Caught!

Thankfully—and rather amazingly—I enjoyed a good night’s sleep in the wide open outdoors of Yogi Berra Campground. The morning sun and my need for a wee overrode the morning’s chilly air urging me to stay in bed: I got up. Beyond not wanting to wake the two still apparently asleep inside the motorhome, I didn’t relish having to go for another lucky shot over the distance into the toilet bowl of the bathroom I could in no way fit into.

Taking a page from Rose’s “nature girl” playbook, I headed back out into the forest aways, going a different direction this time for variety.

“No, no, no, no” Sara sighed and muttered, pacing back and forth around the pic-a-nik table. “What are we going to do?!”

Rose, resting wearily against said table, thought Sara might well wear a measurably deep divot in her walking path if she kept on going. Her aching head from a sex hangover compelled a forehead visitation from her upper left hand. “About what?”

“About these!” she exclaimed in frustration, hefting each of her now-matched-pair of gigantic peni in turn, one held in each arm.

“Same thing we did when you had one:” she shrugged, “nothing.”

“Nnnothing?!” Sara squeaked in umbrage. “Three big breasts, scrotum subsumed by my udder which is now a gigantic mega-udder with more teats than I care to count, and not one but two ridiculously impractically massive peni! Nearly all these attributes requiring my ongoing care and full attention!”

Rose remained unperturbed by Sara’s issues. “Annnd? Somehow one gloriously massive penis and generously proportioned udder was OK, but doubling down on them isn’t?”

“But–! It’s-! Aaaaaaaghhh!”

“That’s one way to put it, I suppose. But you don’t see me complaining about my two new pairs of breasts and new pair of arms and hands, do you?” she asked with a multiple-hand gesture wave over her newly-extended body.

Blinking several times in disbelief and running low on frustration energy, Sara asked more from genuine wonder than anger, “How can you be so calm, suddenly having fully-grown new body parts overnight?”

“Well… it’s kinda happened before.”

“What has?!”

“Post-coital mutations.”

“Huuuh! HAAAAAAA! Hrrrrrr! Ghhhh!”

When Rose told me all of this (many days after the fact) in enough detail that I’ve been able to relay it to you here, she kept breaking up into belly laughs at this point of her retelling. Apparently Sara’s seriously contorted facial expressions and the way she repeatedly whacked her penis glandes together like a drummer setting an exceedingly slow song-starting rhythm as she hemmed and hawed in her angst-ridden struggle to come to terms with everything made Rose struggle not to laugh at the time it happened.

“Why didn’t you tell me last night?!” Sara eventually spat out as a coherent summary sentence.

“We discussed this when the 3 of us were sipping our bevs!”

“Gaaaaahhh!”

“Come on, double-hung Girlfriend” Rose tried to purr as she heaved herself upright, approaching Sara for friendly touch.

The reassuring sensations of contact from her searing-hot lover of last night flipped Sara from anger over to near-tears.

Standing close, now taller than her lover of last night, Rose softly suggested, “Do you really think that knowing odds were good that you‘d further mutate as a result of sex would have stopped you from having what you and I agreed last night was the most epic sex either of us have ever yet had in our young lives?”

“Absolutely I would’ve stop–…”

Rose’s friendly, intimate, loving, knowing, smiling gaze assuredly stopped Sara’s sentence in its tracks.

“Well obviously eventually after a quick sample Iiii….”

Upper arms folded over boob and udder, second pair of hands down in an on-hips position other than being on the shoulders of the third pair (now second from bottom) along with a smirk made Sara reconsider.

“I would’ve…”

–A harder smirky stare from Rose—

“Might’ve…”

–Third pair of hands repeating the annoyed on-hip look on Rose’s lowest shoulders—

“Might’ve stopped… eventually…”

Rose’s lowest right hand gave her a “No no no” index finger woggle.

“Maybe?”

The slow head shake along with everything else Rose had been doing convinced Sara to revisit her true feelings and the most logical outcome therefrom.

