EYES ON THE PRIZE – CHAPTER THREE

Amanda Stern 

“That’s it, keep going – a little more ... just a bit more ...”

“Are you sure you can take it, Stacey? You look like you’re going to burst!”

“Just a bit further”, I gasped. “That’s it ... Ooooh, fuck!”

“I don’t think I’ve got the equipment for that right now”, giggled Natasha. I gave her – no, goddammit, him – a glare as he gave the cords on my corset one final tug and tied them in place.

I wasn’t sure what I found more disturbing right now – the fact that one of my fellow inmates was making jokes about having his cock taped up and essentially rendered useless, or that I was having such a hard time remembering that this was actually a man.

Natasha – I had no idea of his real name – had been one of the few taken prisoner with me who seemed comfortable with the transformation that was being forced on us. After two weeks of training, he’d consistently been among the top scorers for makeup and feminine deportment. Although not blessed with Kaylee’s long hair and petite build, he had progressed to the point where on a quick glance he seemed female – even though a less cursory inspection would still reveal his true gender. Which, I reflected bitterly, put him well ahead of me right now.

Of course I had the more immediate problem of not fainting for lack of oxygen, so tightly was the corset cinched. We had been wearing them for the past week, day and night. We were allowed to remove them before having a shower, which we generally took after our morning aerobics. But the respite was a brief one. As soon as we were clean and dry, we would have to buddy up with whoever had showered with us and lace each other’s corsets up anew.

It was left to us to decide how constricted we should be. I could have chosen to have it a lot looser than I did. But as I saw it, the tighter the fit, the quicker it would narrow my waist – which was surely the point of being required to wear them in the first place.

So why was I so keen to give myself a more feminine figure? It was not that I really wanted to change my shape. But short term pain for long term gain, that was my thinking. I wanted to get out of here with my manhood intact. And if a viable escape couldn’t be found – and trust me, I was still looking – well, I’d already vowed to do whatever it took to win the competition that we’d been promised would offer one of us a chance to stay male.

If I could somehow win free, it wouldn’t take that long to get my regular waist back – or so I hoped. The trouble was that the corsets were far from the only way in which the crazy bitches who’d kidnapped us were changing the look and feel of our bodies.

For one thing, I’d stopped having to worry about body hair. The combination of the chemicals we used to wash ourselves, the drugs they were feeding us and some weird kind of laser treatment meant that I hadn’t had to shave now for over a week. And I didn’t just mean shave my face – I meant anywhere. I was now totally hairless, save only for my head and my carefully plucked eyebrows.

On top of that indignity, I had already had several injections in my buttocks. Although it was hard to be sure, they seemed to be growing bigger and rounder. That process was being helped along by the rigorous exercises, plus our diet, which seemed to be strengthening muscle tone in some places while weakening it in others. And that was without counting the hormones they were doubtless pumping into us ...

And then there was the torc. Without conscious volition, my hand drifted up to touch the band of silver around my neck. It was not there for decoration – or not solely.

After the first couple of days, the ban on inmates speaking to one another had not just been relaxed, we’d actually been encouraged to talk, at least in pairs. (Larger groups were pretty well always discouraged.) But there were two catches.

One was that we could converse only about our clothes, our makeup, our exercises – or any story from the women’s magazines that were the only reading material available to us. Any other topic was strictly forbidden, on pain of getting shocked, whipped or both.

And the other was that we had to speak exclusively in a higher register from the one we would usually use. Which is where the elegantly crafted torcs came in. Sitting snugly over our voice boxes, they had a device that detected any vibrations of the wrong sort. Too low a frequency and they would send a stab of pain to the implants in our cocks. So there was a pretty basic incentive there to use a feminine tone.

Combined with the vocal training that now consumed our evenings, together with makeup and deportment lessons, I was slowly finding it easier to keep my voice higher and quieter. But it was still common, especially early in the day, to hear conversations interrupted by cries of pain – and then further cries, if the initial exclamation was itself pitched too low.

My dark thoughts about the way we were being controlled were interrupted by a gentle touch on my arm. I looked up to find Natasha peering at me, a look of concern on her – his! – face. “Are you okay, hon?”

