Catherine gets tamed 

Copyright (c) Rabbit Productions, 1995, 1996 

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Copyright: This story is copyright 1996 by the author, Sam Rabbit, under 
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Introduction 

I would like to thank the Bard of Stratford for the original plot. The 
title he used was "The Taming of the Shrew"; if you like this story, you 
might try his version. Please don't try the flying stunt - I haven't 
actually tested to see if it works. But if you ever get stranded in the 
East African Veldt, some of the survival techniques will probably work. 
Most of the science is true, but some is invented. Some of the medical 
stuff is true, but most of it is invented. If you want to know which is 
which, consult a good encyclopedia. 

Shakespeare included lots of violence in his version (people being wrung 
by the ears, Katharine striking her sister Bianca and striking her 
future husband Petruchio), sex (Bianca and her lovers, Kate and 
Petruchio). There are stage directions like "Enter Vincentio, in a 
travelling dress" (Vincentio is a man, pretending to be Tranio's 
father). Katharine breaks a lute over Hortensio's head "Re-enter 
Hortensio, with his head broken". Eventually, Petruchio tames the Shrew 
by a combination of love and contradiction. 


Catherine gets tamed 

Copyright (c) Rabbit Productions, 1995, 1996 

Chapter 1 - Flying 

BANG!!! 

Oh, hell. 

I was sitting in an aisle seat (business class) on a 747 heading for 
East Africa, reading a book, minding my own business, when there was 
this tremendous BANG, and the airplane started to fall out of the sky. 
What should I do? I guess most people strap themselves in and assume the 
head down crash position. But at the rate this plane was descending, I 
guessed there wouldn't be a single survivor, even if they all covered 
their heads with their hands. It's at times like this that I wish I was 
a bartender again, but there was no time to wish. I stood up and put on 
my coat, then reached across the passenger on my left, and started 
opening the emergency door. She looked at me, terrified - well, I bet I 
was even more frightened, because I knew what was happening, and the 
insane thing that I was about to do. As soon as the door was open, I 
leapt out, and started flying. 

You probably didn't know that humans can fly. It's easy, just jump off a 
tall building. You fly like a brick, of course, and when you land, 
you'll be just another nasty mess on the ground. But inside the plane I 
was done for, for sure, and I thought my chances were better on my own. 
Not a lot better, of course, but a minute fraction. 

The terminal falling velocity of a human in air is 120 mph. At that 
speed, the acceleration due to gravity is exactly balanced by wind 
friction. Unfortunately, 120 mph will kill you when you hit the ground, 
which is why people use parachutes. The parachute increases the wind 
resistance, and you fall more slowly. Unfortunately, I didn't have a 
parachute. 

Sam Rabbit's my name, and fine beer's my game. Well, that's what it says 
on my business card, so it must be true. The brewery's doing fine, thank 
you very much; our best line is Rabbit's Old Peculiar, but Black Rabbit 
comes a close second - a lot of people like stout. Brown Rabbit is 
popular, too. I've found that if you don't tell people it's a bitter, 
then they don't expect it to be bitter, which it isn't, of course. 
Here's the formula for success in brewing: brew good beer, and sell it 
widely. At Rabbit Ales we've come a long way since the microbrewery in 
the cellar of the Rueful Rabbit. We ship fine ales all over the country, 
and export as well. These days, there are a fair few people working at 
Rabbit's Ales, so I don't have to worry about every little detail 
myself. I try to look after the important things, though, which is the 
quality of the beer, and the development of the market for good beer (as 
opposed to what a lot of marketroid-type people seem to think can be 
called beer). We export lots to Europe, even to Germany. Now, I wanted 
to open up the African market. Or I did up till a few minutes ago, now 
all I could think of was that I wanted to land on something soft, and 
preferably at less than 120 mph. 

I looked down. I was flying over Africa, or rather falling over Africa. 
The landscape looked like a small-scale map, and apart from the wind, I 
seemed to be motionless, but I knew that I'd probably reached 120 mph 
already. Terminal velocity, in more ways than one. I examined the 
territory carefully, looking for blue or silver on the map beneath me. I 
could see some silver, but it was a terribly long way away. Silver means 
water, probably, and I'd rather fall into water than the hard, hard 
ground. My chances still looked pretty bad, but not quite zero. 

I pushed my hands into my coat pockets, and spread my arms apart and to 
the sides, and slightly to my rear. This spread my coat behind me, and 
it must have looked like I'd sprouted wings if you looked at me from 
above. It had the two desired effects; first the wind on my face got 
less, which meant that I'd slowed myself down a bit, and secondly it 
gave me a small amount of control over the direction I was going. I was 
still more falling than flying, but in a kind of very steep, semi-
controlled glide. I aimed for the silvery patch, and hoped that it 
really was water, or I was done for. When you're falling from six miles 
high without a parachute, you have to take your chances where you find 
them. 

As I got closer, I still couldn't see whether I was flying into water, 
but I couldn't think what else could be silvery like that, and anyway, I 
didn't have a choice. I used my coat to steer myself towards the silver, 
and as I got closer to the ground, I could estimate that my glide path 
was about 45 degrees, which is pretty appalling, but a lot better than 
straight down. Just before I hit the water, I took a deep breath, and I 
thought to myself "I hope it is water, and I hope it's deep enough, and 
..." and I plunged in, head first. 

As soon as I got my brain together, I took off my coat; it would be an 
impediment now. I struggled up to the surface as quickly as I could - it 
would be a shame to drown after such a lucky escape. When I broke 
surface, I gulped in the fresh air, and thought "I made it!". I wondered 
what had happened to the other passengers. I started swimming for the 
shore. I'm a terrible swimmer, and the water was fresh, which makes it 
harder to float than salt water. I was probably doing more splashing 
than swimming, and quite a lot of drinking too. This was ridiculous - 
I'd survived a crashed airplane by flying out of it, and I was about to 
drown because I wasn't a good enough swimmer. 

I flailed, and breathed, gasped and splashed. I'd never swum any long 
distance before, just a few yards up and down the pool or beach. And my 
condition wasn't too good; my wind has never been very strong, and 
getting water along with my air supply didn't help. So I was very glad 
to get a helping hand from a much better swimmer than myself. A strong 
arm helped me keep my mouth out of the water enough to breath, and I 
found myself being towed to the shore. I dragged myself up the sand, and 
lay there panting, grateful for the dry land to stand on, the air to 
breath, and the hot sun warming my frozen body. It's bitterly cold, six 
miles high. 

After several minutes, I felt less ill, and able to take an interest in 
my surroundings. I looked around me, and saw my rescuer. She was sitting 
on the sand with her heels tucked under her, and I recognized the girl 
who had been sitting next to me on the plane, by the window. I coughed. 
"How are you feeling?", she said. "I think you just saved my life", I 
said, and I wasn't kidding, I might not have been able to make it on my 
own. "We're even, then," she said. "You just saved mine." 

She had seen what I did in the airplane, and copied me. "Just as well", 
she said. She'd seen the airplane augur in to the ground with such a 
tremendous explosion that there couldn't possibly be any survivors. I'd 
been right to go it alone, clearly. "How did you know there'd be a lake 
there?", she asked. I explained that I didn't know there would be a lake 
there, I didn't know how well people can "fly" using a coat, I didn't 
know if the shock of landing would kill me, even if I landed in water, 
and I had no idea where we were. But I had known that staying in the 
airplane would be certain death, and once you've realized that, the 
alternative is obvious. You get out. 

Chapter 2 - Catherine 

I introduced myself, and apologized for not having any business cards. 
She was called Catherine, but she preferred to be called Cat. "I think 
cats are really neat", she explained. Well, so do I. She explained to me 
that flying wasn't her usual activity either. "What do you usually do, 
Cat?", I asked. "I fight." "Me too," I said. I fight the suppliers of 
inadequate raw materials, I fight the big brewers who make a light brown 
liquid that they call beer, but which isn't, I fight the bars who think 
it isn't important what their customers drink, but most of all I fight 
the people who think that a glass of beer is the work of the devil, and 
try to stop an honest man from relaxing over a pint in the evening. 

Cat laughed. "I don't fight quite so many people at once", she said. 
"Usually one at a time. And I've never been beaten." There's a whole 
world I've never come into contact with - well, I expect that there are 
several hidden worlds in parallel with the one I inhabit. The world Cat 
knew was the world of barehanded fighters. Forget boxing, where they pad 
up your fists to stop the boxers from hurting each other. Forget 
wrestling, much of which is choreographed ballet. When Cat got into a 
ring, it was fight to the finish. Fists, feet, elbows, knees, anything, 
but mostly fists, because apparently, that's the way to do the most 
damage. It was totally illegal, of course. But there was a time, not so 
long ago, when selling beer was illegal. 

This was really new to me. The last fight I was in, I was about 12 years 
old, and I was pretty ashamed of myself at that. I've never seen the 
point of watching two men throwing fists at each other, padded or 
otherwise, and ballet bores me. "It pays the bills", Cat said, "and I 
enjoy it." "You enjoy getting hurt?", I asked. "No," she replied, "I 
enjoy hurting people. And I don't get hurt, ever." "So far, you mean", I 
said. Cat smiled, and she looked very like a large cat with her teeth 
bared. She explained that there were a lot of people who liked to watch 
a big, strong man being smashed, ruined and destroyed, especially if a 
pretty girl was doing the job. That is why boxing is such a popular 
spectator sport. I told her that personally, I'd prefer a good argument 
about politics or a discussion about the Kennedy conspiracy theory, over 
a pint of beer, and that the sight of blood made me feel queasy, even 
someone else's. Cat said that she just loved the sight of someone else's 
blood, it made her feel all warm inside, especially if she'd caused it. 

Good grief. The girl was an obvious sadist, maybe even a psychopath. I'd 
been a bartender for a long time, and a psychiatrist is really just a 
bartender with a certificate. I wished that Candy were sitting next to 
me; I'd feel a lot better with her around to protect me. Cat continued 
to explain. She fought maybe once per week, and spent the rest of her 
time practicing and toughening herself up. Her manner became animated as 
she described how she didn't just win her matches; she would go on 
hurting her opponents long after they were completely unable to fight 
back. 

I looked at her. She looked quite normal, and she was talking in a very 
matter-of-fact voice, the same way a butcher talks about dismembering a 
lamb. She said that she'd been in this field for a couple of years now, 
and had an unblemished record of wins. Looking at her face, I didn't see 
any scars, or evidence of a broken nose, so I guessed she must be good, 
at that. But I had to get her off the subject of fighting people, 
because we had a much more important fight ahead of us - the fight for 
survival. 

Although we had landed safely, and reached dry land, we were by no means 
home and dry. You forget this, living in a city, but people have to eat, 
and people have to drink, and people have to stay warm at night, and in 
the middle of the African veldt, you can't get these things at a 
supermarket. I explained this to Cat, and I stood up and looked around. 
I had a kind of plan, or at least a list of priorities. Cat trotted 
inland from the lake, and I called after her. "Cat, where are you 
going?" "Hunting", she said. "For food." "Cat, come back here at once," 
I yelled, exasperated. 

Cat stopped, turned and looked at me. She walked back towards me, and 
stood facing me. She took off her sweatshirt and trousers, and said "You 
don't tell me what to do and what not to do. Ever." She flexed her arm, 
and it was bigger than I would have expected. She was a few inches 
shorter than me, and looked like she wasn't twenty yet, but I guessed 
that her arm was almost twice as big as mine, not that mine are up to 
much, and I didn't like to even think about the power in those big legs. 
I think she was threatening me, and I didn't fancy my chances against 
this strong-looking, experienced fighter. So I sat down. Most people 
won't hit you if you're sitting down. 

"Cat, let's talk," I said. Rabbits prefer to talk than fight, especially 
when it looks like they're liable to get hurt. Cat squatted next to me, 
and laid it on the line. "I usually fight guys who are a lot heavier 
than you, and all their extra weight is muscle. I always win. I'm very 
strong; you can see from the size of my arms, and I love to use them to 
hurt men. My fists are small but as hard as iron, so when they land, the 
pain is intense, so intense that it disables their body, destroys their 
fighting capacity. I drive my small hard fist through their gut; I try 
to get it deep inside, to cause internal damage to their delicate inner 
organs, and then through the back, so that their insides are mashed and 
mangled against their backbones. 

"When I've got a man down and beaten, I start to damage him, badly. The 
audience loves it, loves watching a pretty young girl destroy a bigger 
man. I can punch so hard, it feels like you've been hit with a hammer. 
After a few punches in the belly, they're so weakened, I can do pretty 
much what I like to them, and if they resist, I just punch them again, 
until they stop defending themselves. I don't just want to hurt them, I 
want to damage them, seriously, so that for the rest of their lives they 
remember how a girl permanently wrecked their bodies. I don't hit their 
jaw, because I don't want to bruise my hand, but I can smash their 
chests and bellies with my small hard fists. I ruin their arms and 
destroy their shoulders, so that they can't fight back. I dislocate 
their joints, and tear their tendons and ligaments, so they can't use 
their arms. After I've finished with a man's arms, it takes a surgeon a 
week to repair him, and even then they don't get completely mended." 

"I like to shake my hair in their faces while I destroy their bodies. I 
keep my hair long and soft, it's the only thing about me that's soft. 
Trailing my long hair on their faces and bodies reminds them that I'm a 
woman, that what they thought was a soft, helpless female is inflicting 
all this damage on them. After I've destroyed their ability to do 
anything with their arms, I work on their leg joints. I twist their 
knees, by putting leverage on their lower leg, and I double up their 
legs with my calf behind their knee. That pops their knee joints and 
dislocates the knee, and tears the ligaments that hold the knee 
together. I'm an expert on knees. I can hurt a man more by working on 
his knees that anywhere else, and all the time, he knows that he's going 
to be stuck in a wheelchair for a long time, maybe for ever, a permanent 
cripple. When I've finished with their legs, they can't walk any more. I 
finish up by disintegrating their bodies; I break their ribs, and damage 
their internal organs. When I've finished with a man, he never fights 
again. And if he sees a girl with hair like mine, he runs away." She 
shook her long, blonde hair in the breeze. 

Golly, this girl was good at psyching out her opponents. "Yes, Cat," I 
said. "But no matter how strong you are, no matter how good a fighter 
you are, if you hadn't done as I did in that plane, you'd be roast cat 
right now." "I've already thanked you for that," she replied. "Yes, Cat, 
but it isn't your thanks I'm after." I wanted her to admit that I was 
older than her, and knew more than she did. I am more experienced, and 
wiser. And I know how to keep us alive in this god-forsaken country, and 
I doubted if she did. And if she wanted the greatest chance of getting 
through this little adventure, then she'd combine her muscles with my 
brain, and the way that worked, meant that she had to do what I said, 
even if she could beat me to a pulp. 

I could see that this wasn't going down very well. The girl was a 
psychopathic sadist, and wouldn't take orders from someone she 
considered her inferior. Once again, I longed for Candy, but put her out 
of my mind; thinking about Candy couldn't help me here. I decided that 
either she did what I wanted, or else I'd go it alone. "Well?" I said. 
"No," she said. "Why don't I explain why I didn't want you to go look 
for food?", I asked. 

First of all she wouldn't find any. If it was animal, it would run or 
hide on her approach, and she'd not catch even a rabbit with her bare 
hands. People just aren't fast enough. Hunting animals for food is a 
skill that you learn over many years, and humans have to hunt in packs. 
The whole reason why language developed, was to co-ordinate the hunt. 
Hunting requires certain skills, and neither of us had those skills, or 
even knew what skills we lacked. Sure, you could sneak up on a 
vegetable, but can you tell an edible plant from a poisonous one? 

Secondly, food wasn't the first priority. The first priority was tools. 
Man is often defined as the tool-using animal. Tools would get us food 
and shelter. And an especial priority was fire. Living in a civilized 
country, you forget how important fire is. You use it for defense 
against wild animals, to make tools such as fire-sharpened spears, and 
to cook food that would otherwise be inedible using just our pathetic 
teeth. 

I explained all this to Cat, and she looked at me with a bit more 
respect. I think she realized that her attempt to find food could not 
have led to anything useful, whereas my more technological approach was 
likely to get results. I told her that we'd start off with two things, 
fire for defense against carnivorous animals, and weapons for offense 
against herbivores. The simplest weapon is a sharp stick, so I told Cat 
to go and search for some suitable pieces of wood. To be more precise, I 
didn't tell her, because I guessed she'd do her macho thing on me again, 
I suggested to her. I explained that we wanted them to be maybe six or 
eight feet long, as straight as possible, and an inch or two thick. Cat 
trotted off, and I started thinking about fire. 

Chapter 3 - Starting a fire 

Do you know how to make fire? I mean, apart from flicking a switch, or 
lighting a match? I'd never done it before, but I knew that 
theoretically, there were three possible ways I could go. One was 
rubbing wood against wood, until the friction made the dust hot enough 
to burn. The second way was flint and iron; I didn't have any flint or 
any iron, but maybe I could find some. The third way is to concentrate 
the rays of the sun into a small area, which then catches fire. 

I started off with the easiest way. I took off my glasses, and held them 
up to the sun. Unfortunately, I'm slightly short sighted, which means 
that the lenses were concave. You need convex lenses to focus the suns 
rays; concave just scatters them. So that route was out. That left the 
hard way - I wasn't sure how hard, but I knew that it was possible, at 
least. 

First, I gathered some wood, for the body of the fire. Then, some dry 
stalks, to catch easily. Then, finally, I searched until I found some 
dry moss, which would act as my tinder. I used one piece of wood as the 
base, and I held a stick between my hands, and rubbed it between them, 
moving my hands to and fro with the stick between my palms, and bearing 
down on the base. I tried pushing lightly and rotating quickly, and I 
tried pushing hard and rotating slowly, and as far as I could see, it 
was having no effect at all. Cat returned carrying some branches that 
looked as if they'd make reasonable spears, and stood and watched me. 

"You're a complete wimp", she said, after a while. "You're not rubbing 
hard enough. Put some muscle into it." I ignored her, and continued, 
squatting in front of my wooden base, and rubbing it hard with my 
twirling stick. Nothing happened, except my arms started to feel the 
strain. "Here, let me have that", she said. She pushed me over 
backwards, and I let go of the stick to stop my head from banging on the 
ground. I'm not used to that - where I come from, people don't push each 
other around, but I thought I'd better not get into a confrontation with 
Cat. I watched her drilling the wood. She was rubbing it much harder 
than I could, but still with no effect. 

If at first you don't succeed, you have two choices. You can try, try, 
try again, or else you can think about why you're not succeeding, and 
dream up a better approach. Life is full of triers; I'm a thinker and 
dreamer. The problem was, if you pushed down hard and rubbed, your hands 
soon got down to the bottom of the stick, and you had to move your hands 
back up, and while you were doing that, you lost the heat you'd 
generated. A better way, would be to have one person making the stick 
twirl, and one person bearing down on it to push it against the wood 
base. I thought of suggesting it to Cat, but then I thought that this 
muscle-brained sadist I was saddled with would find it completely 
impossible to work in a team. So I thought a bit more. If I could twirl 
with one hand, and bear down with the other, that would do it. 

I left Cat to it, and went looking for some materials. I found a very 
springy stick, and a palm leaf that was very tough to tear across, but 
fairly easy to tear lengthways. I tore the leaf into thin strips, and 
plaited them together into thin plaits. Then I plaited three of the 
plaits, which gave me a thin rope with a bit of strength to it. I bent 
the springy stick, and tied my rope to the ends, so that the stick was 
held bent by the rope. I'd made a bow, although I'd hate to try to fire 
any arrows from it, because my rope was really pretty weak. I walked 
back to Cat; she was still trying to start a fire twirling the stick, 
and she still hadn't any success, and she was obviously the sort of 
person who thought there was no such word as "impossible". Back when I 
was a lad, we called people like that "jocks", or sometimes "jokes", and 
spent a lot of time laughing at them. 

You meet idiots like this all the time, refusing to give up on 
something. Usually, I'd just walk away from them, as quickly as 
possible. But I couldn't walk away from Cat. One human on his own has a 
reasonable chance of making it, but the reason that humans are pack 
animals, is that you do a whole lot better if you co-operate with other 
people. Two people together can do things that are simply impossible for 
one. For example, if you want to hunt by chasing animals, you'll be 
doing it all day, but if you can arrange for one person to scare the 
animals into running towards another, then you stand a much better 
chance of making a kill. 

We needed a fire. Even more than that, we needed Cat to understand that 
my brain outnumbered her muscles, otherwise we'd be forever doing dumb 
things that couldn't possibly work. So, I squatted in front of her, and 
laid a flattish piece of wood on the ground. I took my bow, and wound 
the rope round a stick, so that the bow was now gripping the stick. I 
put one end of the stick that I'd be twirling on the base wood, and 
added some dried moss. I held the other piece of wood in my left hand at 
the top of the twirling-stick, to exert some pressure on the wood below. 
I held the bow in my right hand, and started pushing it to and fro, like 
you would with a hand saw. The stick rotated pretty fast, and 
continuously, and I started to see a wisp of smoke coming from the base. 
I kept rubbing, and the smoke got slightly thicker, until suddenly there 
was a tiny flame. I fed it some dried grass, some small twigs, and 
pretty soon, I had a fire. Just as well, the sun was setting, and it was 
getting a bit chilly. 

Cat was impressed, although she tried to hide it. I'd just succeeded 
where she'd completely failed, and she probably couldn't see the reason 
for it. I've noticed that sometimes, you work out a nifty plan for 
achieving some object, the plan works, and the jocks say dumb things 
like "Aren't you lucky." I got the fire going nicely, and then started 
work on the branches that Cat had brought. I chose the four that looked 
longest and straightest, and put their ends in my fire. The idea is, the 
fire burns the ends, leaving a fire-sharpened spear. You've probably 
seen what a bonfire does to sticks that are only partly in the fire, and 
that's the effect I was after. 

"So what are we going to do about supper?", asked Cat. I wasn't sure how 
to break this to her. There wasn't going to be any. I couldn't see a 
gentle way to put it, so I put it bluntly. She stood up and started 
abusing me. "You stupid idiot, you stopped me hunting for food, and now 
you expect me to starve?", she shouted. I controlled my irritation, not 
wanting to be beaten up by this powerful and vicious girl, and explained 
it to her again. And I told her that people can exist for days without 
food, easily. We're designed for it. She sat down again, and glowered at 
me. I adjusted the spears, and started planning what we'd do next. 

I thought about tomorrow. I'd never hunted wild animals for food before, 
and tried to think what would be the best way to go about it. I made a 
three-part plan. Find the prey, split up and surround the prey, one of 
us attacks the prey, killing if possible, but at least driving the prey 
towards the other one, who would do the main killing. I thought Cat 
would be best at the killing, so I'd take the other role. 

Cat huddled closer to the fire. It was getting quite cold, and she was 
obviously feeling it. Neither of us were wearing very much, just a T-
shirt and trousers, but when she'd shown me her body earlier, it was 
clear that she was all muscle; there didn't seem to be an ounce of fat 
on her. I, on the other hand, am exactly the opposite. I'm overweight 
and undermuscled. Where Cat had a thick layer of strong, hard muscle, I 
had a thick layer of soft fat. Why do you suppose people get like that? 
I didn't work out, and I ate too much. But it's also partly in the 
design of the human body. Being fat is good for you, under some 
circumstances. 

So in what situation is being fat an advantage? It's a big advantage 
when your surroundings are cold and you don't have clothes to keep you 
warm, and it's a big advantage when you don't have anything to eat. Fat 
is an insulating layer and a food reserve. I felt sorry for Cat; her big 
muscles and low body fat were not an advantage here. 

I collected more palm leaves. Cat just watched me, unwilling to help 
with such mundane chore. I planted some branches as firmly in the ground 
as I could, making a kind of tent out of them, which I roofed over with 
the palm leaves. That would maybe reduce the impact of the cold and 
wind, and deflect at least some of the water if it should rain. Cat 
continued to watch me, contemptuously. I guessed that macho people don't 
need shelter from the elements. 

As darkness fell, it got colder and colder, and I started to shiver. Cat 
must have felt even worse than I did, colder and hungrier, and our fire 
was beginning to die down. "Cat", I said gently. She turned to look at 
me. I made the fairly obvious statement, "If we sleep together, we'll 
both be warmer." She looked back at the fire, back at me, down at the 
ground. Then she came over to the shelter, where I was sitting, and 
knelt close to me. "Sam, I'm sorry. I've been an absolute bitch, and 
you've been very patient. Thank you." "Cat, it's been a tough day. As 
soon as I jumped out of the airplane without a parachute, I knew I was 
not going to have a nice day." Cat laughed. 

