• Sign up or login, and you'll have full access to opportunities of forum.
Go to CruxDreams.com
For some reason my pulse starts racing as I read Fossy’s prose. How can that be, I ask myself? Probably because he serves up danger and peril so seemingly effortlessly, and I find myself personally identifying so much with Grace. A well done abduction scene! So terrifyingly real.
 
Last edited:
For some reason my pulse starts racing as I read Fossy’s prose. How can that be, I ask myself? Probably because he serves up danger and peril so seemingly effortlessly, and I find myself personally identifying so much with Grace. A well done abduction scene! So terrifyingly real.
You are right about the quality of Fossy`s writing. As for identifying with Grace, your long history and experience as a damsel in distress makes that almost inevitable. If Fossy thinks that way, then Grace is in for a very rough ride indeed.
 
In The Hands of Monsters (1)


Roger Moore’s Main Residence, Eagle House, High Street, Wimbledon Village, London, SW19



Roger Moore, Head of the UK’s Overseas Intelligence Services, MI6, woke with a start, unable at first to remember where he was. Nearby in the darkness a white screen flashed, and a tinny speaker played a pop song. He recognised the tune as one that his teenage daughter had been listening to recently, and felt a twinge of annoyance.

Sophia must have changed his ringtone as a joke, or, more likely, he thought, his irritation replaced by a sudden surge of tenderness and guilt, in the hope of getting a little more of her father’s attention. There was no light by the sofa, so he reached out blindly for the hand set.

He had chosen to sleep in the upstairs office because of the late hour during which he had arrived home at the end of the previous day, a time that in actual fact was only a few hours earlier. It was a choice that remained eminently preferable to waking his wife, who wasn’t always the most receptive to him at the best of times. They had been married for 23 years, their union blessed with a single child, sixteen-year-old Sophia.

As he swiped to open the call his foot caught on a chair leg and he swore before rediscovering his composure.

“Moore speaking” His opening words were curt and to the point.

“Sir, it’s Marcus. Apologies for waking you at this unfortunate hour.” Moore had no idea what the hour was, but if something was serious enough to require a call from his Aide de Camp then the time was hardly relevant.

“No problem.”

“Grace Miller is missing.”

“Missing?”

“We’ve had a coded message from Special Agent Novikova. She sent it a few hours ago, but it’s taken until now to get to me, Sir.”

“Bloody admin,” Moore cursed.

“I know sir, but when an Agent is only ‘missing’ for a few hours, you know the priority is low.”

“How does Agent Novikova know that Agent Miller is missing?”

“The Beijing news drop Sir. She left to attend to it several hours ago and has not yet returned, and this is after they had already received a warning from the Gaochung network over apparent delays in getting new items to them. Sir it is highly likely that our Agents have been compromised.”

“Damn! Okay get Novikova exfiltrated as soon as possible, and pay Professor Chu (see Operation Sinosphere) a visit first thing tomorrow morning.

“You mean this morning Sir?”

“What?”

“It’s already ‘tomorrow’ … Sir.”

“Yes, yes … visit him as soon as practicable and see what he knows.”

“Very good Sir.”

“I will head to the office now Marcus so keep me updated please.”

Moore crossed to the door and flicked on the light switch as he spoke. He saw the alarm clock, 1:32am … which meant it would be around 8:30 am in Beijing. He reached for his trousers, the phone still clamped between his shoulder and ear.

Through the open door Moore caught a movement across the corridor, a nightgown ducking back behind a doorframe. It was Steph, his wife ... he must have woken her. Oh well at least she would now know that he actually came home after work.

By the time Moore had rung off, she had gone back to bed, once more shutting him out of their bedroom. He knocked softly. “I have to go out,” he said through the door. “I’ll see you later, tonight … shall I?”

There was no reply. So that he wouldn’t disturb his family any more than he had to, he went outside and into the covered porch to await his driver.


The abandoned former Capital Steel building, Shijingshan, South-West Beijing


The former site of Capital Steel in the Shijingshan suburbs of Beijing is an expanse of almost 9km². At the factory’s peak in the 1990s, its level of production was at 10 million tonnes of steel and the plant employed more than 200,000 people. Now it lies in waste, abandoned, dilapidated … and ideal place for abductors to take their abductees.

