Miami Bound

by Henry Morgan

  She owned a Range Rover, which naturally, was air-conditioned. It was not soundproof, however, and as they travelled south out of the city, every time it came to a stop at an intersection it sounded as if millions of crickets and frogs and other unknown swamp dwellers were surrounding the vehicle. Nature seemed prepared to encroach upon technology once and for all in the Louisiana swamps.

  After some time they passed an airfield.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said almost absentmindedly. ‘I think I can solve your flight problem tomorrow, David.’

  ‘It’s not really a problem,’ he said warily. ‘I just need to book a ticket.’

  ‘Well, anyway, I shall fly you there myself. I haven’t flown in over a month. I could use the practice.’ She smiled at him.

  ‘You’re a pilot?’ he declared rather foolishly, but this woman was so beautiful and so sure of herself, she made him feel as nervous as a boy.

  ‘It would be silly of me to pretend I could fly if I couldn’t, don’t you think?’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply... I mean, I was just surprised.’

  ‘Would you like a cigarette?’ she asked, dismissing the subject.

  The car sped on for several more miles, and each one took them deeper into the swamp. Sometimes the road disappeared beneath a blanket of mist, and Jubal seemed to make his way by pure instinct between increasingly large and almost grotesquely twisted trees, their decrepit limbs draped in moss. The darkness became almost oppressive, and David felt a profound sense of foreboding possessing him.

  But it lifted somewhat when the car turned onto a paved driveway and he saw a huge white mansion looming against the black sky. The drive was illuminated by a row of torches leading up to the large double doors, and the place had French colonial stamped all over it, as did the young black girl with her hair tied in colourful bunches of rags who ran out to meet the car. She opened the back door, and welcomed her mistress home.

  ‘Light the fire in the sitting room, Maisey,’ Monique instructed her. ‘As you can see, I have a guest.’

  The girl rushed off, but then abruptly turned and ran back. ‘M-madam,’ she stammered.

  ‘Yes, what is it, Maisey?’

  ‘There’s been some trouble in the village, madam.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’

  The girl seemed unsure of how to answer that, but eventually she blurted that Leena had been caught in someone else’s bed, someone other than her husband’s, that is. The offended spouse was understandably put out by the matter, and demanding that the rules of the house be enforced. The others, whoever the others were, had not succeeded in calming him down.

  By now, Jubal had walked around the car and was standing beside his mistress.

  ‘Go and see to it Jubal,’ she said a little wearily, and then turned back to Maisey. ‘Go light a fire in the sitting room,’ she repeated patiently.

  Maisey turned on her heels again, and this time ran all the way into the house.

  Jubal walked purposefully towards the side of the mansion as David followed Monique up to the front doors. They opened onto a large hall in which the right wall consisted of a row of tall glass doors covered by transparent white curtains. David discovered that they opened onto a magnificent sight - the Gulf of Mexico, its warm waves washing the shore of the plantation just a few hundred yards away. The twinkling lights of boats could be seen undulating on the water, but even more incredible were the lights burning inside dozens of wooden huts dotting the lawn of the great house. The whole scene appeared to be painted on a grey-blue canvas in the impressionist style, and occasionally a firefly flickered close to the veranda before vanishing again in its haunting search for a mate in the darkness.

  ‘The village?’ David asked quietly, feeling as though he had been transported back into another time.

  ‘Yes, for my workers.’ Monique walked across to another door, and opened it. ‘Would you like a drink?’

  He followed her into the room just as Maisey was leaving it. The girl had lit a large fire, and a few romantic gas lamps, by whose combined light David could see that the room was decorated in a colonial style perfectly in keeping with the architecture of the house. Two armchairs sat on either side of the dancing flames, and Monique handed him a glass of red wine before choosing her seat.

  ‘This is a beautiful house,’ he told her. In his mind’s eye, he was trying to figure out how she could afford it. She had not mentioned a husband and she did not look old enough to have amassed a fortune big enough to pay for it. He imagined she must have inherited her money, either from her father or from a late spouse.

  ‘It’s the oldest working plantation in Louisiana, and we’ve owned it since my family came from France generations ago,’ she informed him as if reading his mind. ‘I told you I would show you something of the old world.’

  ‘It’s incredible. I thought this way of life had vanished long ago.’

  Monique collected a cigarette from another silver case sitting on a small side table. ‘It did,’ she replied blithely, ‘everywhere except here, where almost everything is still done the old way. We hand pick our cotton and make our own cloth. There’s a premium for such quality material.’

  ‘But the people in the village, I would have thought they’d have left in search of a better life.’

  ‘They did leave, before my grandfather’s time. But what was there to do?’ She shrugged her delicate shoulders. ‘Families wandered the swamps trying to make a living, and a lot of them starved. Many came back. The old life was harsh, but it was secure. A home, food, a purpose.’

  ‘But what keeps them here now?’

  She crossed her legs and blew smoke up towards an unlit chandelier. ‘The same things, I imagine. They can leave if they want to and face the modern world. I can’t force them to stay.’ She got up abruptly, and motioned for David to join her by the window. ‘You see those groups of huts over there? That’s the retirement village. When they can no longer work in the fields, they have a guaranteed house here. How much would that cost in the big city?’