It was the first time I'd seen her laugh, and it was a very nice sight. 
I held my hand out toward her, and she took it, and sat down next to me. 
I put my arm round her shoulders. Or rather I didn't. My arm wasn't long 
enough to span those surprisingly broad shoulders, so I put my arm round 
her waist instead. She put her head on my shoulder for a moment, then 
looked up at me. I then did one of the stupidest things of my life - 
sometimes, all my rabbit-sense leaves my head. I kissed her. As soon as 
I did it, I realized the idiocy of what I was doing. She was a 
psychopathic sadist who crippled men for a living and for fun; what the 
hell was I doing kissing her. I half expected a violent reaction, but 
she just closed her eyes and kissed me back. She pulled away first, and 
shook her head vigorously. 

"We've got a hard day tomorrow," I said. "Best get some sleep." I lay 
down, and I felt a hard body alongside my soft, flabby one. She put her 
arms round my waist, I held her shoulders, and we fell asleep. 

Chapter 4 - The deer hunters 

The bright sun woke me up, and Cat was nowhere to be seen. My fire was 
dead, but I knew I could make another one easily enough. "Cat", I 
called. "Cat." I felt slightly foolish, like a man shouting "Here Puss, 
Puss". I heard a faint "Sam", and walked towards the sound. She was 
splashing around in the lake, and I stood on the beach and watched her. 
She was worth watching. She was stark naked, and her body was 
remarkable. She was muscled all over; she had bulges where I didn't 
think I even had flab. She looked like a sea-goddess rising from the 
foam, and she called for me to join her in the water. 
 
Gingerly, I walked into the water up to my thighs. It felt bitterly 
cold, compared to my sun-warmed skin. I thought about going deeper, but 
decided that I didn't fancy the freezing water on my genitals. I looked 
round - Cat had disappeared. I guessed she was swimming underwater, and 
my guess was confirmed when I found my ankles gripped and lifted into 
the air. I screamed as my body met the icy water, but not for long, 
because you can't scream when your head is underwater. I staggered about 
a bit and got myself sorted out, and Cat grabbed me and pulled me down 
again. I guess I wasn't thinking straight, because I wrestled with her 
and threw her down into the water, and she swam to the shore at a speed 
I couldn't match. I followed her out of the water, and joined her on the 
beach. 

She was still laughing, and wringing out her long hair. "Put your 
clothes on, Cat", I said. "No, I like being naked, I like to feel the 
sun on my skin." I pulled my T-shirt and trousers on. "Cat, this is 
Africa. The sun will burn your skin." Why do you have to tell people the 
obvious? She put her clothes back on; it was a pity, really, to cover up 
that magnificent body, but sunburn can cripple you. "Now, lets go get 
supper", I said. "Breakfast?", Cat asked. "Not a chance", I replied. 
"Supper, and that's only if we're lucky and skilled." 

We took two spears each, and started walking around the lake. I knew the 
lake wasn't very big, because I'd seen it from the air, so I knew we 
couldn't get lost if we circled it. I also guessed that it would be the 
local source of water, and therefore a good place to find game. I 
thought about a fat cow, or a sheep; something domesticated, that would 
let us walk up to it and kill it, and I wished life could be that easy. 
The best we could hope for was something skinny with flesh like leather 
that would run like a bat out of hell when it saw us. We walked and 
walked, and I wondered where all the animal life hung out. 

I saw them before Cat did, and before they saw me. I motioned Cat down 
and back, and we crouched down and whispered to each other. It was a 
herd of something that looked a bit like deer, but with horns. The lake 
would stop them from running in that direction, and I planned to circle 
round and get as close as I could. At the last possible moment, I'd 
stand up, run towards them, and try to get one with my spears. Cat would 
stay hidden, and hope that they stampeded past her, in which case she'd 
have a much better chance to kill one. I wanted Cat to make the kill, 
because she was so much stronger than I was, and so stood a better 
chance to get one or more. I told her the signals I'd use. I told her to 
squat down, and be patient. Patience is the greatest virtue in a hunter. 

It took me four hours to work my way round the back of the herd. 
Occasionally, I waved a spear in the air to let Cat know where I was. I 
got down on my belly, and started to crawl towards the herd, slowly and 
as quietly as I could. Occasionally, I saw an animal cock its head and 
look straight towards me. Each time I froze; it's a lot harder to see a 
stationary hunter than a moving one. Eventually, I decided that I was as 
close as I was ever going to get. I waved my spear in the signal we'd 
agreed, and got my feet under me. I jumped up, and sprinted towards the 
herd. They saw me immediately, and scattered. I screamed my most blood 
curdling yell, trying to panic them, and threw my first spear at an 
animal that was close enough. I missed by a mile. I ran towards the herd 
- unfortunately, the top speed of a sprinting human is about 15 miles 
per hours, unless you're an Olympic sprinter on a cinder track. I was no 
Olympian, and the grassy veldt was no cinder track. The deer were fast, 
very fast, and I had no hope of catching one. I couldn't see how Cat was 
getting on. 

Then I spotted an animal that wasn't moving very fast. It seemed to be 
having some trouble running, and I was able to catch up with it, and get 
close enough that even I could plunge my spear into its body. Pretty 
unsporting, I agree, but I wasn't killing for sport, I was killing for 
food. It squealed like a pig, and fell over. I watched its death agony, 
but didn't fancy getting close enough to those horns to put it out of 
its misery. Very unsporting. Eventually, it died. "Cat", I yelled, and 
looked round. She'd gone, heaven knows where. I waited for her to 
reappear, wondering what had happened to her. Eventually, I decided to 
return to our camp site, as we'd agreed if we got separated, so I 
grabbed the back legs of my kill, and started dragging it along the 
ground. I hadn't gone very far when I realized that carrying it would be 
better. I didn't fancy getting hold of its filthy, bloody body, but 
needs must. It wasn't very heavy, maybe ten pounds - I picked it up, and 
walked back to the camp site. 

Cat was already there, sitting cross legged on the ground. She looked up 
as I came in, and grinned when she saw what I had over my shoulders. She 
wanted to eat it raw, there and then, but I said "No, Cat, it's safer my 
way." Raw meat is dangerous enough under civilized conditions, but who 
knows what diseases and parasites a wild animal might have. Cooking 
would kill these, as well as changing the texture of the flesh from 
leather to edible. 

I got Cat to use her powerful arms to tear the animal's horns off at the 
root, and to use them to open it up. I pulled out the gross things 
inside that you don't want to eat. I gave the raw liver to Cat, who 
shuddered. I said "Trust me, eat it", and she did, and then said that 
she'd never had anything so delicious in all her life. I started a fire, 
and suspended the beast over it. It was three hours before I decided 
that it was ready, by which time Cat was threatening to eat the whole 
thing. While it was cooking, we talked. 

Chapter 5 - How Cat started fighting 

Cat told me how she got into the fighting game. When she was fourteen, 
she got raped. She described it in a very matter-of-fact way, like you'd 
say you got caught in the rain and got wet. There were five of them, and 
they took turns holding her down and raping her. Could you imagine the 
sort of animal that would rape a fourteen year old girl? It made me feel 
ashamed to be part of the same species. They were boys from the same 
school she was at, and when she got out of hospital, she had to face 
them in class, and they made it as difficult for her as they could. 
She'd spent some time in hospital, yes. Rape isn't just about sex, it's 
about hurting people. They really hurt Cat, pulling her legs apart until 
her tendons tore. 

She said that the humiliation was the worst part, and having to face 
them afterwards, every day. She started going to self-defense classes, 
to build up her confidence, plus she had some idea that it might be 
better to be able to defend herself. To improve her strength, she took 
up weightlifting, and found that she had a natural predilection for it. 
"I think my muscles were denser than normal, with more fibers to the 
square inch", she said. Also, because she was going through the young-
teen growth spurt, she started strengthening her muscles at exactly the 
age when they were most receptive. And the memory of the rape gave her a 
determination that few people could match. When a normal person would 
give up, Cat would burn through the pain threshold, and do several extra 
lifts. She concentrated especially on punching. She told me that most 
people can punch about four times as hard as they actually do; there's a 
censor in your lower brain that stops you from using your full force, 
because if you hit something hard as strongly as you actually could, 
your hand would shatter into uselessness. But if you practice a lot, and 
train yourself to overcome your censor, you can hit a lot harder than 
you thought. "Especially if you use a punchbag that gives you feedback 
on how hard you hit it", she explained. Then you can get your 
biofeedback working on your side. Cat's fists were small, so all that 
power was concentrated into a small area. She told me that when she 
punched a man in the stomach, she didn't aim for his stomach, she aimed 
for a point about two inches on the other side of his body. She tried to 
punch her small, iron-hard fist right through his body. 

She explained that the main effects of such a punch were threefold. 
First, the bruising of the stomach muscles, so that they would be unable 
to put up any resistance to further punches, and secondly the ravaging 
of the internal organs between the stomach and the backbone, as her 
punch smashed their insides against their vertebrae. The third effect 
came from the hydrostatic shock; blood is an incompressible fluid like 
water, and the sudden compression of the blood vessels transmitted the 
shockwaves all over the body. Even the brain would be affected by the 
shock, leaving the man groggy and unable to focus his mind. 

She also explained why she, a girl, could do so much more damage with 
her fists than a man. She showed me her fists, and they were very small, 
and remarkably hard. The damage that a fist does when it lands depends 
on a number of factors. It depends on the amount of kinetic energy in 
the moving fist, and on the surface area that is struck. More kinetic 
energy means more damage, and a smaller fist area means that the energy 
has to be absorbed by a smaller area of the victim's body, and so more 
damage per square inch is done. Kinetic energy is measured by the 
formula 1/2 m v-squared, so the energy is proportional to the mass of 
the fist, and the square of the velocity it's travelling at when it 
strikes. Velocity is acceleration times time, and acceleration is force 
divided by mass. So, the lower mass of Cat's fist meant that the force 
of her muscles gave it more acceleration, so that when it arrived at the 
target, it was moving much faster than a man's muscles could move his 
much heavier fist. That greater speed was squared to arrive at the 
energy that the fist delivered, and the smaller surface area meant that 
the damage very much greater. Imagine comparing hitting someone with a 
big, heavy soft cushion; it won't be moving very fast when it hits, and 
when it does hit, it won't hurt very much because of the large area of 
impact. Now try putting the same effort behind a small, light hammer. 
It'll be moving a lot faster when it hits, and the hammer head will 
destroy any flesh it strikes. 

The other important thing to learn, Cat said, was about leverage. If you 
can lift a hundred pounds, and use a ten-to-one ratio lever, then you 
can lift a thousand pounds. If you really want to hurt a person, you use 
the length of their limbs against them, to damage the weakest part of 
the limb, their joints. For example, the way an elbow works, is a lever 
in the wrong direction. Your arm muscles contract an inch or so, to move 
your elbow through ninety degrees, and to move your hand through fifteen 
inches. If you work the same lever the other way round, by exerting 
fifty pounds weight on the wrist, you are putting a thousand pounds of 
force onto the elbow joint, and if something stops that joint from 
bending, then the joint will break, or else the arm will. 

By the time she was seventeen, she could lift three hundred pounds over 
her head, more than any of the boys at her school. She also had 
completely overcome her inhibitions about punching with her fist, and 
when hitting something soft, she could hit about as hard as a person 
swinging a club hammer. She also had a good understanding of human 
anatomy - how the bones connected together, and how the ligaments and 
tendons tied the skeleton together. And one day, while she was walking 
along a river, she met one of the boys who had raped her. 

Chapter 6 - Cat meets her rapist 

He was all alone, so I wasn't frightened of him. But he looked nervous."  
I can imagine why. Cat must have been at least twice as strong as he 
was, and her power was well known throughout the school. "I walked up to 
him, and asked him if he remembered me. He did, and started to 
apologize. Apologize, for raping me! I told him that I was going to hurt 
him, and hurt him badly, so badly that he'd be permanently damaged. Then 
I punched him in the stomach." The boy fell to the ground, moaning. "I 
couldn't believe that one punch was all it took", she said. But she 
wanted more. The memory of the vicious rape still shone brightly in her 
mind, and she wanted to hurt him badly. She helped him get up, and 
steadied him while he got his breath back. "I'm going to break your 
arms, both of them. I'm going to fix you so that you can never hurt a 
defenseless fourteen year old girl again. You'll spend the rest of your 
life wishing that you'd never seen me, never touched me, never raped 
me." Then she punched him again in the stomach and his weakened stomach 
muscles were unable to stop her brutal fist from penetrating deep into 
his vital organs, and bruising and crushing his insides. As he fell, she 
hit him again, in the lower back where the kidneys are unprotected by 
the rib cage. He fell like a dead tree. 

I stood over him, watching him squirm in agony. He couldn't breath, and 
he was coughing blood out of his mouth. I thought about what he'd done 
to me, and I wanted to hurt him some more." He obviously wasn't going to 
get up, so she knelt by his agonized body. The gang had stripped her 
when they raped her, so she took her sweater and T-shirt off, so that he 
could see the naked body of the girl who was beating him to a pulp, and 
she unbraided her hair, so that she could use it to torment him. She ran 
her hair over his face, and took one of his hands in both of hers. "When 
I've finished with you, you won't be able to use this ever again." She 
rubbed his hand against her breasts. "Can you feel this? Try to remember 
it, because you'll never touch a woman again after I'm done with you." 
She pushed him over onto his front. Then she took one of his arms, and 
pulled it straight, and up into the air, twisting it as hard as she 
could. She held onto his hand, twisting and pulling his arm in all the 
directions it wasn't meant to go, until suddenly she felt something 
give, and the arm moved freely any way she wanted. Cat realized that 
she'd broken something in his shoulder, and dropped the ruined arm. 
Again, she knelt next to the helpless boy, and turned him over to lie on 
his back. She slapped his face to get his attention, and his eyes 
opened. "I've broken your shoulder,", she said. "That's just to start 
with. Now I'm going to show you what pain really feels like. Now I'm 
going to show you how a fourteen year old girl felt when you raped her." 
She sat on his legs, and threw a powerful punch into his belly. It drove 
all the breath from him, and the pain from his stomach meant that he 
couldn't breathe in. After a few seconds, he passed out from the pain 
and lack of oxygen. 

It was so easy to hurt him, and it made me feel so good. I wanted more. 
But while he was unconscious, he couldn't feel pain, so Cat had to wait 
again. She sat next to him patiently, watching him take shallow breaths. 
After a while, his eyes fluttered open, and he saw Cat. "No, please. No 
more, I can't take any more. Please don't hurt me any more." Cat told me 
that his plea for mercy made her even more excited. She'd begged the 
gang of boys when they raped her, to no avail. Now he was begging her to 
stop, and she wouldn't either. "I'm going to hurt you, just the way you 
hurt me that night. I'm going to make your body a mass of pain. It'll 
hurt a lot now, but it will go on hurting after I stop. What I do to you 
today will hurt you for as long as you live. You'll feel physical pain 
and humiliation, emotional pain and psychic pain. You'll never forget 
the pain, I promise you." 

She shook out her hair over his body again; while she had her hands up 
in her hair, he tried to punch her belly with his undamaged arm. Cat had 
a layer of muscle to take the force of the blow, and the boy was 
weakened from her ministrations, so it only hurt her a little. But she 
realized that she hadn't got him completely helpless yet, so she hit him 
again in the belly, curling him up into a ball of searing agony. While 
he was helpless from the pain of her punch, she rolled him over again, 
and took his undamaged arm in her hands. She put his elbow on her thigh, 
and stretched his arm out on either side of her leg. Then she pressed 
down on his wrist and shoulder, and pulled her thigh upwards, increasing 
the pressure. He screamed in agony as his elbow sent messages of pain to 
his nervous system. She kept up the pressure, increasing the force 
whenever his screams flagged. She wanted him to remember this for a long 
time, to remember his helplessness in her hands, and how easily she 
could break his joints. She slowly increased the pressure, trying not to 
use too much force, but eventually she pushed too hard. His elbow joint 
was unable to take the backwards-bending pressure, and snapped. Now both 
his arms were useless, and she could do whatever she wanted to him. 

She stripped off his clothes. He gradually became aware of what she was 
doing, and feebly protested. But he couldn't resist, because neither of 
his arms worked. When Cat had him naked, she had a problem. What she 
really wanted to do was rape him, but a woman raping a man doesn't 
create the same feeling of violation and humiliation that a man can 
inflict on a woman. She gripped his balls and squeezed, and he tried to 
kick her. 

That was a big mistake on his part. Cat realized that he could still use 
his legs, that he wasn't completely helpless yet. She stood up, and 
stamped down with her heel on his belly, putting all the force of her 
leg behind the blow. After all the punishment his gut had taken, there 
seemed to be no resistance to her foot, and she felt his backbone 
through his flesh. He was bleeding freely through his mouth now, and she 
turned him onto his stomach, gripped a foot, and holding him by a heel 
and his toes, twisted as hard as she could. "I bet you can run. I bet 
you can run really fast", she said. "I'm going to change that. I'm going 
to stop you running for a very long time, maybe for ever. I'm going to 
give you the sort of injury that permanently disables football players. 
The knee is one of the weakest joints in the human body, and there are 
lots of things you can do to cripple someone's knees." She twisted so 
hard that he rolled over, so she rolled him again, and stood on his back 
while she twisted his foot. The torque she was applying didn't seem to 
have any effect, so she kicked the side of his knee, again and again, 
until his foot began to twist, slowly at first, but then his knee joint 
gave up the struggle, and his foot rotated freely. 

Cat dropped the foot, and put one of her legs behind his other knee. She 
then leaned down on his foot with all her weight, doubling his leg back 
on itself; there was a popping, ripping sound as his knee dislocated and 
his tendons tore. Cat turned the boy onto his back, and while she waited 
for him to regain consciousness, she searched along the riverside until 
she found what she needed to finish him off. She knew that he couldn't 
get away while she left him; neither his arms nor his legs would take 
any weight. When she got back he was conscious and moaning - good, she 
wanted him to watch what happened next. 

She lay on top of him, brushing her long hair on his face. She rubbed 
her breasts on his body. He opened his eyes, and looked at her. "No, 
please, please", he begged. She smiled sweetly, and swirled her hair 
over his battered body, and spread his legs apart. "Open wide", she 
said. "This may hurt a little." She took the beer bottle that she'd 
found, and inserted the neck of the bottle into his anus. She moved down 
his body, and pressed his legs wider apart, and pushed the beer bottle 
harder into the tiny hole. He felt a sudden, blindingly intense pain as 
the skin round his anus tore, and Cat pushed the bottle further in. She 
lifted his ruined legs and pushed them down over his chest, bending him 
double and presenting his backside to the world, and used her fist to 
hammer the beer bottle further in. He offered no resistance at all as 
she turned him over, and kicked hard on the base of the beer bottle, 
again and again, driving it into his helpless body, until it had 
completely disappeared from sight. 

"Then I just got dressed, walked away and left him. He spent several 
weeks in hospital, and when he got out, he was terrified of girls, and 
cried easily. He walked kind of funny, but I wasn't sure whether that 
was because of the beer bottle, or because of his knees. He always 
avoided shaking hands with people, or any other kind of bodily contact. 
I have no idea what became of him in the end. " 

Chapter 7 - Dinner time 

I watched her as she told this terrible tale. She didn't gloat, but 
neither did she show any remorse. She talked about it like you might 
describe a recipe for curry, or a football game. She didn't seem to 
think that she'd done anything wrong, and given what that boy had done 
to her, it was hard to argue. Yes, it is wrong to take the law into your 
own hands, and yes, its wrong to mutilate a person like that, but I 
wondered if any court, knowing the full facts, would have convicted her. 

"Afterwards, I realized that I had really enjoyed shattering both his 
body and his mind. I really got a charge out of hurting him so much, of 
having a man so completely in my hands. And I wanted more. I'll tell you 
how I got more some other time." 

The meat was cooked, and we started to eat. Cat ate ravenously, tearing 
at the food and stuffing it into herself like she hadn't eaten for a 
week. I ate more slowly. Cat looked across at me. "Aren't you hungry?" 
she asked. "Of course I am," I replied. "I've eaten twice as much as 
you", she said, "you eat the rest." "You're still hungry, Cat, right?" I 
asked. "Yes, but ..." "But nothing. Your need is greater than mine, you 
finish it." I explained to her about fat - the fact that I had lots of 
it and she had none. "But you killed it", she said. "Irrelevant", I 
said. "Cat, I can wait until tomorrow. I have reserves. You don't. Eat." 
She ate. 

We licked our fingers, and wiped our faces with grass. Cat came and sat 
down next to me, and I put my hands on her shoulders. "Sam, do you think 
I'm a monster", she said, quietly. Everyone thought she was a some sort 
of monster. People were afraid of her, and hated her for what she was 
and what she did. I pulled her towards me, and kissed her - let the 
courage of the Rabbit be unquestioned. "Cat, can I ask a very big 
favor?" "Yes?", she said. "Can I call you Catherine?" She looked up at 
me and smiled. "Yes," she whispered. 

Why did I want to call her Catherine, she asked. Three reasons, I said. 
The first one, is when I call you, I feel such a fool, like someone 
calling their pussy cat. "That's not much of a reason", she said. "OK, 
here's the second reason. Catherine is a lot more feminine than Cat, and 
you're one very female lady." "And a very tough lady", she reminded me. 
"Yes", I replied, "tough, but feminine. I was watching when you were 
eating. You eat like a cat, delicately, like a lady. And when you 
stretch, you stretch like a cat, like a lady. You are very cat-like, 
very feline, but all woman, all female, all lady." "What's the third 
reason?"  "Ah," I answered a question with a question, a trick used by 
Rabbits for untold generations, "What did your mother call you?" 
"Catherine", she answered. "How did you know?" 

Some questions are not meant to be answered. I kissed her instead. It 
started out soft and friendly, but got deeper and hotter as it went on. 
I wrestled her down on her back, aware that there was no way I could do 
this unless she wanted me to, and started stroking her body. 

Humans have a hierarchy of needs. This is a theory first expounded my 
Abram Maslow, but it's a pretty obvious theory. If you start off with 
hunger, then it dominates your thoughts until you've gotten something in 
your belly. Once you've satisfied that, and not before, another need 
appears, sex. If you satisfy that need, then another need pops up, such 
as beer, and so on. Maslow identified several needs, and named them, and 
it's a widely held theory used by marketing people all over the world. 
Catherine and I had eaten, so now we wanted to fuck. 

I'd thought about this beforehand. I've had some pretty bad experiences 
with women in the past, what with Candy breaking my bones when she 
orgasmed, and Jane's iron vagina almost destroying my sexual organs. I 
didn't much like the sound of what had happened to the boy who raped 
Catherine, and I intended to proceed very slowly and cautiously. 

"Catherine, can I tell you about a woman I loved?" I told her all about 
Candy, how I met the superwoman, how I had fallen in love, and the 
outcome. It's a long story, and a heartbreaking story, and Catherine's 
eyes were wet as I concluded. "Tell me about your loves," I asked. 

Catherine looked at me and blinked. "Do I have to?", she asked. I didn't 
like the sound of this. "Yes - I told you about Candy." She told me 
about a guy she'd had, a couple of years ago. 

Chapter 8 - Cat's first love 

"It was just after a bare-handed fight. The guy was really big, about 
three hundred pounds. I had to hit him a few times before he stopped 
trying to fight back, but then it was business as usual." Catherine 
meant that she spent the next hour turning a beaten man into a broken 
ruin, creating plenty of work for the hospital staff. "After the fight, 
a few fans came up to my dressing room, pretending they wanted 
autographs, but really wanting to touch my muscles." Apparently this 
happens a lot; some men are highly turned-on by watching Catherine 
destroy a man's body, and want to have sex with her afterwards. "I felt 
fairly horny myself, so I told the wimps that I'd fuck whichever of them 
walked into my room first. They looked at each other; they didn't seem 
too keen. Maybe they'd heard some things about me. Then, one of them 
tentatively walked in, and said "You promise you won't hurt me?".  "No", 
I said. "I promise nothing of the kind. You want to leave now?" He 
decided to stay. His mistake. 

