The Sisters

The Sisters

 Agatha and Ann Boothroyd were the absolute cornerstones of the prosperous village where they lived. Their parents had both been doctors and once they both passed away within months of each other the two sisters had inherited a surprisingly large amount of money and the large, detached residence on the edge of the village they now lived together in. Unlike many sisters they got on with each very well and always had done. There wasn’t a lot of difference in their ages; Ann was the oldest at 53, whereas Agatha was 51. Ann was tall and thin with dark eyes and her dark hair now turning a little grey around the edges. Agatha was a little less tall, but she was also a large, buxom woman. She too was dark-haired but unlike her sister had a pair of bright blue eyes. Neither woman was particularly attractive; both were quite forbidding, serious people. They were both intelligent and well-educated. Both had, following the demise of their parents, taken early retirement from their respective well-paid professional occupations.

 They were very active members of the local community. Both sat on the local village committee. Both were regular church-goers and sat on the Parish committee. Ann was a Governor at the local Church School and Agatha played a similar role in the Orphanage at the other end of the village. The two of them not only fundraised enthusiastically but were also known to have contributed a great deal of their own money to the various institutions they were involved with. They were very popular within the community, with good reason. They often took long country walks together and could be regularly seen cycling the quiet country roads around the village. They were both very private people however, apart from the obvious very little was known about the two sisters. They were both educated at boarding schools and had gone to far-flung universities. Their jobs had taken them around the country, and they’d really only been back once their parents were unwell.

 Their love for their village was obvious to anybody who cared to notice. They were rich, respectable and discrete, and fitted into village life perfectly.  One thing they weren’t however was sociable. They had no real friends within the pretty little village, not real friends anyway. They went to other houses for afternoon tea and they played a little bridge for example, but they had no true confidents. They mainly relied on each other for company. They had no other family, no siblings or cousins, no relatives at all, in fact. Ann had never married, and it was rumoured that Agatha had once been married but that her husband had left her. Some had raised their eyebrows at this revelation, Agatha Boothroyd, married? It didn’t really ring true somehow. The village gossips noted their involvement in both the School and the Orphanage suggested that they were using the children in both as some sort of surrogate because clearly now were too old to have children of their own. Which in one sense at least was quite true.

***

 The woman’s heels clicked on the concrete floor. She really hated the long hours her job entailed, but the money was too much for her to leave it. She arrived back at this dismal car-park at the same time five nights a week, every week. She’d just about have enough time for a shower, a change of clothes, some sort of micro-waved meal, a couple of hours of mindless TV and then bed before she started the whole bloody cycle once again. As she walked towards her beloved new Audi she silently cursed the owner of a shabby black van that had parked too near to the driver’s door. She just hoped the careless bastard hadn’t scratched it. She was six feet from the car when she took out her keys and pressed the fob. As the car’s indicators blinked, a sudden movement to her right caught her attention, and the world swayed a little and then faded from view.

 It came back into sharper focus later on, although in a way she regretted it. There were two people standing on either side of her. She herself was sat on a chair with her hands fastened behind her back. Leather straps around her thighs and under her armpits kept her bound to the chair which appeared to be attached to the floor of the windowless, oppressive room. Her jaw and tongue ached due to the large sponge ball that had been inserted into her mouth. The blurred outlines in the periphery of her vision slowly crystallised into two distinct people. The man on her right appeared to be huge. He had dark hairs and a dark moustache. The woman stood on her left appeared to be tall, about as tall she herself. She had jet-black shoulder length hair and piercing blue eyes. Both stared at her dispassionately, like an exhibit in a museum. The woman unfastened the gag from the back of her head.

 “Your name?”

 Asked the woman in an accent she couldn’t quite place. When there was no immediate answer the woman simply slapped her across the face.

 “Your name?”

 The woman strapped to the wooden chair looked shocked and then burst into tears. Immediately her other cheek received another similarly heavy slap.

 “Your name?”

 “C...Claire H...Hartley,” she managed to blurt out.

 The man and the woman looked at each other with a certain sense of self-satisfaction.

 “Why...what are you d...doing?”

 The woman looked her up and down slowly and then slapped her again, but just a bit harder. Claire burst into a renewed bout of tears. Both her abductors waited a little while for her tears to subside.

 “You do not speak without permission, unless you are replying to a question. Is that understood?”

 “Y...yes, I suppose so.”

 The woman inserted a finger under Claire’s jaw and raised her head before delivering another fierce slap.

 “You will always, and without exception refer to me as ‘Miss' and my colleague as ‘Sir’. Is that understood?”

 Claire Hartley looked shell-shocked, were these people quite insane? What was going on? She was aware enough however to realise that the woman was shaping to slap her again.

 “Y...yes, miss. I understand, miss.”

 Instead of the anticipated slap, the woman carefully stroked Claire’s glowing left cheek.

 “Good girl, I can see that we’re all three of us going to be the best of friends.”

 For some reason the innocuous-sounding statement frightened Claire more than the slapping and she dissolved into tears again.

