On the Auction Block (4 page)

Tears flooded her eyes and spilled down her
cheeks.

Lord Snow followed his friend out the
door.

She was to be sold to a stranger and neither
James nor Snow cared enough to wait and see who bought her.

She was lost.

She feared that she was going to collapse on
the block. But she didn’t. A lady could swoon but a slave had to be
strong. Slaves endured. She was no longer a lady, she was a slave,
so she would endure.

“Ninety-three thousand.”

Bidding was slowing. The auctioneer was
offering thousand plaq increments in the hope of encouraging her
price up to a hundred thousand.

Flame began watching the bidders with morbid
intensity.

A familiar face took the ninety-three
thousand bid. It was the owner of the brothel by the docks.

Flame was horrified. Why would a brothel
owner want to buy a hundred-thousand plaq slave? If she was a
hundred-thousand plaq investment, how many sailors’ cocks would she
have to suck, how many cocks would she have to fuck, to turn a
profit? Thousands of cocks? More like tens of thousands before the
brothel could hope even to recoup its money and break even. Unless
she was forced to offer some service that would earn far more
profit than sucking and fucking. Her mind wasn’t perverted enough
to imagine such an act but her heart froze at the thought that some
men could.

“I have ninety-three thousand. Who will offer
ninety-four for this most unusual slave? Ninety-four?”

A pudgy hand on a fat arm was raised.
“Ninety-four thousand!” It was the fifty-year old with bad hygiene.
Compared to what the brothel owner would have her do, getting
fucked by fat, smelly armpits would be a blessing.

“Oh, hell, I’ll make it an even hundred
thousand.”

Flame didn’t recognize the face. The man was
about forty, thin with dark hair and a neatly-trimmed beard. His
clothes were of good quality but not extravagant. If he could
afford a hundred-thousand plaq slave, he should be able to afford
better clothes.

She feared that he might be a businessman who
had a commercial use for her. A use that would justify such a large
investment. Maybe something worse than a brothel.

“Will anyone give me a hundred and five?
Anybody? A hundred and one thousand, then. Who will bid a hundred
and one thousand plaqs for this unique item? Anyone? Going once.
Going twice. Sold for one hundred thousand plaqs to the man with
the goatee.”

The sound of his clapper was drowned by the
applause in the hall.

A handler tugged on Flame’s leash and she
turned around to climb off the block. Her head was spinning. She
was sold. An impregnable door had slammed closed.

She was enslaved forever.

What had she done to herself?

* * *

Her owner didn’t speak to her, just took the
end of her leash from the handler and led her from the room in
silence.

The other men, the disappointed ones who were
leaving empty-handed, stood aside to let the new owners exit
first.

In the vestibule, a large man wearing the
uniform of a private security guard politely directed each new
owner to a side door instead of letting him walk through to the
street.

In that room, three cashiers waited to settle
accounts. It was a simple process. Every potential buyer had to be
registered with the auction firm and his credit freshly verified
before each auction. Settling his account involved only confirming
that he had in his possession the slave that he had bought and
signing a bank draft.

Flame was appalled by the unseemly haste of
the process.

She was about to learn a lot more about
enslavement.

By tradition, ladies wore their hair up. She
had never seen a lady wear her hair down in polite company. Even
the lowest ranked commoner wore her hair up.

Only slaves wore their long hair loose,
floating down their backs.

Flame thought that style was intended only to
make the slaves more appealing to men. Long hair was more sensual.
It aroused a man’s lust.

But, for the first time, she learned that the
slaves’ long hair had a utilitarian purpose.

To verify the identity of each slave, the
cashier parted her hair to reveal a twelve-digit number tattooed on
the nape of her neck – three rows of four digits.

The cashier copied the number to the receipt
and then checked it against a ledger. The purchaser’s name was
copied into the ledger before the slave was released to him.

Flame’s heart sank. The implication of the
placement of that tattoo was obvious. No slave could ever wear her
hair up without publicly exposing her identity tattoo.

