Jack didn’t know what on earth to think.

Alex had been his secret protector through almost all of the past week. It was she who had notified Delon, ran interference for Penny’s rescue, returned his glasses and thought on her feet to stop Hannah delivering him to Caitlin.

She had finally tried to stand up to the mountainous redhead, and it had panned out exactly as they had both feared. Now, for the first time since he had been cornered in the bathroom, he realised that help probably wasn’t going to come.

Alex was likely too frightened to call the cops. Delon might be able to, but would they really pay that much attention to a Beta seemingly crying wolf on a rich, influential student athlete at Oakwood High? And Penny, poor Penny was in Hospital. She had no idea any of this was even happening, Jack knew she would be absolutely mortified if she learned of this…

He could hear Caitlin tapping away on her phone furiously. It was only a matter of time before her attention would return to him, and he had to steel himself for her wrath, especially in light of the confrontation with Alex.

The enormous girl paced backwards and forwards, her vast silhouette moving past the locker every few seconds as she punched message after message out. He could occasionally hear her let out aggravated noises and mutter under her breath, but it was too faint to truly make out what she was saying.

After what was probably about 2 minutes, her restless pacing stopped, she put away her phone and he heard the familiar rattle of the dial as she opened her locker.

Closing his eyes in anticipation, the door swung open violently, flooding the space with light. Squinting, he could just make out Caitlin stooping slightly as one of her giant hands entered his peripheral vision. The hand descended to his level, and her oversized forefinger and thumb pinched at the sports tape covering his mouth.

With a sudden rip, she tore the entire thing off his face.

Jack screeched with pain,

“Aaaooowwwwwwww… fuckkkk!” 

It felt like she’d removed some skin in the process, he was genuinely worried for a moment that some of his lip would be hanging off the tape; his face felt so red and raw.

“Oh can it, you little bitch,” Caitlin sneered, dropping the strip of used tape to the bottom of the locker.

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll answer everything I ask, and maybe, just maybe, I won’t break your little arms and legs.”

Jack gulped audibly, staring up into the steely blue eyes of his horrible captress.

This was going to hurt, one way or the other.

Caitlin leant forward and her enormous, beguiling features honed in on Jack’s smaller ones.

Her expression was one of barely-concealed anger and frustration. He might even have described her as looking vulnerable, upset and conflicted, if only she weren’t about to abuse and torture someone smaller than her simply because she could.

“So I take it you heard our little chat, eh, Jack?”

He glowered up at her, he wasn’t going to be loquacious for the sake of it.

“Don’t test me, runt, I know full well what a sneaky little shit you are. Now tell me, did Alex help you get out of my house?” she asked, her eyes now barely a foot from his as she studied his face for tells.

He stared at her in silence, gently biting his tongue, trying not to be drawn.

“If you want to do this the hard way, I’m happy to indulge you…” Caitlin explained, her soft pink lips pressing together firmly as she geared up to inflict something terrible on him.

He blinked slowly, she was now going to inflict great pain on him… unless he thought of something, and fast.

After a few more seconds’ hesitation, Jack took a risk.

“A-are you happy now?”

Caitlin’s well-groomed ginger eyebrows raised slightly, her eyes boring incredulously into his.

“...what?” she spat, looking at him with an expression bordering on disgust.

“You struck your best friend… and f-for what?” Jack continued.

He could see the anger smouldering inside of her at his impudence.

“*I* ask the questions, you fucking leprechaun, don’t you DARE speak to me like you know me or my life,” she thundered, her eyes widening, her pupils making micro-adjustments as her gaze flitted from one eye to the other.

Jack fell silent once more, looking right at her, his face fighting to stay calm.

“Did Alex get you out of my house that night?” she asked again, slightly louder this time, pressing for an answer.

He kept his mouth firmly closed.

One time too many.

“Have it your way, dumbass,” she leered cruelly, thumping her coiled index finger into his defenceless ballsack without warning.

“Aaaaaahhhh fffuuuuccckkkk….”

Jack saw stars, whining and sucking in air from the surprise attack, writhing in agony as his hands and feet balled up in pain.

“Last chance, big shot,” the malevolent schoolgirl announced almost casually, pinching his little balls together between thumb and forefinger, “Unless you want to say bye-bye to your little peanuts.”

Jack began to puff out his cheeks like crazy, he didn’t really know if Caitlin was bluffing or not, and no part of him could guarantee that she was.

“Clock’s ticking,” she advised, ramping up the pressure the tiniest bit on his gonads, causing him to grit his teeth in pain. 

She began to twist and pull them, treating them with the contempt she clearly felt for his entire existence. 

“Ok ok… I’ll t-talk,” Jack cried, “Just… don’t… do that.”

“Do what?” Caitlin asked, feigning innocence before smiling evilly, pulling them a little harder.

“Aaah… that, Christ please, s-stop,” Jack groaned, his little hands flapping as he tried to resist the pain.

