THE SLAVES IN THE DESERT

Chapter Three

Clarissa Makes Friends - Megan Hangs Around


“I think it’s beginning to work, Miranda!”

“Maybe, but I still don’t fancy running hour after hour in this heat! But you’re right about getting the feet hardened up. It hurt the first few days, but as you say, it’s beginning to work.”

It was three weeks since Megan and Clarissa had been  falsely imprisoned by the local police in this desert gaol. Megan still hung in her cage and seemed to be surviving. Clarissa had seen her a couple of times at night, being let out and exercised by a friendly guard. She wondered if this woman might ever be of help to them in an escape attempt, but when Miranda had been asked, the idea had been well and truly scotched.

“They’d all be in prison if the outside world heard about this place. They may be nicer than the others but they know what side their bread’s buttered. We have to rely on ourselves alone, Clarissa. Us and Megan if they ever let her out!”

Clarissa and Miranda were inseparable by this time and Megan noticed, from her high vantage point, just how affectionate the couple were becoming. At first it had saddened her to think she was losing Clarissa, but as time went by she was just grateful that her friend was being looked after and seemed to be happy enough considering her circumstances. It hurt her that Clarissa never looked up at her, but she hardly thought that this was deliberate callousness on her friend’s part.

Megan’s face still bore the marks of her rough treatment after her attempt to protect Clarissa. Her nose had been smashed twice by the blows of the guard’s rifle butt and there was a scar across her forehead, which she could feel whenever she touched herself there. After five days a friendly guard who had fed her had let her out for a few minutes and helped her clean herself up. As Miranda had said, her first full day had been the worst. She had made the mistake of moving around too much and had quickly leaned that it was essential to conserve one’s strength during the day as the heat beat down with such terrifying force.

The two girls had known that it was hot in this part of the world but this was the first time they had both, in their different ways, been exposed all day to the hundred plus degree inferno. During her first week, she had burned in the fierce sun but her skin was now almost black and proof against the worst the sun had to throw at it.

Her worst fear was that if and when she was let out of this cage, whose discomfort was still almost impossible to bear, she might be permanently deformed from being forced day after day to be in this crouching position. It had been five days before she had been let out for a short time and another seven days before the same friendly guard had been on duty again. Since then she had not been freed  once and despair was beginning to set in.

“How much longer will they keep Megan up there, do you think?” Clarissa asked Miranda during the first break. They had finished eating and drinking and were stamping on a few sharp stones to keep the soles of their feet in their newly hardened state and even get them thicker that ever.

“I don’t know. The last woman to be put in there was in for seven weeks. Before that, there was one in the cage for eight. And the only other person I ever saw up there was in for four weeks and then transferred to an inside solitary cell where she still is after more than a year. But they had all been previous offenders. Megan is only a first time offender. I think she should be out within the next couple of weeks. But don‘t bank on it, Clarissa!”

“If we have to wait for her to be freed and then become as fit as we are, that could mean  three more months before we make a break for it. That’s almost four months we’ll have been here and we both have careers to be starting, Miranda. We’re wasting away the most important time of our lives.”

Miranda, too, was a young woman on the verge of a career. She had been due to go to a medical school three years earlier before being seized in a similar manner to Megan and Clarissa. Unfortunately she had not left word of her whereabouts before setting off on her lone tour and had no idea whether or not her relatives were still looking for her. Both her parents were dead and the aunt who was her nearest relative had never welcomed the responsibility of looking after her deceased brother’s child. As Miranda had grown into a woman, and a woman with a decided sensual preference for her own sex, her aunt had just about washed her hands of her.

The whistle went to announce that the break was over. Clarissa and Miranda kissed each other on the mouth and took up their pick-axes, resuming the pulverisation of rock which took up all their long working day. There was a cheer from the other women to see the kiss. Clarissa was a lovely girl and Miranda tall and handsome, strongly built and with more than a hint of masculinity. They made a striking couple and all could see how utterly infatuated Miranda was with the smaller girl, who clearly returned her affection, at least in part.

Two more weeks passed and Clarissa pronounced her own feet well and truly up to the task of getting rapidly out of sight of the prison, especially if they could escape not too long before dark. One problem was the need to travel quickly. Miranda was sure she would be out of breath after only a few miles.

