The hour passes.
I have done my best with Francesca and my protege has done well with Alexandra. Both walk gingerly but with heads high.
To each woman, I give a pair of gloves, fingerless, so they may still employ the claws that God has given them and that they have sharpened and painted. La nocche - the knuckles - of the gloves carry studs of steel, glinting nubs of metal. The palms of the gloves, when open, are like the sandpaper the carpenter uses at first, the coarsest grain. Rather than a chain around the waists, I now give them necklaces of chains around their slender throats, joined by a strand two meters long.
There are no more ritualistic contests. Within this chain and with these gloves they will fight until one triumphs. I leave the cage to them.
Alexandra remembers, of course, how she hurt Francesca’s belly. Francesca keeps her arms low as they close, to protect that place. This means, sadly, that she cannot as well guard her beautiful face. Alexandra lashes her fist into her. Francesca’s long hair seems to float as her head whips to the side. The steel studs of Alexandra shred her lips against her white teeth, now suddenly red with her blood. The American girl smashes her face again, the other way. Francesca falls to her knees. The black toe of Alexandra’s shoe spears into her injured belly.
During the first rituals, the women were instructed to remain without emotion. No longer. My employer enjoys the attacks of animals as his main course.
Alexandra pours out her rage. I will recount words here as I recall them, although I enjoy such primitive savagery less than does he.
“Get up, you fucking cxnt!” she screams, but kicks Francesca’s thighs when she tries. She drags the brunette girl with the chain to the cage wall before my employer. The chain cuts Franscesa’s skin. At the wall Alexandra drags the Italian girl to her feet. “This is for what you did to my tits.” Her voice is deadly.
Her fists batter Francesca’s breasts. Her back to the cage wall, Francesca cannot escape it.
Alexandra turns Francesca to us. With her body, she grinds the Italian into the wire.
Francesca’s mouth is cut further on the rough weave, blood streams now from her lips down her chin. Her bruised belly presses hard against the wall but it is of course her full breasts that the blonde woman seeks to shred against the steel. Francesca breasts bulge through the weave; one of her nipples juts through, the other is crushed deep into her breast at the junction of the wires that cross. Though I had staunched her bleeding before, it erupts afresh. Drops spatter on the floor outside the cage.
Alexandra braces her feet and grinds harder. Blood sheets down Francesca’s belly, rivulets running along the wire. “Submit to me, whore,” Alexandra demands.
Francesca cannot speak. She can shake her head, barely.
Alexandra angles the force of her body downward. Slowly, Francesca sinks to her knees. Her belly is damaged but again it is her breasts that take torment as they drag over the wire as she descends. The wire tears them.
“Submit to me or I will kill you,” Alexandra screams. Her voice is frenzied now.
My employer grunts and seizes the current favorite’s hair. She freezes. He is close to orgasm, but if it is too soon, if he climaxes before the denouement, she knows she will lose his favor.
Her hip now between Francesca’s shoulder blades, still forcing her breasts through the wire, Alexandra drags the Italian’s head back with the chain. She smashes her studded fist into Francesca's forehead, then uses her open palm to tear its skin.
Francesca clings to consciousness. She refuses still to submit. She has more courage than any woman I have procured before her.
With a scream of frustration, Alexandra slings Francesca back toward the center of the cage.
She forgets they are connected by chain.
I know that lovely Francesca weighs 57 kilos, 125 pounds.
Her body hits the end of the chain. Her neck jerks but it does not break.
Nor does Alexandra’s neck, but the blonde woman pitches forward with great shock. She lands on her breasts and face.
With a scream of incoherence, Francesca flings herself on Alexandra’s back like a panther. She wraps the chain, twice around Alexandra’s throat, once across her face, her mouth, the chain between her lips and teeth like the bit in a horse’s mouth.
Francesca pulls, with all her strength.
Alexandra’s courage is as great as Francesca’s. The current favorite can hardly be blamed. My employer climaxes, his cock pumping his seed into the favorite’s mouth and throat, then over her breasts as she gags and pulls back.
Only then does Alexandra submit.
The next day, I submit my resignation. I can never, and do not wish to, procure a woman Francesca’s equal.