Which was how we passed the next three evenings. We’d come back from the trials, pull off our clothes, fuck real hard, and then eat. During some break in the second day trials, Jonathan had gone out, found an English-language bookstore, and scooped up a shopping bag full of mysteries and sci fi. We weren’t following rules anymore, which meant we could say anything we wanted. But we were afraid of saying wrong or embarrassing things to each other. At least I was. So the books kept us busy during those weird, wired, exhausted, polite, and oddly companionable evenings. We’d dive into them, every so often one or the other of us finishing one, maybe briefly recommending it, or tossing it across the room, proclaiming it a “turkey, guessed it halfway through, don’t bother.”
On the fourth evening, the rock ’n’ roll/cyberpunk story I was racing through reminded me of thrash music and I thought of my Primus T-shirt, packed up with my stuff at Stuart’s. I decided that if I passed the trials I’d tell Jonathan he could have it as a good-bye present. Thanks for the memories, I guess, and for the strange intimacy, even if we’d only had about four real conversations in the space of a year and a half. Good-bye, and thanks, also, for finding me a job that was not just a job but an adventure. So long, accomplice, collaborator, coconspirator.
Just then, there was a knock at the door. Jonathan went to get it. There were two European guys in suits and short squared-off haircuts, looking like the cops in La Femme Nikita. They were from the auction committee, though, and they were here to tell us—well, Jonathan, really—that I’d passed the trials. I could hear that much anyway, though the one of them who was doing the talking, the only one who knew English I think, was speaking very softly. I heard Jonathan tell him, “I’ll fax them the papers within an hour. And I’ll get her for you now.”
I hadn’t known they came for you in the middle of the night. And I don’t know if Jonathan had either. He walked over to me—I was sprawled on the bed in a hotel bathrobe and a pair of his socks—and pulled me to my feet. “You’re in,” he said, “and you’re not allowed to speak anymore.” So much for the T-shirt idea. Or for even a so long. “Take off your clothes,” he continued in an expressionless voice. “You’ll go with these gentlemen.”
They were standing by the door watching without much interest. I felt a little sorry for them; this had to be the dullest master/slave scene they’d ever barged in on. I pulled off the socks and robe, folded my glasses on top of the open book, and walked over to them. They produced a pair of high heels and a trench coat and helped me into them. Then, silently, they hustled me out of the room and shut the door behind them.
CHAPTER VI
Long Corridors
They led me down the long aseptic hotel hall—this was a hotel people stayed in for business, not pleasure—to the elevator and through the lobby. One of them—not the one who had spoken—had his hand on my arm, which he held very tightly. I was pretty scared. After all, I was in a foreign country, without money or passport, being taken god knew where by two neatly dressed thugs. Still, I had to ask myself, what was I afraid of? A white slave ring? Uh, Carrie, hate to break it to you at this late date, but that’s exactly what you’re in the middle of. Unless this was really some kind of bizarre Interpol spy story like one of the books I’d read. But that was even less likely. Maybe, I considered, all the sex stuff is true, but the money angle is a big scam. Now that was a frightening thought. And thinking of the money angle reminded me that what we really looked like—what the people in the lobby probably thought was happening if they happened to notice us at all—was two plainclothes cops with a prostitute they’d busted and were escorting out of a classy hotel.
The black car was parked on the street near the hotel, with another thug in the driver’s seat. We got into the back and—dumb as it sounds I found this mildly comforting—they pushed me to the floor and had me suck their cocks. Maybe they had found the situation reasonably interesting after all, or, more likely, I thought, this was just their routine. Afterward, they joked among themselves, smoked Gauloises, and gave me a few drags. I didn’t understand the language they were speaking, but they seemed to like my haircut, stroking my head, tugging at my pubic hair. I guess the joke—I mean, I don’t think these guys were any too swift or subtle—was that my pubic hair was longer. They were also interested in the marks on my ass, examining them clinically. I think they saw lots of beat-up asses and just liked to keep tabs to keep a running score. After a while, it seemed like they were losing interest in me, although they still stroked and grabbed in an absent-minded way. But I think they were talking about sports or taxes or something. They seemed like pleasant enough goons, probably with wives and kids. Their ordinariness calmed me down a little.