When free women wore their hair up, everybody
could see that they were not slaves. Flame suspected that very few
ladies were ever told about slave tattoos. They didn’t know why it
was traditional for them to pin their hair up off the back of their
neck. But she was sure that every man who used a slave would know
about it. That was why a husband would never let his wife leave the
house before she had fixed her hair properly.

It was the first of many cruel truths that
Flame would learn about slavery.

The final step in the transaction was for the
cashier to give the new owner the key to his slave’s handcuffs.

Some owners uncuffed their new slaves
immediately; other owners dropped the key into their pocket and led
their slaves from the room with their hands still bound behind
their backs.

Flame suspected that it depended on how the
new owner wanted to fuck his slave for the first time. Some wanted
their slave to remain restrained in bondage, helpless and
submissive; others wanted her to be an active participant and
demonstrate her skill.

Which would her owner choose? It would tell
her much about his predilections and expectations.

She didn’t know which she would prefer. She
had made herself a slave. She felt a certain perverse attraction to
being treated like a slave. She had her fill of being treated like
a wife. Besides, she was insecure about her love-making skills. She
had only ever made love to one man, James, and she knew nothing
about what another man might want. Bondage would relieve her of the
obligation to demonstrate skills that she did not have.

Conversely, though, she feared that she might
have to spend her life in physical chains if that were her owner’s
preference. The handcuffs were uncomfortable – the edges pressed
into her wrists and her shoulders were held at an unnatural angle.
She had been handcuffed for less than a quarter hour and she
regretted every minute that she was unable to cover her breasts and
crotch, scratch an itch, or put a hand out to steady her
balance.

When she was brought before the cashier’s
counter, he addressed her owner. “Mr. Dodge, Flame is a special
case because we couldn’t process her before the auction. We regret
the inconvenience, but it will take some time to comply with the
law. The Bureau of Slavery audits us all the time. If you would
like to come back for her today, we can have her ready by five
o’clock. Or if you would prefer, you can pick her up any time
tomorrow afternoon.”

Mister
was not a title. Her new master
was not a lord or even a knight. He was not an officer in the
military. She had been bought by a tradesperson. A shopkeeper or a
factory owner or a farmer, maybe. Someone who was successful enough
to afford a hundred-thousand plaq slave but who had no status in
society.

She had degraded herself more than she had
thought possible. She was the sex toy of a nobody. A money-grubber
whom she could never respect would now be plowing her at his
whim.

She felt sick to the pit of her stomach. But,
somewhere lower than that, she felt a throb of anticipation. It had
been far too long time since any man had plowed her pink furrow,
member of society or commoner.

“I’ll be back at five,” he said.

He couldn’t wait until tomorrow to claim his
property and plant his seed.

One of the handlers from the auction took the
end of her leash and led her though another door into the working
bowels of the slavery.

The corridor was lined with the same
rough-hewn planks as the other public areas of the auction house,
but when she was taken into one of the rooms off the corridor, it
was appointed in a modern clinical style: antiseptic stainless
steel, white tiles, and white porcelain.

The handler removed the chain from about her
neck but left her hands cuffed behind her back. He had her lie
face-down on a padded table and then strapped her body and head
firmly into place so that she couldn’t move.

The handler left her alone.

A few minutes later, a man in a white coat
came into the room. He was carrying a clipboard.

He didn’t speak to her. She was nothing but a
piece of merchandise to him. He would no more converse with her
than a shopkeeper would talk to a turnip as he dumped it into a
bin.

She had never felt so small and
unimportant.

He parted her hair so that the nape of her
neck was bare and swabbed it with an antiseptic.

He consulted the clipboard to ensure that
each digit was correct as he tattooed it on her neck.

She wept copiously. Not because of the
physical pain.

The man didn’t care why she was weeping. This
was the first stop for a young woman who had been pressed or
adjudicated into slavery. He had wiped an ocean of tears from his
table, along with a bucket of blood. It was part of the job.

