Carrie's Story Page 15

  “Lick my boots,” he managed, and I muttered, “Yes, Master,” and did. I could hear him moaning. He was really getting off on it, and I started to hope that his teenage boy-ness would get the better of him and he’d come in his pants. Because if he didn’t…

  He didn’t. I was going to have to get behind this scene, I knew. He pulled me to my feet by the collar and bent me over the desk. I heard him unzip his fly, and I was afraid this was going to hurt terribly. Relax, I told myself, open up. You can do it… slave. I heard this last in Margot’s voice. Her lecture. I started to play it over in my head. It’s the system, I thought, the system is your master. He jammed his cock into my asshole, and I just kept thinking, the system, the system, the big, beautiful, well-designed system. And as Karl kept pumping away, I kept hearing Margot, and then I kept seeing her mouth, which I was glad I had gotten a look at before she told me I couldn’t look at her face. I was crying really hard, but I kept seeing her, her hips in the leather pants, her hands on the computer keys. She had, I thought, designed this hideous, awful, beautiful system. She had created all this pain and humiliation for me.

  Karl cried out and collapsed on top of me. I could feel him shrinking within my raw, abused asshole, and I could feel various buttons and buckles of his pseudomilitary uniform biting into my back and legs. I wept and wept, but it was partly with relief that it was over. I’d gotten through it. But no way did I feel anything but outrage at being violated by this dim-witted creep, and no way was I ever going to feel any kind of respect or sexy abasement in front of him. It had been my sexy images of Margot that had gotten me through it. Margot and her system. I guess I’d cheated. Sue me.

  Karl pulled me up and then pushed me to my knees. I was glad I didn’t have to look at his face to see the mulish satisfaction I knew I’d find there. He unhooked my hands so that I could put his cock back in and zip up his fly. Then he pulled me to my feet and pushed me in front of him. He opened a door and we walked down a corridor. A few doors down, he put his hand on my shoulder to stop me. Then he went into a little kitchen and came back a minute or so later with a glass of what looked like milk. It was. Warm milk, to help me sleep, I hoped, and I also hoped it was drugged. He pushed me on, through some more corridors, and we finally came to a room, all white, with a white iron bed in it. There was a ring embedded in the wall above the bed with a chain dangling from it. He nodded to the bed, and I lay down on my side. He pulled the chain through the ring in the front of the collar and loosely attached my cuffs to it as well. Then he covered me with a light blanket. I settled into a fairly comfortable position, dimly aware (the milk must have been drugged) that I was falling asleep in the same position that O did, her first night at Roissy, in the Guido Crepax illustration.

  I woke up the next morning with the sun—cold, bluish northern light—streaming into the little white room. There were gauze curtains at the window, and they moved a little, as a mild, fresh breeze blew in. It took me a minute or so to remember how I got here. I stretched tentatively and realized that the chain was long enough so that I could sit on the bed or stand at its side. I felt okay, considering. Actually, I felt pretty good, except for the fact that I was hungry and had to pee rather badly. I wasn’t groggy at all—if the milk had been drugged, they’d known how much was the right amount to use. I remembered that one of the papers I’d signed—it seemed very long ago—had authorized my doctor, Jonathan’s doctor, to disclose just about everything to these people. I thought of Paul’s thick folder. What did they know about me? Everything, perhaps. I stood up and stretched as well as I could. And the day could hold anything.

  I remembered then that it would definitely hold a whipping for me. At 10:00, Margot had said. Actually, she had said a whipping and a punishment, and while I could hope she hadn’t spoken clearly, that the whipping was the punishment, really I knew better. There was no clock in the room, so I didn’t know what time it was, but from the look of the bright sunlight, I figured 10:00 wasn’t that far away.

  The doorknob rattled, and a slender young woman dressed as a maid, or a nurse, or maybe a nun, entered. I lowered my eyes quickly, so I didn’t really get to look at her face, but I think she was pretty, sweet-faced, about my age. Her very simple, uniform-like dress and coif-like head covering were white, and she also wore a large white apron, and I could see the handle of the ever-present whip sticking out of the apron’s pocket. She carried a white china chamber pot and had a towel draped over her arm. Putting the chamber pot between my legs, she pointed downward. I squatted and peed, and then she wiped me very gently with the towel, which was warm and slightly damp. Then she left, to return in a few minutes with a pan of gruel-like food, a saucer of water, and another towel. She put them on a low table in the corner of the room. Then she unchained me from the bed and attached my hands together behind me.