The car stopped in front of a large, low, old, official-looking building with a semicircular driveway in front of it. I couldn’t help wondering if it was some kind of a police station, because that’s really what it looked like. Maybe it was a sting operation, maybe the thugs were really double agents. Maybe they were finally onto the slave thing, maybe somebody had really gotten hurt. It was, after all, pretty amazing that nobody had up until now, I thought, though in fact I had never felt like I was in that kind of danger at all.
We walked up a few low steps. It was very quiet. The building seemed to front on some sort of park, and I realized that we were no longer in the center of the city. The night was foggy and the streetlights were very bright, diffusing into a layered, pale gray glow. One of the thugs rang a buzzer, and a guy who looked like a security guard opened the door and let us into an anteroom. Marble-tiled floor, desk, a few other pieces of furniture, some dark, anonymous paintings on the wall. The thug who could speak English parked me in a corner and told me to take off the coat and shoes and give them back to him. The security guard had a small, thonged whip hanging from his belt. Nope, not the police station after all. He went to a fax machine, took out a piece of paper, compared it to the papers the thugs were shoving at him, and signed his name a lot of times. The thugs signed a few times as well, seemed satisfied, and trooped out.
The security guard, or whatever he was, came over to where I was standing and pinched and slapped me a few times. He flicked his whip idly over my breasts and poked its handle lightly at the opening of my vagina. I stayed pretty still, just trembling a little. The marble floor was cold under my feet and it was very quiet. Then he sighed, walked over to the desk, stapled all his papers together, and filed them in a folder on the desk. He picked up the desk phone, dialed an extension, spoke softly into it, and hung up. He was very young, I realized, not much more than eighteen, dark, broad-shouldered, beetle-browed, a bit stocky, just past pimply.
He sat on the edge of the desk, one leg dangling, and motioned me to come over, nodding at the floor in front of him. I knelt, watching him uncertainly. Then he took a small rubber ball out of his pocket and tossed it at the opposite corner of the room. I figured I knew what he wanted, but I waited for the light flick of his whip against my ass before I set off, on hands and knees, to fetch the ball with my mouth. When he took it back from me, he slapped my face and tossed the ball again, and I understood that I had not been fast enough. It took me about six or seven tries to get it right, and then he raised the ante. From one of the many pockets of his fatigue-type khaki pants, he took out a string of five or six small metal balls, looking like those plastic pop-bead necklaces I used to wear when I was a little girl. The balls were about the size of Ping-Pong balls. He inserted one into my asshole. Then I felt another swipe of the whip, and we continued the game. I tried to be as fast as I could and not drop the ball out of my asshole, while the rest of them flapped behind me like a crazy, horrible little tail. He seemed to enjoy this and had just graduated to pushing the second ball up me, when, thank goodness, a woman walked into the room. He quickly stood at attention, jerking me up, too, and quickly and rather painfully retrieving the string of balls as well.
The woman was tall and serious and wore a black sweater and leather pants. She smiled at the
security guard, and they chatted a bit, again in a language I didn’t understand. She carried a small black laptop computer and had the same whip hanging from her belt. She looked me over, went to a small dresser, and took out a collar and set of cuffs. She quickly put them on me and hooked my hands to the back of my neck. Then, nodding to the security guard, who slumped in a chair on the other side of the room, she sat down at the desk and sorted through the papers he’d put in the folder. She opened up the laptop and typed a bunch of entries into it.
She was terrific to look at. In her late twenties, maybe thirty. Very thick shoulder-length hair, a full mouth, flaring cheekbones, wide shoulders, and slim hips. She picked up the desk phone and dialed an extension. “Paul? Margot. They dropped off Lot 14 here just now. Let’s do it, okay?” Her accent was distantly British, probably not English, more like Australian or South African, overlaid with a few years of California, maybe. She continued, “Yeah, fine. I think so. No, I know you’ve got a file. Uh, let me see…uh, yeah, Carrie Richardson. See, you do have a file.”
