing spitfire into the bar, pulled up a chair, sat in it, and then laid Lucy over his lap.

It was only when he started unbuttoning the butt-flap of her long-johns that she realized what he was doing.

“Oh, no!” she said, kicking her legs and beating her arms, as her lily-white bottom was exposed to air. “Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare spank me—”

He spanked her. He spanked her with a hand that had won every arm-wrestle it had been a part of. He spanked her again.

“Fuck!”

“You get two more for cursing, little lady.”

SMACK! SMACK!

“In Levinston, you see, we value two things,” said Andrew, alternating smacks between her butt cheeks. “Hard work and discipline. You skimped on the hard work, so you get the discipline.”

SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!

Lucy gnashed her teeth as her butt turned cherry red. “I’ll leave!” she screamed. “I’ll never come back to this fucking town. Just please — let me go!” SMACK! “God! Fuck!”

“Don’t think you can slither away that easy, little snake,” he said, never slowing his barrage of spanks. “You caused these hard-working townsfolk a lot of trouble. They might like seeing your bright red butt, but it ain’t going to restock their storerooms, now is it?”

SMACK!

“OW!”

“I’m not going to let you leave until you make up your debt to these hard-working people,” said Andrew.

And so it was. Lucy was a prisoner, but not in prison; and she had to do hard labour, but not in the quarries. Andrew let her sleep in his house, and leased her labour to all the Levinston locals she had terrorized. She planted crops, stocked shelves, and waitressed for the bar. Oh, by the end of the first day, her body was aching all over, practically paralysed.

That first week, she tried to sneak out of town every night. Before she could get through the front door, Andrew would pull her over his lap and beat her runaway bottom. To make it easier to discipline the work-shy sloth, he forced her to go buck-naked while in his house. A man like Andrew couldn’t waste time pulling up layers of frilly dresses and petticoats just to spank a lazy girl. (And he certainly wasn’t going to let a girl wear pants!)

When she was out and about helping the townsfolk, she needed to wear something more substantial, but which always left her bottom open to a wallop. The local bordello lent Lucy a cabaret outfit. It was a dark-red corset which hugged her hourglass curves and pushed her boobs together. On her lower body were just a garter belt and thigh-high stockings, and a diaphanous pair of panties. Those panties didn’t offer a lick of padding when a spank came down.

Lucy was embarrassed at first, but she found that her taskmasters went easier on her. She just needed to bend over as she washed tables to show off her, or bend from the waist as she picked up boxes to stick out her peachy bottom. She even liked the compliments her body got, even the playful slaps and fondles. No one ever treated her like this when she dressed like a man. And when they’d praise her after a long day of work, she’d feel so happy. This wasn’t like the happiness she felt before, when she only ate, slept, and stole. Now she felt… proud? She felt as if her actions had purpose. So this was what helping others felt like.

It was a month into her punishment, but she didn’t think of it as punishment anymore. She didn’t even keep track of the days anymore. Every day was a blissful blur of obedient service.

She was scrubbing the entryway to Sheriff Andrew’s house. Sheriff Andrew always came home at exactly 9pm, so she made sure that the first sight he would see when he came home was her big, beautiful butt sticking up in the air as she scrubbed his floor.

The front door opened, and Andrew whistled as he did every evening. “Well, ain’t that a sight for sore eyes.”

Lucy giggled, and, as she did every evening, she wiggled her butt at him. He told her to come to the living room and sit on his lap. She hummed happily as her bum pressed against the bulge in his pants. He relaxed and told her about his day, and she relaxed too. She was hazy-eyed with a dopey-smile from knowing that she had made Sheriff Andrew’s day just a little bit easier.

“I’m going to miss this,” said Andrew.

“Huh?” said Lucy, suddenly more awake. “Miss?”

“You’ve worked off your debt, moon pie,” he said, giving the side of her butt a playful whack. “In half the time I thought it would take you. You’re a busy little beaver when you want to be.”

Lucy was silent.

“Anything wrong, sweety?” asked Andrew.

“I… I don’t want to go,” she said. She hopped onto the ground, onto her knees, and hugged Andrew’s legs. “Can I stay, sir. In all my years, roaming and leeching, I’ve never been as happy as I’ve been here. I want to be Levinston’s helpful eye-candy.”