  David had no idea, and so simply shook his head.

  ‘A lot of money,’ she assured him. ‘They would need very good jobs outside to afford a retirement like this, right on the ocean surrounded by their loved ones, not locked up in some horrible nursing home. So they stay and work for me.’

  They were returning to their seats when there was a knock at another door leading into the room. Monique called for the person to enter, and a man who looked to be in his late thirties walked in.

  ‘What is it, George?’

  ‘Please, madam,’ he began respectfully, ‘you gave Leena to me, and now she’s lying down with that young buck.’ Apparently, he could not bring himself to say the other man’s name.

  ‘I gave her to you, George, because you have no children. I was hoping Leena would be expecting a child by now, but she’s not, so I’m not surprised she should seek another man’s bed.’

  George looked embarrassed, and his gaze dropped to the carpet. ‘But we have rules, madam,’ he reminded her. ‘If they’re not kept, the village will be lawless.’

  ‘I bent those rules for you, George. You know that. If a man fails to make his new wife pregnant within a year, then she’s put to Jubal, and Jubal will stud her until a child is sired. That’s the rule. Yet you begged me not to put her to Jubal. If I bring Leena in now for her punishment, then you must accept the other condition.’

  George literally wrung his hands in despair. Jubal had many children running around the village. Many men had seen their wives taken away until Jubal planted his seed inside her and made her conceive. However, once she was pregnant she returned to her husband. Considering all this, George finally nodded his agreement.

  ‘Where is Leena now?’ Monique asked him.

  ‘Outside,’ he replied.

/>   ‘Then send her in, and bring Jubal here as well. We shall kill two birds with one stone.’

  George knew what that meant, and so did David, who thought it was a particularly cruel twist to send the husband to fetch the man about to mount his wife.

  A few minutes after George left, three women escorted a struggling Leena into the fire-lit room. At first David could not get a good look at the girl because she was twisting so violently in the arms of her escorts, but Monique brought her under control simply by saying her name. Leena immediately became passive, and the women released her.

  Monique turned to David and motioned for him to stand up. ‘Clear the hearth,’ she instructed the women, who promptly began moving the chairs away and taking everything off the mantelpiece. When they had finished, Monique faced Leena.

  ‘Why do you lie down with another man when I have given you to George?’ she asked directly.

  ‘I did not want George,’ Leena replied, holding her mistress’s eyes. ‘He is a good man but he is old, so I went to Gilly for comfort.’

  David could understand that. Leena looked to be no more than eighteen-years-old, and although her billowing skirt and blouse did little for her figure, her face was exquisitely beautiful.

  ‘Does George not satisfy you?’ Monique demanded. ‘Does he not perform his duties?’

  ‘Not like a man who wants to possess me, he has no passion. He mounts me and rides me like a man without a heart. No children can be made when there is no fire in the man’s thighs.’

  The door behind Leena opened, and in stepped Jubal, followed by George. Leena turned her head, and her eyes widened when she saw the whip in Jubal’s hand. She looked back at her mistress and sank to her knees. ‘Please, madam, do not whip me,’ she begged passionately.

  But her plea fell on deaf ears. Monique stepped aside, and the women took that as their signal to grab Leena’s wrists and drag her over to the fireplace, holding her centred between them. For a moment David feared Leena’s skirt would touch the flames, but a large matronly woman yanked it down, forcing Leena to step out of it. Her blouse was also then stripped off her, and now the young black woman was completely naked. Her skin was so smooth and lustrous it shone like a wet hazelnut caressed by the firelight. She also had the smallest, firmest bottom David had ever seen.

  Jubal stepped forward, took up his position slightly to Leena’s left, and shook the whip out. It was short, resembling a supple cane with a switch connected to the end. The big black man loosened his wrist, Monique gave him the signal, and he slashed the strip of leather across the young woman’s back with a loud crack that resounded across the room. David expected a scream to follow, but the girl was silent. He looked at her back, and saw evidence of the cruel power of the blow smiling garishly from her shoulder all the way down to her bottom.

  Leena did not make a sound until the fifth stroke, and then all she did was gasp. David tore his eyes from her stripped body to look into the mirror hanging above the mantle, and caught her defiant eyes glaring back at him. Then the sixth and final lash descended across her flesh, and although she threw her head back from the pain, she took it without complaint.

  ‘Release her,’ Monique commanded.

  When the women let go of her, Leena gripped the mantel for support. The room was silent, and David glanced at George. His face was flushed with anger and pain. His beautiful wife had taken the beating he had ordered for her, and now she was about to receive a rod of a different kind.

  The silence was suddenly broken by the thud of Leena’s body hitting the rug; she had fainted.

  Two of the women lifted her gently up into a sitting position while the third held a glass of brandy to her lips. Despite her mental defiance, Leena’s young body had sought release from the torment in unconsciousness.

  During this slight intermission, Monique ordered George to pour a brandy for her and for David, and instructed the women to return the furniture to its proper place. Then she and David sat down again.

  ‘Who will go underneath her?’ Monique asked.