Well, you could wish to be Lot 49 in the auction, but you couldn’t really insist on it, I supposed. Meanwhile, a guy who was probably Paul came in. He was thin, spiky-haired, and blond, with big glasses and lots of nervous energy. He was also wearing black, with a whip hanging from his belt, but he was wearing jeans and Dr. Martens. He carried a thick, messy, folder. All of a sudden the room seemed very busy.
“Let’s have a look at her,” he said. “Come here, Carrie,” he called to me. I walked over and he grabbed the ring in the front of my collar. “C’mon, c’mon,” he said, pulling me along and flicking his whip lightly over my calves. “Bend over the desk,” he said, and I did.
They both leaned over me.
“A few marks,” she said. “What do you think?”
“Needs a few more,” he said. “Definitely. It’ll make all the difference in the photograph. But just a few. You know how they get when we bring them merchandise that’s too marked up. It’s dicey—mark her up enough for the catalog, but not so much that it won’t clear up before auction day itself. But we can do it. I can do it. Hey, I also have another idea. Before we actually get her up there, how about spanking her? Might be really effective, her butt all bright pink.”
“It’s a possibility,” she said, fingering my asshole thoughtfully. “Let’s see how she’d look.” She sat down on the desk next to me. “Okay, Carrie,” she said. “Over my knee now.” I froze for a moment. It wasn’t as though nobody had ever spanked me during my year at Jonathan’s, but it had not been very often. I was much more used to whips, canes, and belts, and the necessary distance they put between me and the person doing the beating. Being spanked, with somebody’s bare hand, lying naked across their lap, seemed much more intimate and humiliating to me. I moved toward her, finally, but she had picked up on my hesitation.
Very tentatively, I lay down over her lap. She was strong and sharply pulled me into place. And she was annoyed at me. “God, Paul,” she said. “Did you catch that? Little prima donna doesn’t want to get spanked. They are just so damn fussy, these little packages of merchandise. They think that because we’re not buying and selling them, they don’t have to obey us. We’ll deal with that tomorrow, though.”
Even though I didn’t think I was allowed to speak, I started to apologize, but she wasn’t listening. Just started spanking—hard and rhythmically. Her hands seemed enormous, covering wide swaths of me every time. She wasn’t, I realized, looking for an emotional effect on me; she was interested in getting my ass a bright, even pink as quickly as possible. From my point of view it was taking a long time, and it was making me cry loudly. The crying, I couldn’t help thinking, of Lot 14, and I was sure there’d be a lot more of that to come. Paul, who was watching over her shoulder, shoved a balled-up, not entirely clean, handkerchief into my mouth to gag me.
“Thanks,” she said to him. “I could hardly hear myself think. How does she look?” keeping up the whacks as she spoke.
“Sure,” he returned companionably, continuing to watch eagerly, “Oh good, very good, Margot. Five more strokes?”
“Seven,” she said, and it was a long seven. My ass felt cooked. Hot, evenly hot, stewed, grilled, whatever—it was painful and tender. I imagined a cube of butter melting on it; I could almost hear the sizzle.
“Done,” she said finally. “So, is this a possibility?”
Paul grabbed my shoulders and stood me up. The handkerchief was still in my mouth, and I was still sobbing and sniffling a little.
“Not bad at all,” he said, remembering at last to take back his handkerchief. “Well, I think it’s a go. I’ll see that it gets on George’s instructions, and I’ll add a gag for her to his stuff. Okay?”
“Sure,” she agreed. “Why not? Probably add five thou to her price right there. Okay, so much for the creative part. And I’ve entered her into the schedule for exercise, depilation, weighing, and measuring, all that stuff. No allergies, regular diet. And it’s clear from her file that she’ll do better the more fucking she gets, so I’ve coded her on the high end of Level II. We’ve got to photograph her tomorrow morning, so can you come whip her at about ten? Are you busy?”
“I’ll move some things around,” he said.
