An innocent man, trapped by a woman with a taste for revenge and her sadistic friends, finds an unusual savior with her own ideas of vengeance -- and a past that taught her own tormenters why it's a bad idea to break something as complex as a human mind...

Dana woke slowly, not quite sure of where she was or why she was sleeping on a hard wood floor. The constant rocking of the world around her told her she was on a boat, the bite of the air told her she was naked, and the feel of cold steel on her wrists and ankles let her know she was a prisoner.

A few feet away, a door swung open with a creak that spoke of old, untended hinges. A hand took her by the chin and tilted her head back. A huge, grizzled face looked down into hers, and she screamed. The other hand slapped her hard, and she stopped.

"Dana?"

A trembling voice came from her left. It sounded like Angie. The black-haired giant turned his head, raised his hand and growled "Quiet!" From Dana's right came another voice, this one not as frightened as the first.

"Gonna beat up the women in chains? Oh, tough guy!"

Dana turned and saw her friend Stephanie, naked and chained just as she was. The giant looked at Stephanie, raised his hand to a lever on the wall next to her, and pulled it down. She was pulled tight by the chains against the wall, held spread-eagle and defenseless. The giant walked over to her and looked her in the eye.

"I do not have to hit you to show you how powerless you are." He spoke in a rough growl, and his hand moved almost too quickly to see. His fingers grabbed her nipple and twisted. She screamed, and tried to pull away, but there was nowhere for her to go. He smiled and left her.

Jen was huddled on the floor, curled into a ball, trying desperately to disappear into herself. The giant just looked down at her, then reached for her slowly. She screamed nearly as loudly as Stephanie, and began rocking and trembling. On Dana's left, a naked Angie dangled in a hanging cage suspended from the ceiling. Her eyes were wide and frightened.

The door swung open yet again. The giant turned and seemed to lock eyes with the backlit silhouette of a woman in the doorway, and backed off into a neutral corner to give her room to enter. She was a tall blonde, long-legged with a trim figure, full lips, and pale blue eyes that held not an ounce of sympathy or remorse. She spoke a few words of what sounded like Russian to the giant, and he nodded once in reply. The woman stepped back slightly to allow him to leave, then stepped in and closed the door behind her.

"Hail, hail, the gang's all here." Her voice was cool and slightly amused, with a hard-edge no one could ignore. "How does it feel to be a prisoner for a change?"

Dana looked up at her captor, defiance burning in her eyes. "Who are you, and why are we here?"

The woman looked at her then, and the cold emptiness that met her fire shocked Dana into silence. "My name is Stark," she said simply, "and you already know the reason you're here. The imprisonment and torture of John."

Dana's lip quivered, and she almost laughed, "You mean Joannie. Oh, she is NEVER getting out of that chastity belt now."

Stark grinned, baring her teeth. "He's already out, Dana. Has been for days. Actually, more than a week."

"You lie!"

"Moi?" She placed a hand delicately above her breasts. "No point. He's free, and I did it. Just as I captured you all."

Dana shook her head. This Stark bitch must be lying. The belt was impregnable, her plan had been perfect. This must be some kind of a scam to incriminate her, perhaps force her to deliver the key. That would never happen.

Stark saw Dana's reaction, reached behind into her shoulder bag and pulled out something metallic. She dropped it on the ground at Dana's feet.

"Proof, Dana. John's belt."

Dana sneered. "That could be just another copy of the same belt. It proves nothing."

Stark retrieved the belt and put it away. She shrugged.

"Believe what you want. It won't help you. In the end, you and your friends will still be trapped, just as John was when you started all of this. But John will still be free." She smiled again. Dana lunged to her feet, trying to reach for her captor.

"Who the hell ARE you?" Dana screamed, saliva flying from her mouth. "My revenge is MY affair! Why are you even involved?"

Unmoved, the woman looked at Dana as if she were some species of poisonous snake.

"So much heat from such a cold bitch," she said primly. Dana practically snarled. "I told you. My name is Stark. And I'm involved because John had the guts to work past his fear and found me. I saved him."

Dana's mind spun, a chill running through her that had nothing to do with her naked state. "Impossible. He couldn't 'find' anyone. I was watching him all the time. How did you … he …?"

