Kern by Carter Fell

Kern
by Carter Fell

Chapter 1: The Purity Of His Pleasures
A strange dream came to Kern. In the dream, he was whipping Jenny’s back, scourging her furiously. Then, like an SM version of The Exorcist, her head rotated through one hundred and eighty degrees, and she gazed at him with sad reproachful eyes. His eyes flicked open, his heart was thumping, there was a strange metallic taste in his mouth. He turned his head towards the glow of the clock on the bedside table. This was a real struggle for his eyes; they were fairly hopeless without his glasses. But by squinting and concentrating, he could make out that it was almost five-thirty.
Deciding just what were his favourite moments was always a difficult matter for Kern. A top contender would have to be the few minutes after waking, when he would visualise the next couple of hours, the time he devoted to the cruel purity of his pleasures. Another favourite was opening the cell door, seeing his girls rolling hastily off their bunks to lie before their master. And today was December twenty-fifth. A day for a man to celebrate life, and to award himself something very special.
He went down to the kitchen, put the kettle on, and lit the gas under the slaves’ porridge. He poured himself a cup of tea, took it with him upstairs to the bathroom. He showered and shaved, scrubbed his teeth vigorously. As his hair dried, he combed it carefully, for he hated his slaves to see him as ever less than perfectly groomed. For them to see him in any way dishevelled would make him feel closer to their level, and somehow vulnerable.
Kern finished his tea in the bedroom, while he was dressing. He wore his usual leisure kit, corduroys and a sweat shirt. It was now six-thirty, and the grey light of dawn was spreading. This bedroom had windows to the font and back of the house. At the front was a small garden, the lane, and the flooded farmland of the Severn valley. To the rear was his large yard, behind which the ground rose towards the Cambrian mountains of Wales, which pushed bony fingers of foothills into the voluptuous belly of England.
Ready now for his day, Kern descended the stairs, went through the kitchen to the back door, and crossed the yard to his garage. He easily manoeuvred his minimalist buggy out through the side door of the garage, its maximum width was only 32 inches and it weighed just 22 pounds. A steel axle running through a shaft joined two cycle wheels. Welded to the shaft was an upright tube that supported the seat, and a coupling ring to which the shaft was attached. He returned to the garage for the draft bar, which he fitted through the top ring on the shaft and secured with a split-pin. Now he clamped the foot-rest bar onto the shaft, and made a last visit to the garage for the harnesses. It was six-forty-five.
The slaves were kept in a lean-to extension at the rear of the house; Kern called it his stable, for his main reason for keeping slaves was to use them as ponygirls. He had modified the extension the previous summer, bisecting its interior with a brick wall to form an outer vestibule and an inner cell. Ten feet by sixteen, it ran almost the width of the house. He drew himself up to his full height as he approached the outer door, which he opened and then locked behind him. This vestibule’s only adornments were equipment shelves on either side, filled with the accessories of a slave-holder’s life. There were chains and manacles, there were whips and straps and canes. There was an iron spreader-bar fitted with ankle cuffs, there were hoods and steel collars, there was a welding kit and an antiseptic spray. He selected two pairs of handcuffs and two pairs of ankle shackles, held them in his left hand as he turned the lock of the cell door with his right.
Always his heart was pounding with excited anticipation when he opened the cell door, and today was no exception. Two naked girls rolled off low bunks onto the floor, their ankle chains rattling on concrete. Each girl adopted the posture that Ken had trained them to; flat along the floor, face down with their hands clasped behind their backs, legs spread wide apart. Kern nursed an inner fear that his slaves would some day be desperate enough to attack him, to seek their freedom. This prone position greatly limited their aggressive options while Kern secured them. Each girl was swiftly handcuffed and shackled, and then Kern hauled each to her knees. Neither Kern nor either girl had spoken, they know he would punish them for speaking out of turn, just as he would if they ever looked him in the eye. He walked around them, checking his property.
Sally, the black girl, was almost six feet tall; she had a lovely face and a good physique. Kern had taken her into slavery just three months previously. The twenty-four year old had been first terrified, then furious, then heartbroken, then sullen. He had caned her again and again, careful not to break the skin. Then he had worked her on the treadmill to build her strength and stamina. His resolution not to mark her had been abandoned after her first outing, when chained and apparently helpless, she had turned her head and spat on him. Kern had flogged her for that, and he had run her in the buggy the next day with her back raw and bloody. Her broad shoulders were still criss-crossed with cuts, some were healing well, but others still looked dangerous. Kern knew he would have to bathe her back with hot salt water, but it was not an immediate concern.
Jenny was a few inches shorter than her stable mate. A plain-looking girl of thirty-three, she had been Kern’s first pony, and he had learned the slave owner’s craft with her. There was scar tissue on her back because he had foolishly worked her on the treadmill under the lash. She had pulled his first cart alone and with great courage, as the novice slave master applied the whip to her back. Jenny’s lone suffering had convinced Kern that at least two slaves were required; one pony simply could not pull him at a smooth and brisk pace. Kern’s only confidant, a distant sharer of his dark secrets, was a Canadian dentist. When Kern had revealed Jenny’s origin to him he had been horrified. ‘Your own sister?’ he had said; ‘You can’t use your own sister!’
Well why the hell not. Throughout history, men of Kern’s stamp had murdered their fathers and mothers, and sold their siblings into slavery. Kern had committed neither patricide nor matricide, he had merely given structure and discipline to his sister’s wrecked life. Admittedly, the structure was not of her choosing, and the discipline was of an extreme nature, but at least he had not passed her to a stranger. All the physical requirements of a ponygirl were mere ideals, in the practical world she only had to be available, and there had to be no one to report her missing. Jenny had fitted the bill; it was as simple as that. When she had come to live in his house, he had just completed converting the extension to a miniature prison, and had been racking his brains for a foolproof method of pony acquisition. It was clear that Jenny would have to be a confederate or a victim, a mistress or a slave. It had been a spur of the moment decision; Kern had taken her naked and wet from the shower to the cell, and had started her training the next day. The weeks went by, there were no phone calls for her, and her only mail was a visa bill. Mission accomplished.
Satisfied with his animals, Kern uttered a single word, ‘Stay’. This was to instruct the slaves to remain in the kneeling position. He left the cell, locking it behind him. Shortly he returned with a jug of cold water. Each pony drank as much as she could from the jug, then Kern led them both out to the yard, the slaves taking the tiny steps that their ankle chains would allow. Early experience with Jenny had taught Kern to never work a pony on a full stomach, he had seen her throw up too often. His routine now was to work them hungry, then feed and rest them. Later in the day he would put each girl on the treadmill for an hour. In his first weeks of slave ownership, with Jenny, Kern had had used a whip to keep the girl moving. Now he simply chained their wrists to the side rail, gave them a distance to run, and left them to it. The machine had a simple computer to measure distance, as well as heart rate etc. If the pony failed to reach the required distance in the allotted time she would be fastened across a horse and caned, then put back on the machine to complete the distance. This brutal training regime was extremely effective, transforming the slaves’ legs and hindquarters into powerhouses. Kern had become largely desensitised to the brutality of slavery, a simple caning could no longer excite or horrify him, it was just something that had to be done. Flogging Sally had thrilled him though; at each stroke her breasts had bounced as an agonised shudder ran down her body. His erection had subsided when her bladder emptied, and this was another lesson he had learned. In future he would confine a slave to dry out before administering severe punishment.
There was no question of clothing for the slaves; in fact Kern possessed not a shred of clothes for them. The cell was kept at a constant sixty-eight degrees, and as they were always worked hard when outdoors Kern could see no danger of them suffering from exposure. If there was a really cold spell in January or February he might have to think again, but he would worry about that when the time came. He knew that their unsupported breasts would soon start to sag, especially Jenny’s, but he reasoned that looking good was not their true purpose. Floppy tits would not harm their cart pulling powers.
Sally was secured to the draft bar first. Her handcuff chain was locked under a staple on the bar, then her waist and shoulder straps were fitted and fastened to the bar. Jenny was similarly harnessed, and then the head rig was fitted. A soft leather bit went into each pony’s mouth, held in place by a strap around the back of the head. At either side of the bit there was a brass ring. The left hand pony, which was Jenny, had the left rein clipped to her left bit ring, her right-hand bit ring had a leather link to Sally’s head rig. The right-hand rein was clipped to Sally’s head rig. Neither pony had nipple rings, butt plugs or any other adornment. Shaven-headed and bare-footed, they and their equipment comprised only what was needed to do the job, and Kern thought they looked just fine. He removed the slaves’ shackles, then climbed onto the seat and shook the reins. There was a jerk as the slaves hauled the buggy and their master into motion; Kern pulled the right rein, swinging the buggy towards the driveway at the side of the house. At the gate he pulled back on both reins, stopping the slaves. He alighted and opened the gate; he stood there for a few seconds, listening carefully. The misty morning did not allow him to see far, he strained to catch the sound of a vehicle coming up the lane from the main road. If Kern had been expecting callers he would have kept the slaves gagged in their cell, this was just a precaution. All seemed well, so he resumed his seat and turned the buggy left into the lane, leaving the gate open for his return. It was exactly seven.
The buggy continued its jerky motion, Kern had found no way to achieve smooth progress at the walk. Trotting the slaves seemed to provide enough momentum to smooth out the jerks, but Kern always walked them for ten minutes to warm up their muscles. Not for the first time, he noted the superb tone of Jenny’s body. Six months of slavery had eaten every scrap of flab off her; she was just muscle and bone. And a brain, of course. What happened in that organ Kern could not know, and he no longer cared. His philosophy was that life is too short; if you don’t achieve your dreams you have wasted it. Kern had achieved his main dream, he had stepped through the looking glass into his fantasy world, and he had become the master of ponygirls.
Sally was not yet so well muscled as Jenny, hence the buggy tended to drift to the right if Kern did not correct. Eyeing the black girl reminded Kern of his current preoccupation. Jenny was a good pony, but aging, and with another pony to partner Sally he could use Jenny for other purposes while keeping her trained as a reserve for harness. He already used Jenny as a household drudge, fastened to a long chain in the utility room she was his laundress, and the luxury of sleeping on freshly ironed sheets every night was something he had really come to appreciate. Perhaps he could take in some assembly work, make some return on the money he put into his slaves.
When he judged the slaves to be warmed up, he uttered his second word of the day, ‘Trot’. The slaves lifted their knees and the buggy surged forward up the slight incline of the lane. Soon they reached the point where the lane fizzled out at the edge of some Forestry Commission land. Here there was a sharp left-hand turn onto a track through the wood. The leafy track was easier on the slaves’ feet than the stony lane had been, but with a steeper gradient. Kern felt the buggy slowing, and cracked the whip over the slaves’ heads. Speed was regained for a while, when it started to decline again Kern gave each pony a flick across the shoulders, the draft bar and harnesses made it impossible to reach their buttocks with the whip. Jenny gasped occasionally, and her head rolled from side to side, but Kern had no doubt she was fit for many more miles. But he was a cautious man, and ever fearful of being stranded with a dead pony, so half a mile along he steered the buggy off the track for a break.
Finding a small clearing, Kern dismounted and ordered the slaves to squat. He took a cloth from the seat basket and wiped some blood off Jenny’s back, hearing her urinate as he did so. The lash had opened an old cut, and he silently cursed himself for his excessive whip use in the early days. Routine strokes with the driving whip should not draw blood, but her back was in such a poor state that he wondered how much longer he could use her as a draft animal. Perhaps a few months without his leathery kisses would allow the skin to fully heal and toughen up. That would only be possible when he had a new pony. Looking up from Jenny, he caught Sally’s eyes on him, before she quickly looked away. There was something in those eyes, something dangerous. His own safety came to mind again. She was only a woman, but she was less than half his age, and the bondage he held her in was making her stronger every day. If ever she came at him unrestrained, would he be able to handle her? Probably not, he decided. So he would keep her shackled when not in harness, and maybe he would flog her again when her back was healed, just so she knew who was boss. He took his seat in the buggy, ordered the slaves to their feet, and drove back to the track.
At the end of the track was another left turn, taking them homewards. Urged on with frequent tastes of the whip, Sally and Jenny trotted on. Their lungs were on fire, and there were steel needles of pain in their legs, but their master would give them so much more pain if they failed to obey him. Unlike the slaves, Kern was relaxed now. He could sit back, enjoy the ride, and savour the pleasures to come. Life was so, so sweet. It was Christmas, and Santa was bringing him a new pony.
Chapter 2: The Slave Revolt
At a few minutes before eight, the buggy pulled into the yard; both slaves were bathed in sweat and gasping for breath. Kern hopped down from his seat, retrieved the two pairs of shackles from the seat basket, and hobbled his slaves. After swiftly removing their harnesses and throwing them through the open garage door, he led the slaves to their cell, gave them some water, and then put them into the prone position. Returning to the yard, he removed the draft bar and foot bar from the buggy, then stowed it in the garage. Into the house then, to remove the saucepan of porridge from the cooker. He filled two bowls with the sticky food, stirring a large dollop of honey into each before setting the bowls on the small pine table. Next, he brought a thawed chicken from the fridge, placed it in a large saucepan, set it on the cooker and brought it to the boil. He really hated this, he was waiting on the slaves, and they should be waiting on him.