I was proud of my reaction – or rather, the lack of it. Two weeks ago, I’d have punched any guy who dared to call me “hon”, let alone touched me. A week ago, even, I would have snarled at him, or at least scowled at his presumption.

But I’d been training myself to control my responses. It was part of the mental regimen that was going to get me out of here. The same discipline that had made me so successful at school sports was now being used to temper my responses to ... well, just about anything they threw at us here.

The key, I kept telling myself, was to bide my time, do as I was told and accept my treatment – until it was the right moment to do otherwise. And if that moment never came, I would make it out anyway, by winning whatever twisted contests they put us through. I intended to be the best – and if that meant the best pseudo-woman, well, so be it. Hideous though that might be, it was better than the alternative.

Of course I knew I wasn’t the best, not right now at any rate. But I had been working hard on my makeup, on how I carried myself, how I spoke. And I had also schooled myself, as now, to take a moment before reacting to anything said or done to me.

Because I had already seen what happened to the inmates who couldn’t match that discipline. On that dreadful second day, we had looked on aghast as three of the most recalcitrant captives had been brutalised by the guards, then sent off to surgery, where a truly dreadful fate awaited them.

Anaesthetised, they were forced to watch helplessly as their genitals were removed and replaced by a piece of plastic with a small hole in the middle, similar to the one recessed into the side of my own appendage. But I could still hope eventually to resume the use of my cock – theirs had been taken forever.

The same had happened to two more inmates who had snapped and tried to overpower a guard – a tactic which, after what we had seen, only an idiot would attempt. If we were to believe what we were told – and it was hard not to – all of them would be sent off to work in a prison camp, mutilated and broken.

And the rest of us had been compelled to view the surgery on a big screen! I found it hard to comprehend the kind of insanity that would prompt one human being to treat another like that. But as the boss bitch had made clear, we were paying not just for own “crimes”, but those of men in general.

Of course that wasn’t fair. In my case, maybe I’d overstepped the mark a few times, but not to the extent of deserving what I was currently being put through. But while I couldn’t stop that thought from routinely popping into my head, I could and did suppress it as quickly as possible. No amount of bemoaning my fate was going to remake it. It would be discipline and commitment that would see me through, not self-pity, despair or resentment.

So when Natasha asked if I was okay, I took a second to compose myself, then quietly nodded and said in the soft voice so unlike my own: “I’m fine thanks ... sweetie.” The slight pause was to prevent me curling my lip at the term. We’d been told that using such ridiculous vocabulary would improve our femininity scores, but I was still struggling not to sound strained when talking that way.

“I’m just a little out of breath, that’s all”, I continued. “I like your skirt, by the way.”

Natasha’s face lit up in a smile. He looked down at the embroidered red skirt that flared out slightly, its short cut emphasising what I had to admit was a shapely pair of legs, clad in black nylon. “I wasn’t sure if it works with this blouse.” The top he had chosen was made of black silk, with long sleeves and silver buttons.

“Are you kidding?” I protested. “You look gorgeous!” That brought a blush. Almost shyly, Natasha brushed the fringe of his auburn hair (or wig, I reminded myself) out of his eyes. It was a thoroughly feminine gesture and one I should really learn to copy. He gave me a piercing look, his large hazel eyes as always skilfully enhanced by makeup. “You really think so?” he asked softly.

Of course I don’t, you sissy faggot, you look ridiculous. Put on some proper clothes and take off that fucking makeup! That’s what I wanted to say ... but of course I didn’t. And, truth be told, he looked – well, not gorgeous, obviously, but nice. Those legs ...

I felt a strange surge of heat in my trapped member, firmly tied in its usual position between my legs, though mercifully there was no sensation of stiffening. I didn’t want to deal with that kind of discomfort, let alone what it would imply about my reaction to Natasha’s appearance.

To cover my embarrassment, I leaned in and gave her – no, him! – a quick peck on the cheek. “Of course I do Tash, it was a great choice. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get my own outfit on.”

Not waiting to see his reaction, I turned and went to the rack where I’d carefully hung up my choice of clothes.

This was actually the first day we’d been permitted to dress ourselves. We’d previously been rotating through costumes that essentially fitted whatever kind of dance workout we were going to do that day, each chosen for maximum shame and distress – if you didn’t want to look like a girl, that is.

