CHAPTER TWOFRENCH GIRLS

  The first thing he can notice is the terrible pulsing sensation in his head, waves of pain being pushed through his brain with each and every single one of his heartbeats.

  The reason why he's feeling that way is obvious. He must have slept with his head against the concrete wall again. His nights have always been quite restless, and he can guess that he’s been spending the night sleeping with his head against the wall. It's something he consistently struggled with back in the custrophobic cells of the private prison that sufficed as his jail, the company exploiting the facility refusing him and the others left in solitary even the dignity of a pillow to sleep on.

  Because of course they did. Capitalists are all the same. They’ll do terrible things to other human beings just for profit. Like bring back svery, be that in the form of actual colr around the neck svery or being sent to prison for life and made to do unpaid bour all day.

  So he’s a sve now. Not just a sve, but a sve with a terrible fucking migraine. Probably going to be put to work in some desperate pit and live the rest of his life being yelled at by some mildly overweight middle-aged white guy with a shitty beard and an inferiority complex, the same kind of sve driver he dealt with at, like, McDonalds.

  Literal sve drivers now. Because that’s where his entire life has led him to, signing that stupid document signing away what remained of his rights and freedoms under the assumption that he might get food with slightly fewer moulds and maybe a pillow to sleep on.

  Which just leads him back to what seems the most imminent problem in his life— the fucking migraine. Not svery, because he can’t help that anymore, not now that he’s been sold.

  For now, he's just going to deal with the headache in the way he knows helps soothe that particur issue: slow, deliberate breathing and keeping his eyes closed.

  He tries to focus on the vague shapes that form against the bck background of his closed eyelids, the waves and the pulses, and tries to empty his mind to the best of his ability.

  …

  It doesn’t fucking work. In fact, it’s counterproductive, because his effort to not focus on the pain in his head just led to him realising that he also has an incredible ache in his arms, forced behind his back and held in pce by a set of way-too-tight handcuffs.

  He pulls on them, trying to see how much mobility his new owners have granted him. He finds that they're connected to an anchor in the floor, keeping his arms pretty much stuck in pce. His ankles are simirly restrained, though the chain is longer and gives him some room to move his legs as necessary.

  The st thing he notices is a horrible itch in his groin. Instinctively, he tries to rub it a bit— just to immediately run into the issue that his hands are very much not up to the task right now, restrained as they are.

  After considering his quite limited range of options, he tries to press his thighs together. That should offer a bit of relief, at least. Because he really doesn’t want to be dealing with a fucking itch right now, like the most annoying straw that broke the weakest-ever camel’s back.

  Oddly, he doesn't feel anything, not where he should.

  Then, he feels bandages.

  Panicked, he opens his eyes, looks down at his groin, and finds that his penis is still there under the bandages, but that his balls are very much gone. Just, from one day to the other. A quick snip and they’re… no longer there. Though he doesn’t necessarily know whether it has been one day, or multiple days— the st he can remember through the deafening background noise of his migraine is being taken out of his cell, being told he’s got an owner now, roughly escorted to a van in the basement of the building, and then being sedated without as much as seeing the syringe.

  He knew that he was signing away a lot of rights when he agreed to be a sve, as his court-appointed wyer had suggested. They could work him, they could beat him, they could touch him in any way they liked. He’d expected that. Immediately starting off his new life by being operated upon without his knowledge, without his conscious presence being brought to the operating table, without his consent— that was unexpected.

  He guesses it’s why they went for this approach. It's the most absolute and impossible-to-ignore decration that his bodily autonomy is now void that he can think of. His owner can do to his body as they please, and none of his involvement will be required. Like a pet getting spayed, quite literally, in his case.

  Thank god they just took his balls, they could have taken a part of his body he actually likes, like his hands, his feet, or his tongue. Instead, they took the two sad little sacks of semen. They were probably thinking he’s addicted to masturbation like most single males of his age.

  Who cares. He won't miss them. He never used it much— using his mouth was much more fun those times he did hang out with girls. His owners won’t care either. They need him to work, not to reproduce.