I took him home with me; I live out in the country, a long way from any 
neighbors, because I don't like people hearing the screams. I took him 
down to the gym, so he could watch me work out. Fighting the big man 
hadn't been much exercise; he'd been too soft, and too easy to break. I 
pumped iron for about an hour, lifting about four times as much iron as 
the wimp could handle, and showing him how easily my big, hard muscles 
could handle the load. Then I was ready for sex, but I'm a bit 
fastidious, so I wanted the wimp to have a bath first, and told him so. 
He objected, saying he'd had a wash only recently, but I wasn't going to 
argue with him. I punched him in the belly very gently, so as not to 
break anything, and while he was struggling to breathe, I put him over 
my shoulder and carried him upstairs. 

I tore off his clothes, its easier than undoing all those buttons and 
zips, dumped him in the bath, and turned on the taps. I added a pint of 
disinfectant to kill off any germs, and make him smell nicer (I quite 
like the smell of pine), and scrubbed him down with a hard brush. By the 
time I was finished, he was a bit red, but fairly clean. I told him to 
stop snivelling as I rubbed him down with the towel, or else I'd have to 
spank him. I took his hand in mine, and pulled him to the bedroom; for 
some reason, he didn't want to go. I told him that I was being very 
gentle with him, but he'd better start co-operating, or I'd maybe lose 
my temper, and he really didn't want me to lose my temper, did he. 
 
He stopped struggling, and I picked him up and threw him on to the bed. 
His little penis was completely soft, and it was obvious I wasn't going 
to get any satisfaction from there, so I told him that it was going to 
be either his nose or his mouth - his choice. He looked baffled, so I 
spelled it out for him. If I used his nose to give myself a climax, then 
I could only do it by rubbing really hard, which would probably break 
his nose and damage the rest of his face. If he used his tongue on me, 
then he could probably give me an orgasm in half an hour or so, and his 
face would still be intact.  "Tongue", he said enthusiastically, and 
wriggled down to get to work. 
 
I guess he'd never licked a girl before, because I had to keep stopping 
him to explain some elementary facts of life, like what a clitoris is, 
and how he had to get his tongue inside my vagina for maximum effect. 
Each time, I pulled his head towards me by those convenient handles that 
men have on each side of their head, explained the necessary to him, and 
rubbed his face hard on my abdomen, which is very hard, to hurt him a 
little bit. 
 
It took him a lot longer than a half hour. I used as much self control 
as I could, because I really like the feel of a soft tongue between my 
legs, and I managed to last for an hour. He had trouble staying the 
course, though - he kept stopping and saying that he couldn't go on any 
more. Each time, I offered to finish things off with a nose-and-face 
job, and each time he obediently got back to work. Eventually, I 
orgasmed. I hadn't warned him about what might happen when I came; I 
thought he'd be able to work that out for himself. In any decent orgasm, 
you lose control of your body, and I did then. Fortunately, he was out 
of reach of my hands and arms, and most of his body was well away from 
my legs. But his poor head was trapped between my thighs. 

Catherine showed me her thighs, and I shuddered at the thought of having 
my head in there when she reached orgasm. 

"I don't know how much pressure you get down there when I climax, but it 
must be a lot. His ears suffered the most. You know how boxers have 
cauliflower ears, from having them punched too often? Well, you can get 
the same effect when a strong woman clamps her thighs round your head 
and squeezes as hard as she would in an orgasm, while shaking you up and 
down." 

"Then I let him go wash his face, and join me in bed. I cuddled his face 
to my breasts, and we both fell asleep. By the morning, his ears weren't 
too bad, but they were about twice as big as they'd been before, very 
red, and very sore. I asked him if he'd like to stick around for another 
round, but he made his excuses and left." 

Chapter 9 - The maker of tools 

When Catherine finished telling me about how she'd damaged the man who 
had wanted to be her lover, I took her hands in mine, and kissed each of 
them. Then I pulled her towards me, and kissed her mouth. "I'm a 
monster, aren't I?", she said. "I don't think so", I replied. I was 
rapidly revising my previous opinion of her as a sadistic psychopath. If 
she were, then the episode she'd just described would have ended with 
her sexual partner crippled, or worse. She'd made no attempt to 
brutalize him in the way she'd described her treatment of other men, and 
if she really were a bad person, she would have hurt him badly. As it 
was, he was hurt no worse than any man would be at the hands of a woman 
four times stronger than himself. I should know, I've been there. Yes, 
she'd mangled a boy beyond repair, but he'd raped her, so you could 
understand it, even if you couldn't condone it. The men she damaged in 
the ring - well, that was just doing her job, and they didn't have to 
get in the ring with her if they didn't want to. Maybe she wasn't a 
homicidal, psychopathic, sadistic, maniac. Maybe she just needed someone 
to love her. 

"We've got a hard day again tomorrow, Catherine. Goodnight." "Goodnight, 
Sam." I felt that Catherine was improving. She'd started off treating me 
like an object of derision, but now she was beginning to treat me like a 
human being. Things were looking up. If she continued to co-operate, 
maybe we'd survive this ordeal, although I hadn't yet worked out how to 
get back to civilization, apart from the obvious method of walking 
south. Oh well, let's get the hang of getting enough to eat, and worry 
about other things later. I fell asleep, trying to think of ways to 
build a radio transmitter from deer horn and palm leaves. It can't be 
done. 

Next morning, I started working on toolmaking. The art of making tools 
is the most important and ancient known to man. I wished I had some 
flints to knapp, but that would have to wait. You can get a really good 
cutting edge with flint, and really sharp spear heads. But first, you 
have to find some flint, and I hadn't seen any. However, the deer's 
horns were wickedly sharp, and I used more palm-leaf fiber to bind a 
horn to each of two spears. If you can't make a radio transmitter, at 
least make something useful. I also had a few more ideas I wanted to try 
out, but I really needed a knife. I usually carry a beautiful Swiss Army 
knife, but hadn't thought far enough ahead when jumping from the 
airplane, and it was still in my briefcase. I wanted a knife really 
badly. You have no idea how much you need a knife, until you haven't got 
one. 

Catherine came back from the lake looking wet and gorgeous, and I just 
sat and started at her. "What are you staring at?" she asked, 
aggressively. Oh no, I thought. Catherine's gone, Cat is back. 
"Catherine, you are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and it's a 
pleasure just to look at you." She smiled, coyly, and Cat was replaced 
by Catherine. I stood up, and showed her the two spears I'd just 
improved. "Here you are", I said, handing them to her. "Shouldn't it be 
one each?", she offered. 

During the second world war, the science of Operational Research was 
invented. The idea was to apply scientific method to the conduct of 
operations, and after the war, the same idea were used in business. One 
of the most impressive results of OR, is when you take a fixed resource, 
and redeploy it to get a lot more effect, in such a way that after 
you've done it, everyone says that it's obvious, but before hand, no-one 
had thought of it. One example that has always stuck in my mind, was at 
an army mess hall. The soldiers had to wash their plates afterwards, and 
there were three bowls of soapy water for washing, and three of clean 
water for rinsing. One day, an Operational Researcher saw this and saw 
the queues of men, and suggested that since washing takes a lot longer 
than rinsing, the six bowls should be four for washing, and two for 
rinsing. Same six bowls, shorter queues. 

I explained to her that since she was stronger than me, she should have 
the best weapons, because that gave us the best chances at the most 
kills, which would be good for both of us. She saw the sense in this, 
and agreed. We went hunting again, and this time, we went the other way 
around the lake. We were lucky again - we encountered another herd of 
small deer-like animals, this time with much smaller horns. We repeated 
the hunting method that we'd used yesterday, except that I told 
Catherine to stay hidden for longer, so the fleeing animals would come 
closer to her. It took me several hours to work my way round them, but 
when I ran at them, I managed to get one, and Catherine waited until 
they were almost trampling her, jumped up, and got two, one with each 
spear. She picked them up and ran over to me, as excited as a teenager 
on her first date. "I got them, I got them", she yelled, and in her 
enthusiasm, she dropped them and hugged me. I struggled at first in her 
strong grip, but then relaxed, hoping she'd let me go. She did, but then 
started jumping up and down exuberantly, while she held my hands. I must 
admit, her excitement was infectious, and I was pretty pleased about our 
kill too, and started jumping up and down in time with her. 

But while I was jumping in the air, I'd noticed something interesting 
over by the lake, and I told Catherine to grab the three deer, and 
follow me. I got to the lakeside, and stood on the stony beach. "Yes!", 
I shouted. "Yes!" "What is it?" said Catherine. I picked up a few of the 
stones, and showed them to her. "They're stones", she said. "Not just 
stones, Catherine. Flint! Flint stones." "Oh, ha ha. Flintstones.", she 
said. "Very funny." 

I explained to her why flint was so important. I don't think she 
believed me, but she'd see me pull a few technological Rabbits out of 
the hat already, so humored me. I gathered up several likely looking 
stones, and laden down with deer and flint, headed back to our camp. 
This time, we had three of the little animals to clean, cook and eat; 
this time we'd both go to sleep on full bellies. 

I got the fire going, while Cat got the deer ready for cooking, and then 
we left them to roast. I took my lovely flints, and started working out 
how on earth you go from round stones to knives and spear heads. I had a 
rough idea of the theory, but I'd never tried it out before. I asked 
Catherine to continue what she'd been telling me, about what happened to 
the guys who had raped her. While she told me, I tried to see what I 
could do with the flints. 

Chapter 10 - Cat meets the second rapist 

After I'd hospitalized the first one, I realized that I didn't have to 
cower every time the other four teased me. I'd just gotten used to the 
idea that they could hurt and humiliate me, but that was three years 
ago, and things were different now. I followed one of them home, and as 
we passed an alley, I ran at him and pushed him between the buildings. 
It was dark in there, and no-one could see us. I told him who I was, and 
what had happened to his friend. I told him that I was going to hurt and 
humiliate him, just like he'd hurt and humiliated a helpless fourteen 
your old girl, but that girl was seventeen now, and was going to show 
him pain worse than anything he'd ever imagined. He told me "Up your 
ass, bitch". I explained to him what had happened to his friend, how I'd 
broken his power to fight back, then broken his limbs, then broken his 
ass. He laughed, and told me I had a wild imagination, that his friend 
had been beaten up by a biker gang. "No, not a biker gang", I told him. 
"By me, by a little girl." 

"Show me your tits", he said, reaching for me. I hit him in the stomach, 
gently. I didn't want to take him out yet; I just wanted him to know 
that he was in a fight. He laughed, and swung a fist at me. I moved my 
head, and he missed. I hit him again in the stomach, a bit harder this 
time. "Oof", he said, and looked angry. "You're asking for it, bitch", 
he said, and tried to hit me in the face again. I moved, but I didn't 
see his other hand punching my belly, and he connected solidly. It hurt, 
but not very much - I've got a lot of muscle between me and the world. 
At least he was fighting now, and I hit him again, this time over the 
heart, and this time with a bit more force. He looked surprised; it must 
have hurt more than I'd intended. I hit him gently in the belly again, 
not wanting to hurt him too quickly. 

He reached up to my neck, and tried to strangle me. It was painful, so I 
took his wrists in my hands, and pulled them off my neck, squeezing hard 
as I did it. I could feel his wrist bones rubbing together under the 
pressure of my grip, and he took a couple of steps backward. "Going 
somewhere?", I asked. "Don't you want to fight the weak little girlie?" 
He snarled something obscene and irrelevant, and rushed at me, his head 
lowered. I moved aside to let him go past, turned, and grabbed his head 
in my arm as it went by. I curled my forearm under his neck, and grabbed 
my arm with my other arm, pulling it up, but not as hard as I could. I 
felt something creak and give. I let go at once - I didn't want to break 
his neck, that would be too quick. As he fell to the ground, I helped 
him down with a light punch to the kidneys. 

He lay on the ground, breathing hard, and I wondered what I'd done that 
had hurt him so much. Maybe he was shamming? I reached down and gave his 
nose a good tweak. "Had enough then? Is the weak little girlie to much 
for the big strong man, then?" That infuriated him nicely, and he 
struggled to his feet, saying words I didn't know (or rather, shouldn't 
know), and tried to hit me again. His fists were moving more slowly now, 
he was getting tired from the fighting and the pain I'd given him so 
far. When his fist hit my belly, it didn't hurt at all. I decided that 
he didn't have any more fight in him, so it was time to move to stage 
two - smash his body apart. I hit him in the stomach again, but this 
time I hit him properly, with my full force, and I hit his kidneys again 
as he dropped. This time, he curled up on the ground, holding his belly, 
and groaning feebly. There was blood coming from his mouth, because I 
must have broken something inside him. I took off my panties, and 
stuffed them into his mouth; I didn't want his screams to attract 
attention. I took one of his hands in both of mine, put a foot in his 
armpit, and pulled on his hand, getting his shoulder out of its socket. 
As soon as it came loose, I twisted the arm, to keep the joint 
dislocated. Then, keeping it straight, I levered it round behind him, so 
that I could feel the fibers of his tendons and ligaments stretching, 
and then tearing loose. He fainted. 

I sat on his limp body, waiting for him to revive, and thinking about my 
next move. When he woke up, I explained to him what I'd just done, and 
told him that his arm would be useless for the rest of his life. "You're 
now a one-armed man. You'll find eating difficult, and you'll never play 
the violin again. But I haven't finished with you yet. There's a 
fourteen year old girl here who wants to hurt you like you hurt her, and 
there isn't anything you can do to stop her, Mr One-arm." I moved his 
injured arm around, to show him how painful it was, and that he was 
unable to move it himself. "Even getting undressed is difficult with 
only one arm. You'll have to get help to get dressed and undressed. 
Here, let me help you get undressed." 

I started taking his clothes off. He started to fight me, but I hit him 
gently in the belly, and told him that unless he obeyed me, I'd hit him 
properly. "Please, don't hit me again," he said. "It hurts, you've hurt 
me so much already." I stripped him naked, without any help from him, 
but without any resistance. Then I broke the news to him. "It won't be a 
proper rape unless I get undressed as well." He stared at me in fear as 
I took my clothes off. I took his undamaged hand in mine, and slowly 
rubbed it over my body, using it to fondle my breasts and vagina. "I 
hope you're enjoying this", I said, "Because I am. You want it, don't 
you? Admit you want it." "No, please, leave me alone." I gripped his 
hand tightly in mine. "Admit you want it. Admit you want me to hurt 
you." 

"No, please, please", he begged. "Tell you what," I said. "admit that 
you want me to hurt you, and I won't break this hand." "Please, no", he 
said. He didn't seem to be able to scrape up much eloquence. I started 
compressing his hand in both of mine, and his voice became higher by a 
couple of tones. "You're hurting me, please." "Say that you want me to 
hurt you, and I'll leave your hand alone." "Oh god, all right, I want 
you to hurt me, please, please." 

I released his hand, and lay down on top of him, pressing my breasts 
into his chest, and letting my soft hair caress his face. "Say it 
again." He was crying now. "Hurt me, please hurt me." "That's much 
better," I said. "Say it again, and beg me to hurt you." "Oh, please, 
Cat, please hurt me, but not too much." I punched him gently in the 
stomach that had been terribly bruised and weakened by my earlier 
treatment, just to remind him about what I could do if I wanted to. "No, 
leave out the last part. And tell me what part of you to hurt, or I'll 
hit you hard here again." I punched him a bit less gently in the stomach 
again, and his breath left his lungs, and he went red, trying to breath 
against the pain and my weight on his body. " Cat, hurt me, please." 
"Where?", I asked, punching his belly again. "No, please, I can't take 
any more, you're killing me." "Where?", I said, punching his belly 
again. "My leg, hurt my leg." 

I got off him. "Right, you asked for it, you got it." I turned him over 
onto his front, and bent one leg up so that his other knee was resting 
on it, with the leg straight out behind. In this position, his ankle was 
several inches from the ground. "Where do you want me to hurt you?" He 
groaned, and then whispered "My leg." I dropped down on his leg with my 
full weight, bending it in the opposite direction from the way it should 
have gone. There was a sharp crack as his knee joint disintegrated. I 
turned him over again, and sat on his belly, and explained what had just 
happened. "You asked me to hurt your leg, so I did. I've broken your 
knee joint. After you've recovered, walking will be difficult, and you 
can forget about ever running again."  "No, no", he groaned. "Yes, yes," 
I said. "OK, what's next?" I punched his agonized belly again, not too 
hard. "What do you want me to hurt next, this?", I punched his belly 
again, "Or what?" 

He was delirious with the pain from his belly, shoulder and knee. I was 
asking him to choose which part of his body I would destroy next; I was 
asking him to do the ultimate betrayal, the betrayal of his own body, of 
himself. "Leg", he whispered. I helped him to stand up, gripping him in 
a bear-hug around his tortured belly. He brain was too fogged with pain 
to understand what I was doing. I lowered him until his weight was 
entirely supported on his one good leg, then I kicked at the inside of 
his ankle. His ankle twisted sideways, and as I pushed down on his body 
to add my weight to his, the twisted ankle couldn't take the strain, and 
snapped with a loud cracking sound. I let go of him, and he fell to the 
ground like a sack of flour, only softer. "Chin up," I said to him. "Not 
much more to go now." I gripped his testicles with one hand, and his 
good arm with the other. "It's decision time again", I said. "What do 
you want me to break?" This time, he didn't need to think about it. "My 
arm", he whispered. I punched his gut again; it was red and purple, and 
lumpy. I guessed that I'd done something terrible on the inside. "I 
can't hear you", I said. "My arm", he said, in a louder whisper. "No", I 
said, "Say it properly. Say Please kind Cat, please break my arm, and 
say it real loud and clear." I tightened my grip on his balls. "Please, 
kind Cat, please break my arm." 

"Anything to help a friend," I said. "After all, you helped me to get 
raped three years ago." I laid his good arm on the ground, put my leg 
into the crook of his elbow, and bent his forearm over my leg. Then I 
sat on his wrist, and as my weight came down, his forearm was compressed 
toward his arm. But my leg inside his elbow stopped that from happening. 
This could only be resolved in one of three ways. The first possibility 
was that my leg would break, but I wasn't even feeling any pain, so you 
can forget that possibility. The two more likely scenarios are that his 
forearm breaks, or his elbow comes apart. I wasn't sure which would give 
up first. I gradually increased the weight on his wrist. Suddenly, his 
elbow almost exploded; it came apart with such force, I thought his arm 
would come off. He fainted again. 

Time for the finishing touch, I thought, and hunted in the alley for a 
beer bottle. I didn't find one, but I found something better, a wine 
bottle. First I needed him awake, so that he could properly appreciate 
what was to come. I looked around for some water to bring him round, but 
there wasn't any in sight. I didn't want to leave him, in case someone 
found him before I was finished. Then I realised I did have some water 
with me. 

I faced him upwards again, squatted down over his head, and urinated on 
him. The hot liquid and pungent smell brought him to consciousness as 
effectively as smelling salts. "Now I'm going to rape you", I said. He 
was in very great pain from his ruined arms and legs, and his smashed 
belly made breathing painful. But the male sexual reflex is very 
powerful, and as I gently rubbed my breasts up and down his chest, and 
tickled his genitals with my hair, he slowly became aroused. I lifted 
his legs towards his head, and showed him the wine bottle. "No, no", he 
protested. "Please, anything but that." I gripped his penis in my strong 
hand and squeezed. "Choices, choices", I said. "Which one?" He groaned, 
"No, no." I wanted him to choose. I wanted him to remember for the rest 
of his life how he had betrayed his own body, how he had asked me to 
ravage him with pain and humiliation. "If you don't choose, I'll rape 
you and then I'll also castrate you, so choose one. Which one do you 
want, rape or castrate?" "Rape me," he asked. 

I pushed the bottle into his anus, neck first It went in easily at 
first, but then the shoulders of the bottle wouldn't go into his hole. I 
put my knee on the base of the bottle, gripped him round the waist, and 
pushed really hard. There was resistance at first, but then the bottle 
moved more easily. His body spasmed, then lay still. I checked that he 
was still alive, and continued to insert the wine bottle. The further I 
pushed it in, the harder it was getting; the last few inches were really 
difficult. I guessed that the bottle had needed to push a few things 
inside him out of the way. 

She got dressed, and left him there. 

Chapter 11 - Flint tools 
                 
"I heard he spent a long time in hospital, and when he got out, he was 
in a wheelchair, but I don't know if that was permanent. I also heard 
from one of the girls at school that his sexual needs had become more 
interesting. He liked to be hurt, and enjoyed having blunt objects 
inserted into his rectum." 

Catherine looked at me, as if for approval. I could have lied, but I 
didn't. "Catherine, what you did was wrong. What they did was wrong, but 
you mustn't take the law into your own hands, even if you think the law 
has served you badly." Catherine looked down at the ground, and was 
silent for a very long time. "I know that", she whispered. I sat down 
next to her and put my arms round her. Knowing right from wrong is the 
first step on the road to redemption. "You see, rape isn't just about 
sex, pain and humiliation. I felt used, like they'd used me as a toilet. 
I felt, deep down, that I must have deserved it. I had no self-respect, 
no feeling of self-worth." I saw a tear in the corner of her eye, and 
hugged her close. "Catherine, you're a nice person, and anyone would be 
lucky to have a friend like you." "You see, I had to do it, I had to 
beat them up. It was the only way I could feel like a proper person, the 
only way I could regain my dignity and self-respect. Every time I saw 
any of them, it reminded me about how I'd been just a convenience to 
them, and they rubbed it in by laughing at me. I had to change the way 
they saw me, and the way I saw myself." 

I sat with my arms round her for a long time, saying nothing, but 
hugging her. I tried to think what I should say - eventually, I found 
the words. "I forgive you, Catherine." She sobbed, and clutched at me. 
Her arms pulled me towards her hard, hugging me as hard as she could. We 
stayed in that position for a long time, and then I remembered supper. 

The three deer were cooked at last. Catherine and I had one each, and we 
shared the last one. I fed Catherine, and she fed me, and we finished up 
wrestling for the last few scraps of meat. I got her pinned underneath 
me, except that she reached up, pulled my head down onto hers, and we 
kissed, and somehow at the end of the kiss, she was on top, but I didn't 
care. I wanted her quite badly, but I still wasn't sure whether it would 
be wise even to make a move. Anyway, rolling around with a girl who is 
several times as strong as you, and can destroy a 300 pound man with her 
punches, is rather fun. Well, I think it is. We fell asleep in that 
position. 

Next day dawned bright and sunny. Again. I examined my handiwork of last 
night, and it was looking hopeful. If you bang two flints together hard 
enough, one of them will fracture, leaving a fairly flat stone surface. 
Then, if you tap round the side of the surface, you can remove flakes of 
flint, and the edges of those flakes are as sharp as a razor, making 
great knife blades. 

I used these knives to cut the deer-skin into strips, and used some of 
the strips to bind the flints to the thighbones of the small deer, 
giving my knives a handle. To cure the rest of the leather, I urinated 
on it. I know it isn't ideal, but it's something I have plenty of, and 
the ammonia ought to help preserve the leather, and stop it becoming 
totally hard. I left the mess in the shade to dry, hoping that it would 
yield some useful straps for tying things. 

Catherine returned from the lake, carrying several flints. I was 
extremely pleased. I hadn't asked her to do this, she'd thought of it 
herself, and it was a sign that she was actively co-operating with me. I 
showed her the knives I'd made, and she wanted to carry one. Good idea, 
I thought, and I showed her how to plait a palm leaf to make a belt-
holder for it. "I never thought I'd ever be plaiting, sewing and 
weaving", she joked. "And I didn't think I'd ever develop the skills of 
flint-knapping", I replied; I was rather proud of how my flint tools 
were looking, although I guessed a real Stone Age man would have rolled 
on the ground laughing at my efforts. 

We got ready for the hunt. This time, we had flint-tipped spears, and 
usable knives. We walked for some hours, and the sun seemed to be 
getting hotter and hotter, before we sighted a group of small animals in 
the distance. Catherine looked at me, and I must have looked exhausted, 
because she suggested that I should stay on this side of the herd while 
she worked round behind them. Then she'd signal when she was in place. 
I'd be rested by then, and could do my usual routine of jumping up and 
charging at the herd, scaring them towards my partner, who would kill as 
many as she could. 

