Is Fifty Too Old?

Part 3

by Bridget

The Week After

After everyone had left, I took a deep breath and settled down. Then I got online and changed my address at the Postal Service website, paid a few bills and arranged to have the water and electricity turned off. I called the landscaping company and told them to stop the service because I was moving and had just sold the house. All I had left to do was clean out the fridge after I ate dinner and take the trash out. I spent a lot of time thinking about what had happened this week. God, the things I had done that I never would have dreamed of doing before I met Master. But deep in my heart I knew that I had passed the test and was quite happy about it. I was completely enslaved and did not regret it at all. Whatever time I had left on this earth I knew would be spent taking care of him, pleasuring him, and obeying him. I had an early dinner, and put the final loads of trash by the back door. I would put the bags in the cans just outside in the dark just before I left in the morning. I washed the sheets on the bed and put them away when they were dry. I would sleep on the couch that night because I didn’t want dirty sheets being packed and put in storage. The movers would be here at eight in the morning but I would be long gone by then. I curled up on the couch and turned on the television. I switched around between the channels looking for something boring that would put me to sleep. I finally found a shopping channel that was presenting camping gear, the last thing in the world I was interested in. Soon I drifted off with the television still on.

When I woke up, I was disoriented for a few minutes before I realized where I was. I looked at the clock lit by the light of the television screen and realized I had several more hours to sleep. I turned the TV off and went back to sleep.

When I woke up the next time, I knew where I was and that today was the day I would start my new life with Master. I turned on the table lamp near my head and saw that it was time to get ready. I went to the back and took the trash out and put it in the cans. Then one at a time, I wrestled them down to the curb. Standing outside in the street, as naked as the day I was born except for my collar, I wanted to do something demonstrative. I stretched out my arms, tilted my head way back, and howled at the moon. A light down the street quickly came on and I ran to the back door, my breasts bouncing, and went back inside.

After a quick shower, I got in the car and pulled away. I knew I would have to stop once for gas, and I debated for a long time whether or not to stick to back roads and find an out of the way place to fill the tank. The risk was if the car broke down, or I had a flat tire, what could I do in the middle of nowhere naked? So I planned to drive about a half an hour on the interstate, and then get off at an exit that didn’t have a town around for twenty miles. That way I could get gas in, hopefully, relative obscurity.

When I got to the exit, I was in luck; there were no other cars or trucks there. I pulled up to the pump furthest away from the store and carefully got out of the car, trying to keep the pump between me and the brightly lit windows of the building. I put my ATM card in the slot, pulled it out, and nothing happened. I tried it again and still nothing. Then I heard a voice over the speaker in the pump announce that the satellite connection for the pumps was down. I told the speaker that I needed gas and didn’t have any cash on me. Whoever was in the store said that they had a landline inside as a back up and that I could pay inside, but I would have to come in first to pay.

I almost cried. After the last week, I thought that part of my ordeal was over; the part where I was exposed to strangers and friends. I took a couple of deep breaths to slow down my racing heartbeat and tried to remain calm as I walked to the store. When I was inside, I went up to the counter to face the kid manning the cash register who was staring at me with his jaw hanging open.

“Master, I need to fill it up, please,” I told him.

“But lady, you’re naked.”

“I know, Master.”

“But why?”

I was going to tell him the story about losing the bet, but I remembered Master telling me that I could not lie. “I am a slave, Master, and my owner prefers that I remain naked. It has been over a week since I have worn any clothes.”

“Is that why you called me master, because you’re a slave?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Did your owner shave your pussy?”

“No, Master. I did it at his command.”

“Damn,” was all he could say.

We looked each other for a few moments, me looking at his face and he looking at my breasts (all he could see as I was standing very close to the counter for some protection). Then I broke the silence by asking about my gas.

“Oh, yeah. Sure. Just give me your card and I’ll set the pump. When you finish, come in and I will ring it up.”

I handed him the card and went back to my car. As soon as I was outside the door, I heard him come from behind the counter and follow me out. He stayed a few paces behind while I walked away, deliberately swaying my hips so he could watch my ass move. At the pump, he took up a position in front of me between the car and the island. I had to bend over a little to hold the pump in and could feel my breasts swaying I turned to watch the numbers climb as the tank filled. When the pump shut off, I stood up straight and hung up the spout. I put the cap back on and shut the door. As I started walking back to the door, he moved up beside me.

“What’s it like being naked all of the time?” he asked.

“To tell you the truth, it’s kind of sexy. There are times when I wish I had something to wear, even if it was only a bra and panties, like now, but I like being like this with only my collar.”

Once back in the store, I used my card to pay for the gas. I was on my way out and he called out to me to stop. I tuned around and stood there as he came around the counter and stood about a foot away.

“Open your legs a little more,” he told me.