While the chicken boiled, he went back out to the yard. He had a showerhead rigged on a pole, fed with water from a hose. Now he turned on the tap, sending a spray of water over the muddy surface of the yard. He turned the tap down to a trickle, not wishing to get himself soaked. He went to the cell, picking a collar and chain from a vestibule shelf on the way. The collar was placed around Jenny’s neck, and he led her by the chain out to the shower pole. Her hands were still cuffed behind her back, and she was still hobbled. The chain was clipped to the pole, the girl shivering violently as the cold water ran down her body. Kern soaped her vigorously, paying special attention to her crotch, her anus, and under her arms. Then stepped across to the tap to turn up the flow. In a few seconds the soap suds were washed off Jenny. Kern released her chain from the pole and led her in to the kitchen, where he rubbed her briskly with a large towel, she whimpered as he worked on her sore back.
Kern sat Jenny at the table, then padlocked her chain to the chair and removed her handcuffs. He gave her a spoon, thrust a bowl of porridge in front of her, then returned to the cell to fetch Sally for her shower. With Sally seated and eating, he returned to the chicken, which was now boiling merrily. He turned the gas down to a simmer, added some cabbage leaves, and fitted a lid to the pan. Now he boiled a small quantity of water in the kettle, and poured it into a bowl. He stirred in some salt, and added some cold water. The slaves were finished eating now, both sat with heads bowed, their hands in front of them on the table. Taking the bowl of hot salty water and a cloth, Kern proceeded to bathe their cuts. He thought that he had better learn how to stitch cuts, that would be the best way to avoid the sort of lumpy scarring that disfigured Jenny’s back. He checked his watch, it was almost nine. He hobbled Sally, then led Jenny out to the sandpit in the corner of yard, where the girls were trained to defecate. Always embarrassed by this particular routine, he turned away from the girl. Job done, he led Jenny back through the kitchen to the utility room, where he substituted a longer collar chain locked to a ring in the ceiling.
Leaving Jenny to her work, Kern led the other pony out to the sandpit. He had been planning to put Sally on the rowing machine for a while, but now he had a change of mind.
‘Sally, I am putting you with Jenny to learn the laundry’
‘Yes, Master’
Had he ever heard either of them say anything but ‘Yes Master’? Not recently. It was what he had trained them to say, the only answer that did not risk a beating. So Sally was chained to the utility room ceiling in the same manner as Jenny, who had already filled the sink, and was now loading it. Kern was irrationally annoyed to see that she was washing the slaves’ bedding first, but he gave no reprimand. Their bedding, like his, was washed every day. He knew that every item would be perfectly washed and immaculately ironed, but still he issued his usual warning.
‘I will be inspecting your work, it had better be good’
‘Yes, Master’ they answered in unison.
It occurred to Kern that there could hardly be anything about washing and ironing for Sally to learn, she was a woman after all. Had she done housework? He had no idea. About the only things he knew about her was her age, that she had been born in London, had come to live with a cousin’s family in Birmingham, and had somehow finished up on the streets. She had got into Kern’s car on a warm September evening, and they had talked business. Then she had broken the tart’s number one rule of survival, she had agreed to go to his home for the night. Perhaps she had reason to trust him; he had been a regular client. For although Kern already had Jenny in captivity at that time, he shared his Canadian friend’s squeamishness about incest, and was obliged to pay for his urges. So Sally had come to stay the night, and was in chains by morning.
Kern left the slaves to the laundry. He had work of his own to do, adding a microphone to the CCTV camera in the pony cell. His obsessive concern with security had led him to speculate that the slaves might be plotting against him, and he wanted to eavesdrop. In fact, Jenny and Sally had assumed the presence of microphones long before Kern had thought to install them. Although they had not been forbidden to converse, they never did so in his presence, and always in whispers in his absence. Sally stole a glance through the open door to the kitchen, to be sure he had left the house. She spoke to Jenny, keeping her eyes on her work and her lip movements to a minimum. There was a CCTV camera here, as there was in all the areas Kern took them to.
‘How does my back look?’
‘Not too bad, considering. Mine feels awful.’
‘It looks awful, you could get gangrene. Jenny, he’s going to whip us to death or work us to death, we’ve got to get away.’
‘Be patient Sally, we have to wait for the right chance. I know how you hate him, but I’ve been here longer than you, and I’m certain he won’t kill us. He enjoys us too much.’
Sally could not understand Jenny at all. She had been through hell, and yet she seemed so mild about it. And she refused to tell how she had been taken, why could that be? They both fell silent as they worked, Sally wringing the washing, Jenny loading the drier. After a while, Sally spoke again.
‘That road can’t be far.’ At night, when Kern thought them deep in exhausted slumber, they would lay on their bunks and listen to the distant roar of traffic, often punctuated by the whooping sirens of emergency vehicles.
‘You’re in chains. I see he’s even left your ankles shackled now. How can you reach the road?’ Jenny was dismissive, but she had pointed out a fair problem. Whereas Sally had no doubt she could reach the road, shackled or not, the chain attached to her collar was the difficulty. How strong was it? They did not know, neither of them ever dared to test their chains, for if Kern saw them on a CCTV screen he would surely shred their backs.
They worked on in silence, but when Jenny took the first load from the drier, Sally saw her get the iron from a cupboard, saw her plug it into the mains. That iron was sharp and heavy, it was made to bash a head, but could she steel herself to do it? Terrible memories of the flogging came to her. When Kern had dragged her from the cell late at night, she had assumed that he was going to rape her again, she had forgotten about the spitting incident of many hours ago. But he had taken her to the room with the hated treadmill, fastened her wrists to a post, and shown her a whip. It was a stiff, heavy, evil-looking thing, not at all like the whip he used in the buggy. He had come close up to her, squeezed her breasts, and whispered in her ear.
‘Thirty for spitting. If it happens again I’ll give you sixty.’
Surely, if he had raked her back with a red-hot steel comb, the pain could not have been worse. When she had wet herself, and the urine on her legs mingled with blood flowing from her back, she had willed herself to pass out, to die. It would be better to see the beast die, but she knew she would only get one chance. If she tried and failed, he would put her through the tortures of the damned, and would keep her so heavily shackled that she could never again get lift a finger to him. So she must not fail, and she dare not trust Jenny. She had finished the wringing now, and she spoke to Jenny again. ‘Let’s swap round now, and I’ll try some ironing.’ They changed places, and Sally felt the satisfying heft of the iron in her hand.
The microphone was quickly fitted to the shoe on the cell camera, and then Kern had to drill a hole through the lintel above the cell door. In that confined space, the noise of his Makita chewing through the concrete was deafening and prolonged, but after that the job was easy enough. He ran the cable through the lintel hole, then stapled it around the plasterboard lining of the vestibule to the outer door. This door had a wooden frame, which was soon drilled through. From there the cable was passed up to the window of his study, located directly above the lean-to. He did not bother with clipping the cable to the wall, he just took it through the window frame to the phono input of a cheap amplifier. And that was another of his bodge jobs completed.
After his DIY work, Kern was sat in his study, gazing out of the window. The mist was thinning now, he could see across the two fields behind his yard to the edge of the wood. Suddenly there was a loud bleeping noise, a smoke alarm. Oh shit, the chicken pan must have boiled dry. He leapt to his feet, and hurtled down the stairs to the kitchen. Grabbing the panhandle, he heaved it across to the sink and turned the cold tap on. The alarm was still bleeping, and the kitchen was filling with steam, when he suddenly thought of the slaves. As he entered the utility room, Sally swung the iron at his head.
Cracking skulls with a steam iron is not something a girl gets a lot of practice at. Sally mistimed her swing, so that instead of the sharp edge of the iron’s soleplate connecting with Kern’s head, she caught him with the flat of the sole. The crashing blow against the left side of his head sent Kern staggering back, he swivelled round before collapsing onto the kitchen floor. Sally charged at him as best her shackled feet would allow, but her neck chain brought her up short, so she threw the iron at his head, missing by several feet. Screaming with rage, frustration, and fear, she now applied both hands to her chain, desperate to break it or yank it from the ceiling. But with a two thousand pound breaking strain, that chain was not going to give. It was anchored to an eye bolt set through a ten inch joist, Sally was going nowhere other than the hell that she had known she would risk.
Jenny stood with her back to the sink. She was wide-eyed, amazed. Now Sally shouted at her.
‘Help me, will you? Help me!’
Jenny made no move. Her only thoughts were of how she could avoid being involved in Kern’s reprisals, for she feared the whip on her damaged back more than she feared death, more than she feared anything. Through the doorway she saw Kern start to rise, and she dropped face down to the floor, hands clasped behind her back. He must know that she had no part in this rebellion. He must. Sally continued to jerk at the chain, throwing her weight into convulsive pulls, all the time screaming at Jenny to help her. But Jenny paid no heed, she stayed motionless and silent in the prone position, a puddle of urine collecting under her terrified body.
Oblivious to Sally’s commotion in the utility room, Kern stumbled out of the house. He doused his head under the showerhead in the yard; there seemed to be no blood, but there could still be serious damage. Cautiously, he poked his little finger into his left ear. When he withdrew the finger he inspected it for blood. Oh thank the lord, there was none. A wave of nausea swept over him, he crouched low to the yard, retching. He had to lie down for a while, so he returned to the house. On his way through the kitchen he closed the utility room door, to shut out as much of Sally’s noise as possible, then he dragged himself up the stairs to flop across the bed. He pulled his knees up and clasped his arms around himself, was surprised to find his eyes stung by salty tears. Downstairs, Sally was suddenly quiet. In a few minutes Kern had fallen into a deep sleep.
Chapter 3: Santa
Kern awoke with start, swung his legs onto the floor and looked at the clock. It was two-fifteen. Holy fuck, he was going to miss Santa. A swift charge took him along the landing to the bathroom, where he wet his hair again so that he could persuade it to lie flat. Suddenly his bladder felt fit to burst, more precious seconds wasted emptying it, before rushing back to the bedroom to dress. Then he needed to piss again. Standing at the toilet bowl, he studied his reflection in the bathroom cabinet mirror, tilting his head this way and that. His left ear was slightly puffy, and the sight of it reminded his brain that it hurt. The cheek on that side looked swollen, or maybe he only thought it was, he could not be sure. Kern knew that he had to be the luckiest bastard in the world.
In the utility room, Sally heard Kern moving around upstairs. She was sat on the floor with her back against the drier. She was exhausted, cold, and shivering. Silently, she began to weep.
Kern dressed in panic, he was in a ferocious competition with time, running against the clock. When he was ready to go, he had to decide what to do with the slaves. It was certain that they were secure in the utility room, but it would worry him to leave them there while he was away from the house. He would have to sacrifice precious minutes to putting them away. He ran downstairs and out to the lean-to. When he reached the outer door he suddenly felt sick and dizzy, he had to steady himself against the doorframe, then the feeling passed, and he pressed on.
In the vestibule he collected a short chain, then he went to the kitchen to retrieve the slaves’ handcuffs. From nowhere, a new sense of power and confidence had come; he wrapped the chain around his right fist, then shoved open the utility room door. Sally looked up at him with big frightened eyes, but she was still game, and she scrambled quickly to her feet. Her plan now was to gouge at his eyes, to have her best shot at blinding the fucker. But Kern was having none of it; he strode up to her and drew back his right arm to smash his chain-wrapped fist into her face. Sally’s hands retreated from their outstretched, claw-like position, she drew them back to protect her face, and she turned her body to shield herself with her shoulder. Kern was able to spin her right round, and then to punch the chained fist into her kidneys. Seconds later Sally’s hands were cuffed behind her back, and the rebellion was over.
With Sally secured, Kern stepped across to Jenny. He cuffed her hands behind her back, and hauled her to her feet. As he did so he noticed the puddle.
‘You’ve wet the floor.’
‘Please, master’
‘Shut up.’
He used the short chain to join the girls’ collars, and then unlocked the collar chains from the ceiling. Leading the chained pair to the their cell took an irksomely long time, because Sally was still hobbled. On arrival, Kern removed the short chain from the collars, then chained each girl to the floor ring. He fetched gags from the vestibule, because he did not want them shouting in the unlikely event of a visitor to the house. The gags were of his own make, similar to a commercial ball-gag, but with an oval wooden block bored with breathing holes. At last he was ready to make tracks, but before leaving he would give the slaves something to look forward to.
‘Jenny, for fouling your workplace I am sentencing you to six strokes with the cane, which I will give you on my return.’
‘Sally, for striking your master you will be severely flogged.’