When he was finished, the numbers were
precise, neat, and clear. A professional did careful work on a
piece of property that was worth a hundred-thousand plaqs. A
blunder would cost him his job.

He taped gauze over the tattoo.

He drew two vials of blood and gave her three
injections in her buttock before he left the room.

He did not release her from the table. That
was not his job.

When the handler returned and released the
straps, Flame couldn’t wipe the tears from her face because her
hands remained cuffed behind her back.

The next room was equally antiseptic but
contained a chair, a sink, and cosmetic implements.

She was not strapped down this time. The
handler left her standing in the middle of the room.

She didn’t bother trying the door. She had
heard the lock click shut.

The woman who entered a few minutes later was
in her fifties. She wore a white jacket over a nice skirt and
blouse but her long, graying hair was loose down her back. She was
a slave, too.

“What’s this?” she asked in a mother-hen
voice. “Tears all over your face. Eyes like dirty red pits. Your
owner doesn’t want to see you like this. Not until he’s given you
cause to cry. And he will. They all do.”

That was another cruel secret of the slave’s
life. This one, not a surprise.

She unlocked the cuffs from Flame’s wrists.
“We’ll have to put those back on later, but there’s no need for
them now.”

Flame’s shoulders were sore from being held
back for so long. She massaged them for a minute.

“Okay,” the woman said. “Let’s get into that
chair. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

She pushed a button and the chair tilted
backwards, then she wiped Flame’s face with a cold wet cloth. “Keep
your eyes open wide. We’ve got to get that red out.” She let a few
drops fall from a dropper into each of Flame’s eyes. “That will
wear off in a few hours, but, by that time, I’m sure that you’ll
have a good excuse to have red eyes.”

She put her hands on Flame’s knees and spread
them wide apart.

“Now, let’s do something about that ugly
bush. If ladies took as much care of their nether hair as they do
with the hair on their heads, their husbands would be a lot more
interested in them.”

Another slave secret? No. An obvious truism.
Gentlemen loved slaves. If ladies acted like slaves, their husbands
would love them more. And treat them like slaves. Wasn’t that
exactly what Irene had tried to do today? Act like the ultimate
slave? And James had treated her like a slave. He didn’t want her
so he had abandoned her. A man owed a slave no consideration
whatsoever. Especially if he had not had to pay dearly for her.
Which is why wise ladies never acted like slaves.

Foolish Irene was becoming wise Flame too
late.

The woman shaved Flame’s pubic patch,
armpits, legs, and arms. Then she rubbed a cream over every place
that she had shaved. “That removes the stubble. Use that every few
days and you’ll never have to shave again. The kennel service will
keep it stocked for you. If your owner wants to pay for permanent
hair removal, it’ll save you a lot of effort. You can suggest that
to him. If you think he might be open to a suggestion from a slave.
That can be a tricky call.”

Flame spoke for the first time since she had
told the handlers to tear her clothes off. Her first words as a
slave. “Kennel service?”

The woman laughed. “You don’t think that rich
men clean their kennels themselves, do you? They hire a service to
clean their kennels, keep them stocked, and tend to the
slaves.”

Flame blushed. James must hire a service to
maintain his kennels. She had no idea. She’d never thought about
the mechanics of keeping slaves and ladies never went anywhere near
the kennels.

The woman looked at her. “The service cleans
the kennels, stocks the supplies that you need, and may prepare
some meals if your owner doesn’t feel like hand-feeding you and if
he hasn’t put you on a starvation diet. They also dress wounds and
monitor your general health. It’s up to you to prepare yourself for
your owner. The service doesn’t do hair and makeup. You better
learn quick what your owner likes and give it to him. One more
thing. Be good to the kennel service and they’ll be good to you.
They won’t abuse you without your owner’s permission but slaves
have been known to give occasional blowjobs to keep the service
happy. You don’t have to, but it’s worth considering. Just make
sure that your owner never finds out that you’re servicing the
service. The kennelman won’t talk but other slaves might not be so
discrete.”