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 Sarah's Story

   Prologue

   Ned Fisher laughed loudly as he helped the stumbling 18-year-old girl
out of the bar.  His girlfriend Miriam followed them out with a smirk on
her face.  They caused some stares as they left; it was illegal for women
to drink, and this girl looked like she had been drinking heavily all
night. In reality though, Sarah White would have never have broken the law
like that; Ned knew that the drug he had being spiking her soft drinks with
all night would make her `drunk', and then leave her comatose.

   Ned and Miriam were awful people, sexual predators and serial murderers
of an insatiable appetite.  Miriam worked as a hairdresser at a posh salon
in central Grand City.  There she had befriended this 18-year-old school
leaver, who she told Ned was a little naive despite having an education. 
They hatched the plan.  Miriam was to ask her new friend out for a night to
celebrate her new job.  Ned had being spiking every drink he had bought for
Sarah or had left unlooked at for a moment, which had been nearly all of
them.  The plan from here was to rape the drugged Sarah, do awful things to
her young body, and then force her to sign a slavery contract.  Then, they
would, quite legally, torture and murder the young girl.

   They half dragged Sarah into the nearest dark alley.  Ned was hard; this
girl's lithe body had being intoxicating his mind all night.  He pushed the
nearly unconscious Sarah into the wall of the alley.

   "Not yet!" hissed Miriam.

   Nevertheless, Ned proceeded to the strap of Sarah's dress with his
pocket knife.  He then slashed the side of her dress and began to grope her
breasts through the material.

   At that point, there was the sound of running footsteps.  Ned and Miriam
instinctively fled.  Sarah's limp body fell onto the dirty floor.



   Loria and Francene stumbled about laughing.  They were underneath the
statue of the Emperor in Coronation Park, a shady green space in Grand
City. The Emperor's statue now had `WOMEN RISE AGAINST THE EMPEROR' daubed
across it in white paint.  The two girls collapsed against the pedestal of
the statue, Loria holding a paint brush and Francene holding the near-empty
bottle of spirit.

   The two girls had been friends for a long time.  They had been sent to
expensive schools all their lives, only really seeing their parents at
holidays.  Having a childhood mostly without control and without excess,
they had essentially grown up as spoiled closeted snobbish brats.  They had
objected to the most recent round of patriarchal legislation, mainly
because the new alcohol laws stopped them having fun.  Without thinking,
they had actively sought out an underground women's rights group, who only
smelled money when the two blonde school leavers contacted them.  The two
girls had been persuaded that they would need to graffiti as an act of
initiation.  A bottle later for courage, and here they were.

   The two girls were very drunk now.  They dumped their stuff at the
statue and stumbled away.  At the entrance to the park, they passed a
newsstand with fresh copies of The Grand City Chronicle.  The state-funded
paper was free to all, so Loria picked up a copy on the way past.  On the
front page, there was a story about two members of another underground
group who had been caught attempting to write disloyal graffiti on the
walls of Justice Palace of all places.  Inside, there were pictures of the
two rebels being burned at the stake for the heresies they uttered in
court.

   Loria and Francene looked at each other in panic.  The seriousness of
their crime was hitting them, and they were starting to sober up.  They
flicked further through the paper, instinctively looking for page 10, where
all public punishments were listed.  Their hearts skipped a beat when they
saw pictures of a Lucilla Bache being flogged in Justice Square for
drinking alcohol.

   "Shit!" exclaimed Francene.  "What do we do now?"

   "Run."

   The two girls ran into the nearest dark alley, where the promptly
tripped over the prostrate body of an unconscious Sarah.  The two girls
looked at each other as the same plan hit them at the same time.

   They struggled to lift Sarah's body across the road and into the park.
Once in the park they decided to drag Sarah across the grass by her arms.
Sarah's dress tore in several place but they didn't care.  Once at the
statue, they sat Sarah up against the base.  Into one hand was put the
paint brush and into the other the spirit bottle.  The two girls stood
back.

   "Do you think this is right?" whispered Francene.

   "What choice do we have?" said Loria.  "This girl had clearly been
drinking, and we found her unconscious in an alley; she must be a nobody
who no one is going to miss."

   "Okay."

   "What time is it?"

   "Nearly four."
   "Right, we'll walk to the police station and report this crime."