I can still remember my father’s face as he handed me over to the grim faced nurses on our doorstep. “What are you doing?” I asked, turning and fighting to break free as he shoved me into their arms. “Where are they taking me?”

Two autocops stood on standby at the end of the gate, waiting to see if I’d run. I took one look at the line beside the house before remembering my wristhook was still in my bedroom. My father scowled at me. “I found the letters,” he said, reaching into his pocket and tossing a handful of folded sheets of pink paper into my face. “You disgust me. How could you do this to our family?”

“It’s not what you think,” I said, looking down at the letters at my feet as the nurses began to drag me away. “I love her.”

He didn’t reply. He just turned and went inside and I was loaded onto the barred steamcrate for a journey into hell. The nurses left me locked inside and the pilot refused to even acknowledge my existence. I rose past the roof of the steamscraper and then we headed towards the setting sun, soon ascending into thick cloud which penetrated through the bars, making my dress drip with moisture as I shivered in my makeshift cell.

When we landed the sun had long since set and I could see no more than a few feet around me. “Where are we?” I asked the pilot as he stepped off the crate and lit a cigarette.

“Aint you worked it out yet love?” he said, a nasty smile spreading across his face. “You’re going to Gaslight.”

The words were like a bucket of iced water being poured over my head. I began to shiver uncontrollably as two shadowy figures emerged from the gloom. Gaslight Asylum, the home for the incurables.

Ever since the autorepro labs had been set up, sex had been outlawed and anyone caught indulging was liable to end up in a peeler cell for a first offence or here if they were caught twice. But I was the worst kind of offender in the whole skysystem, no second chances for me. I was a lesbian.

I wondered where Emma was right now. Were they coming for her like they had done for me? Two figures came into focus and I recognised the uniform of the private peeler. They took hold of my arms and began leading me across the grass and up to a pair of enormous wrought iron gates, the centre of each was spun into two letters in flowing script. G and A. Gaslight Asylum.

The gates began to open as I shivered in fear. Nobody knew what really happened here, it was more a horror story to tell people once they reached adulthood.

“Don’t touch yourself or you’ll end up at Gaslight.”

“Jenny kissed a boy and the next day they took her to the asylum.”

“Don’t have naughty dreams or Gaslight will have you.”

A few of my classmates at the academy had been committed here over the years, caught kissing in the toilet block or behind the furnace room. They never came back. I wondered if I’d ever see my skyisland again as I was led through the gates and up the marble steps to the imposing front door. On the doorstep a man stood in a tweed jacket, twirling the end of his moustache with his finger.

“Octavia Thompson?”

I nodded, opening my mouth to speak but he raised a hand to silence me.

“Welcome to Gaslight Asylum. My name is Terence Finnegan and I am the Warden of this establishment. Here we will remove your lascivious thoughts, your unconscionable desires, your reprehensible predilections. Do not fear progress and you will not fear treatment.” He took my hands in his and smiled warmly. “We will make you well again.”

He turned to the peelers stood either side of me. “You may leave her with me. Thank you gentlemen.”

Once we were alone all the warmth vanished from his voice. “Into cell nine with you and do not dawdle, the hounds will be roaming shortly and I’m sure they’d love to make your acquaintance.”

A nurse grabbed my arm, dragging me through one door after another, each opening at the touch of a button, the mechanisms clearly well oiled. Everything about the place looked expensive, gleaming marble floors, statues in recesses, chandeliers dangling from the ceiling. We passed through a door marked “Ward B” and the décor changed immediately. I realised that the area for the inmates was quite different to that where the staff worked. The wallpaper was peeling, the floor chipped and stained and I could hear moans and screams coming from the cells.

“In here,” the nurse said, shoving me through a door identical to others along either side of the corridor. By the time I spun round the door had clanged shut and I was alone in a cell. I looked around me. There was a bucket coated with unmentionable filth, a six inch wide window with a single bar across the middle up near the ceiling. No glass meant the cold night air blew towards me as if I were standing outside. The floor was covered in a thin layer of straw and there was no bed, just a frayed yellowing sheet dangling from a hook on the wall.

I wrapped the sheet around me and backed into the corner furthest from the window, squatting down and fighting the urge to cry. I prayed that Emma learned they were coming for her and had been able to make a run for it. If only I hadn’t kept the letters. We’d never even made love, we’d only kissed a few times but with her working in the gunsmiths now and me in a gluebar we had no chance, seeing precious little of each other in our leisure time. We’d both chipped in to buy a mechapigeon, using it to pass messages back and forth once our time together at the academy came to an end.