Stark shook her head. "You are extraordinarily stupid for a criminal mastermind. You had his home completely wired, cameras and sound and the like. But you couldn't do the same at his office. The system administrator would surely catch on to a live multimedia feed from John's desktop. Or even a keystroke capture application, if you had thought of it. Which you apparently didn't. And that's where he found me. At the office. On the Internet."

"John was spending any time he could spare on the computer at his desk, frantically looking for a solution to his problem. He found himself frequenting chat rooms in areas he never would have dreamed of visiting before you … violated his freedom. John went so far as to post pleas for help on bulletin boards, hiding his identity as best he could and asking for responses to a free e-mail account he'd set up. Apparently, he was reasonably sure you wouldn't be able to get into his system at work. Lucky for him, he managed to find the courage or the desperation inside himself to take the chance."

Dana was speechless. They all were. Five women staring at Stark in disbelief.

"I have intelligent search programs, called spiders," Stark continued calmly. "They search the chat rooms and bulletin boards looking for people in situations like the one John found himself in. One of them found several of his postings, and forwarded them to me. Naturally, I contacted him immediately."

"Oh, naturally." Dana sneered. "And who the hell are you to get involved in something that is none of your damned business?"

Stark's eyes narrowed, and her smooth voice became an angry hiss. "I'm someone with a great deal of money and time, and precious little patience for tiny tin goddesses like you. Too many men find themselves trapped, betrayed by love into the hands of monsters … like you. Twisted and bent to your will, as if your will were everything. You think you can do what you like. You're wrong. I'm going to make sure none of you ever do what you like again."

Stephanie spoke up, her voice shaking. "We'll be missed."

Stark smiled a smile that never reached her eyes. "No, you won't. You all went on a cruise together, something Dana arranged. You rented a large sailboat, sailed away, and never came back. After all, none of you had any real experience sailing a boat that big. People will assume you were lost at sea. Which, in a way, is absolutely true."

Dana shook his head. "You lied before. He's still wearing that belt. The one you showed me was just a copy. This whole twisted scene is just a way to get me to trade the keys for our freedom."

"If it were, would you trade the lives of all your friends for your revenge? Would you hurt all of them? Just to hurt a man who did nothing wrong except to fall in love — and then out of love -- with a bitch like you?"

Her silence spoke volumes, and the other women knew that Dana's love for them was as empty as her heart. Stark smiled. "It doesn't matter. This is no trick. You're mine now. And John really is free."

"It took a while, of course. After all, we didn't want you to know he had a friend. An ally. So first, I pursued a mechanical solution to the problem of the belt. It was examined in detail by a lab of my choosing — not X-rays, of course, given the location of the locking mechanism. However, the finest thermal imagining revealed the truth of your assertion that getting it off without the key was impossible without genital mutilation. The best lock men in the business poured over the mechanism for days, looking for weaknesses. There were none. In short, we needed the keys."

Dana smiled. "I knew it! The belt you showed me was a copy! You do need the keys!"

"Not at all. The day after we realized the keys were essential, John was free. And in a perverse twist, you were the one who helped me free him."

Dana's eyes flashed. "No!"

It was Stark's turn to smile. "According to John, you told him it was 'the best chastity belt on the market.' You said you paid nearly $1000 for it. You said it was made out of titanium and that it was escape proof. You said it took you hours of riding around the city to find it, in a single afternoon. You said the only way he could get it off without the key was to 'cut his balls off' with it. And you said you were the only one with the keys. Naturally, he went along."

"So did your friends here, sadly for them."

"Your little speech, intended to impress John with the hopelessness of his position, actually gave me everything I needed to find the person who sold you the device. There are not many chastity belts that sell for $1000, fewer still made of titanium, and few dealers in John's city that would even carry such an item. I tracked down the person you purchased it from relatively quickly, and … persuaded him to part with his extra set of keys."

Dana's blood froze. "Extra keys?"

Stark smiled. "Oh yes, my dear. After all, he didn't know what you wanted the belt for, did he? Maybe for some bedroom games, maybe for laughs. Why not make extra keys? If you lost your keys and were frantic enough to free 'your' man, he had an extra set to sell you. For a substantial mark-up, I might add, since you had already proved you were willing to spend a lot for the belt in the first place."

"Luck," she scoffed. "What if he didn't have an extra set of keys?"