Agent Miller woke up in a strange haze that receded abruptly as the memory of what had happened came flooding back.

Having kept her awake to listen to their disgusting comments all the way to wherever ‘here’ was, once the van had stopped moving this gang of monsters had injected her with something, a sleep inducer of some sort.

Her head felt hazy, her mind vague and muddled.

It had been this way for a while now … sleeping from the drugs they’d given her; waking, her panic momentarily surfacing through the fog in her brain, then drifting back into oblivion again. How long exactly, she had no idea. Grace loosely remembered being taken … The motion of the vehicle, and sensing when it pulled off a smooth, fast road on to bumpier, more rural ones.

From the way her body, despite being held in the tight grip of powerful hands, had rolled from side to side on the floor of the blue Maxus van, she’d guessed they must have driven some distance from the spot from which she had been taken. Eventually they’d turned onto what felt like a rough track, crawling over potholes. When the van finally stopped, doors banged, and cold air rushed in around her feet, the needle slipped under the bag and into her neck. She heard a male voice speak, the Shanghainese dialect too thick and fast for her to make out the words.

A second man, close to her head, answered in the same parlance. Hands lifted her, the men sliding her out and carrying her between them. There was quiet conversation as if they were simply moving furniture or a piece of rolled carpet. Then she was deposited somewhere that felt both small and echoey.

Grace heard men’s boots as they scuffed on a rough floor as they laid her down. A sharp sting in her wrist brought back the panic, only for sleep to quickly claim her once more.

When she next awoke, it was to discover that the bagged hood had been replaced with a blindfold. She tested her hands. Handcuffed. Bile rose into her mouth.

“Looks like little princess is awake,” a voice said in heavily accented English. A hand clamped around her wrist, the grip, whilst not rough, was most certainly assertive. She flinched at the touch.

“Okay,” the same voice said at last. “… Ràng wǒmen kāishǐ” These words were said in a much more traditional Mandarin which the young Agent could understand, and her body stiffened with fear.

“Let’s begin.”

01 - Little Princess is awake.jpeg

To Be Continued …
 
Is Grace`s fate Moorish or Mooresque?
Moorish would mean that a sample of her torment would create an inherent desire for 'Moore' of the same, whilst Mooresque indicates that her torments are very much like the trials and tribulation suffered by CF's own leading lady. Both very appropriate ... and so how about we say that Agent Miller's fate is very much Mooreishesque.
 
In The Hands of Monsters (2)


The abandoned former Capital Steel building, Shijingshan, South-West Beijing



Grace paced the room anxiously. Six steps one way, three the other. It was small, but manacled wrists secured behind her back, stopped her from removing the blindfold and meant that she still had no real idea where she was.

The walls were covered with bare plaster, the floor solid concrete. Not that Agent miller could see. She was however aware that it contained a small mattress, and a blanket – she had felt her way around that much. The weather outside, she recalled, was quite warm, but in here the captive girl was cold and she shivered.

She wondered if they meant to rape her. To begin with she’d been certain of it, had assumed, with a sickening lurch of nausea, that to do so was their clear intention. But she had been here for what seemed like several hours already without being touched and so now Grace wasn’t so sure.

Tears welled under the blindfold. She was still a virgin … please don’t let the worst happen, she prayed silently. She thought of Kat, then her mum and dad who would be heading out to New Zealand without knowing that anything was happening to her. The thought of home made her gulp back more tears. And there was another kind of fear gnawing at her now as well: fear of the unknown.

Surely, MI6 would regard her as ‘missing’ and some sort of rescue mission would be underway, wouldn’t it? After all she was a British overseas spy … or did Agents in peril only get saved in the movies?

She knew that her cover had been blown, they had already called her ‘Agent whoever you are’, and so that meant Kat was in danger too. Could her friend and colleague make it safely home before she too was taken?