  He vaguely remembers some horrible story from one of the girls at their former squat in an abandoned warehouse. It was during one of their frequent venting sessions about just how incredibly fucked up it is that svery is legal in the United States again. She talked about how most ensved women would end up becoming sex sves and how it was common practice to sterilise them for exactly that purpose. All so they could avoid abortions, apparently, because both of their shitty fucking parties believe abortion is murder. Only a few states in the South have taken this idea to its logical conclusion — you can ensve anyone who works at Pnned Parenthood — but that doesn’t mean that the US isn’t a complete and utter wastend when it comes to any kind of human rights in general. In the end, it’s always been a country for the very richest.

  Getting angry about the state of the nation really isn’t going to help his migraine. If he didn’t have the ability to do anything about it when he was free, he certainly can’t do anything about it now.

  He sighs, loudly. He’s just going to take joy out of the fact that, however desperate he may be, at least there isn’t anyone around to see just how badly he really has fallen.

  He thinks.

  Right?

  Reluctantly, he opens his eyes again, and takes a look around the cell.

  He isn’t alone.

  There's a young woman kneeling on the other side of the room. Another sve. Unlike him, she’s allowed clothing— she’s wearing a simple white dress, skirt billowing out just above her knees. Her hands rest on her thighs, palms facing up, as if she’s meditating. In fact, she probably is. Her hair is long, down to the small of back, and wet, like she’d just showered. A silver colr adorns her neck, a small gemstone embedded within. Her eyes are closed and the woman is softly smiling.

  "Oh, uh, hi! I didn't see you there." Iffy says, trying to start a conversation with her.

  The woman doesn't respond, not vocally, not in body nguage. She just kneels there, still like a statue. It freaks him out a little.

  He gives her a moment, then tries again. "Hi, I'm Iffy. Well, my nickname is Iffy, it's short for Iford, my st name. It's what people have always called me, since school, at least. Because I can be quite, um, iffy, you know."

  He still doesn’t hear an answer, so he tries to push a little further. "It's, uh, nice to meet you? Despite the circumstances?"

  Again, she doesn't talk back, though he can see the soft smile withering away into what seems like more of a neutral look.

  "Helllooooo? Can you hear me?" Iffy tries. She can't be deaf, right? "Please just say something if you can hear me."

  "You really shouldn’t be talking to me." The woman responds, her eyes still closed. There’s something anxious about her tone.

  “Why not?” He asks.

  “The rules.” She says. "Specifically, Rule 1: Do not speak unless spoken to."

  Iffy considers the message for a second, about whatever the woman might mean by what she said, but it's rather cryptic. Sure, she might just want him to shut up, but they're both sves, right? They wouldn’t be enforcing the rules on each other, hopefully. Which means she probably wants to talk, but can't, for one reason or another.

  "Is our owner listening in on us?" He asks. “Like, are there cameras and microphones…”

  There’s no response from the sve, not even a confirmatory nod. It’s like she wants to keep him in the dark about this. She probably has good reason to— sve owners aren’t exactly good people. The fact that she’s sharing a cell with him is, in itself, a sign that she’s in just as much trouble as he is.

  "I'd like to know whether they are listening in.” Iffy says. “Because like, I've spoken already, and they're gonna punish me regardless, but it'd still be nice to know whether I'm going to be punished or not, you know? And, like, if they're not listening in, we don't have to follow the rule, because if two sves talk in a cell and no one's there to hear it, did they really talk?"

  "Master isn't listening." She says, opening her eyes and looking oddly annoyed. "She shouldn't have to spend her valuable time watching our every move. She has more important things to do. And if she can't trust us to follow the rules in her absence, they might as well not exist. As such, may I simply remind you of Rule 1: Do not speak unless spoken to."

  Iffy takes a moment to try to comprehend the fact that the other sve is trying to enforce the rules. There’s no reason to, right? Which just makes him think that their owner is — despite the girl’s words — actually listening to them talk.

  They’re also not here to stop him from talking, and Iffy has a lot to say. Like—

  "'May I simply remind you'? Oh god, I didn't know I was stuck with a British sve." The words she uses are overly formal and circumspect in the same way a British person would talk on television, even if the accent seemed a bit off. He chalks it up to being surrounded by Americans for too many years. "A stiff upper lip, eh? Keep calm and accept svery? Well, I guess it makes sense if you're here all alone. But now there's two of us. Well, there’d be two of us if you used to be all alone before today. I don’t know about that. I don’t know about a lot of things actually.