It was a struggle not to think of how good she had felt last night, feeling a stirring deep in her large loins from the memory of the amazing, immersive, passionate sex. She quashed the feeling, but her personal aftermath was still right in front of her: double-barrels of maximum pricky dickiness, gunning from each side… if they weren’t so restfully hanging from the support of her arms and hands. She hadn’t even truly gotten used to having a penis at all, and now she had two: big around as big city water main pipes and nearly as long as she was tall, before the mutations.

{I still don’t get how you can be so nonchalant} Sara thought regarding Rose. {I’d be unhinged without normal legs and feet, even though I now have two sets of those—grrrr! But you don’t seem to mind, and you… you sure make good use of them.}

This last thought brought Sara’s mind directly back to the feeling of all of Rose’s magnificent breasts—and her udder—pressed against her. Knowing there were now 2 additional pairs she’d yet to experience, right there in front of her within easy squeezing range should she choose to go for it and maybe bend over a bit, made her have to fight down another erection—now a doublet! She shook her head, wondering if her extra-vivid sexual memories and overactive passions were another part of the mutation or just her finally feeling a deep connection with someone after having been ostracized for so long.

This is where I returned from my morning wee, dressed and ready to go. “Aren’t you two going to wear any clooowwWHOOOAH!”

Can you tell my still-waking-up brain took awhile to figure out the obvious changes?

“Was it as good as it looks?”

The two in-motorhome lovers nodded, Sara just barely out-blushing suddenly rose-cheeked Rose.

“Tell me true, Rose: is that mixed horizontal-vertical stance you’re in an upgrade?”

“Too soon to know. Gotta test the various new options.”

“How about you, Sara? I’ll forego my udder puns to help encourage a straight answer.”

“What kind of life is it having a high sex drive and all this equipment when every time I have sex I’ll mutate further?!”

“We don’t know that yet” I sighed. “Yes, Rose and I have each experienced significant new mutations after sex. But for us so far it’s nonlinear: sometimes subtle to the point of having to struggle to suss out what’s changed, other times like what you two have this morning far more dramatic. All part of the mystery that any of us so affected are struggling to work out.”

“Were I independently wealthy and secure in place or location or residence from those who wish me ill and harm and somehow able to get my living needs met without risk or struggle, I might not care so much about the mutations and might be OK enjoying sex and cuddly love, come what new mutations may therefrom. But I don’t know that I‘m good with that, because I’ve barely started living my adult life yet! So much I want to see and do!”

“Nothing at all that you like about your new mutations?”

The upset look on Sara’s face drove first Rose then me over to our struggling new friend’s side, for an affectionate Sara-centric group hug. She never answered my question of mild curiosity, which wasn’t worth pushing anyone to answer.

“We should get going soon. Are you as tired as you look, Rose?”

“At least.”

“OK” I sighed. “If you two will break down camp and clean everything up, I’ll figure out how to get myself in there in a safe and workable driving position, figure out where we’re heading next, plus check radio news for anything we should know.”

Apart from the addendum that all 3 of us really ought to express what milk we could in the most efficient, non-sexually stimulating way possible, Rose and Sara were in agreement with my suggested plan.

It impressed Rose to see me all ready to go in the driver’s position, during one of her final loading up trips. “You managed to get the seat back off?”

“Yeah” I responded sheepishly, hoping she didn’t see me blushing. I further hoped she’d not try and find the removed seat back and see that it had been snapped off by my frankly to-me scary brute tentacle strength as I was merely trying to figure out how it was attached—not even trying to force anything whatsoever! “All ready to go.”

Sara walked in at this point. “This should be everything.”

“OK, cool. You get settled in here, and I’ll go do a final check and be back shortly.”

“Can anybody of your now-tall height be back shortly?” I teased my freshly-mutated bestie.

“We’ll have to have a week-long sex marathon for me to mutate as tall as you, darling” she teased back, grabbing the end of my nearest-to-her wayward tentacle for a kiss then a stimulating boob cleavage rub. “Assuming you don’t mutate longer tentacles or your upper body during all that.”

