Driven by panic, shame and fear, Jane ran on through the dark summer countryside without caring where she was going – or the fact that she was stark naked.  When somebody she thought she knew so well did something like that, she simply had to get away.  Now her feet were cut and bruised by stones and her lower legs were scratched and blotched by nettles and briars but still she ran. 

As she crossed a small lane she saw the lights of a car in the distance. Should she stop it and beg for help, despite the embarrassment that would mean? Then she thought: but it might be Mark out looking for her. She could not take the risk! And so she ran on again…

Eventually, physical and emotional exhaustion became too much to bear, and Jane sank to her knees in the middle of a dew-wet fallow field, crying and gasping for breath at the same time.  As she huddled there wrapped in mystery, she wondered what would she tell her family and friends? Dare she tell them the truth? And what about Mark? Could she forgive him now she knew what he was really like, or was it best never to see him again?

Those things would come later. First, she had to find some clothes and shelter and a telephone.

She looked about her and realized that she had no idea where she was. In the pre-dawn half-light she made out a cluster of buildings not far away. She struggled to her feet and set off towards them.

As she approached the buildings she realized they were surrounded by a high brick wall. What she could see over that suggested an estate of a dozen or so large modern houses, jutting into the field and flanked by belts of trees. There must be a gateway somewhere, but she was approaching it from the back. She followed the wall around, clambering over a couple of wooden paddock fences, until she came to the end of a winding lane snaking away between the clumps of trees.  It was closed off by a tall solid double gate.

There was a sign by the gate that she could just read in the growing light: SKYLARK MEADOWS: PRIVATE.

Beside this was a cluster of mailboxes and the speaker grille panel of an entry system overlooked by CCTV cameras.  Oh God, was somebody watching her standing there naked even now? Then she realized it was unlikely anybody was watching at this time in the morning. But people would see her very soon. Her finger hovered over the visitor call button, anticipating the embarrassment to come. She did not want to wake anybody so early in the day, but this was an emergency. Perhaps she could ask for a woman to come out and bring her some clothes before she went in.

And then with a click the gate swung open before her.

Was it actuated by some automatic entry system she had accidentally triggered? Even as she hesitated, she heard a car passing by along what was presumably the main road at the hidden end of the lane behind her. Mark, she thought in panic, and quickly stepped through the gate. It closed behind her.  Now she was in a space, large enough to take a removal van, between it and a second identical gate in front of her. It also swung open.  Nervously she stepped through it.

She found herself on a short access road running between the walled gardens of two of the houses that opened out at the end onto a loop of gravel drive encircling a kind of miniature village green.  As she approached it she realized that all the houses looked inward towards this, separated from the driveway by relatively small front gardens, while their larger back gardens extended outwards to the boundary wall.  No lights were to be seen anywhere.

Now Jane had the choice of what door to knock upon and try to explain what she was doing there at such an hour in such a state. As she dithered, gathering her nerves, she realized that there were some curious objects dotted about the little island of grass.  They seemed to be posts and benches with odd fittings, and a kind of short flagpole with something hanging from the top that was not a flag, but which she could not make out in the dim light. Overcome by curiosity, she took a few painful steps across the gravel and onto the grass to peer up at it.

As she did so the thing moved slightly. To her horror she saw it was a naked woman dangling by her wrists from a rod hung from the wire rope of the pole.  Another rod held her legs spread wide.

Buried lamps ringing the grass snapped on, illuminating her and the odd devices and hanging woman. Front garden house lights also sprang on, doors opened, and people emerged purposefully. Torch beams cut through the air and pinned her in their glare. They had been ready and waiting for her. The gates had not opened by accident – it had been a trap!

She cringed down in shock and horror, trying to preserve her modesty with her hands, as the people of the estate converged upon her. In a minute she was surrounded by a dozen middle-aged men in dressing gowns and pyjamas.

‘Well, she’s not one of ours,’ somebody said, causing the others to laugh.

‘P… please can you help me… I’m lost,’ she begged.

‘Lost your way and your clothes I see,’ one of the men said. ‘Who are you and how did you get here?’

‘M… my name is Jane Chandler.  Now please can you give me some clothes?’

The men laughed again.  ‘Women don’t wear clothes here. This is a private estate and we have our own dress code.’

He flashed his torch up at the suspended woman. Now Jane could see she was perhaps in her mid-thirties with blonde hair and a shapely body. There was a strap across her lips and there was some device plugged into the cleft of the groin. 

‘Now tell us how you got here, unless you want to take her place?’

Cold sickness at the horror of her new situation was making her stomach knot up. She had expected some embarrassment at revealing herself to strangers and begging for help, but not something as bizarre and perverse as this!

‘What does it matter how I got here?’ she choked out.  ‘Now… if you won’t help me then I’ll go…’

Jane stood up and tried to slip past them, but they grabbed hold of her arms and pulled them out wide while evading her desperate kicks.