A noise. The door opened and Agent Miller instinctively shuffled away from the sound and fell backwards onto the soft mattress. The person was close, she could feel his breath on her face, his hands on her shoulders as this someone knelt down by her side … and then her eyes were blinking as light returned. Once the blindfold was removed Grace found herself looking upwards at the small grill covered window high in the roof of this tall but small space.

A few more dextrous clicks and her wrists were freed allowing the young girl to massage the flow of blood back into them. But now she had seen the men, and Grace knew that in itself was not good news.

There were two of them, men who now took a few paces backwards so that they could look properly at their young, nubile and very scared captive, visibly shivering as she stared wide-eyed at her captors.

“Do you know where you are?”

She shook her head, and whispered, “No.”

“Louder, please. Do you know what might happen to you here?”

“No.”

A hand smashed onto the rough surface of the old table, which, along with a chair, was the only other furniture in the room. The sudden rage made the girl jump.

“Don’t lie to me. Think about your answers. Can you imagine the kind of things that might happen to you here? I’m sure you don’t like to think about them, but I’m also certain your imagination can help you. Correct?”

“Yes,” Grace said in a small voice.

“List them.”

“You might … hurt me.”

“Go on.”

“Kill me. Beat me.” A pause. “… Rape me.”

“And if we did any of those things, what would you be able to do about it?”

Nothing. Had she said that out loud, or just in her head?

But the man speaking, the one issuing the provocative questions, repeated it, so she must have said it aloud.

“Nothing. That’s right. You can do nothing about it at all.”

Grace felt sick.

“Now stand up and take off your clothes.”


Briefing Room, MI6 SIS Building, Lambeth, London, UK


“You can’t go in there, Miss …” The officer on guard outside the briefing centre could tell that his words were very unlikely to stop the marauding girl heading his way.

“Stop me!” Special Agent Novikova was seething with rage.

As the door burst open the small group huddled round a table looked up.

“You fucking bastard!” the outraged Agent directed her vitriol towards the Head of MI6 himself seconds before her arms were gripped tightly by an officer, then two, one at each side.

“It’s fine, let her go,” Roger Moore’s pause before issuing those gentle words diffused the situation, at least as far as the attending officers were concerned.

As Moore moved his plate to one side, the sandwiches brought in for their late lunch having being devoured, he sat back in his seat.

“Explain yourself Special Agent Novikova.”

Kat pulled her arms free of the holding grip from the men who remained in position by her side, and took a deep breath.

“Grace Miller is not even a fully trained Agent and you sent her on a mission to one of the deadliest places in the world … now she’s been taken and we don’t even know who by …”

Now it was Kat’s turn to pause, before she continued, her anger rising once more.

“… And … Sir … did you know that she is still a fucking virgin!”

02 - She is still a fucking virgin!.jpeg

Moore nodded slowly, and then countered the head movement with his words. “No Ekaterina, I did not know that. Why would I?” Now Moore stood and moved towards his Agent. “This is MI6 Special Agent Novikova, and we do not practice medieval training regimes like our colleagues across in Moscow at the SVR Academy do. So, no, I did not know that snippet of information. Checking to see if she was a virgin, or more to your point, making sure she was not one, was never a part of Agent Miller’s training.”

His voice rose towards the end of his words, but Kat simply stared at him, unmoving, before she quietly said, “She will probably be raped, Sir.”

“Sometimes we have to consider the bigger picture Special Agent,” Moore turned and moved back to his seat, leaving Kat open mouthed and still looking distraught.

“Join us Ekaterina, and help us plan the way to get Agent Miller out of whatever predicament she is in. It will be a much more productive way in which to spend your time as opposed to yelling at me.” He smiled up at Kat as, with a still-heavy heart, took a seat at the table.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon in London. It had taken MI6 just over 14 hours to exfiltrate Special Agent Novikova from Beijing, and all of that time Agent Grace Miller has been in the monstrous hands of the Gaochung network and at the mercy of whoever their Lords and Masters were.


To Be Continued …
 
“Sometimes we have to consider the bigger picture Special Agent,” Moore turned and moved back to his seat, leaving Kat open mouthed and still looking distraught.
That’s what those bastards always say! Worried, very worried. Poor Grace.
 