“Any news, via whatever ancient tech we’re allowed to use that won’t track us?”

“Can’t get any news stations in here” I replied to Sara’s query.

Rose was already nearly out the door, “That won’t be a problem in a quarter-hour’s time, when we’re back on the road.”

As the driver, with the additional difficulty of it being a struggle to get in and out of the seat, plus having nowhere to park on the outside of the campground gated area that wouldn’t leave tire tracks after we left, and finally with Rose not having anything suitable to wear for bodily ground sweeping, covering our tire tracks was not going to, and did not, happen. Indeed it was Sara who made the trek out to open the not-really-locked gate then put it back as it was once I drove the motorhome back out of the campground to the public highway side of the gate.

Despite no one (that we know of) seeing us leave, we all remained uptight tense and stressed until we were several miles away from the gate and turnoff.

Seeing no oncoming vehicles and with no others going our direction visibly in front of or behind us, Sara tentatively worked her way towards the front of the motorhome. “So where are we going now?”

“North… tending east.”

“That’s it? No destination?”

“Not until we can identify some place which is safe and private, where we have a chance of making a fresh start. Until then we have to keep moving, in case anyone’s looking for us.”

“Why would they care about us in particular versus any other mutants?”

Taking another page from Rose’s playbook, I tapped the radio on, hoping to derail the conversation before having to answer with a likely lie as well as for the actual purpose of catching up on the latest SOMS news.

Being outside the range of the news station to which we’d been listening, I needed to find another. Fortunately this radio had a scan function that would scan to a given format—just like the one my grandparents had in their 1990s Cadillac.

The one news station it found currently featured a seemingly endless series of banal brain-melting commercials. Awful as the commercials were, they did succeed in terminating Sara’s and my conversation.

I kept driving, remaining thankful for how little traffic there was… almost like we had the road to ourselves.

Once the commercials were finally over, relevant news came up immediately.

Even typing that last sentence now to share with you in this narrative makes my skin crawl!

“Go west!” Rose yelled.

“Go north!”

“Go CHILL!” I yelled back, feeling like a surly lion was running around loose in the pit of my stomach, between the anxiety, stress, and insufficient meals.

“We’ve gotta get across the border before it closes!”

“Which border?!”

“Canadian! Lots of nice lakes in western Ontario.”

“I don’t have a passport!”

“None of us do, Sara. We’re staying with Plan A, Rose.”

“They’ll find us!”

“We can’t cross any borders!”

“Head to the Canadian and I’ll figure something out!”

“Oh what? You channeling gangsters you may have known now?!”

Soon as that came out of my mouth I regretted it. More so seeing Sara’s worried, confused expression.

“What?” she asked, sounding as worried as she looked.

Rose approached, putting her arm around her newest lover and friend, “C’mere; I’ll explain—while Tent keeps driving us north!”

Remember how angry I looked back at my rented place near campus when I tried on those awful junk shorts from fitzallweguaranteeitohyeah.com? That’s about what I looked like—and certainly how I felt!—as I kept on driving, northeasterly, per the original plan.

“–Turn that thing OOOOOFFFFFF!” I screamed, beyond wit’s end from all the stress, handling my own demand via a solid whack of Rose’s Bluetooth speaker with my nearest tentacle, knocking it clean off the countertop, abruptly silencing it as its batteries flew out of their compartment, scattering across the motorhome’s floor as we rush-rolled (motorhomes are too big to race) relentlessly onward.

Rose managed to catch her audio annoy-box with her upper middle hands before it smashed against anything, dusting it off and setting it safely out of my extensive reach. “Sorry! Seemed appropriate.”

Sara helped her pick up the batteries, from her look obviously afraid to say anything which might upset either of us (especially me).

I tapped the radio back on,

“Now that your overly-dramatic stress-enhancing musical selection’s title seems to be becoming literally true, what do you suggest we do, Premium?”

