Chapter 96: Quarantine
The drive was silent, the black sedan eating up miles of winding mountain road. Marco sat beside her, his presence a calm, impenetrable wall. Sandi watched the pine forests blur past, her body still humming from the constant use of the last weeks, a dull, pleasant ache in every muscle and orifice.
“There is a final, non-negotiable requirement for induction,” Marco said, his voice cutting through the quiet. He didn’t look at her. “The members of the inner circle are free of all sexually transmitted diseases. A point of pride, and necessity. As you will be having unprotected sex with them, exclusively and repeatedly, you must be rendered disease-free as well.”
Sandi turned from the window. “I’m clean. I had a full panel before I came to France.”
“Tests can be faulty. Incubation periods can be missed.” He finally glanced at her. “You will endure a three-month quarantine. Fifty acolytes—men who have already completed their own quarantine and been cleared—will be your only companions. They will have sex with you. They will report anything, any slightest symptom they might potentially catch from you. It is the most rigorous biological audit imaginable.”
The clinical term—audit—sent a strange chill through her. It reduced what she had come to crave into a spreadsheet of pathogens and vectors. “Three months?”
“In isolation. At a repurposed monastery. The conditions are Spartan. There are no books, no television, no music. No distractions of any kind. Sex is the work. Sex is the only available pleasure. It will break you of any lingering sentimentality about the act.”
The car turned onto an even narrower track, overgrown with gorse. A high, grey stone wall appeared, then a heavy iron gate that swung open silently. The monastery was a severe, angular block of weathered stone against the bleak sky. No warmth, no lavender, no golden light. Just wind, rock, and a crushing silence.
They entered a vaulted refectory, now empty save for a single wooden chair placed in the center of the stone floor. A man in plain grey trousers and a tunic stood waiting beside a small table on which lay shears, razors, and bottles.
“This is Brother Anselm,” Marco said. “He will perform the initiation.”
Anselm had the calm, empty eyes of a dutiful machine. He did not smile. “Sit, please.”
She sat. The wood was cold and unyielding against her thighs. Anselm gathered her sun-streaked auburn hair in one hand, lifting its weight. For a fleeting moment, she thought of her daughters, how they loved to braid it, how her husband would bury his face in it. Then the shears snipped, and a thick rope of hair fell into her lap. The sound was brutally final. Snip.Snip. Snip. Hanks of hair piled around the chair, a rust-coloured nest on the grey flagstones. The shears gave way to electric clippers that buzzed like angry wasps, reducing her scalp to coarse stubble. Finally, a straight razor, its edge icy with alcohol, scraped her skull clean. He worked with a barber’s efficiency, turning her head, tilting her chin. When he was done, he held a small mirror before her.
The woman who stared back was a stranger. Her skull was elegant, pale, vulnerable. Her hazel eyes looked enormous, haunted, and strangely alert. She felt a shocking lightness, a literal and metaphorical unmooring. The last vestige of the Wimbledon mother was heaped on the floor.
“Stand and remove your clothes,” Anselm instructed.
She did. The air was cool on her naked skin. He pointed to the table. “You may choose a marking. It is optional, but most choose it. It helps them… focus.”
On the table lay photographs: tattoos, brands, piercings. Her eyes scanned them—elaborate spirals, glyphs, rings, brutal-looking scars. Then she saw it. A simple, elegant script. A word.
“That one,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady. She pointed.
“The word?” Anselm asked.
“‘Enjoy’,” she said. “With the exclamation point.”
A trace of something—not emotion, but perhaps assessment—flickered in Anselm’s eyes. He nodded. He guided her to lie on the table, her legs spread. He swabbed her shaven pubic mound with cold antiseptic. The buzzing needle of the tattoo gun replaced the buzz of the clippers. The pain was a sharp, persistent sting, a hundred little bee stings tracing an arc just above her slit. She didn’t flinch. She watched the exposed wooden beams of the ceiling, concentrating on the sensation, claiming it. This was her choice. Her signature. When it was done, he wiped away the excess ink and blood, and applied a salve. In a simple, black cursive, the word “ENJOY!” now curved over her sex, a permanent, ironic command.
Marco approached for the last time. He looked at her shaven head, at the fresh tattoo. He gave a slow, approving nod. “The quarters are through that door. The acolytes have been instructed. They will attend to you in shifts. Remember, this is an audit. Your body is the subject. Be meticulous.”
He turned and left. The great oak door of the refectory closed with a solid, echoing thud. She was alone with Brother Anselm, who simply gestured toward a small, arched door.