“Great, love,” she said. “Now, what have I forgotten? Never hurts to have another pair of eyes.”
He hit some keys on her computer, turned to her, and said, “Looks good. Just type in her punishment for tomorrow.”
She typed something in. “It affects some of the other databases,” she said, “but I think it works anyway. It’s good I fixed that Level II glitch. Well,” she continued, “I guess I can read her her rights and put her to bed. On your knees, Carrie, at attention at my feet.”
I hurried to do it and tried to present a graceful, compliant front as I gazed at her.
“I’m sure,” she began, “that it’s not really necessary to point out that ‘reading you your rights’ is just a little joke we have around here, a private name for the lecture I’m about to deliver. Because if you think you have any rights around here, somebody has made a terrible mistake. But you seem to understand what’s going on. So…”
She paused for a moment and then continued. “Now,” she said, “I’ve been calling you by name, because that’s what you’re used to, and it was easiest to process you in that way. But you’re completely entered into our system now, and for most of our personal interactions, you won’t really need a name. ‘Slave’ is quite adequate and a good deal more accurate. This is a warehouse, a processing center, and also a display center. We take care of all you little packages of merchandise that will be auctioned off this Friday. We take excellent care of the flesh—some of you are ridiculously expensive—we package and display you to make sure you are appealing to buyers. But we also have a more subtle responsibility—to the spirit, which demands abuse and contempt.
“For what we understand is that although most of you think of yourselves as slaves, you really have not the faintest notion of the concept. You, for example, have served one man for a year. Oh, I know you’ve participated in little entertainments he arranged, but they’ve been trivial. And you did the pony thing, which is certainly good experience, but limited. Essentially, you had a lover, a boyfriend(she said the word contemptuously), not a master, however he chose to superintend your activities. He organized his life around you every bit as much as he commanded you to organize yours around his. We don’t consider that kind of situation an exercise of your capacity for obedience.
“Now, you’ll only be here five days, but we think you’ll find them instructive. You will find, in any case, that nobody here is particularly interested in you, in your little quirks of personality or individuality. We value you—all of you—as rather unique commodities that will be sold for a lot of money. Our job is to pass you through our very well-designed system. It’s our system that’s your master, and all of us who administer it are your masters and mistresses.
&nbs
p; “This means Paul and I, of course, but it also means Karl over there, and all the people on our payroll—cooks, security guards, garbage men, and so forth. You will address us all as Master or Mistress, when you address us at all. We will indicate when you may speak—be careful to understand our wishes. And keep your body as open and displayed as possible. I like the way your arched back offers your breasts to me, but your legs are too close together, your pubis too hidden. That’s better. Now keep your chin up, but lower your eyes. You’re not allowed to look us in the face. If it helps you to discipline your gaze, remember to concentrate on the whip we all carry at our belts. When possible, your hands will be bound, but when they are not, you must remember not to touch yourself. That’s all. We’ll take care of you completely during your brief stay here. You’ll hear the details as you need to hear them. Well, what do you say, slave?”
“Yes, Mistress,” I managed. “Thank you, Mistress.”
She rose. “I’m giving you back to your Master Karl now. He’ll get you to bed. And Paul and I will see you tomorrow for your whipping, your photograph, and your punishment.”
“Thank you, Mistress,” I repeated. Paul prodded my hip with one of his Dr. Martens, and I found myself saying, “Thank you, Master,” in his general direction as well.
Then they left me on my knees there, looking meekly at the floor. I was tired. It had been a long day. I couldn’t quite focus my understanding on everything Margot had said, but I knew that these next days would be different than anything I’d known thus far. I felt lost, really. I was frightened, and, I realized, obscurely thrilled that something really new was beginning to happen. I wanted to lose myself some more, dive into the swirling, vertiginous feeling she had created, but just then I realized that Master Karl was standing over me.
Great. An oafish teenage master. About the least attractive person who’d ever been thrown my way. I mean, I knew that was the point, but I was tired, damn it. I don’t think he knew much English, but I guess he’d mastered what he needed to know.
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