Kern always felt like a judge in a B movie when he passed sentence on his slaves, but there was no denying the satisfaction of it. As he locked the cell door behind him he could hear the girls moaning in their misery. Excellent. He checked his watch, it was two thirty-five, he was supposed to meet Santa at three. One last scurrying visit to the kitchen, to retrieve his precious envelope from under the microwave, then he locked up the house and ran out to the garage.
The Land Rover coughed reluctantly to life, Kern reversed it out to the lane, then headed for the main road. The last three hundred yards of the lane were under water, but Kern was perhaps the only man in England who loved the millennium year flooding, because it increased the isolation of his home. Heading for the rendezvous, he several times drove around Road Closed signs, and ploughed through with water up to the Landie’s doorsills. He was only ten minutes late when he arrived in the car park of the roadside café. To his immense relief, he saw a Merc with Belgian plates parked close to the café entrance.
Kern hurried into the café, he immediately saw Paul Santa-Dumont smiling at him. Europe’s premier illegal immigrant dealer was sat near the door, and he had company. There was Doorn, the swarthy hard-man Kern had met in Antwerp when he paid his deposit, and there were two women. One was a peroxide blonde who was obviously well into her forties; the other was a frail looking brunette. He stopped at the counter to order a pot of tea, and then crossed to Santa’s table.
Before Kern could utter any greeting, Santa spoke. ‘Have you got the money?’
Santa had a gift for speaking through his teeth. From any distance he appeared to smile pleasantly, close up the mask was unconvincing, you saw only bared teeth.
‘I’m sorry I’m so late, Santa.’ Kern was not to be diverted from opening pleasantries.
Santa was not to be diverted, either. ‘Show me the money please.’
Kern handed Santa the envelope that had nestled under his microwave. Santa did not open it; he passed it to his thug, who went straight to the toilets to count the money.
Santa leaned back on the padded seat. He finally consented to make reply to Kern’s apology. ‘We are not long arrived here, you are lucky. The traffic was stupid, you fucking English have no idea, have you?’
Kern could not disagree with this stark analysis of the nation’s roads, but he said nothing.
Santa gestured to the blond. ‘Allow me to introduce you to Ana, who travelling with me today, and to your new friend Estelle. Estelle is from Ukraine, she does not speak English. What happened to your face?’
The tendency towards changing the subject in mid-sentence was both irritating and confusing. Kern could only suppose that it was an intentional effect. Realising that he had raised a hand to the side of his face, he rubbed the cheek as if it didn’t hurt like hell, and forced a casual answer.
‘Oh, it’s nothing.’
Kern went through the clumsy social ritual of shaking hands with the Ana and Estelle. This interrupted the girl’s consumption of her meal, a plate of chicken curry with rice. She could have no idea how typically English her meal was. Neither Santa or his thug proffered a hand, so Kern ignored them and sat down. He was seated on the left of Ana, who had Dorn on her right. Opposite Kern was Santa, with Estelle on his left. Finishing her food, the unwitting slave looked at Kern with open suspicion, and then spoke softly to Santa.
Santa then addressed Kern. ‘Estelle would like you to know that she is a good girl. She is very grateful to you, and she will work hard to pay you back for her passage, but she is a good girl’
He leaned towards Kern with a knowing leer. ‘She is not going to suck your cock, you understand?’
Kern looked suitably shocked. ‘Oh please Santa, give me some credit. How old is she?’
Santa had to consult the girl, then he replied to Kern. ‘She is nineteen.’
Kern was mildly disturbed; this was a little too much like cradle snatching. But he was locked on this track; he could not go back now. He willed himself to look relaxed as he said ‘Nineteen eh? That’s the same age as my daughter; they’ll be great friends. My wife has Estelle’s room ready; I know she’ll be very happy.’
Santa translated for Estelle, and the fictional cosy family seemed to reassure the girl. Kern and Santa had a brief discussion of the best route to Newcastle, which convinced Kern that the Belgian was going nowhere near the place, and then Doorn returned. The thug said nothing, and his silence was all Santa needed. He stood up, and so did the blond Ana. Santa gave Kern a mocking salute, patted Estelle’s cheek, then walked away without another word, Ana and the thug followed. The transaction had been completed in less than five minutes. Kern was left there with his new purchase, eighteen thousand pounds worth of (soon to be) ponygirl.
Chapter 4: The Cane & The Moonlight
Leaving his tea untouched, Kern motioned Estelle to rise, he was anxious to be away now. The girl seemed reluctant, but with a glum look on her face she followed him out to the car park. He got Estelle to the Landie, opened the front passenger door for her, and she climbed in. Kern settled behind the wheel, cranked the engine, and they were off. The engine was pumping hot water through the heater radiator, and the girl leaned forward to fiddle with the controls, showing a surprising familiarity with the arcane workings of the ancient beast. She switched the radio on, stabbing the search button until she found the right sort of pop, then she settled back and got a packet of Revels from one of the many pockets in her voluminous padded jacket. She filled her mouth with a handful of the sweets, and then waved the bag in Kern’s direction, he shook his head. Several times during the journey, Estelle turned to study Kern, she seemed to sense that there was something terribly wrong about the tall Englishman.
As the Land Rover rolled to a halt in the yard, Kern removed the keys from the ignition, opened his door, and jumped out. Estelle watched him enter a lean-to building, seconds later her apprehension turned to blind terror as she watched him returning; there were straps and chains swinging from his left hand. Kern dropped his small collection of essentials onto the surface of the yard, and then he looked up at Estelle with a blank and implacable expression that said nothing, but still conveyed the horror of the life he had planned for her.
These were going to be the difficult few seconds, but Kern was not going to let the girl piss him about. He opened the passenger door and offered a hand to help her out. She ignored him; head down she stared at her lap. Kern stretched his left arm across her to release her seatbelt, as he did so he seized the back of her neck with his right hand. The belt retracted into its bobbin, and Kern pitched the girl off her seat and out onto the yard, where she landed on her hands and knees. Kern kicked her in the ribs, and she went over onto her back, screaming like a banshee. He leaned over to catch a hold on her wrists, but as he did so she tried to sit up, and their heads collided. His forehead connected with her nose, which had the benefit of knocking her back down. Kern had found a good grip on her right wrist, now he stepped back, spinning his captive over onto her stomach. Her hands were cuffed behind her in no time, then the gag was fitted and there was an end to the noise. He noticed that she had only one shoe on; the other one must be in the Landie. Taking the shoe off her, he threw it through the open door of the vehicle.
As soon as he had shackles on her ankles, Kern left her and entered the house. If she managed to get to her feet, which he doubted, she could not hobble far while he was inside. Opening the door under the stairs, he turned the cellar light on. The cellar steps were steep and narrow; it was a hell of a descent whilst wrestling a struggling slave. Kern knew that, he had done it with Sally. He went down carefully, keeping a hand on the banister at all times. The air down here was cold and damp; he had never managed to completely dry the cellar. There was no electrical power point, he planned to install one, but had not got round to it. He crossed to a Calor gas fire, lifted the lid to feel the weight of the cylinder; there was probably enough gas in it for a few days. The gas lit after a few attempts, then Kern checked the rest of the cellar’s paltry contents. There was a mattress on a rubber groundsheet, a chemical toilet, and a sink with a single tap. A shelving rack contained towels and blankets, a plastic mug and spoon, tampons and talcum powder, sundry items pertaining to the care of female slaves. Most importantly, there was a ring set into the floor, with a six-foot chain attached.
Kern left the cellar, and then he fetched a cane from the lean-to vestibule. Estelle had not moved from where he had left her, Kern could hear her sobbing as he approached. He dragged her up by the handcuff chain, giving the backs of her thighs a couple of stinging swipes with the cane. The terrified girl twisted and turned frantically. Kern allowed her to struggle for a few seconds before letting her feel the cane again, this time across her calves. Then he swung her round to face the back door of the house and shoved her in the back. She stumbled forward a few steps, and then came to a halt. The cane stung her thighs again, and she moved towards the house. She was learning.
There had once been an outside door to the cellar, but it was now under the concrete foundations of the lean-to extension. Now the dangerous steps were the only route to the cellar. He drove Estelle through the kitchen to the cellar door, which was still open. Keeping one hand on her handcuff chain, he crouched down to release her shackles. Then he guided her down the steps, all the while gripping the banister with his right hand. Safely down, he refitted Estelle’s shackles, and padlocked them to the anchored chain. Taking a Stanley knife from his pocket, he stripped her without removing any of her restraints. The top layer, her thick jacket, was the most difficult, needing some very careful knife work to avoid cutting her flesh. Her sweater needed only a slit cut before could just tear it away in a few pieces. Her blouse was gone in seconds, her bra he tossed aside after three cuts through the straps. Her skirt fell away after he made one long cut from waist to hem, then he cut her panty elastic and ripped them off her. She wore no hosiery.
Grasping her shoulders, he bent Estelle forward from the waist. Possibly she was going into shock, she offered no resistance whatsoever. Separating her buttocks, he examined her anus, then her vagina. She seemed healthy enough in those tell-tale areas, there were no growths, lesions, foreign bodies, or burst blood vessels. He looked through her pubic hair for traces of lice, there were none. He straightened her up, then inspected under her arms, feeling for lumps and looking for louse eggs. With no pubic infestation, it was extremely unlikely that she would have lice there, but caution was wise. Reaching his arms around her chest from behind, Kern felt her small breasts thoroughly; he could find no lumps. He checked through her hair, peered as far as he could see into her ears. He picked up the cane again, and swished it through the air as he put a finger to his lips, the universal gesture for silence. Now he removed the gag, forced her head back roughly, and opened her mouth. Her dentition had just one gap; the reformed gum said it was an old extraction. There was one gold filling in a lower incisor, and amalgam fillings in the first and second left lower molars. Plaque was forming, especially at the back of her mouth, but overall her dental health was a close match for her apparently good bodily health. Her teeth would bear watching, he would have Jenny show her how to floss.
Turning Estelle around in front of him, feeling her shoulders, Kern was well satisfied with his purchase. She lacked muscle mass, but her youth would allow him to build that very quickly, and then she would be trained for the buggy. Estelle’s tear-streaked face, smeared with blood and snot, was not a pretty picture. Her eyes rolled upwards in their sockets, her head sagged back, and her knees started to fold, she was fainting. Unconcerned, Kern lowered her to the floor. He had seen all this before. Always a considerate master, he ensured that her tongue was well to the front of her mouth.
All the slave’s pathetic belongings and remnants of clothing he stuffed into a plastic sack. Then he pulled the mattress and the chemical toilet to within the reach of her chain, and he placed a mug of water on the floor. Estelle was coming round now, her puffy eyes opened; she saw Kern and groaned aloud. He gave her a healthy slap across the face to stop her screaming, and then he pointed to each of the luxuries he had provided for her; the mattress, the toilet, and the mug. As an afterthought, he took a blanket and a box of tissues from the shelves and threw them onto the mattress. Then he removed her handcuffs, picked up the rubbish sack, and left her, closing the cellar door behind him. He was sure that she would be screaming and shouting quite shortly, and he did not want to hear too much of it. The girl would have to realise the hopelessness of her situation in her own time, then she would quieten down.
His strategy for breaking Estelle would be to apply indirect terror, by letting her observe his other slaves being worked and punished, rather than by thrashing her body as he had done with Jenny, and to a lesser extent with Sally. And he would not force himself into her. He would let her learn his absolute power, and fully appreciate the depths of her degraded dependence on him. When she had a complete understanding of how he controlled every minute aspect of her life, then she would want to please him. The memory of Santa’s words came back to him.
‘She is not going to suck your cock, you understand?’
Oh yes she is, Santa baby, oh yes she is.
Back in the kitchen now, Kern made a cup of tea, then sat at the table to drink it. Struck by a thought, he went out to the Land rover to gather Estelle’s shoes, which joined the rest of her former life in the rubbish sack. He threw the sack into the vehicle, locked all the doors, and then returned to the kitchen to finish his tea. It was turning four thirty when he went out to the lean-to.
As he opened the cell door, both slaves turned pleading eyes towards him. Ignoring Sally, Kern unchained Jenny from the floor ring, then took her into the house and up to the room next to his bedroom, the room he had fitted for training and punishment. There was a treadmill, a carpenter’s horse, a rowing machine, and a whipping post. The post was not set into the floor, it was held out from the wall on brackets. Jenny had been gagged for more than two hours, her dry tongue kept sticking to the wooden block, and her jaws were in desperate need of movement. All of which was no concern of Kern’s, who set about the punishment in a brisk and businesslike manner. First he strapped her ankles to the legs at one end of the horse, and then he forced her body horizontal along the length of the horse’s body, before removing her cuffs and strapping her arms to the other pair of horse legs. Now there was the issue of severity, which was a matter of cane tip velocity, itself dependent on the length of the cane. He selected a forty-inch cane and swished it through the air a few times to check its soundness. Jenny was making a sort of gurgling whimpering sound through her gag, she had been strapped on this horse many times, and she well knew the pain to come.