  She gestured to the table. I figured that I was supposed to kneel down and lap the food and water, so I did. It tasted dull and nourishing, but not bad. I mean, I guess that people don’t become sex slaves for the cuisine, and at least this was recognizable people food, a healthy rice cereal. If it was any indication of how I’d be eating here, I figured they’d be giving me tofu for dinner (I was right, too). After I finished, she wiped my face with the second towel.

  The morning continued silently. There was a little bathroom—also all white—off my room. She removed my collar and cuffs, placed my hands at the nape of my neck, and helped me into the big, claw-footed tub, where she gently scrubbed and rinsed me, then helped me out and dried me. She cut my nails, rubbed some nice oil into my skin. She even brushed my teeth. I liked it all, this Elizabeth Arden treatment. I knew the point was to treat me like an object, hopefully an expensive one. It wasn’t bad. A woman had designed this system, I thought.

  After the maid had dried me off, she led me back into the bedroom, to a sunny spot by the window. She put the collar and cuffs back on, and hooked my hands behind my neck again. Then she gently pushed me down, by the shoulders, to a kneeling position. While she quickly made the bed and tidied up a little, I found myself trying to adopt the position Margot had commanded last night. The maid stroked my cheek and very softly kissed me on the forehead. Then she left the room. Her footsteps were silent, and the door barely clicked as she shut it behind her.

  I stayed quite still for the next ten minutes or so, just waiting, making sure my back was arched, legs open, chin up, eyes facing downward. I tried to breathe very slowly and deeply, practicing what I had learned in yoga class. And I tried to enjoy this momentary physical well-being and not to worry about what was to come. Yeah, right. But the breathing did help. Even if I was emotionally agitated, my body and some important part of my spirit were relaxed and ready.

  Finally, I heard a sound at the door, and the bright, quiet little space became very busy as Paul and Margot strode in, both still dressed in black. They sure could fill up a room. Paul carried a leather satchel and a big, professional-looking camera. Margot also had a satchel and her laptop. They parked their equipment on the little table and jerked me to my feet. Together, they commenced a brusque yet very meticulous inspection of just about every part of me, poking, prodding, shoving.

  “It says in her file,” Paul remarked, “that she’s always got those shadows under her eyes. It’s okay; I like it. I’ll light the room to play it up. I’ll depend on you, though,” turning to Margot, “for the right expression on her face.”

  Margot just nodded thoughtfully. Then she turned to me.

  “Slave,” she said, “stand against that wall. Best posture. Hands behind your neck. Elbows wide apart. Legs slightly apart and pelvis angled forward.”

  While I tried to follow her instructions, feeling my breasts lift as I spread my elbows, Paul turned on some very bright lights that were mounted on the wall across from me. He fiddled with a bank of knobs and switches (they were in a little box, also mounted on the wall), adjusting the angle and brightness of the lights. I had just about gotten myself arranged in a pos
ition I thought Margot would like, when she called, “And you can raise your eyes. Look straight at me.”

  Paul began to shoot photographs, feeling his way through subtle variations in angles and lighting. Meanwhile, Margot carelessly said to me, “Oh yes, and I’ve forgotten to tell you your punishment. For slowness to obey and talking out of turn yesterday. You’ll be displayed in the staff cafeteria tonight at dinner. Swing shift will have you for dessert.”

  Paul snapped another picture, and Margot shot me a self-satisfied look. Clever bitch. I guess my ill-concealed surprise and outrage had been what they’d wanted all along.

  “That’s it,” he called, jubilantly. “Super, Margot. On the bed, slave, hands and knees.” And Margot added, “And no more looking us in the face.”