In The Hands of Monsters (3)


The abandoned former Capital Steel building, Shijingshan, South-West Beijing



“Take off your clothes …” The words were still sinking in when, without thinking, Grace replied “No!”

The word had hardly left her mouth when a flying fist punched her in the stomach, doubling her over and knocking the wind out of her body. As she struggled to regain her breath, the same man grabbed a handful of the girl’s long dark hair and stood her upright. Gasping for air, he used his grip on her as a handle to hold her head in situ, and slapped Grace as hard as he could across the face. Then he slapped her again and then a third and fourth time before the other men in the room stopped him.

"She no use if she dead, man."

"I fuck her even if she dead, and then toss her ass out onto the road for the fucking dogs." The man, letting go of Grace’s hair snapped at his colleague, before saying in a more measured tone, as his fury subsided. "But, you right man; I would like to feel her mouth on my cock soon. So, I won't kill her yet."

Grace had regained her breath, but was crying hysterically, bleeding from lips and nose as her hair was finally released and she collapsed on the floor surrounded by this small, but mal-intentioned gang.

"Now, fucking clothes off, bitch." The words were repeated.

"O … okay … please don’t hit me again," was all the battered MI6 Agent said as she looked up into the man’s face, which smouldered with lust-fuelled anger.

Grace slowly got to her feet, still sniffling and bloody and slipped her leather jacket off.

"Good girl." The man said with an evil grin, "Now, everything ..."

With clear reluctance, Grace gripped the sides of her shirt and pulled it up and over her head, the slow movement becoming unwittingly provocative to the watching group. Blood slowly dripped from her nose as she dropped the shirt onto the ground.

At a nod from the lead man, Agent Miller gripped the zipper on her jeans, pulled it down and punched loose the waistband button. She grimaced as a sharp pain shot through her stomach, a reminder of the beating she had just been on the receiving end of.

Offering no respite whatsoever, simply by virtue of their silence, the men’s expectation remained absolutely clear. With closed eyes Grace stepped out of the tight denim and, having toed off her trainers already, she stood facing them wearing only a red bra and panties.

The man who had administered the beating, overweight and smirking, looked at her for a second and then beckoned Grace to come towards him.

“I do this for you …” From his position perched on a large packing crate he slowly reached up and around the hapless Agent so that he could unfasten the hooks on her bra. Very slowly his hand slid down her back, enjoying the feeling of her skin. As he turned Grace to face the others, he reached up and pulled the bra straps away from her shoulders, leaving the cups clinging to Grace’s ample breasts.

The young girl’s eyes closed as she felt him hook his fingers under the wired material and peel it away from her body.

“Girl need fuck!” The small gang stared at Agent Miller, who was naked except for a skimpy pair of red panties, her skin covered in goosebumps and her nipples hard as bullets.

03 - Girl Need Fuck.png

This entire process had taken less than five minutes from the second time the order had been given telling Grace to take her clothes off … and now the room had gone strangely quiet as every man strained to watch this gorgeous girl strip.

Her eyes still glazed, Grace hooked her fingers into the waistband of her panties and tugged them down her hips to let them fall to the floor along with the rest of her clothes.

The fat man stood and circled his captive, pausing only to slap her hard on the ass.

“Aiiiiiii! Owwww!” She yelped.

"Okay, now we begin,” He said with an evil grin, as he reached over, grabbed Grace by the arms and pulled her to him.


The Apartment of Special Agent Novikova, Goodrich House, Royal Haslar, Alverstoke, Gosport PO12


Upon hearing the knock, Kat opened the door to her apartment and fell into the waiting arms of the man standing before her.

“Oh Jase, they’ve taken her.”

“I heard baby, do you want to tell me what you know?”

Lieutenant Underhill, closing the apartment door shut with the heel of his boot, had asked the question but knew he would have to wait until his lover had stopped crying on his shoulder before he received any kind of answer.

“Baby,” he said, holding her at arms-length, “… this is not like you?”

