Chapter Nine
CAS 123 lay still as death. Only the faint movement of her chest indicated that she was only sleeping; if the troubled unconsciousness that claimed her could be called sleep. They had been coming to abuse her at odd times, disrupting the normal patterns of waking and sleeping. Once they had tortured her in shifts for a day and a night and a day, until even a dousing with cold water wouldn’t wake her.
It had been two weeks since the guards had finally come, rescuing her from one waking nightmare only to deliver her to another. She didn’t know how long it had been. Information had been deliberately refused her. She was always blindfolded, and no one even spoke for the first few days. Her need for simple human communion was strong now. She knew she was being punished, but she didn’t remember why any more. Things were getting hazy and confused. She needed tenderness and forgiveness.
Maybe it was hunger. The meager rations she had been given in her cell were mere scraps from the hands of her tormentors. She had to beg for those scraps, and thank them humbly when she was fed. She promised to do shameful things for bread crusts. Once, a laughing guard forced the handle of a whiskbroom into her rectum and promised her a slice of orange if she would sweep the floor. Obediently, she dropped into an awkward crouch, leaning forward so she would not tumble over backwards on to her bound hands, and swinging her bottom back and forth. As the broom straws dragged across the floor, the handle shifted inside her.
When he called a halt and gave her the orange slice, she wept with gratitude.
“Thank you, Master. May I have more, please?”
“Suck my dick and swallow my cum,” he said, “and you can have the rest of the orange. If I feel any teeth, you will be a sorry little bitch.”
She went eagerly to work, opening wide for him and swallowing when she felt the fleshy knob against the back of her throat. His pubic hair tickled her face as he raped her mouth. She had learned the hard way to control her gag reflex, and to take quick breaths on the outstroke. When he came, she swallowed convulsively, and carefully licked him clean. She wondered with a flash of the old Kim Victor wit if there were many calories in sperm.
The whisk broom incident was part of a deliberate program of humiliation. Some small part of Kim still had enough awareness to recognize this. She knew that when she had to urinate, squatting over a floor drain in full sight of her captors, or confess out loud to eating dog shit and drinking out of urinals, or polish the guards’ boots with her tongue. She was being taught her place. Her pride was gone, along with hope, joy, and any real sense of self. She pleased them to survive, to get food and approval, and to avoid pain.
Pain and promises of pain were always present. All the vile threats that she had heard on the playground as a girl in school were common practices here. When they said they were going to whip her ass, or shove something up it, or put her tit in a wringer; they meant it.
She had a dim memory of how horrified she had been the first time she was raped. Now it was an everyday routine. She often asked the guards to use her, knowing rape and sodomy were nothing compared to what might be done to her. With a waning sense of shame, she realized she was coming to enjoy the rape. What difference did shame make? She would be raped anyway.
They beat her with whips and paddles, straps and crops. She knew how each one felt upon her body. The guards knew all the special tender places where the greatest pain could be caused. Under the arms was bad. The skin was thin there, as it was on the inside of her thighs. The soles of the feet brought excruciating pain when they were struck. One of the guards told her the nerves there connected to the rest of the body.
When she wasn’t dangling from the ceiling, she was strapped over a bench, elevating her bottom to the perfect position for beating and violation. Since the bench placed less stress on her body than hanging, she was often left that way for extended periods of time. There was a floor drain under the bench, but she was not allowed to void her bladder without asking first. After she urinated, she would be hosed out with cold water. Her bowels were flooded daily, and the discharges hosed away. It was like being a laboratory animal. She no longer had personal control of simple human functions.
Then, one morning, she was bound hand and foot and dumped on a heap of straw. Exhausted, she slept.
Sarah entered the room softly and looked at the sleeping girl. She was about ten pounds underweight now; probably fifteen pounds lighter than when she arrived. It was not a great loss, and Sarah knew that she would not allow it to become more serious. Her hair was tangled and dirty, with bits of straw in it. Sarah would attend to that soon.
“Wake up.”
Kim’s head came up, startled, casting about for the source of the voice.
“Kneel.”
Sarah was glad to see the guards had at least taught the slave to kneel properly, with her knees apart and her head bowed. Of course, training slaves was Sarah’s job. The guards were only there to abuse them.
Kim struggled into position. She had been sleeping on her side; there was numbness in one arm, pins and needles in her fingers and toes. Her arms were fastened behind her. She remembered to spread her knees as much as her bound ankles would allow.
“Who are you?” asked Sarah.
Kim fumbled through her mind for the correct answer, tense and confused. “I’m Kim,” she started to say, then remembered her confession. “Charlene,” she amended hastily. “I’m Charlene.”
Blindfolded, she couldn’t see the blow coming. The whip wrapped around her ribs and kissed her breast. She gasped, but held her position, knowing that she must never move unless told to.
“You are CAS 123, a slave. Say it.”
“I am CAS 123, a slave!”
