In The Bleak Midwinter

In the bleak midwinter

frosty wind made moan.

Earth stood hard as iron,

water like a stone.

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

snow on snow.

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Tiffany Brennan hung in the enclosed courtyard, small flakes of snow drifting down around her in the frigid winter air. Her skin glowed in the pale blue light that shone upon it, as she hung nude in the metal device they had left her in. Wrists, spread out to her sides, just above her shoulders, secured in metal cuffs so cold that they burned. More metal just above her hips, forcing her to push her waist forward. And the device whirring between her thighs, providing just enough support that she didn’t suffocate from hanging by her arms. All part of the same frame that held her there, in the freezing cold.

She’d often wondered, during slow nights in the emergency ward, how she would react if she found herself as part of an actual emergency. If she was the one facing down a crazed man with a knife, the one staring at an oncoming car, the one standing on a sinking ship. Would she panic? Would she cry? Would she rage against the unfairness of it all?

She knew now: she would do all of those things. She raged and cried, struggled against the metal that held her, and panicked because she knew she’d been left here to die. She did all of those things, and more.

There was another part of her, however. The trained part of her brain, the part that made sense from the chaos in a busy ER. That part still analyzed her situation. So she looked around herself at the glowing symbols they’d erected around her suffering. She listened to the soft, male chanting about midwinter and snow, probably emerging from hidden speakers. She tried to endure the cold. And she wondered what these crazy fuckers thought they were accomplishing.

They’d taken her as she walked to the bus, fourteen hours after the start of a twelve hour shift on the ward. She had already been exhausted -- holidays at a hospital were the worst time of year -- and she didn’t remember much. A prick of a needle above her shoulder, a wave of dizziness, then nothing. She hadn’t come-to until she’d felt another needle, pulling her into a confused consciousness with no way of knowing how much time had passed.

They’d dosed her with something, but for all her medical knowledge, Dr. Tiffany Brennan couldn’t guess what it had been. It didn't matter, though: Tiffany Brennan, woman, knew exactly what its purpose was.

Within moments, a familiar warmth started in her lower abdomen, quickly spreading upwards to her breasts and her neck, and downward to the juncture of her thighs. Suddenly, the world felt too bright, too loud, too sharp, as all of her senses went into overdrive. Before she’d grasped what was happening, before she’d realized she was already nude, before she even saw the men dressed in black robes around her, they’d descended on her. Hands too numerous to count held her down, spread her out.

And they played with her.

She’d felt a skilled set of hands between her legs, fingers slick with her juices, stimulating her aphrodisiac-overwhelmed body to a peak. She’d fought the pleasure, fought to deny what those hands did, but she could feel herself rapidly approaching the precipice of orgasm. And then, right when her pleasure peaked, when she knew she couldn’t hold herself back any longer-- the hands stopped, pulled away. Left her there, on the edge, denied her release.

She remember hearing their laughter as she lay there, held down, her body twitching from the denied pleasure, her mind racing from the drugs they’d pushed into her system. And then they started again. And again. And again. Hands, toys, tongues… they focused entirely on pushing her to the edge, but never, ever letting her drift over.

They might have kept her there for minutes, hours, or days; she remembered it as an unending, unbearable eternity. She’d broken under the weight of the pleasure, the torture and the drugs, as the fourth man started to use his hands, begging him to finish her, to let her come. By the sixth (or seventh? or tenth?) she’d threatened, her voice desperate with the kind of empty threats she used as a last resort. The whole time she struggled and fought, but there were always too many hands to fight against, too much male strength to be overcome by a lone woman.

Eventually, she’d only screamed, the constant stimulation and denial of her body stealing away her ability to form words. Then, her throat raw, she’d only whimpered and twitched. Eventually, finally, they’d dragged her, nude, out into the Irish winter. They placed her on this device, and left it to continue their work.

That was where they’d left her. Where she was, even now. Shackled, nude, outdoors in winter, with this device between her legs. This simple, damnable device: a dildo, moving in and out of her, applying its own lube to supplement hers, and a vibrator, adjusted to press exactly against the most sensitive parts of her body. Even now, with the drugs weaker in her body, she could feel it pushing her relentlessly to another peak.

Tiffany shut her eyes. She couldn’t stop the stimulation, couldn’t stop the lasting effects of the drugs that kept her body primed to respond, but now that she had her mind back, she knew she didn’t want to give the crazy bastards the satisfaction of reacting.

Practicing her breathing, Tiffany resisted the need to cry out or moan as the vibrator pressed relentlessly against the reddened flesh between her thighs. The men had even taken away her ability to clench her teeth, so muted sounds escaped from between the dental gag they’d used to hold open her mouth. But she fought off her reaction as the machine worked, and pleasure peaked in her body, focusing on her breathing and--

She cried out despite herself, as the vibrations stopped, and an unexpected mist of warm water sprayed out from all around her, coating her nude form. Her eyes flew open, as the warm moisture settled on her body and rapidly cooled; she could already feel it freezing in her hair, as she shook her head. And, in her mind, she could hear the laughter of the men in robes, mocking her for thinking she could overcome them, even here, alone.

Her whole body shivering as the water steamed on her body, Tiffany looked out at the symbols surrounding her; they had changed. Without her glasses, she couldn’t tell how they glowed as they did, but they had definitely changed. She added that to her list of mysteries, then moaned in surprise as she felt the machine between her thighs speed up, felt the vibrations increase, felt her body respond more quickly, pushing her back to an edge she knew she wouldn’t be allowed to go over.

Closing her eyes once more, wondering if it was all futile, Tiffany focused on her breathing. There were countless mysteries here, but only one question mattered to her in that moment: Why her? Why were they doing this?

Why?