“If we run around the compound in the exercise period, they might suspect we were planning to make a break. But running on the spot in the cell! That could be the answer! But Stella would need to be told.”

Stella was the odd woman out in the cell. Both Clarissa and Miranda had offered to include her in a sort of lesbian threesome, but she had angrily refused. And it was clear that she did not approve of her companions’ increasingly uninhibited love-making. Only last night, Clarissa had  momentarily raised her head from her attentions to Miranda’s succulent cunt, as her lover had spread wide her long and beefy legs to allow the blonde head access to her sex, and seen the look of disgust on her cellmate’s face. Despite this, they were both convinced that Stella would not betray them, for she hated the prison and her continued incarceration far too much for that.

“What are we to do, if they keep Megan up there for ever?” asked Miranda as they toiled away side by side. “If we leave without her, they may take it out on her. But I am beginning to think she’s become a permanent fixture in that cage. It’s that fucking cunt Debbie! She really took a king-sized dislike to poor old Megan! If Megan stays in the cage, she’ll cooperate with the screws and make her girls do the same. I’ll have to have a word with her and see if I can’t persuade her to agree to freeing Megan. But if one of us can get a message to the State capital and let them know all about this place, she will be freed then, along with a lot of the rest of us. We can’t wait much longer, Clarrie!”

“I know, but I hate to leave her, all the same! It seems a betrayal.” Clarissa felt herself starting to cry and she said no more until they were on their way back to prison. She looked up at her friend for the first time in weeks and was shocked at how the long captivity had affected her. There seemed to be no fight left in her after all this time. She would clearly be in no shape to take part in an escape for weeks after her release, and that seemed as far off as ever.

That night the humane guard was charged with feeding Megan. As was usually the case with her, she let the captive out to walk about and straighten up. This time Megan spoke to the friendly guard, risking punishment, but desperate to make contact with another human after so long.

“How much longer am I going  to kept here? I don’t think I can take a lot more of it. Sometimes during the day, I just want to let myself die. We neither of us did anything wrong, you know. I swear we are both innocent!”

The guard explained how the town she lived in had been settled by a strict Protestant sect about one hundred years ago and that over the past ten years the elders had become more and more strict. Wayward women were a particular object of their punitive zeal and, in their eyes,  lone women travellers came under this heading, especially if they were immodestly dressed. She, herself hated everything about the system but had family in the town who would suffer if she went against the elders who dominated this remote county. The woman pointed north west and said that  the nearest way out of the elders’ jurisdiction was twenty five miles, where there was a filling station  together with a public telephone.

“But you could never make it in bare feet, and even if you did, in the heat without water you’d die before you got ten miles. I don’t know why I tell you this, because you’ll never get the chance, but in case you ever do, that’s the direction to take. But it would be hopeless - all ravines and boulders. Now, I’m sorry, but you must get back in. I’ll be on duty in five days’ time, so it won’t be too long before you get out again, Megan. Try to be strong, now!”

When Clarissa looked slyly up at her friend next morning she was delighted to see Megan looking more lively.

“I think maybe Megan looks better today!” she said to  Miranda. “I hope it lasts.”

“Me too!” said Miranda. “I sounded out Debbie last night after supper. She won’t play! It’s giving her a real kick thinking Megan is up there at her pleasure. As far as she’s concerned, she can stay there for the next thirty years until they release you both! Not that they ever will release you, of course. They aren‘t so insane they don’t know what would happen if either of you did get out.”

“Then we have to get out without her! I hate the idea, but what else can we do?  It should be a full moon in a week. That should help us at night. We must try to get some kind of bottle to take with us. Unless it rains sometime. Does it ever rain around here?”

“Only in the winter and not always then.”

“Can it get cold in winter?”

“Yes. Especially at night. Last year they kept us in a couple of times. The naked prisoners really suffered, especially as some of them are getting older. One died.”

They got into the truck and were soon at the site of their back-breaking though useless work. Soon the air was thick with dust as twenty sweating women used hammer and pickaxe to reduce more rocks to rubble.

“We could bury a bottle in all this stuff, said Clarissa as they took their short break. She dug into the dust with her pretty but dirty foot. “It must be quite deep. If we could only get hold of a bottle, it wouldn’t be too hard to conceal it. They never search us.”