  The women glanced at one another, but no volunteers were forthcoming.

  ‘If no one agrees, Jubal will do as he wishes.’

  The women looked at the huge man, and then at each other again. Finally, a girl not much older than Leena spoke up. ‘I will,’ she said.

  Monique looked at Jubal, and the man nodded as he began undressing.

  ‘Where are you going?’ his mistress demanded of George, who was making his way to the door. ‘This is being done at your request, so that everyone can see justice has no favourites. You will stay and watch.’

  Once Jubal was naked, David saw what was probably the largest erection he had ever beheld. Jubal’s cock looked to be about a foot long and was equally impressive in girth. The three women stared at it with concern as they helped Leena to her feet. The other girl, the one who had volunteered, then turned away from them, and Leena’s arms were wrapped around her neck from behind. The girl then knelt down in front of the fire and leaned forward until her head was touching the carpet, bringing Leena down with her. They spread her legs, and Leena was now in a position to be mounted from behind.

  It was clear to David why this position was being used, because if Jubal mounted her from the front, she would have rubbed her welt-covered back and bottom on the carpet and suffered greatly.

  The impressive black man got down on his knees and aimed his rigid cock towards the girl’s pussy. Several times he attempted to penetrate her, but she was unresponsive. Eventually he nodded at one of the women, who crouched down and spread Leena’s labia open. Jubal finally got his helmet inserted, and then he slowly sank every last inch of his enormous erection inside her.

  For about ten minutes he penetrated the girl with all the passion and ferocity she had been missing in her marriage. The execution of the punishment was almost methodical, but Jubal’s violent fucking was not, and it aroused David where he sat uncomfortably in his chair trying to hide the hard-on in his trousers. Occasionally he glanced at Monique, only to find her looking impassively at the scene whilst calmly smoking another cigarette and sipping her brandy.

  David was almost relieved when Jubal’s neck thickened, and his whole body shuddered as he fired his sperm into the young wife’s belly. A moment later he pulled out of her, got to his feet and walked across to his mistress. He stood quietly in front of her as Monique leaned forward and studied his rigid penis. She blew a cloud of cigarette smoke over the black shaft, and then looked up into his equally dark eyes.

  ‘Well done, Jubal,’ she said quietly. ‘The girls will take Leena back to your hut now. I will let George know when he can have her back.’

  The women helped a semi-conscious Leena to her feet, and escorted her from the room while Jubal put his clothes back on.

  ‘Now, George,’ Monique said, ‘you can tell the village that your mistress shows favours to no one. Everyone is equal here under the law.’

  George nodded and made another attempt to leave the room, but his mistress called him back yet again.

  ‘When Leena returns to you, she will be carrying. You must prepare your hut for the new arrival.’

  ‘Yes, madam, I will. Thank you,’ he said, and was finally allowed to leave.

  Only David and Monique were left in the room, and David was full of anticipation, but his erection instantly deflated when Monique announced she was exhausted from the night’s activities and was going to bed.

  ‘You must stay the night,’ she told him. ‘I haven’t forgotten my promise to fly you to Miami tomorrow. I will drive you back to the city in the morning, and you can pick up your things then.’

  David was roused from a deep and dreamless sleep by breakfast, carried into his room by Maisey. She had brought him eggs-over-easy, bacon, toast, and strawberry preserves.

  She greeted him cheerfull
y, and placed the tray on a desk before pulling back the drapes and opening the windows. Sunshine streamed into the room, along with a riot of noise from outside indicating work was already well underway on the plantation.

  When Maisey left, he got out of bed and picked up a piece of toast. He intended to take a few bites and then head for the bathroom, but the view outside held him enthralled. Perhaps a hundred people were milling around in the vast field surrounding the house carrying bundles and otherwise going about their work. Where the Gulf met the land a jetty cut into the water. It had been invisible by night, but now David saw a boat tied to it that the villagers were loading with bails of cotton.

  Eventually he headed for the bathroom and showered as quickly as possible, eager to get outside.

  Monique was sitting out on the veranda looking busy and efficient and absolutely stunning in a white pantsuit. She was drinking orange juice at a long table while signing some documents the captain of the boat had brought her.

  ‘Good morning, David.’ She smiled up at him. ‘Did you sleep well?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, like a log... good morning.’ He reached out and shook the captain’s hand. ‘This is wonderful!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s like being transported back into the past.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’ Monique rolled up the papers, and handed them back to the captain. ‘That should do it,’ she said. ‘See you in another two weeks.’

  The man smiled at her, saluted David, and headed for the water.

  ‘I telephoned the airport early this morning,’ Monique told him. ‘They said the plane would be ready by three o’clock. Would you like some orange juice?’

  On the way to The Lafayette to pick up his things, David remembered the RV. He had been planning to drive around to used car lots and sell it before catching his flight to Miami, but he really did not need the money the vehicle would fetch. It took some doing, but he finally persuaded Monique to accept it as payment for the flight. She admitted the plantation needed a new truck, and said she would trade the RV in for one when the time came.

  Jubal took the RV back to the plantation, and Monique drove them to the airport. It was little more than a runway surrounded by a handful of small buildings.