I spread my feet about shoulder width apart and he cupped his hand between my legs. Without thinking, I pressed myself down into his hand. Emboldened, his other hand went to my breast and he gently rubbed the nipple between his thumb and forefinger. As his finger started to work its way into my slit, I backed up a step and asked him to stop.

“Lady, you can’t run around like that and not expect to get felt up or worse,” he said.

“I understand, Master. But under the orders my owner gave me, I can’t let you do that. But if you wish, I will masturbate for you.”

“That’s something I would love to see. Sit up there, on the counter and spread your legs wide.” I did as he instructed and then he told me to play with myself. My hand went down to my pussy and I inserted two fingers. I was already wet from him fondling me. I watched him watching me as I masturbated until the climax came when I threw back my head and moaned as the orgasm exploded inside me.

When I had calmed down, he thanked me and stepped up between my legs. He put his arms around me and kissed me and I returned the kiss. He hadn’t really taken advantage of me, at least not as much as he could have. He was a sweet kid and I wanted to reward him so I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him with as much passion as I could muster.

When he broke away, he stepped back and looked at me. His eyes were scanning up and down, from my pussy to my breasts to my face and then back down. “That kiss was better than being fucked by my girlfriend,” he told me.

“Thank you, Master. May I go now?”

“Thank you, lady. Stop by any time.”

I made the rest of the drive without incident and arrived at Master’s house at about six. It was still dark outside and as I pulled into the driveway, I saw him sitting on the porch waiting for me. I rushed from the car and ran up the steps, launching myself at him. As I jumped, he braced himself and I wrapped my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist while I kissed him. He carried me inside like that and back to the room with the cage and post and I saw that he had made a couple of changes. First, there were shutters on the windows that could be closed from the inside, blocking all of the light. There was also a chain hanging from a hole in the ceiling. He had put a plate over the hole and sealed around the chain so that hot air couldn’t get into the room from the attic. Finally, there was a table that I later learned could be tilted to any angle between vertical and horizontal. He locked some cuffs to my wrists and told me to raise my arms as I stood under the chain so he could lock them to it. I had to stand on my tiptoes to reach and when he let go, I could feel my body being stretched.

Then he told me to tell him about the week again. As I recounted the events, most of which he had already heard, he played with my breasts and caressed me all over. I tried to stay focused on remembering everything but soon I was squirming and found it difficult to focus.

Every time I went backwards to tell him something I had forgotten, he stepped back and slapped me hard somewhere on my body. My breasts, bottom, stomach, and thighs all got slapped several times and after each slap, he returned to fondling and caressing me. After what seemed like an hour, I finished telling him about the stop for gas and the rest of the drive. My body had red hand prints all over it when I was done with the story.

Master took off his clothes and we made love while I was hanging from my wrists. He held me up when I wrapped my legs around him and I cried out with pleasure as soon as he put himself inside me. We kissed each other all over as we screwed and as we came together in a sweaty mass he pulled me against him, crushing my breasts against his chest. When he let go of me I squeezed him once with my legs before letting go. He went to take a shower leaving me hanging from my wrists and standing on my toes.

When he came back from his shower, he was dressed in walking shorts and a tee shirt. He was also carrying a leather strap that was narrower at the ends than in the middle. He let me down and had me stand with my back to him while he put the middle of the strap under my breasts and pulled the ends up around my neck. As he did, he explained that this was what passed for a bra in ancient Rome and that he didn’t want my boobs sagging from lack of support. The wide part in the middle supported my breasts without covering them, and the soft leather twisted to lay flat as it ran up my shoulders and around my neck. He marked the ends, took it off, and put grommets in both ends while I waited. This time when he put it on, he passed a lock through the grommets and the ring at the back of my collar to hold it in place. Slapping me on the butt, he told me to go make breakfast.

We ate with me kneeling next to his chair and him feeding me. After breakfast, he put me to work cleaning the house while he was in his office doing his work for his job. I finished about four in the afternoon, having cleaned everything from top to bottom, stopping only for a quick, light lunch which I served him in his office and shared with him. While I was scrubbing the kitchen floor (on my hands and knees with a brush) I couldn’t help thinking how quickly I would become bored with menial housework. I had never worked before, and always took care of the house when I was married, but I also had a social life. I imagined getting a case of cabin fever locked up in the house all day with nothing to do but clean and watch television.

When I finished cleaning, I went to his office and knelt near his desk. He was doing something with a spreadsheet program and I waited for him to look up. When he did, I told him that the house was clean. He nodded, unlocked the breast support, and told me to take a shower, but I could only use cold water. I scurried to the bathroom and set a world’s record for the quickest shower because it was so cold. I noticed he had put out some cosmetics and I used a bare minimum after drying my hair with a blower. When I returned, he told me to go to the garage and get in the car. He followed me out a few minutes later, got in the car, and we pulled out of the garage.