***

The four middle-aged women stared intently at their respective cards; the fifth was reading a newspaper.

 “It rests with you dear,” said Miss Sturridge to the woman on her left. She didn’t want to rush her hostess necessarily, but it had been several seconds.

 “Oh, oh I’m sorry,” answered the usually imperturbable woman. “I was just thinking a little, I do apologise.”

 The woman patted her hand. “That’s quite okay, Agatha, age does come to us all you know.”

 Agatha Boothroyd laughed gaily and tried to refocus on the hand she’d been dealt.

 “Did anybody hear me? I said that missing girl from Surrey still hasn’t been found. It’s been three months apparently.” Said Mrs Thornley, raising her head from her newspaper and repeating her earlier question.

 “Poor little thing,” said Ann Boothroyd. “I do hope nothing’s happened to her, although one must fear the worst after all this time.”

 “What’s that about a missing girl?” Asked Mrs Sanderson. “I haven’t heard anything about that.”

 “Oh really, Joan! It’s been in all the newspapers and on the news for weeks.” Said Miss Sturridge with just a hint of impatience. “Surely you’ve heard about it?”

 “Caroline Lassiter, age thirty, a dentist from Esher,” said Miss Thornley reading from her copy of the Daily Mail. “Apparently she went to meet a friend for dinner and never arrived. What do you think of that? Look, here's a picture of her, she's a pretty little thing."

 “Oh, that one,” said Joan Sanderson. “I’ll bet you any money there’s a man at the bottom of it, there always is.”

 “Do you think so, dear?” Asked Ann Boothroyd, “what makes you so certain?”

 “Stands to reason, Miss Boothroyd, that’s why. She’s probably run off with an unsuitable young chap and doesn’t want anyone to know where she is for the time being. She’s bound to show up sooner or later.”

 Agatha Boothroyd caught her sister’s eye for half a second.

 “Two hearts,” she said, trying and succeeding in keeping any emotion from her voice.

 The game eventually broke up an hour or so later. The three guests had eaten their fill and drunk copious amounts of Darjeeling. They were in no real rush to leave; the house was beautiful and full of interesting items. It was quiet and peaceful, and despite their rather forbidding image, the two sisters were very good company. And besides, their own lives consisted of nothing much more than shopping, socialising, and Good Works. All three of them were comfortably well off and had never done a day’s work in their lives. The five wandered slowly to where the cars were parked and it took another thirty minutes until the last of them had been waved off with entreaties that they must come back soon. As the last car made its way down the gravel drive, the sisters followed and pressed the fob that automatically closed and locked the large double gates. Another button and responding beep informed them that the perimeter alarm had been set. A more observant guest might have wondered why two middle-aged ladies living in wealthy, middle-class enclave like Middlebury, where crime was almost non-existent, where indeed there was no need for a police station, would need such a comprehensive anti-intruder system. Similarly, they might ask why go to the expense of installing a fifteen foot brick wall topped with discrete razor wire and a sophisticated motion sensor system that enclosed the entire estate? Fortunately perhaps, no guests appeared to notice, and even if they did they would have been far too well-bred to mention it.

 The sisters turned and walked back to their house hand in hand. The sun had gone behind a cloud and the house took on a slightly less welcoming look, not necessarily imposing but certainly more substantial, more solid somehow. If a casual observer looked very carefully it was possible in this sort of light to see that all the windows were either shuttered or had very delicate-looking steel bars across them.

 “I thought those bitches would never leave,” said the taller of the two as they made their steady, unhurried way back down the gravel drive towards the wooden entrance door.

 “God, they are so boring,” replied her buxom sister.

 “How I kept my hand out of my cunt when they were talking about the girl, I’ll never know,” said Ann.

 “Haha, did you notice I almost lost it there? How the hell am I supposed to concentrate on fucking cards for God’s sake?”

 Both women laughed as they approached the door. It had automatically locked behind them as they left and now it required a password to open. Ann pressed the requisite numbers and letters on the keypad and it clicked open. They entered and Agatha leaned her back against the robust steel and wood affair to close it. As she did, she hitched up her decorous, knee-length, pleated skirt and plunged her hand down the front of her knickers.

 “Ohhh, I’m so wet! I’m surprised those silly old women couldn’t smell me.”

 She played with herself for a few seconds; her sister simply unzipped her own similarly discreet skirt and let it fall to her feet before stepping out of it.

 “They probably did smell you, dear. They just didn’t recognise it, that’s all.”

 Both women burst into delighted laughter. Agatha shrugged off her tweed jacket and left it on the floor. Her hands went to the little pearl buttons of her pink blouse and quickly unbuttoned them. Ann carefully removed her string of pearls and placed them on a nearby table before stripping of her green, cashmere sweater. Agatha unzipped her skirt and it joined the little pile of clothes on the immaculate parquet floor. Both sisters were left in their modestly-heeled court shoes, stockings, suspenders, high-cut French knickers and respectable bras. They stood next to each other in the hallway and admired themselves in the full-length mirror. The growing stain in Agatha’s blue, silk panties was quite evident. Ann held her own small breasts and squeezed them pleasurably.