We got five; I got one, and Catherine got four. Three she speared, and 
the fourth one she just leaped on, and slaughtered with her knife. She 
was really pleased with herself, and so was I. She hugged me, a bit too 
hard, but I didn't complain. We carried the little animals back to our 
base camp, but as we set off, it started raining. "Ugh," said Catherine. 
"I hate getting wet." "Can't be helped," I said, "We won't melt." Don't 
ask me what that means, it's something my mother always used to say. 

After we'd gotten soaked to the skin, Catherine cheered up. "Well, we 
can't get any wetter", she said. When we came in sight of our camp, she 
hurrahed, and ran towards it, eager to get under our shelter. 
Unfortunately, as she was running, she slipped and fell over, and stayed 
down. "Please no", I thought. The slightest injury, trivial in a world 
of antiseptics and doctors, could turn fatal here. I was relieved to see 
that she was fine, she'd just slipped in a patch of wet clay, and was 
winded. I helped her up, and she stood and got her breath back, then 
continued to the shelter. I lingered for a moment, looking thoughtfully 
at the wet ground, then followed her. 

The rain soon stopped, the sun came out, and the world dried off. I left 
Catherine to start the fire, while I gutted and cleaned the deer with my 
knife. In particular, I was thinking about catgut and the use of 
ligaments for string, and set some aside for later use. While Catherine 
looked after the fire and roasts, I went back to where she'd slipped 
over. I wanted a closer look at what she'd fallen in. 

It looked like clay, and it felt like clay. So, maybe it was clay? I dug 
a big double-handful out of the ground, and brought it back to the 
shelter. "What's do you want mud for?" asked Catherine. "It isn't mud, 
it's clay, and you make pottery out of clay." Catherine laughed. "Here 
we are in the African Jungle, and you want to make clay pots!" I 
frowned, and turned to tell her a thing or two, but she looked so lovely 
as she laughed, I started laughing too. A woman laughing is one of the 
most attractive sights and sounds in the world, I think. You might 
prefer paintings of cornflowers. "Catherine, it isn't the Jungle, it's 
the Veldt, and you won't believe how useful pottery is. Think about not 
having to go to the lake every time you want a drink." Catherine stopped 
laughing quite so hard, and squeezed me in her muscular arms, too hard 
as usual, and I squeezed her back, and one thing led to another, and we 
fell on the ground wrestling, and this time she didn't let me win, and I 
ended up with my arms held down on the ground, and the most intense kiss 
I've ever had. After an eternity she let me up, and I pulled her back 
down on me. After another eternity, we both got up and sorted ourselves 
out. 

While Catherine attended to the roast, turning it, I thought about how 
you make pots out of clay. I knew how to form the clay into any shape I 
wanted, but I had no idea how hot you had to make them to fire them. I 
knew that commercial kilns are far hotter than I could hope to achieve, 
but I thought that people had been making pottery since very early 
times, so I guessed you didn't need any more heat than you could get 
with a wood fire. I kneaded the clay in the way you have to, to get it 
ready for working. Then I took lumps of it, and rolled it into long, 
thin sausages, rolling it between my palms. I used the thin clay 
cylinders to build up my pot, winding it in a spiral to make the base, 
then building it upwards with more rolls of clay, round and round, and 
up and up, until I had a sizable urn, made out of my spiralling rolls of 
clay. I pressed the walls gently between my hands to make sure that 
there weren't any gaps, and put it by the fire to dry. If it rained 
again, my work would be ruined, but I could always make another one. 

As we ate our supper, I asked Catherine about the other boys who had 
raped her. At first, she didn't want to talk about it, and I told her 
some more about my romance with Candy. She asked me lots of questions 
about Candy's feats of strength, and looked at her own arms, obviously 
wondering if she could match my ex-girlfriend. I didn't want to tell her 
that there wasn't any chance, any chance whatsoever, because she was 
rightly proud of her muscles. Then I asked her about the boys again, and 
she told me about her next encounter. 

Chapter 12 - Cat meets the next two rapists 

I guess word of what I'd done got around, and the other three started 
avoiding me. I sought them out wherever I could, and started taunting 
them. "Afraid of a little girlie?", I asked. "Nervous that I might do to 
you what I did to the others? They can't walk properly now, you know. 
Worried about walking past dark alleys? The other guys weren't worried 
about what might happen, maybe they should have stayed in brightly-lit 
streets. Frightened when you see your own shadow, thinking it might be 
some little girl following you? Scared that I might beat you to a 
bloody, ruined pulp, like I did your friends?" Yes, they were, and I 
tried to make them as terrified as I could, to make their lives a misery 
of anticipation, wondering when Nemesis might strike and convert their 
healthy bodies into crippled wrecks. 

I guess I pushed them too far. They decided that their best bet would be 
to get me before I got them. It hadn't occurred to me that they'd be 
able to scrape up the courage to attack me, after what I'd done to their 
friends. But even a cornered rat will attack its tormentor. 

They armed themselves with baseball bats, and confronted me one night as 
I was walking home over the grass. Two big boys, armed with baseball 
bats that looked as big as telegraph poles, and as hard as iron. I was 
really worried about what I'd gotten myself into, and thought about 
running for it. Did they want to cripple me like their friends, or were 
they just aiming to kill me? I certainly didn't want to find out the 
hard way. I thought I could maybe out run them, but they were taller and 
their legs were longer, and I wasn't sure. I certainly didn't like the 
thought of being smashed from behind by a baseball bat as I ran away. So 
I decided it was safer to stay and fight, in spite of the horrible odds. 

With their weapons, they didn't need to let me get close enough to use 
my fists. They could stand off and wear me down, each one hitting me 
from behind as I faced the other one. They didn't need to hit very hard, 
either; there's a limit to how much even my hard muscles would be able 
to take being smashed with those wooden bats, whereas clubbing me 
wouldn't hurt them at all. We snarled abuse at each other, but my mind 
was occupied with the tactical problem - how do you deal with two 
determined attackers, armed with baseball bats, who want to batter you 
into a bloody broken ruin. Again I thought of fleeing, but again I 
decided that it would get me into worse trouble than I was already in. 

It was dark; none of us could see very well, and I thought I'd make use 
of that. I bent down and scooped up something heavy, and threw it 
straight at the head of the one on my left. He raised his arms to 
protect his head and ducked, not realizing that there was nothing to 
avoid. While he was distracted, I hurled myself at the one on my right - 
I needed to get him out of action quickly so that I could concentrate on 
the other one. He swung his bat at me, and it connected with my right 
arm, sending a lightning bolt of pain up to my shoulder, followed by 
numbness. I lunged forward in spite of the agony, and my left fist sunk 
into his soft belly with all the force I could gather, sinking deep into 
the puffy flesh, driving hard through his stomach muscles, fat, and 
underlying tissue, until it reached deep within him. The force of my 
punch sent hydrostatic shock waves through his body; the fluid inside 
him was unable to escape through its guiding channels fast enough to 
absorb the shock, and the delicate internal organs that should have been 
protected from harm by his skeleton and musculature felt the force of my 
blow, transmitted through his body. Internal organs don't have the 
ability to feel pain, but they are able to refer the damage to other 
parts of the body, which feel the pain for them. The damage to his 
heart, for example, was expressed as an white-hot agonizing sensation in 
his left elbow. He collapsed. I could safely ignore him. 

Not so the guy behind me. He'd recovered quickly from my trick with the 
imaginary stone, and rushed towards my unprotected back as I attacked 
his friend. He swung his bat, and connected with my left side, and I 
felt my ribs crack from the force of the blow. These guys weren't 
kidding. I fell to the ground, and rolled, trying to put a bit of 
distance between myself and that terrible hard weapon. He stood over his 
friend, trying to help him to stand, but to no avail. I'd hit him with 
all my strength, plus all the hatred of the fourteen-year-old inside me 
that had been raped by this animal, plus all the desperation of the 
seventeen-year-old who didn't want to be crippled or killed. He was 
staying down for a while. 

The other guy stopped tugging at his friend, and stood to face me. 
"Right, bitch. Get ready to die." My left arm dangled uselessly by my 
side, and I hugged my left side with my right arm, trying to contain the 
pain of my broken ribs. "Can't you leave me alone?", I begged. I looked 
down at my dangling arm. "You've broken my arm, and smashed these ribs. 
You've taught me a lesson - leave me alone, and I promise I'll leave you 
alone." He laughed, and waved the bat in my face. "I'll leave you alone 
all right. I'm going to break your other arm, and a few more of your 
ribs, and then I'm going to use this bat where it will hurt you the 
most. I'm going to ram it right up your cunt, until it comes out of your 
throat." I wept. "Please, can't you see I'm helpless? My left arm's 
useless, and I can't move because of my broken ribs. Please, please 
don't hurt me any more", I cried. "I'll do anything you want, anything." 

He moved towards me, holding his bat ready to swing at my right arm. He 
was going to break my arm and make me helpless, then he was going to use 
three feet of hard wood to rape me. He swung, and the thick, heavy 
baseball bat connected with my right arm, and broke the bone with an 
audible crack. 

I moved in towards him, and my left arm shot towards his gut, powered by 
every fiber of my being. I knew I had just the one chance that my right 
arm had bought me, and I was going to use it to the limit. My legs, my 
torso, my shoulder and my arm muscles all drove my fist into his 
stomach, and I hit him so hard that I thought that I could feel his 
backbone on my knuckles. He was driven back a few feet by the force of 
my punch, and dropped like a sack of coal to the ground. I stood over 
him, breathing heavily, and trying not to faint from the pain of the two 
breaks in my right arm. 

It had been agony, using my good left arm to lift my right arm up, so 
that I could grip my jumper in my right hand, and pretend that my right 
arm was fine. It had taken all my self control to pretend that it was my 
left arm that was broken, and allow him to swing his bat at my already 
excruciatingly painful right arm. The verbals were easy; it didn't take 
much acting to have him believing what he so much wanted to believe. But 
he'd fallen for the stratagem, and now lay on the ground, trying to 
breathe without the white-hot lances of agony that were shooting through 
his body. 

I wanted to crawl home and let someone look after me, I wanted to go to 
a hospital and have my arm set in plaster, but I had more work to do 
before I could rest. I didn't want a repeat performance of tonight; I 
had to make sure that these two toughs didn't bother me any more, and 
the best way to do that, I thought, was to tenderize them. Every 
movement I made brought pain to my right arm, and every breath I took 
hurt my ribs. My strength was ebbing; I could see at first hand how pain 
sapped your muscles, and turned power into weakness. I stood panting 
over the two boys, and thought about how I could make sure that they 
were never any threat to me again. 

I picked up one of the baseball bats, and hefted it. I could see how it 
would make a fine weapon. I swung it, and gasped as the pain of my 
broken ribs struck my side. I walked over to one of the boys, curled up 
in a ball, gasping on the ground. I hit him in the kidneys with the bat, 
so straighten him out, and he arched his back with the blow. While his 
stomach was exposed, I rammed the end of the bat into his solar plexus, 
and he passed out from the pain that struck his body. I turned him over 
on to his back, and spread his arms out to each side. I could only swing 
the bat one-handed, and each swing hurt my side, so I abandoned all 
thought of subtlety. I just broke each of his elbows, and each of his 
hands. He must have felt the pain even though he was unconscious, 
because his body spasmed at each blow. Then I turned him onto his back, 
bent his legs, and smashed his kneecaps, and broke his shins. No 
subtlety at all. 

I left him lying there, and walked over to his friend, still lying on 
the ground. I waited a few minutes until the pain from my own exertions 
died down, and went back to work. A couple of blows to his backbone 
uncurled him, and I could bring the end of my bat into his belly button, 
where a great many nerves converge. I had to repeat it a couple of times 
before the pain became too much for him, and he passed out. Half a dozen 
swings of the bat left him with enough broken joints to make me feel 
he'd have long term pain and trouble, and I rested, leaning on the bat. 
I really, really wanted to stop now and leave them, but I drove myself 
on. I had to finish this thing off the right way. 

I loosened the boy's belt, and dragged his trousers down a little way. I 
didn't have the strength to pull them right down - half mast would have 
to suffice. I looked at the bat, and decided that I'd use the handle end 
on his rectum, and thrusting as hard as I could, I managed to get it 
about six inches inside him before I gave up, leaving it in place. 

I picked up the other baseball bat, and staggered to the other boy, the 
one who had promised to rape me with the hard wooden club. I pulled his 
trousers right off, and thought about what my next move should be. I 
wanted something special for him, and couldn't think what. In my 
weakened state, there wasn't much I would be able to do, but it had to 
be something good. I looked around for inspiration. Then I saw a litter 
bin nearby, and I had an idea. I dragged him, inch by inch, over to the 
bin, and tied one of his ankles to its base using his belt. I then took 
his other ankle in my good hand, and lifted it as high in the air as I 
could. I stood on the ankle that was tied to the litter bin, and let 
myself topple to the ground, keeping his ankle firmly in my grip as I 
fell. 

I must have passed out when I hit the ground. My broken ribs were on 
fire, and I could barely breathe. But as I looked at his ruined body on 
the ground, I felt that it had been worth it. His legs were splayed far 
apart, at an impossible angle. I'd destroyed his hip joint, possibly 
both of them, and broken his pelvic girdle. He'd wouldn't be able to 
walk, until he had an artificial hip replacement, and he'd never be able 
to walk quickly, let alone run. But that was only the first part of my 
intentions. With his legs able to freely move in unnatural directions, I 
was able to insert the thick end of the baseball bat into his anus, and 
there was little resistance from his broken bones and ruined hips as I 
pushed it as deeply as I could into place. Without depth markers on the 
side, it was impossible to be sure, but I judged that I'd gotten it 
about eighteen inches in before I couldn't push it any further. 

I was exhausted, and in very great pain. I urinated on his head, and 
went home to lick my wounds, and get hospital attention. I wanted to get 
treatment right away, I figured they'd be very busy tomorrow. 

Chapter 13 - Fucking Catherine 

Catherine licked grease of her fingers and arms; she looked very like a 
cat cleaning herself. She looked up at me, her tale told. "Rollicking 
Rabbits, Catherine," I exclaimed. She looked so lovely in the flickering 
firelight, soft and feminine, vulnerable and in need of protection. I 
crawled over to where she sat, and put my hands on her shoulders. She 
kissed one of my hands, and I pulled her towards me, and held her. I 
felt her trembling; telling me about her fight with the two boys had 
obviously brought it all back to her, the fear and the pain. I held her 
hands in mine, and told her "I thought your broken-arm ruse was 
brilliant." She explained "It wasn't my idea. I got it from a bird, the 
partridge. If a fox prowls too close to a partridge nest, the hen 
partridge pretends to have a broken wing, so the fox tries for the more 
tempting mother instead of her babies. Each time the fox lunges at the 
partridge, she manages to flutter away, but still pretends to have the 
broken wing, until she's lured it far enough from her nest that she 
feels that her babies are safe." "It was still brilliant", I said, "and 
to think of it in the heat of battle, through the pain of an already 
broken arm, and to see it through, knowing that the same arm would get 
smashed again." 

Catherine smiled. "I'm not all brawn, you know." "True, but quite a lot 
of you is." I showed her some of her brawnier bits, and then some of her 
more delicate bits, and one thing led to another, and I wound up 
helpless in some sort of wrestling hold. "This is called a Full Nelson", 
she explained. I told her it didn't hurt at all. "It does when I'm 
fighting - this isn't fighting." I immediately decided that I'd rather 
not try the fighting version, and told her so. She let me go, and came 
round to face me from the front. "Sam," she asked, "Why don't you fuck 
me? Is it because I'm so horrible?" 

"Catherine, Catherine. I don't think you're horrible at all. I think 
you're quite the nicest girl for miles around." She giggled. "I think 
you're sweet, and gentle, and good with a spear, and intelligent, and 
brave." "Then why won't you fuck me?" 

I explained the problem to her. As many people may have forgotten, 
fucking makes babies. The reason why people forget, is that in our 
modern society, fucking doesn't make babies unless people want it to. 
But before contraceptives were invented, a woman might have over a dozen 
babies, if she were lucky. If she wasn't lucky, she'd die in childbirth 
after the first few. Of those dozen babies, maybe a couple would survive 
to adulthood. Modern medicine has changed that - pretty nearly every 
baby survives to adulthood, so people use contraceptives to reduce the 
baby count. But we didn't have access to modern medicine, and I really 
didn't know when we'd get back to civilization. "If it takes several 
months, you getting pregnant could kill us, because it pretty much puts 
you out of action." People are designed to live in tribes, so that the 
men can hunt as a band, and the women can help each other with the 
babies. We didn't have a tribe. "Catherine, we only have one form of 
contraception available to us - abstinence." 

Catherine thought about this for a moment. "Is that the only reason?", 
she asked. "Yes", I said. "I'd fuck you bandy-legged otherwise." 
"Right", she said, and jumped on me. Have you ever been jumped on by a 
woman about five times as strong as you? I have - a long time ago with 
Candy, and now again with Catherine. I worked out a way of dealing with 
it with Candy. What do you do when a strongly muscled woman grips your 
body between her thighs? You probably guessed it - anything she wants. 
Catherine's hands and mouth clamped over my genitals, and it was clear 
to me what I was supposed to do, so I did it. 

She was surprisingly gentle, considering. It was still a lot more 
vigorous than I would have preferred, and frankly left a lot to be 
desired. I was very surprised at the speed with which she climaxed, at 
which point she stopped, leaving me somewhat frustrated. "Whew", she 
said. "That was nice. Thanks."  And off she ran to the lake, to have a 
bit of a swim before darkness fell. Nice? Was that all she had to say? 
Thanks? What happened to "The earth moved"? What happened to "Oh 
darling, that was the greatest thing that has ever happened to me?" 
Nice? Is that all I rated? I'm sure she'd done her best, but her amorous 
prowess was pathetic. I would have expected better from a virgin. And 
then it occurred to me to wonder; maybe she was a virgin? 

There are different kinds of virgins. There are the real, virgo intacta, 
type virgins, but there is also the kind that is technically not a 
virgin, but has never been aroused, never known true love, and never had 
a proper, full-throated, mind-blowing, muscle-weakening, toe-curling 
orgasm. Catherine had been raped, so she was obviously not an intacta, 
but an experience like that can be psychologically devastating, and can 
be difficult to recover from. I suspected that Catherine was in that 
class, and had never made love, just been licked by people who didn't 
really care what happened, or rubbed things on herself. The more I 
thought about her, the more I could see that her emotional development 
had been arrested at the age of fourteen, and it was easy to see what 
had been the cause. She hadn't had a proper adolescence, the time when 
people learn how to stop being children and start being adults. 
Adolescence is a painful experience, but that's because you're learning 
so many new things, learning ethics and morals, learning how to relate 
to other people, learning how to be an adult. 

As the sun set, Catherine returned. I saw her against the crimson and 
maroon sunset, her golden hair looking deep red in the evening light. 
She came into the shelter, we snuggled up like spoons, and went to 
sleep. 

I declared the next day a holiday, of sorts. There was enough left over 
from yesterday's hunt, that we didn't need to trek out, which was very 
nice - this was the first time we'd produced a surplus, and meant that 
things were going well. But I didn't want us to just laze in the sun. I 
had plans for a kiln. I scraped a trench in the ground, and built the 
sides up with clay. I filled it with thick pieces of wood, and used a 
branch from my fire to light it. Once it was going strongly, I roofed it 
over with turves of grass, put the pot I'd made at the end, and a turf 
wall behind it. At the front, I needed an my air-blower, but I had an 
idea how I could get one. The effect was a forced air draft over the 
fire, channelled down the trench, blasting over the pot, reflecting off 
the wall behind it, and escaping upwards. All I needed was something 
that would create a strong draft of air from the front; bellows or an 
electric fan. 

Chapter 14 - Pottery 

"Catherine", I called. "Come and see this." She didn't look too 
impressed, and I explained that we needed a high temperature to fire the 
clay into a pot. I explained the tremendous advantages of having pots to 
put things in, and to cook in, and to store things in. I convinced her 
that what she wanted right now more than anything else was pots, and 
then I explained to her that she was my air-blower. She could use a 
broad leaf to drive the air, but what I needed mostly was her strength 
and endurance. She say down and started flapping. The fire became 
stronger, and I went to get some more clay, because if this experiment 
worked, we'd want lots of pots. Plus, I could think of another important 
use for fired clay. Walls and roofs. 

Catherine fanned while I potted. It was tiring work for her, but she 
didn't complain. I found her presence restful; she didn't feel that she 
had to fill every second with chatter, like so many people do. Potting 
doesn't take much brainpower, so I was able to do a bit of thinking. How 
could we get away from this lonely veldt back to civilization. I thought 
of several plans, some silly but some more sensible. Eventually, I had a 
thought that was so lunatic that I laughed out loud. The more I thought 
about it, the more insane it seemed, but I couldn't actually think of a 
good reason why it wouldn't work. I thought I'd wait before telling 
Catherine about it, in case I could find a reason why my absurd idea 
might be infeasible. 

I told Catherine she could stop fanning the fire, and let it burn 
itself. She came and sat by me and watched me making pots for a while, 
but them she wandered off. I got several more pots ready for firing, 
with different sizes and functions, then started making bricks. You know 
that thing about making bricks without straw? Well, you only need straw 
to strengthen bricks if you aren't going to fire them, and I didn't 
think that unfired bricks would stand up to the sort of rain that I 
could see that we got around here. 

Eventually, Catherine returned. She'd walked right round the lake, and 
she'd found a whole bunch of pretty stones - mostly quartz, that looks 
like diamonds, and pyrites, which looks like gold (and is also known as 
"Fool's Gold"). I explained to Catherine that, although the stones were 
pretty, the white crystals were silica quartz, and the sparkling golden 
rock wasn't gold, it was iron pyrites. I fell silent as I stared at the 
pyrites. If it had been gold, it wouldn't have been nearly as valuable 
as what it actually was. It was iron. Iron! 

I can't begin to describe the excitement I felt as I realized that I had 
everything I needed to make iron, maybe even some sort of steel. To make 
iron, you heat up the ore in a reducing furnace, which means that you 
mix it with charcoal and burn the mixture. You make charcoal out of 
wood, and we had plenty of wood. I was so excited, I stuttered slightly 
as I explained this to Catherine, and I think that my excitement must 
have been infectious, because she got heated up too.  I didn't have to 
explain the importance of iron to her; everyone knows how useful it is. 
I was so enthusiastic, I almost forgot about my pot, but not quite. The 
fire had died right down, and I used a couple of branches as tongs, and 
lifted it out. I rapped on it with my knuckles, and it felt sound. When 
it had cooled, we took it down to the lake, and filled it up with water. 
I'd done a good job, it didn't leak. Catherine carried it back to our 
shelter, and we dined on cold roast deer, left over from the previous 
day. While we ate, I put my pot on the fire, and put all the bones, fat, 
and inedible meat in the water. Meanwhile, Catherine told me about the 
last boy who had raped her. 

Chapter 15 - The last rapist 

I'd turned the other four boys into ruined wrecks, permanently maimed 
and psychologically scarred for life. There was one more left. The urge 
to destroy in me was less, mostly sated by dealing with the other four, 
but I didn't want the fifth boy to escape my attentions. He knew what I 
intended, though, and he made sure that he was always with plenty of 
other people. I saw him in school, but I couldn't get him alone. I had 
to change my strategy. I would have to deal with him in public. 

My first chance came while we were in the hallways at school. He was 
among a group of friends, but I wasn't going to let that bother me. I 
walked right up to him, and rubbed my body against his. "Hello", I said 
brightly. "Remember me?" I could feel him trembling as I leaned against 
him. He was afraid of me - good. "Have you visited the other four guys? 
I hear they're making good progress, and might be walking a little any 
week now." I rubbed it in. "I hope they catch the gang of thugs that 
beat them up. We wouldn't want any more beatings, would we?" He was past 
speaking. "Would we?", I repeated, more loudly. He shook his head, no. 
"I heard that the gang beat two of them up the other week, left them in 
hospital. Used baseball bats on them. Appalling." He knew who had been 
carrying the baseball bats, and that the next day, my arm was in a 
plaster cast, but the two boys were in intensive care, expected to pull 
through, but maimed for life. He knew what had happened, everybody knew. 
Nobody had any evidence, they just knew. 

