And there was Achmed! His visit made her feel like a patient in a hospital, she was so glad to see a friend. She serviced his hunger with all the finesse at her command. Like most trades, whoredom had its own small skills. She was picking them up fast.
'You learn jij-a-jij real good.' He was proud of her.
'Thank you, Achmed. Do you think I?ll ever get out of here?'
'You don?t like nice chain and collar?'
'It?s O.K. I meant, have you heard anything about me being sent back to America?'
'No one ever send girl like you away.' He sounded shocked.
'I expect you?re right.' She shrugged the subject into the oblivion it deserved. 'Have they recaptured Audrey Cotswold yet?'
'No search any more. Is gone. Very bad.' He gestured forcefully. 'If ever find her she get whip much hard.'
It was a pleasant visit. Miss Corey Gibson told Achmed to come again soon.
The girls all envied her the prestigious connection.
She had become accustomed to the vagaries of male concupiscence. Talifa had been right. Some wanted to whip her breasts or vulva lightly with a small light whip provided by the house on request. Corey had learned to control her reactions while she disposed her body for their pleasure and gritted her teeth. The marks they placed upon her skin with this pleasantry faded rapidly but inspired superb erections over which she was expected to enthuse. There were also the ?Tie-uppers?. They had their own notions but several had caught on to Achmed?s trick… with hands tied behind her back to arch and raise her loins, a girl delivered a superior joy. When one of the nondescript valiants of The Cause made this want known, Corey provided him with a length of The House rope, kept under a cushion for this purpose, and crossed her wrists behind her back for them to be bound. All these oddities had become a bit of a bore like the husband who wanted chile con carne for supper every night. The gag was a surprise and came as something extra. He had brought it with him, a modern facility filling her mouth with rubber and buckling harshly behind her neck. Corey was as mute as she had ever been. When he pulled away the curtain behind which he had rendered her helpless she realised instantly the depth of his deception. Every girl visible was similarly captive. As other curtains were folded away one by one they revealed other strictured maidens tugging at bound hands and shaking frustrated heads at tight gags. When Corey looked toward the door and beheld Raynee and Talifa in the same plight her heart plummeted. If this was rescue it was not the kind she wanted.
The men looked like all others. They sported no Leader. But they had been drilled. A huge bolt cutter made short work of the padlocks but left the collar locked on each small throat. In the collar was a ring. Through the ring was threaded a new half inch sisal rope. Counting Raynee and Talifa, there were twenty girls. One by one their collars were threaded so that none was independent of the rest. It was not a coffle. There were no knots in the rope, it could slide back and forth. But, nonetheless, the twenty were inexorably joined. One man stood on a chair and answered the question their gags forbid. 'We are moving from Amphala. Our Leader is doing battle. You will be taken to a new home. Resistance will earn you a flogging. You are gagged to keep you quiet, we have no time for cackling pullets.'
It sounded reasonable.
The truck ride was one of those dreams where you?ve been there before. To Corey Gibson it was poignantly reminiscent of that other jolting journey that had led her to the trek to Ben Sirah. This would simply move her to another brothel. It did not matter. She began to discern a pattern. Slaves were driftwood on a stream, used and passed around as their Masters wished. Looking at her mute and bound companions she guessed their thoughts the same. She wished her wrists had not been tied so tight.
Everything ends. After hours of jolting the truck stopped and ejected its tired, naked, and helpless cargo. The first face Corey beheld was that of Mustafa. He was counting out money to the driver of the truck. There was a cordial shaking of hands in farewell, the truck grunted away in an empty return. The second man remained with Mustafa, no other males were visible. The considerable force who had carried out the successful coupe in Abdul Nour?s bagnio had remained at Amphala. The naked American girl dismally surveyed the scene. It was all too familiar, even the same four donkeys. She was back at square one.
Once more, Miss Corey Gibson suffered the bitter frustration of being female in a land of slavery. There were twenty girls, strong and young and vigorous. But they were controlled with ease by two men. They would never be given a chance of escape, they would be used, they would be punished. Inexorably, they would be taken to where a single man wanted them to go. And there was nothing any of them could do about it… nothing! She tugged at her tied wrists in feminine vexation. If Mustafa knew she was there he gave no sign. But he did indulge in a brief communique.