 They couldn’t  wait any longer, they’d delayed the moment for as long as they could in order to enjoy the illicit thrill, the excitement of what they were about to do. That’s why they’d invited the women to the house, merely to delay the moment. The thought of what was quite literally below the feet of their wealthy, pampered guests was almost overwhelming. Their father had been a lovely man, but he did have some fairly unconventional ideas. One of those was that there would be certainly be some sort of nuclear war and therefore he’d prepared his own house to anticipate one. Underneath the large, imposing edifice he had excavated an area equal to the size of the ground floor of his existing house so that in effect the building was half as big again but completely hidden from view. When the sisters had taken over the house they’d inherited, one of the first things they’d done was have a secret door installed which led downstairs. That’s where they were headed now. Silently the door opened and then closed behind them with a quiet hiss. The two ladies slowly descended the carpeted stairs and mentally prepared themselves to enter their own, alternative world.

***

The woman crouched shivering in her cage. It was too low for her to stand in and too short for her to stretch out. Consequently her only options were to crouch or kneel. An hour later the man had come down the stairs and turned the ice cold water from the hose on her, as he left he’d turned the lights out off and left her crouched cold, naked, and terrified in pitch blackness. She was in shock and she knew it, her mind had shut down and refused to work. How long she’d been down here she couldn’t say. She’d been kidnapped, she knew that much but by whom or why she had no idea. She wasn’t rich or well-connected; she didn’t have any close family in fact. So why had this happened to her, why her in particular? She still knew who she was, Claire Hartley from Colchester. She worked in London for a brokerage. She was twenty eight; she owned her own house and her own car. But beyond that she could recall nothing more than walking across a concrete floor to her car, after that her old life had ended. What really frightened her, what reduced her to helpless tears was the attitude of her captors. She could tell, even in her reduced state that they’d done this sort of thing before. She certainly wasn’t the first person they’d abducted and terrified.

 They hadn’t just threatened her and taken her purse and her mobile. The man hadn’t dragged her to a secluded corner and raped her. They hadn’t discussed any sort of ransom for her, so clearly she hadn’t been imprisoned against her will for either sex or money. But then, why had she been taken? Her two captors had beaten and slapped her, but hadn’t really left any permanent marks; they’d deprived her of sleep and questioned her endlessly about her private life. They’d kept her in the dark room on her own without speaking to her for what seemed like several hours. They’d kept her awake with bright lights and loud music for a similar amount of time. They’d deprived her of food, they’d let her piss herself by not allowing her out of the cage, but then they’d give her three proper meals and ensure she used the bathroom facilities regularly.

 She was no expert but she knew that a psychological war was been waged against her, but the questions still remained. Who was aging the war against her and why? She knew by now that she wouldn’t kick up much of a fuss. Clearly they weren’t going to kill her or they would already have done so, but then why were the spending so much time and energy on her? Really, this was already becoming way too much for her to process, whatever they wanted they could have. If only for God’s sake they’d just tell her what they wanted! Realising that she’d had this same conversation with herself a hundred times and that she was by now really, really cold she managed to get herself into a kneeling position and just cried. Great big tears of self-pity tumbled out of her eyes and rolled down her plump, shapely breasts. Upstairs, sat in the comfort of a well-appointed kitchen her two captors watched the crystal-clear CCTV feed with interest. Their new project was coming along very nicely.

                                                                                                           ***

 The two sisters were in their dressing room, the first room on the left at the bottom of the stairs. The large room had shelves and racks full of clothes in their respective sizes. One wall was given over entirely to floor to ceiling mirrors where the two could examine their appearance. Both had retained their underwear from upstairs, but had changed everything else. Ann wore a stylish blue suit and glossy, blue four inch heels. Her crisp, white blouse was buttoned at the cuffs and up to her throat. Over the suit she wore a black academic gown and her hair was piled high on her head. The overall effect was to make her look tall and forbidding. Agatha was dressed in a similar way, but both suit and her heels were black and her silk blouse was blue and strained against her fulsome breasts. Unlike her sister she didn’t wear a gown, but she still looked large and intimidating.

 A quick glance at each other’s clothes was enough to convince them that they were ready. Ann led the way out of the room and into another smaller one, in there was a selection of their favourite instruments, racks of canes, leather straps and paddles. Ann selected a couple of bamboo canes and swished them vigorously before deciding on one particularly evil-looking specimen. Agatha thoughtfully tested the weight of a few straps before settling on a medium, brown leather one. Thus armed the two left that room and went back into the corridor, a little way down on the right were two doors. When they came to the first, the sisters embraced. Ann inserted her tongue into Agatha’s willing mouth and in return her sister fondled Ann’s sex through her skirt. They parted and Ann opened the door and marched in, banging it behind her.