There had been the cheerleaders’ uniforms, the brightly coloured polka dot skirts and white socks for rock n roll dancing, the check shirts and tight denim shorts for country line dancing, which weren’t too bad ... and worst of all, the ballet outfits. It had been utterly humiliating to have to wear leotards, pink tutus and white stockings and then prove just how flexible we weren’t. I could see in the eyes of the inmates around me – well most of them anyway – their loathing of this particular uniform. Hopefully I was hiding my feelings better than they were.

At any rate, we’d been given an opportunity today, following a gruelling class in our rock n roll outfits, to select clothes of our own choosing from a very large collection. Our only instruction was to “look good”.

After much umming and ahhing, I had settled on a fairly conservative choice – a simple black cocktail dress, with a high neck and no sleeves. I was still learning about women’s fashion and wasn’t too confident about matching colours with my particular skin tone, or whatever stupid shit it was women worried about ... No, can that thought, that “stupid shit” might at some point mean the difference between having a dick and pissing through a tube.

Anyway, I reckoned it was better to keep it simple and just look as elegant as I possibly could. To add a little glitz, and also call attention to my narrowing waist, I’d added a belt with gold circles. I’d have worn some dangly earrings as well, but we had not yet been allowed access to any jewellery.

We’d also been given the freedom to select a wig. I’d chosen an ash-blonde number with curls that tumbled to my shoulders. As I brushed it out and inspected my appearance in the mirror, I was reasonably satisfied with the overall effect. It was certainly very feminine, even if I was still pretty obviously a guy in drag.

The final touch was the shoes, black flats with a gold buckle that matched my belt. I was a little mystified that we hadn’t been forced into wearing high heels, given the potential for ridicule and misadventure, but I certainly wasn’t complaining.

“You look good Stacey!” I looked up to find Natasha smiling at me. My hands unconsciously started to ball into fists, but with an effort I relaxed. He was paying me a compliment, not being sarcastic – or so I was prepared to believe. And even if he wasn’t, giving him the beating he deserved would be foolish in the extreme.

I shrugged. “It’ll have to do.” I glanced up at the clock on the dressing room wall. “C’mon”, I said, heading towards the door, “we don’t want to be late.”

With a few minutes to spare, we joined the throng of inmates in the Studio, the room where we took our dance classes. Today the blocks that usually formed a stage at one end had been laid out longwise down the middle of the room. I looked around at my fellow prisoners. All were in makeup, wigs and a colourful assortment of female clothes. Some looked passable, others just garish. But then my breath caught as I saw Kaylee.

She was a wearing a gold mini skirt with an embossed pattern, a white blouse inlaid with intricate panels of fine mesh and a dark jacket. The skirt showed off her legs, which were also emphasised by the gladiator-type sandals she was wearing, the black laces gracefully entwined around her calves. Her makeup was understated rather than heavy, highlighting her finely chiselled features. And where the rest of us were forced to wear wigs, her flowing chestnut locks fell naturally to her shoulders.

I tried the mental correction, to think of Kaylee as a him, but my brain was no longer willing to dispute what my eyes could plainly see. And that heat was back between my legs ...

Wrenching my eyes away, I looked around the room. As usual, there were a few guards, but not as many as our numbers might warrant. Our captors were pretty confident about their ability to control us. And unfortunately, that confidence seemed well placed.

As much to keep my thoughts away from Kaylee as anything else, I turned to the guy next to me and said conversationally: “I’ve been wondering about those initials on our cheerleading outfits, the ones that the guards have too – R.A.M.S. What do you suppose they stand for?”

My neighbour was a large, well muscled man who had been stuck with the name Chantelle. He was wearing a red wig and way too much green eye makeup. He squinted at me suspiciously, though whether because he wasn’t sure why I was talking to him or was trying to work out whether this was a permitted topic for conversation, I couldn’t say.

“Rev-”, he started to say in a rich baritone, then doubled over with pain. Straightening up, he mouthed a swear word then tried again, this time in a strangled falsetto. “Revenge Against Male Scum. That’s what one of the guards told me. But I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.”

Before I could absorb or react to this information, the voice of the boss bitch sounded above us. “Welcome, ladies, to your next challenge! You can start by changing your footwear.”