She didn’t have a chance to answer, nor did we get anything out of the rest of the news report due to what happened at this point: as we rounded a sharp turn in the road, a large portable electric road sign parked on the shoulder confronted us:

Rose read it aloud at the same time my and Sara’s minds were processing what our eyes told us. “Seems late in the season for road construction” she shared.

Before any of us could even begin forming a response in our minds, we rounded another blind curve, immediately confronted with a line of state police vehicles, all set up to take every passing vehicle in order for some sort of inspection, over on the grassy shoulder.

“NNNNOOOOOOOOOO!” yelled Sara. “Quick! Turn this rig around!”

“How?!” I yelled back. “There are guard rails on either side, other than where the line of police cars are!”

“Just… crash through them and keep going! This big, heavy motorhome is more than up to the challenge!”

{Don’t know about that. Though my tentacles probably could take care of things, if we had the time and weren’t being watched by the police!} I remember thinking.

“Then what?!” Rose yelled. “Go hurtling down that steep embankment without rolling over?! We can’t even get in seats, much less get seatbelts around us!”

I was already coasting towards a stop at this point, momentarily impressed with how well my inner right front tentacle had been doing working the pedals.

My slowing displeased Sara greatly. “NoNoNoNoNo!: keep our speed up and blow through the roadblock!”

“I don’t think I can squeeze this thing through the gap any faster than we’re going now!” I yelled back.

Rose was equally worked up, and equally in disagreement with Sara’s suggestion, “Blow through and kill a police officer?! Good fucking Gaia, girl!: that’s not going to help our situation any!”

Struggling to calm down, my mind latched onto Rose’s phrasing. Looking at her quizzically, I asked, “Do you think Gaia’s into boning?”

“We can ask her soon when we get there!” Sara raged. “Go for it, Tent! Better them than us! Who knows what they’ll do if they catch us?!”

“Settle down, you two! They‘re less likely to do bad things to us if we cooperate.”

Rage shifted to loud plaintive wailing, “I don’t wanna diiiieeee! After all this time wishing I was dead for being a severe mutant, I finally found love!… as a mutant.”

Rose blushed well beyond rose color into full red.

At the same time my talented pedal tentacle eased over onto the brake pedal I calmly declared, “We are going to stop. We are going to fully cooperate unless/until any of our lives or well-being are directly, immediately threatened. Beyond the fact that attempting a getaway only marks us as suspect thus hastens our capture and guarantees we’ll be treated as criminals, think about what it says for our many fellow mutants for us as mutants to act more like gangsters than civilized citizens. Like it or not, everything we do represents our kind.”

With the motorhome stopped where it was supposed to be for the moment in the lineup, I used my right rear tentacle pair to ease both Sara and Rose into a tight hug with each other and me, “Deep breaths… stay calm. Let’s all hope with all our might for the best.”

Maybe we weren’t hoping enough. Maybe we got the donut shop dozen of Bad Cops. Whatever the case, we were escorted out of the motorhome by no less than 5 state troopers, all in full PPE: gloves, N95 masks and gas masks atop, plus their usual thick leather outfits and ass-kicking steel-toed boots. Having 3 Tasers, 1 revolver, and 1 rifle all pointed at us struck me then and still strikes me as overkill for 3 passive, cooperative frightened young women, but then the officers too were clearly scared at least as near-shitless as were we.

“Slowly… slowly…” the lead officer commanded, him and the rest keeping their eyes intensely trained on us. “No sudden moves, and I’m not just talking about your hands. If you even shrug your shoulders in a way I don't like….” He let that threat hang menacingly in the air.

This apparently pushed sniffling, weepy Sara over her limit, “Pleeeease pretty please don’t hurt us!”

The lead officer took his menacing tone down a full notch, “Just stay still.”

As he spoke, several of the others approached. Before we knew it, we were all in handcuffs!

“H- hey!” Rose stuttered—something I’d not before this moment ever heard her do—related to the handcuffing of her bottommost wrists. “I need those free to be able to walk!” Actually she would’ve been better off with both that lowest pair and her next-to-lowest free, but reasonably enough she didn’t want to push her luck.

