The Toymaster's Castle

Chapter Eight - Helen

The next morning, he had me up at the crack of dawn.

I guess he managed to work out that I was not particularly enthusiastic but I didn't say anything out of place and so he let me get away with it!

He stuck me on the cross trainer to warm up whilst he started on the rowing machine.

Naomi, his personal trainer, arrived a couple of minutes early and she had one of his gang of security guards with her.

I guess that made sense now I knew that he is the head of something that basically amounts to the mafia.

Which means that I might as well give up on any sort of thoughts of running away.

I was a bit surprised that his personal trainer was a girl but I don't suppose it makes all that much difference, really. Maybe he works a bit harder when there's a pretty young woman watching him... or maybe he just likes the sight of a girl's bottom in figure-hugging lycra!

Anyway, before long, she had taken me across to something called a multi-gym which basically involved pulling or pushing on various metal bars which shifted around lumps of iron using a pulley type arrangement. She only had me moving little weights so it was pretty easy at first but, after about a million of her 'rep' things, my arms had basically turned to jelly.

Meanwhile, Daniel had moved across to another spot on the multi-gym and was throwing much more impressive heaps of ironmongery around.

And, when my arms and legs were ready to drop off, she took me out to the pool and started teaching me how to do the front crawl. I'd tried to learn it a couple of times in the past but not really got anywhere with it but the endless pool certainly made that sort of thing much easier.

And, again, when I had finished, Daniel was waiting for me with one of the bathrobes and slipped it on me as I climbed out of the pool. It's funny but if you didn't know he was an evil bastard who gets off on beating up girls, you could almost think he was a nice person!

But I did give him a smile. I mean... in spite of everything, I did appreciate the gesture.

I scurried off for a quick shower and then he showed me the food elevator. It was quite a clever system that took a trolley of food up to the floor where it was needed and then pushed it out into a cupboard sort of arrangement, ready for us to collect.

Then we had breakfast together and, in spite of everything, I found myself chatting totally casually with him. Then he vanished off to work and I hurried along to my room, sort of excited at the idea of being allowed to put on clothes for the first time in ages.

The dress I found hanging up there was a simple, elegant thing in a deep royal blue. It had a modest V-neck and came down to my knees... and I could just tell that it was a million times more expensive than anything I'd ever worn before. It felt really strange to be putting the thing on... it was as if I was pretending to be someone I wasn't or something.

And I was still trying to get my head around the way it made me feel as I took the leftovers from breakfast along to Susan. I sat with her as she ate... and I just knew that, even without my collar, simply wearing that lovely dress would have been enough to make me do my best 'elegant sitting' thing. We chatted a bit until I heard the 'ding' that told me the lift was coming.

So I hurried back and was just in time to meet the Helen person... and Daniel must have really trusted her because she was allowed to come up on her own.

As soon as she stepped out of the lift, she set to work on me. She waited in silence for a moment then told me, "You are the social inferior and so it is up to you to introduce yourself first."