Kern laid the bamboo across Jenny’s buttocks, taking care to avoid the base of her spine. The impact created a fairly broad area of redness instantly, which faded swiftly as a paler ridge rose along the line of contact. However many times he used the cane, this always fascinated Kern. He left about ten seconds between each stroke, aiming the cane with precision so that no strokes overlapped, this greatly minimised the risk of cutting his victim. Ideally, he would like to finish with six separate and perfectly parallel ridges across her rump. Jenny’s head shook from side to side at each stroke, as if she could shake off the pain like a dog shakes off water. Her whimpering was now a fairly loud squeal, she would have screamed up a storm but for the gag.
After the sixth stroke, Kern inspected his handiwork. There were a couple of crossed welts, but no blood, he could congratulate himself on a job well done. He handcuffed her hands behind her back again, then he released her legs and led her downstairs to the kitchen. ‘Jenny,’ he said to her, ‘I am going to remove your gag, then I am going to give you some water. You will be silent and respectful, or I will take you back to the horse. Do you understand?’
The hapless Jenny nodded her vigorous response, and then Kern allowed her to drink her fill from the tap. While Jenny was still bent over the sink with her head under the tap, Kern shackled her ankles. As soon had as she had satisfied her thirst, he asked her if she needed the sandpit.
‘No, Master. Thank you, Master.’
Kern returned Jenny to the cell, taking a jug of water along. He removed Sally’s gag, gave her water, and then asked if she needed the sandpit.
‘Yes, Master. Thank you, Master’
While Sally was relieving herself into the sand, Kern thought about her punishment. On the one hand, the thought of flogging her again made his stomach churn with excitement; but on the other hand he was concerned about the risk of infection if he laid her back open so soon after her last whipping.
‘Sally,’ he said; ‘I am not going to flog your hide immediately.’
‘Yes, Master.’
‘If you are a very good girl over the next few days, I may reduce your sentence to a caning.’
‘Yes, Master. Thank you Master.’
Kern thought that this could work out well. He had used Sally sexually since she had been his slave, but always in a brutal and animalistic way. By giving the girl an enormously strong reason to seek his goodwill, perhaps he could manoeuvre her into sexual pleasures of a more prolonged and pleasurable nature. And there would Estelle at his command as well. Suddenly, he was filled with festive bonhomie.
‘Come on, my girl. Let’s get you ready for your evening run.’
‘Yes, Master.’
Kern left Sally in the yard while he fetched Jenny from the cell. He thought briefly about bringing Estelle up to see what would be expected of her, but rejected the idea. It was dark now, the morning would be soon enough to start training her.
Only the moon saw Kern drive his pony buggy up the lane, and it sailed over the trees beside them as the slaves trotted through the wood. Sally’s mind was racing as she forced her legs to keep pumping, she knew exactly how Kern wanted her to reduce her punishment, and she thought that his sexual demands might well provide new opportunities for escape. Jenny was downhearted, and still in great pain from her beating; she could see no hope at all. The slaves’ feet padded almost silently over the leaf mulch, the wheels whirred, and there was an occasional smack of leather on brown skin or white. The master was entirely happy in his seat. It had been a lovely Christmas, and he looked forward to a very happy new year.
Chapter 5: Babes In The Wood
In their short-lived prime, the American rock group The Eagles laid down a blindingly good track titled Hotel California. Whilst the song has been widely interpreted as being about cocaine addiction, Kern had his own view. In its explicit and implicit verbal imagery, he fancied he could smell the horrors that lie beneath the quiet surface of everyday life, buried as shallow as a murder victim. Like the night manager of the Hotel California, Kern was programmed to receive; his guests could check out any time they liked, but they could never leave. Sally had tried to check out, but Sally was still here in his tender care. Her notification of departure would have been viewed as unconventional, and totally unacceptable, at any hotel. Stern retribution had been called for, and Sally had been beaten.
Bamboo cane had been applied to tender female flesh; buttocks and thighs had been thrashed with a calculated ferocity. In order not break the slave’s skin there had been two separate sessions of twenty strokes, in each of which Kern had turned up the pain from the merely unbearable to the unbelievable. But by enduring this, and by providing her master with all the sexual pleasures his fertile imagination could devise, Sally had preserved the living skin and flesh on her back. For the slave girl had been in no doubt that the alternative treatment, one hundred whip strokes on her defenceless back, would have maimed her, left her a monstrously scarred cripple. Or left her dead.
Today’s trials had started earlier than usual. Carrying the driving whip, Kern had come to the cell while it was still dark. Sally and Jenny had rolled off their bunks onto the floor, had laid their bodies in the required submissive position. Kern had cuffed their hands behind their backs, as was the norm, but had taken the less usual step of fitting them with collars and chaining them together, instead of shackling their feet. Outside, the bitterly cold air was an immediate shock to their naked bodies. The reason for the absence of shackles was soon apparent; Kern had set them to running on the spot, he had circled round them cracking the whip until satisfied that knees were being lifted high enough. Then he had gone into the house, they knew he was fetching the new girl from the cellar.
Now he emerged from the house, leading Estelle by a chain attached to her collar. Her head had not yet been shaved, she had an untidy shock of hair over her small face. Sally noticed that Kern’s latest acquisition did not look so terrified these days. Three weeks after she had arrived screaming in the yard, the girl was starting to wear the expressionless mask of the slave. The master must see no hint of insolence or defiance, his threats must not be rewarded with a satisfying look of fear, and he must discern no encouragement to his advances. Kern put Estelle into line with his other slaves, and he soon had her legs pumping up and down in time with her peers.
Kern stood back to enjoy the show. Of his three slaves, only Sally had the looks of a showgirl, but that row of moving womanflesh was still a fine sight. He decided that he would have their pubic hair removed. The only reason he had not done this up to now was because of Jenny being his sister. He had done many a foul thing in the past months, he had enslaved and excoriated his own flesh and blood, but what kind of man could shave his sister’s crotch? To interfere in that area of her would inevitably lead him into the only heterosexual perversion he had not explored, incest. The answer was obvious; he would have the slaves shave one another. And they would obey him readily enough; the hated whip made all things possible and nothing too distasteful.
While the luckless trio continued to pound the rough surface of the yard with their bare feet, Kern wheeled his buggy out of the garage. As dawn lit up the tops of the distant mountains behind him, he checked his tyre pressures, and grey light stole over his tiny slave empire while he checked the leather harnesses. And all the while he could hear those six feet working to his command. Assured that all was well with the inanimate parts of his rig; he strolled back across the yard.
Endless hours on the treadmill had made Jenny and Sally fit to perform like this for hours, but it was much harder for Estelle, she was clearly suffering, and was noisily sucking great lungfuls of air through her gaping mouth. Kern accepted this, her physical training had only just begun, and he did not think he could work her in harness for at least another month. But he could not accept her knees being lifted so low. With the flat of his hand, he signalled to her that she should lift them higher, and he shook the whip out to its full length, as if to bite her skinny body with it. She had not yet felt the lash, although she had been caned several times. The knees lifted higher, and Kern drew the whip back. It always paid to be strict, exhaustion was not their master, he was.
Bored now, Kern took Sally and Jenny out of the line, across the yard, and into harness. Until recently it had been his custom to hobble them with shackles until he was ready to drive off, but now he rarely bothered. Sally could go nowhere without Jenny, and he had good reason to think that Jenny would not run. He took Estelle back to the cellar, where she flopped onto her mattress. She laid face down, her face buried into her folded arms, the picture of despair. On his way out of the house Kern stopped in the kitchen to check that the breakfast porridge was simmering nicely, then he went across the yard to mount his buggy.
When does a slave become a pony? In Kern’s world, it was when she was harnessed. As they were already warmed up, Kern ordered the trot as soon as the buggy was clear of the gate and out into the lane. The slaves were pulling well, and Kern had no real cause to use the whip, but the whipping devil was in him today, so he lashed them for more speed. He instantly regretted it; for there was a bright spurt of blood Jenny’s back, and she cried out in pain. Kern the pitiless had been trying to wean himself away from his habitual whip use, not because of any humanitarian feelings, but because of a concern that the physical condition of his slaves, especially Jenny, was deteriorating to an extent that could threaten his activities. And he needed Jenny’s strong body in his service for a while yet, at least until the new girl was ready for service.
Curiously, Jenny’s distressed cry had brought a little comfort to Sally. For a while now she had suspected that Kern was favouring Jenny over her, and for one or both of two reasons; Jenny was white, and she just had to be an old girlfriend of Kern’s. For although Jenny would freely discuss much of her past during their whispered conversations at night, Sally’s probing could never reveal how her cellmate had encountered the master. Jenny had once been married, and Sally knew that the husband had moved his dental practice to Canada, taking with him the plump hygienist who had displaced Jenny in his affections. Sally was fairly sure that sometime after that, Jenny had taken a new man into her life, and that man was now riding arrogantly behind them. Sally also knew that Jenny had been the first slave, and that the master had treated her with such extreme brutality that she had been lucky to survive. Not fortunate, for death would have been kinder, but definitely lucky.
And yet, for all her suffering, Jenny had rarely shown much bitterness, and although she should have been possessed by hatred for her tormentor, Sally could see no sign of it. Now, and it seemed to be since the new girl’s arrival, Jenny would hardly speak at all in the night, she would just point at the microphone in their cell, and turn over. Worse, there had been an incident that Sally thought very sinister. She had been put to work in the yard, scrubbing some car mats with a stiff brush. It was the kind of pointless activity that was constantly invented to keep the slaves busy. Working at a furious pace, to keep herself warm, Sally had happened to glance up from her task. Through the kitchen window, she saw a disturbing sight, Jenny and the master in animated conversation. Then the master had turned towards the window, and she quickly put her eyes back on her work. When she dared look up again, the kitchen was empty. The obvious conclusion was that Jenny had finally snapped, and was answering back. Sally fully expected that the next time she saw Jenny, she would show the bloody marks of a whipping, or would be walking with the painful semi-crouch of a girl who has just been caned. But Jenny displayed no mark of fresh punishment, and did not mention an altercation. This was very bad; something was up.
Sally’s sharp mind had proved highly resilient through all her ordeals, her body could be used and abused, but she retained her spirit to herself, hidden from the slave master. One day he would make a mistake, or he would be forgetful, or he would fail to notice some crucial detail; Sally would wait for that day, she would seize that day, and she would be his nemesis, his undoing. And so she was able to haul the beast along in his buggy, and clean his floors, and satisfy his base urges, whilst all the time believing this was only a brief interlude. Kern’s dark world of bondage could not possibly last long, surrounded as it was by a modern society; she would be free again. Her morale had not been destroyed by steel chains, or by bamboo and leather, but the thought of Jenny conspiring against her had dealt it a severe blow.
Jenny could not match Sally for brainpower, any more than she could match her for looks. And her self-esteem had been savaged by marital betrayal and divorce, before she had been made a slave. To be chained to a treadmill, to be forced to run naked before her brother, to be whipped and whipped and whipped when she just could not run any faster, these were things to demolish a stronger person than she had ever been. Trotting alongside Sally, it had not seemed possible that she could ever return to the ordinary world, where women wore clothes and were not subject to corporal punishment at their owner’s whim. Who would want her? Who would care for her? But now there was another hope. Kind words had been spoken; promises had been made. Now, with the itchy trickle of blood on her back, she wondered again if there was really any hope for her, but she was still determined to impress with her obedience. More effort had been demanded; as always, Jenny delivered.
On these morning buggy runs, it was Kern’s normal practice to give the slaves a brief rest in the woods, but today he made an exception. He thought that Jenny might be getting too cocky, and Sally was looking increasingly sullen, it was time to wake both their ideas up. So he gave them no respite; he drove them through the wood without stopping, and then along the lane to home. The complete circuit was slightly more than three miles; he would try to complete it in forty-five minutes. For there was the truth of it, neither of the slaves had any control at all over their present or their future. Kern’s grip on them was as tight as his grip on the reins and the whip; they were just helpless babes, lost in an evil wood.
Chapter 6: Metamorphosis
January dragged on, always quite cold, but only dipping below freezing at night. Each day opened with a rime of frost on the ground; murky mists filled the hollows of roads, and lingered all day around woods and hedgerows. In his first winter as a slaver, Kern had to make up the rules as he went along, and was obliged by reality to make constant revisions. As the month closed the night temperatures plummeted, and every dawn broke on a frozen landscape. Kern finally had to make concessions to the weather; his slaves no longer worked barefoot and naked, when prepared for harness they had training shoes on their feet, and were dressed in sweatshirts and baggy shorts. He could no longer enjoy such a fine view of their hard-working hindquarters when he drove them, but it was a matter of necessity.