We mostly spoke of moving to the New World, leaving the fetid skysystem to the council and making a fresh start in a land where we’d be free to be together. It was a dream of course, the tickets on the airships were far out of our reach of our joint income especially as my father took a substantial portion of mine for himself.

I put my head on my knees and stared at the far wall, cursing my father, my family and the council. I could no more choose who I loved than I could pluck the stars from the sky. Was it fair that I should be punished for something over which I had no control?

I began to cry, tears running down my cheeks as I thought of Emma’s face, knowing I’d likely never see it again. I hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye to her. That was what hurt the most. Our last meeting had been a stolen kiss in the alleyway beside the gluebar before my shift began. She’d surprised me as I’d walked to work, jumping out from the shadows and wrapping her arms round me. At first I thought a nightowl was prowling and I had my fist clenched to lash out before I even realised it was her.

The door to the cell swung open, rousing me from my thoughts of that final kiss. A figure was shoved inside but I could see little more than a shadow in the gloom. “Who’s there?” I asked, my voice echoing round the cell.

“Octavia?” the figure replied. “Is that you?”

My heart soared as I recognised the voice of the love of my life. “Emma?”

Before she could answer a gaslamp flared and Finnegan stuck his head through the open doorway. “This is your chance to prove you are curable,” he said, looking from Emma to me and back again, swinging the gaslamp in his hands. “Last the night without indulging in the sinful pleasures of the flesh for which you are both so reviled and perhaps you will see your skyislands again one day. Goodnight ladies.”

He left, the door slamming shut behind him. As the light faded I turned to Emma, taking her hand in mine. “It’s so good to see you. I feared I had lost you forever.”

To my surprise she snatched her hand away from me. “It’s your fault I’m here,” she snapped. “You corrupted me.”

My heart sank at the sound of those words. Did she really mean that? Did she really blame me for us ending up here? “You’re not serious?” I asked, my voice shaky.

She sighed loudly. “I don’t know. I just wish we’d never met.”

“Don’t say that, please.”

“Look at us, locked away in an asylum with no hope of release and despised by all who know us.”

“That’s not true. There are many who disagree with the council on the laws against intimacy. They’re just too afraid to speak up in public.”

There was the sound of echoing footsteps growing louder as someone approached. A panel in the door was lowered and a nurse peered in at the two of us, gaslamp held to the side of her face. She raised the panel again a moment later and then the footsteps moved on.

I heard a sniffing sound and then Emma began to cry. “Hey,” I said, putting an arm round her shoulder. “It’ll be all right. We just need to get through this.”

“And then what? Just go home and forget this ever happened?”

“No, then we get tickets for the New World and leave this hellhole behind forever.”

“Nice dream,” she said, her head leaning on my shoulder. “But will we ever get out of here?”

I lifted her chin to stare at her, a flicker of moonlight reaching us through the window, just enough light to see her beautiful face. I couldn’t resist. I kissed her. She pulled away slightly but then she was kissing me back, her tongue sliding into my mouth.

“We mustn’t,” she said between kisses but her hands slipped into mine as she spoke and within moments we were laid together in the straw. She reached down under her dress and then I heard a wet sound as she gasped out loud. A second later she had a brass egg in her hand. “Is that the one I gave you?” I asked.

She nodded back at me. “It was up there while I was at work today, it reminded me of your tongue being inside me. Perhaps we can make use of it somehow.”

“I think I know how,” I said, taking it from her and easing out the handle from the side, winding it slowly until it began to buzz in my hand. I ran my free hand up her leg, sliding her dress upwards until I felt the fabric of her panties underneath. I moved the egg to her knickers, pressing it against her clit as she let out a squeak of excitement. She clamped her hand over her mouth to keep quiet as I slid the egg over the fabric, watching it grow damp as the minutes passed.

Eventually my teasing frustrated her so much that she grabbed my arms, dragging me upwards until I was laid on top of her, the egg forgotten in the straw between her legs. She wrapped her arms round my back, kissing me passionately as I stared at her face, still half thinking this was a dream and I would wake up alone in the cell with a throbbing pussy and an aching clit.

She dragged my body further up her until my knees were either side of her head, my dress hiding her from view. I felt her hand pull my panties to one side and then her tongue was in me, delving and stretching my wet hole whilst her hand moved to my clit, stroking it gently. She lapped at my insides as I gasped above her, my hips rocking back and forth as I raced towards an orgasm. She ripped at my panties, tearing them from me in her lust filled haste, the shreds of fabric falling away as she began to caress my buttocks, her fingers moving ever closer to the hole she knew I loved to be filled. She eased her thumb into my bottom as she continued to lick my pussy, the sensation pushing me over the edge and sending an intense climax racing through me as I rocked above her face.

