"This is Heidi," said Paul Harshman, holding an eight-by-ten glossy photo for Pal to see.
They had her back in her room, she saw, and apparently she had just been awakened from whatever coma or fainting spell she had suffered when she was on the verge of escaping from this madhouse.
She tried to focus her eyes on the photo. Paul was sitting on the edge of her bed beside her, one arm around her shoulders, supporting her unsteady body.
His hand – the one holding the picture – was steady, and when she could clear the fuzziness from her eyes, she saw that Heidi was a rather attractive blonde with a luscious body that would elicit wolf-calls from any red-blooded male. The shot was not what might be wished for by a professional photographer, but it was sharply in focus and the lighting was adequate.
Heidi's skin was clear and lovely, and her stance was provocative, although Pal sensed it was simply a natural attribute, like the glowing complexion. The facial expression told Pal that Heidi was posing against her will.
"At least, that was Heidi when she first came here," Paul corrected himself. "But Heidi had a certain amount of Germanic hard-headedness. She didn't want to give up the idea of escaping."
Paul let the photo fall on the floor and placed the hand that had held it on Pal's thigh, giving her creamy golden flesh a gentle pat. Then he put the hand on his own knee.
"As punishment, Heidi became test-case number one for Dr. Stillwell's last experimental formula. It was a compound having properties of several preparations, including caffeine, cantharidin, and phenmetrazine hydrochloride."
"Cantharidin?" asked Pal. "Isn't that what they call Spanish Fly?"
"Yes," said Paul. "He's trying to find an ideal balance of several types of oral medication which will provide sexual excitement, mental stimulation, and a general sense of pleasant well-being. Sadly enough, the compound caused a skin problem, a slight weakening of the sphincter nerves, and what seems to be a protracted if not permanent nymphomania. I'd show you. Come along."
He helped her to her feet, then led her out the open door of her room and down the hall to the second door from hers. It was one of the two she had listened by earlier, when she sneaked from her own room.
Paul opened the door, and as he led Pal inside, she saw the form of the tall blonde Aryan girl on a bed like her own. But this girl differed in appearance from the one in the photo. There was the same blonde hair, done in the same loose coronet-braid pigtails, and the frame was substantially the same. But there the similarity ended.
Heidi's entire body was pocked with large scars and open sores. Even as they watched, she scratched at her belly as best she could with her arms held by restraining straps, tearing a piece of scab loose. A yellowish-white pus oozed from several other sores.
Pal was sickened by this horrible destruction of a once-beautiful and healthy body. She noted the rubberized sheeting under Heidi, and was about to ask if the skin eruptions emitted that much fluid. But then she saw why it was necessary.
As the girl lay there, either half asleep or in some sort of traumatic shock, her thighs widely abducted to reveal the blonde and pink attributes of her pubic mound, an amber fountain erupted from her slit, wetting her thighs and the sheet below.
Pal recalled Paul's mention of the weakened sphincter nerves, and realized that the girl probably didn't know she had urinated. It was a heartbreaking thing to see, even for Pal, whose nursing background should have toughened her to such sights.
But it was the waste that appalled her – the use of such a healthy young body for these illegal experiments. That, and the fact that a doctor would even perform such a terrible act.
Just then, the girl's eyes opened, and when she saw Paul, she began to get excited. Her English was uttered with a strong Teutonic accent, and half the words were German.
"Doktor Paul! Ist good you komm! Bitte – please! You reizen my pussy, yes?" The girl's hips thrust upward lewdly at Paul, and swiveled to make a vertical orbit above the bed.
"I'm too busy, now, Heidi," he told her. "Dr. Jonas will come fuck you later."
"Doktor Jonas fuck me not long ago, but only kitzeln mit his hundschwantz, not mit his leder-spieler! Please! You take minute und fuck me mit fingers, Doktor Paul!"
"No, Heidi. But I'll ask Dr. Jonas to bring his lederschwantz and fuck you with it, if you promise to stop talking that way about the schwantz God gave him. Or should I tell him what you said?"