Estelle’s training was stepped up day by day. By the beginning of February, Kern was running her for two hours a day on the treadmill, with another hour on the rowing machine. She had responded to discipline far better than he had expected; after a difficult first few days when she had seemed to be withdrawing into herself, she was now alert to command, and needed only an occasional touch of the cane to keep her motivated. Muscle tone was appearing, the time to put her in harness was fast approaching. Kern now had to progress his plans for Jenny, yet he was racked by doubt. Oh, he was fairly sure he could trust her, but he could he rely on her?
Kern’s plans for his sister differed in no material way from what Sally had already surmised. Jenny was to fill the roles of housekeeper, overseer, and demon’s familiar. She would cook, and supervise the slaves at their cleaning duties. She would have the slaves ready in harness every morning, and would afterwards take charge of them for the rest of the day. She would be on duty in Kern’s absence, and would thus provide some assurance against a casual caller or burglar making some very surprising discoveries. She would supervise the physical training programmes, and administer routine punishments. All in all, there was a busy life planned for her. And yet Kern hesitated; he had to admit to himself that he was reluctant to free any of his slaves.
His decision was taken one morning, as he worked the slaves slowly through the wood. The cold spell had broken, and the ground was softening. He decided that the slaves would no longer need their feet protected by shoes; the sweatshirts and shorts could also go. What date was it? He struggled for a while, and then concluded that it must be February 11th. That meant that Jenny was no longer thirty-three, it was her birthday. Last year he had sent her a card and flowers, this year he would give her the precious gift of freedom. Well, perhaps not quite freedom, but he would improve her status; a man should look out for his family. Unexpectedly, this decision lifted a burden from Kern. Tomorrow he would have naked slaves again, and he would not have to feel guilty that one of the vaginas he glimpsed between straining thighs was his sister’s. And what a pleasure it would be to have Estelle in harness, he looked forward to giving his newest slave her first taste of the driving whip.
Kern allowed the slaves to keep a slow pace all the way back to the yard. He left them in harness while he went to the kitchen to put out their breakfast, then he showered them. This was an everyday routine, the slaves stood impassively as their master soaped them. He always enjoyed washing Sally, feeling her soap-slippery breasts under his fingers, admiring the slightly darker skin of her shaved pubic mound. Her back looked good, with only very faint scarring from the flogging he had given her the previous year. He would have to ensure that Jenny did not mutilate his precious black slave, whose body was the real joy of his life.
As soon as he had Sally and Jenny sat for their breakfast, Kern brought Estelle from the cellar to join them at the table. Watching his three slaves as they ate, Kern speculated on their cash value. There was no way to put a price on any sexual or aesthetic considerations, so Kern performed a mental calculation based on minimum wage, twelve hours per day for twenty years. About half a million each. He had paid eighteen thousand for Estelle, quite a bargain. Suddenly his planned birthday present for Jenny looked ludicrously expensive, and his plans shifted.
After the meal, Kern took each of the slaves to the sandpit for the necessary unpleasantness of voiding their bowels. Then he took Sally to the treadmill, and Estelle to the rowing machine. He chained each girl by the wrists to her machine, and set her a target, which was still very difficult with Estelle because her grasp of English was limited. The Ukrainian girl set to at a fierce pace, Kern leaned in the doorway and watched the muscles in her shoulders, arms, and legs working. Yes, she was ready for harness. Kern then took Jenny to the utility room, but for the first time in her slave life she was not chained to a ring in the ceiling.
‘Jenny, when you have finished the laundry you are to come to my study.’
‘Yes Master’
This was a remarkably unsubtle test for Jenny. Kern did not for a moment think that she would shuffle out of the door and away down the lane, and if she did he would soon catch her. He was simply giving her the tiniest possible measure of freedom, in order to reassure himself that she would not abuse it. In his study, Kern sat himself at his desk and switched both his PC and the CCTV monitor on. First he checked the training room. Sally was running at a steady pace, she would easily reach her target and avoid the cane. Estelle was still pulling hard, always she liked to reach her target early, and then she would coast along to exceed it. Her head turned to stare at the camera, as if aware that she was being watched. Looking the master in the eye was a whipping offence, but Kern did not think he could apply that particular iron law when eyes were connected by co-axial cable. Discomfited by Estelle’s remote gaze, Kern hastily switched to the utility room. Jenny was sorting the laundry into the separate piles she would wash. Now, with one eye on the CCTV screen, the ruthless slave master settled into one of his favourite distractions, sending his tank armies across the battlefields of the computer game Red Alert.
The enemy infantry advanced in hordes; Kern’s incompetent rocket batteries fired over the heads of the minute soldiers on his screen, the missiles exploding ineffectively behind them. But now his line of Tesla coils crackled, and the enemy troops were fried. Kern prepared to send his armour against the enemy base, hoping to knock out the factory before the flame towers of his opponent cooked his tanks - and someone was knocking at the study door. Surely Jenny could not have finished already? But it could not possibly be anyone else.
‘Come in Jenny’
The door swung open, Jenny entered.
‘Have you finished your work Jenny?’
‘No Master, I am waiting for the drier to finish so I can put another load in.’
‘Very well. You can relax, I am not going to punish you.’
‘Yes Master. Thank you master.’ If Kern had sentenced her to be flogged to death, Jenny’s answer would have been the same.
‘You have been a good girl, and now I will reward you as I promised. But you must remember that I am still your master. If you are disobedient I will have to whip you, and if I am not satisfied with you work, well then I must cane you. Do you understand that?’
‘Yes Master. Please Master, you did not whip Sally for attacking you.’
‘I punished Sally as I saw fit to punish her. You must not question my judgement Jenny, or there will be no more of these conversations, and you will have no future but the harness and the whipping post.’
‘Yes Master. I’m very sorry Master.’
‘OK then. Now Jenny, you have been handled as my slave, you know what has to be done. Later today I will put Estelle in harness, in your place. You will learn to drive the buggy, and you must not fail me. Slaves are not obedient to me Jenny, they are obedient to the whip, and they have to know that I will use the whip. Could you use the whip Jenny?’
‘Yes Master. I could, Master’
Kern did not doubt that his sister was sincere, but he did doubt that she could win a battle of wills with Sally. If he was away, and Jenny tried to get Sally on the post for a whipping, what would be the outcome? Well, he would just have to lay down a set of rules that would prevent any such confrontation.
‘We will see then. Now you will finish the laundry, then you can return here and I will prepare you for your new duties.’
‘Yes Master. Thank you master.’
Jenny left, and Kern turned back to his PC screen. During the brief conversation with his sister, an enemy air attack had devastated his key installations, and his position was now precarious. Irritated, he closed the game programme, and fired up Microsoft Word. A freelance writer cannot earn his bread from tender sonnets that speak of everlasting love, not that Kern was inclined to write any, and an occasional poorly selling novel brings in very little money. Kern wrote what he had to write, and this week he was writing about a Chinese vacuum cleaner. He had a photocopied sheet of instructions from the factory, and a sample of the appliance stood in the corner. With his digital camera, and his minor gift for stringing words together, he would produce the camera-ready artwork for a glossy user manual.
Kern finished the main body of text for the Royal House Of Buckingham vacuum cleaner model Super King, and was working on the parts list when Jenny came knocking on the door again. Kern commanded her to enter, and she stood before him, with her eyes lowered and her hands clasped behind her back.
‘Please, Master. I have finished my work, Master.’
‘Go to the old spare room Jenny; it is where you will sleep now. You will find some clothes; put them on, then return here.’
‘Yes, Master. Thank you Master.’
The excited Jenny disappeared. The house had been built with four bedrooms. The tiny bedroom over the stairwell had become Kern’s study when he first moved into the house, Jenny’s old bedroom was now fitted for training and punishment, and that left the spare room, where he had decided to accommodate Jenny. He had bought two sets of clothes for her from a mail-order company. The tops and skirts were easy, but he had felt oddly uncomfortable about choosing panties for her. There was no question of buying anything too saucy for his sister, so he had settled on plain white cotton briefs. He had not bought her a bra, and for one very simple reason; although he had worked her naked for months, and had seen her body writhing under his lash, he had been embarrassed to ask her cup size.
In her new bedroom, Jenny was elated. She could hear the slaves working next door, and she felt no sympathy for them. The panties felt smooth and warm against her crotch, prompting her to think how nice it would be to see Sally’s and Estelle’s bare arses in front of her when she drove the buggy. The cool white blouse was like a lover’s touch on her nipples, and they became erect, as they had not done since - well, she could not remember when she had last been sexually aroused. Her crotch always became wet when she was beaten, but she knew that was common among women. The brain associates violence with sex, and prepares the body for penetration. She slipped into the dark blue skirt, and the matching cardigan. The shoes were black, striking a discordant note, but she would not dare mention that to her brother. Jenny intended that she would never again be strapped to the whipping post or the horse, and that no human being would ever again see her naked. She was enormously grateful to her brother, and she would serve him well, she would become his pearl beyond price.
Kern took the slaves from the training room to the cell; where he shackled them and left them to rest awhile. Then he finished his vacuum cleaner manual before sitting Jenny at the kitchen table for a cosy chat.
Jenny was drinking coffee with the master; her happiness was complete. Yes, she had suffered terribly at his hands, but that was all over now. He had only done what his nature told him to do, and nobody could blame a man for that. She listened intently as her role was explained to her. Kern gave her a tour of his vision, and she lapped it up. He concluded by giving his instructions for her first drive of the buggy. ‘I’m going to throw you in at the deep end, you can have an hour before lunch getting used to driving the slaves. Just walk them around the yard, practice stopping and starting, that sort of thing. Let them get used to a different driver, maybe tomorrow I’ll let you trot them up the lane.’
Excitement was building in Jenny. ‘I’ll be fine, trust me, I’ll be fine.’ She had deliberately failed to call him her master. If Kern noticed, he issued no reprimand. He went out to the lean-to, and returned in a moment with a riding crop, which he passed across the table to Jenny. Using the whip on harnessed slaves is a tricky matter. The lash has to brought down from above to avoid the traces; great care is needed if an eye is not to be taken out. Kern had decided that he could not risk letting Jenny drive the buggy with the whip he used, so he had replaced it. By leaning forward with the crop, she would be able to sting the slaves’ shoulders, but she would not be able to seriously damage them.
‘You will use this to drive with for the time being. When you are experienced you may have the driving whip. Always remember Jenny, they are my slaves, not yours. You must only use them as I order. Now, you start getting lunch ready, and I’ll harness the slaves for you.’
Chapter 7: Enter The Dragon
When Kern entered the cell, Estelle backed away from him as far as her chain would allow. He was annoyed; he had spent weeks training her to assume the submission position whenever her master appeared. Perhaps being moved from the cellar had confused her; he seized her roughly to handcuff her. Sally was in her proper position; Kern cuffed her and then took the naked pair to the buggy, which had been left out after the morning run. He chained them to the draft bar, but did not fit their harnesses.
Despite Sally having foreseen Jenny’s promotion, when the fully dressed woman strode across the yard with a smile of joy and triumph on her face, Sally stared at her in shock. The smile did not leave Jenny’s face as she came up to the buggy. She struck Sally across the breasts with the crop. ‘How dare you stare at me! I will cane you for your insolence. I am your mistress now, do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
Again Jenny struck Sally’s breasts with the crop, and the girl cried out in her pain. ‘Yes what?’ Jenny demanded.
‘Yes, Mistress.’
‘Now that’s better. Later on I will take you to the horse, and I will teach you that you must not stare at your mistress.’
‘Yes Mistress. Thank you Mistress.’
Kern was horrified by this incident. For all the time he had owned slaves he had carefully avoided damage to the soft tissues of the breasts, stomach, and genital area. Jenny was drunk on her new-found power, but Kern knew that he could not undermine her in front of the others, so he said nothing.
Now Jenny strutted around the buggy, wallowing in her position. She stopped in front the slaves, silently daring each of them to look her in the eye. Fortunately for them, and to Kern’s immense relief, both kept their eyes safely lowered. Jenny fitted the harnesses and bits competently enough, and then she removed their shackles, and took her place on the driving seat. She tightened the reigns, and gave her first driving command. ‘Walk!’
The obedient slaves lifted their knees, and the buggy rolled forward. Jenny walked them to the wall of the yard, and then pulled them into a very tight turn to re-cross the yard in the other direction. In zig-zag fashion, the buggy covered every available inch of the yard, and then Jenny set the slaves to trotting around the widest circle that the limited space would allow. She circled in one direction, and then the other, and she increased the speed to match her growing confidence. The riding crop was used with great vigour, and whichever pony was on the outside of the circle was thrashed for ever more speed. Kern did not feel that he could step in and stop this circus without destroying Jenny’s credibility, but nor could he stand and watch his property abused, so he went into the house.
