"Move your ass, stupid kunt!" The harsh words are underlined by a stinging whiplash on my
back. A yelp escapes my lips, followed by a curse that I can suppress at the last moment.
Not that I need to be reminded by the whip to do what I'm told to do and move my ass. I
always do what I'm told to do. I'm not suicidal, and I'm not relishing the sting of the
bullwhip either. But I guess the brute didn't whip me to get me to do what he wants me to
do, he rather whipped me just because he likes to do it. And because he can do it whenever
he wants. He probably wouldn't even get into too much trouble if he beat me to death right
here on the spot. I am, after all, merely merchandise. Merchandise with a certain value as
long as I'm alive, but not too valuable either. Quite cheap, to be exact. Not exactly
worthless, but close.?
I quickly hurry forwards, not too eager to feel the whip more than is necessary. I
didn't want to be the last of the group of five young women which are herded through the
streets towards the market. Being the last in line is not good because it places you in
reach of the whip. But it hasn't been my decision. I never decide on anything, not even on
such unimportant matters like this. There's always someone else who decides for me. This
time it was just bad luck; the slave handler had each of us locked by her collar to a
chain of about ten metres and I was the last to be attached to the chain, so I am the last
in the line of kunts. Which in turn makes me the one to feel the whip if the brute is
annoyed by a mosquito biting him, some other minor irritation or just because he damn well
feels like whipping someone. Such is life. There's nothing I can do about it, that much I
have learned. The hard way, of course. I would have learned it anyway, being the smart
girl I am, but the sadists who introduced me to my new life made sure that it was
hard. ?We hurry onwards, walking down a wide alley with villas behind walls and hedges on
either side of the road. Here, where the wealthy and famous live. Me, I live here too, or
rather, I used to live here. I have no idea where I will live tonight. Not that it matters
too much. I'll still be the same person and I'll still be treated the same as before, more
or less, live the same live as yesterday and the day before.
The city is already awake and bustling with activity, there's a lot of people around, on
feet, in carriages and on horses. Dark skinned people stroll and talk to each other. Carts
pulled by horses and oxen rattle towards the harbour, heavily laden with tobacco and
sugar, the new gold, earning some plantation owner a fortune without having to bend his
fingers. Pale men and women carry bales of goods and jugs of water; coachmen swear and
crack their whips. They usually don't notice us, so we have to watch out so as not to be
run down by a cart or a carriage. Nothing unusual there, they never see us unless they
want something from us. This is actually a good thing, because it means we can go around
unnoticed, slide in and out of places without being seen. It's as if we don't exist as
long as we don't meet anyone's eyes. The bad thing is that you can't count on not being
seen. And you definitely don't want to be caught moving in the wrong places or doing the
wrong things.?
Way ahead of us I see two young men pulling a sulky, running towards us. A young woman
on her early morning ride, in full regalia, gold gleaming on her neck and earlobes, her
firm breasts bouncing with every shaking of the sulky, her colourful headscarf fluttering
in the breeze. She cracks her whip incessantly at the poor blokes who look, to be honest,
quite ridiculous in their pony's attire. I never understood the fascination some people
have with dressing people up as ponies and use them to pull carriages. I mean, even us
'primitives' from Ingland use horses for that.
Their bodies glisten with perspiration and they're panting heavily, at the brink of
exhaustion, but that doesn't stop the young lady from lashing out at them. Then she
catches my eyes and I know that I'd made a mistake by looking directly at her. Never,
ever, look one of them directly in their eyes without being told so.
She lashes out when our paths cross and the whip catches my left breast and lets it
explode in white, hot pain. I cry out loud but keep on going, knowing that to break my
stride would only earn me more kisses of the whip. The handler behind me laughs and barks
at me once more that I should move my ass. I hear the young girl's merry laughter fading
away behind us as her 'ponies' pull her down the street, away from us.