“Why, sweet-pea,” he said. “Of course, you can stay.” Before she could jump for joy, he said, “But there is one condition. It’s one thing for me to have a prisoner lodging here. I can’t be having a free woman here.”

Lucy was almost crying. Serving Sheriff Andrew, feeling his eyes linger on her big bum, her full breasts, snuggling up to him in bed at night — would she have to lose all this?

“So will you be my wife?” asked Andrew.

She hopped up onto his lap like an eager puppy. She kissed his face all over. “Oh, yes, yes, yes, sir! I’ll be the most dutiful, hard-working wife in the world!”

**

*Crashlanding on Planet Jezebel*

Chief Torturer Ashleigh’s boots thudded across the dark, damp dungeon’s floor. She had come to size up the new prisoner. Was it woman or beast — or something never yet seen on the planet Jezebel?

One of Queen Virago’s scouting parties had dragged this creature and three other identical ones from a wreckage on the edge of the Queen’s domains. The wreck was a massive vessel, fallen from the sky (if any woman could believe that). It was made of more metal than Queen Virago’s queendom could mine in a year. It was moulded into a form that none of her blacksmiths could achieve in a hundred years. The creatures inside were no less strange. They wore armour which was seemed useless in battle: a thick white padding around their torsos, and gloves that resembled the hands of a jungle arch-ape. And the helmet was strangest of all. It was a sphere, like a bubble, but hard as glass and reflective as a mirror.

That outfit was a world away from Ashleigh’s uniform. She wore a leather jerkin, tailored to contour around her breasts and curves. Her pants snuggled tightly against her long, muscled legs and thick bottom.

Ashleigh kept her blade in her sheath. She wouldn’t test how hardy the creature’s armour was. Oh, she wanted to. She wanted to shed whatever liquid this creature used for blood. But rule one for the Legion of Torturers was: never kill by accident. She would interrogate the creature and determine its… physical limits.

“What are you?” she barked.

The prisoner neither answered nor even pulled against the shackles holding up its arms.

“Don’t pretend you don’t understand.” Ashleigh tapped the black crystal in her forehead. “The servants of Queen Virago speak and hear pure meaning. What are you?”

The prisoner spoke slowly, like someone recently awoken from unconsciousness. “Just a man.”

That voice. That voice was deep. Ashleigh had heard plenty of deep voices among Queen Virago’s warrior women. Ashleigh herself had a deep voice. But that voice was… gravelly, bass, booming. Just hearing those words made her quiver, as though a muscular musician’s hands had thrummed her heartstrings.

She composed herself. A Torturer must never show weakness or… arousal.

“Man!?” she said. “Do not cut words in two. There is only wo-man! Don’t you—”

“My head’s still ringing,” said the prisoner. “Can you speak softer?”

“Don’t you order me,” she whispered, and clenched her teeth when she realized she had whispered. She tried speaking louder, but it just made her voice lower and breathier. “How dare you tell me to speak softly.”

“This helmet’s too thick to hear you,” the prisoner said. “Use an indoor voice.”

It showed no courtesy, no grovelling. This creature was just ordering her around like a servant.

“Is this better,” she said in her best indoor voice. Her cheeks were burning. She wanted to spite the prisoner by yelling, but… but… she didn’t want to displease him.

“Him”. That was a new concept for her translator crystal. The crystal tied it to the other unheard of term: “man”. Ashleigh had no clue what “man” was, but the prisoner was “man”, and she was “woman”. The word “MAN” was written in big letters, while “woman” was written smaller, daintier, below “man”. Was her translator crystal malfunctioning?

“That voice is perfect, sweety,” he said.

He patronized her! If it were any other prisoner, she’d give him a kick across the face. For him though…

“Thank you, s… s…” There was a word on the tip of her tongue, like “ma’am” but stronger, more… manly. She refused to say it. She had to fight this submissive girliness bubbling in her tummy.

“Just as I thought,” he whispered.

“What do you think?” she said as loud as she could bring herself to.

“Oh,” he said, “just that… this planet’s atmosphere is safe for me.” Outsized panic seized his voice, the kind one hears from Queen Virago’s jesters. “But do not remove my suit. My kind wear these suits to protect our weak, tender bodies.”