Sat in the living room with a cup of tea, Kern reviewed the situation. Clearly, Jenny needed more time to settle into her new role before he could trust her enough that he could leave her in charge. The woman should not need to assert her dominance over the slaves in such a deliberately cruel manner. In Kern’s own mind he was a fairly kindly master, one who applied the rod or the lash in careful measure as circumstances dictated. Should he allow Sally to be caned? After all, she had only reacted with natural surprise on seeing Jenny fully clothed and carrying the riding crop, she did not deserve to be beaten. On the other hand, he always thought that a sentence given was sentence that must be carried out, and Jenny had been acting with his authority. So yes, he would stand back and let Jenny give the punishment, but afterwards he would have strong words with his sister, and might apply a course correction to her backside. Sipping his tea, he casually looked out of the window, and was dismayed to see Jenny drive the buggy out into the lane.
Leaping off the sofa, Kern ran out through the kitchen, out of the back door, and along the side of the house to the lane. He could see that Jenny was driving the slaves at a reckless speed, and they were already at least fifty yards up the lane. What to do? He could bellow after Jenny to order her back, but suppose she ignored him? Now the buggy was sixty yards or more away. How stupid he would look if he had to run after the buggy, and he doubted that he could sprint for more than two hundred yards; no, he would not catch up with it. Seventy yards away. He could hear the short thong at the end of the riding crop smacking the slaves; oh fuck, the stupid cow would kill them, they would collapse and die. Eighty yards away.
Kern abandoned his futile gaze at the retreating buggy; he went back through the yard to the garage. The Land Rover was reluctant to start, and his furious pumping of the throttle flooded the engine. He pushed the choke in, floored the throttle, and kept the starter motor turning the engine over in desperate hopes that the bastard would fire. The bastard did not fire, and Kerns ears told him that the battery was nearing exhaustion; he climbed out of the cab, slammed the door shut, and sat on the front bumper to await the buggy’s return.
Jenny was enjoying her drive. She had pulled the cart over this route so many times; it was fantastic to be in the driving seat at last. It was a pity her brother had not given her the whip to use, but he would do, and she was looking forward to that. As the buggy neared the turn-off into the wood, Jenny pulled back on the reins, slowing the slaves to a walk. With Jenny’s weight in the buggy instead of Kern’s, they had covered the lane faster than they had ever done before, but Jenny knew from her own experience that they could not possibly keep going at such a pace. She would let them idle through the wood, and then she would work them up to a good speed again, to arrive back in the yard like the winner in a chariot race.
Watching Sally’s rump, Jenny relished the caning to come. She rather thought that she would not gag the girl, but would let her holler. Jenny did not have a sexual connection to flagellation, as she knew that Kern had, for her it was an exercise in, and a demonstration of, her superiority. She was uneasy about Sally, and for a number of reasons. Whatever happened to her, the black girl always seemed to retain an inner confidence that her day would come, and Jenny was afraid that she was right. Jenny would never seek to expose Kern’s activities; she did not want to appear in the public spotlight as a mangled victim, she did not want to be questioned for endless weeks by detectives, she did not want to pored over by analysts and therapists, and she definitely did not want forensic photographers recording her scars for posterity. No, she felt that she was now her brother’s chosen one, and that was good enough. But Sally would not hesitate to destroy all their worlds, and she would turn it all into a pot of cash, Jenny had no doubt of that. There would be a lurid serialisation in the tabloid press, at least half a million quid there. There would be TV chat shows, and how much would she be offered to pose naked? She would be set up for life.
The thought of Sally naked triggered another of Jenny’s concerns. She knew that her brother took his sexual pleasures with Sally, and of itself, that did not bother her. Her worry was that fucking would lead to fondness, to affection, to misplaced loyalty, and finally to a disastrous love. How to avert it, that was the issue. Women are much less squeamish than men about biological matters; Jenny accepted that her brother’s body was constantly producing sperm, and that he would feel the need to relieve himself of it. It would not distress Jenny to help with that relief, but she realised that Kern was sensitive to the incest taboo; he could flog the hide off his sister’s back, but he could not fuck her.
And the other girl, Estelle. Had Kern been having her as well? Sally did not know, but she supposed that he had, and that might also lead to a catastrophic relationship. The only answer, the only way to keep her brother away from the slaves, was for Jenny to drain his precious fluids. She resolved that she would at least make the attempt, and as soon as possible. Turning out of the wood, with the buggy facing homewards, Jenny ordered the trot. The slaves did their best, but they could not keep the hot breath of the dragon off their backs.
Kern had worried himself sick in the buggy’s absence, when Jenny swung it back into the yard he felt the greatest relief of his life. Jenny flashed him a smile, then she was off her seat and shackling the slaves. Estelle swayed as she was taken to the cell, she was clearly close to collapse. Jenny drove the girl on with the crop, into the cell to be chained. Then she returned to the buggy for Sally. As she removed the pony’s harness she spoke to her. ‘I am not a slave anymore. You are a slave, you always will be a slave, and every time you look like forgetting it, I am going to beat you. Do you understand that?’
‘Yes, Mistress.’
‘You’d better understand. I am taking you to the horse now, to pay you for your insolence.’ She turned to Kern. ‘Will you watch me punish this one?’
Kern shook his head. ‘No. Don’t give her more than six.’ He was allowing the punishment for his own reasons. The sentence had been entirely Jenny’s initiative; once she had carried it out she would be locked in as his accomplice. So he stood out in the yard and he listened. He heard the thwack of the cane, and he heard Sally’s screams. His own distress amazed him, he realised that he was really fond of Sally; if any of his slaves had a royal stamp, then surely it was she.
In the cell, Estelle could not hear the cane, but she could hear the resultant screams. With her mere smattering of English, and from her limited contact with the other slaves, she did not have a good understanding of what was happening in this madhouse. But her instincts told her that a complex relationship was brewing between Sally, Jenny, and the man who made them all call him master. She was not sure where the greatest danger lay, inside that relationship, or outside looking in.
Chapter 8: The Roller Coaster
When Jenny returned from chaining Sally in the cell, Kern coldly ordered her to strip in the kitchen, and then he sent her up to the post. His fury was building as he tightened the straps around her wrists.
‘Jemmy, you must be fucking mad if you think I am going to let you behave like that with my slaves. You whacked Sally’s tits, I would never do that, it was a bloody bitchy thing to do. And why did you take them out of the yard? I told you to stay in the yard! What is the matter with you?’
He gave her no opportunity to reply before continuing. ‘I may have made a mistake with you; maybe you’re not up to it. I’m giving you twelve strokes for disobedience, and we’ll see how you get on over the next few days.’
‘Yes Master. Thank you Master.’ Jenny thought of somehow explaining her actions, but it was pointless. Kern was set on a flogging, and she would just have to take it.
Jenny was a hardy thing under the lash. She took the first two strokes as if she was made of wood, she gasped at the third and fourth, only after the fifth did she start to scream, when the torturing leather thong cut deep into scar tissue. This was not the high-pitched woman’s scream of a horror film; it was something deep and desperate, something that frightened and disturbed Kern to such an extent that he wished he had gagged her. But she remained conscious throughout, and she retained control of her bladder and bowels. She must have been counting the strokes, for she thanked her brother after the twelfth.
Kern wrapped Jenny in a towel, to prevent blood from dripping onto the stairway carpet, and then he took her to the cellar. A flogged slave may think there is nothing to loose, so he shackled her feet, and he fitted her with the collar ring that Estelle had recently worn. As he attached a chain from the floor ring to the collar, Kern gave some brotherly advice. ‘You should have risen above this by now, but you’ve been punished so there’s an end to it. Try to be sensible when you are driving, be perfectly obedient to me, and things should work out OK.’
He left Jenny chained in the cellar, naked except for a bloody towel. A whipping always gave him a throbbing erection, so now he went out to the cell, and he unchained Estelle from the floor ring. Sally’s sleek black body was more appealing, but he knew that she was still in pain from the beating Jenny had given her; it had to be Estelle. He took the girl to the living room, removed her shackles, and sat her on the sofa. Sitting next to her, he encircled her with an arm, and then he began to fondle her breasts. He was astonished when she took hold of his penis, and delighted when she slid down to take it in her mouth.
Kern ejaculated very quickly, then Estelle pushed him back down onto the sofa, and she climbed on top of him. She took his right hand, and placed it in her crotch. The slave was controlling the master, but Kern did not resist. She leaned forward, brushing her nipples against his lips. Kern felt his erection returning from the dead; he took Estelle by the hand and led her to his bed. Repeat performances do not come easily to a middle-aged man, but it was all easy for Estelle. She exhausted her master, and soon he slept.
Only a dull light shone through the drawn bedroom curtains when Kern awoke, night was falling, it must be after five He shot out a hand to feel for Estelle, but she was gone. This was it then, the police would have a wide cordon around the place, soon they would be coming into the house for him. He lay still for several minutes, breathing deeply, trying to get his pounding heart under control. If only he hadn’t chained Jenny in the cellar, she could have prevented this. If only he had returned Estelle to the cell after fucking her. So many if only’s, but no regrets, he had enjoyed his time as a slave master.
What would happen next? He did not think the police would sit and wait for him to emerge, not when he was alone in the house. He rolled out of bed and across to a window. With a hand ready to twitch a curtain back, he stopped; that would be asking for a bullet in the face. On hands and knees, he crawled to the door, where he stopped to listen for whispered words on the landing. There was nothing to hear, so he cautiously opened the door, and scuttled out. He peered over the banister, but could discern no Kevlar-clad officers, no snouts of Heckler & Koch sub-machineguns. Could it be that the police simply had not arrived yet? That would be too good to be true, but Kern felt a little optimism returning as he crept down the stairs. The living room was clear, the kitchen was clear, he moved to the back door.
Grasping the door-handle, Kern hesitated. He muttered ‘Go on then, shoot me you fuckers’ to himself, and then he threw the door open. Sally and Jenny were harnessed to the buggy, as they had been for two hours. In front of them stood Estelle, dressed in the clothes that Jenny had been stripped of in the kitchen, and holding the driving whip. Sally’s face had its usual sphinx-like impassivity; Jenny’s betrayed her turmoil. Hearing the door open, she turned to her brother to appeal for relief from this rebellious slave bitch who had whipped her up the cellar steps. Estelle laid the whip across that torn and bloody back, Jenny faced front again.
Kern’s eyes took it all in; two fine strong slaves, and Estelle in complete control. He smiled as he greeted his new Queen.
Chapter 9: A Way Through The Wood
Early on a May morning, Kern sat at his kitchen table, drinking tea and watching his three women in the yard. Estelle was moving briskly and confidently as she harnessed Sally and Jenny to the buggy. Satisfied with her work, she came into the kitchen, where she joined Kern at the table, and poured a cup of tea. ‘All is good.’ She announced, and she gave him that cheeky grin again, the same one she had given him half an hour earlier when she had sat astride him on the bed. Kern half-smiled at her, but said nothing. He finished his tea, tousled her hair affectionately, and then went out to the yard.
The two slaves fidgeted nervously at his approach. He stooped to remove their shackles, and then took his seat in the buggy. Before Estelle had changed his life, he had often enjoyed fondling Sally’s breasts before driving her, but not now, not with Estelle watching through the window. He drove the buggy slowly past the house, and out onto the lane. Heading towards the wood, Kern mulled over the events of the past months. After paying eighteen thousand pounds for Estelle, he had not had any real slave value out of her. But the girl had redeemed what she owed him simply by staying when she could have fled, when she could have brought his whole world crashing down. And she had stayed on her own terms, as his mistress in bed, and as the mistress of his slaves.
Her woman’s common sense had told her that she must stop Kern’s sexual contacts with Sally, and she had done exactly that. He would wake in the morning to find Estelle’s cunning fingers coaxing his penis into life; she would always drain him before he went to the slave cell. And the slaves were now dressed at all times other than when in harness; no way was Estelle going to have nude women about the place, so she had sat and ordered suitable clothing from the Argos catalogue. Suitable meant that Kern could no longer relish the sight of Sally’s breasts swinging as she worked with broom or mop; now he only saw her dusky body when she was pulling the buggy. And no more did he enjoy the slave master’s supreme privilege, flogging a naked slave at the post, for Estelle had quickly assumed the role of overseer.
Without the burden of an interest in their flesh, Estelle was able to take a detached and utilitarian view of slavery. She was amused by Kern’s insistence on using his slaves to draw the buggy; she recognised that it was a kink, but she did not pretend to share it. She let Kern take his enjoyment from buggy driving, but for the rest of the time the slaves were her domestic appliances. Whereas Kern had always been nervous of having a slave cook for him, Estelle had no such qualms; immediately following her ascendancy she had put Sally to work in the kitchen. Jenny had been used as a cleaning machine, paintwork had been scrubbed, and woodwork polished to a mirror finish. Every carpet in the house had been painstakingly hand-shampooed, a task that would have been unthinkable without the unflagging hands of slaves; Estelle had worked them for fourteen hours a day on that job.