"Then I would have had two avenues open to me. Contact the manufacturer in England and throw money at them until they removed the belt. Or lock you in a dark room with drugs and implements of torture, and use both until you revealed the location of the keys. Either approach would have suited me. I'm still more than a little sad I didn't get to hurt you." Stark's face became an emotionless mask. "You still need some hurting, if only to impress you with the seriousness of your crime."

Dana felt the first stirrings of fear deep inside.

"After all, you were planning to keep him your slave for two and a half years — maybe more. Keep him on a string, force him to dress as a woman, make him jump through your hoops. Who knows how far you would have taken it? Force him to submit to homosexual rape? Make him give blow jobs to strangers in bars? I can't even begin to contemplate how low you could sink with this kind of power over a man. And all this for revenge? Because of an imagined crime against yourself. As if your desire for a marriage proposal from John constituted some kind of contract. But in case you forgot, slavery is illegal in this country. So is extortion. Of course, if John had you arrested, you might never have found the keys. And the whole affair would have degenerated into a media circus. So in the end, it's good he came to me. I know how to keep things quiet." Another cold smile. "All sorts of things."

Stark looked at the others, a half sneer on her face. "I'm reasonably sure this was all your idea. But your … friends … here willingly assisted you. They did their best to help you toy with him, humiliate him. They knew more than one crime was being committed, and even though John had done them no wrong, real or imagined, they willingly participated for no damned good reason. Just because he was a man. So they are equally guilty, if not more so, since they did it for kicks. Entertainment value." Her voice dripped venom. "You all deserve your fate."

Dani felt like she had been kicked in the stomach. "What fate?" she asked, her voice cracking.

Stark smiled her cold smile, and said, "Afraid now, are we? Since you're so fond of turning people into slaves, I thought you'd appreciate seeing the process from the slave's point of view." Jill started sobbing, and Angie started a low keening that served as a counterpoint to Stark's continued explanation. "Gregor doesn't usually take human cargo, but he'll do it as a favor to me. You'll be addicted to something easy to get in the East, something to make you easier to manage and control. You'll be sold and trained, and spend the rest of your lives doing whatever other people tell you to do. You'll never control your own lives again." Dana moaned, and Stark bared her teeth in a humorless grin. "You want to talk about revenge? You're a rank amateur, bitch. I'll show you all what slavery really means."

Stark turned and walked to the door. "Enjoy your new lives as property."

After she left, the silence was broken only by the crying of the five women, The rumble of the ship's engines increased, and they felt the ship begin to move under them. Hours went by. Gregor came in and threw metal plates full of table scraps in front of each woman. When no one moved to eat, he smiled his gap-toothed grin. "Better eat while you can, laydeees," he purred. "Otherwise the rats may smell the food and decide you're all more tasty. The scars will lower your value." When no one moved, he laughed out loud and left them alone with the future. Reluctantly, the women ate the scraps, and settled down to a fitful night's sleep.

The next morning, the women woke, all realizing they needed to relieve themselves. When Gregor came in with breakfast — cold oat mush and hard rolls — he saw how uncomfortable they were, and kicked the buckets in each of their corners within reach before leaving again. They all averted their eyes and avoided watching the others. Soon the windowless room smelled rank and close, and the women imagined what a long sea voyage trapped with their own excrement would be like.

They soon found out. The day passed slowly, as did the next one, and the next. The ship's engines continued their muted roar undaunted by the passage of time. Gregor came in and treated them with a mixture of indifference and cruelty, ignoring them or touching them sexually in equal measure. On the fifth day, they felt the ship slowing, the engines dying to a soft rumble. Stark entered the room with a man they'd never seen before. The man held a tray full of hypodermics.

"Enjoying your cruise, ladies?" Stark smiled. "Not quite as entertaining to be the one in chains, is it? Just wait until you get into the hands of your new owners. The things they'll make you do will make you long for this smelly hole." The women said nothing. Nothing could be said.

"We'll be moving you to another ship for the rest of your journey," Stark said with a smile. "I thought it would be a good idea to get you hooked now on the drugs that will make you … cooperative. You'll be out for the next few days, and when you wake up, you'll start your new lives." The women all cried silently, tears pouring down their faces. They didn't speak. There was nothing to say. They were totally defeated.

Stark let them feel the weight of their despair, mourning their lost lives. Then she spoke. "At least, that's how it would happen if I were really selling you all into slavery, which I'm not. Yet."

As one, all of the women looked up at Stark. Could there actually be hope?