Ashleigh’s Torturer instincts blared. The fool had revealed both that he could survive without his suit — and that he would be writhing in pain after a few cuts. He had ordered her not to remove his suit, and that order held her back like a taught leash. She did not want to displease him.

She pulled out her blade and sliced cleanly across her forearm. “Bad girl,” she said to herself. “You are a Torturer.” She would not be controlled by a prisoner, by this thing called “man”.

She lunged forward, too fast to rethink her actions. She slashed from left to right across the suit’s torso. No blood. She had not hurt him. But she would.

Kneeling in front of him, she reached into the gash in the suit. “Tender flesh, you said? I wonder if you’d scream after a single touch— Mmm.” Her thighs clamped together, and her eyes fluttered back in her head. Her hand had touched muscle, a firm six pack. The word “MAN” roared like thunder in her head.

“It *is* just as I thought,” he said. He didn’t seem to mind that she’d stuck both her hands into his suit, and was feeling up his toned torso, her mouth agape in bewilderment. “On this planet, you have no men. You girls have built up no resistance to manliness. The slightest whiff of it and your innate femininity jumps to submit. Well, then, undo these shackles, sweety.”

Ashleigh stopped feeling his chest up. “Yes, sir! Sir. Sir.” The word felt so good, so right. She kept saying it as she unlocked his shackles. She only stopped when he pulled off his helmet and took off his suit.

He stood before her in only underwear, looking chiselled as a God. He may as well have been a God.

“Tell me everything about this castle, the layout, the security, and where my crewmates are.”

Ashleigh forgot her vow of loyalty to Queen Virago, her blood oath that she would sooner kill herself than compromise her Queen’s security. Chief Torturer Ashleigh blurted out secret after secret, telling him everything about the castle that popped into her head.

He put his finger to her lips. “Sweety, slow down.”

Her monologue stopped dead. “Yes, God.”

He chuckled. “I’m no god, sweety.” He stroked his square jaw, deep in smirking thought. “But you can call me Patriarch, Patriarch Howard.”

A title *and* a name, so she could be reverent and intimate. “Yes, Patriarch Howard.”

“You’re going to help me stage a revolution, sweety,” he said.

With no guilt or compunction, Ashleigh helped Howard usurp her Queen and homeland. It didn’t take long.

Ashleigh guided him to his three crewmates’ holding cells one by one, and one by one he confronted Queen Virago’s Torturesses. No sooner did these Torturesses see Howard in his manly glory than they fell to their knees, ready to betray their country just to obey a man. With just a word, he had them free his crewmates, who each took off their space suits to reveal their own manliness. Howard and his crew’s manly authority skyrocketed exponentially as their number increased. Ashleigh and her subordinates were jumping with joy that they could submit to so many hunky men at once.

Howard and his three crew men marched into Queen Virago’s throne room, where she sat haughtily in her ebony armour. Her two-score squadron of bodyguards rushed at the four intruders, spears drawn, ready to hurl them at the men.

Howard shouted, “Girls! Stop right there!”

These highly-trained, battle-hardened Amazons, who would sooner die than desert their duty, all stopped still in their tracks. They didn’t know why they obeyed, but they knew it was so right, so natural.

“Never run with sharp objects,” said Howard. “Drop those weapons.”

Spears clanged to the stone floor, even as Queen Virago shouted and screamed for her bodyguards to kill these intruders.

“And this armour,” said Howard, “these outfits. They’re far too mannish for girls like you. Take it all off until we can find something more feminine for you.”

Breastplates, bracers, leg-guards, everything fell to the floor, followed by undershirts and underwear, until only a group of forty buxom girls in their birthday suits remained. Ashleigh and her torturers watched from the sidelines, but they too tore off their clothes, hating the thought of looking “mannish”. None of the girls knew what “feminine” clothes looked like, but they couldn’t wait to wear some.

The only girl who wasn’t utterly starkers was Queen Virago. She was on her feet, blade drawn, beating on her ebony breastplate, ranting and raving that she would cut Howard and his crew down; but as Howard strolled up towards her throne, her voice got softer and softer, until it was just a squeak when he was face-to-face with her.

