Something had shifted in the world. Adele couldn’t have said what. Like a sound was missing: an ambient sound that you only heard when it wasn't there.

It was quiet enough for her taste as it was. Dead of night in some empty suburban enclave, standing on a barely lit sidewalk under a tree. She couldn’t place it. She couldn’t tell what she was doing here.

She was staring down at the guy’s hand on her forearm. It came to Adele that’s how he was doing it. Pacifying her. Because that was the word for it, she was pacified. Alone in the dark in the sort of trimmed-lawn no-man’s-land where murders happen, literally in a strange man’s grasp: and look at you, Adele thought, it’s like you don’t mind about it at all. Like it was happening to someone else. She could feel the place in her where the tensing, the readying to scream ought to have been: but it was a ghost sensation, a kind of tingle; a mild slightly disconcerting numbness.

Adele looked at him. She’d been avoiding his eyes, like they tell you to do when you’re being mugged. But she wasn’t being mugged. He was just a sweaty early-onset-balding incel type: instant creep vibe, but not dangerous in any way. He smirked at her, like he knew what was going on in her head. He shrugged. “Women tend to follow my lead,” he said.

Where am I even parked, Adele asked herself. There was a flash of anxiety about her delivery schedule, then she recollected she wasn’t on tonight. She had a specific memory of calling in sick not long before shift and getting yelled at. She felt fine though.

Just as she turned her head to scan for her car he released his hold, pivoted on his heel and strode abruptly off. He was headed up the longish walk leading to the house they were in front of. Adele stood staring after him with her hands on her hips, shaking her head. Without so much as a backward glance he disappeared inside.

The sky was clear and moonless, and the night turning chill. The only sound was leaves rustling. Adele could feel the suburban desolation seeping into her bones. She wondered how many hours yet till sunrise, till the world would be restored. That was all she had to do, she told herself, just keep it together till sunrise.

This is not me “following your lead,” asshole, she scolded the guy, and started up the walk. It was clarifying, cussing him out in her head. Made her feel more like herself. And that fucking door better not be locked when I get there either. Because he would, he’d think it was a joke. Make her stand out there freezing in a t-shirt and shorts pounding in the stillness of whatever ungodly hour it was a.m. for him to let her in.

The door was ajar. The house was big and mostly dark, and seemingly empty. Echoey. Adele went the only place where there was light showing, a living room or something past the front stairs. It was a room with stuff in it but the sort of stuff that only made a place look emptier. Tacked-up blackout curtains for drapes. Big TV on the wall, an Ikea-type couch and table, a couple overstuffed armchairs. Nothing matched. Game console. Two bored-looking girls were on the couch, one blonde one brunette, playing some sort of car-racing thing. Both of them naked. One girl, the brunette, acknowledged Adele with a quick nod. “Hey,” she said.

Unsettled, Adele glanced over at the dude, wondering about her position vis à vis the extra girls. He’d drifted over near the windows and was standing there absorbed in something with his phone. Adele tried to catch his eye. “Do I …” she asked, gesturing toward the couch. She didn’t feel remotely like stripping in front of them all but it didn’t seem like something to be a stick-in-the-mud about. Obviously he was going to want her naked sooner or later. He looked at her blankly for a beat, then shook his head yes and flashed her a thumbs-up. Still fixated on his phone he opened a door at the farther end of the room and walked out.

“Mister politeness,” Adele muttered under her breath. But her shirt was off and she was halfway out of her shorts before she realized she’d made a decision. She got a kind of queasy feeling when she hooked her fingers into her panties but then they were gone and it was actually borderline cool, seeing herself naked with the naked chicks. Like they belonged to a club. The blonde glanced at the nothing little pile of clothes at Adele’s feet. “Guess he got you ready,” she said wryly. The brunette, eyes glued to the game, told her “Pick em up, he don’t like messes.”

Adele dropped the clothes on the nearest armchair. The brunette looked narrowly at her. “You eighteen at least?” she asked. “I just look young,” Adele said, nodding. The blonde took her hand off the controller long enough to flash a thumbs-up of her own.

“Sit,” the brunette said, patting the empty space on the couch next to her. Adele pushed the clothes to the back of the armchair and flopped down there instead.

The blonde, on the far end of the couch, glanced around the brunette over towards Adele. “You’re gonna wanna shave that you know.”

“Yeah,” the brunette said in the direction of Adele’s crotch, “he’s got a thing about bush. Not right away though, you have to wait’ll he tells you. He likes to supervise.”

Great, a no-bush creep. Those were the best kind. It’ll grow back, Adele told herself. The girls started on a new level of the game and forgot her for a couple minutes. It began to feel like it did when you were out with someone and they were scoring drugs at someone’s house you didn’t know. Same anonymous room, same combination of aimlessness and free-floating tension. The blonde put her controller down. “Hey, you’re pizza delibery, right?” she asked.

Adele said “What?” and the brunette snorted and said “You said ‘delibery.’” “Did not,” the blonde huffed. “Delibery. Deliber— Fuck.”

