Chapters Dollhood: A Woman's Choice Book 1 Chapter 14
Chastity told Pappa everything. Silent and proper as she was these days, easy to overlook, my sister had been very much awake in the next bed over, listening in her bound darkness to our unholy fiddlings and our conspiracies against the defined future set in front of us.
Of course Pappa had been alerted immediately the next morning when my automaid found me lying in a soiled bed. I remember trying my best to hold it in, but us girls were used to the early rise at school, not the lenient wakeup time Pappa had generously allowed. And I hate to say it, but as one gets used to constant protection, their continence does suffer from lack of practice. This had left me with almost two endless hours to lay in bed, awake, desperately needing the toilet.
Oh, I had never seen him so furious. I refused to explain the discordant states I was left and found in, feigning ignorance as best as I could, but my efforts were useless. I had never lied in my life, how could one lie with no privacy to protect? In Pappa’s eyes I saw the newfound fire that had resulted in Mother’s second transformation, and I couldn’t help but cry. She sat right next to me, almost a stranger, mute and still, but perhaps I felt her lean into me slightly with her armless shoulder? Her wide breasts were hard to avoid, and as for parsing her vague behaviours, I had no idea what was Mother and what was “Cushions” anymore.
Then he asked Chastity, popping out her gag.
“The whore’s daughter came in the dead of night and debased Hope, bewitched her like an ungodly fricatrice would, and I fear Hope is still under her spell. They were going to live as commoners in the farmlands and hide away in their sapphic sin. Please help her see reason, Pappa!”
My eyes were wide, a squeak of betrayal escaping past my gag. After weeks of attempting to connect with her at Sunday dinners, laboring and failing to see any recognition float across her face, this is where she decided to open her big mouth! How could my own sister sell me out like this?? And if that wasn’t enough, she concluded with a quiet, “Can I have my name-gag back in, please?” A thankful nod from our father and the maid had her sealed up again, sucking away like an overinflated pacifier.
I tried desperately to tell him that’s not what happened, that it was not an act of harm but of love, but he would have none of my pleading, personally re-gagging me too, overfilling the air-bladder until my jaw ached. This left Althea, in only her nightwear but restrained as usual with neck corset, gag, and glove, sitting across the room from us under the close watch of her maid. She knew our plan was beyond hopeless now. She wouldn’t look me in the eye. Pappa stood in front of her, between us.
“Now, young lady, I invite you into my home on my daughter’s generous request, I include you in our yuletide gatherings, I even propose an arrangement which would leave any other girl at Werburgh’s on their knees in gratitude. And you sully your honour and ours by behaving so impurely! Did you think I didn’t know from whence you came, little temptress, or what you were? Your door swings both ways, it’s all in the background report Sir Wainwright sent me. Yes, they know too. And do you know what we Societymen do to Dolls-to-be suffering from such afflictions when they act on them? Yes, we take the desire out. All of it.”
Eyes wide, Althea was on her knees in front of him in a blitz, fallen from her perch, begging past her gag. She was broken, emitting a muffled, “Please Mr. Hodgkinson, Sir! Anything! Anything but that!!”
I saw then and there just how much my father had changed since our departure, and even if that was Lord Chittenham’s doing, the blame did not rest solely on that hedonist’s shoulders, but on the weak ones of our patriarch.
“Yes, Ms. Burns. Now you know what’s at stake. Now you both know what’s at stake.” He said, addressing me as well. His eyes melted a little at my tears. He was hardly practised in disciplining us, Nanny had always seen to such things. He looked down to the tearful girl at his feet, groveling as far down as she could with her rigid attire. “But the rest of your file shows you to be a worthwhile investment once graduated, especially once we quiet that conspiratorial tongue and put it to more appropriate uses, so I’ll give you what most men in this country wouldn’t: a second chance. Nuzzle, right here,” he pointed to the zip of his trousers, and what lay within, “if you don’t want the school to hear about this.”
There wasn’t a moment of hesitation before her gagged face was pressing against my father’s privates, debasing herself. I had no idea he could be so classless and cruel, but here we were.
“You will behave, and if by the slightest chance you are permitted to opine upon your own future, you will tell your Headmaster how overjoyed you are about my offer, or else we’ll cut the centre of your perversions out when you graduate and you won’t go back that half-rate whorehouse you call a home, no; I’ll donate you to the House of the Enhanced Venus for them to remodel you into their monthly special, whatever that may be. Ah yes, I thought you would recognise that name.”
I barely understood this last part, but I knew the threat worked, for she was distraught, broken. When Father finally picked Althea up from the ground, he whispered something in her ear, a threat or pact I will never know, and as much as I cried and begged for my friend back, she remained like Chastity in the perfect doll act until our graduation three and a half months later.