As I came I bit my lip to keep quiet, my chest heaving, my breathing slowly returning to normal. I slid from her and kissed her, tasting my juices on her lips as I slid my hand down her dress, finding the top of her knickers and slipping inside, rubbing her clit in the way I knew she enjoyed more than anything else. Occasionally I’d dip into her pussy but I’d always return to her clit, bringing her to an orgasm whilst staring into her eyes.

She kissed me as she gasped loudly, her body twitching whilst her climax washed over her. She hadn’t even recovered when an unwelcome voice reached us from the door.

“Oh dear.”

I turned to see Finnegan looking in through the open panel in the door. “I feared you would be incurable and alas that I should be proved right. Such a shame.”

The next morning I awoke after a disturbed sleep to find Emma had gone and I was alone in my cell. I noticed something sparkle in the gleam of the morning light and rummaging amongst the straw I found the egg. With a pounding heart I stuck my fingernail in the razor thin gap around the middle. It took a moment but then with a click the two halves fell apart to reveal the insides of the egg. A mass of springs and cogs took up all the available space and with a cautious ear out for anyone approaching the cell I lay out the blanket on the straw, removing each part of the mechanism in turn.

I began connecting cogs together, using the tiny pieces to create the one thing I knew I could use in my predicament. It took a little over a quarter of an hour and it would not last long but I felt proud of myself as I stood up. If it was one thing you learned working in a gluebar, it was how to create a lockpick. Enough ne’er do wells frequented the place to furnish me with the skills to take up any number of illicit careers should I so choose.

I took a deep breath before gingerly inserting the lockpick into the cell door. I twisted it left and right until there was a deep clunk and then the door swung open. Hardly able to believe it had worked I tiptoed along the corridor. I was just passing cell one when I heard a, “Pssst!”

The panel in the door was open and I saw a woman peering out at me.

“Take me with you and I’ll make it worth your while.”

“What?” I hissed back, fearing that a nurse might appear at any moment.

“You’re escaping aren’t you? I have the means to get off this skyisland. Let me out and we’ll leave together.”

I looked at her closely, wondering if she was being honest. “What means?”

“I will not say unless you free me. Or perhaps I could yell for the nurse instead?”

“All right, just lower your voice.” I inserted the lockpick into her cell door and in under a minute she was by my side. She looked strange, not like anyone I’d seen before. She was wearing black leather knee length boots. From them were fishnet style stocking that ran up to the frilly black skirt of a ballerina. Above that was a brown corset, black fingerless gloves and she had chest length dark brown hair under a hat with goggles wrapped around it.

“Who are you?” I asked, looking up and down her once more.

“My name is Anna and I will explain who I am once we are airborne. Come, this way, I know the quietest way out.”

“Hold on,” I replied. “I’m not leaving without Emma.”

“The other girl in your cell?”

“Yes! Do you know where they took her?”

“I know all too well. She’s where they take all the new inmates on their first morning.”

“And where’s that?”

“The treatment room.”

“Take me there.”

“What? Are you insane? It’ll be swarming with nurses, doctors, half the asylum staff observe the treatments, I swear they derive a pleasure from it far more intense than any enjoyed by the inmates.”

“Take me there,” I repeated, my teeth gritted.

“All right fine. But if they see you, you’re on your own.”

She led the way, only stepping aside when we reached each door, me holding my breath as I picked each lock, wondering how long my makeshift tool would last. Somehow it held together and we were soon in the treatment wing.

I could hear Emma moaning in the distance and it was all I could do to resist running to assist her. Anna put her finger to her lips and pointed towards a grilled window set into the wall a few feet ahead of us. I could hear nurses talking on the other side of the glass as we crawled beneath it before regaining our feet and edging onwards.

We turned a corner and there stood an imposing oak door blocking the corridor, a brass panel screwed into it was marked, “Treatment Room A.”

I slid the lockpick into the door but as I turned it, it snapped, the broken end remaining wedged in the lock. “Now what?” I hissed to Anna and she shrugged. I turned back, trying each door I came to. The third one swung open to reveal a storeroom and inside I spotted the one thing I thought could help us.