  "Anyway, the point is… we can get out of here. Get back to jolly old Engnd. Breathe the air that makes you free. I’m pretty sure that Engnd doesn’t deport sves back to the US after they’ve fled. Or was that Europe? Like I said, I don’t know much about anything… How's that sound? Or maybe you don't want to talk about that right now, makes total sense, really, if she could be listening in. Let's talk about something simple. Like, what's your name? Where are you from? In Engnd, I mean. Are you even English? You don't quite sound the part, but this could just be how they talk in, like, Wales, or Irend, or maybe some other part of Engnd."

  Surprisingly, she did respond in the end, probably annoyed enough by the never-ending onsught of words that it broke through her own willingness to avoid punishment. “I was born in Arlington, Virginia, but I studied w at Oxford for two years before moving back to the US. I hope that satisfies your curiosity about my… apparently weird accent. Now, please start following the one rule you know, I’m trying to meditate. Master says I should.”

  Iffy really can’t believe it. Does she care about her meditation that much? Surely not. If she wanted to escape, interrupting her meditation wouldn’t be such a big deal. Which leads him to a rather scary question. Does she want to be here? That has to be it, right?

  "Okay, no, no, I get it. You must be one of those lesbians. The political ones, I mean. Not 'those lesbians', as in, all lesbians, homophobically. I'm fine with lesbians in general, knew one or two before I was, well, here. They're great fun, mostly. Hate the state as much as any man would, for very understandable reasons. It's fucked up that gay marriage is banned, like, just let girls kiss girls. Who's scared of that? Anyway, I once or twice heard one of them say something along the lines of like, 'I would rather be a sve to a woman than a friend to a man', and I just assumed it was hyperbole, and not, like, literal. And I'm very sorry for being a man, I didn't choose it either, but if you're going to Stonewall me — forgive me for the pun, that one was too easy — you might as well, like, say it. I'm a big boy, I can handle it. You don't have to sit there and be a stuck-up asshole about it. Like, maybe your owner wants you to be like this, I get it, but—"

  The other sve interrupts him, seemingly genuinely angry now. "Rule 2: Always show utmost respect to your superiors."

  Fuck. Iffy had hoped she might say something useful, something nice— but no, she'd rather cim she is a superior. As if that makes any sense. "Superior? We're all sves here. Like, we're all equally on the absolute bottom rung of society. Maybe you think you're, like, superior because you've been around longer but that's just stupid. They used to do that during svery 1.0 too, right, you know that? It's not something they teach in modern textbooks anymore, but I found some old ones online, and they pretty clearly expined how they would try to divide and conquer by bringing together different ethnicities and nguages and creating a false hierarchy where some sves would be, like, better treated than others. But, like, we're all equal here, right? We gotta show some solidarity! We've got nothing to lose but our chains, after all."

  The stuck-up sve dy doesn't say anything in response, again.

  "Fine. You can go have fun being like that. Didn't even want to be friends, anyways."

  They sit in silence for a while.

  Iffy hopes she’s happy now.

  It takes a while, but the silence is eventually interrupted by the sound of therather big and bulky cell door opening. A tall woman wearing nothing but a zy sweater and jogging pants combo stands in the opening, more interested in the female sve than she is in Iffy.

  It takes him a moment to recognise her as the weird dy who'd looked at him with the ptop the day he was due to be sold. She stared at him like he was a piece of meat, spending a considerable amount of time inspecting his body. Iffy remembered thinking she stood out for her rather androgynous clothing style, where the others who’d looked at him had mostly been men in nicely-fitted suits. Despite her zy style of dress, she carries an air of authority with her— though that might just be because Iffy is looking up at her.

  The woman snaps her finger and points at a spot on the floor next to her. The other sve's eyes snap open, gaze quickly diverting to the floor after seeing where her owner’s finger pointed, crawling towards the spot, and kneeling next to what has to be her owner.

  Her movements look desperate, almost pathetic. Disgusting. Gut-wrenching. Humans aren't supposed to act like this. They aren't supposed to crawl, to kneel next to other human beings, their heads gently resting against their owners' thighs, their bodies rexing in the presence of someone so cruel and fucked up as to want to own another human being. It’s fundamentally wrong.

  And yet, she does. He feels sorry for her despite the way she treated him. Her soft happy noises as her owner touches her just prove that she's been thoroughly brainwashed.