The girl in front of me catches her foot on a piece of wood lying on the street and
stumbles. I bump into her, there's a moment of confusion which is dissolved with some more
bellowing and another lash of the whip from the brute, this time on my thigh. I groan and
pick up the pace again, partly pushing the girl ahead of me, partly being tugged along by
the chain. The stupid, hated, unnecessary chain. As if there is a need to chain us
together. We're all seasoned kunts here; none of us is stupid enough not to do what we're
told. Yet as soon as a handler is dealing with more than one kunt at a time, we're chained
together or have our elbows tied at our backs. Some handlers even cover our heads with
hoods, thus slowing everybody down. Which is, of course, our fault. And if something is
our fault there's no shortage of whiplashes to make us pay for it. Stupid, stupid, stupid
people they are.
It's about nine in the morning now and the sun is already scorching down on God's
creation. Uh. Excuse me, it's not God's creation, that's blasphemy. I mustn't think of the
single God of my youth. Here we believe in at least a couple dozen Gods. I never could
quite get the hang of all the Gods of our masters, but I think there's a God for
everything: Earth, water, fire, the people, the crop, the sky, wind, fertility,
infertility, livestock, you name it. There is, that much I know for certain, no God for us
kunts, nor is there one for all the other slaves. Well, maybe there is a God for the
domestic slaves, and maybe there's some small second-class semi-Goddess for the slaves
working the fields or the sugar mills. But not for us kunts. We're the bottom of the food
chain, the cowshit under the soles of a farmer's shoes, the tobacco stained spit in the
toon. There's no God left for us, not even some minor, half-assed semi Deity. Nope, no
such thing. Instead of a God we have the whip. The whip is a powerful, terrifying,
unforgiving God. We fear the whip and we love the whip and we worship the whip. We fear
the whip almost all the time. We love the whip when it lands on someone else's back
because that means it isn't cracking the skin of our back. That doesn't mean I think
others should be whipped. Nobody at all should feel the whip, in my humble opinion. But if
someone has to feel it, it'd rather not be me. And finally we worship the whip whenever
we're told to.
You see, it's a simple world we kunts live in: Whip, or no whip. Pain or no pain. Obey,
or suffer. Live, or die.
We're nearing the market now; even if I didn't know where we are I would recognize the
sweet smell of fruits and vegetables, the stench of excrements of cattle, pigs and other
livestock. The road is hard baked dirt now in the dry season. As soon as the rains start
the mud will be almost knee deep. No cobblestones here, for the poor people who live in
this part of town. No whitewashed adobe walls, no neatly trimmed gardens and patios and
backyards. Here is mud central when it rains and dust bowl when the sun shines. The huts
are made of rough sticks covered in mud, the roofs are thatched with reeds or banana
leaves instead of bricks. Here live the poorest of the wealthy nation of New Affrika. Hard
working men and women, children with bloated bellies, worse fed than us kunts, hollow eyed
beggars, cripples, thieves and whores. But as miserable as they may be, they're still
human beings. And even when they have to eat the dirt from under their finger nails in
lack of something else, they look down on us. They look down on us with contempt, hatred
even. As if one of us has ever done anything bad to them.
Our little group enters the market and we're herded through the row of stalls full of
vegetables, stinking dried fish, meat buzzing with flies, spices and everything else that
is sold on Makala's biggest market, to the smallest section, the slave market. There are
several sections on this market. The one we're crossing now is by far the biggest. The
market where cows, pigs, goats and other beasts are auctioned is at the far end, as is the
slave market which is where we're heading. It is right on the edge of town; beyond the
slave market is a field where all the garbage and leftovers from the market are dumped and
then it is miles and miles and miles of sugar cane, cotton and tobacco fields. It
shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that the slave market is next to the stinking
garbage dump.
The masters and plantation owners don't buy their human merchandise at the market.
They're not setting foot in the veggies-section of the market, let alone lower themselves
to the stink of the slave market. No, those rich people call a slaver to bring them a
choice of girls to pick from, so they don't even have to leave the house. Or they get a
couple of girls to test for a night or two, if they're rich or important enough.