The blindfold came off. Kim blinked, her vision clouded by the long confinement under the blindfold. Her eyelids were crusty with dried tears. The first thing she saw was Mistress Gyve smiling down at her. It was the first face she had seen in two weeks, and she had not realized until now how hungry she had been for that sight. Sarah reached out and touched her face, and Kim surprised them both by turning her head and kissing the woman’s hand.
Sarah was not as surprised as Kim was. She knew from long experience that slaves had a need for love and approval at this stage of their training. It was a need she intended to exploit.
“Are you hungry?”
“Yes, Mistress. I’m thirsty, too. Could I have something, please?”
Sarah smiled indulgently and went over to the wall, where she pressed the speaker button on the intercom.
“Breakfast for one,” she said, “scrambled eggs, bacon, biscuits, honey, and orange juice.”
“Yes, Mistress Gyve,” answered a metallic voice.
Kim looked around the room. Though she had been here for two weeks, she hadn’t seen it before. It was all white tile, as sterile as a surgery—or an abattoir. Easy to clean, she thought, remembering the hosing down and flushing out she had been subjected to. She spotted the hose, a black rubber python with a dildo for a nozzle. The decor was utilitarian, stainless steel carts laden with instruments of torture. Whips, straps, and paddles hung on the walls. There was the whipping bench, bristling with restraining straps. In a corner was a card table and chairs. A deck of cards and two empty beer bottles rested on the table. When not actively engaged in tormenting her, the torturers had passed their time playing cards. She remembered how she had come to tense up at the sound of chairs scraping across the floor, knowing that they were rising to return to their dreadful work.
“Look at me!” barked Mistress Gyve.
Kim looked, fear in her eyes.
“I ordered breakfast for you. Thank me.”
“Thank you, Mistress.”
“Remind me later to punish you for forgetting.”
“Yes, Mistress.” Kim was crestfallen. She had been doing so well today, and had dared to hope that things were going to be better now.
“Have you learned humility?”
“Yes, Mistress!”
“We shall see.”
Breakfast came, delivered by a girl in a leather collar. Sarah worked the fork, feeding her charge like a baby. It would have been easier to free the girl and let her feed herself, but Sarah wanted to reduce her mentally to a dependent infant, who was fed and cleaned, punished or praised at the whim of its mother.
Kim ate ravenously, hardly taking time to chew, afraid that the food would be snatched away. Tears of gratitude welled in her eyes when she realized that she was being allowed to finish.
“Lick the plate.”
She lapped eagerly, greedy for the crumbs of egg and drops of grease that remained.
“Thank you, Mistress.” She meant it.
“You need grooming,” said Sarah. She stroked the tangled mass of the girl’s hair. “I’m going to remove your bindings and take you down the hall to give you a trim. I’m showing you kindness, don’t spoil it by doing something foolish.”
“No, Mistress.”
Sarah studied her, seeking the glimmer in her eyes that would betray an intention to attempt escape. There was none. She unlocked the shackles binding the girl’s wrists and ankles. She helped her to her feet. Kim was wobbly, but she could walk.
“Follow me.”
Sarah opened the door and led the slave down a corridor past locked doors. Kim heard a faint whimpering behind one door, and remembered that she was not the only prisoner here.
“Here we are.”
The room contained a barber chair outfitted with restraint straps. Instead of a footrest there were high stirrups like the ones Kim had seen in the doctor’s office.
“Sit down,” Sarah ordered.
Kim hesitated, but her tortures were a fresh memory, and she didn’t want to invite trouble. What could be done to her that she hadn’t endured already? She sat.
Sarah strapped her arms to the chair at wrist and elbow, then lifted her feet into the stirrups and strapped them in place. She adjusted the support arms of the stirrups so Kim’s legs were spread wide. Another strap went around Kim’s throat and secured her to the back of the chair. There was no headrest.
Kim didn’t question any of this, even in her own mind. She had been bound so much it seemed a normal condition now.
Sarah wheeled a cart over to the chair and lifted a cloth to expose the items it contained; a comb, scissors, electric clippers, shaving lather, and a safety razor.
Kim was becoming a well-trained slave. Her whimper was barely audible when she realized what was about to be done with her. She watched with mounting horror as her hair piled up around the chair. The clippers buzzed past her ears, and the razor glided over a scalp that was suddenly cool. Sarah rubbed Kim’s head with alcohol before turning her attention to the pubic area and repeating the operation.
“I’ll leave the eyebrows,” Sarah commented as the razor scraped between Kim’s legs. “They please me.”
The alcohol was a cold burn.
Sarah cleaned her tools and put them away before spinning the chair around so that Kim could see the result. It took Kim a moment to understand that she was looking in a mirror. The girl she saw was thin, her body a mass of welts, old and new. She seemed as bare as a baby robin.
“Behold the newborn slave,” said Sarah softly.