At first the slaves had accepted Estelle’s power to send them to the whipping post only because they assumed, probably correctly, that Kern would cut them to pieces if they challenged his paramour. But Estelle very quickly gained her own authority over Sally and Jenny, essentially because she was a fair mistress. If they were obedient, if they worked hard, then they would not be punished. But if a smudge were left on a polished surface, or if a meal was not prepared correctly, then the offending slave would be released from wherever she was chained, and Estelle would point upstairs, to the post. No English was needed; the slaves knew what was upstairs, and why Estelle would want them there.
She had whipped each of them several times, but clearly took no pleasure in it. She would not use the cane, or the back-shredding bullwhip; the driving whip was her only tool. Estelle’s punishments would make the slaves howl, and they would finish with a shiny patina of blood on their backs, but she did not mutilate them. The punishment would always be ten strokes; she would have them strip to the waist, and then she would lash their bare backs. Kern had watched her at this work, and it was the most erotic thing he had ever seen. With her face calm and impassive, Estelle would stand back for about twenty seconds between strokes, giving the slave time to suffer each bite of the whip, and to anticipate the next. After the punishment, and while the slave was still strapped to the post, Estelle would sponge the bloody back, and then towel it dry. No recuperation was allowed; the slave would be dressed and put back to work immediately.
Swinging the whip was about the only labour that Estelle undertook. She would not wash a cup, or lift a duster, or make a sandwich. She liked to stay up late watching satellite TV, and as she insisted that dirty dishes could not be left overnight, Sally would often be kept on her chain in the kitchen until the early hours, until the last cup of coffee had been drained, and the last snack consumed. The slaves had to be up again to pull the buggy on the dawn run, so Sally would get as little as three hours sleep at night. Estelle usually allowed them to rest on their bunks for a few hours during the day, but only if she had no work for them. She had learned how fear of the whip could overcome tiredness.
Now, as his two ponygirls pulled the buggy along the lane, Kern felt an increasing resentment towards Estelle. She had made a lot of useful changes, he could recognise that. She gave him good sex, enthusiastic sex; just as importantly, she gave willingly, which was a novelty in Kern’s life. And putting Sally in the kitchen had worked out brilliantly, although it was putting pounds on him. But he no longer felt like he was the master in his own house, something would have to be done. He turned the buggy onto the track through the wood, and whipped the slaves up to a trot.
The lash stung Jenny’s shoulders; that was the only communication she had with her brother now; he pulled back on the reins to slow down, and he used the lash to speed up. In the week after Estelle had become Kern’s queen, Jenny had tried to speak to him one day. She had been on her hands and knees, working on a stain in the living room carpet, when he had passed her. ‘Please Master, may I speak with you?’ She muttered furtively.
Her intention had been to beg for another chance as his overseer. He had ignored her, but a few minutes later Estelle had sent her up to the post. To have that little slip of a girl, who was not much more than half her age, strip her to the waist and whip her was a bitter humiliation to Jenny. She had to admit that it was less agonising than being bullwhipped by Kern, but it still should not be happening. And the girl was so cold about it all; never excited, never angry, she seemed to regard a whipping as being akin to changing a vacuum cleaner bag, it was something you did to make a machine work properly.
Estelle had whipped Jenny on two other occasions, for unsatisfactory cleaning work, and for falling asleep in the utility room. Sally had been whipped twice, for serving tea in a cup that was not perfectly clean, and for stealing food. When working in the kitchen, Sally was surrounded by the temptation of food that would never be given to the slaves, and often she had treated herself to a few morsels. But her luck had run out when she had been caught in the act of popping a piece of cheese into her mouth, and Estelle had painted her back red.
Sally despised all of the household’s three white people, but Jenny most of all. She understood that Kern was a sexual sadist, driven by a pathological need to control women, while Estelle was a stranger in a very strange land, who was making the best of her situation. But Jenny was something else; a calculating, treacherous thing, who had spitefully used her moment of supremacy to give Sally a thrashing with the cane. Sally could not understand that, and she would never forgive it. She preferred life under the rational Estelle to the former situation; mainly because she no longer had to entertain Kern, but also because there was now some protection given to feminine modesty. And except when in harness, she no longer had to be in constant fear of the whip; Estelle expected every job to be done perfectly, but she did not dole out punishment for amusement. As always, Sally waited. She waited for the wheel of chance to spin for her, as she was sure it would.
Kern gave the slaves their usual short rest in the wood. As they both squatted to urinate, he took a stroll, and he pondered his best course of action. It irritated him that Estelle could not share his love of pony driving, but he supposed that she was unable to appreciate it as an expression of total power and control. What really worried him was the awful thought that behind her shrewd eyes she might be mocking him. Saucy cow, perhaps he should whip her. But then he would be utterly alone in the world, and he could not bear that, not now he was accustomed to sharing his life with – with what? With a friend, for that’s what she was. Together they had got quietly drunk while watching the TV, they had roared with laughter together as Estelle had tried to read English newspapers. Together is a powerful adhesive; Kern knew he could not pull away from her now.
Taking his seat in the buggy again, Kern tried to stop himself from fretting. Estelle was running the house very well, he should be grateful to her, and let her get on with it. And yet, as he sat behind the slaves, Sally’s powerful body pulled at him like a magnet. He thought of how he used to enjoy the warmth of her, how he had ejaculated between her breasts, and watched his milky fluid run over the rich tones of her skin. He had always thought that the pallid bodies of white women looked far too much like the tenants of graves, and had preferred darker meat. Tonight he would be sharing his bed with Estelle, but when he entered her, he would be thinking of Sally. Bloody hell, it was like marriage.
He drove the slaves home, frequently cracking the whip over their heads, and giving Jenny a few lashes with it. But he was careful not to cut Sally; he had plans for that gorgeous body.
Chapter 10: A Bird Flies
When Kern arrived back at the house, Estelle was waiting in yard, as she usually was. She shackled the slaves’ feet, and then took Sally to the cell to shower and dress. In a few minutes, Sally was preparing breakfast in the kitchen. Estelle returned to the buggy to fetch Jenny, who was then showered, dressed, and ready for her role of serving maid. In the meantime, Kern watched the news headlines on TV; after breakfast he would have to crack on with some work, but for now he relaxed.
Sitting at the kitchen table, Kern slowly chewed his toast, and watched Estelle eat. She was enjoying what hotels misleadingly call a Full English Breakfast; sausages, mushrooms, eggs, bacon, fried bread, and tomatoes. He wondered how she could eat so much without piling weight on. She ate American style, cutting her food up, and then transferring the fork to her right hand. She looked up at him. ‘Today we go shopping?’ Her English was coming along in leaps and bounds; she used French, in which she was fluent, as an intermediate language. When she could not find the right English phrase she would try some French, and if Kern did not understand she would simply repeat the words, but much louder. Like most of his generation, Kern had studied French for four years at secondary school, but had only a weak smattering of the language.
‘No, today I must work.’ Kern replied in carefully enunciated robotic English. And he spoke the truth, for his financial situation was becoming critical. He had sunk as low as a freelance writer can get, he was taking in proofreading work. If he took Estelle into town he would spend money he just did not have, which would mean increasing his ominous credit card balance.
‘Tomorrow we go shopping?’ Estelle was pleading with him now.
‘Maybe tomorrow. Maybe.’ Kern swallowed the last of his tea, left the table, and went up to his study. He switched on his PC, and clicked on his internet connection icon. Outlook Express found no new email, so he fired up IE and proceeded to check through his various alias mailboxes. There was nothing for him; his former confidant, the Canadian dentist, no longer corresponded. Kern then uploaded selected photos of his slaves to appropriate newsgroups; he had recently started to do this as a way to ensure that something of him would continue whatever happened. His pictures of their whipped backs had been well received, and he was glad that he had taken some nice shots of Estelle strapped across the caning horse. Work, he had to do some work. He closed the internet connection, then inserted a CD from a double-glazing company. The CD contained several dozen images of windows, doors, and conservatories; Kern’s task was to select the best of them, crop and touch them up as necessary, spin a few words around them, and produce the artwork for a two-sided advertising flier that would be inserted into newspapers. A piece of cake, and he did not intend to spend more than a day on it.
He heard Estelle bring a slave upstairs, and then he could hear the rowing machine creaking rhythmically. Shortly after, the other slave was brought up, and then he heard the whirr of the treadmill resistance fan. Kern ignored the routine around him; he worked quickly and efficiently on the job in hand, which would bring in five hundred pounds. He was progressing faster than he had expected, and he thought he deserved a coffee. He went out to the landing, and shouted down to Estelle. There was no reply; he supposed she was out in the garden. Jenny would have to do it then, so he went into the training room to fetch her.
Both slaves were dressed in the shorts and T-shirts Estelle had ordered as their training kit. Seeing Sally in the rowing machine instantly aroused Kern, the front of her shirt had become translucent with sweat, her shoulder muscles rippled as she worked the oars. He knew that he must have her again, but not now. He turned to the treadmill. ‘Jenny, stop.’
‘Yes, Master.’
‘Put your feet together.’
‘Yes, Master.’
Jenny was soon shackled, and making her cautious was down the stairs to the kitchen. Kern returned to his study, but could not get back into his work. He was still staring idly at the PC screen when Jenny arrived with his coffee and biscuits. He told her to put the tray on his desk, and then he took her back to the treadmill. With a biscuit sticking out of his mouth like a cigar, he attacked the keyboard, determined to get the job finished. As always, when he piled on the pressure the words began to flow, and he had finished the copy while the coffee was still warm. Draining the mug, he heard a commotion from next door, so he went to investigate. Sally was no longer in the training room; Estelle must have taken her downstairs without him hearing. But Jenny was still there, she was gagged, and Estelle was strapping her to the whipping post.
Kern realised what was happening, he had taken Jenny off the machine for at least ten minutes, so she had not completed the required distance. And now Estelle, unaware of the interruption, was going to whip her for failing to reach her exercise target. Jenny turned her head towards her master and brother, her eyes made a desperate appeal to him. Kern considered intervening, but rejected the notion. There had not been a whipping in the house for weeks; it was good for the slaves to get a regular taste of leather. He stayed to watch.
Estelle swung the whip in her usual unenthusiastic but effective way; Jenny’s scarred back was soon streaming blood. It seemed to Kern that Jenny’s back was becoming ever more fragile; her stifled cries through the gag, and the violent jerking of her body when the lash bit told of her intense suffering. He remembered how stoic she had been the last time he bullwhipped her, and he wondered if she was coming to the end of her endurance. When the punishment was over, Estelle was intending to put Jenny back on the treadmill to finish her distance, but Kern stopped her. ‘Leave her with me Estelle.’ He wanted to have a talk with Jenny. But Estelle was adamant. ‘No, she must finish.’
Kern felt his temper rising. ‘Estelle, I said leave her with me.’
Estelle did not reply, but she retained her grip on Jenny’s arm, and she glared at Kern, who made an instant decision. He slapped Estelle’s face, and he pointed at the post. The girl understood immediately, the colour drained from her face, but she kept her dignity, she would not plead. She took of her blouse and bra, and she placed her hands in position to be strapped to the post. Kern made her take off her skirt and panties as well, to Jenny’s immense delight. But Jenny was not to have the pleasure of seeing Estelle flogged; Kern took her to the cell. Passing through the kitchen, he noticed that Sally was preparing lunch.
Back in the training room, with Estelle’s naked form on the post, Kern realised that he had never whipped her before. He considered the using the bullwhip on her, but did not want to cut her too badly, so he settled on the whip that had just been used on Jenny. He swung it as hard as he could, and his victim screamed at every stroke. She fainted once, but the next stroke revived her to scream again. Twelve lashes seemed like enough to end her arrogance for once and for all; she was crying bitterly as Kern released her from the post. Her legs buckled under her, he carried her to the bedroom and laid her on the bed. Never before had he felt such remorse; seeing her body racked by huge sobs, he felt his own eyes cloud with tears. He lay down beside her, and together they cried themselves to sleep.
In the kitchen, Sally was worried; the pie she had cooked for lunch would have to come out of the oven soon, or it would burn. She busied herself with chopping salad, the wicked blade of her knife slicing through tomatoes, celery, lettuce, and spring onions. It was precisely because he had feared the weapons potential of the kitchen that Kern had not used a slave cook, it had taken Estelle’s recognition of how powerfully the slaves had been conditioned to obedience to change that. Sally finished with the salad; she was becoming increasingly concerned that she might be whipped for burning the pie; there was still no sign of the boss and his bitch. Turning to the oven, she saw Estelle standing in the doorway, a strange expression on her face.
Sally was frozen, she stood with the knife pointing at Estelle, who smiled and came up to her. She put her arms around Sally, and kissed her full on the lips; Sally was horrified, it had not occurred to her that Estelle might be a lesbian. But she had been trained to obey, so she parted her lips to receive a probing tongue, and she opened her thighs for the exploring hand she expected. The embarrassed Estelle pulled back quickly, she smiled at Sally again, and she shook her head. She said one word. ‘Goodbye.’ Then she left through the back door, closing it quietly behind her. Out in the yard, she wondered if she should take her farewells of Jenny; but no, she thought that Jenny probably took whippings personally, and time was pressing. She went out to the lane, and walked quickly towards the main road.