Her cell was exactly as described: Spartan. A narrow cot with a thin mattress and a single wool blanket. A stone washbasin with a jug of cold water. A chamber pot. A single, high, barred window letting in a slab of grey light. There were no personal effects. Nothing to read, nothing to do. The walls were bare stone. The silence was absolute and heavy.
She sat on the edge of the cot, the rough wool prickling her bare thighs. She ran a hand over the shocking smoothness of her scalp. She looked down at the tattoo, the letters still raised and angry-looking. ENJOY!
Time lost its shape. It was measured only in the arrival of men.
The door opened without a knock. The first acolyte entered. He was young, maybe twenty-five, with a broad, plain face and close-cropped hair. He wore the same grey tunic and trousers. He said nothing. He didn’t look at her face. His eyes went directly to her body, to the tattoo. He untied his rope belt, let his trousers fall. His cock was already half-hard, thick and serviceable. He walked to the cot, put a hand on her shoulder, and pushed her onto her back. He knelt between her legs, spat once into his palm, slicked himself, and pushed inside her.
The act was wordless, efficient, and devoid of any affect. He fucked her with steady, deep strokes, his breath humid on her neck. He came inside her with a low grunt, stayed buried for a moment until he softened, then pulled out. He stood, pulled up his trousers, tied his belt, and left. The entire encounter lasted less than five minutes.
Sandi lay there, feeling his semen already starting to leak from her. She felt nothing. Not disgust, not pleasure, not violation. It was a transaction. A clinical procedure.
The door opened again ten minutes later. Another man, older, with a wiry build. Same routine. Eyes on the tattoo. Trousers down. A quick, thorough fuck. A deposit. Exit.
Then a third. And a fourth.
They came in shifts. Day and night lost meaning. The grey light at the window faded to black, then returned to grey. She slept in fragments between them, her sleep often interrupted by a hand on her shoulder, rolling her over, entering her from behind. She ate the bland, functional meals—porridge, boiled potatoes, tough bread—that were left on a tray by the door. She washed sparingly with the cold water. Her world contracted to the four stone walls, the cot, and the endless, rotating procession of cocks.
Their anonymity was total. They were bodies. Functions. Some were quick. Some took longer, pounding into her with a grim determination. Some fucked her mouth, holding the back of her shaved head, fucking her throat until she gagged, coming down it without a word. Some used her arse, the hole kept perpetually loose and ready. They used her in silence, or with only the basic, animal sounds of effort and release.
Her initial numbness began to mutate. The constant use, the lack of any other stimulus, rewired her. The fucking became the only event, the only punctuation in the void. Her body, deprived of all other sensation, began to amplify the sexual ones. The rub of a calloused palm on her nipple. The particular angle of a thrust that brushed her cervix. The smell of sweat and sex that now permanently saturated the cell. These became landmarks. The tattoo, “ENJOY!”, became a focal point. Many of the men would trace it with a thumb, or read it aloud in a flat tone before entering her. It was her name now.
She began to crave not the men, but the feeling of being occupied. The emptiness between them became a profound anxiety. She would listen for the scrape of the door latch, her body tensing with a need that was purely physical, a addict’s need for the next fix. The orgasms, when they came, were sharp, desperate things, ripped from her by the sheer mechanical friction. She came to value the men who fucked her longest, who filled her the fullest, not for any personal quality, but for their stamina, their girth, their ability to stave off the terrifying emptiness for a few extra minutes.
One day—or night, she couldn’t tell—a new acolyte entered. He was taller than the others, with a quiet authority. His routine was the same, but after he finished, instead of leaving immediately, he remained kneeling between her splayed legs. He looked at her face for the first time.
“You are adapting,” he stated. His voice was low, cultured.
Sandi just stared at the ceiling, catching her breath.
“The others report no issues. No symptoms. You are likely clean.” He reached out and touched the tattoo, his finger cool. “This is a good word. It is an instruction to us, as much as to you.”
He stood and left. His visit was the only break in the monotony, a flicker of something resembling communication. It faded quickly, absorbed back into the relentless rhythm of use.
Weeks bled together. Her body changed. She grew leaner, harder. The slight softness of motherhood vanished, replaced by taut muscle from the constant physical engagement. Her nipples were permanently darkened, sensitized. Her cunt and arse felt perpetually swollen, used, a state that had become her new normal. Her mind quieted. The memories of her past life—the twins’ laughter, her husband’s smile, the tedious satisfaction of a well-organized spreadsheet—felt like scenes from a film she’d seen once, long ago. They had no texture, no weight. The only things that felt real were the grain of the wool blanket, the chill of the stone, and the next cock filling her.