On a shelf lay a box of freshly pressed nurses’ uniforms. I held one out to Anna and took another. “Change quickly,” I told her as another moan reached me from the treatment room. I began to undress and Anna did the same and I could not help but look at her body as she removed her corset, her breasts coming into view, putting my own to shame as she neatly folded her clothes and laid them on the shelf. “I’ll be back for those,” she said, sliding into the white dress. I felt a flash of disappointment as her nipples vanished from view but I let it pass, easing open the door once more and glancing out before nodding back at my companion. “What are you going to do?” she whispered.

I walked up to the treatment room door and knocked loudly. Anna gasped as my boldness as the door swung open and a naked man opened it. “Yes? Ah, you must be here for stage two before the display for the general staff. I’ve not seen you before though.”

“Just transferred here,” Anna said quickly.

“Fresh off the steamcrate,” I added, trying not to look at the erect member between the man’s legs.

“Well come in and let’s get this thing moving.”

“How’s the patient?” I asked as I walked into a laboratory more suited to a mad scientist than a council funded asylum. In the middle of the room Emma was naked and strapped onto a wooden table, intensely bright gaslamps set into the walls around her. Various tables and shelves were covered in all manner of devices, from Ronson’s patented malaise cures to long brass cylinders, vibrating eggs, a long showerhead, even a converted mechapigeon, its robotic wings replaced with what looked like feather dusters.

“No matter what I’ve tried she refuses to allow me to insert myself into her,” the man said, folding his arms and glancing back at Emma. “She is incorrigibly Sapphic and it chills my blood to see such an intense disease invading her mind.”

“Could I suggest something?” I asked, my heart racing as I thought how I could free her before he began to torture her.

He nodded. “Go on.”

“Have you heard of intensive aversion therapy?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“It was patented by Doctor Tarr and Doctor Featherr of Gothenburg in ’76 and is summarised thusly. The patient observes the correct behaviour whilst being treated to pleasurable stimuli. In her mind she begins to relate the two and can sometimes be cured in a matter of hours.”

“Intriguing. How would we go about conducting such a treatment?”

“It will require you to create a tableaux with my colleague here whilst I stimulate the patient.”

“Are you suggesting…?”

“I am.”

“Very well.”

Anna tapped me on the shoulder. “Are you saying I indulge in congress with the doctor whilst you do the same to the patient?”

“I am,” I winked at her, raising my eyebrows to hint that I had a plan in mind. She nodded almost imperceptibly before turning to the doctor.

“Shall we good sir?” she asked, lowering herself to her knees and taking hold of his erect member in her hands. She began to slide her hands up and down his shaft as I moved over to the table and leaned down to kiss Emma’s neck.

I whispered in her ear as quietly as I could, “Hold on a little longer my love and you will soon be free I swear.” I moved my lips down over her shoulders towards her nipples, licking them into hardened buds as Anna took the doctor’s cock into her mouth.

“How is she?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at Emma.

“Keep going,” I replied, kissing my way down her stomach towards her pussy. “I must examine her intimately to see how she reacts to the stimulus you provide.”

He pushed Anna off him, raising her to her feet and turning her round, bending her over and yanking down her panties, leaving her round bottom exposed to our gaze. “Spread your cheeks,” he said. “Let’s show her what she should desire, none of this Sapphic depravity of which she’s so fond.”

Anna did as he suggested, revealing the round hole of her bottom and the pinkness of her glistening pussy. The doctor slid the head of his prick between her buttocks, down over her labia to her clit before sinking into her, taking hold of her hips and rocking deeper into her pussy.

I moved my tongue over Emma’s clit, planning to move down to undo the bonds which held her ankles in place. I became distracted by the taste of her, finding myself unable to pull my mouth from her clit, lapping at her engorged nub as she moaned loudly above me.

As I licked her Anna began to shriek with pleasure, the doctor slamming ever faster into her, her body shaking as he kept her from falling to the floor with his firm hands on her hips. Anna glanced down at me as I pushed a finger into her, teasing her warm insides as I continued to lick her clit. I felt her pussy contract around me as she suddenly came without warning, her hips thrusting upwards towards my face.

As she let out a deep sigh of pleasure, I moved my hands to her ankles and then her legs were free. She was still recovering from her climax as I freed her wrists. Together we tiptoed behind the doctor and grabbed him, dragging him out of Anna and pushing him backwards onto the table before he could react. In seconds we had him tied down and then we stood back, ignoring his protests as his cock jutted into the air, glistening with the juices from Anna’s pussy.

“What are you doing?” he cried. “Let me free this instant.”

