The clock showed eleven so she went down to the little kitchen to breakfast with three other girls. She spoke Russian to one but didn`t understand the two others who spoke German. She had been six months in Germany now but she had never had the time or the opportunity to learn any German.

Richard and Sabina: A Biography of the Rev. Richard Wurmbrand and His Wife Sabina

She savoured the taste of the coffee before lighting a cigarette. Then she helped herself to the bread and the assortment of cold meats. It was all so much better than Russia and it was the promise of the Promised Land that had made her come. But she had hardly been outside the house because that was forbidden. And her salary had not been paid. Only promised.

She had finished eating now. So she lit up another cigarette. She enjoyed the blond tobacco. So much better than the black Russian tobacco that grated your lungs. She brushed crumbs from her slip. She was very scantily clad. They all were. She appraised the other girls. Their breasts, waists, hips, arms, hair, eyes. She was blond with blue eyes, blue as the cold Russian winter sky. Her breasts were medium and milky-white but her hips were broad childbearing hips. Yes, she was as beautiful as any of them. She was twenty-three.

She put the dishes in the sink and left them for the cleaner. She bade her compatriot farewell. She made her way to the bathroom and enjoyed the luxury of a warm shower and the hard, clean tiles under her feet. She took a towel from the closet to dry with and blow-dried her hair. Then she brought perfume and make-up from the bedroom and put that on. Back in the bedroom again, she decided on a red dress to match her hair and put that on together with a few other items of clothing and a little artificial jewellery.

After the Madness

Idly she smoked again while she was waiting for her first customer. He was middle-aged and beefy. "Guten Tag," she said in a bad accent. "Guten Tag," he said with a sweet beam. And then he said something else, she couldn`t understand. When he saw she couldn`t understand him, he stopped talking.

He took his own clothes off so she supposed she should do the same and took her clothes off. He sat next to her on the bed and put his left arm over her shoulders. She looked at the erection between his legs. He felt her breasts with his right hand and she was aware of his intakes of breath. He manipulated her round so that her head lay on the pillow and he lay next to her. The right hand was still busy at her breasts like a baker with his buns occasionally straying to her thighs, which he clasped tightly so she was aware of his hard workman`s hands.

She felt no electricity in her body and his desire awoke no flame even as he mounted her. She was aware of his weight. Everything was very uncomfortable. His breath was coming very fast and he started to groan. He braced himself on his arms and started to push deep and slow. Then he got tired and lay on top of her again and buried his head in her hair, while his hips bobbed up and down. She decided to make a few noises to encourage him. Everything seemed to go up-tempo and the bed shook. Then he was there. He lay inside her for a little while. Then he rolled off. His hand once more explored her private parts he had paid for. Then he got up and put on his clothes, while she sat on the bed and watched. "Guten Tag," she said. "`Tag. Auf wiedersehen," he said turning at the door with a parting smile. She hoped she would never see him again.

Girl, Interrupted

She re-arranged the bed, put on her clothes, re-arranged her make-up and used the bathroom to urinate. Then she smoked a cigarette to wait for the next one.

He was younger. Thirties. He wanted her to undress him. So she did. He undressed her. She found herself staring at his penis. It was big and stiff. She wondered why men had ever been endowed with such a ridiculous piece of apparatus.

His hands were more sensitive than the first man`s and she was conscious of them probing her everywhere. Intercourse was not so bad this time because they lay side by side. Also, he came fairly quickly.

His notion of romance included the idea of her taking the rubber off. So she did and deposited it in a bucket with a bin liner together with the first.

And so came the others. At around two hour intervals. Afterwards, she talked a little again to her Russian girl friend, although both women stayed off the subject of today`s sex.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

They talked about money. The brothel owner had promised them big bucks, which he had never paid. They were forbidden to go out so there was no chance of escape. They were illegal so they had no possibility to complain. Men came in on a conveyor belt and the only way to handle that was to forget them as soon as possible. They couldn`t communicate because they didn`t know the language. The girls were tough. Very tough. And they knew they were slaves. Life had been tough in Russia and they had been very poor. But now they were like rats in a trap.

She went to bed in the attic room about two o`clock. She dreamed. She dreamed of a bridge. It hung ramshackle high over filthy water. She was frightened to step on it. It began to sway as she reached the middle. She couldn`t see the far end in the black of the night. Suddenly she realised there was no end. It would simply stop. She would fall off. Down into the filthy water. She would drown. She wouldn`t be able to breath. It would be like a man pressing on top of her lungs.

She woke suddenly. Sweating. She turned on the lamp by the side of the bed. She sat on the edge of the bed. Shuddering. She smoked a cigarette. She turned in and slept. Misery lay ahead of her again tomorrow.

I should like to submit Caged Canary to Sing to you and Fullosia Press.

It has been newsworthy that girls from all over � but particularly Eastern Europe � have been brought in to serve brothels, often cheated of pay and simply locked in. In other words �sex slaves`.

I try to present a nameless woman sexually exploited. I hope the piece is realistic.

If All Men Were Angels

As an Attorney, you must have had many remarkable experiences. If I understand you rightly, you have drawn upon those experiences in your book, �If All Men Were Angels`. I`m sure it would make fascinating reading and, if you would tell me how to order it by Internet, I would do my best to obtain a copy.

You write: "Writers do explore the outer limits of their own personalities in order to construct characters." That puts exactly into words what I`ve been thinking of lately. The question of the relationship of your own experience and your story telling is a very moot point. Without the experience, you could never envisage certain things. However, there has to be an element of creativity and fiction or you can`t make your experience into a story. Also, in a story, you have to fool your reader. He has to think it`s really happening. Dramatists often talk of a �Suspension of Disbelief`. The reader has to let his guard down and go with the story.

You also say: "When they (writers) visualize what could happen theoretically, they must retain a boundary between that which they write about and themselves."

It`s certainly been the case in the past that I have found myself living �inside` a story, or a nightmare.

Hopefully, this will never happen again.

Since about July last year, I`ve wanted to explore the area between fantasy and the real world. I wanted to find a fiction for myself that was truly make-believe.

Sybil

In addition, I was surprised to find that I could write humorously and this was also a voyage of self-exploration. However, it is, as you say, �exploring the outer limits of your own personality`. It`s just a question of how far you can go and taking the reader with you. How far will he suspend his disbelief? Fro instance, in a small room, you wouldn`t be able to swing an axe because the ceiling is too low. Will the reader notice this? Perhaps you`re right and I should go back to what I do better. But I want to experiment and I want to see what I can do and �go to the outer limits of my own personality in order to construct�` stories.

I do, however, know the border between myself and my stories. I`m not living those stories as I write them. I want to fool my reader so that he will �suspend disbelief` and step inside my story world. My story world for me exists on a piece of paper and the moment that I start to live my story will be the moment that I lose my objectivity so that I can`t write it and they lock me up.

I would definitely like to thank you for your concern on my behalf. It seems you wrote on New Year`s Eve at around 8.00.pm. I thank you very much indeed for your New Year`s Eve greetings.

Sincerely,

Geoff Jackson