The Slave (43 page)

Grateful for the interruption, she nodded
and got up to follow him. He was still a great friend to have,
although they had pretty much stopped screwing around on the side.
The last time they fucked, it had been for Jimmy’s amusement. Anal
sex out on the deck, bright lights shining on their oiled bodies.
Jimmy idly fucking Jeff’s mouth for almost an hour and a half,
alternating pulling away and then thrusting violently, easing back
and then almost choking the slave.

It had been a hot night all around.

Downstairs, Jeff and Raul were already in
attendance, Jeff on his knees with his hands clasped behind him and
Raul standing. Carl and Robin joined Jeff on the floor, facing
their two masters. Eric looked a little annoyed; Jimmy looked
downright exasperated.

Eric got right to the point. “Eve Panski
hasn’t found the earrings. They must be here.”

Well, they were all waiting for that news.
Panski had been over to the house the previous weekend with her new
husband. It had been a friendly visit, the masters hosting a small
celebration of her marriage and welcoming Tom into the society of
the Marketplace. It had been just fine until the day the guests
were packing to leave, when Eve reported that a pair of emerald
earrings, her engagement gift from Tom, were not where she had left
them the night before.

A search was launched immediately. Nothing
was found. And although Eve was very careful not to even mention
the possibility of their being stolen, it was on everyone’s mind.
What made the situation even worse was that no other guests had
spent the night. If the earrings had been removed by someone, it
had to be the owners, or the slaves. Both possibilities were beyond
belief.

But Tom, who didn’t know exactly what kind
of an accusation he was making (other than one of simple theft),
asked out loud if it were possible to search the slaves’ belongings
and room.

Eric had colored instantly, but before he
could deliver some kind of retort, Jimmy ordered Raul to empty the
room the slaves shared, removing the four small boxes of personal
affects, and the bedding. Shushing Eric by asking him to take the
slaves outside and see “if he could find out anything new,” Jimmy
then ushered Tom upstairs to conduct the search personally.
Naturally, the search turned up nothing more interesting than
Carl’s college ring and Robin’s old collar. There was certainly
nothing that hadn’t been seen, handled, and approved of by the
masters.

The next day, Raul whispered to Robin, “As
if one of us could be a common thief! As if he learned absolutely
nothing about us!”

“
The man just lost several thousand
dollars worth of present to his new wife,” Robin had answered.
“They were nice pieces, heirloom stuff. If they were mine, and they
were missing, I’d be suspicious of everything that
moved.”

In the end, Eve had tried to rescue the
situation by suggesting that maybe she had been mistaken and the
earrings had somehow gotten into her luggage. She would search when
she got home, but now they had to catch their plane. She apologized
and everyone sighed at her attempt to save face.

But now, this. Apparently saving face was
not so acceptable any more.

“
I’ve promised her that we will make
another search,” Eric continued. “But this time, Jimmy and I will
supervise. I have to ask you all again; did any of you leave your
room the night that the earrings went missing?”

Carl at least had an alibi. He had been
chained at the foot of his masters’ bed all night.

Three “No, masters” chorused back.

Eric pressed his lips together. “OK. Carl,
you can get back to work. Robin and Jeff, you stay with me. We’re
starting down here. Raul, you go upstairs with Jimmy. We’re not
going to stop until every square on inch of this place is
uncovered, if it takes all week!”

It didn’t take more than four hours. But it
was four hours of removing seat cushions, patting down pillows,
emptying and refilling closets, checking the pockets of all
clothing, and going through boxes and bags in storage. It was four
hours of removing every book on every shelf, and shaking every
decorative pot or vase, and even digging into a potted plant or
two.

Resentment seemed to grow in Eric, who was
above the kind of petty labor going on. He was also fuming over the
fact that his house had fallen under suspicion, and he let his
displeasure show with curses and an occasional smack or kick when
nothing turned up.

In the early afternoon, Jimmy came down the
stairs, and called to his lover. “Eric, could you bring the slaves
up here, please?”

Robin followed obediently, not even curious
about what Jimmy wanted. The whole search seemed silly to her, a
waste of time. No slave would jeopardize their position in the
Marketplace with what amounted to petty theft.

Her stomach tightened as she saw that Jimmy
was leading them all to the small room that was her work space.
Raul was standing by the door, his head down and his hands folded
behind his back.

Jimmy stepped through the door, and beckoned
Eric to follow him. Robin crept up slowly, and stood just outside
the door. When she heard Eric call her in, she didn’t know what she
was going to see, but knew that it wasn’t going to be good.

Her desk had been cleared off, her calendar
and pens and phone directory all on the floor next to the wall. In
the middle of the desk, a small pool of water was still quivering.
Two red flowers she had picked the day before were scattered at the
edge of the puddle, their petals in crushed disarray.

In the middle of the puddle were two
metallic things that glittered. Large metallic things with emeralds
in them. The ceramic bud vase that usually sat on the shelf above
her computer screen was standing on the desk corner.

Robin gazed down at the desk and then
quickly back up into the faces of her owners. Jimmy was unreadable;
Eric was livid. She opened her mouth to say something, anything,
but Eric moved as fast as she’d ever seen and backhanded her across
the face. It caught her off guard, and the force threw her to one
side, hitting the doorframe, which she clung to, fighting to remain
standing.

“
You ungrateful little cunt,” the
handsome man snarled, drawing his hand back again. “I’m going to
kill you!”

“
Master, please, I―ahh!”

Eric caught her with another slap, this
one aimed too high to catch her cheek. It hit her on the side of
the head and her head seemed to rebound off the wall. The double
impact sent her spinning down, and she could feel a warm trickle
coming from her mouth and leaking onto her cheek.

