Chapter 1

 

Andy and I were both IronMan competitors — all right, if you want to be pedantic about it, IronMan and IronWoman, - and while we were not yet near the top of the tree, we were both getting nearer and nearer.

We had been sweethearts ever since school when we found we had so many interests in common, not the least of which was a love of sport — hard sport and living on the Gold Coast of Queensland, we had naturally gravitated to the Nippers Surf Club and from it to the senior Club at Currumbin from whence we became interested in the IronMan competition.

For those who are not familiar with this gruelling sport, it involves swimming, cycling and running — the classic triathlon.  About four kilometres swimming, nearly two hundred on the bike and over forty in a marathon run so you can see you have to be ultra fit to even complete the course let alone gain a place.

Andy and I spent all our spare time in training but we were also good students academically and this led us to aim for a university course in physical education.  This was where Sports Shoes Unlimited came in.  The pair of us had been approached by Kerry Harker.  Neither of us liked him but he came up with the goods and we put our antipathy aside.

What his company was offering was a full four year scholarship for each of us.  They would pay our tuition and other fees and also give us a living allowance.  In return, we would be required to feature in their rather racy ads and make appearances as required but not so as to interfere with our studies or regular training.

We were a trifle ashamed at what we would have to do in their advertisements but we put it aside for it really was an incredible offer and in any case we were proud of our bodies.  They were, we thought, about as good as you could get them and although we would be naked, our private parts would not be seen — at least not by the public.

What we didn’t know was that Kerry, that total and utter slime-bag, had private copies of the unedited tapes — parts that showed us in all our naked glory.  These, we eventually found out, he used not only for his private sexual pleasure, but also to offer us to a small band of very, very wealthy men who indulged in modern day slavery — slavery of a very special kind — human galley slaves!

He was paid very well for his position as Managing Director of Sports Shoes Unlimited but he was also doing very nicely from the occasional sale of good-looking sports stars on the white slave market.

 

Our first shoot was awful.  Kerry (whom we still trusted, even if we didn’t like him) explained that even a tiny pouch to cover our privates would take away from the artistic merit of the film but assured us that no indecency would under any circumstances be permitted in the final shots and that we would have control over what went to air.

We therefore reluctantly, in great shame, stripped off entirely and went out of the dressing room to the studio where the first session was to be filmed.  They all admired our bodies and if we thought Kerry’s eyes were a little too bright for comfort, we concentrated on what we had to do and minced around, wearing only the admittedly very comfortable and highly advanced sports shoes.

They were indeed well advanced but it was the series of ads, dreamed up by Kerry, not the advertising agency, that had shot them to pre-eminence in their field.  Each one showed off star athletes each wearing nothing but their shoes — otherwise stark naked - and performing in their respective sporting discipline.  None ever showed their genitals or in the case of a female, her breasts (or at least her nipples, anyway) but each was quite obviously totally naked and the ads drew an immediate following — much as the early Coca-Cola ads of beautiful young men and women, half naked on the beach, had.

We were shown swimming with our butts on full display as we powered through the water to the beach, then, our genitals hidden in shadow, sped up the beach to the bicycles which we jumped onto and then took off up the road.  There was just the pair of us but skilful editing showed us cycling stark naked between thousands of fans.  Again it was tasteful and not a hint of our genitals or my nipples was allowed on to the final version.

Then it was the marathon and the same thing went there.  The editors were very good.  In the minute or so of the ad, they gave the illusion of the three kilometre plus swim, the hundred and eighty km ride and the forty km run and never once did they allow my vagina or nipples or Andy’s cock or balls to be seen — and yet we were quite naked throughout the shoot — apart from those shoes.

Other sessions followed and we became minor celebrities for them as well as for our rising fame as triathlon competitors.

I suppose our looks had been a factor in Kerry’s selecting us for his advertising campaign.  We are both blessed with inherited good looks but our sporting activity had, no doubt, helped as well.  We are both blonds, Andy with that rugged dirty-blond look that went so well with his really superb physique and me a finer, ash-blonde with fine hair that flopped everywhere when it was dry.  We both had olive skins that tanned well and set off our finely toned musculatures to a tee.

We had decided, at the beginning of our university careers to move in with one another in a small unit near the uni.  We were going to get married as soon as we finished the course and couldn’t see the point in holding off until then.  I suppose we might as well had tied the knot then but we didn’t, preferring to wait until our graduation as physical education teachers.

But then, half way through the course, Kerry suggested we marry.  He would pay for the whole thing and it would be a minor celebrity marriage.  The fashionable church, magazine photographers, the wonderful reception and a really terrific honeymoon.  Andy hadn’t been that keen, preferring a small wedding but, ever the bride, anxious for a wonderful occasion, I persuaded him and so it happened.