I wanted to ask him where we were going, but I sat in silence as we drove. He had the radio tuned to a sixties channel and I sat back and let the music take me back to my early teens. About forty-five minutes later, we were on a country road going through a forest when he slowed and turned off the road. After about five minutes traveling on a dirt road, he stopped the car and had me get out. In the trunk there was a duffle bag that completely filled the small compartment in his sports car. He helped me get the straps over my shoulders and I bent under the weight of it as I followed him down a path through the woods.

About a mile in, he stopped and had me put down the bag. We were in a small clearing next to a stream. He started unpacking a small tent, just big enough for two people, and set it up in a few minutes. While he was putting up the tent, he told me to find some dead wood for a fire. I walked around carefully in my bare feet and collected what I thought was enough for a good sized fire, piling it next to a rock circle that had obviously been used for a fire before. He started a fire with some tinder and patiently built it up so that it lit the clearing as the sun set. When the fire was built up, he took two frozen packages wrapped in aluminum foil and put them in the fire.

He spread a blanket on the ground and sat on it with his back against a tree. Then he motioned for me to come over and sit next to him. When I did, he asked me to tell him why I wanted to be his slave. I thought for a few moments, trying to put into words everything I felt about being enslaved. Finally, I told him, “Because it is fulfilling, Master.”

He just nodded and we watched the fire, not saying anything but he put his arm around me and pulled me toward him, holding me. About thirty minutes later, he used tongs to pull the packages from the fire. Opening them carefully, he put the contents of each package on a dish. It was ground beef, rolled into a log with carrots, celery, small potatoes, onions, and green beans. He got some water from the stream and we had dinner in the clearing under the stars.

When it was time to go to bed, he surprised me. I thought I would sleep in the tent with him, but I guess slaves don’t get to sleep under cover when camping. Instead he took a very long stake and drove it through a link in a short chain and into the ground near the opening of the tent. Then he chained me to it by my collar and told me I could sleep lying across the opening of the tent. “A primitive alarm system,” he said laughing.

I lay in the dirt, naked, without even a blanket to keep my warm. The chain was so short I couldn’t raise my head more than a couple of inches from the ground. I turned on my side and used my arm for a pillow as he climbed over me and into the tent. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well and in the morning, I was feeling a little cranky. After freeing me from the chain, he asked me how I slept and I made a smart remark. As soon as I said it, I knew I had made a mistake as his face clouded over. I apologized at once and went down on my knees and kissed his foot. I really was sorry I had said it and I knew I was going to be punished. I thought that if I showed some remorse and was contrite, it might mitigate my punishment. I was wrong.

He pulled me to my feet and hauled me to a large tree. He put a handcuff on one wrist and pulled it around the trunk. He pulled my other wrist up and put a handcuff on that one, securing me to the tree with my body pressed against it because my arms and the cuffs were just large enough to go around the trunk. I couldn’t even slip down because the trunk widened and the only way I could go lower was if I dislocated a shoulder.

I heard him behind me. He cut a thin switch from a sapling and used a knife to strip it of leaves and small branches. I heard him swish it through the air a few times so when he struck me it caught me completely by surprise. I screamed because I thought the switch had cut me in two, so deeply did the pain flash though my back across my shoulders where he struck me. Then again, a few inches lower and I screamed again. He waited for me to recover and then the third blow, again a few inches lower than the last.

Because he hadn’t allowed me to police myself yet, my bladder let go and I peed against the tree and felt it run down my legs. He never stopped or slowed down when I did. Fifteen times he hit me with that God awful switch, creating a series of parallel welts that ran from my shoulders do my knees. I must have cried for twenty minutes or more after he finished, praying for the pain to go away, but it didn’t. He left me there bound to the tree to cry while he puttered around the campsite.

When I quieted down, he released me momentarily only to re-bind me to the tree but this time with my welted back against the trunk. The cuffs wouldn’t hold me this time because my arms wouldn’t stretch backward far enough around the tree so he used rope to connect my wrists above my head and behind the tree. Next he put three loops of rope around my waist and the tree. Finally he tied my ankles pulling them apart as he tied the rope from each ankle behind the tree.

“I’m going fishing for my breakfast,” he told me as he took a net from the duffle. “I’m not sure I am willing to share with you this morning.” And then he walked away, leaving me bound to the tree.

I wanted to scream with the pain of the rough bark against my whipped back and with the helplessness I felt being bound naked in the woods and left alone. Any creature, if it approached the camp, could nibble on my flesh and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I didn’t even bother to test the ropes because I knew it would do no good and the only way to alleviate the pain in my back was to stand as still as possible.