The audit was working. It was breaking down everything but the essential machinery of hunger and satisfaction. She was being scoured clean, not just of disease, but of history, of personality, of want beyond the most primal.
One morning, after a man with a thick, curved cock had spent a long time fucking her arse, she lay on her stomach, feeling the familiar trickle of his release. She looked at the wall, her eye catching a faint scratch in the stone. She had made it, weeks ago, to track time. She had lost count long ago.
It didn’t matter. Time was not days. Time was the space between fuckings. Time was the slow leak of semen from her body, waiting for the next man to replace it. She closed her eyes. The door would open again soon. That was all she knew. That was all she needed to know. The word above her sex pulsed, a literal, inked heartbeat.
ENJOY!
And in the stark, empty cathedral of her mind, she finally did.
The change began without conscious thought during the visit of a man with a scar across his shoulder. He was fucking her with the usual detached vigour, his hips slapping against her thighs, his breath hot and regular against her stubbly scalp. Her hands, which had lain limp at her sides for weeks, stirred. They floated up and her fingers brushed the sweat-slick plane of his back. She felt him twitch inside her. Emboldened, she flattened her palms against him, feeling the flex and pull of his muscles as he drove into her. She held on.
The next time, with a younger acolyte whose eyes were a surprising shade of blue, she not only held his back but turned her face into the column of his neck. She inhaled his scent—simple soap and male sweat—and pressed her lips to his skin. It was not a kiss of affection, but of acknowledgement, a punctuation mark in the rhythm of his thrusts. He shuddered, his pace faltering for a single beat before he resumed, gripping her hips tighter.
Her legs, always splayed and passive, began to act. She hooked her ankles around his calves, locking him deeper. The following week, she graduated to wrapping her thighs around his thighs, then finally, with a broad-chested man, she locked her heels above the small of his back, her body arching to meet each plunge. He stopped, braced above her, his cock buried to the hilt. He looked into her eyes, really looked, for the first time. “You want something,” he grunted.
“Kiss me,” she breathed, the words strange and thick on her tongue.
He did. It was clumsy, all teeth and desperation, but it was a connection that sparked a circuit long dormant. After that, they kissed. Not all of them, but many. The silent, clinical fuck became a grunting, sighing, mouth-to-mouth exchange.
She moved the cot herself, dragging the rough frame across the stone until it lay directly opposite the door. She would lie there waiting, naked, her legs spread wide, the “ENJOY!” on full display. She greeted them. “Come in,” she’d say, her voice no longer hollow. “I’m ready for you.”
They started talking. Short, gasped phrases at first. You’re so fucking tight. Take it. Come for me. Then questions. “What’s your name?” a man asked, pumping into her slowly.
“Sandi,” she moaned, and it felt like reclaiming something.
“I’m Tomas.” He kissed her again.
One afternoon, with Tomas still buried inside her, the door opened for the next acolyte. Sandi turned her head, her cheek against the rough blanket. “Leave it open,” she panted. “Come in. Watch if you want. Join when you’re ready.”
The man in the doorway, a silent figure named Arlo, stood stunned for a moment. Then he entered, leaving the door ajar. He watched Tomas fuck her, watched her hands claw at Tomas’s back, heard her ragged cries. Arlo’s cock strained against his trousers. He freed himself, stroking his length as he watched. When Tomas finally groaned and spilled into her, collapsing to the side, Arlo was there, replacing him in an instant. Tomas then guided his softening cock to her mouth and her glistening lips. “Suck me clean,” he ordered, and she did, hungrily, tasting the mingled spend of what had to be a great many men. Tomas, recovering quickly, got hard again, and started fucking her mouth, so she took them both, a moan escaping her as she clenched around Arlo’s thrusting flesh.
Word spread. The mood in the stone corridors shifted from dutiful silence to a charged, anticipatory hum. The door to Cell Five was rarely closed. Men would linger outside, watching, waiting their turn. She took two regularly, one in her cunt, one in her mouth. Then she asked for a third, to fill her arse. The feeling of total penetration, of being stretched and stuffed in every possible channel, made her scream into the mouth of the man she was sucking. She learned to use her hands, too, jerking off one or two more who stood at the bedside, their cocks in her fists as she was fucked from multiple angles. The cell stank of sex and sweat and come, a smell she now associated with power, not degradation.