  I hurried onto the bed, while he got a set of straps out of his satchel. Very quickly and expertly, he trussed my wrists to my ankles, so that my ass was correctly angled at him. A few more straps, and I was immobile on the bed. He had brought a real gag this time, thick padded material, that tied at the back of my head. Then he took out a last strap, doubled it, went into the bathroom, and held it under the water for a while, stiffening the leather. Then he dried off the excess water and started his meticulously placed, hard strokes. It hurt more than Jonathan’s cane. I wept, choked, and gurgled behind the gag. Thank god I couldn’t move. There weren’t that many strokes, however, though I could feel when they crisscrossed each other, no doubt the dark welts creating a most impressive cross-hatching effect. At least, Margot thought so, helping unstrap me and affectionately telling Paul, “You do good work.”

  They could see that I was pretty teary-eyed and knocked out by the whipping, so they just dragged me to the wall and attached my wrist cuffs over my head to the chain I’d been attached to the previous night. Working very quickly and well together, they got the bed out of the way, readjusted the lights, and prodded me into the right position. This was an easy one for Paul, I guess, since he didn’t have to worry about my facial expression in this rearview shot. He even kept the gag on, partly, I think, so they wouldn’t have to listen to me, but certainly for documentary effect as well. It all went very quickly. Then he ungagged me, packed all his equipment, and hurried out, leaving me with Margot.

  She unchained me and freed my hands. “Kneel up at my feet,” she told me, and I did, while she typed some more into her computer. I kept my eyes focused on her hands. Finally she closed the cover. Her hands were folded in her lap and I could feel her eyes on me.

  “We take care of you slaves in several ways here,” she began. “First of all, we prepare for the auction by getting all your information together for the big, glossy catalog we produce for potential buyers. That’s why you’re here for five days; that’s how long it takes us to put it together and get it printed up. We’ve got your photographs now and they’ll weigh and measure you at the gym later, and that’s about it—I think we know just about everything we need to know about you.

  “And of course we feed you and keep you clean, rested, exercised, and fucked. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that anybody who comes to your room to fuck you is your master or mistress, to be obeyed completely. And of course you’ll obey the trainers in our gym just as completely. You’ll be working out for two and a half hours every day. It’s really pretty businesslike, and slaves don’t usually disobey the trainers, probably any more than Cher or Madonna does. See that you’re good, though, because of course you could be punished if you don’t cooperate fully.

  “Other than that, though, this is a display center. Buyers come here to check you out. They can schedule visits to your room, but mostly they do their shopping in the Garden. Which is where you’re going next. You don’t really need to know more than that. Actually, you don’t really need to know that, and I’ll be explaining why in a minute. Well, what do you say to me?”

  I murmured my appreciation, not forgetting to address her as “Mistress,” and she continued. “Now, let’s talk about punishment. We are constrained, of course, in our choice of punishments because we want you to be relatively unmarked when you’re sent to the auction. So exposure and humiliation are what we use.”

  She reached into her satchel, and pulled out two neatly lettered, laminated cardboard placards. They each said SLOW TO OBEY/TALKED OUT OF TURN, and she attached one in front and the other in back, so they dangled from the rings in my collar. “You’ll wear these inside our staff areas all day,” she said, “so that any staff member who happens to see you will know that you’re to be among the slaves displayed this evening. It’s up to them how they use you. Sometimes they squabble over the slaves they want the most, and sometimes they design group games. It’s a good punishment, but it makes life difficult for me, because I have to modify your routine online. And since every time a buyer wants extra time with you there’s a systemwide ripple effect—fuzzy logic and all—the extra modifications are no fun. So don’t make me have to punish you again.” She slapped me on the cheek.

  “No, Mistress,” I said clearly. “I won’t, Mistress.”

  And then she reached into her satchel and took out a small bracelet, which she buckled snugly onto my left wrist. It was made of soft leather, and I could feel wires embedded in its underside. She opened her laptop and pressed a key, and I felt a small set of prickles from the bracelet’s wires, as though the points of many tiny pins were being stuck into the inside of my wrist. I guessed it was a buzz from the wires, the mildest possible electric shock, but somehow encoded to feel sharp, metallic rather than electrical.