Kerry had copies of all the photos, of course — as he did of the unedited parts of our commercial shoots, parts that showed off Andy’s very large and prominent sexual organs as well as my vagina and my naked breasts — all quite unbeknown to us of course.  He certainly didn’t give us copies of them, making us believe they either hadn’t existed in the first place or, if they had, had been destroyed after editing.

It was a few months after our wedding when Kerry told us about the overseas shoot.

“It will be a wonderful opportunity for you both,” he gushed.  “You will start in Paris and have a day or two shooting there followed by an equal number of days sightseeing.  Then you will move to Spain and do the same there.  After that, Morocco, Ghana, South Africa then up to the Caribbean.  It will be on your long university vacation   What do you think?”

I looked excitedly at my new husband.  He smiled back at me and we nodded.

“Sounds great, Kerry,” we said, almost in one voice.

And so it happened, exactly as he had outlined.  We flew to England and then crossed to France and did the shoot, much the same as those we had already taken part in back in Australia, then had a couple of days seeing the sights of Paris and surrounding districts then flew to Spain and did the same there.  It was every bit as exciting as Kerry had promised and as with our Australian shoots, the public was kept away while we performed in the nude.

We were never part of the editing sessions but Kerry always had us in to see the final film for us to sign off on and this happened now as well, the first shots being really good.  As our working holiday progressed we had reason to thank Kerry for the wonderful opportunity he had provided for us — until we reached the Caribbean, anyway.

There, in Haiti actually, we were kidnapped.

It had nothing to do with our photo shoot — or so it seemed.  We were walking together down the streets of Port-au-Prince, trying to ease the hot damp rooms of our hotel when we were suddenly set upon by two men who had us in the van that was following them.

It happened so quickly we had no time to call out even but even if we had, at that late hour there weren’t too many people around and in any case, such things were never even seen by passers-by.  It was just too dangerous.  We had told the night manager of our intentions and no doubt he, bribed by our abductors, had let them know we were on the loose and ripe for picking.

They had placed canvas bags over our heads and upper bodies and tied them around our waists and they kept our arms imprisoned as well.  They also tied our feet then drew them back and tied them to our wrists.  We were now face down on the metal floor of the van, hog-tied and helpless.  The van drove for what seemed like hours to us but then stopped and we were roughly manhandled out and into another metal-floored vehicle.  This turned out to be an aeroplane and now we flew for many hours, stopping only to refuel, God knows where.

When we landed finally, and they undid our bonds and removed the bags and we alighted from the plane, we saw green grass, tall, swaying coconut palms and sago-thatched cottages.  We were somewhere in the South Seas, where exactly, we had no idea but the tall bluish mountain in the background and the overall scenery around us gave away our general location.

“What …?” began Andy — and received a brutal backhander from one of our guards, both very tall and very muscular black men.

“Keep your mouths shut!” he snarled and then, grabbing an arm each, they marched us across the grass-covered landing strip to a Land Rover.  We were pushed up into the rear and our hands drawn behind the uprights that supported the canvas cover that could be fitted over it, and then cuffed.  Our guards sat beside us.

The Land Rover took off, heading towards a small settlement we could see in the distance.  This was comprised of a number of splendid houses, each of which was surrounded by smaller and much less salubrious buildings.  The village they comprised was on a small harbour and in it, moored to a series of jetties as in a marina, were a dozen very strange-looking vessels rather like ancient Norse longships, even to the oars.

But we didn’t have much time to wonder about the harbour and its strange vessels for our eyes were just about popping out from the other things we saw in that village.

Naked people, for a start.  Young men and women who were stark naked except for an iron collar around their necks or attached somehow to their genitals and all chained together walking towards the piers or back from them, from or to one of the great houses set back from the beach.

We noted that each of these naked people were extraordinarily athletic and I felt a cold shiver — followed by a hot prickle of apprehension pass right down my body as I stared at the coffle marching across our path.  Each was marching, not walking, with almost military precision and I noted the black overseers who accompanied them, held small black plastic things in their hands, things that looked like TV controllers.  When I saw one of the naked boys leap into the air clutching his groin I realised the overseer had done something with the controller; something that had caused the boy terrible pain.

We also stared at another aspect of their bodies.  Every single one of them was totally free of hair.  Not even a small triangle at their pubes.  I knew of course that some people are less hairy than others, but I had never heard of anyone past puberty who didn’t have at least some pubic hair.  These people had none.  Not a single hair below their eyelashes.

I looked across the Land Rover at my husband, my eyebrows raised in a question.  He just shrugged but his face registered the same horror I felt as I stared at the coffle and at other naked boys and girls working on the streets or around the splendid houses.

What had we come to, I wondered — and more importantly, what were our roles going to be in this dreadful place?