She tried to maintain her haughty demeanour, but she could only whisper her taunts at Howard who towered above her. “Don’t… Don’t you dare think you can just… just walk in and… and—”

Howard told Queen Virago, “Spank your bare bottom one hundred times.”

The dreaded Queen of half of planet Jezebel said, “Yes, sir.”

Patriarch Howard took Queen Virago’s throne and discussed his plans to dominate planet Jezebel with his three crewmates. All the while Queen Virago stuck her naked, reddening butt at them (“Twenty-four. Ow! Twenty-five. Ooh! Twenty-six — Ouchie!”).

Thereafter, the four crewmen became the four Patriarchs, beloved rulers of Queen Virago’s domain — or as she was now called “Virago the Dancer”. Ashleigh kneeled before Patriarch Howard’s throne as the court watched Virago’s sensual swirling. She had traded her ebony armour for body-paint.

Ashleigh snuggled into Howard’s warm legs. The “feminine” clothes women now had to wear hardly kept the cold out. They were barely coverings at all. These outfits were just diaphanous veils to wrap around the breasts and pelvis. There were metal collars around their necks with matching shackles around their wrists. The collars and shackles had no chains, and so didn’t restrict their movement. They were just to remind the girls of their place.

And Ashleigh loved being in her place. She loved being a soft-spoken, docile servant for Patriarch Howard. She could barely remember the time when she got a kick out of hurting people.

**

*The Bikini Party at the Vampire’s Beach House*

Kate had tried to escape the beach house of Countess Carmilla by running across the burning sand. Having spotted Kate, Carmilla’s six surfing sentries had swooped down from the gnarly waves to the shore, their double-D hooters bouncing as they bounded after Kate. Kate trembled at the sight of the surfers’ snow-white skin. Those beach bunnies couldn’t tan, for they were — vampires!

Kate ran back towards the beach house. One of the buxom surfers groped after her, but her sharp, manicured nails only managed to undo the back of her Kate’s bikini top. Heedless of her bikini fluttering away, Kate doubled her speed and disappeared into the labyrinthine beach house.

She rested against a wall, warm with the sun’s rays. Sweat rolled down her face, down her neck, over her bare, heaving breasts. She looked at her boobies, relieved to see the tan lines just around her nipples where her microkini had been. This proved she wasn’t a vampire.

She slapped herself. She wasn’t a vampire, but Ashleigh and Lucy were. Countess Carmilla, or one her gaggle of vixen vampires, had bitten Kate’s friends.

This was just meant to be a crazy, summer vacation before they went to college. In just a few months they were going to study business together, and learn skills that would let them be strong, independent women who could make it by themselves in the real world. And now, Ashleigh and Lucy would be spending the rest of their immortal lives as slaves to Countess Carmilla. Kate had to escape the beach. She’d be an independent career woman — independent enough for all three of them!

Kate hugged the wall as she followed the branching corridors of the beach house, searching for a way out. Then she saw it. The patio, which overlooked a pier with a boat docked and ready to go. She just had to run a hundred meters or so.

She was about to break for it. Ashleigh and Lucy climbed up onto the patio from the beach, towelling off their hair, their bare breasts and bellies covered with sand. They had no tans.

They spotted Kate. They jumped up and down, waving at her. Kate turned tail and ran — straight into pair of F-cup breasts. Kate landed on her bottom. She looked up at Countess Carmilla, the six-foot-two woman wearing only a heavy black cape, cast back to reveal her snow-white nakedness.

Before Kate could stand up, Carmilla swooped down, knees on either side of Kate’s body, hands planted right next to Kate’s ears. The cape covered both their bodies. Carmilla lowered her face to Kate’s, her breasts pressing on Kate’s. She smiled, baring her fangs.

“Do you want this, honey?” asked Carmilla.

“Why are you asking?” Kate could barely speak the words. She was too terrified to move a muscle. “Just take me, like you took them.”

Carmilla chuckled and croaked deep in her throat. “Oh, I asked them too, honey. And they begged me to bite them.”

“What!?” said Kate. “Why would they choose to be your slaves?”