  "Did you sleep well, my dearest Elo?se?" The woman asks, running her hand through the sve’s hair. "Any dreams?"

  "I slept very well, Master." She answers, looking down at the floor with an incredibly content smile pstered across her face. "I dreamt about the rose garden again."

  "That really is a recurring dream, isn't it?" She asks, causing the sve to nod ever so slightly. "Maybe I should take you there again, sometime."

  "Only if it'd please you, Master." She whispered, blushing slightly.

  "Naturally. Only if it'd please me, and it would very much please me to have you prepare a picnic for me, my dearest." The woman smiles. "Now, I trust you've been able to go through your morning routine as expected? Or has our newest acquisition caused you trouble?"

  The owner — his owner — finally ys eyes on him, the fond look quickly repced with a much less content one, one that keeps growing more and more angry as Elo?se expins what had happened.

  "They kept disturbing me during my mindfulness routine, Master. I counted nine different breaches of rule 1, two viotions of rule two — ciming you would be such a bad Master as to allow your sves to be ‘stuck-up assholes’ — and they openly talked about rebellion. I informed them of their duties, but they didn't listen. I’m so sorry, Master— I’ll work harder to keep them in line in the future, I promise.”

  "You are forgiven, Easy— they sound like they must have been quite stubborn. But you being forgiven doesn’t mean you won’t have to try to make it up to me by making me something nice and hearty for breakfast. You’re dismissed for now, Elo?se." She says, still shooting daggers at Iffy and pying with one of the bracelets around her left wrist as what has to be some kind of nervous tic or self-control mechanism. "You, on the other hand—"

  At first, he feels a sharp sting in his neck, one that glows hotter and hotter by the millisecond before pteauing at an incredibly painful level. It stays there for a while, causing him intense agony, forcing his body to respond in ways he really wished it wouldn’t have responded. Then, just as suddenly as it started, it stops. It just stops. Just leaves him vulnerable in a way he hadn't quite realised he was before. The cold metal around his neck feels even more present than it already had, every single one of the nerves in his neck left on high alert.

  The bulky steel thing he'd been made to wear in the Pit definitely didn't have such a function. Sure, he knew that he had a new colr — it was the st thing they'd done to him before he was sedated, transported, and operated upon — but he wouldn't have guessed it'd be a shock colr. Those are considered cruel to use on dogs, they can’t just give them to humans, right?

  "You need to learn how to behave, sve." She spits out, her hatred obvious. "And you better learn to do so quickly."

  "I didn't know the rules—"

  Another long, painful shock makes its way through his body.

  "Rule 5: Always tell your owner the truth, and nothing but the truth." She states, simply. "Though that should have been obvious, even to you. Elo?se pointed them out to you as you broke them and you still continued your insubordination."

  "But ma'am—" Iffy has to stop before even saying the words, biting down on his lip with enough force to pierce through it. He can feel blood pooling in his mouth, drips of it running down his chin as well.

  "Rule 2: Always show utmost respect to your superiors." She says. "My title is Master. Master Celine Foret if you must refer to me around others, not part of this household. You heard Elo?se use that term; surely, you could have guessed to use the same."

  "But Master,"

  "Silence." She orders, not shocking him this time. "If I wanted to hear your voice, I would have asked you a question. But I don't want to hear you begging. So shut up, unless you want to make me shut you up."

  He tries to do so, staring at the floor so he doesn’t have to look at Celine.

  "Good. Silent. I like that on you, Esmée." She grins.

  "Esmée?" Iffy asks, stupidly, quickly realising both his mistakes. He feels them, too, with an even longer, stronger electric current pushed through his body than before. He’s left gasping for breath after the onsught.

  "That's you, idiot. God, do I really have to expin everything to you? Are you really that fucking useless?” She rolls her eyes. “No wonder you couldn’t finish high school."

  Iffy is gd that he is looking away from his now-owner, as he really doesn’t want her to see just how deeply those words stung. Mom often called him useless, and so did many of his managers, perpetually unhappy with his performance. Being reminded of all the failures in his life that led him to this point is just too painful to deal with right now.”

