Danielle reaches over, gently touching my thigh. Her comforting touch centers me.
Danielle. She’s as close as I have to a friend in Peter’s house. Will we ever see each other again? What if one of us is sold, but the other isn’t?
There’s a sickly silence in the room as I stand up on wobbly legs. Reluctantly, I walk to the side room that Tracey has just emerged from. The raven-haired beautician follows me, and she doesn’t smile as I’m directed to sit on a raised chair in front of a mirror.
“No,” the beautician snaps. “First, the dress.”
My lip trembles. I’ve heard about pleasure dresses, but never been forced to wear one before. The concept is that they turn your own body into an enemy against you – betraying you by making every act – every movement – tantalizingly pleasurable; no matter how angry, humiliated, or frightened you are.
They’re called pleasure dresses – but they’re a slave’s garb. They’re chosen by slave traders to force their unwilling female subjects to appear aroused at all times.
The worst part? In this room there’s an entire rack of shimmering pleasure dresses; meaning that Peter had always had the means to buy and sell a litany of women. He might not have ever touched any of us – his household staff – inappropriately; but that didn’t make him much less of a monster.
I stand up and step in front of the row of dresses. The beautician eyes my body shape, her cold gaze measuring my ample curves like a robot. Eventually, she picks out a long, flowing dress and hands it to me.
The moment I touch the material, I know I’m doomed.
It electrifies my body. A shudder runs down my spine as I feel the impossibly soft fabric. It teases my fingers, stimulating the entire flesh of my hand, moving and contorting as if it has a mind of its own.
I know there’s no use begging. There’s no mercy in the beautician’s coldly-dark, brown eyes. She’s simply looking at me, waiting – as if I’m livestock, not a human being.
There’s nothing I can do. I hang the dress across the back of the chair and strip down to my undergarments. I reach for the dress when the beautician snaps angrily: “No! Take it all off.”
I shudder. I’m being forced to strip down to nothing, and the entire time this cold-eyed stranger is watching me – judging me. There’s no room for privacy. No room for dignity. She’s analyzing me like a robot, as if running a report comparing me against what she considered to be her ‘worldly’ standards of beauty.
Eventually, without a trace of emotion in her voice, the woman remarks: “You’re lucky.”
“Lucky?”
It’s a bold move for me to sound so scathing – especially naked, in front of a woman who works for my ‘owner’ – but I can’t control myself.
“How can you consider me lucky?”
The beautician barely registers my anger, and coldly answers: “You’re lucky because Toads generally prefer slimmer women. These Bullfrogs may be different, but they’ll not desire a woman of your… generosity in the same manner as Aurelians.”
Generosity?
Curvy, she means. That’s certainly a word that’s been used to describe me plenty of times.
But do my womanly curves make me lucky? Perhaps so, if I avoid being sold to a Bullfrog or Toad. But what about an Aurelian?
I shudder at the thought.
The beautician ignores my response, and continues to explain how ‘lucky’ I am.
“Aurelian men are addicted to the attributes associated with fertility. Those hips of yours? That bottom? Those tits?” She snorts – the first sign of emotion I’ve seen from her. “They get one look at you, and those haughty bastards will be lost.”
I say nothing. I can’t believe any scenario that involves me being sold – like property, or livestock – can constitute me being ‘lucky.’
But the beautician continues:
“If you are lucky – blessed by the Gods, perhaps – it’ll be those three Rogue Aurelians who buy you.” She sniffs disdainfully. “You’ll have a better fate that at the hands of a Bullfrog.”
I shudder again – the ‘hands’ of a Bullfrog would be cold, slimy and sticky.
So, perhaps that makes me lucky – but oh Gods….
Those Aurelians have been invited to the slave auction? When they get one look at me…
It’s not arrogance that makes me think that. I don’t view myself as especially attractive – despite what the beautician and even Peter himself has said. But I do know the tastes of Aurelian men – after all, their insatiable appetite for fertile woman is near-legendary.
I might not consider myself a beauty – but I know I’ll suit the taste of an Aurelian.
I swallow as I imagine being owned by not one, but three of those towering, haughty, near-perfect Aurelian males.
Their species stands nearly seven-feet-tall – or sometimes more. Almost all of their race have enormous, rippling muscles and perfect physiques that no human bodybuilder could ever match. There might be a few specimens of human-kind that stand seven-feet-tall – athletes for most part – but none of them have the same proportions as an Aurelian; five hundred pounds of slab-like muscle that can move quicker than a lightning bolt.
I’ve seen a holo-vid of Aurelians in battle – they were born for war.
In fact, they say that the battle rage of the haughty Aurelians pales only in comparison to the frenzy of their mating rage.
But whatever I think, the beautician is right. It’s inarguably a better fate to be purchased by Aurelians than Toads. It’s far from ideal – the idea of being sold at all is horrific – but the best fate of all is one that is already out of reach.
The simple desire for life to go back to normal – that everything could just stay the same…
But nothing will ever be the same – I know it deep in my heart.
The odds are that I, or my best friend, or both of us