“I’ll think about stopping when you spill the beans about Alex, you tiny fuck,” Caitlin spat.  

She pressed ever harder, they were starting to throb and ache from the discomfort now.

“Did Alex take you from my house, yes or no, dipshit?!”

Jack closed his eyes, trying to bear the strain, he was starting to feel sick with how much it was hurting.

Any more of this and she was going to pop something. He knew it, and she definitely knew it.

But… the way she had phrased the question. Jack actually had an out… she had inadvertently given him an out.

“No… no… she d-didn’t… ok, it wasn’t her,” Jack cried out eventually.

Caitlin’s finger and thumb didn’t budge.

“Liar…” she breathed quietly, “You’re a fucking little liar.”

She twisted even more.

“It wasn’t Alex… it wasn’t Aaaaaaaa-” Jack shrieked as Caitlin gripped him firmer than ever.

“Then who was it, huh? Who the fuck broke into my house?!”

“I… I…” Jack started to say, but his higher functions were being compromised by the fear that he was about to lose one or both of his testicles in a fit of pique by an incensed giantess.

“It wasn’t Alex… it… wasn’t h-her… ”

“Then WHO? WHO goddam it!” Caitlin berated the tiny boy, spittle flying from her mouth and spattering onto his face.

“Wasn’t… Alex…” Jack gasped, his eyelids flickering, he was about to pass out from the pain.

The colossal redhead slammed her free hand against the base of the locker and let out a shriek of exasperation and fury.

“I swear to god, I am going to make you suffer, Jack, I am going to make you wish you’d never been born!” she roared.

She released her grip on him, and stood up to her full height.

“And whoever you are protecting, I am going to find out who they are, and I am going to destroy them too.”

Jack was too busy hyperventilating and blinking back the tears to congratulate himself on holding out. Caitlin was in a rage, yet again, and he wouldn’t have much respite before he would resume punching bag duties once more.

With another punch of her fist against the locker frame, Caitlin suddenly bent at the waist, dipping below Jack’s field of view, and he could hear her unzipping her sports bag in readiness for his abduction. 

She stood back up and glared at him one last time before slapping the used piece of tape back over his mouth hard with the palm of her hand and pressed it down hard, causing Jack to emit a muffled scream.

“That’s enough out of you for now,” she explained curtly, giving his face a playful slap, before grabbing both of his arms and peeling them painfully off the back of the locker as he moaned and groaned through his nose in protest.

She next ripped his entire torso free of the tape, causing him to hang forward awkwardly at the waist with his legs still taped down. The giantess nonchalantly bent his arms behind his back and taped them down with the excess, patting it all down firmly so there was no way he could get free.

Finally she coiled each of her huge hands around his exposed thighs and simply pulled him free of the back of the locker with pure brute strength, the tape digging into his flesh painfully before tearing away in shreds.

His jeans were still around his knees with his little boxers bunched up under his ballsack. Jack could see by Caitlin’s face that she found it hilarious, and as he squirmed and wriggled in her grasp, she reached down and gave him another vicious pinch down there to make him writhe in agony. 

“Don’t struggle too hard, big guy, you’ll need to save your energy for later,” she scoffed in a sing-song voice.

Blinking back the tears, his head lolled back to the sky as she pulled his boxers up and over his tender genitals, snapping the waistband back and then dropped him without warning into the bag below. He crumpled in a heap on top of the pile of sweaty training clothes, his legs flailing as he did so. He tried to reorient himself, but the gargantuan schoolgirl dropped his own Beta-size backpack hard onto his stomach, winding him, then shoved his head down roughly with one massive hand and pulled the zipper closed over his prone body, sealing her tiny prisoner inside.

Kicking and floundering around inside the bag, he felt it being lifted up by the handles, and Caitlin shook it knowingly to remind him who was boss, as if it were ever in doubt.

The beastly teen could be heard chuckling to herself as she closed the locker door, and the sea-sickness-like lurching of the bag forwards and backwards began as she strode confidently out of the building.

Jack kicked and squirmed occasionally out of pique but this soon died down as he knew he just had to accept how pointless his efforts at reprisal were. Caitlin wasn’t bluffing - he needed to save his energy, not waste it with petulant attempts to ‘resist’ an impossible situation.

The giantess eventually arrived at her car and threw the bag into it carelessly. Jack experienced a sudden unexpected rush of hang-time before landing heavily on his back and shoulders as he and the bag collided with the interior of the car.

Caitlin wrenched open the driver’s door and got in with a considerable weight shift; the car audibly groaning on its springs as she entered, before she closed the door behind her and started the car’s engine. Aggressively-loud hip-hop with female vocals exploded through the car speakers as he felt the car lurch forward, gather speed, then slam to a halt.

Clearly, Caitlin was neither a patient nor refined driver.

The bag would slide around each time the vehicle turned a corner or braked – sometimes smacking against what was either the back of the trunk space or a seat – and during the quieter moments in the deafening soundtrack he could hear busy traffic; heavy vehicles like trucks or buses moving past or idling.