What Jase meant by that was that whilst understanding the gravity of the situation, Kat was a seasoned Agent, one who had experienced the worst of what the life had to offer and bounced back. So, ordinarily she would have channeled her emotions into rational anger and coherent planning … not burst into tears.

“They sent Grace out to China … Moore, the bastard, sent her out into the field. A pretty young girl, and Jase …” she paused to choke back a sob, “Jase … she is still a virgin.” Agent Novikova stared at her lover. “You hear what I’m saying Jason?”

He nodded, slowly, emphasising that he knew exactly what his girlfriend was implying through her words.

“We all live with the threat of being captured and killed Jase, but to have your first time taken by monsters … how could Moore not know that she had never had sex!”

Jase took her hand and led his secret lover further into the apartment.

“So, tell me what the plan is.”

******

“I have to leave Kat.”

The bedsheets were a tangled mess and the small room smelled overwhelmingly of sex. Kat was a little ashamed that whilst her friend and colleague was being held captive in China, she was back in the UK making love with the man she wanted more than anything else.

She smiled weakly at him, tracing imaginary lines on his back with her fingers as he sat up.

“I know you do.”

“Sam is home with the kids Kat, and I said that …”

“Shhhhh baby, you don’t need to explain, there’s only one thing you have to do for me.”

Jason Underhill’s eyes widened and he nodded. “Anything Kat?”

“When Moore finally gets his plan together you and I have to be front and centre of the rescue mission.”


To Be Continued …
 
surrounded by this small, but mal-intentioned gang.
What? You mean these are BAD guys? OMG!!
“So, tell me what the plan is.”
Sex
The bedsheets were a tangled mess and the small room smelled overwhelmingly of sex. Kat was a little ashamed that whilst her friend and colleague was being held captive in China, she was back in the UK making love with the man she wanted more than anything else.
I thought so!
 
In The Hands of Monsters (4)


Briefing Room, MI6 SIS Building, Lambeth, London, UK



“Sit,” Moore spoke to Kat as she entered the briefing room. It was 9am the following day. Agent Novikova’s jet lag was cleared and she had the warm feeling of time spent with the Jase the evening before to comfort her … and hopefully quell the antipathy she had felt the previous day.

Roger Moore looked like he had been in the room all night. On frequent occasions Kat thought Moore was a dick, more than that, she actually hated him when he used and abused her, getting off on her scars and welts … But at times like this, as with the time when he had orchestrated the rescue mission to Belarus (see Death By Crucifixion), she also realised how devoted he was to his job.

Special Agent Novikova took her seat.

“No one else is to see this unless I’ve cleared it.” Moore’s tone was confidential in the extreme.

He gestured to a technician to start the tape. The MI6 team had been assembled in quick time. Kat looked at Moore across the table and turned away, determined not to catch his eye.

The film cut to a grainy image of a figure, hooded and bound, lying on the floor of a van. It had been filmed with a phone, or some other unsophisticated camera: the picture was shaky and slightly out of focus. Almost immediately, it cut to another scene. Now the camera was moving through the doorway of a small stone-built room, like an animal pen. A figure was sitting on the floor, handcuffed. The hood had been taken off, but only as she looked up did it become clear that it was Grace Miller. She looked terrified.

Then there was a brief shot of the same girl drinking from a plastic bottle. Once again, it was only on screen for a few brief seconds as the zoom moved in on the girl’s face in close-up. The camera pulled back jerkily to reveal that she was sitting in a chair. There was a murmur of disquiet around the briefing room as they saw that she was stripped naked, and that her limbs had been secured to the chair’s arms and legs with tight rope.

The framing was adjusted by an unseen hand, and the background was purposely blurred so as to give no clues regarding Grace’s whereabouts.

The screen went blank, all Officers and Agents in the briefing room collectively exhaled.

“But what do they want? And are we assuming ‘they’ are the Gaochung Network?” It was Kat that spoke first.

Moore took a deep breath. “The Gaochung Network is a collection of news terrorists. They take purloined headlines from other international states and release selective and fake news out to the world. Who do you think they do that for Agent Novikova?”