Winter’s bleak grip loosened. A warm breeze occasionally found its way through the high window, carrying the scent of thawing earth. One day, the senior acolyte, the one with the cultured voice named Eamon, did not lead her back to her cell after a session in the refectory. Instead, he guided her outside, through a gate and into the grounds.
Spring had erupted. The mountain stream that cut through their walled domain roared with snow-melt, its water achingly clear and brutally cold. Sunlight dappled through new leaves. “Strip,” Eamon said, and she did, standing naked on a smooth rock. The fifty men, her auditors, her congregation, gathered along the bank.
They led her into the current. The water was a shock, a physical slap that stole her breath. It needled her skin, turned it bright pink. But the deep, internal fire that now lived in her gut did not gutter. She laughed, a wild, free sound that echoed off the stone. She spread her arms, her shaven head tipped back to the sun. They washed her, their hands scrubbing her body with rough gentleness, rinsing away weeks of grime and dried seed from every fold and crease.
After, they adorned her. They wove chains of tiny blue star-flowers and buttercups, draping them around her neck, her wrists, her ankles. They placed a crown of them on her head. She stood before them, bejewelled in living colour, water sparkling on her skin. She looked at the ragged grey dress she had worn, the only one she had, and she tossed onto a rock. She left it there.
“Listen to me,” she said, and her voice carried, clear and firm. They fell silent. “You took me without my consent at first. You used me as a vessel for an audit.” She touched the tattoo above her mound. “But I give that consent to you now. Freely. I want you to stop seeing this as just using a hole to relieve a physical need.” She stepped toward them, her hazel eyes blazing. “I want us to go further. Into pleasure. Shared, deliberate pleasure. Then past that, into ecstasy. And from there, into something spiritual.”
She saw confusion on some faces, intrigue on others. Eamon watched, his arms folded, a faint smile on his lips.
“A certain man, before I came here, taught me things,” she continued. “He spoke of a feminine force. A current that fills the whole universe. Creation, chaos, appetite—it’s all in that current.” She placed a hand on her belly, then between her legs. “I can feel it filling me up. When you’re in me, all of you, in every way you can be… you’re not just fucking. You’re connecting to it. You’re plugging into the source through me. Through my orifices. This isn’t a test or a punishment any more. It’s a sacrament.”
A man named Josef, older with greying temples, spoke. “It’s a beautiful notion, Sandi. But there’s fifty of us. And only twenty-four hours in a day.”
She smiled, a radiant, challenging expression. “Then I want to see what happens. I want to put myself at your service for every minute of those twenty-four hours. While I eat. While I sleep. While I’m menstruating, if you want. I want to see if the vessel can stay perpetually full. I want to see what that does. To me. To you. To the force.”
A palpable energy, part disbelief, part raw hunger, rippled through the men. Most shook their heads, retreating from the sheer logistics of such a commitment. But a core group remained—Eamon, Tomas, Arlo, Leo, Josef, and about ten others. They were the curious, the devout, the insatiable.
They took her at her word.
They set up a pallet in the sun-drenched refectory. She lay on it, always accessible. She ate porridge from a bowl while Tomas fucked her slowly from behind, his hands kneading her breasts. She dozed in a twilight state with Eamon’s soft cock resting in her mouth, jerking to hardness with her sleep-slow sucks before he’d wake her properly by fucking her throat. Slowly, all the others took to joining it.
When her period came, a bright slick of blood, only a self-selected hard core persisted. The first, a man called Josef, carefully smeared it on his cock and pushed into her cunt, groaning at the metallic smell and the slick, primal heat of it.
The state of her body after three days was shockingly, profoundly dirty. Blood-stained come crusted between her legs and leaked and dried in streaks down her inner thighs. The smell was overwhelming, a pungent mix of sweat, sex, and iron. Her arsehole felt gaped and sore, her cunt lips swollen and bruised. She was a used, sticky altar. She had never felt more powerful.
During a lull, as Leo gently wiped her face with a damp cloth, a sliver of her old, pragmatic mind surfaced through the delirium. She looked at the mingled fluids on her stomach. “Leo,” she whispered, her voice hoarse from constant use. “What if I get pregnant?”
He continued wiping her, his touch oddly tender. “They crush the pills,” he said casually. “The contraceptive pills. They put them in your food. Have from the start.”
She blinked, the information slotting into place. A profound, dizzying relief washed through her, followed immediately by a late-blooming terror. She smiled, a slow, weary smile. She wondered why the danger—the potential of being tied to this place forever by a child, the ultimate biological audit—had only just now occurred to her.