  “This will alert you to get to your next station,” she said. “No, you won’t know where it is. You’ll have to consult one of the Arguses,” and she led me to a small computer screen mounted in the wall of my room, near the door.

  “You wave this stud on the bracelet over the little light,” she said, holding my wrist and doing it for me. I heard that crabby little computer disk reading sound, somewhere between a click and a postnasal drip, and the screen lit up, showing me a schematic map of myself and my surroundings, with arrows pointing me where to go next. It was actually pretty clear, at least in direction, though I didn’t know where I’d be when I got there.

  “We have lots of these,” she said, “two hundred and fifty-six of them, actually. So you can’t get too lost, and of course we can always find you. But the signal at your wrist will become a little stronger in five minutes, so you’ll want to hurry. When you get to where you’re going, you can log in at the Argus, and then the signal will stop. Until, of course, it’s time for you to move on.”

  “Well,” she said, “I think you’d better go. But what do you say, slave?”

  The bracelet’s prickles got just a little sharper as I thanked her again, as though slightly bigger needles were going just slightly farther into my flesh. I waved it over the Argus again, to review the directions, and then I hurried in the direction the screen described to me. I was going down a long corridor, past purposeful people, some naked, some clothed, everybody, it seemed, going somewhere fast. Some of the people with clothes on looked appreciatively at the signs hanging from my collar. As I hurried to the Garden, I tried not to think of what that would mean for me that evening.

  The diagram on the Argus screen had been pretty schematic, but quite adequate and accurate. Out of my little room, quite a ways to the left down a long corridor, a little way more to the right, through a door, and then into a large open space, maybe halfway into the center. Just before I got to the door of the large open space, the pinpricks from my bracelet got a notch sharper. This time it was really painful, but I almost didn’t notice, I was so amazed to see what there was through the large open door.

  It was astonishing. A huge, beautiful, domed area, maybe twice as big, I guessed, as one of those big domed baseball stadiums. Fountains, large potted trees, beautifully raked gravel paths and many, many flowers. It didn’t pretend to be outdoors; there wasn’t Astroturf or anything on the ground—mostly beautifully colored tiles a
nd gravel, ivy and some hardy succulents growing in shallow beds. But there was a lot of green, considering, and running water, streams and little waterfalls, and small hills and winding paths through miniature arbors. The dome was made of sinuous art deco ironwork, like the boulevard Saint-Michel Metro station, and through its huge glass panels you could see that cold blue-gray northern winter sky, contrasting with the balmy temperature within. This was the Garden, I guessed, but I had to think of it as a pleasure dome, decorated with fairy lights and the naked and sometimes adorned bodies of the slaves scattered throughout it.

  A security guard was standing at the door looking bored. “Log in at the Argus,” he said, and after I did, he took the signs off my collar. “You don’t wear these for the rich people,” he said, “but you’re in trouble if you don’t get them back from me after you do your thing in there. And hurry up,” he said, shoving me through the door.

  If he hadn’t, I probably would have just stood there gaping, ignoring the pain in my wrist until it jumped another notch, but I hurried to the next Argus, embedded in a low wall next to a small café on a brick terrace. I almost bumped into a bearded man in a pale gray suit, blissfully leaning against the wall, while a naked red-haired boy sucked him off. I buzzed myself in, and the prickles in my wrist stopped. I was finally where I needed to be, I guessed, as I stood there taking in the scene some more. At the tables, drinking wine and coffee and eating ices, were a few very elegant people, dressed in soft silks and linens, as though they were visiting a resort in the middle of winter. More of them strolled down the paths, talking, laughing, and pointing out the sights, the slaves posed as living statuary on pedestals, columns, and fountains, or beautifully masked as animals in cages in the little zoo or on the tiny carousel by the lake. Every so often, if a slave seemed inviting enough, one of the sightseers would simply gesture to him or her and the slave would approach and strike a position, offering mouth, ass, cock, or cunt—rather like the presentation competitions Jonathan had, once upon a time, taken me to. It was a lot to take in—the bigness and the prettiness of the space, the well-bred tinkling laughter that seemed to be everywhere, the absolute graceful obedience of all the slaves, and my own stupid, naked amazement in the middle of it.