“The Chinese Government?” Kat made her answer sound like a question, although she already knew it to be correct.

“The Chinese Government, Ekaterina, yes.”

Moore paused fleetingly before adding, “Agent Miller is in the hands of The Chinese Ministry of State Security.”

“Fuck,” whispered Kat under her breath, because she knew just what the Chinese MSS were capable of.

“And you ask what do they want Special Agent Novikova?”

Kat looked up.

“The answer to that is simple, they want you.”


The abandoned former Capital Steel building, Shijingshan, South-West Beijing


The door of her cell opened.

“Come.”

As directed, Grace walked into the larger room, where she stopped short at the sight of a rope, hanging over a thick roof beam. On the floor was a coil of hosepipe. The fat man stood to one side, watching.

“Move.” Agent Miller, naked, wrists cuffed in front of her body, was pushed to where the rope hung.

There was another member of the group in attendance and he tied the cord to the short chain linking Grace’s handcuffs, then reached for the other end, pulling on it to raise her hands until they were above her head, whereupon he tied the free end to a bolt in the wall.

Strung up by the wrists, Agent Miller’s arms supported almost all of her body weight, the metal of the cuffs digging into her flesh. Suddenly, without any warning, the head monster grabbed her by the hair and pulled Grace violently towards him, then threw her backwards in the same manner.

As she rocked back against the rope, he slapped her, hard, across the cheek, with an open palm. The poor young girl screamed. It wasn’t just the pain; it was the sudden, shocking violence of it. Whimpering, she pulled away as far as the rope would allow.

The man, bulky and overweight, was breathing heavily now. He swung her round, then yanked Grace forward and grabbed her head in both hands, bringing it very close to his own so that she could see right into his eyes, inhaling his foul breath in the process. As he released her, he slapped her face again.

“Nǐ jiāng bèi pò zāoshòu jìnǚ,” Grace understood the words – “You will be made to suffer whore” Then she was slapped and punched until she vomited …

“You film this?” The fat man turned to another of his colleagues who nodded.

“Good, then we get the other whore as well.”

Finally, in her dazed haze, Agent Miller realised that she was being untied. Her aching body sagged with relief, but it wasn’t back to her cell that they were dragging her, it was to another location in the same room … her suffering wasn’t yet over for the day …

******

Sitting on the thin mattress, naked, Grace wrapped her arms around her knees and sobbed. As hour followed hour with nothing but her own thoughts to distract her, terror had been joined by an aching, dull despair. Locked in the small room she was free of cuffs and manacles, at least for the time being.

“I’m such a fuck-up,” the young girl muttered quietly to no one but herself. “Getting caught so easily …”

04 - I’m such a fuck-up.jpeg

She saw now how the kidnappers were going to prevent this from dragging on: they were simply going to escalate her torment, little by little until she broke irreparably. They hadn’t even asked her any questions yet!

The onus would be on MI6 to find her before things got really nasty. Bizarrely she wondered if her parents had arrived safely in New Zealand, but the simple thought of her parents caused her despair to worsen.

Grace got onto her knees and tried to pray. At home, when she was younger, her family did this together every week; it was one of the things that daddy had insisted on. She wasn’t sure if she really believed – not that she’d ever dare tell him that – but right now it felt reassuring, as if it wasn’t God she was getting in touch with, but her family.

“Please don’t rape me, please don’t rape me, please don’t …” the quiet mantra was uttered under her breath. The girl feared penetrative rape more than being killed!

She thought of Kat. Had her friend, colleague … and, yes, would-be lover, escaped. The man had said they wanted to get her …

The sound of the chain rattling at the door alerted Agent Miller to the fact that her abductors were coming for her again. She pressed her hands even tighter together, squeezing her eyes shut too, whispering soundlessly into her fingertips. She heard the door open, but no command came. She went on praying. Still there was no sound. A minute passed. When she did eventually look up, she saw the fat leader standing there, framed by the doorway, waiting for her to finish.

“Get up,” he said simply.


To Be Continued …
 
Back
Top Bottom