Master returned about half an hour later. I watched as he built the fire, cleaned the fish, and then cooked them in a pan he took from the duffle. While they cooked, he got some water from the stream and offered me a drink. I gulped it down and he went back to the fire. When it was finished, he put the two fish on a plate and ate them with his fingers. There wasn’t anything left so I guess that I was not going to get breakfast. He looked up at me as he put the plate down and I saw a strange look pass over his face. It was like he was considering something and I could tell when he had made up his mind.

He got a bag out of the duffle and poured something onto the fire. It was charcoal briquettes and he used the tongs to pile them up. It took a long time but I could see that they had caught and were starting to burn. It was maybe fifteen or twenty minutes later that they really began to glow under the gray ash that coated them. Master got a scarf from the duffle and used it to blindfold me. Then I heard him rummage around in it some more before pulling something else out.

I felt him standing in front of me before he removed the blindfold. He leaned down and kissed me on the lips and I hungrily returned it the best I could. When he broke off the kiss, he looked deep into my eyes and told me that I would never again doubt my slavery or mistake myself for a free person after this morning. I had no idea what he was talking about so I just nodded in agreement. He stepped back and my eyes followed him until he nodded at the fire so I looked down and my face turned white.

It was a branding iron. There was an iron rod about two feet long with a wooden handle sticking out of the charcoal. On top of the coals was a shape glowing orange from the heat. I couldn’t make out what the shape was but I knew instantly what it was and that it was about to be used on me.

I squirmed at much as I could, trying to free myself at the panic set in. Master watched at I twisted and turned in my bonds crying out with the pain in my back and the thought of what was about to happen. When I finally calmed myself again he went to the fire and pulled out the branding iron. He held it up so I could see that it was W, the initial of his last name, but in an old English form with wavy lines through it. The letter itself was two inches high and very ornate. I could feel its heat even several inches from my face before he put it back in the fire to let it reheat.

When he took it out again, he didn’t hesitate at all. My eyes locked onto the bright orange tip of the brand as he knelt down, told me to hold still, and pressed the iron into my thigh about six inches above my knee. I didn’t even hear myself scream as the hot iron burned my flesh and the pain became a beast devouring me. He must have only held the brand against my skin a second or two but I could smell the burning skin and meat long after he removed it while I thrashed about against the tree. When he sprayed the antiseptic on the burn, I never even felt it because the pain from the burn itself was all consuming.

He left me tied to the tree the rest of the day and through the night. He fed and watered me a little throughout the day, but not much at all. Not that it mattered because food was the last thing on my mind. The pain just never stopped. Yes, it did subside, eventually, but all the time I was tied to the tree, it was the only thing I could feel and it had my complete focus as I tried to fight it off. I would moan, or cry, throughout the time I was tied up as a way to break my concentration on it, but nothing really helped. I never really slept, either. Bound as I was, it was almost impossible.

When dawn broke, he woke up and got out of the tent. The first thing he did was examine the brand and spray it with antiseptic again. This time I could feel the sting. He went fishing and made breakfast the same as the day before, but when he finished, he took down the tent and packed the duffle. He carried it to the car himself before he freed me from the tree but as soon as he did, he cuffed my wrists behind my back and attached a piece of rope to my collar to use as a leash as he led me back to the car. He put me in and fastened the seat belt with my arms still cuffed behind my back.

We didn’t talk at all on the ride home. I spent most of the drive looking at the W burned into my thigh by the iron. It was as if someone had taken a chisel and carved it into my flesh because the letter was indented in my skin (Later, as it healed, the scar tissue actually raised it above the skin on my thigh).

By the time we arrived, the brand was just a throbbing ache that never left instead of the sharp pain that it had been the day before and most of the night. Once in the house, Master cautioned me not to touch the brand, even if it itched, and unlocked my cuffs. It was almost lunch time so he had me make sandwiches while he unloaded the car. When the food was ready, we went to the living room, sat down on the floor, and ate together in silence. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Master, may I ask a question?” When he gave me permission, I went on. “Why did you feel marking me was necessary?”

“Let me ask you something first. Do you feel any differently since you were branded?”

Did I? I wasn’t sure until I considered it but then I realized that I did feel differently in a couple of ways. First, when I considered the act of branding, I realized that it was something men did to animals. Did that make me an animal? In a way, it did, at least as far as saying that free men and women were at a level above me. But the real difference was in how I understood the relationship. Up until yesterday, I could admit that I was a slave without really admitting being owned. But the brand changed that. I was no longer a slave, now I was Master’s slave; I was owned by him.

“Yes, Master, I do,” I admitted.

“Then you understand now why I did it?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Not that it matters, but do you agree with what I did?”

“Master, I will be marked as your slave for the rest of my life. It is what I want, so why would I disagree. It may have been necessary for both of us for you to do it and I am happy you did. It is a stronger vow than any marriage ceremony.”

My only regret about any of this is that I waited until I was this old to find out what was right for me. I guess that if you want to change you really can and fifty is never too old.

The End