"Gregor's boat went out into the Atlantic for a few days, then turned around and came back to the States. We're a short distance offshore, and we'll be bringing you back to land shortly. When you wake up from those shots, you'll be back in your own apartments, and your lives will be waiting for you to pick them up again." Stark was unsmiling as she looked around. "You may all be sure, this was NOT my idea. I wanted you all to suffer for the rest of your lives. You deserve to, in my opinion. But John is the client, and he argued for your freedom."

Dana's eyes bugged out. "WHAT?"

Stark nodded. "Even you, bitch. He's a decent man, even after all you put him through. Unlike you, he would never enslave anyone. The whole concept repels him. So you're all going free. With a few warnings."

They all watched her, almost tasting the freedom.

"John is off limits, completely. If you see him anywhere, leave. I don't want you bumping into him on the street. I don't want you calling him to thank him. Hell, I don't even want you living in the same hemisphere, but it's not up to me. If it were up to me, you all wouldn't be allowed within shouting distance of a man ever again. Or you'd wake up on an auction block in Kurdistan, and be tightly controlled for the rest of your lives. That's how much I hate you all."

"You will be watched, although not all the time. You won't know where or when I'm watching, but I will know if you don't follow my instructions. And if you don't, you'll disappear. Period. No warning. No quarter. You'll wake up in some whorehouse on the other side of the world, strapped to a bamboo frame where you'll be fucked every way they can think of until you die. No escape, no reprieve. And I will not shed a tear."

"You will tell NO ONE about me, or what happened this week. And if any of you try to pull shit like this on ANYONE ever again, I'll know. And you're gone. And you'll think the whorehouse idea was merciful, I promise you. If you think I'm not capable of burying any of you alive in a casket full of hungry rats, think again. You get one chance with me, when I give chances. Letting you go now is it."

"John doesn't know any of this. And he won't know. These are my rules, not John's. Despite what Dana thinks, John is a decent man. I'm neither. Do you all understand?" They all nodded vigorously, and Stark shook her head in disgust. "Give them the shots, Ron."

Ron gave each woman a shot in the arm, and all but Dana collapsed in their confinement as the tranquilizers took effect.

Dana got her shot last. Stark stood over her, nothing but contempt on her face.

"I wanted to have a few last words with you, because I want you to know why I hate you so much. I didn't used to be a woman. At one time, I was trapped as John was, and twisted by a rich group of sadistic bitches into the living Barbie doll I am today. They stole everything I had and turned me into little more than a fuck toy. It took them a while, but they broke me. Funny thing, though. When you break something as complex as a human mind, you might break things you never intended to break along the way. When they imprisoned me in this body, they set a part of me free that turned me into something else. Something not quite sane. Something … dangerous."

"I spent months playing submissive, all terrified and broken. Until I had them where I needed them. Until I could kill them all, slowly." She smiled. "It was ... fun. Then, when I was through, I took all of the money their organization had and put it to work finding people like you. And saving men like John."

Dana's world started to get fuzzy around the edges.

"As I told the others, you get one chance, because it's his choice. But YOU get special treatment from me, because that's MY choice." Stark lowered her voice to a growl. "I know you. If you did something like this once, you'll do it again. Or try to. You're way too dangerous to be within ten feet of anything with a Y chromosome. You wanted John to marry you. You wanted yourself a husband to keep you warm in his arms. So I'll make sure you never get one. Ever. Every man you meet that you even think of as husband material will know what you tried to do to John. I'll make sure of it. I saved everything. All the recordings you made in his home, all of his humiliations. His own recorded words from our earliest meetings. Any potential husband will run, not walk, to the nearest exit, when he sees you the way you truly are."

"So get used to being alone, bitch. Because I'll see you stay that way -- for the rest of your miserable life."

Stark walked towards the door, then turned, once again framed by the light from beyond the doorway.

"Revenge is a dish best served cold," she whispered with a grin. "Bon appetit."

NOTE: This is the first of a series of stories about Stark and her life's work rescuing men trapped by those who would treat them as pawns or property. It was inspired by a series of stories called "Dana's Revenge" by another author. That series was never completed, but I do not wish to step on that author's prerogative to finish her own tale as she wished to. So for those who wish to view this as not a continuation or conclusion, think of it as the story of a different Dana and a different John -- and a very different outcome, thanks to Stark. *grins* -- Randalynn