So, the slave market is just visited by the traders and slavers. And the occasional
youngsters who hope to sneak in for a quick fuck. A not unlikely possibility, given the
fact that usually there's not many people walking the grounds. It's easy to climb the
wall, go to a girl standing in a corner, bend her over and use her for quick relief. The
girl will keep her mouth shut, because if she yells or screams and the boy gets away
before the overseer can lay his whip across him, it's her who gets to feel the whip. Being
fucked is less painful than being whipped.
There are only field slaves and kunts on display on the slave market. Domestic slaves
usually don't change hands as long as they do a good job. And if they don't, they're sold
to the fields. And once you're working the fields, you will always work on the fields.
Nobody returns from there.
At last we reach the slave section of the market. There is more yelling, more beating
and at last we're all securely chained to our places. Each of us kunts has her left leg on
a slab of stone, a shackle around the ankle attached to a ring on top of the stone by a
short chain. The chain's too short to be able to put the left foot on the ground. We will
stay like this until we're sold or until we keel over. If one keels over, she will be
beaten and whipped until she stands again.
I look around. There are a couple dozen slaves, most of them muscular men and women with
tanned skin and sun-bleached hair. Field slaves. They live on the fields, they sleep on
the fields, they love on the fields, they give birth on the fields, but most of all they
die on the fields. Bitten by snakes, killed by infections, in accidents or simply because
of exhaustion. I don't envy them, and they don't envy us.
Unlike me, they at least get a day off every week. I can't remember my last day off.
When I'm not being used I have to help in the house.
Being on sale is like a day off, though. If I'm lucky I won't be bothered too much and
I'll have time to dream. I love to let my mind wander, leaving my sorry body behind. It's
quite a simple thing to do, once you got the hang of it, to leave your body and travel
somewhere else in your mind. The first time it happened to me it was some kind of
protective mechanism kicking in, I think. It happens to most of us. Some of us never come
back from their trips away from their body. Some do, but they're not the same anymore. Oh
well, none of us is the same as before. They made sure of that. And some learn to do it
whenever they want, or need, to do it. There are a few tricks and lessons you better learn
fast or you won't make it long.
Travelling in your mind is one of them. Today I'm visiting my family. My father and my
mother, my two baby sisters Rose and Margaret. And me, of course. Oh, sorry, I haven't
introduced myself yet. You must excuse, dear reader, I'm just not used to introduce myself
anymore. It's not expected from me because nobody gives a damn who I am, all anybody cares
about is what I am. If at all.
So, maybe you're not interested either, but as I said, I don't have many opportunities
to talk to someone these days. My name is Gwen. Gwen Sawyer. Well, of course I'm not Gwen
Sawyer anymore. My name is Kipepeo. Butterfly. My first owner gave me that name when I lay
in front of him; my legs spread wide, no secrets before my owner. He looked at my pussy
before he ravaged it with the whip in his hand. He was a very imaginative man. He also had
a tattooist come to his mansion and tattoo a colourful butterfly on my pussy later. Very
creative.
Well, back to my family.
We lived in a little farmhouse, in south-western Ingland, a couple days from the sea. My
father was a hard working cabbage and potato farmer, my mother a woman who knew how to
feed five heads with almost nothing but cabbage and potatoes. Life was hard but sometimes
it smiled on us, like when mum slaughtered a goose for Christmas. Or once a year when we
went to the fair in town. It was also good on Sundays, when we went to church and didn't
have to work on the field or help mum in the house.
But sometimes life didn't smile on us at all, like when the summer rains wouldn't end
and the potatoes and cabbage rotted on the fields. Then we'd go hungry through the winter,
eating turnips and barely getting along. But that didn't happen too often and all in all
we were quite content.