'You all be slaves.' His fierce eye swept them like a lash. 'Abdul Nour is big fool, he soon be killed. You not his. You mine.' He looked from one to the other of them, contriving somehow to Miss Corey Gibson. 'Is no escape. You try escape you be whipped… punished. Best you be good girls. We walk by day, sleep at night. No one chase us, no one care.'
Ruefully, Corey Gibson reflected on Mustafa?s unconscious truth. No one cared. To those who might care about her she must have vanished utterly without hint or clue. Reid Hunter?s death would have put a seal on her disappearance. Her father would be baffled. Assef Aslam had probably written her off as an expensive jinx. Audrey was gone, Seth Burdett was no more. She was alone, a white slave girl on her way to be sold a second time. It was hard no to wince at sight of the two chains. They stretched their considerable length out on the sand in a parallel promise of prisoned wrists and necks. With economy and convenience they would render captive and helpless twenty lithe strong females who would accept their padlocks because they had no choice.
In a continuation of a planned project, the roped girls were marshalled into line by the brandishing of an unnecessary whip so that number one now stood between the far end of the span of links, the rest were prodded into place with a chain on each side. With prudent caution they were coffled one at a time, hands untied, the right wrist shackled, a link padlocked to a collar. Even after the removal of her gag the girl remained obediently mute. She knew her place. Mustafa and his helper moved on down the line. Reaching Corey, the slaver met her eyes for the first time. As he clicked the padlock shut on her collar his words were terse: 'Forget him, he is gone. You will not be rescued.' Sneering at her evident dismay, he promised: 'I will make sure you are well fucked and well whipped.'
To Miss Corey Gibson there seemed nothing more to say.
The American girl felt an American irritation with her fellow captives. Most of them felt they had taken a step up in the world. A whore was few prospects, but a girl naked on an auction block is fecaed with infinite promise. If she was lucky enough to be purchased by a wealthy man who was not a sadist…! They beamed happily at a mental vista of good food, beautiful clothes, and a man who might not beat them too often. Talifa and Raynee were as optimistic as the rest. But it was Talifa who first felt Mustafa?s whip.
Camping at the end of the first day it was Talifa and Corey who were freed to do the chores. Corey braced herself for a bad time, but Talifa was indignant on the score of protocol.
'Talifa top girl, she not do such work. You choose another.'
Mustafa viewed this insubordination with the same surprise he would have accorded a conversational camel. But his reprimand was gentle. 'You be good girl. You go now help white girl work. She know how. She been on coffle before.' In the false security of a lost authority, Talifa stood her ground. 'Me number one girl, same Raynee. Others for fuck and work. Me only for sell.' Corey watched the inevitable. She no longer found horror in these incidents. Talifa should have had more sense. She herself would not now dare quibble in such independence. But she shivered in sympathy as the rebel was suspended upside down by her ankles from a tree, her hair falling to the sand, her arms reaching ineffectually at nothing. Talifa?s fine black bush proclaimed her widely sundered loins. Even before the first blow fell she voiced a change of heart: 'I sorry, I sorry…! Please not to whip. I be very good girl…! I be very…'
It was the end of verbal negations. The whip sliced between stretched thighs in a manner to make Corey Gibson shrink. The upended girl uttered the first of many shrieks, her free arms flailing uselessly against an enemy she could not touch. She was perfectly postured for the lash. It worked up and down her thighs and across the separated cheeks of her bottom and the satin loveliness of her unmarked back. Half way through, Mustafa capitalized on the occasion. With one pensive hand gently massaging Talifa?s scarlet and swollen cunt, he suavely admonished. 'You disobey, you argue with Mustafa, then you hang like this.' Paternally, he patted the well lubricated vulva beneath his hand and resumed his task. The former number one girl screamed steadily until released. She then sped, with a new and ardent conviction, to help Corey with the fire. The coffle sighed in