Knowing that the tip of my inner left rear tentacle was out of all officers’ sight lines and already very near Rose, I gave one of her lower right boobs a very quick, slight tap. When she turned and looked up at me, I gave her the most friendly, reassuring “We’ll get through this” weak smile I could manage.

She’d already ceased objecting, now relaxing somewhat as the officer working with her clicked shut the pair of handcuffs on her lowest wrists.

“Into the trailer” the lead officer ordered, his tone having notched back up to normally-menacing.

“I want to follow all your orders, but I can’t walk like this!” noted Rose.

“If it will be helpful to you all, I can lift and carry Rose in several of my tentacles as I slither myself over” I offered.

Despite my meek-as-possible tone, several officers’ expressions revealed fear and shock.

“Or just take at least the bottom if not that and the next-to-bottom pairs of handcuffs back off until I can walk where you want me, then put them back on if absolutely necessary.”

The leader apparently felt Rose’s suggestion bettered me demonstrating my strength. “Take ’em back off, Jan.”

“Just the bottoms?”

He nodded, his grim expression having hardly shifted the whole time.

We walked, crawled, and slithered as we were directed: towards a bright white mobile home with large double doors. I felt a knot in my stomach seeing what looked to me like a gang symbol on the side of the lead officer’s neck, followed immediately by catching a glimpse of a Blue Lives Matter sticker (no doubt left over from 2020) on the bumper of one of the patrol cars when I averted my eyes from the officer’s neck.

Brightly lit and clean though it was, the interior of the mobile trailer was hardly any more friendly than outside. Along with several medical technicians in bright white full hazmat suits, there were 3 other officers aiming Tasers at us.

The technician nearest the doorway where we entered was apparently doing data entry. “Name please?”

“Sara Trotter.”

“Middle name?”

“Jane.”

For a fraction of a second I nearly giggled, given Sara’s humantaur form and her apparent surname. Seeing all the weaponry pointed at us cut that right off.

“Name please?”

“Rose Camellia Bush.”

Under other circumstances I likely would have cracked a joke about Rose Bush, or Camellia Bush for that matter. This was definitely neither the time nor place for that!

“Name please?”

“Margaret Caroline Armitage.”

Rose looked me up and down, an inscrutable expression on her face.

“Come forward slowly, one at a time” the lead tech solemnly ordered, her and the others brandishing syringes not unlike the way the troopers brandished their Tasers.

“Bonnie?!” Sara exclaimed in shock, to her de-facto phlebotomist.

The technician said nothing, focusing on properly palpitating Sara’s arm to find a viable vein.

Sara never stopped crying, from well before the needle went in.

Rose and I each had our own, other phlebotomists, as obviously they were operating in tandem to maximize mutant throughput. Neither of us in any way recognized ours, thus making no effort to communicate as had Sara.

Soon enough it was done. Thankfully they had the common decency to apply pressure then cotton balls to help the needle pricks heal.

We were led out the opposite end of the structure, directly onto a metal ramp-like gangway sloping slightly upward to what looked for all the world like a prisoner transport bus—barred windows and all. This of course made my heart sink and Sara bawl much harder.

Unoccupied prior to our arrival, the stark, hard interior of the bus had room for several more average-sized mutants or one more around my size. This made it all the more surprising that soon as Rose was again fully handcuffed, they closed the doors right away.

A loud conversation we overheard was telling:

“Get a-rollin’, Danny!” a man on the outside called out, slapping the side of the bus with his hand, creating a brief loud metallic ringing.

“Their tests aren’t in yet” our driver replied.

“Don’t need ’em with mutations this severe. Take ’em straight to quarantine, and make America healthy again!”

The bus’s diesel engine chugged to life, soon getting the bus rumbling onto the road.

“Her expression looked so, hhhf, hollow, when she made eye contact with me!” Sara tearfully related to us as our bus rolled along some highway we couldn’t see. “She knew who I was—we were in classes together! And nursing shifts! It’s like– It’s like I wasn’t even a PERSON to her any more! WAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!”