"I wouldn't like you to get hurt like that." He swallowed. "Look, my 
arm's better now, it was just a plain fracture." I showed him my arm. I 
held it up and flexed, so that he could compare it with his own, thinner 
and smaller, and so much softer and weaker. "I know a way you can make 
sure you don't get torn up like those guys," I said. "What do you want," 
he whispered. "What do you want from me?"  "What are you offering?", I 
asked. "Please," he said. "I saw what you did to them. Please don't hurt 
me." "All right, I won't hurt you today, if you'll just do one little 
thing for me." "Yes, anything. What do you want from me?" 

"Wet yourself," I said. "Look, look at my biceps. Hasn't my arm healed 
well? I heard that they got hit in the belly with a sledgehammer. I bet 
that isn't true; who would walk around carrying a sledgehammer, just so 
that he could smash someone in the belly? Aren't my muscles big? I'd 
like you to wet yourself. Right now." 

I guess it seemed like a great trade. In exchange for some discomfort, 
and some embarrassment, he was free from my frightening presence. I 
watched the warm, wet patch spread on his trousers, smiled at him and 
his friends, and left. I hadn't laid a finger on him, and his 
humiliation was off to a great start. 

Over the next week or two, I bumped into him every time I could. Each 
time, I snuggled up to him, rubbing my body against his, and letting my 
hair tickle his face. Each time, I made him wet himself, and walked 
away. Maybe he hadn't made such a great trade after all. The trouble 
with paying the Danegeld, is that you never get rid of the Dane. 

I increased the pressure. I bought a watermelon, and got him to hold it 
for me. While he held it up, I hit it with my best right hander. The 
melon exploded, pulp, juice and seeds everywhere. I told him that he 
wasn't allowed to piss in the toilet, that he was only allowed to piss 
when I told him he could. I showed him my right fist, told him that it 
was as hard as iron, and let him touch it, and feel my knuckles. I told 
him to imagine what a punch like that would feel like. And I told him to 
wet himself. 

As the days went by, I found him accompanied by fewer and fewer friends. 
Is that a surprise? Each time I came up to him, he wouldn't know whether 
he would be allowed to urinate or not. Often, he was in some discomfort, 
because of my toilet ban. Sometimes, when I told him to piss in his 
pants, he was even grateful for the release. 

I made a regular feature out of his arrival at school. I made him stand 
at the top of the steps, and wet his trousers. No-one wanted to sit 
anywhere near him in class, and certainly not next to him. I told him to 
go visit his friends in hospital, to assure them that I was in good 
health, that my broken arm was mended properly, and that I hoped they'd 
regain some use in their limbs, at least. He came back from those visits 
very submissive and humble, and I would take the opportunity to add some 
new humiliation to those he was already suffering. 

He started to cry when I spoke to him. I always spoke softly, gently to 
him, and always showed him examples of my strength and power. I would 
explain to him how his elbow worked, gently bending it backwards and 
forwards, showing him the delicate bones of the joint and exposed nerves 
inside the elbow. I would stroke his inner elbow, explaining about how 
terribly vulnerable this part of the body is, and how important it is 
not to break it. 

I made sure that he drank plenty of milk at afternoon break, and when it 
was time to go home, I started a new ritual. He had to stand at the top 
of the steps, take off his trousers, and wet his underpants. Then, he 
could put his trousers back on, and go home. After several days of this, 
I changed the routine - instead of putting his trousers back on, he had 
to wear an old skirt of mine while walking home. 

By now, he had no friends at all. His former friends couldn't understand 
what had happened to him, how he had turned into this disgusting, filthy 
perverted animal. But I knew, and so did he. He would cry when I spoke 
to him, great floods of tears for no good reason. By now, he was so 
accustomed to obeying my will, he would wet himself on my command 
involuntarily. I told him to shave his head, and he came in to school 
the next day, totally bald. 

The teachers were complaining to his parents about his behavior, and he 
told me that his parents were trying to find out the reason for his 
strange behavior. He cried often now, for no apparent reason. He would 
sit in class, ignoring the teacher, just crying softly to himself. I 
told him that he mustn't tell anyone about my commands. I told him that 
he had to say that it was an inner voice telling him, and he had to 
obey. I showed him my fist again, made him count my knuckles, touch my 
forearm. I showed him the stunt with the watermelon again. 

I felt that I had him softened up enough, it was time to break his 
sanity completely. In the middle of the school assembly, I told him to 
drop his trousers, shit on the floor, and try to smear it on as many 
people as possible. He took me literally, and I spent ages in the shower 
afterwards, getting rid of the smell, then getting rid of the memory of 
the smell. But so did lots and lots of other people. The effect was 
everything I could have wanted. He was expelled from the school, and 
sent to a psychiatrist for treatment. He continued to wet himself, as 
I'd forbidden him the toilet, and explained that he was obeying his 
inner voices. He was committed to an insane asylum, and probably was 
genuinely insane by now.  

Chapter 16 - Catherine has an orgasm 

As Catherine finished telling this terrible tale, I was both fascinated 
and appalled. A seventeen-year-old girl had figured out how to drive a 
boy insane, and had coldbloodedly done so. I wondered if there was any 
atrocity that she wasn't capable of. I couldn't decide whether she was 
insane herself or not, and remembered the acid test for sanity. If you 
can hold down a job, you're sane. Catherine's obsession had been with 
the five boys who raped her, and her lust for revenge was now sated. 
What she had done was truly horrible, gruesome, but if you read the 
plots of Shakespeare's plays, you'll find far worse things. In fact, if 
Shakespeare wrote today, and someone tried to make a video of some of 
them, action groups would be trying to ban them. Romeo and Juliet, for 
example - have you any idea how young Juliet was? Go look it up. If 
anyone wrote that play today, it would be called child porn, and banned. 

There's nothing new under the sun. And, I've never been raped (playing 
at being raped isn't the same thing at all, that's a fun fantasy between 
two consenting adults, and anything that two grown ups want to pretend 
as part of their sex play is fine). So I couldn't put myself in the head 
of a woman who had been brutalized by five big boys, and who then had to 
continue to go to the same school as them, as if nothing had happened. 
So I couldn't make judgements about Catherine, except to see that she'd 
been so terribly hurt, physically and emotionally, that she'd had her 
adolescence stolen, her innocence prematurely terminated, and sexual 
development derailed. And it takes time to recover from such a horrible 
experience. 

I told her that I forgave her, and that I wanted to try something with 
her. "Do you trust me?" I asked. She hesitated. Life had taught her not 
to trust anyone, I was asking her to give me something that she didn't 
have. She closed her eyes in pain, and started crying. I held her 
gently, and kissed away her tears. "Catherine, Catherine, what have they 
done to you. My baby Catherine, come here, come to Sam, let me kiss you 
better." It's a scientific fact that a kiss is one of the best 
painkillers, and mothers knew this even before science was invented. 
Catherine's pain was pain of the mind, and that's the kind of pain that 
kisses are especially good for. I gave her the standard dose, then a 
double dose. Then, risking the possibility of overdose, I kissed her 
face, her mouth, her nose, her chin, and worked my way southwards, 
kissing as I went. 

From my position near her crotch, I looked up at her. "Trust me, 
Catherine. Close your eyes and trust me." I saw her eyes close, and felt 
her body relax. I'd never felt her body like this before, it had always 
been hard and tensed. Her body was still a lot harder than mine, but it 
had lost the illusion of slick satin on hard steel, and now felt like 
soft silk on firm flesh. I stroked the fur between her legs, and she 
relaxed more. I was very gentle, and tried not to move her along too 
fast. I wanted her mind relaxed, and her body floating on a cloud. 

The human hand is the most devastating sexual weapon that a man or woman 
has. It is designed primarily to deliver sexual pleasure. It is far more 
sensitive than is needed to use the kinds of tools that man evolved 
with, such as sticks and stones. It is far more dextrous than is needed 
to wield a stick or throw a stone. The pads at the ends of our fingers 
were designed entirely for pleasing a lover. 

Likewise, the whole human body is designed to be a sexual organ. Our 
near-hairlessness is a disadvantage, as we are less protected from the 
elements. But the sexual pleasure that the naked ape gets from its 
nakedness, exceeds anything found anywhere else in the animal kingdom. 
There are good evolutionary reasons for this (see the story about Jane). 

I used my hands on Catherine's body, slowly, gently, using long, careful 
strokes over her flanks and belly, and short, rubbing motions on her 
bush. I could feel her getting aroused under my touch; I could smell her 
sexual state, and hear her breathing getting harsher. I avoided touching 
her genitals, I needed them at maximum receptivity for later, and 
touching them now would be too soon. But as her body began to writhe and 
stretch, I reached up to touch and rub her nipples, bringing her 
strongly into heat. 

When I judged the time was right, I brought one of my hands down to 
stroke her clitoris and vagina, and she immediately exploded into 
tumultuous orgasm. Her body shook and spasmed as she tried to get away 
from the delicious torture, but I gripped her carefully, and pushed her 
further into her climax. Her screams were as loud as a woman in pain, as 
I touched places that had never been touched before, and convulsed her 
nervous system into an orgy of sensation. But a body can only take so 
much, and with a final, despairing scream, Catherine fainted. 

I sat and watched her as she lay there, looking like a child asleep. 
After a few minutes, her eyelids flickered and opened, she sat up, and 
uttered an immortal cliche that I'd never actually heard before. "Where 
am I?" I didn't think that needed an answer. She shook herself all over, 
like a dog emerging from a bath, and I waited. "Golly," she said. "What 
did you do to me?" 

"It's called an orgasm, Catherine. I guess you've never had one before." 
She agreed, never. "But I've had sex with people - why didn't I feel 
like this before?" "Because you trusted me, Catherine, because you let 
me take charge of your body, you let me take control of you." "Yes, she 
said. "I've never let anyone take control, I've always wanted to be in 
control, because if you're not in control, then someone else is, and I 
can't stand the thought of someone else doing what they want with my 
body." I went over to the fire, and picked up the pot. "And now I've got 
a special treat for you." 

We shared the soup. There was no salt, no pepper, no garlic. There was 
no cream, no chopped chives, no parsley garnish. But it was the best 
bowl of soup I've ever had, bar none, and it was just as good for 
Catherine. We both slept well that night. 

Chapter 17 - The iron age 

The next few days passed in a similar manner. We hunted, and each time 
we got better at it, until we only needed to trudge out every few days. 
I made more pots and mugs, bricks and shingles. When we had enough 
bricks and roofing shingles, I used them to make a more durable and 
rain-proof shelter for us. I even made a pinch-pot, made out of a ball 
of clay, and pinched into an exotic shape, purely for decoration, to 
emphasize the fact that we now lived in a proper brick house, a one-
roomed dwelling with water laid on (in jugs), sanitation (via a pot), 
and central heating (last thing at night, we brought a pot of boiling 
water into our little house, to warm the chill night air). While I 
worked to improve our standard of living, Catherine gathered wood, large 
quantities of wood, and more of the pretty Fool's Gold, iron pyrites. 

Eventually, I was ready for the Great Experiment, the leap of technology 
that I hoped would bring us into the Iron Age. I built a charcoal-making 
fire, drawing on a book by Arthur Ransome called Swallows and Amazons, 
where the Amazons Nancy and Peggy make charcoal in order to smelt gold. 
Iron has a lower melting point, so I didn't need so much charcoal, but I 
remembered how they made it in the book, and I followed their method. 
You build a pyramid of wood, then cover it with turf (of which the veldt 
had plenty, and our flint tools could easily handle the soft ground), 
except for a kind of chimney. You got the fire burning nicely, then 
smothered the pile of wood entirely with turf, including the chimney. 
After the inside smoulders for a few days, you have a pile of charcoal. 

The point of charcoal, is that it is almost pure carbon, so it burns 
hotter than wood. It's not as convenient as coal, but if I had a horse, 
I'd ride home. You can't use what you haven't got. Next, I built an iron 
smelter. The floor was just hard-trodden earth, the walls were circular 
and made of brick, to keep the heat inside and concentrated. After 
rising for two feet, they curved inwards, making the circle smaller and 
smaller, until there was just a small chimney-hole at the top. There was 
a small square cut in the side of one of the walls, so that I could blow 
air in to make the fire burn hotter. Inside, I built up later after 
layer of charcoal and iron pyrites. I didn't really know how this should 
really be done, or even if pyrites was an adequate ore for iron, but I 
knew the theory, and let that be my guide. I filled the small smelter 
nearly to the brim, then set fire to it with a burning branch. Catherine 
acted as my air blower, but soon the smelter was burning well, the air 
being drawn through by the chimney, and we could let it work on its own. 
I inserted the bricks to close the door. 

The smelter burned for two days, and it was another two days before I 
decided it was cool enough to examine. I pulled the loose bricks away to 
open it up, and Catherine peered over my shoulder. "It's empty", she 
said, disappointed. "No it isn't, look." I pointed. It looked like a 
puddle on the ground. It was iron, melted into a puddle, then 
solidified. We'd made iron. 

You can almost get the same buzz by flying to the moon on a spaceship 
you've built in your back yard, or by giving a devastating orgasm to a 
woman who has never had one before. But let me tell you out of personal 
experience, nothing, absolutely nothing beats the thrill you get out of 
making iron. 

That evening, Catherine and I celebrated. There was no beer, 
unfortunately, or other intoxicants, but we did have each other, and you 
can get pretty high on sex. Afterwards, we didn't have any cigarettes 
(no loss, as neither of us smoked), so instead, Catherine told me how 
she got involved in professional barehand fighting. 

Chapter 18 - Catherine becomes a professional fighter 

After I left school, I went to work as a waitress in the city, in a 
coffee house. I couldn't afford to live in a decent neighborhood, 
although it wasn't quite a slum. The coffee house was pretty run down 
and grubby, though, and frequented by rather a lot of undesirables. I 
thought that wasn't my problem, until one day, an especially ugly one of 
them grabbed me and pulled me down onto his lap as I was passing. I 
struggled, as one does, and got away from him. Next time I passed him, 
he tried to pull me down onto his lap  again, so I gave him a slap on 
his ear, not too hard, but hard enough to sting. I thought that was the 
end of the matter. 

That evening, as I left for home, I was jumped by two guys, Ugly and a 
friend. Before I realized what was going on, they'd forced me down to 
the ground, and I realized they were planning to rape me. Not again! The 
rape of the fourteen-year-old Cat was as fresh in my mind as yesterday, 
and I struggled and tried to scream in my terror. Then I realized that I 
was being rather silly. Neither of these guys seemed to be armed, but I 
had my fists. I relaxed under them, and said "Well, I might as well 
enjoy this. I've always wanted to be raped." "Yeah, baby," Ugly replied, 
wittily. "Could I give you a blowjob first, get you really ready?" I 
requested. Golly, talk about gullible. Ugly lay down and let me get 
positioned above him, and his friend held my ankles to make sure I 
couldn't get away. I pulled down his trousers, pulled up his shirt, and 
tried to bury my fist as deep in his belly as I could. It must have felt 
like the world had fallen on him; he folded up immediately into a tight 
ball. 

I turned to his friend, who was still holding my ankles. "What's the 
matter with him?", I asked, innocently. He let go of my ankles, and 
knelt over Ugly, trying to see what was wrong. He had his back to me, so 
I punched his kidneys as hard as I could, trying to punch them through 
his body. He collapsed on top of his friend. 

I stood up, and rearranged my clothing. There didn't seem to be anyone 
around, and I had a bit of a think. They knew how to find me, and I 
didn't know how to find them. If I just let them walk away, they 
probably wouldn't leave it at that, and I might not be able to deal with 
them so easily next time. I didn't fancy another encounter with two men 
armed with baseball bats, or worse. I had to make sure that they didn't 
come looking for me at some later date, and I could only think of one 
way to do that. 

I wasn't very creative; it was just a chore that had to be done. I laid 
an arm out flat on the ground, but with the elbow on top of one of their 
legs, and pressed down with my weight on the wrist and shoulder until 
the elbow broke. I did this four times. I did the same thing with four 
knees, except that I had to throw myself down on the leg to get enough 
force to break each knee. Enough. If that didn't discourage them, 
nothing would. 

I was wrong, very wrong. It took a few months, but their joints healed 
fairly well, and I was again accosted by the two men, this time moving 
more slowly and painfully, limping, and armed with knives. I had my back 
to a wall; they were spread out on each side of me, feinting with their 
knives, acting like they had all the time in the world. I knew that if I 
went for one, the other would thrust his knife into me, and I wouldn't 
survive the night. They kept moving around, waving their knives, and 
taunting me. "Not so brave now, bitch?" "When you're down and bleeding, 
I'll make your last minutes pleasurable, bitch". I moved, aimed a kick, 
moved. They kept out of my reach, occasionally slashing with a knife. 
They were waiting for me to make a mistake, and I knew that eventually, 
one of the knives would get me. I thought of how I'd dealt with the two 
boys armed with baseball bats, and couldn't see how to apply this here. 

Then it got worse; a third man appeared. He moved towards the one on my 
left, and punched him on the face; he dropped like a stone. The one on 
my right whirled to face this new threat, and slashed out with his knife 
- bad move. I stepped forward, and unleashed a piledriver to his body, 
and that was all it took. Then the other guy staggered to his feet, and 
started towards my rescuer. I didn't bother to warn my new friend, I 
just stepped past him and smashed my fist into the assailant's chest. He 
went down, and this time, he stayed down. 

"Wow," said my unknown helper. "What do you keep in those, dynamite?" I 
shook my head. "Have you ever thought of taking up barehanded fighting? 
With a punch like that, you'd be a winner for sure." I looked up at him 
and smiled. "Jesus, you're a girl!" he said. 

"Well spotted," I said. "Long hair, boobs - adds up to girl." "Sorry," 
he said, "What I mean is, I've never seen a man that can hit that hard, 
let alone a mere girl. You'd be a cinch as a barehander. Sorry, let me 
introduce myself, my name's Harry, they call me Harry the Hammer. Would 
you like to come talk to a guy about a job?" Nothing could be as bad as 
waitressing in that greasy dive. I nodded, and followed Harry the 
Hammer. 

He took me to a nearby gym. Two boxers were dancing with each other in a 
ring, a few guys were pumping small amounts of iron, and a couple of 
overweight wrestlers were trying to frown each other into submission. We 
entered an office, where a small overweight man, glistening with sweat, 
was pushing some papers around. "Whassup, Harry? Nice chick." "I've got 
a possible new fighter for you." "Ah, great, we need new blood, fnarr 
har har. Where is he, what's his name?" "Not a him, a her." And Harry 
pointed to me. "What's her name?" asked Fatso. "Er, dunno." There was a 
short silence, which I broke with a suggestion. "Why don't you ask 
her?", I said. 

Fatso stuck out his hand. "Sidney, Sidney Mincing". "Cat". "Are you a 
fighter?" "Sometimes." "Let's see if you're any good." 

They put me in a ring with one of the dancing boxers, and put these huge 
padded things on my fists. I felt that with those in place, I could hit 
a brick wall and not hurt myself. They rang a bell, and I walked towards 
the other guy. He pranced towards me, bobbing up and down, and lashed 
out a fist, hitting my nose. It hurt, stung quite badly, so I hit him 
back, as hard as I could. He had one of his padded gloves in the way, so 
I hit that instead of the belly I was aiming for, but the effect was the 
same, because his hand was driven into his stomach, he grunted, and 
dropped like a deflated rubber toy. 

I turned back to my corner to get these silly gloves taken off, but 
Harry said "Hang on, he'll get up and you have to go on fighting." "No," 
I said. "He won't get up." And I was right. Harry helped me off with the 
gloves, and we went back to Sidney's office. Harry told him what had 
happened "One punch, and he was done for." Sidney was impressed. "OK, 
you're a fighter. Fifty bucks a fight, eighty if you win. Back here this 
evening." 

Chapter 19 - How to make a fight last longer 

And that was how my career as a fighter started. I fought twice that 
evening. They didn't put the silly padded gloves on my hands, instead 
Harry wrapped a leather band round my knuckles, to protect them in case 
I hit something hard. I don't know why; I couldn't see anything hard 
inside the ring. Everything was padded except my fists, and they were 
the only hard things in sight. The fights were easy. Once you knock a 
guy down and he stays down, the fight is over. My two fights took about 
ten seconds, and about five. Afterwards, Harry took me out for a 
celebratory meal, and some advice. 

"You're winning too fast, Cat", he said. The audience isn't there to 
watch a man get knocked down, they want to see a fight. They want there 
to be some element of suspense, they want to see one guy gradually draw 
ahead of the other and win. My one-punch fights weren't entertainment. 
Harry told me I had to hit them less hard - hard enough to draw the 
strength out of them, so they couldn't hurt me, but not so hard as to 
put them right out of the fight. Otherwise, in spite of winning, I'd 
find myself back as a waitress. Also, he explained, if I just damaged my 
opponents without them having any chance of winning, I'd soon run out of 
people willing to face me. 

I listened to Harry, he seemed to know what he was talking about. But I 
didn't know how to do as he requested; I didn't know how hard you have 
to hit to only partially disable a man. I asked him to teach me; I 
fluttered my eyelashes at him and looked demurely up into his face, and 
said "Harry, show me how to beat up a man slowly, so that everybody can 
enjoy watching me do it." 

Over the next few weeks, Harry showed me how to punch at less than my 
full power. At first, we used the punch bag in the gym, but after that 
burst, we went to the basement of his house, and practiced there, using 
a roll of carpet. Eventually, I could judge the strength of my punch, 
and could go anywhere from 20% to 100% of full power. Harry also showed 
me how to judge the strength of the abdominal muscles that I'd be 
facing, so that I could decide how much power to use. 

My next fight was much better, from the point of view of the audience. I 
hit him hard enough to turn his arms to jelly, then spent the next four 
rounds letting his soggy arms hit me, and pretending to hit him back. On 
the fifth round, I hit him a bit harder, and he went down and stayed 
there. The crowd cheered, Sidney told me how pleased he was, and Harry 
told me that I was a boxer now. Is that what it's all about? Wouldn't it 
have been simpler to just pre-arrange the whole show? 

Over the next few months, Sidney matched me against several men. I was 
always careful not to hit them too hard at first, so that the audience 
would have something worth seeing. But one day, when I came in to the 
gym and said hello to Harry, he mumbled something back, and wouldn't 
look me in the eye. I took no notice, and did my usual workout with the 
weights. Sidney came by and told me that I had a special match that 
evening, and I should wear some makeup. Makeup? A boxer, wearing makeup? 
Oh well, he pays the wages, I wear makeup. 

I was surprised at the size of the crowd that evening. I asked the 
reason, but Harry wouldn't answer, and looked embarrassed about 
something. I shrugged my shoulders, touched up my mascara, and climbed 
into the ring. The crowd cheered for me, and then my opponent turned up, 
and they cheered really loudly for him. He ducked through the ropes, got 
into the ring, and stood up, facing me. 

It was like looking at a mountain. I guessed he must be six-eight, maybe 
more, and I'm only five-seven. He must have been more than twice my 
weight, all of it muscle. His arms had to be six inches longer than 
mine, and I felt like a piece of meat that has just been pushed into the 
top of a mincing machine. 

You think men are macho, and do silly things to feed their ego? Women 
are too, they just give it a different name. What do you suppose makeup 
is all about. You think we wear it for men? Women call it feminine 
pride; the effect's the same. I could have ducked out of that ring, and 
ran for my life, but how could I face the guys in the gym after that? I 
had at least to let him knock me down, before giving up. 

I asked my cornerman what was going on here. Apparently, Sidney had been 
setting me up ever since I'd arrived. The idea was to get the fans 
howling in blood lust, hating the woman who had beaten so many men, 
wanting to see her pounded into the canvas. Tickets had cost fifty 
dollars apiece, and the hall was sold out. Sidney must have made a 
bundle out of my impending doom. I resolved to have a little discussion 
with Sidney at my earliest possible convenience. Which, right now, 
looked to be as soon as I got out of hospital. 

We sat in our corners, and I was thinking as hard as I could. Was there 
some way I could avoid getting splattered all over the ring? Could I 
somehow lose gracefully? Was there some way I could persuade this 
gorilla to be a bit gentle with me? Then I saw Sidney, grinning all over 
his face, and I had an idea to get out of this predicament unscathed. 