  "I guess I fucking do. You are a sve. You signed up to be a sve, preferring this over the other potential punishment for your crimes. You got the privilege of signing up for this kind of rehabilitation because your actions led to people losing their lives. You, in return for a second chance, give up your freedom, your rights, and your desires, now existing solely for the service of another human being. You are legal property. I can do to you as I like, and what I like is for my sves to be girls. I like them to be girls in every sense of the word — looks, voice, behaviour, hormones — and I expect you to strive to be as much of a girl as you could possibly be. Do you understand?"

  He's going to have to be a girl? That’s weird. Sure, he's heard of some boys being bought up by some rge corporation and forced to become girls in the past, but always assumed it was some weird conspiracy buoyed by many a boy's fantasies. Plenty of men fantasise about being girls, both in reasonable ways and in weird sexual ways, and more still fantasise about a female sve or their own. It's easy to see why the two concepts got mushed together into some cooky theory. He hadn’t guessed it would be something that actually happens.

  But of course it was going to be the fantasy of some, and Iffy just happened to be so unlucky as to end up with an owner like that. He can't be a girl, it's just impossible to change your gender like that. Sure, one can crossdress, but it's not the same as actually being a girl. There's no way that someone can take a man and turn him into someone pretty like Elo?se. It's just not possible.

  Elo?se isn’t even that high a standard— she’s just middle-css-white-girl-in-the-picture-on-a-college-admissions-page pretty. Like, girl-next-door pretty, casually pretty, but not exactly a model. Iffy — useless fucking Iffy! — has to try to be a girl like her? It’s an insane proposition. But he's going to have to damn well try, for now, or at least pretend he is. Because he was so stupid as to think he'd get a simple, normal life as a sve in some warehouse somewhere over whatever this is supposed to be.

  Left with no real option, Iffy simply nods in response to his owner's demands. He really doesn’t want to be shocked again.

  "Beautiful." Celine says, taking a few steps forward. "Now, stay as still as possible, at least if you want to prove to me you’re theoretically capable of obeying if you try to do so.”

  Celine squats down next to him with a tiny key in her hands, waiting to see whether Iffy will move or not. Of course, he didn't, he's not going to try shit anymore, not as long as he has this stupid thing around his neck. She’s got him by the balls.

  No, wait, that’s a rather inappropriate metaphor now.

  She’s got him by the throat, and she can do to him whatever she likes without even having to get near him. He’s completely helpless in the face of a weapon like that.

  Satisfied by the passivity, Celine clicks the handcuffs open one by one and finally frees his hands for what feels like the first time in weeks— it might as well have been, between court, the transfers and the stupid, uncomfortable cells in the Pit, unworthy of even short-term human habitation. He wants to rub his aching wrists, but doesn’t dare to do so out of fear that Celine will interpret it as some kind of rebellion.

  "Right." His owner looks down at him as if she might spit. "There’s some kind of brain in there, at least. Let’s see if you can put it to use. I want you to think about what it means to be a sve."

  “I—, um. It’s when you have to like, follow orders and stuff.” He says, then quickly has to squeal in pain after another electric shock rips through his body. He doesn’t even know what he did wrong this time.

  “I ordered you to think about it, you dumb, useless sve.” She spits. “I didn’t want you to say the first thing that comes up in your mind. It was always going to be dumb. Because you don’t just have to think about what your next few days look like, Esmée— it’s going to be the rest of your life, and you better try to formute an idea of what is expected of you. I’ll give you twenty-four hours to come up with an answer worth my time. If you want a tip — and I would guess you need one — it’s easiest to just think about what you know about svery and work backwards from there.”

  “Yes. Understood.” He nods, just to be shocked yet again, and he can’t help but look up at her, confused.

  “Yes, Master. I’d expined that one already. Are you really that dim?” She paces, hand on her forehead as if she has a migraine worse than Iffy’s. “Christ. I really shouldn’t have expected to buy anything valuable from the bottom of the bargain bin, should I?”

  Iffy doesn’t even try to respond to that particur comment. There’s no reason for him to. The woman’s just looking for reasons to take her frustrations out on him anyway. Blending into the background is the best option.

  At least she’s done with him for now, leaving the cell and locking the heavy steel door behind her, as if Iffy had any real hope of escape in the first pce. He’ll be stuck there forever with a total bitch of an owner and a fellow sve all too happy to snitch on him.

  His life keeps getting fucking worse, as always. He really hopes that he’s finally hit rock bottom by now. Surely life can’t get worse than this?

  Right?