"No! Please! You don't tell him! But you send him to me quick, no? Is so hot, my pussy, I go crazy! You sure you can't take minute to help me mit your fingers?"
"I'm sure, Heidi. Now be quiet, and I'll ask Dr. Jonas to come soon." Paul led Pal back out of the room and closed the door, but not before Pal noticed that he had not reset the switch-button in the door frame. She guessed that it wasn't necessary as long as Heidi was strapped in bed.
"What's wrong with Dr. Jonas and what is it that she wants him to use on her?" asked Pal, half afraid to learn the answers to her questions. Paul chuckled as he herded her back into her own room and made her sit on her bed. He stood facing her.
"Dr. Stillwell has a number of phallic toys – most of them made of leather – which he uses to satisfy females that require bulk in their vaginal diet. Poor Jonas was cursed with an oddly malformed penis. It's longer than average, but terribly thin, and the head is elongated and almost pointed. That's why she calls it a dog's pecker – but not in front of him! He's very sensitive about it, for which you can't blame him. But you'll find out about Dr. Stillwell firsthand, Pal baby."
"What do you mean?" Pal had a premonition of something that made icy shivers up her spine.
"We share almost everything equally – Jonas and I. Because I run the risks to get the girls here, I take first choice. That way I get a little bonus now and then. I might have kept you to myself for quite a while, because you're an exceptionally juicy little hunk of female, Pal baby. But you need to be punched for trying to get away."
"Don't you think your whip is parchment enough? Haven't I actually been more than punished in advance for doing what anyone would have done in my place?" Pal was so indignant that Paul had to laugh at her, but as he spoke, he grew quite serious.
"You'd better start learning that you're not in the world you've spent the first part of your life in. This little world here is run by Jonas and me, and we run it as we like! Now, you can go on acing as if this is just an interlude in your life which provides harsher treatment than you like, and you can go on hoping and believing that you'll return to that other world and take up where you left off. You can – but I don't recommend it!"
"Your wisest course is to accept the inevitable. Take my word for it: you'll never leave this building alive! And you'll remain alive only as long you're useful to we. What those uses may be will in part also depend upon you."
"If you're as intelligent as I think you are, you'll try to be the best little old sexpot of a playmate either Jonas or I could want. Because when your nuisance value – your upkeep and the problems you manage to create – becomes greater than your worth as a stimulating sexual partner, you will be transferred to guinea-pig status. As with Heidi, we might amuse ourselves with you sexually now and then, if it suits us, but your major value will then be as a test animal for our research."
"I… I just can't believe this is happening," Pal said, "It must be a bad dream! People just don't do things like this!"
Paul reached over and grabbed her right breast, squeezing it to make the nipple erect. When it did, he pinched the springy peak painfully, letting his thumbnail bite mercilessly into its tender flesh. Pal screamed in agony.
"Have you ever had pain like that in a dream?" Paul asked.
"No! Oh, God no!" Pal gasped. "Please don't do that again!"
"From this moment on, you'd do well to remember that you're just a slave here. The amount and degree of pain you experience will in some measure be decided by your own actions and behavior, including your attitudes. The end results are inevitable, but you can prolong your life and make it less miserable – even enjoyable at times – if you use your head. I'll leave you to think that over for a while. Jonas will be paying you a visit, soon!"
He left her, and as she peered up through the pain-induced tears, she could see that he was reaching to push the switch button of her doorframe. Quickly, she drew her bare feet up off the floor before the door latch clicked shut.
She sat there massaging the throbbing, smarting tenderness of her brutalized nipple, and sniffling to stop the wetness in her eyes and nose.
If indeed she had lost her only chance for escape, there seemed to be a very small choice of futures for her. She knew that she didn't have the kind of makeup that would permit suicide, and the guinea-pig routine horrified her especially with the recalled vision of poor Heidi's condition.
She couldn't see any alternative but total submission.