What could Rose or I have said? It doesn’t get much shittier than someone you know looking at you like you’re beyond dead person walking, all the way into non-person!

Rose and I felt her pain. We’d each experienced our own version of it. All we could do and did do was get the three of ourselves into a protective, nurturing group cuddle, there on the hard, unforgiving bare wood floor of the bus. Perhaps having figured out that mutants don’t often fit into normal seats, the authorities in charge apparently decided to not even try: the interior was as barren as a moving truck.

Over time the healing cuddles soothed Sara sufficiently to ease her into tapering down her crying: lesser and lesser as each 5s of minutes passed, eventually down to occasional sniffles.

I remember feeling a sudden strong sensation as we all cuddled that somehow the mutations had turned us into tight-knit sisters, despite no known blood relationships. I felt at least as protective of Sara and Rose as I would of any actual siblings. Despite not being lovers with Sara, additionally my protectiveness was one of defending one’s true love—or loves. Along with this was feeling the devastation of knowing that I’d inflicted all the agonizing hurt Sara was suffering, via allowing Rose to sell my milk, then sharing sex with her, leading to her own mutations and milk production, then sales of her truly decadently delicious milk as the well-titled Pinnacle Premium Creamy.

Rose didn’t at the time know what was on my mind, but did correctly read that I was upset. Nuzzling deeper into me and kissing part of my huge boob nearest her lips let me know that she still loved me and there were no hard feelings.

None of us had the wherewithal nor motivation to figure out even roughly where we were at any moment, nor where we were going. Once again, we found ourselves thrust into the dark ages of last millennium, into which we’d been born but had been too young to know: something so trivially easy to know in mere seconds if any of us had our tech on us was instead next-to-impossible to know. My and Rose’s devices had been stowed in the motorhome since yesterday, along with Sara’s joining later. For awhile we kept count of how many times each of us instinctively reached for ours before remembering why we had them off and put away, until other more important events had us losing track. Even without the count, it was clear that Sara’s anxiety was greatest going without.

Wherever we’d been and were headed, it was a long, long trip.

It was nearly sunset by the time we arrived at our destination.

“What do you see?! What do you see?!” Sara excitedly (and repetitively) asked as I gazed out one of the tiny windows between the bars as best I could.

“Not much, with all the dirt on the window.”

“Anything at all, Ms. Regular?”

“Looks like a prison yard to me, Ms. Premium.”

Rose’s and my failure to remember that Sara knew nothing of our pet names for each other became all too obvious when she asked, “What’s this regular and premium stuff about?”

{Oh shit!} I needed to make something up, and fast! “Rose burns hotter than me when we make love, so we figure she’s higher octane, hence those names of endearment” I smiled, as the bus slowly made turn after turn towards some eventual stop-off or parking space.

“She burned hot enough to mutate more udder and an additional schlong like the one I already had big enough to have its own gravitational field onto me, that‘s for sure!”

“You titted me up quite nicely and armed me further” Rose grinned. “Thank you!”

“You like having more arms and boobs?!”

“Sure; why not? Gives me more options, including worming more into each of your hearts.”

The conversation abruptly ended thanks to the abrupt jerking to a stop our bus made. The loud echoing indistinct voices we heard speaking back and forth outside suggested a lot of hard, reflective surfaces stacking echoes thus blurring sounds, making speech far harder to understand from any distance.

Before we knew it the doors opened up.

“Get out, you three” the latest of the ongoing series of Bad Cops of the day ordered, “and no funny business.”

“Do you want to unlock her handcuffs like they did when they put us in here?” I asked. “Or would you rather have me bodily carry her in my tentacles?”

Even through the personal protective equipment it was easy to see this mean officer’s face go white.

“Or anything else that works for you all, obviously.”

“Walking on my latest pair of hands is far from a core competency” noted Rose, making direct eye contact with the officer as she concluded, “I’m not in any way a flight risk.”

Another officer who’d been passing by and apparently had a quirky (or maybe kinky) mindset shared his opinion, “Let’s see the octopussy try and heft the boob worm.”