Chapter 20 - Fighting the mountain 

The bell rang, and the gorilla bounced out of his corner, throwing 
punches at the air. I walked toward him. He threw a punch at me; if it 
had connected, that would have been the end of the fight. His hand was 
as big as a teapot, and as hard as wood. I couldn't get close enough to 
hit him; not without getting so close that one of his mallets would get 
within range of my body, and I didn't want to find out if my hardened 
muscles would protect me from those huge hands. I skipped backwards, 
backwards, backwards. He followed me, full of the confidence that his 
superior weight, height and strength gave him. I knew I couldn't retreat 
for ever - sooner or later I'd run out of ring, get cornered, and then 
battered to death. But I had a plan. There was one way I could hit him 
without my body getting within his range. 

My fists are small, so the force that I throw is concentrated into a 
tiny area. They're very hard; I can actually bang six inch nails into 
wood with them. And if I put all my force behind them, you feel like 
someone has hit you with a claw hammer. I had to time it right; I might 
not get more than one attempt. He was using standard tactics, jab with 
the left, and swing with the right, jab with the left, and swing with 
the right. You could rely on it - jab, swing. Jab, swing. The jab to get 
my guard out of the way, the swing to exploit the opening. But I wasn't 
playing his game, I just kept retreating out of the way of both punches. 
I got the hang of his timing, and just as he started another jab-swing, 
I made my move. 

He jabbed with his left. I moved back twelve inches, and punched as hard 
as I could with my right. But I didn't aim for the body that was out of 
my reach - I aimed for the fist that was on its way toward me. His fist 
met mine, with a sound like a hammer hitting wood. I heard something 
break, and hoped that it wasn't in my hand. I didn't feel a thing, and 
neither did he, not yet, because pain travels a lot more slowly than 
sound or sensation. The second part of his combination punch moved into 
position, and as his right hand came up, I hit it with all my strength 
with my left. I saw his hand break; I saw my fist crush his knuckles and 
break his fingers. I knew that I didn't have to worry about his right 
any more, and I guessed his left was in pretty poor shape too. I stepped 
back, and started back pedalling some more. I needn't have, he wasn't 
moving toward me. He was looking at his hands, puzzled. Then the pain 
struck me; it felt like both my fists were on fire. I saw the pain 
strike him at the same moment, and then the bell rang. 

I sat on my stool, and rested my weary legs. Now I understood why boxers 
look like they're dancing, it's to keep out of the way of your opponent. 
I drank some water, and flexed my fingers. They hurt like fury, but 
nothing was broken, and I was ready for more. I looked across the ring 
at my gorilla. His second was unwrapping the leather from his hands, and 
the gorilla was wincing from the pain of it. I smiled at him, and 
borrowed a brush to tidy my hair. I like psyching out my opponents using 
my hair; it's long, and soft, and feminine, and contrasts nicely with my 
fists, which are small, and hard, and frightening. The bell rang for 
round two. 

The gorilla was still in the game, but he'd changed his punching 
tactics. Instead of jab-swing, he was using his right hand to protect 
his face, and holding his left ready to hit me if I got close enough. I 
moved in on him, and pretended to punch his body. His guard came down, 
and his left jabbed out. I tried to hit it with my right, but he wasn't 
going to let that happen again, and pulled it back sharply. We sparred 
for a few minutes, with me moving towards him, and him retreating. It 
felt good that this man-mountain was acting so cautious around me, and I 
told him so. "How'd you like getting hit by a girlie? Come and hit me 
now, I want you to hit me. You're not scared of the little girlie, are 
you?" I taunted him, but he didn't rise to the bait. The audience was 
getting restive; they'd expected to see my blood by now. The round ended 
without either of us connecting. 

During the rest, I thought out my tactics for the next round. If he 
wasn't willing to come to me, I had to go to him, but I still had to 
stay clear of his undamaged left hand. When the bell rang, I was across 
the ring at once, and he'd barely stood up when I hit him in the gut 
with my left hand. I put a lot behind that punch - all the momentum of 
my rush across the ring, the strength of my thighs driving my body 
forward, my shoulder muscles driving my arm forward, my elbow 
straightening to add to the momentum of my fist, my small, hard, iron 
fist. 

His body was hard, very hard, harder than anything I'd ever hit before. 
But my hand was small, and as hard as iron, and it must have felt like 
he'd been hit with a hammer. He grunted, and leaned back against the 
corner post. I could see his stomach muscles relax from the punch, as 
the pain struck him. His back leaned towards the corner post, and by the 
time he was touching it, my right hand arrived. I hadn't thought that 
one punch would be enough, and I was planning on two big ones, driven by 
all my muscles, and then lots of smaller punches, powered mostly by my 
shoulder and upper arm. 

With his stomach relaxed, my right hand penetrated his muscles, drove 
through his stomach, and damaged his internal organs. The hydrostatic 
shock to his cardiovascular system was transmitted through his body by 
his blood and other internal fluids; the pain must have been extreme. I 
think that he was finished at that point, but it was too late to change 
my tactics, and I hit him again and again in the stomach, destroying his 
already weakened abdomen, turning his powerful body to mush. After about 
a dozen punches, I stopped, and let his body slide down to the canvas at 
my feet. I'm not sure if he was conscious or not, but that was entirely 
academic, because the shock to his system had cut the communication 
between his brain and his arms and legs. His eyes were open, but I don't 
think he was seeing or hearing anything. I think he was just aware of 
the incredible pain that was roaring though his body. 

I shook my hair out of my eyes, and smiled. The crowd was roaring. 
They'd come to see me get beaten to a pulp, but this was just as good. I 
walked round the ring, shaking my hands over my head, then jumped over 
the ropes, and walked up the aisle. But I wasn't heading for my dressing 
room, not yet. I had a job to do. I saw Sidney, and smiled and grinned 
at him, and beckoned him towards me, my mouth pouting for a kiss. He 
came towards me with his head cocked forward, and as soon as he got 
close enough, I hit him three times. Once in the stomach, to shock his 
body into jelly, then as he began to sag, once in the upper chest to 
cave in his ribs, puncture his lungs and maybe even damage his heart. As 
he slumped forward, I hit him a third time, in his face, which was as 
soft and yielding as the rest of him, caving in at my touch. This 
bastard had set me up. 

I turned, looking for the other bastard. I saw Harry, who had known 
about the set-up and not warned me, trying to get out of the hall as 
quickly as he could, but his fear made him clumsy, and I caught up with 
him before he could get out. One punch to his kidneys put him down, and 
then I stood over him, and dared him to get up. He knew what would 
happen if he did, so he stayed down. I taunted him with his cowardice, 
but he'd seen what had happened to the gorilla, and he knew I was angry. 
I told him "Harry, I could always kneel down and smash your body apart 
with my fists" "No, please, I couldn't help it, he'd have made me fight 
instead if you'd not gone into the ring." "Gee, thanks Harry. I guess me 
getting splattered wouldn't hurt nearly so much. Stand up, you 
snivelling coward, so I can trash your lily-livered body." "No, please 
Cat, your fists are so hard, you'd damage me permanently. Anything, I'll 
do anything, please don't hurt me." 

I remembered a boy who had said that to me; now Harry the betrayer was 
begging for mercy. "I won't punch you to pieces if you do one thing for 
me now." "Anything, anything, what do you want", Harry pleaded. "Harry," 
I said. And waited. He looked at me expectantly, ready to obey me. "Wet 
yourself." He thought he hadn't heard me right. I knelt down beside him, 
and showed him my small, hard fist. "Harry, you helped me learn how to 
pull my punches. I can punch more gently now, so you don't pass out 
immediately. I can hit you here, and here, and here" I touched his body 
in different places with my fingertips, then I took his hand, and made 
him feel my fist. I moved my fist onto his soft mouth, and rubbed his 
nose with it. I touched his cheek with it, and then moved it down to his 
shaking body. "Harry, do what I tell you. Wet yourself." 

He did, of course, in front of a big crowd that was watching the drama. 
I got a great thrill out of watching the wet patch spread over his 
trousers, demonstrating to everyone what a total wimp and pussycat he 
was. I stood up, turned, and went back to my dressing room. 

I showered, and changed into a pretty silk dress, with a long skirt and 
long sleeves. As I brushed my hair, there was a knock on the door. I 
opened it, and in walked a man who would change my life, who would make 
me an offer I couldn't refuse, who would become my new boss. 

Chapter 21 - The balloon idea 

Catherine looked at me as she finished this part of her life. I told her 
that it seemed to me that every time she trusted someone, they betrayed 
her. I guess that makes you hard, vicious and unhappy, and I told her 
that what she needed was someone to love, who would love her, which 
would make her soft, gentle and happy, like a woman wants to be. "Yes", 
she said, "That does sound rather nice." We fell asleep. 

Over the next few days, I started using the iron I'd made. I gave first 
priority to weapons, to improve our hunting. And the thing that would 
improve our hunting most, would be a bow and arrows. But it takes a lot 
of skill to shoot straight with a traditional bow and arrow, so what I 
made was a simple crossbow. The iron made that possible, because I used 
it for the quarrels, and with the crossbow, plus a couple of iron-bladed 
spears, Catherine was able to go off hunting by herself, and return with 
some good kills. The advantage of sending Catherine off by herself, was 
that it freed me up for a couple of research and development projects 
that I needed to do, before I could start my masterpiece. 

It was getting increasingly important that we get back to civilization. 
I didn't think Catherine was pregnant, but we were certainly doing the 
thing that made it possible. Even without that, there was the 
possibility of toothache, appendicitis, broken arm, all the things that 
are entirely trivial to modern medicine, but are killers in the 
primitive conditions we had. Not to mention the likelihood that the herd 
of deer that we'd come to depend on, would eventually figure out that 
they'd be wise to leave the neighborhood. I had a plan for getting us 
back, but I didn't want to tell Catherine about it until I knew that it 
really was feasible. It sounded to lunatic, so ridiculous, so absurd, 
and I needed Catherine's full co-operation to make it happen. 

After a few days, I had all the outstanding problems solved, and I'd 
done the necessary calculations. So, one fine evening, I broached the 
subject with Catherine. "Catherine, you know we can't stay here for 
ever, we have to find our way back." "Yes," she said, regretfully. 
"Here's how we're going to travel," I said. "We're going to fly." 

Catherine thought I was joking, of course. I told her I was completely 
serious, and that I could make an aircraft, and fly us back. Catherine 
stopped laughing, and sat facing me. She took my hands in hers, and said 
"Tell me how I can help." 

I thought back to the Cat I'd first met, the wild Cat, the animal who 
had threatened to beat me up for no particular reason. I thought how 
she'd improved over the weeks, until now she was willing to believe what 
was, on the face of it, a completely impossible proposition, and ask 
politely how she could help with it. She was displaying real maturity 
now, behaving as an adult. Adults care about the future, and co-operate 
with each other to make life easier, that's one of the differences 
between adults and children. So I thought it was time to stop playing 
games, and tell her what I had in mind. 

"A hot air balloon, Kate. It's just a big bag of cloth, filled with hot 
air, which is lighter than cold air, so the balloon floats. You steer by 
getting up to an altitude where the wind is going your way. You go 
higher by throwing out ballast, or by heating your air some more. You go 
lower by releasing some hot air from the bag. You have a basket 
underneath to sit in, and you travel as fast as the wind. The technology 
is so simple, the Ancient Romans could have made one, if they'd thought 
of it, and if they'd had a use for it." 

I explained that the main work would be in making the cloth for the bag, 
but if we crushed the palm leaves, and extracted the fiber, then we 
could spin and weave the fiber into cloth. There are a lot more details 
in making a balloon, but I didn't think now was the time to tell Kate 
about all the problems I already had solved. However, there was one 
thing I had to tell her. "It'll take about six months to finish, and 
we'll both have to work jolly hard." Kate flung her arms round me, and 
promised to work her socks off, and I pointed out that she didn't have 
any socks, and she said that as soon as we had some cloth, socks would 
be a high priority, and she wrestled me down to the ground, but I 
managed to get on top of her because she was too weak from laughing, and 
it was about an hour before either of us were in a fit state to do 
anything. 

For the next few months, everything was secondary to the balloon 
project. There was only one big task really, and that was making cloth. 
Kate gathered palm leaves, and I soaked them, pounded them with stones, 
and extracted the fibers. I made a simple spinning wheel, treadle 
operated, and Kate would sit and spin thread for hours and hours. 
Meanwhile, I was building a power loom, because hand-weaving the cloth 
would simply take too long. I thought about steam power, but I simply 
didn't have the time to develop all the components of a steam engine. I 
thought about water power, but there wasn't any handy river nearby that 
would be big enough, and eventually I decided that my loom would be 
woman-powered. 

A loom is a fairly simple machine. You need a wooden frame, to stretch 
the warps. Then you need to pick up every other warp, and catapult a 
shuttle across the weft, between the warps. You then lower those warps, 
and pick up the alternate warps, and throw the shuttle back. After each 
to-and-fro of the shuttle, you push the wefts back to keep the weave 
tight. That's all you need. If you want to weave a pattern, it's a lot 
more complicated, but I thought a plain ecru cloth would do fine. 

Cloth like this wouldn't hold air, it would just leak through the weave. 
So I planned to dope the fabric, and to make the dope, I was boiling up 
a concoction of hoof and horn, which was giving me an increasing amount 
of sticky, gooey mess that would close the weave most effectively. Any 
meat that Kate brought back that was surplus to our immediate needs, I 
cut into strips and smoked, to give us rations for the journey. Nancy 
(in Swallows and Amazons) called this "pemmican", which I think is a 
much better name than "jerky". 

Before we started making the balloon, we had another use for the fabric 
we were making - clothes. The clothes we'd arrived in hadn't been 
terribly suitable in the first place, and were getting rather ragged and 
used. I showed Kate how to use a small bone with a tiny hole in it as a 
needle, and she sewed trousers for me, skirts for her, and all the other 
items that humans find so necessary. 

Kate told me one night, that she'd never imagined she'd be spending her 
time as a spinner and weaver, and I told her that I was doing a lot of 
things I'd never thought I'd need to do. She asked me how big the 
balloon had to be, and I told her what I was aiming for; thirty feet 
across. I didn't arrive at that figure by scientific calculation, 
though. I just remembered hot air balloons that I'd seen. "I bet they 
used nylon", said Kate, and I realised that she was right, and that our 
linen was much heavier, and I didn't know if it would be big enough. But 
I didn't know how much lift I would get from the hot air, because I 
didn't know how much it expands when heated. So, I decided that I would 
have to do what NASA did before they sent a rocket to the moon and back. 
I would have to do smaller scale experiments. 

I made a balance and a set of weights, using stones. A balance is easy, 
it's just a length of wood, balanced in the middle, and with the length 
marked in inches or whatever. Weights are easy too; I picked a stone 
that I thought was about right for a pound, and used the balance to make 
larger and smaller weights. I made a test balloon twelve inches across, 
and weighed the envelope. Then I filled it with hot air, and found out 
how much my small balloon would lift. 

The rest was calculation. Have you ever done these kinds of calculations 
without a computer, without even a calculator? I have - when I was in 
school, those things hadn't been invented, so I was no stranger to 
arithmetic. The lifting power of a balloon is proportional to the volume 
of hot air, which is proportional to the cube of the balloon's size. The 
weight of the envelope, is proportional to the square of the size. So if 
you double a balloon's size, you quadruple the weight, but multiply the 
lifting power by eight. I wanted my balloon to lift Kate and myself, 
plus the basket and rigging, plus supplies, water, and ballast. Thank 
heavens for the cube law. I calculated that 45 feet would be big enough, 
50% more than my original guess. 

That evening, Kate and I had a small ceremony. We filled the little 
balloon with hot air over the fire, and with only a little weight to 
ballast it, released it. It rose, up and up, higher and higher, until we 
couldn't see it any more against the blue sky. It gave us both hope, and 
a feeling that this would work. 

Chapter 22 - Kate destroys a man's body 

That night, Kate told me about her new boss. He ran another fighting 
outfit, and the gorilla she'd just vanquished was one of his boys. He'd 
watched her performance, and didn't care in the slightest that she'd 
badly damaged his man; he just wanted her to come fight in his group. He 
offered her $10,000 for each fight; $15,000 if she won, $25,000 if she 
totally destroyed her opponent, wrecking his limbs and ruining his body. 

I couldn't believe what he said. I'd been getting $80. He explained that 
the sight of a woman ripping a man to shreds would be so erotic, so 
exciting, that people would pay a fortune for the opportunity to come 
and see it. He told me that he'd offer my opponents even more money, 
especially if they won, but that was fair, because this would be their 
last fight, whereas I would be fighting each week. He told me that he'd 
expect me to damage my opponents so badly that they'd spend weeks in 
hospital, but that I should try not to kill anyone, because that was 
much harder to cover up. He would charge for seats at the live 
performance, and also video the proceedings, and he'd give me 4% of the 
proceeds from selling the video. He spoke to me quietly, and with 
respect, treating me as a person, and not just the bimbo that so many 
other people seemed to think I was. I accepted his offer. We shook 
hands, and he didn't try to crush my hand like so many men do, which was 
sensible of him. 

I walked out through the gym. They were loading Sidney onto a stretcher, 
and I watched. He was still in agony, and his face was badly caved in. I 
thought of what he'd tried to do to me, and I thought of the three 
punches I'd smashed him with, and I felt better inside. Then I walked 
over to Harry, who was sitting on the ground, his back still arched from 
the pain of where I'd hit him, a large wet patch covering his trousers. 
"Hey, Harry - guess what," I said, cheerfully. I explained to Harry that 
I was changing bosses, not that Sidney would be much use for quite a 
long time, and that I wanted to keep Harry as my personal trainer. I 
wanted to absorb his skills and his experience, but more than that, I 
wanted to punish him some more for his betrayal. I told Harry he'd be 
coming with me to California, and that we were leaving tomorrow, and 
that he should turn up at my place nice and early, with a suitcase of 
his clothes, and his car all gassed up and ready to go. He opened his 
mouth to protest or argue, so I crouched down over his body, and made a 
fist in front of his eyes. I trailed my soft hair over his face, and 
then rubbed my hard fist on his nose. "You have something to say, 
Harry?" He shook his head. "Wet yourself, Harry." He obeyed. 

I prepared carefully for my first fight. I designed a fighting persona 
for myself, calling myself "The Golden Amazon". I wore a long gold-
colored silk skirt, slit up almost to my waist on both sides, so it 
wouldn't get in the way. I wore gold high heeled pumps, although I 
didn't plan to actually fight in them. I had my hair done, so that 
instead of just hanging down or in a pony tail, it would have body and 
bounce, and I had it darkened a bit, so that instead of ash blonde, it 
was a deep golden color. I also put some fake tan on my skin to get a 
golden color (too much sun on a fair skin can give you skin cancer). I 
added a couple of props; a longbow and a huge six-foot two-handed 
broadsword. I wore a long, swirling satin cloak, to hide my body, and to 
increase the dramatic effect when I took it off. I looked like a 
terrifying female amazon, your worst nightmare and your best dream, both 
at once. 

They made it easy for me in my first fight. My opponent was about my own 
size and weight, and it was completely unfair to put him into the ring 
with the Golden Amazon. I got into the ring, dumped my bow and sword, 
and took off my cloak. The effect was very satisfying; the silence was 
only broken by a few low moans. They announced the fight, and the boy 
started the boxer's dance. I stood and waited, my arms by my sides. I 
guess he'd been warned about me, because he didn't seem to want to 
fight. I put my hands behind my head, and shook my breasts at him. He 
stopped dancing, and I could see the erection in his shorts. I swayed 
towards him; he watched my nipples, like a rabbit watches a snake. As 
soon as I was close enough to him, I slowly brought my arms down to my 
sides, and smashed my fists into his unprotected stomach. 

He collapsed like someone had just let out his air. First, he folded in 
half, bowing from the waist. Then, his knees buckled, and he sank slowly 
to the canvas. Once again, the power behind my fist was too much for 
flesh and blood. That was the end of the fight, if you define a fight as 
something where both sides participate. What followed wasn't a fight, it 
was a man being hurt and damaged more than he'd ever been before. I 
thought about the $25,000 that I'd get for complete destruction of this 
wimp, and I thought about his future as a fighter. It was no contest. I 
knelt down next to him, my silk skirt getting in the way a bit. 

The $25,000 that had been promised to me if instead of merely beating my 
opponent, I ruined his body - it was as good as mine. The pain in his 
belly drained every ounce of his strength, and he would now be incapable 
of stopping me from doing whatever I wanted to his helpless joints and 
bones. I started with his arms. 

I rolled him over onto his front, and lay his arms by his sides. I stood 
on his back, and lifted his left hand as high as I could. All the 
leverage of his arm was now twisting his shoulder further than it could 
go; I pulled his arm up until it was vertical. Keeping his arm straight, 
I then used my weight to push it further towards his head. The further I 
pushed it, the more resistance I got from the ligaments of his shoulder, 
and he started to make noises as I stood on him. I threw myself at his 
hand, twice, three times, until suddenly I felt something tear, his 
shoulder stopped resisting my pressure, and I could move his arm quite 
easily an any direction. 

The effort of this had made me perspire (animals sweat, men perspire and 
ladies glow, but I guess Golden Amazons aren't ladies). I went back to 
my corner, and asked Harry for a towel, to dab my face, and a drink of 
water. As he obeyed me, I noticed a definite erection bulging his pants. 
"Harry", I said casually. "You're erection is showing." He looked down, 
and as he looked, I moved my hand, and gripped his genitals brutally. He 
gasped with pain, and his erection disappeared. "Later, Harry, later." 

I returned to the guy laying broken on the mat. After the effort of 
destroying a shoulder (men have large shoulders), I wanted something 
easy, like a hand or an elbow. I raised his other arm, and called for 
silence in the audience. I explained that I wanted them to choose for 
me. I guess none of them put themselves in the shoes of the man I was 
mangling, or they wouldn't have been so enthusiastic about choosing his 
elbow. 

You might think that hands are easier than elbows, because they are 
smaller. Certainly, fingers are easy to break, but it really is quite 
hard to do much more than that to a hand, because there's no leverage. 
Elbows, on the other hand, excuse the pun, are different. There's a very 
convenient lever, more than a foot long, excuse the pun, on each side of 
the joint. And if you bend an elbow backwards, you don't need to bend it 
very far before it gives way. I put my leg flat on the canvas, put the 
knuckle of his elbow on my leg, and pushed down on his shoulder and 
wrist. I didn't even have to use all my weight before I felt it snap. 

I remembered the time I'd crushed the boys who had raped me. It seemed a 
lot harder to break this man's joints than theirs had been. I suppose 
that there were two main reasons for this - a man is bigger, tougher, 
thicker and harder than a boy, and I didn't have the hatred of a raped 
fourteen-year-old driving me. I wondered how I would cope with his legs, 
because they looked a lot more difficult to deal with. 

By now, he was moaning quite a lot. His shoulder and elbow must have 
hurt like a whole-body toothache, and the pleading noises he was making 
were irritating me. To shut him up, I rolled him over to his back, and 
knelt down beside him. I used my hair to tickle his chest, rubbing it 
gently up and down to sensitize his body for what was to come. I then 
straddled his groin, making sure that my crotch rubbed against him; by 
now, he was semi-hard. I punched hard down on his solar plexus, where 
the nerve ganglia cluster. 

He was tough, I'll give him that. I'd expected instant loss of 
consciousness, but he made a strangled noise, and tried to fold himself 
in half. Since I was sitting on his groin, that meant that his head came 
up, so I punched him lightly on the nose, and he smashed his head on the 
mat with a satisfying thump. He lay still, and the annoying noises had 
stopped. Now I could deal with his legs. 

I stood up, and wondered what would be the easiest way to turn him into 
a quadriplegic, a wheelchair case incapable of using his arms or legs. 
He was flat on the floor; only his feet stuck up, and I wondered if I 
could do anything good with those. If I pressed down with sufficient 
force on his toes, the lever of his foot would tear his ankle apart, but 
only if I stopped his leg from moving. No problem. I put his legs 
together, stood with my foot planted across his knees, and stamped down 
on his upturned toes with my other foot. Something cracked in his ankle, 
and his toes were no longer turned up. Now that his ankle joint was 
weakened and broken, I could grip his toe and heel in my hands, and 
twist until I could feel there was nothing opposing my torque. That 
ankle would now need extensive repair, maybe even replacement. 