As she said this, several guards walked into the room, carrying large racks of shoes. My heart sank as I realised every single one of them seemed to have high heels. I might have known we wouldn’t get off so lightly.

“Select a pair that goes with your outfit, but don’t put them on yet”, came the instruction. “You have ten minutes.” Like the crowd of dispirited drag queens that we resembled, the group of inmates converged on the racks. In other circumstances there might have been pushing and shoving to get a closer look, but that would have implied enthusiasm. Instead a sullen silence descended on the Studio as the options were weighed.

I hung back from the throng, trying to decide what I should look for. Something black, or black and gold, to go with the dress – that was obvious. But what type of heel, and how high? We would probably be judged for style, but I strongly suspected we’d also be expected to walk in them – and there was the problem. I had no experience and not even the faintest clue how to balance on heels of any size, let alone move my feet.

Part of me wanted to insist that if women could do it, how hard could it be? But the realist had an answer for that kind of bravado – yeah, you thought that about makeup too, and look how difficult that had turned out to be.

Still uncertain, I moved forward to look at the racks, which already had empty places where others had made their selection. Of the ones in my size, the best looking option was an elegant pair of what I thought from my magazine reading were called slingbacks. But the heels were pretty narrow and I figured I needed as much support as possible. That led me to a pair with wedge heels – but even my uncertain fashion sense was telling me that they would look out of place with a cocktail dress.

With time nearly up, I settled for a pair of plain black pumps with fairly solid heels. Not very spectacular, but at least I should be able to take a few steps in them – or so I hoped.

“Now that you’re properly attired, we’re going to see how you go strutting your stuff on the catwalk. So when your name is called, you will sashay – I believe that’s the technical term – down to the other end and back again.”

The boss bitch’s voice was dripping with sardonic amusement. But there was nothing funny at all in what she said next.

“You’ve already been judged on your appearance today. That was your first test. Your second is how you look on the catwalk. The third will follow immediately afterwards. Your scores in the three tests will determine whether you get through to the third round of the Competition. Half of you will progress, half of you will be leaving us.”

A glance around showed that everyone else was having the same thought. Only half of us could stay. Which meant the other half ... But wait, had she said third round?”

“You’re probably wondering what happened to the second round.” It was hard to know what to hate more about the boss bitch – the uncanny way she could anticipate our thoughts and reactions, or the smug tone that she used to make it clear that she was always a step ahead.

“The first round concluded when we decided you had all reached the minimum standard to progress. We didn’t bother to tell you because we wanted you to have an incentive to keep working hard on your appearance and deportment. And as for telling you what will happen if you don’t progress to the third round ... we’ll, I’ll leave that to your imagination for now. Another incentive, see?” The chuckle was truly chilling.

But there was little time to fume, or even worry about our predicament, because the guards were ushering us into place on each side of the “catwalk”. So, just to add to the pressure, we would have an audience all along the way.

To kick things off, a rather overweight but neatly dressed inmate who had been unlucky enough to draw Bambi as a name was asked to put his platform shoes on and stride down the runway. Except it was not so much a stride as a nervous shuffle, which drew jeers from the watching guards.

Even so, he did better than Savannah, who simply could not balance on his chosen stilettos and toppled over seven or eight times. The sight of him desperately trying to regain his feet, red-faced and with blonde wig askew, would in other circumstances have had an audience falling about with laughter. But it was only the guards who derived any mirth from his predicament. The rest of us inmates were all too aware of what he was going through – and how likely that might be us in due course.

And so it proved. A few took the same option as Bambi, virtually refusing to lift their feet off the ground and taking the shortest of steps. But most were a little bolder, likely figuring that the safest option would score the fewest points. That was my thinking anyway, though by the time my name was called I was beginning to have second thoughts. Almost everyone had taken a turn by then, and not one prisoner had managed to look comfortable. Even Natasha and Kaylee, who were easily the best looking, turned from graceful to ungainly once forced to walk in heels.

I had tried hard to look for clues as to how best to handle the task, but there was simply nobody to emulate. So it was with mounting anxiety that I slipped my feet into the pumps, took a few seconds to ensure that I had my balance and then, with my calves already protesting the unnatural strain, took a step towards the stairs at the end of the catwalk ... and landed flat on my back as my lead foot shot straight out from under me.