Carmilla huffed playfully. She put her mouth right up to Kate’s ear, letting her fangs tickle her earlobe. “I just gave them a choice. Either, they could take that boat, go back home, enrol in college, spend years learning things they won’t need for a job they won’t want, where they’ll work till ten for a boss who’ll never notice they exist — all to be independent career woman… Or, I bite them, and they live in my beach house, servants to a mistress who will kiss and cuddle and coddle them every day—”

Kate didn’t need Carmilla to finish. “Bite me!”

**

“Now, let’s give a big round of applause to Levinston’s newest starlets.” It was Carmilla’s voice, but Kate, Lucy and Ashliegh were too deeply asleep to know for sure.

That changed when an auditorium of claps jarred the three girls awake. Kate blinked, shocked to find herself on a stage, much less in front of an audience filled with the whole population of Levinston. She yelped, and put her arms over her breasts when she saw she was only wearing a microkini. She looked over at her friends, who would be covering up too if they weren’t still rubbing the sleep from their eyes.

Lucy was wearing some Old West Cabaret getup that pushed up her breasts and was little more than a corset and panties. Ashleigh had it worse, wearing some gauzy harem-girl bra and panty set, with slave collar to match.

Behind Lucy stood a man dressed like a cowboy, and behind Ashleigh a guy in a space suit with the helmet off. Kate arched her neck back and saw that behind herself was Carmilla.

Carmilla gazed down at Kate. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “The town loved your little plays.”

Plays? So that dream…? Kate was running across the stage, her bare breasts bouncing — in front of a whole town!?

“While making these naughty biker girls humiliate themselves has been fun,” said Carmilla to the audience, “something more important has happened. They’ve all learned very important lessons.”

Kate was confused. Judging by the looks on Ashleigh and Lucy’s faces, they were too. The cowboy behind Lucy tapped her shoulder. Suddenly, confusion vanished from Lucy’s face, replaced by righteous intensity. She shot to her feet and said:

“I learnt my lesson! I was a lazy-bones who needed a man to smack my bottom!”

She finished by bending over, grabbing the armrests of her chair, and sticking her butt out to the audience. She earned a massive round of applause.

Before Ashleigh can process what happened, the astronaut tapped her shoulder.

She shot from her seat and said, “I learnt my lesson! I was a sadistic shrew who needed a man to dominate me!”

She prostrated herself before the audience.

Kate tried to slip out of her chair before her shoulder got tapped, but — too late!

The moment Carmilla tapped her shoulder, Kate knew she had to stand. A truth had formed in her heart and she just had to tell everyone. She shot to her feet.

“I learnt my lesson! I was a strong, independent woman who needed a woman to take care of me!”

Kate fell to her hands and knees, instinctively knowing that the best way to express her epiphany was acting like a puppy. “Woof! Woof!”

Carmilla raised her hand to halt the audience’s applause. “There is one last and most important matter.”

Carmilla, and the cowboy, and the astronaut all pulled small black boxes from their pockets. They all got on one knee. The cowboy asked Lucy, the astronaut asked Ashleigh, and Carmilla asked Kate:

“Will you marry me?”

**

1970s, Levinston

Charlotte’s mouth was agape when Kate had finished the story.

“So you’re saying,” Charlotte said, “you used to be a biker, but got tricked into watching a subliminal movie, which hypnotized you into acting out kinky stage plays, and then you woke up dressed like centrefolds, and then you were proposed to in front of the whole town, pressuring you to settle down in Levinston for life?”

“Uh-huh.” Kate grinned.

“That’s so romantic!” Charlotte swooned back onto the couch’s headrest.

*Ding-Dong*

Charlotte jumped up like a possum on an electric fence. “Tony’s here!”

She ran to the door, greeting Tony, and stammering and stumbling over her words, until Tony said:

“Baby, sleep.”

Charlotte’s face fell into Tony’s muscled chest. He told her hypnotized mind that everything would be alright.

Kate smiled at the sight. She jolted when an arm went around her shoulder but melted into a lovey-dovey puddle when she looked up at Carmilla’s face. They both gazed at Charlotte being led to prom by Tony.

“And to think,” said Carmilla to Kate, “you once thought a motorbike and greased hair was more valuable than this.”