Quite a few times he heard her yelling at something unfolding in front of her, but with the music thumping away it was impossible to hear what she was actually saying.

He tried closing his eyes to try and calm his heart rate down, the familiar sickly, earthy smell of Caitlin’s athletics gear filled his nostrils as he tried to take stock of the situation he now found himself in.

Instead of the white hot terror he felt when she had him directly in her clutches, he now felt the drip, drip, drip of overwhelming dread – a horrid, empty feeling in the pit of his stomach acknowledging the horror of the coming hours… no, whole days of his life.

The one thing he had been so desperate to avoid had finally come to pass, it felt… strange, surreal and wretchedly inevitable. A small part of his headspace found the predicament darkly amusing, he allowed an ironic smile to cross his features for just a second before he crumpled back into sadness, his eyes scrunching tight and shedding a few soggy tears. His fate had proven exactly as inexorable as he had catastrophised about, and he was especially bitter that he had made it so far, and been so close to making it to the weekend… the last lesson, on the last day… if he didn’t have bad luck, he’d have no luck at all.

As the traffic outside the car seemed to grow heavier and louder, the car was spending more and more time at a standstill. Jack surmised that the journey Caitlin was making was taking too long to be to her house… if anything, it felt like she was getting closer to the centre of town. He could faintly hear the bustle of pedestrians and the electronic pips of crosswalks each time the vehicle came to a stop, even with the din of her music drowning most of it out.

She might be heading to a hotel, or perhaps a city centre apartment the Reids owned, either of which would potentially make an intervention or rescue attempt more difficult, but as he thought about it, ever so gradually, an even more chilling realisation began to form in his head, one pixel at a time...

Caitlin was taking him to Amber’s apartment.

Existential panic started to fill up his insides like a pitcher of beer. His brain had all-too-readily sought to erase the memories of Amber and how she enabled Caitlin and mistreated him herself when she’d been left alone with him for barely a minute at most. His thoughts rewound to when he’d heard her name mentioned, the photos online of her cosying up to the powerful redhead in alcohol-soaked nightclub selfies, the vivid memory of her jabbing her finger callously into his injured shoulder by the poolside...

Now he was trapped like prey, bound and gagged, helpless and heading to an apartment god knows where… He just had to hope against hope that somehow Alex wouldn’t flake and that she and Delon would actually do something. It had firmly crossed the line to necessitate a phone call to the police, but would the cops even listen, and would they react in time to catch Caitlin in the act, or miss his abduction entirely? 

Oh god, please… his thoughts returned to hearing Alex crying, how coldly and violently Caitlin had reacted, could he really count on her help now? As much as he wanted to believe that she would try, he worried deep down that she would now be far too scared to do anything.

The car turned sharply to one side, and the bag slid at speed before crunching heavily against the car interior yet again, smacking Jack’s shoulder against it. The suspension lurched as the car passed over some kind of speed bump and then the bag slid fully to the other side of the vehicle, this time causing a thump to his legs as the car descended down a steep ramp.

The drone of the engine became a little more noticeable as the vehicle levelled out; it definitely sounded like the car had pulled into an underground space like a basement car park, but before he could make anything else out, the engine cut  abruptly, ending the music with it. He stayed completely silent, listening out for any further clues, but Caitlin didn’t say a word. He could faintly hear the occasional plasticky ‘tap’ of her using her phone, and a few ambient bips and tones as she sent or received several messages. Nothing else happened for at least a minute, until he heard the door swing open with an audible thud and a slight groan of metal, followed by a heavy ‘clunk’ as it slammed shut a few seconds later. The giant girl’s heavy footsteps made their way round the vehicle, opening another door and dragging the bag that contained him out by the handles, before adding a few other items to her payload as he heard her big body reaching around.

With another firm ‘clunk’ the car door was closed, and a couple of piercing electronic pips confirmed it had been locked as she walked away. He tried not to make any obvious twitches or jolts despite his discomfort; he figured it might be worth trying to aid the illusion that he was either asleep or had passed out with exhaustion, or even just to signify that he was prepared to be more cooperative… though in all honesty, as soon as she got to her destination it probably wouldn’t make much difference. The bag was rocking backwards and forwards quite violently in time with the girl’s pounding footsteps as the handles squeaked from the strain.

He heard the Alpha tap a few buttons into a keypad and push open a door, then wait for a lift, stepping inside the metallic chamber as an electronic voice crisply announced ‘Floor 2’. She punched a button, and it only took a few moments for the lift to ascend to ‘Floor 4’ and the doors to open with a pre-recorded ‘bing’.

The fear was reaching its crescendo now. He was in completely alien territory, somewhere in the middle of downtown, probably in an Alpha apartment building, and only Alex would have any idea where it was.

The rhythmic swaying of Caitlin’s movements came to a halt yet again, and he heard the sound of a keycard being used in a door, and then, without so much as a pause for breath, he was in…