“Fuck it”, I exclaimed as I collided painfully on the floor, then yelled again, this time in a higher register, as the torc around my neck delivered its painful rebuke. “Dear me Stacey”, chided the boss bitch over the PA, “that didn’t sound very ladylike!”

Cursing under my breath, I clambered unsteadily to my feet and tried again. I made it up one step before going down again, banging my knee painfully. By the time I was ready to begin the walk down the makeshift runway, my confidence was totally shot. So I took the easy way out and performed a slow shuffle down and back. Even then I went over twice more. By the time I clambered slowly and painfully back down the stairs I was bright red with humiliation and exasperation.

I had still not recovered my composure by the time everyone has taken their turn. And my worst fears about how badly I had done were realised soon enough.

“Your last test”, announced the boss bitch, “will be undertaken in private, so that none of you gets the chance to prepare. But rest assured, we’ll be showing replays later. When you hear your name called, go to the door at the rear of the Studio. You will be competing in reverse order of standing after the first two tests.”

Reverse order ... so that meant the first ones to be called would have the lowest marks – and be most in danger of being eliminated from the Competition.

“Courtney – you’re up.” To a crossdressed man, we turned to stare at the inmate who was running dead last. It was hardly a surprise. Two weeks of training had done little to improve the big blonde’s makeup skills or deportment, though after initial shows of resistance he had at least made some effort. Some of his earlier defiance resurfaced now as he scowled at us and, head held high, headed for the back of the room. But the effect was spoiled by the shuffling gait he was forced to use to avoid toppling off his heels.

He was out of the room for just a couple of minutes before returning, a sour expression on his face that could not quite hide the underling fear. Whatever the test had been, it had not gone well. He was quickly ushered away to wait on the far side of the Studio, we’ll away from the rest of us. Chantelle and Savannah quickly followed him, both returning with similarly distressed expressions.

As our group was slowly whittled down, I was keeping count – and so, I knew was everyone else. Twenty-four of us remained from the original group, which meant twelve only could stay. And when my name was called tenth, I realised with a sick jolt that I was presently in the bottom half. Unless I did well on the third test, I would be ejected – and I didn’t want to begin to think what I might lose in the process.

But if there was a silver lining, it was that I had no chance to reflect on this, or to berate myself for being able to walk over to the door far more easily (if still rather slowly) than I had been able to manage on the catwalk. Even just a short span standing around in my heels had given me a chance to grow a little more used to the peculiar feeling of being balanced on such an unsteady and unnatural base.

Once outside the Studio, I was taken by a guard to a small room and told to kneel down. As I did so, another guard entered, wearing the biggest strapon dildo I had ever seen. It was about the same girth as the cock-shaped feeders that we were forced to fellate three times a day to gain the protein shake that had been our only sustenance for the past fortnight. But it was far, far longer, maybe half a metre in length – and it had regular markings all along its length, like some kind of measuring scale.

The suspicion in my mind was quickly confirmed by the boss bitch, her voice ringing out from the hidden speakers that just about every room seemed to have in this accursed prison.

“Oh dear, Stacey, whatever are we going to do with you” The tone was mocking. “Such a disaster on the catwalk – and after you’d put all that effort in to look good too! You’re in real trouble, you know that? And the only way out is to show us what a good little cocksucker you are.”

As she said this the guard positioned herself in front of me, moving forward to position the head of the giant phallus against my lipstick-covered mouth. Fighting the instinct to pull away, I parted my lips obediently. The boss bitch chuckled. “Do you see that, Marta? She gagging for it, the slut – or she will be in a minute. Go on, give her a little slap.”

Obediently, the guard grasped the shaft with both hands and whipped it from side to side, making contact heavily with each of my cheeks in turn. Steeling myself, I ignored the stinging blows and held my mouth open.

“Very good”, laughed the voice above me, “such an obedient slut you are, Stacey. But now you’re going to show us how far you can get that toy down your throat – and how long you can keep it there. So here it comes – eyes up now!”

I looked up to see a wolfish grin on the face of the guard. And as she drove the potent symbol of humiliation into my gaping mouth, I steeled myself for the ordeal ...