‘You think we’re going to let a pretty naked woman just walk out on us?’ one of them said with a chuckle.

‘Scream for help all you like,’ another said. ‘There’s nobody going to hear you but us.’

They closed in about her, pawing and prodding and pinching at her naked body with total self-confidence, playing their torches over her so they could see every detail while she squirmed feebly in their grasp.

Jane was of a slender build, with pale skin.  She had long brunette hair and a heart-shaped, innocent and open face. Her pale blue eyes shone out under straight bold dark brows.  Her nose was neat, and she had shapely lips. Her breasts were rounded and not over-large but still prominent and tipped by pale. stand-up nipples.  She had a deep navel and a trim tight waist, flaring into smooth hips and crisply rounded bottom cheeks. Sparse fluffy pubic curls framed a soft, pouting set of pink labial lips.

‘Very nice,’ one of the men said appreciatively.

The torch beams also illuminated her scratched and cut lower legs and feet and banded red marks on her wrists and ankles. There were also some scratches and puncture marks clustered about her breasts, belly and groin.

‘You didn’t get them by accident, did you?’ another asked, running his fingers over the red marks on her wrists. ‘What’s happened to you?’

Despite the growing horror of her situation, she felt ashamed to admit the truth.

‘No please… I don’t want to talk about it… let me go!’

‘Women have no secrets here.  Well, we’ll just have to loosen your tongue…’

Between them dragged her over to one of the odd devices set in the grass.  A stout wooden post supported at a little over waist height a vertical plank panel split across the middle, with three holes cut through it. She realized it was a pillory, which a few hundred years ago might have stood on a green like this, except that this one was obviously freshly built of new materials.  A lash hung from a hook screwed to one side of the post.

The men opened the top panel, which was hinged on one side, and bent her over and pushed her head and hands between the boards and closed them about her neck and wrists, holding them tightly.  Then they pulled her legs wide and strapped cuffs connected to chains fastened to stakes that had been driven into the grass to hold them in place. A hinged strut with a T-bar top was unfolded from the side of the pillory post so that it pressed into her hips and lower stomach, pushing her bottom outwards.

Rubber hooks on coil springs dangled from the board on either side of her head as it poked out between them.  They stretched out the hooks and dug them into the sides of her mouth, which wedged her teeth apart and stretched her lips into a ghastly parody of a smile.

The men stood back admiring her now helpless and provocatively presented the body.  She squirmed and strained against the clamps and chains but that only made her dangling breasts jiggle.  She was totally helpless.

A man unhooked the lash from the pillory post and trailed its thongs over her face.

‘I’m going to tan your backside and then you’re going to tell us everything,’ he told her.

Jane whimpered and shook her head. This could not be happening to her!

He moved around behind her, running his hands across her exposed buttocks, and then swung the lash.  It hissed through the air and cracked across her bottom cheeks.  Jane screamed and bit on the hooks holding her mouth wide.

Swish, crack! The lash licked across her bottom again and again, making her bottom cheeks shiver and tremble even as she clenched them in desperately as if she could somehow escape the terrible pain burning through them.  She drooled around the hooks holding her mouth open even as tears streamed down her cheeks. She had never felt anything like it before in her life.

What made it even more terrible was that all the other man stood around, watching her suffer with approval and delight.  A few of them were rubbing their groins and some stiff penises were being exposed.  She had stumbled into a community of sexual sadists!

The terrible lash changed direction and swung up between her splayed thighs. It smacked into her pussy lips and rasped between them and kissed her clitoris with shocking power.  The sharp burning intimate stab of pain caused her bladder to give way and she peed on to the grass.

While her cheeks burned, the watching men cheered and clapped.

The man who had been lashing her desisted.  He pulled the hooks out of her mouth and took hold of her hair and twisted her head up.

‘Now, unless you want another pussy thrashing, you’ll tell us how you came to be here.

At that moment she was too shocked and stunned to resist any more.  Yet it still felt shameful to tell, even though she had done nothing wrong.

‘I… I was out with my boyfriend… Mark Ridgeway… He said what about a midnight picnic under the stars on Pensley Rise? Then he said, let’s make love… and we did.  Then he said, what about making it more interesting… and did I like sex games? And I said I didn’t know… and he said give it a go. He had these metal croquet hoops with him and he pinned me down with them and then he had me again… and it was exciting… in a way. But then he said I needed to be more submissive and try harder to please him.  B… before I could say no, he pushed a rubber ball into my mouth and he got this branch of holly and he began to beat my… my tits and pussy with it. And I struggled and pulled and then one of my hands came free.  He tried to pin me down again and I… I punched him in the balls.  While he was rolling about I got myself free and then ran… I had to get away… I was frightened he would come after me and do something even worse… so I kept running until I ended up here.’

‘Out of the frying pan into the fire,’ said the lash man with a chuckle.  ‘You should have stayed with your boyfriend and done your best to please him the way he wanted.  He sounds like a man after our own hearts…’