“We’re leaving,” I replied. “Goodnight good doctor.”

“No wait,” the doctor pleaded. “At least do not leave me this frustrated.”

I opened my mouth to speak but Anna was in front of me before I could say anything. “I will do this,” she said to me. “For I am also desirous of the same outcome.”

She climbed onto the table and squatted over his pelvis, guiding him up inside her as Emma and I could only wait. She began to bounce up and down on him, watching his reaction change as he fought ineffectually against the bonds holding him in place. She moved her body down against his a minute later, grinding against him until he grunted loudly at the same time as she let out a deep moan. They came at the same instant and I could see excitement flash across Anna’s face as he came inside her.

Her body shook with her own climax and it was some time before she had recovered sufficiently to climb off him and step back down to the floor, giving his shaft a single kiss before turning to me. “Let’s go,” she said, a broad smile upon her face.

The doctor looked as if he’d imbibed opium, he seemed in a soporific daze. We left him on the table and tiptoed out of the door, Emma picking up a ring of keys from a hook on the wall as we left. We made our way along countless corridors with Anna in the lead. She took us left and right again and again until she stopped at a final door, taking the keys from Emma. She unlocked the door and then we were outside in the grounds.

“How did you know which key to use?” Emma asked.

“I used to work here before the patients taught me the pleasure of intimacy but there is no time for long tales. We must find my balloon.”

“Balloon?” I asked as she began to run across the manicured lawns towards a copse of trees by the boundary wall. She didn’t respond to my question as she clambered up from branch to branch before hopping onto the top of the wall, beckoning us to follow. A minute later we were on the other side and running once more, listening out all the time for private peeler patrols. I was almost out of breath when she stopped at last by a derelict steamcrate dock. “Under here,” she said, reaching into the control box and pulling a lever. 

A section of grass slid aside and left a gaping hole in the ground. Anna reached inside and began winding a wheel on the control box as a length of thick fabric began to emerge from the hole. Within minutes a balloon was in view and then Anna clambered down into the hole, passing out four long cylinders each marked “Gaseous – Caution.”

“How did this get here?” I asked as I took the first cylinder and laid it near the balloon.

“I will explain later,” she replied as she climbed back out of the hole, “but for now we must hurry.”

She walked over to the nearby bushes, throwing branches aside to reveal a hidden wicker basket. Under her instructions we soon had the cylinders attached to the basket and the balloon fabric in place along the ground. She twisted the wheels on the first cylinder and with a hiss and a click a plume of flame emerged from the end. 

“Hold this,” she said, passing me a section of balloon. With Emma holding another piece a circle formed and the heat of the flame passed through to the innards of the balloon which slowly began to inflate. It seemed to take forever to fill and as the balloon slowly rose above the basket I heard an echoing siren back in the direction of the asylum.

“Hurry up,” I snapped as the whistles of private peelers filled the air.

“Climb in,” she replied, turning the wheels of the remaining cylinders which each began to spurt flame up into the balloon.

“Oi!” I heard a peeler yell and then a dozen of them were running towards us as I clambered into the basket, my feet kicking a canvas bag which lay in the footwell.

“Come on!” Emma shouted as she saw the nearest peeler reach for a fusegun with just a few yards between him and us.

At that moment the basket wobbled and began lifting into the air. The peeler put on a fresh burst of speed and just got the tips of his fingers onto the basket as we rose above him. He tried to hold on but lost his grip and fell the few feet to the ground as we rose higher into the air.

“Oh my life, that was close,” I said, collapsing into the basket and sighing with relief. The cylinder above me roared as more flame jetted upwards and then Anna turned the wheels once more, letting the balloon drift slowly through the air.

“Why aren’t they firing at us?” Emma asked, looking down over the side of the basket.

“They know what’s in the balloon. A single fusegun blast and the explosion would take out them, the asylum and most of the skyisland.”

“How do we steer this?” I asked, glancing up at the voluminous patchwork of fabric over our head.

“With this,” Anna replied, pointing at a panel on the side of the cylinders. “Different levels of heat in different sections of the balloon. The space within is divided in conjunction with this and a master flyer knows just how much heat to send to each section to choose which direction to fly in. Any more questions?”

“What’s in the bag?”

“A fusegun, some provisions and something else that we’ll need when we land. Satisfied?”

“Almost,” Emma said, taking my hand in hers and pulling me to my feet. “Just one more question. Where are we going?”

Anna smiled as she watched Emma’s arm slide round my back. “Where do you think? To the New World of course.”