By now I was feeling tired, and I was wishing I had some easier way to 
smash his other leg. I couldn't see any, so I walked back to my corner 
to consult Harry. Harry looked scared as I walked towards him, and I 
realized that my frown of concentration must have frightened him. So I 
smiled instead, kissed him, and asked him what he thought would be the 
best way to mangle the other leg. 

Harry's been in this business for a long time, but he'd been in the 
fight game, and what I was doing couldn't be called fighting. He just 
looked more and more terrified, until I got fed up with him, told him to 
wet himself (it's amazing how easy it had been to train his sphincter to 
open on my command) and went back to the man laying on the mat. Sorry, 
former man laying on the mat, because he'd never be a whole man again. 

There's no point in just standing there, girl, I thought. I turned my 
back to his head, straddled his good leg, and lifted it up. It was big 
and heavy, and felt like a log of wood. But the knee has to be the 
weakest point. I braced his knee against my thigh, and pulled it 
sideways, exerting a side force on the knee joint. I couldn't twist hard 
enough to do anything, but seeing his leg straight and under lateral 
tension, gave me an idea. I held his leg up with one hand, keeping his 
knee under lateral tension, and with the other, punched as hard as I 
could into the side of his knee. At first, nothing seemed to be 
happening, but I figured that the hammer of my fist had to be doing 
something inside his knee. I punched again and again, until the area I 
was hitting seemed to soften. As I continued my blows, I felt his knee 
getting softer and softer, until it felt so soft, I stopped punching. 
When I felt it, there didn't seem to be any bones or cartilage holding 
it together, and it bent freely in my hands. I dropped his leg, he was 
finished. The audience was going wild, yelling and chanting "Golden 
Amazon, Kill, Kill". 

I stood up, and tidied my hair. Harry handed me my sword and bow, I put 
my cloak back on, and went back to my dressing room. Simon was waiting 
for me, with a sheaf of money. Counting it would have been poor style, 
so I just handed it to Harry, and told him to refresh my feet, which 
were tired and sweaty from all my efforts. 

I sat down, and Harry took off my boots and socks, and started licking. 
I had him well trained. Simon looked startled at first, but soon ignored 
what was going on, and we spoke about the match. 

"You did good", he said. "Jim will have to spend a month or two in 
hospital, but the $50,000 will keep him from being too unhappy." I 
thought a month or two was optimistic, and I thought that even after 
they'd finished repairing him, he'd still be somewhat damaged, 
physically, and very damaged mentally. Being destroyed by a pretty girl 
seems to do that to people. "The audience loved it, and the video should 
sell well. Handle the next one similarly." 

I nodded, enjoying the feel of Harry's tongue on my feet. Harry had 
taken to foot-licking like a duck to water, after some initial 
resistance, that lasted as long as it took me to clench my fist and show 
it to him. Simon continued "Just one criticism, a minor one." I raised 
one eyebrow, a trick that took me hours in front of a mirror to master. 
"Could you make your opponent last longer? Partly for the live audience, 
who will feel more satisfied by a long, drawn-out match, but mostly for 
the video, because if the video is much less than half an hour, we get 
complaints." 

I looked down at my fist, and slowly closed it and opened it. "It's hard 
work, you know, smashing up a man's body. Quite tiring." Simon 
understood my meaning. "I'll pay you an extra $10,000 if you make them 
last 30 minutes, $20,000 if you can keep them going for a full hour." I 
looked at him. The only movement was Harry lapping round my toes, 
cleaning the dirt from between them, and making them feel really good. I 
looked down, and patted his head. He winced as my hand moved toward him, 
and I laughed at his comical fear. I looked back at Simon. "Call it 
$50,000 for an hour." He agreed. "Heel, Harry - we're going home." 

Thus it was that Kate told me how she agreed to accept $50,000 for 
torturing men to the edge of death, to the point where death must have 
seemed preferable, to condemning them to a life as a cripple. Now I 
could see how she had become such an emotional monster. The initial rape 
had started the process, her revenge on the rapists had damaged her 
mental equilibrium further, and her betrayal by Harry had pushed her 
nearer to the edge. When she discovered how much she enjoyed hurting 
men, how much satisfaction she got from smashing their bodies to ruins, 
she had taken the final step away from humanity. Now I could understand 
the Cat that I'd first met, the cruelty and the sadism, and her attitude 
toward me. But really, all she'd needed was someone to respect, and 
someone to treat her as a human being. I felt that I had at least 
started the process of rehabilitating her, of taming a wild Cat, and 
helping her turn herself into the sweet Kate that she wanted to be. 
Because deep down, every human being wants to be loved more than 
anything else, and Kate knew that a man-smasher like Cat wasn't going to 
be loved. 

Chapter 23 - The balloon is ready 

It was September, according to my count, when the balloon was finished. 
It seemed huge, and represented a major investment of work. But both 
Kate and I were immensely proud of what we'd done. We had dried food for 
the journey, and water, and we'd made a load of charcoal (light weight, 
high heat content) to maintain the hot air. Before we could launch it, 
just one task remained. A craft like this needs a name; you can't just 
call it "the balloon". I asked Kate her opinion, and she said "Ships are 
always female, right?" "Right", I said, although I don't know why this 
is. Kate continued "It's big and powerful, but very beautiful - let's 
call it Candy." 

Tears came to my eyes. I believe that there's no shame in a grown man 
crying, it's just another way to express emotion, like laughing. I often 
cry at movies, and "Brief Encounter" (the original version) is my all 
time favorite weepy. Now I was crying for at least two reasons. Kate had 
reminded of the lost love of my life, while simultaneously displaying a 
selflessness that you would not have predicted had you met Cat six 
months ago. "Candy it is", I said at last. "Now we'd better get some 
rest, because we'll find it hard to sleep in Candy." 

That night would be the last night we would spend on the ground for a 
long time. So we talked about something very important, something we'd 
not talked about before. We talked about Afterward. What would we do 
after we got back to civilization? In particular, would we stay 
together, maybe even get married? Or would we go back to our old lives? 
Kate said that she wouldn't want to go back to maiming people for a 
living, and I explained that brewing is an ancient and honorable 
profession (although it has been illegal in various countries in the 
past, and still is in some). But the key question was, what about "Us"? 

I had grown very attached to Kate, she was a fine girl, sweet and 
gentle, good-natured and kind. She'd obviously come to like me. And the 
sex was great. But thrown together as we were, it was maybe just the 
propinquity that generated the affection. Could we still be a couple 
Afterwards? 

There was at least one big factor against it - the disparity in our 
ages. I was slightly more than twice as old as Kate, and although she 
said it didn't matter, I knew it did. She hadn't lived through the 
sixties, she didn't like the Beatles, she'd never seen Brief Encounter - 
we came from different cultures. More importantly, if a man of forty-
five can't keep up with a girl of twenty, think how much worse it would 
be in ten years time. 

We argued about it - she thought it wasn't so important, I thought it 
was critical. Eventually, she said "You just don't love me." That 
brought me up short, and I thought about it. She was right. I liked her, 
I liked her a lot, and the sex was splendid, but I didn't love her. 
"You're right, Kate," I said. I pointed out that I'd never said that I 
was in love with her (things said in the heat of passion don't count, do 
they?). Kate said "You're still in love with Candy, aren't you?" I 
thought some more, searching deep within myself. I didn't actually need 
to look very far. "Yes", I whispered. "I'm sorry, Kate." "Don't be 
sorry", she said, and put her arms round me. I did the same for her, and 
we fucked, sweetly and gently. At least we could be friends. 

"Afterward", Kate said. "Yes?" I asked.  "Afterward, we can be friends, 
right? And see each other sometimes?" "I'd like that too", I said. "And 
make love?" she asked. "Most certainly", I replied. It really was very 
good with her. "So what are you going to do, Afterward?" she repeated. 
"I'll go back to being a masterbrewer." "And?" she persisted. I couldn't 
think what she was driving at. "What do you mean, Kate?" "Sam, for 
someone so clever, you really can be amazingly obtuse sometimes." "Spell 
it out for me Kate. Sometimes men cannot see what is obvious to women." 
"Sam. Oh, Sam." she held me in her arms, and rocked me slightly. "Sam, 
you have to go look for Candy." 

By the Great Rabbit, I can be pretty dense sometimes. She was right. I'd 
let the love of my life walk away from me, for no better reason than 
she'd broken my bones. And I'd not gone looking for her, simply because 
she'd asked me not to. "You're right, Kate. I must go out and search the 
world. I must embark on a Quest for Candy." Kate smiled at me. "And you 
must tell me how you get on." 

"Kate, I've saved your life and you've saved mine. We've lived together 
for several months in extreme circumstances. We won't lose touch. I'll 
write to you often, and you must write to me. And Kate, if you're ever 
in trouble, ever unhappy, ever need me, you must promise to tell me. I 
owe you." "Sam, I'll promise the same thing. If you ever need me, tell 
me, and I'll do whatever I can to help you."  Thus we plighted our 
troth, after a fashion. Thus we bound ourselves together, or rather, 
recognized the unbreakable bond that already existed between us. 

Next morning was bright and clear, with a southerly wind. Launch day. I 
put up the rig to support Candy, and lit a fire to inflate her. After 
four hours, Candy was pulling hard at her anchor. Kate and I got into 
the basket, I cast off the anchor, and Candy rose into the sky, slowly 
and majestically. I consulted my compass (to magnetize iron, you hold it 
North-South, and pound it with a rock; suspend it by a thread at the 
center, and you have a compass) and we were drifting slowly south, 
towards the Cape. Excellent. 

You don't travel very quickly in a balloon, but you do travel steadily, 
borne by the wind. If the wind isn't going in the right direction, you 
rise or fall until you find a wind that's right for you. This means that 
you have to keep an eye on which way you're going, but apart from that, 
there isn't much to do. Kate told me more about her past life. 

Chapter 24 - The demolition girl 

Fighting for a living was good; it paid well, and the crowd loved it 
when I demolished a man into a living wreck. And demolition was the word 
for it; just like a brick building that cannot resist the heavy steel 
ball as it gradually smashes it to small pieces, no man could resist my 
hard fists, turning their insides into hamburger. And then, without any 
resistance from the unfortunate man, it was relatively easy to use the 
leverage of their limbs to destroy the cohesion of their bodies. It's 
hard to remember a lot of the fights, because they were so similar. 

I remember that at one point, I was getting tired of Harry, because he 
wasn't giving me any resistance, and there's a limited amount of 
satisfaction in humiliating someone who doesn't have any ego left. But I 
had an idea - I looked up one of my former opponents, and knocked on his 
door. He answered, and I immediately explained the situation to him by 
hitting him, medium hard, hard enough to knock him down, hard enough to 
hurt him badly, but not hard enough to completely disable him. "Remember 
me?", I said. He was kneeling in front of me as he nodded. "Stay on your 
knees, jerk." I wandered round his apartment, looking at his awful taste 
in art. His eyes followed me round the room; he must have been wondering 
what I was after. "Lie down on your back, I've got a treat for you." I 
faced him, and curled my fingers into a fist - he knew that either he 
lay down, or he was knocked down. "Open your mouth and close your eyes, 
and you will get a nice surprise." Again, he obeyed me - it's marvellous 
what a clenched fist can accomplish. I squatted over his face, and 
urinated into his mouth. He coughed and spluttered, and I laughed at his 
discomfort. "I want you at the front door of my apartment in one hour," 
I said, and left. 

When Richard arrived at my door, I let him in, and told him to take off 
all his clothes. From that point on, he was mine to command as I wished. 
He had once felt the power of my iron fist, and been subjected to the 
systematic destruction of his body, and he knew that resistance was 
futile. I used his presence to rouse Harry into a degree of 
rebelliousness, which made life more interesting, as it became necessary 
to devise punishments for him (and, of course, for Richard). Richard was 
more servile, as Harry had never really felt my power over men, had 
never had his limbs systematically destroyed, whereas Richard knew from 
personal experience that I could easily give him several weeks of pain-
filled horror. 

Having two men at my beck and call made it easier for me to embarrass 
and humiliate each of them, either in public or in private. I got Harry 
to teach Richard how to lick my feet, and I got Richard to give Harry 
lessons in fondling my genitals. I passed many a pleasant evening 
reading a book and relaxing while the two submissive males fondled and 
caressed parts of my body on demand. And if I felt the need to reward 
one of them, I could tell him to give himself an orgasm, or I could tell 
the other one to give him an climax. Very convenient. Harry's 
personality was by now very different from how he had been when I first 
met him. He'd been thoughtful, careful and a bit calculating, but now he 
was a happy, carefree lad, never thinking of tomorrow, always cheerful 
no matter how much I hurt or humbled him. He had adjusted to his new 
reality. 

I fought one man after another; tall, short, fat and thin. It made no 
difference; the weaker ones needed a gentle poke in the guts, the tough 
guys needed a hard punch in the belly, sometimes two, if the first one 
merely relaxed their muscles so that my second punch could penetrate. 

Eventually they had trouble finding me an opponent. No-one ever fought 
me a second time - in fact, I don't think any of my opponents ever 
fought again, because the way I ruined their limbs left them permanently 
weakened and in some pain. But after a while, even the offer of a 
quarter million dollars wouldn't persuade anyone to climb into the ring 
with me, at least, not anyone who would at least look like a worthy 
opponent. And this was a real problem, because without a steady stream 
of hopeful challengers, how could I excite audiences with my ability to 
hack men to pieces. The drought lasted for weeks, and I began to wonder 
if they would ever find anyone stupid enough to let me torment them. I 
asked Harry's advice.  "Maybe you need two men", he suggested. "Great 
idea, Harry," I said, told Richard that he was Harry's slave for the 
day, and went happily down to the gym. 

I explained Harry's idea to Simon, my fight promoter. He looked dubious 
at first, but I explained to him that I had once met, and defeated, two 
men armed with baseball bats. After a while, he accepted my contention 
that I could handle two opponents, and started thinking about how best 
to promote the match, how best to ensure a large, big-ticket, audience. 

He chose my opponents carefully. They were big-name wrestlers from the 
professional wrestling world. He told them they'd be fighting a girl, 
but explained that I was no pushover, and that most of my opponents 
spent time in hospital. I don't think they realized what they were 
getting into; they seemed to think that the match would be staged, an 
exhibition of ballet leaps and loud but forceless slaps. When Simon told 
them that it wouldn't be tag, that they could both fight me at once, 
they laughed. Piece of cake, they were thinking. Didn't they wonder why 
I might be letting myself in for such an apparently one-sided contest? 

Simon advertised the match in some of the sleazier magazines; he told me 
he spent over a million on adverts. He hired a very large hall, the 
Yorkover Center. He sold the beer concession, the popcorn concession and 
the binocular concession, but he organized stalls to sell past videos 
and stills. Even though tickets were $1000, the hall was packed to 
overflowing. There must have been about ten thousand people there, 
yelling and screaming. Some of them wanted to see the pretty girl 
getting torn apart by the two huge men, but most of them wanted to see 
the two huge men reduced to mangled wrecks by the pretty girl. The crowd 
was definitely on my side, and as I walked towards the ring, they were 
chanting "Golden Amazon, Golden Amazon". The two wrestlers stood 
quietly, grinning, waiting. I had Richard and Harry as my cornermen, and 
they helped me remove my weapons. I walked to the center of the ring, 
and took my cloak off. The wrestlers looked goggle-eyed, like they'd 
never seem a bare-chested Golden Amazon before. I tied my hair up out of 
the way using a silk ribbon; lifting my arms brought my breasts into 
greater prominence, and one of the wrestlers make a vulgar gesture at 
me. I smiled back at him, walked over to their corner in my high heels, 
and explained that before the evening was over, every time he would see 
a golden-haired woman, he would feel unreasoning terror and stomach-
churning nausea. I explained to him that he would never be able to walk 
again without the aid of a stick, and that he would never play the 
violin again. 

I had my strategy all planned out, long ago. Beating these two tubs of 
lard would be easy enough, the problem would be making it look 
difficult, without running the risk that they might manage to hurt me. I 
could disable them both, totally, and very quickly, with two massive 
smashes in the gut, but then there wouldn't be a fight, and the crowd 
would feel cheated. I had to disable them enough so that they wouldn't 
hurt me, but not so much that they couldn't at least look like they were 
fighting. 

Chapter 25 - The first match of the evening 

The answer to the problem was fear. I had to get them to understand just 
how dangerous it was to come near me and my terrible fists, so that they 
wouldn't be able to co-operate against me. Also, fear stops the mind 
from working properly. When you brain is paralyzed with fear, your body 
just wants to flee. The third effect of fear, is to cause the body to 
tremble and shake, to debilitate the muscles and stop them from working 
properly. And I had the ideal way to instil a proper sense of fear into 
them. A preliminary bout, against a single man - large and heavy, but a 
man alone, and there was no way that a loner could escape his terrible 
fate at my fists. 

The bell rang for the start of the first bout. My terrified opponent 
knew very well the fate that I had in store for him, and he came to the 
center of the ring, and fell to his knees in front of me, begging for 
mercy. He licked my thigh in submission, then my high-heeled shoes. He 
should have known better - even if I'd wanted to spare him, I needed to 
put his body through my meatgrinder to instil fear into my next 
opponents. I told the wimp to kneel with his head up and his eyes 
closed, and while he was in this position, I brushed his shoulder with 
my long, soft hair, and then I punched his shoulder, hard. He was 
knocked to the mat, but I told him to get up, and close his eyes again. 
He begged me not to hurt him, but I brushed his other shoulder with my 
hair, waited a couple of seconds so that he could anticipate the pain, 
then hit him on that shoulder. By the end of the first round, his arms 
were purple and black from the elbows upward, and he didn't seem to be 
able to use them at all. His cornerman helped him to stand up and get 
back to his stool. I stalked round the ring, waving to my fans. I 
stopped opposite the two wrestlers, smiled brightly at them, and told 
them "You're next". 

The bell rang for the next round. I beckoned my wimp toward me, and once 
again, he sank to his knees. This time, his arms hung limply by his 
sides; the terrible battering I'd given them had robbed them of any 
function. "Please, Golden Amazon, please don't hurt me." I grabbed a 
microphone, and stuck it in front of his face, so the whole hall could 
hear him. "Oh, Mommy, help me, it hurts so much" he wept. "I'm not your 
mommy, and it's going to hurt much more. Stand up" I told him. He stood 
up, which made it easier for me to reach his lower arms. I bent over to 
brush his arm with my hair, then smashed my hard fists into his elbows 
and forearms. I stood behind him and stroked his shoulder, then drove my 
fist into it. I came round to stand in front of him, and pistoned my 
iron hand into his collarbone. I didn't want him to fold up just yet, so 
I left his stomach alone. But I explained to him, if he didn't stand and 
take it like a man, I'd have no reason not to start work on his belly. 

He knew what that would mean - he'd seen me destroy strong men with a 
single punch to the abdomen. So he stood as long as he could, until the 
pain in his arms made him too dizzy to stay upright. He toppled over, 
and lay on the deck, and the bell rang for the end of the round. I sent 
Harry and Richard to help him up. As they propped him up between them, 
you could see the mangled remains of his arms, twice as large as before, 
swollen from the damage to the veins and arteries. The blood was unable 
to get through to his arms because of the crushed arteries and broken 
veins. Starved of blood, his arms needed medical attention soon, or he 
would develop gangrene. But I still had lots to do. I strolled over to 
my next opponents, took the microphone in my hand, and explained the 
situation to them. Their faces looked as white as my wimp's blood-
starved hands. 

In the third round, I started on his legs; his thighs and calves. They 
felt soft and yielding to my fists, and before long they softened even 
more. It's a bit like the way you pound steak with a hammer to soften 
the fibers before cooking - I wasn't going to cook him, just soften his 
body. His arms were turning from black and purple, to white, because of 
the lack of blood. I knew that unless I worked faster, he might lose the 
use of his arms permanently, so I slowed down. As the time for the round 
drew to a close, I finished his legs off by attacking his knees from the 
side. It only took one punch to destroy the first one, and before his 
body had time to fall, I quickly smashed the other one. He didn't have a 
leg to stand on, and fell heavily to the canvas, unable to use his arms 
to break his fall. 

Again, I sent Harry and Richard to help him back to his corner. While 
they were bandaging his knees, I hopped out of the ring to have a word 
with my wrestler friends. I showed them my fist, and explained the 
theory of why a small fist was so much more damaging than a large one. A 
large fist can be swung at a given speed with more momentum, but a small 
fist will accelerate faster, and can be travelling at twice the speed 
when it strikes its target. Since energy is proportional to the square 
of the speed, but is linear with mass, it follows that the speed of the 
fist is vastly more important than the weight behind it. Or, to put it 
another way, small hard fists like mine could wreak as much damage as a 
sledgehammer, while large, soft fists felt more like pillows when they 
landed. What we were about to see was how well their pillows compared 
with my sledgehammers. 

With the fourth round, I was going to prove this theory, to give flesh 
to my hypothesis, or rather to give wimp-meat to it. Because that's what 
my sparring partner looked like now - a side of meat. His pale white 
arms hung uselessly at his sides, and his legs were like rubber, barely 
able to support him. His knees didn't work at all; Harry and Richard had 
bandaged then so that they wouldn't bend, so that he could at least 
stand up. It was time for the main target. It was time for his torso to 
feel pain. 

I've heard that in certain third world countries, they use sleep 
deprivation as the primary torture technique. I guess they haven't heard 
of hydrostatic shock. If you fill a bag with water, and punch it, you'll 
see that the force of the blow is transmitted through the water to all 
parts of the bag, because water is an incompressible fluid. You get the 
same effect with the human body; if you hit a blood-filled part hard 
enough, the shock waves travel throughout the body, to the brain, the 
heart, the liver, and all the other internal organs. One really hard 
punch through the belly is enough. Some men are able to tense their 
stomach muscles enough to take the force of the blow, but if you hit 
hard enough, those muscles are paralyzed by the shock, and your second 
blow gets through. And I do mean through - you should be able to 
compress the stomach against the backbone. This compression is 
transmitted throughout the body, and the effects are immediate and 
severe. 

After such a shock wave strikes, it's like the aftermath of a tidal 
wave. The brain loses most of its function, and only the automatic 
control systems work. The target is unable to think clearly, or even to 
think at all. The heart feels the effect too, and the overload on the 
valves cause arrhythmia (fluttering heart) for some minutes to come, 
before the steady beat can reassert. The lack of heart-pumped blood 
causes an immediate lowering of blood pressure, which has a catastrophic 
effect on many other bodily functions. 

My wimpette went down, and stayed down. He was in excruciating pain, but 
the damage to his brain had even disabled the pain-censor, the part of 
the brain that shuts down consciousness when there is too much pain for 
the mind to be able to function. If he'd had any muscle control left, he 
would have writhed in pain; if he'd been able to breathe, he'd have been 
screaming. But all he could do was lie on the mat, making a gentle 
gurgling noise. I brought the microphone close to his mouth so that 
everyone could hear, and the sound was more terrifying than the most 
agonized, tortured scream. It was the sound of someone hurt too much to 
be able to do anything, even scream. 

The Golden Amazon had triumphed yet again. Of course, against a lone 
man, my victory was a foregone conclusion, but even so, the crowd was 
whistling and yelling, anticipating the next match with shouts of "Kill, 
kill, kill..." I went back to my corner and wiped my face with a wet 
flannel - I was perspiring slightly, as it was quite warm in the hall 
from all the people. I kicked off my high heels, and Harry helped me on 
with my wrestling boots, giving my feet a good lick as he did so. Harry 
knew how to get into my good books. While I was getting ready, my two 
opponents climbed into the ring. One of them was looking at me; I faced 
him, smiled at him, and mimed a punch in his direction. He looked sick, 
and turned back to his partner. 

Chapter 26 - Kate fights two men 

Their best bet was to work as a team, coming at me from both sides. If 
they could each grab one of my hands, I'd be in real trouble - without 
the use of my fists, I'd be a weak and helpless girl between a sandwich 
of muscle. With my fists, I was more in the position of a hammer facing 
soft putty. I could easily disable them both, totally, quickly, with two 
fast punches, but that wouldn't be much of a show for the audience, and 
would mean no bonus for the Golden Amazon. My plan was that the previous 
match would have intimidated them so much, that they would not have the 
courage to face me as a team, that they would each try to get the other 
one to take my punches. They'd seen how a man's body crumbled under my 
small hard fists, how a shoulder turned to mangled meat. 