We didn't go to school, of course. Girls didn't need to know about reading and writing,
we had to help our parents and we were supposed to marry, run a household, raise a family
and look after our parents when they were old and frail. All we needed to know, we learned
back home: Cooking, preserving veggies and fruits, sewing, mending clothes, whatever
needed to be done. To sum it up: Life was hard, but it was our life and there was a lot of
laughing and hugging and there was also a little bit of love. At least for me, although
I'm not sure if it was love what I felt.
He was 19, a year older than me, and he was a carpenter, working with his dad. I saw him
every Sunday in church, a couple of rows ahead on the other side of the aisle, where the
men were seated. His name was Philip and I constantly got nudged by Maggie when I looked
at him and all but forgot about listening to the priest and his sermon. Then she and Rose
giggled when I turned my head again, blushing. But after a while I'd be back looking at
Philip, imagining his big, strong hands, his smile, the way he had looked at me shyly when
we passed each other on the steps of the church.
After church we stood on the grass, my sisters and I, looked around, talked to our
friends, gossiped, laughed and enjoyed our time. Eventually I would wander off, in search
of Philip and when I found him my heart would miss a beat or two and then we would stand
in front of each other, both of us blushing and neither of us would know what to say. And
then we talked, but it was just about the usual stuff; how the crop was, whether he had a
lot to do, such things.
On the fateful day my life was taken away from me we knew what to say to each other. It
was a beautiful October Sunday, the air was crisp and clean but heavy clouds to the west
promised rain and maybe even a storm later in the night. Philip took my hand and wanted to
lead me away from the people gathered outside the church.
"Wait a second; I have to tell my family that they shouldn't wait for me." I ran over to
my sisters and told them that they should go home without me. They giggled and made
comments, but I knew they were happy for me. Mother looked over too, but she knew me well
enough to trust me and so she just smiled. Father didn't even realize anything; he was too
busy discussing the newest rumours. I had heard them too. Apparently there were strange
people to the south and the west, and they were not friendly people but robbers and
murders. Rumour also had it that people had disappeared and never returned. But that was
far away and I had other, nicer things on my mind.
I hurried back to Philip and we walked hand in hand across the fields, up a little hill
where we sat down and looked at the scenery below us. Neither of us said much, we both
just enjoyed being with the other, his arm around my shoulder, my head on his. At long
last Philip took my face in his hand and gently kissed me. The kiss became longer and
longer and I learned in a second how to kiss a man. It was wonderful and I hoped that the
kissing would never end. But as it happens with all good things, this came to an end too.
Then he told me how much he loved me and that he wanted to marry me and I was the
happiest lass ever. We stayed up that hill for a long time, talking and making plans, he
said that he would come over to our cottage as soon as possible to ask my father and I
wanted to know when, maybe tomorrow? and he laughed and said "there is no need to rush, my
lovely Gwen," but I was in a rush and I wanted everything to happen immediately.
At long last he looked up at the sky. It was overcast by now, thick grey clouds had
replaced the clear blue of the morning and the sun was about to sink.
"I must go, my dear," I said and he had to go too. He lived on the other side of the
village, half an hour away.
"I'll walk you home, sweetheart" he said and my knees got all mellow and wobbly when I
heard him call me sweetheart. I wanted him to take me anywhere and never ever leave me
again; I wanted to share his life and his bread, his house and his bed. But I insisted on
him going home too, it was getting late and it was a long way for him.
"Well, I'll bring you at least to the bridge," he said, "and if you say no I will just
carry you like a bag of potatoes." I giggled while he got up and helped me getting on my
feet. We walked hand in hand across a meadow towards the river I had to cross. When we
reached the bridge, we kissed again, hungry lips on hungry lips and I wanted him to hold
me forever. But then he broke the kiss, told me that he loved me and sent me on my way.
"I love you too, Philip," I said and started to walk the two miles that separated me
from home, my heart making leaps of joy in my chest and already longing for the tough of
his lips on mine.
After the bridge came a forest that ran along the river all the way down to the sea. It
was in that stretch of wood where my life was taken away from me.
| 