The other slaves backed away from her as
Eric moved in to kick her viciously in the thigh. She cried out
again and shrank down, pulling herself into a ball, even though her
training had told her to never do that.

Jimmy had to finally pull Eric away. But it
was only the beginning.

And Robin was never given a chance to say a
single word.

* * * *

She couldn’t really feel her fingers any
more. Which was perhaps a blessing. Everything else she felt was
pain. Pure pain, divorced from any aspect of pleasure, and from any
sense of security.

The cracking sound of another rod breaking
was a momentary respite from the steady cutting and burning of the
beating. It might take all of ten seconds to choose the next one,
flex it, and begin again. But there was no part of her body that
didn’t already pound and throb with intense agony. Even the soles
of her feet had been cut, held aloft for terrifying and
excruciating minutes of strain on her arms and wrists.

Eric had not forgotten the line that Chris
really had put in his report―that canes and cane-like punishment
tools were most effective on Robin because she feared
them.

Jimmy and Eric had no canes lying around.
But there was a collection of newly purchased garden stakes, still
in their wire wrapping.

Eric had sent Jeff to go get them. Then,
when Robin was gagged and bound in the corner downstairs, he tossed
a bunch of them onto the floor beneath her and pushed one into
Carl’s hands.

“
Use it on her until it breaks,” he
said. “Not just her ass. Everywhere.”

And the torment began. The acute bite of the
rods was bad enough on her buttocks and thighs. It was hellish on
her breasts and sides. It stung and burned and cut more times then
she could count, and when Carl had broken the first rod, Raul was
sent over to begin with the second. Carl’s face showed a struggle
going on; Raul was as placid and efficient as he always was. Both
were as merciless as Eric directed them to be.

Heat spread throughout her body, and after
some immeasurable time, she could barely tell how often new stripes
were added. She could see down the front of her body a mass of
crisscrossed red lines, some of them with white edges, others with
darker red middles. Every one throbbed and ached, until that was
all she could feel.

She wished that she had the power to make
herself pass out. In a moment of lucidity, she remembered the
Victorian porn she had once collected, and the frequency of
fainting spells when punishments got too harsh.

And then a rod would fall again and she
would scream into the gag until finally even that stopped. Sweat
poured down her face and body and slipped over welts and through
cuts, and when she slumped into the bonds because her legs were
just not capable of keeping her up any more, they let her hang.

This is not
safe
,
another thought came, ludicrously. By the time they unfastened the
cuffs, there was no place on her body that she could rest on
comfortably. She was amazed to find the floor a little wet and
sticky beneath her, and that the pounding in her bones and muscles
was not nearly as bad as the million needles that seemed to be
stinging the flesh of her hands.

And still, the worst had not happened.

Because then, after the gag was pulled out
of her mouth in a torrent of pinkish spit, Eric looked at her from
across the room and said to Raul, “Place a call to New York. Get me
Parker.”

Robin had thought that there were no tears
left in her. But at the sound of that command, and as Raul rose to
go to the phone, unaware that she was moving her lips in a silent
plea to stop him, to beg for a chance to explain, to beg for mercy,
she broke and sobbed furiously.

Now she was finished, destroyed. And over
something that she didn’t do.

That was when she finally passed out.

She was trapped in a little steel box, with
burning walls tight against her flesh on all sides. The air was
musty and smelled of bitterness, like chemicals spilling over
copper. She couldn’t see, it was too dark, and no one could get to
her, could let her out before the sun burnt through the steel and
melted it all against her body, running in rivulets, scorching her,
going through her, until she screamed and screamed and ran out of
air and couldn’t breathe....

Flames touched her and she jerked awake.
Instantly, the pain of her dream coalesced into the reality of her
condition. She moaned, and something searing touched her again.
This time, she realized that it wasn’t fire at all, but something
cold.

She was lying on her side, and as she drew
in one harsh breath, she practically inhaled a mouth full of dust.
It didn’t make her dry mouth and throat any better. As she began to
cough it out, she opened her eyes. Her right eye. Her left eye,
still pressed against the surface she was laying on, was swollen.
It only opened a slit, and that scared her as much as anything
else.

“
Hold still, there’s a lot to clean,” Carl
said. She raised her head a little and looked at him. He was
crouched down, next to her. She was on a wood plank floor―not in
the house. Next to her head she could see the blue trim of a bowl,
and the edges of a tray. There were washcloths stacked on the tray,
and a brown bottle.

Carl touched her again and she hissed. “It’s
only ice,” he said. “It’ll take the swelling down.”

“
C-Carl.” She managed to form the
sounds, and heard them inside her head, as though she had a cold.
“I didn’t... I didn’t...”

Carl thrust a hand into the bowl and brought
out a small piece of melting ice, which he held to her lips.
“Here,” he said gruffly. “Suck on this. Don’t try to talk.”

It felt cool and good for a few seconds, and
then it suddenly made her feel chilly. She held onto the slippery
sliver, though, and tried to look around again.

Behind Carl was something silver and red,
with a long black cord. It was the power mower.

She was on the floor of the damn tool shed,
next to the garage.

They wouldn’t even let me sleep
in the house. Just dumped me in an outdoor shed, to lie in the dust
and the oil and the dirt.
She started to cry again, and found that even that
hurt. From the crown of her head to the soles of her feet, she was
nothing but a mass of pain. And the only thing that was being done
for her was ice for the welts and a bottle of peroxide,
administered by another slave.

I want to go
home
, she
thought, clenching her hands into fists.
I don’t care anymore, I just want to
go home, where I can have my own bed and sleep with whom I want to
and never have to take this from someone who could just do it
without any reason!
She sobbed heavily, and each movement of her body seemed to
awaken another aching itch. Finally, Carl had to go. She made no
other attempt to talk to him, and he said nothing else to
her.