The bell rang for the first round, and the two men, each weighing about 
twice my weight, moved nervously and cautiously towards the center of 
the ring. Good! The fear was instilled in them, and working in my favor 
already. Now, I needed to expand it so that it was the primary thought 
in their heads, so that their main objective was to avoid the pain that 
flowed from my fists. I raised one of my fists, and put my other hand on 
my hip, looking sexy and threatening at once. This was partly for the 
benefit of the two gorillas facing me, but mostly for the audience. 

In this game, all the time you have to remember the audience. Man-
smashing is primarily a spectator sport; it's certainly no fun at all 
for the man. Sex and violence are the two primeval urges, sex and 
violence. To the men in the audience, I was an unimaginable fuck, and 
several weeks in hospital. To the women in the audience, I was 
everything they wanted to be, able to seduce a man or cripple him, at my 
preference. If the match is over in a few seconds, the audience gets 
hardly any pleasure, so they eat less popcorn, drink less beer, and 
don't buy the video afterwards. But if a match takes half an hour, an 
hour, even two hours, then they can relax and enjoy the spectacle of a 
pretty young girl demolishing a healthy adult male, piece by piece. They 
can fantasize, putting themselves in my shoes. They can even put 
themselves in the man's shoes, imagining his pain without the agony of 
feeling it. 

To increase the fear, I started talking to them. "Who wants to be 
first?" I asked. "One of you is going to get hurt, which one should it 
be? My fist is like a hammer, and it wants something to smash. Your 
flesh won't bruise, it will break apart inside. Each of your muscles 
will stop functioning after being hit with this little hammer of mine, 
so I won't hit you too hard at  first, just hard enough so that you can 
feel what's in store for you. Remember the wimpette you just saw? I 
pounded his body into mincemeat. After a few punches, his meat was so 
soft, you could almost have pulled it off his bones. Because that's what 
you are to me, just meat, meat to be pounded into tenderness. You might 
think you're tough, but after a bit of pounding from my meat hammer, 
you'll be as tender as a little baby, and you'll be able to control 
yourself about as well." I turned round to face my corner, 
contemptuously turning my back to them, telling them that they were no 
threat at all. "Harry, wet yourself." The dark stain immediately spread 
over the front of his trousers. "You see what happens when you lose 
control of yourself? Would you like to be like Harry?" 

It's amazing the effect that words can have. The demonstration with the 
wimpette had shown them that it wasn't just idle chatter, that my fists 
could back up my words. If they had worked as a team, one on either side 
of me, grabbing one hand in each of theirs, they could have had me 
helpless in seconds. But the fear paralyzed their brain; each of them 
could only think about himself, and how to preserve himself from the 
vicious battering that they'd seen just before. In front of me, instead 
of two men, there was one man, and one man. Each of them alone in his 
terror, each of them unable to co-operate with the other. Each of them 
wanting the horrible experience to be over, for the other to be the 
punchbag, the side of meat that was about to be hammered. 

I pointed my finger to one of them. "You!" I cried. The other man was 
visibly relieved, it was his friend that would be taking the punishment. 
The man I pointed to shivered and shook noticeably, imagining his body 
being reduced to the ruined wreck that he'd just seen in my previous 
opponent. "You stay where you are!" I turned, and pointed to the other 
man. "You're first." Relief turned to terror. It's an excellent trick; 
the idea is to turn their minds into rollercoasters of fear, to build 
the suspense and terror, then let them down, to take the unafraid man 
and create instant horror in his brain. The effect is to destroy any 
will they have left, to turn them into puppets, to make them feel that 
my will is the only one in the room, and that their fate rests on my 
whim. 

I hit him twice, once on the left shoulder, and once on the right. The 
audience heard his shout of pain, but he appeared to be undamaged. It 
was not at all obvious to the audience that his arms were now paralyzed, 
temporarily at least. I turned to the other man, and gave him the same 
treatment. It was not at all obvious to the audience, but the fight was 
now effectively over. I had first destroyed their will to fight, and now 
their capacity. 

In order to move your arm, your brain gives an order to the relevant 
muscles. This order is transmitted down the nerves, via your shoulder. 
Nerves aren't very long, though, and the message is passed from fiber to 
fiber; the end of one fiber releases a chemical that excites the 
adjacent fiber. When the message gets to the muscle to be flexed, the 
nerve releases a chemical that tells the muscle to contract. If you 
overload some of the nerves along the way, the muscle-movement message 
gets lost among the noise. One good way to overload a nerve, is to send 
a very loud pain message along it; if the pain message is loud, it 
interferes with the muscle control. Try picking up an egg while you 
stick pins into your hand. If the pain message is loud enough, the 
receptors cut out, and the muscles can no longer obey the commands of 
the brain, as the messages simply don't get through. So, if you torture 
a limb hard enough or long enough, the owner loses the use of it, at 
least temporarily. The two gorillas facing me, could just about use 
their arms, but every time they tried to move them, the pain from their 
shoulders would distort the messages flying down the nerves. In other 
words, it looked to the audience as if they could still fight, but in 
fact they were pretty much armless and harmless. 
 
We spent the rest of the first round doing not much more than dancing. I 
hit their arms a few more times, to make sure that the pain wouldn't 
fade for a long time, but apart from that, the round consisted mostly of 
me chasing them, and them trying to take shelter behind each other. I 
think the audience enjoyed watching the sight of the two big men trying 
to stay away from the pretty girl's fists. While we were doing this, I 
kept up the fear level by explaining what I planned to do to them in the 
next round. "Your arms don't hurt enough. I've hurt your silly weak 
muscles with my small hard fists, but in the next round, I'm going to 
damage the arteries and veins of your arms, so that the blood can't get 
through to them. I'm going to make you feel pain like the guy I just 
smashed. I bet you haven't cried real tears for a long time. You're 
going to cry today, though. Cry like babies." The bell rang, and I 
walked back to my corner. 

Chapter 27 - Round two 

For round two, I came to the middle of the ring, and let my hair down, 
swirling it round my shoulders. It's important that the Golden Amazon 
look female and feminine; the audience gets a much bigger kick that way. 
I'm no dyke; I like men. Harry and Richard would confirm that if you 
asked them. I adore having Harry lick all over my feet, and Richard's 
hands on my genitals are magic. The two gorillas edged nervously 
forward, but I wasn't completely sure of their condition. They'd had a 
few minutes to recover, and I'd watched as their trainers rubbed their 
arms; maybe they'd recovered some stuffing? So, just in case, I repeated 
the treatment of the first round, smashing my fists into their 
shoulders, disabling their ability to resist. 

Since this was round two, it was time to get in a bit deeper. I wanted 
them to look rough, so I started punching their upper body, around the 
chest and ribs. I punched them lightly, because I only wanted to bruise 
their bodies, not break them. They still had some use of their arms, so 
tried to protect their tender bodies from the hammers that were pounding 
them. But their arms were so badly weakened from my earlier treatment, 
that they couldn't stop my fists. By the end of the round, I had the 
effect I was after. Their chests were bright red from my blows, but the 
damage was skin-deep. It must have been painful, but more a stinging 
pain than the sort of deep-down pain that I explained to them that I'd 
be delivering later on in the fight. It looked good to the audience, 
even though in reality it didn't hurt that much. In a show like this, 
appearances are so important; the audience must get what they are hoping 
for. Their bright red skin contrasted nicely with my golden-brown skin, 
and showed up especially well against my skirt. 

They staggered out for the third round, and I strolled toward them. This 
would be the round where I broke them down some more, and started 
damaging their legs. Imagine my surprise when they did what they should 
have done in the first place. Each of them got hold of one of my wrists, 
and they pulled them apart, spreading my arms wide, and making it 
impossible for me to hurt either of them. I felt a lurch of fear in my 
stomach - now they had me helpless, and they could inflict terrible 
damage on my utterly defenseless body. I had some muscle on me, but not 
enough to protect me from the assault that was about to hit me from both 
sides. 

I twisted, wriggled and writhed, trying to pull my arms from their 
grasp. They should have been able to hold me easily, but my wrists 
slipped out of their fingers. I had weakened them so much in the first 
two rounds that they were unable to exert any strength through their 
arms. I felt thankful that they'd been too frightened to have tried this 
at the beginning, otherwise I'd have been done for. I made certain that 
they wouldn't be able to have another attempt at this hold, by taking 
their hands one at a time in mine, and crashing my fist into the fleshy 
part of their forearm, on the inside of the arm, aiming for the nerve 
trunk that runs down the middle. Then I turned each arm over, and 
crashed my fist into the place about two inches away from the elbow, 
commonly called the funnybone. 

You must have hit your funnybone some time - everyone has. You must have 
felt the instant paralysis of the lower arm that follows, from elbow to 
fingertips, followed by the blazing agony searing up to your shoulder. 
What is actually happening here, is that your nerve has been crushed 
against your ulna. It is usually several minutes before your arm 
recovers. 

While their full attention was focused on their funnybone pain, I 
circled round them, and attacked from the rear. Just above the waist, 
behind you, there's a lovely soft area, protected only by your back 
muscles. Underneath those muscles, is the important internal organ 
called the kidney. Don't ever let anyone hit you in the kidneys; even 
bruising those organs will leave you pissing blood for a week, and if 
any major damage is done to them, you could die. I didn't want to kill 
these guys; I knew that if I killed them, I could spend the next three 
months filling in forms. But a bit of bruising in that area would slow 
them down nicely, as it would make movement painful. 

The other place to be very careful about is your backbone. If you've 
ever had a bad back, you know that it can be completely incapacitating. 
The simplest way to get a bad back, is to lift something heavy while 
your spine is curved, but anything that puts your vertebrae out of line 
will do the same job. If your vertebrae aren't exactly on top of each 
other, the spine can't flex the way it is supposed to, and if the 
alignment is out by more than a few tenths of an inch, the spinal cord 
can be damaged by the spine, leading to intense pain, and in extreme 
cases, paralysis of the body from the waist down. 

If you look at someone's back, you can actually see the vertebrae very 
easily, And if you hit one hard enough, it pops out of alignment, and 
needs an experienced osteopath to ease it back in place, followed by 
great care on the part of the patient not to put it out again. I aimed 
for one of the vertebrae just above the small of the back, where the 
adhesion is weakest, and let rip with my fist. I did the same for the 
other guy. Each of them screamed as the blow landed, and fell to the 
canvas. Instant bad back, very bad back. It was agony for them to stand 
up, agony for them to move, agony for them to even breathe. If you've 
ever put your back out, you'll recognize the feeling, and sympathize. 
I'd never had a back problem, could only imagine how they felt, and 
didn't sympathize at all. By the time I'd finished all this, and they 
were standing again, the bell was ringing for the end of round three. 

One problem with such a large hall, was that unless I was careful, the 
audience wouldn't be able to see what I was doing. I wanted them to get 
their money's worth, to see the spectacle that they'd paid for. It was 
the same in Roman times, when they threw the Christians to the lions. 
What the crowd came for, was to see the Christians getting mangled by 
the lions. Here, my crowd wanted to see the gorillas getting mangled by 
the Golden Amazon. 

Chapter 28 - Round four 

When round four started, I punched one of them in the stomach, medium 
hard, just to keep him out of the way. He went down, and doubled up, 
groaning. I hit the other one in the same place, but not nearly so hard, 
as I wanted him standing. I stood in front of him, and took one of his 
arms in both my hands, twisted it so that the palm was upward, and 
lifted it as high as I could reach. I stood close to him, looked up at 
his face, and tossed my hair into his chest. I nestled my body towards 
his, rubbing my hair against him, and murmuring sweet nothings to him. I 
felt his body relax against me - it is surprisingly easy to convince a 
man's body that the girl caressing him is not a threat, even though his 
mind must have been wondering what was going on. But the relaxed body 
was what I was after; I moved  about twelve inches away, twisted to face 
away from him, and brought his upraised arm sharply down, catching his 
elbow on my shoulder. There was a sickening cracking sound as his elbow 
broke, and his arm continued to bend in the wrong direction. 

The crowd went wild. "Kill, kill, kill" seemed to be the predominant 
shout, and I knew that they wanted me to do the killing. But that was 
just lack of imagination, because I knew some things to do that they'd 
appreciate much more. I dropped the hand I was holding, and watched the 
man sink to the canvas, semi-conscious. 

By now, the other man had recovered a little, and with some gentle 
assistance from me, he was able to stand. While he'd been doubled up in 
agony on the mat, he hadn't seen what I'd been doing to his partner, so 
I thought that much the same idea would work nicely again. I helped him 
stand, and stood up against him, my face upturned to his. I rubbed my 
naked breasts on his chest, and my silky skirt on his thigh, and got him 
thoroughly aroused, in spite of his pain. Then, I pushed his arms up to 
rest around my neck, and pulled his face down to kiss me. "Close your 
eyes", I breathed, and the poor fool did. I took one of his arms, lifted 
it high with his palm uppermost, whirled, and brought it down hard on my 
shoulder. Craaack! "Amazon! Golden Amazon!" the crowd chanted. Well, I 
thought, why root for an obvious loser? Then the bell rang for the end 
of round four. 

Harry handed me a hot towel. They are remarkably refreshing, and it was 
just what I needed. I told him that I had a treat for him this evening, 
and that he should tell his tongue to get ready to have fun. He looked 
at me with dog-like devotion, and I stood up for the next round. 

By now, it must have been obvious to the audience who was going to win 
this fight; the only question was how much punishment would I be ladling 
out to my opponents, and how long could I keep them going. In a 
situation like this, the main thing is to make sure that they can stay 
on their feet, so I had to leave their legs till last. But each of them 
had one good arm (good is a relative word), and I could work on that. I 
told one of them to stand in the corner, facing me, and I bunched my 
fist to show that it would be a good idea to obey me. I told the other 
one to hold out his good arm. 

You know the game whereby two boys knuckle the backs of each others 
hands, until one of them can't take it any more, and the other one is 
declared the winner? A typical male thing, seeing who can take the most 
pain. I had my own version of this game. I knuckled the back of his 
hand, and he gasped with pain. I told him to hold his hand out again, 
and again I knuckled the back of his hand. We repeated this again and 
again; the back of his hand was getting red and puffy, and the veins 
were beginning to break under the skin. He started to get reluctant to 
hold out his hand, so I took his other hand in mine, and twisted. The 
pain from his shattered elbow roared through his brain; I let it 
subside, and asked him to hold out his hand again, and he did so. Each 
time I hit the back of his hand, the pain he was feeling grew more 
intense. I gradually increased the force of my blows, although his agony 
was such that he wouldn't be able to notice this. All he knew about was 
the raging torment at the end of his arm. Again and again I smashed my 
knuckles down on his hand, until the skin began to tear, and blood began 
to drip. I don't think that his mind was in the driving seat any more - 
he just automatically brought his hand up each time after I smashed it 
down, until eventually the force of my punches was breaking the fine 
bones in the back of his hand. By the time the bell rang for the end of 
the round, he no longer had a hand, just a lump of meat at the end of 
his arm. I turned to the other guy who had watched this process, and 
smiled at him, and said "You're next". He vomited, all over the floor of 
the ring. There wasn't much in his stomach, so most of his retches were 
dry, but he was certainly trying to bring up the contents of his 
stomach. 

I told Harry and Richard to help them back to their corner, and get them 
ready for the next round. I sat in my corner and brushed my hair. I 
think it is so important for a girl to look her best, don't you? 
Especially in front of a big audience. With my hair a beautiful golden 
color, and with plenty of body and bounce, I was really quite proud of 
it, and I spent the whole interval brushing it till it shone. 

Chapter 28 - Round six 

Round six began, and I had a problem immediately. The guy who still had 
one good (well, goodish) arm tried to climb out of the ring. I think the 
other one would have too, but he was too far gone. I didn't think there 
was any point in appealing to his manly pride, so I told him that unless 
he got his puny body back into the ring sharpish, I'd follow him outside 
the ring, and rip his balls off. It didn't take him long to decide to 
come back inside. On the whole, that was probably a mistake. 

One of his arms was useless, and the other one almost as bad. The crowd 
were yelling "Blood, blood, give us blood" now, and I couldn't 
disappoint them. The best place to find blood is the nose, so that's 
what I went for. It's easy enough to break a nose, and just as easy to 
mash it flat. but that isn't very spectacular. What I wanted was a 
fountain of the very best claret, the finest reddest gusher you've ever 
seen. The crowd wanted blood, I'd give them blood. 

The nose contains a very interesting blood vessel. It's a kind of safety 
valve. Just as a steam engine has a safety valve, designed to open when 
the pressure gets too great, so does the human body. It's in the nose, 
and that's why nose bleeds are so frequent. Of course, sometimes the 
safety valve triggers when it needn't, which is why people regard a nose 
bleed as a nuisance. Once you understand this, it becomes obvious how to 
trigger a river of blood. I punched him two-handed, one fist very hard 
to his heart, the other more gently to the base of his nose. The blow to 
his heart generated a temporary over-pressure in his circulation system, 
the blow to his nose was to help the safety valve blow. 

The result was very satisfactory. A great gush of gore spurted out from 
his nose, covering his chest, my body, and my skirt. I helped him stay 
upright so that the entire audience could enjoy the spectacle; it hardly 
hurt him at all, but the crowd weren't to know that. It certainly looked 
like it ought to be very painful. Actually, blood doesn't equate to 
damage, and even though he lost about a pint in total, the human body 
can easily tolerate losing that amount, the only effect being a slight 
feeling of weakness. But I wanted to maintain the illusion of a man 
damaged beyond repair; the river of blood certainly looked convincing. 
So I punched him in the temple, where the brain is very close to the 
skull, and the impact made his brain knock against his skull, and made 
him lose consciousness. 

The other guy was laying on the mat, barely moving. The pain in his 
damaged arm, and the pain in the glob of meat at the end of his other 
arm had turned him from a reasoning human being into a wounded animal. 
There wasn't much more that I could do to him, but I still had one trick 
up my sleeve. Again, this was really for the benefit of the audience, 
rather than for the ruined hulk whose capacity for pain had been 
exceeded. I stood over him, straddling him with my legs. I lifted up my 
skirt, and held it over my head, my hands lifting my hair, and my raised 
arms lifting and enhancing my breasts, making them stand out towards the 
appreciative audience. I held this position as they screamed "Golden 
Amazon" again and again, and the emotions hurled by the frenzied crowd 
built to a fever pitch. The microphone above my head picked up my voice, 
amplified it a million times, and hurled it around the great hall "I am 
the Golden Amazon, and no man can stand against me", and I urinated 
copiously on the pathetic body beneath me. 

Chapter 29 - Flying in the balloon 

As Kate finished the tale of how she'd demolished two professional 
wrestlers in one match, I felt rather nauseated. It was partly her 
description of how she'd caused pain, it was partly all the blood, and 
it was partly the thought of being urinated on. My nausea must have 
shown in my face, because Kate put her hands over her eyes, scrunched 
herself down in the basket, and looked like she was crying. I carefully 
crawled across to her, and put my hands on her shoulders, pulled her to 
me, and rocked her in my arms. "Kate, Kate, please don't cry." "I've 
been so wicked, so awful. I can't bear to remember how terrible I've 
been." I stroked her hair, and held her close to me. "There, there, 
there", I murmured. "That's all in the past now." Her tears were wet on 
my face, as I tried to kiss the pain away. "Kiss me, Kate", I said. She 
did, and I did, and we did. After a while, her sobs became less 
frequent, and I dried her eyes with my hand. I rummaged in one of the 
pots, found a strip of pemmican, and gave it to her to chew. In my 
experience, food is a great comforter. 

I stood up in the basket to see if the wind was still taking us in the 
right direction, and checked the fire that kept Candy's air hot enough 
to lift us. Everything looked fine. I told Kate that she should get some 
sleep, and I'd waken her later for her watch. She settled down, and I 
was left alone with my thoughts. 

I kept getting mental images of a pretty blonde girl facing two men, 
each twice her size, and pulverizing them to hamburger. In my mind's 
eye, I kept seeing her continuing the wrecking process long after she'd 
defeated them, purely for the amusement of the crowd. I contrasted this 
with the sweet Kate that I now knew, and wondered which one was the real 
personality, the vicious Cat or the lovely Kate. The human mind is the 
most complex and wonderful thing in the world, and it's hard to believe 
that the complexities of the human mind can ever be encompassed by a 
human mind. After a while, I stopped the recursive process, and thought 
about a much more pleasant subject - Candy the superwoman. I imagined 
Candy in a silk blouse and short skirt, Candy in a soft satin night-
dress, Candy naked. I thought about all the wonderful things we'd done 
together, and all the more wonderful things that we could do if we got 
together again. I knew that in spite of everything, I loved her and she 
loved me, and all I needed to do was find her and tell her this. 

The next thing I knew, it was getting light. I stood up, and looked down 
to the ground; we were too close, and the warmth of the sun would soon 
heat the surrounding air, causing us to sink further. I woke Kate, and 
started feeding our fire, to make the air in Candy hotter. Kate asked me 
where the toilet was, and I gave her a pot, and told her to empty it 
over the side when she'd finished. She wrinkled her nose, but there 
isn't a better way. We breakfasted on pemmican and water, and settled 
down for another day in Candy. 

I checked my compass from time to time, and if I found that we weren't 
heading south, I'd feed the fire to rise a bit, until we could find a 
wind that was going our way. There's not really very much to do in a 
balloon, so Kate and I amused ourselves in the old, old way, but very 
carefully, since we were several hundred feet up in the air, in a rather 
fragile basket. 

Every now and again I scanned round the visible countryside, until 
eventually one night, I saw a city in the distance. Human civilization 
is easiest to spot at night. I dumped hot air, and sank towards the 
ground. We landed, Kate and I tethered Candy, and we got ready to head 
toward the city. We dressed in our best homespun clothes, took our 
knives, our jars of supplies, and using my compass, we set off for the 
big city. 

It turned out to be Ladysmith. We made our way to the town hall, and 
explained our situation. I'm not sure if they believed our story, but 
they helped us to get in touch with the US Embassy in Capetown, and the 
rest was easy. I suppose we must have looked a bit unusual when we 
entered the Ambassador's office, Kate in her off-white dress, and me in 
my matching off-white trousers and off-white shirt. They wouldn't let us 
carry our knives, and you have no idea how naked I felt without it. In 
the veldt, your knife is your best friend. He loaned us some cash, so 
that we could buy some more conventional clothes, and staked us to a 
ticket back home. 

The airplane back to the States was our last chance to talk, and we both 
knew it. We hugged a lot, and kissed, knowing that we were going to 
part. We repeated our promises to stay in touch, and that we'd meet once 
each year, and we both knew what would happen at that meeting. There was 
an unbreakable bond between us, forged in adversity. But now we were 
getting back to our lives. 

We parted at the airport, each going our separate ways. She told me to 
be good, and wished me luck in my Quest for Candy. And here's what I 
told her. 

"Kate, when I first met you, you were a first class bitch. You were 
mean, shrewish and unattractive, to be feared and avoided. Over the last 
few months, you've changed completely. You are now a really nice person, 
and any man would be proud to know you and love you. I believe that love 
and loving is more enjoyable than hate and hurting, and I can see that 
you think so too. I believe that you'll find a good man, a man to love, 
a man to live with and live for, and who will love you and live for you 
too. I believe you'll be happy in your new style. Here's what another 
Katharine said, in her final speech." 

Chapter 30 - Another Kate

Petruchio:
Katharine, I charge thee, tell these headstrong women
What duty they do owe their lords and husbands.

Katharina:
Fie, fie! unknit that threat'ning unkind brow;
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes,
To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor:
It blots thy beauty, as frosts do bite the meads;
Confounds thy fame, as whirlwinds shake fair buds;
And in no sense is meet or amiable.
A woman mov'd is like a fountain troubled -
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;
And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee
And for thy maintenance; commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks, and true obedience, -
Too little payment for so great a debt!
Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel,
And graceless traitor to her loving lord? -
I am asham'd that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace,
Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,
When they are bound to serve, love, and obey,
Why are our bodies soft andweak, and smooth.
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts?
Come, come, you froward and unable worms!
My mind hath been as big as one of yours,
My heart as great; my reason, haply, more,
But now I see our lances are but straws;
Our strength is weak, our weakness past compare, -
That seeming to be most, which we indeed least are.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below your husband's foot:
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready, may it do him ease.

Petruchio:
Why there's a wench! - Come on, and kiss me, Kate.

Copyright (c) 1995, 1996 Rabbit Productions

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