The look the first officer gave suggested that a superior of his had just spoken. He sounded nervous when he said, “Alright: go ahead and lift your multiply-breasted multiply-armed friend, and all follow me. Officer Hetch will be following behind, fully armed with serious firepower.”

“Ready, Rose?”

“Lift me up any time, Margaret.”

I so badly wanted to glare at her for using my given name, of which I’m not especially fond. Doing so under the circumstances would not have furthered any of our causes.

Lifting up her watery limpid eyes to our captors, in the most sweet, gentle voice possible Sara asked, “Do you want me walking in front of or behind them?”

The men looked at each other.

“Behind” replied Officer Hetch, with a lecherous smirk and accompanying snicker.

All of us knew from this one comment that he intended to enjoy Sara’s nude “behind”.

Hetch’s smirk went away and the other officer’s face again tended paper white seeing me wrap a single tentacle around Rose then easily lift her up and carry her over close to my body core.

“Don’t you dare try anything tricky!” Officer #1 yelled, in a man’s voice with intonations and mannerisms of a scared little boy.

Hetch planted a hand on his shoulder, “They’re nice girls, Jack. They’re not going to do anything bad, are you, girls?”

We all made clear, direct, sincere eye contact as we slowly and deeply shook our heads.

The loud rasping buzz of the fluorescent light fixtures sounding like hive after hive of angry bees as we made our way along the dank halls of the prison made me wonder about the budget situation of Minnesota’s penal institutions. Modern energy-efficient quiet LED strip lights aren’t exactly a new, exotic thing, far as I know.

It wasn’t a super-long walk, though it had enough twists and turns and I was stressed enough to have no way of readily knowing how to get back out, should the opportunity arise for me to be doing so on my own.

“In here” the officer apparently named Jack ordered, his quivering voice belying his ongoing fear of us (likely me).

{From med student in an apartment to captive in a prison cell, for a crime I didn’t commit} I remember thinking. {Except Rose and I kinda did, with that whole milk thing.} “Do we have assigned cots?” I felt the need to ask.

“Anywhere you like, ladies,” Officer Hetch leered, “long as you’re all getting along nicely and behaving.”

“One of the upper cots please, Tent” requested Rose.

“We gotta get some, ugh, tentacle cuffs on that one” Officer Jack tried (and failed) to whisper to his superior.

“No, we’re going to take all the cuffs off, now that they’re in their cell and not going anywhere mutating anybody else.” He turned towards us, “You’re not going to mutate anyone else, are you girls?”

We all made eye contact and shook our heads, as before.

“You’re going to stay in here and be my good girls?”

Thoughts of him forcing himself on any of us flitted through my mind. Nevertheless, there was obviously only one correct answer to ensure relative maximum freedom, therefore I joined Rose and Sara nodding.

Officer Hetch personally removed all our handcuffs, starting with Sara since she was again weeping. She managed to get through to him emotionally for a fleeting moment, judging from a twitch of apparent discomfort I saw him make.

“How long are we in for?” Rose asked as he sequentially unfastened her pairs, starting from the top.

“As long as it takes for people in the know to figure out how and why this keeps spreading, how to stop it, and hopefully how to reverse it.”

Thankfully my handcuffs precluded my face-palming when Rose ballsily asked, “How is it that we can be incarcerated when we haven’t committed a crime, much less been convicted of one, and not even charged with one?”

“Health and safety laws, ma’am” he replied as he unfastened her second-to-lowest pair. “And it’s isolation, not incarceration.”

“Looks like a prison to me.”

“We work with what we have.”

“Bend over lower, please” he asked of me. “Or however that works for you.”

He shot me a dirty look as he finished opening my handcuffs, apparently having only now figured out that I have 8 tentacle cocks, assuredly larger than whatever he or most un-mutated men were or are packing.

“Supper’s coming ’round within the hour” Officer Hetch announced as he rolled the iron bar gate door shut with a loud CLUNNNNNNG! “Have a good night—hopefully without further mutations.”