“You say it,” the brunette ordered Adele, and she did. “Delivery.”

“Dude,” the brunette laughed, “you can’t say delibery right. Wait.” The blonde’s face lit up. “Neither can you!” she said, punctuating it with a slug on the brunette’s arm. The brunette winced and seemed to deflate.

“It’s one of his dumb games, he likes to fuck up how we say something and not tell us,” she said to Adele, half-apologetically.

“I’m not, uh,” Adele stammered, “yeah I haven’t got any. Pizza to bring.” It was awkward avoiding saying deliver. “Last time I mean,” the blonde said. “The other night.”

“I liked that pepperoni,” the brunette added.

“The other night,” Adele said. It was like trying to coax back a dream. “Late. Yeah.” That’s where she’d seen that front door. Three-pie order. Tipped well. Had to be the same guy, but she couldn’t put a face. Weird to think the girls had been around then too.

“Yeah, he said you’d be coming back. DoorDash,” the brunette said, pointing to herself, and gesturing to the blonde, “Instacart.” “Dude likes his delibery girls,” the blonde snickered.

“Delibery girls,” the brunette repeated, heavily sarcastic. “Oh fuck off,” said the blonde. Her game controller was resting on her belly and she moved it absently onto the couch. “You sound so fucking stupid when you say it like that,” the brunette said. They were staring hard into each others’ eyes. She licked her lips. “You sound so fucking brainwashed,” she said, and then her tongue was down the blonde’s throat.

Adele decided she wasn’t comfortable watching the couch girls grope one other and slid off the armchair onto the floor, facing the TV. They were cute girls and this was probably the least of it she’d have to deal with but it just felt tawdry, spectating. She hadn’t even introduced herself yet. Couldn’t help hearing them though. She wished there was anything at all going on on screen. Maybe next tine they came up for air she’d get one of them to toss her a controller, show her the ropes. She wasn’t much for gaming but it’d at least be something to take her mind off.

But then they went back to racing and she forgot about it. That was the thing about tagging along on someone’s drug buy: theoretically something illicit was happening but really all you were was bored and distracted. Adele kept to her thoughts and drifted in and out of the action. She had no idea where in the big empty house the guy had got to, or if he was even still around. She almost started wishing he’d come back just to break the monotony.

“Yo, Pizza.” They were between games, and meanwhile Adele had kind of zoned out. The cute blonde was leaning across her friend’s legs. She had a wicked glint in her eye. “You gay yet?”

“Jesus, Cart,” the brunette said, swatting the blonde on the back of her head. “She hasn’t been here an hour yet. We’re not gay,” she told Adele firmly. “She’s not hitting on you.”

“Hit on whoever I want,” the blonde pouted, rubbing the spot. She shot the brunette a side-eye and told Adele, “We’re not gay, we’re just extremely into pussy lately.”

It wasn’t her thing, but Adele didn’t care if they were gay. Might have been his thing though. Of course it was his thing. That’s why he’d left them alone. But what did he think was supposed to happen? She was gonna catch it from them or something? Steep her in a room for an hour or two with a couple nude lesbians and she’d spontaneously go over the fence? Adele pitied the dude’s lack of imagination.

She cleared her throat, glanced at the screen. “So how long um, how long you guys been at it?” she asked.

The two of them wrinkled their brows at each other. “See, pizza was which night?” the brunette said. “Was that the end of the second day or the third?” “Asking me dude, you got here before I did” the blonde said, and then for a minute or two they bickered fruitlessly between them about what they’d eaten when and how much time it was since which of them had been taken.

Oh, Adele thought. Oh that’s not what I meant at all. Her heart sank. “And nobody’s missed you yet,” she broke in. Immediately she regretted phrasing it like that.

The girls didn’t seem to take any implication though. “He took our phones,” Cart said. She had herself wrapped up in her half-reclined partner’s arms, snuggling her cheek against DoorDash’s breasts. “Yeah he fakes the odd check-in,” the brunette added, sounding blasé, “we like, text excuses to people or whatever, whatever he tells us,— really though it’s been pretty chill.”

Adele realized he had her phone too. In her bag. Along with her ID and car keys. She could picture herself holding it out to him right as he approached her, and not a word said. No way for her to leave on her own then. Guess I’m here for the duration, she told herself.

Still, better to know. So she’d be hanging with the gals a while longer. The stay didn’t seem to be doing them any harm. And they were kind of a hoot, now she was getting used to them. Not like she had anything pressing to get back to.

Cart poked her head up. “We quit our jobs!” she offered brightly. She seemed to think it was a selling point. “Free up time for the new hobby,” she added snarkily. Dash only sighed and looked off into space.