Seconds after waking, an instinct had told Kern that he would not be seeing Estelle again, and he was quickly able to confirm it. He raged around the house, Sally was so terrified that she sat at the kitchen table and wept, something she very rarely did. But Kern’s anger was entirely directed at himself, at his own stupidity. Why had he thought he could whip a free woman? And why had he not chained her in the cellar afterwards? He did not delude himself that Estelle might come back, or that he would be able to find her; she would easily and invisibly slip into the general population, just another fish in the ocean.
But even while wallowing in his tragedy, Kern knew that he had to come to terms with the new situation. Life had to go on; there were slaves to be fed, worked, and controlled. He decided that he would continue with the household routine established by Estelle, it worked well enough. As evening came on, he stripped the slaves for a run. Neither of them had been fed since breakfast, they were both hungry. That suited Kern, he believed that a slave should always be hungry, and should frequently feel the benefit of the lash. He drove them at a brisk walk up the lane, wandered through the wood without stopping, and then trotted them home.
Sally baked a fresh pie while Kern bathed and changed, he had instructed her to throw the previous one away, and not to dare touch it. Jenny waited at his table, after which she was put in the cell for the night, still hungry. He kept Sally in the kitchen until midnight, and then he took her to his bed. One of the good things about Estelle had been that he did not have to chain her to the bed, but he really did not notice the shackle around Sally’s left ankle as she brought him to climax with her lips.
Chapter 11: The Black Angel
Day followed day, slowly for the slaves, and quickly for Kern. He tried to keep the house as clean as Estelle had left it, but found that the required level of detailed supervision bored him. Inspired by a TV programme on female body builders, he stepped up Sally’s physical training; the conviction set in that if only he trained her hard enough, she would be able to pull the buggy alone. He brought the cane back into use, the main recipient being Sally, for often she could not meet her training targets.
Every buggy run was timed now, Kern aimed to shave ten seconds off each day. He tried to be moderate with the whip, but his own targets forced him to lash the slaves more and more, so that their backs were always raw. Both slaves were becoming desperate and despondent; their lives were a living hell of work and punishment. One day, Jenny plucked up the courage to appeal to her master. ‘Please Master, may I speak to you?’
‘Go on then.’ Kern was very guarded.
‘Please Master, I am working for you as hard as I can, although I don’t think Sally is. You are whipping me so much, but I can work just as hard without being whipped, maybe I could work harder.’
‘Well Jenny, it is my right to whip you as I see fit, so I will flog you for your insolence.’
‘Yes Master, thank you Master.’ Jenny went to the post, Kern cut ten stripes in her buttocks with the bullwhip, her back was in too poor a state to be flogged.
That evening, Kern took the buggy out as usual. Jenny was still in great pain from her whipping, and had difficulty walking to the buggy. Kern thought that she would loosen up, but decided that he would not time the run; he would give them an easy circuit. Slowly and painfully, Jenny dragged her body and her half of the load up the lane. After turning into the wood, Kern ordered the trot. Jenny did not even begin to respond; Kern lashed her savagely, and she dropped to her knees coughing and retching.. He dismounted, Jenny’s bulging eyes and greying face told him that he could drive her no further. He un-harnessed her, and knelt beside her. ‘Jenny, can you hear me?’
‘Yes, Master.’
‘You are to follow the buggy home. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Master.’
Kern resumed his seat. The shortest way home was to retrace the buggy’s path, so he hauled on Sally’s right rein and gave her a flick with the whip. She jumped forward, and the buggy turned. Hauling Kern’s weight alone was a challenge for her, and she had difficulty keeping a straight line. Kern was strict in keeping her moving, but did not whip her insanely. Every few minutes he would look behind to check on Jenny’s progress; she seemed to be recovering, and kept close to the buggy.
Arriving back in the yard, Kern immediately un-harnessed Sally. Crucially, he had not shackled her when Jenny came up to them. Kern turned away from Sally, and took Jenny’s arm; he led her over to the shower pole, to chain her there while he dealt with Sally.
This was the moment of carelessness that Sally had awaited for so long; she was completely unrestrained. For a second or two, she considered whether to run. She looked at Kern; he had his back to her while he fitted Jenny’s neck chain. Her mind was made up when she heard the angry rasp of a truck horn from the main road; that was her starting signal, she ran for the side of the house, giving Kern a hard shove in the back as she passed him. Caught off balance, Kern fell forward, but kept himself off the ground with his hands; looking up, he saw Sally disappearing around the side of the house. He propelled himself forward like a sprinter leaving the starting block, and the race was on.
Sally turned right into the hedge-lined lane, heading for the sound of the real world. About a hundred yards from the house, the lane curved to the left; looking straight ahead as she ran, Sally could see across two fields to the road, where the low sun was flashing off the windows of vehicles. She did not take the bend; instead she rolled over the top of the hedge, thorns tearing cruelly at her flesh. As she landed in the field she looked back, to see Kern pounding down the lane after her, and she set off again, ignoring her lacerated hands and stomach. Kern followed his runaway slave over the hedge; his clothing protected him from the worst of the thorns.
Day after day, week after week, Sally had been worked on the treadmill. The leg strength and the stamina that had been forced into her under the ever-present threat of a beating now told in her favour. As hunter and hunted crossed the field of half-grown oilseed, the distance between them stretched rapidly. There was a wire fence at the bottom of the oilseed field, then a field of sugar beet, then another hedge, on the far side of which was the road. Sally reached the fence; she put one hand on top of a post, and tried to vault over the wire. She almost cleared it, but her left foot caught the top wire, and she fell heavily into the field beyond. As she regained her feet, a jagged pain from her right ankle made her cry out, momentarily lifting Kern’s spirits. But she carried on, half hopping and half running, through the beet tops towards freedom and safety.
To Kern, Sally’s black form fluttering across the field was like the angel of death. In another two hundred yard she would reach the bottom hedge, and then the road. He stopped at the fence, and leaned against it with his chest heaving. The early evening traffic was a steady roar; salesmen, commuters, and truckers competed for scarce road space. He stood and watched hopelessly, someone had seen her. A truck drew up at the side of the road, its hazard lights flashing. Kern saw the driver come around the front of the truck to the hedge, the nosey bastard was shouting something to Sally; Kern could not hear his words, but he heard Sally’s reply. ‘Help me, please God help me.’
Other drivers were pulling up behind the truck, a small crowd was gathering at the hedge, arms were outstretched to help the fugitive; a man was taking his jacket off to give some cover to her naked body. A woman saw Kern, pointed at him; for a terrible moment he thought he was to be pursued by a mob. He turned towards his house, trying to walk with dignity, but his self-control was breaking as he retraced his footsteps across the oilseed field; he stumbled across its furrows, falling several times.
Jenny, of course, was still where he had left her. When she saw Kern return alone, and covered in mud, she knew that Sally had got away. Things were ending exactly as she had dreaded, in the most disastrous way possible. An emotional storm raged across Kern’s face; he looked ready to kill, and ready to die. He walked past Sally without looking at her, straight into the house. The darkest of terrors flashed across Jenny’s mind; he might inflict a final satanic orgy of flagellation on her; he might end both their lives on his own terms. When he re-appeared he was carrying a whip; he came over to Jenny, and her fear vented itself as a high-pitched porcine squealing.
But Kern’s wishes were shockingly mundane. ‘Time for you to do the laundry.’ And he unfastened her chain, seized her by the arm, and marched her to the utility room. She was again chained by the neck, and she set to work. Her brother was baffling her now, she wondered if he just could not accept reality, and had shut it out. Part of her still wanted to protect him, part of her desperately wanted protection from him. Her mind tried to work out the likely sequence of events. Sally must have reached the road, or Kern would not have come back without her. Someone would have used a mobile phone to call 999, they would have asked for police and ambulance. How long would the ambulance take? Maybe twenty minutes, but the police would arrive much quicker. So Sally would blurt out her story, and she would point a shaky hand in the direction of her former prison. Jenny figured that in half an hour at the very most, the fat lady would sing, and it would all be over.
Half an hour passed, an hour, two hours. Was it possible that nobody would believe Sally's absurd tale of brutal slavery? No, Jenny knew there was no chance of that; the forces of retribution would surely be gathering for an irresistible assault.
There was a brittle tension between the last two players in the drama; Jenny finished the washing, Kern made her do it again. He checked on her minute by minute, striding into the utility room with the whip in his hand. He knew his nerves were getting the better of him, but could do nothing about it. Standing in the doorway watching Jenny work, Kern suddenly realised that there was no traffic noise from the main road. Jenny must have noticed too, for she turned her head, and she committed the cardinal sin of looking her master in the eye. He advanced on her, and released her neck chain.
'You should know better, I'm taking you up to the post.' It would be good to hear the smack of leather on her back, and he would not get another chance.
Jenny shook her head, and tears welled up in her eyes. 'There’s no traffic, Bob. The police must have closed the road; they'll be here soon. You can’t whip me now.'
Kern seized her by a wrist, dragged her into the kitchen. Now they could both hear a helicopter approaching. With his free hand, Kern picked up a pair of handcuffs from the table, he tried to turn Jenny to cuff her, but she fought him, lashing out with her fists. He closed with her, and managed to get a grip on each of her wrists, but still she struggled. The swishing throb of rotor blades filled the air as the two of them wrestled. They fell onto a chair, it collapsed under their combined weight, two of its legs detaching completely. Kern landed on top of Jenny, and pinned her wrists to the floor with his hands. Breathless from the fight, he gasped as he held her down.
Jenny screamed at him. 'Let me go, let me go - can't you see it's all over?'
Kern hauled her upright, spun her round, cuffed her at last, and turned her to face him again. The helicopter noise was fading; it had passed over the house and was moving away.
Jenny spoke again, this time more quietly. ‘Dress me Bob, we can deny it all. It will be our word against the black bitch, we can say she was a willing player until she lost her nerve and ran, nothing will come of it. I’ll still be your slave - and anything else you want me to be.’
Their eyes locked for a moment, but Kern did not reply. Jenny had been his first slave; now she was his last, and his visitors would find things in good order. He took her to the cell, gagged her, and chained her to the floor. As he returned to the house, he could hear booted feet running in the lane, and now he could see the navigation lights of the helicopter, it was sliding sideways towards him from the direction of the wood, a couple of hundred feet off the ground, its turbine noise a shrieking roar. Kern had watched the TV cop shows; he knew they would have a thermal imaging camera locked onto him. Now, and for the first time, an icy fear came over him.
He darted into the house, slammed the door behind him, and put the whip down on the table. It had been the first whip that he had ever used, on Jenny, when she was first chained to the treadmill. And he had lashed her up the lane and through the wood with it, on those difficult runs with a single pony. Later on, when he had taken Sally as his second slave, it had easily persuaded the pair of them that they could keep trotting when their bodies were begging for a halt. Yes, that whip had given him good service, it was a pity he would not be using it again. Estelle had used it too, but the memory of her brought a lump to his throat, so he forced his mind back to the present, where time was so desperately short. If only he could have one last drive, or one last flogging; a vivid memory of Sally writhing under the lash gave him his last erection, it was to last for the last thirty seconds of his life.
Almost calmly, Kern walked out into the yard, he was smiling at a pleasing memory of how he had once curled the bullwhip around Sally’s body, and its tip had caught her right nipple; the girl had fainted from the pain. The fear had left him, he was not unhappy, and he was not ashamed. What millions could only dream about, he had done. He had grabbed his dream, not his dick. That dream had lasted for only a year, but in that time he had experienced more pleasures than enrich a dozen dull lives. Was there someone crouching against the back wall? He walked forward to see who was skulking there, and then someone was shouting at him from behind. ‘Armed police! Drop the weapon! Drop the weapon!’
Kern was bewildered, for he had no weapon. He whirled around to face his challenger; bullets hit him in the neck and chest, and he fell to the ground. His last thought was that he had been far too soft with the slaves, and for a few seconds before life was extinct his right arm twitched up and down, as if it were holding a whip.

* * *
Jenny’s psychiatrist was initially opposed to her attending Kern’s burial, but persuaded himself that it might help her to draw a line under the affair. There had been pressure to have Kern cremated, but Jenny stood firm; people just wanted to destroy her brother, and she would not have that. Inevitably, there were uninvited guests; a camera crew, several press photographers, and a clutch of onlookers. Jenny was the only mourner, but as the car took her out through the cemetery gates she saw a small brunette stood on the pavement, clutching a bunch of lilies. Seeing Estelle’s face again, for the first time since the little bitch had whipped her on the day she had left, was a tremendous shock for Jenny. But she did not cry out; settling back into the soft leather upholstery, she dreamed of sweet revenge.

The End

Copyright© 2001,2012 by Carter Fell. All rights reserved.