So cute together though, Adele thought. Real cute energy. You could see how somebody might want to keep em around for it, especially since they obviously didn’t mind having an audience. Cart with that sassy little mouth,— it looked it too, kissing her must be like biting into a Granny Smith. Adele felt her own mouth watering and shook her head. Let’s not make it weird, she thought. “So, you guys have just been …“ She balked at where the question seemed to be going, but couldn’t think of another. “I mean, for however long you’ve—“

“Been held captive?” Dash yawned and stretched her arms over her head. "Yeah, gaming ordering in and fucking, pretty much,” Dash said. “Not him,” the blonde added. “No,” Dash hurried to agree, “no we don’t fuck him. He likes us fucking though. Or you know, making out, whatever.”

“I’m not sure he’s even into sex,” Cart confided after a pause.

“Titty massages,” the brunette countered. “And we have blown him a few times.” “Call those blowjobs,” Cart said. “Have you ever even really had his dick in your mouth? We make out,” she told Adele, “and he just sort of, gets in our way for a bit and then he nuts.” The blonde looked at her like she was appealing for a ruling. Dash shrugged the question off.

Adele wondered if they’d go back to playing anytime soon. She looked around surreptitiously for a dimmer switch or something. It was too bright for an orgy, if that’s what he was expecting. No mystery. Ideally, she thought, you'd want the screen to be the only light in the room. Sit on the floor in the dark like a little mouse, unnoticed, and watch the naked gamer chicks enthralled in their game. Watch it play out in screenglow on their skin, watch the cars shimmer and distort across their moving tits.

“I guess you guys must be getting real good at racing by now, huh,” Adele said.

Dash scoffed. “It’s not about the games,” she said. Cart sat up and looked at Adele like she thought the girl was slow. “Dude,” she said, gesturing towards the TV, “how else do you think he keeps us brainwashed?”

“AAARRNNGHHH—“ the brunette made a game-buzzer noise. “What?” Cart said, in wide-eyed dismay, “No!” and her shoulders slumped. Dash was shaking her head. “You lose, pal!” she crowed, throwing a quick look Adele’s way. “You know the rules! Pay up.” The blonde was blushing furiously, the redness extending over her chest. “Scuse me,” she muttered to Adele, not meeting her eyes, and sprawled herself forward onto the floor between Dash’s legs.

“First one to use the b-word in front of you has to eat the other one out,” the brunette told Adele. She closed her eyes for a second and cooed at whatever Cart’s tongue was doing. “Which is a hard game to play, because we fucking love brainwashing.”

“I think you said it first,” Adele told her meekly.

“Yeah well, she didn’t call it,” Dash said. “Hear that?” she asked, grabbing a hunk of Cart’s hair and shaking her with it. The blonde moaned. “Shoulda callt it bitch!” Dash closed her eyes again and tilted her head back and rode her pussy harder against her friend’s face.

There was a wet-sounding interval, then the brunette sighed a short, heavy sigh and gave Cart a head tap to make her stop. She looked back over at Adele and her eyes widened. She singsonged an “uh-oh” and tapped again, more urgently. “Check it out,” she said, and the blonde, her eyes vague and her mouth smeary-looking, finally lifted herself off of Dash’s pussy. She grinned wolfishly at Adele’s lap. “Aww yeah,” Cart said, “Pizza in the house!”

Adele looked down and saw she was stroking her finger up and down her slit. And keeping on doing, which was kind of a surprise. The one time she’d tried masturbating for a boy she’d been too embarrassed to go for more than a minute. But she couldn’t have made herself stop now if she wanted to.

Adele locked eyes with Dash and got up over her knees and slid a couple fingers in, slow, deep as she could get them. She was so wet she barely even had to push. She ran her tongue over her lips all lewd at the brunette and started fucking herself in earnest, and never once gave into the urge to look away. She’d taken improv. She understood yes and. If she was gonna have to play this fucked-up scenario, then she might just as well goddamn play it.

“Come on Peetz,” Dash said, leering at her and rubbing the couch cushion next to her with her palm, “she’s gotta do you too.” Cart scuttled a couple feet over to get in position. “Come sit up with the big girls.” Once Adele was on the couch her fingers went automatically back to her pussy, but Dash caught her hand up instead and carried it to her mouth and started licking the juices off.

The first touch of Cart’s tongue splitting her pussy convinced Adele that any time she’d spent not getting eaten out by girls in her life had been a waste. She wanted to grind herself against the blonde’s mouth just like Dash had but was afraid it might make her stop. She could feel herself about to give in though, then something cold bumped up against her ear and Adele startled.

“Shhh,” Dash whispered. She held up a pair of earbuds. “Just a little white noise,” she said. “Keep things nice and fuzzy for ya.” She fit one of the buds in Adele’s farther ear, while she pressed a wet, lingering kiss on the near one. “We are gonna have soo much fun together, Pizza,” she crooned, and then Adele’s head filled up with cotton candy.

A little while later she sensed movement, and saw it was the dude come back. He was standing over them like a goober with his dick in his hand, because of course he was. Dude likes his delibery girls, she thought, giggling to herself. Or was it pronounced delibery. The question distracted her enough that when he spooged on her tits she wasn't ready for it, and had to stifle a laugh.