Family Matters

The loss of her friend depressed Anne and made her listless. Customers noticed; her revenue to the brothel dropped. She heard her owners discussing it and wondered if her turn at the renderer's had come.

Just then Francesca's sister asked to borrow her again. Helene hired a crew of migrant workers to pick fruit at the farm, where they would be without their wives or girlfriends. Anne could satisfy their needs.

It was arranged; she would be sent by train.

The next morning two guards fed her breakfast and let her relieve herself in a corner of her cell. They took her outside, bound her hands and packed her headfirst into a cage little larger than she was. The door at her feet was latched but not locked; there was no risk of her opening it.

The young attractive guard the whores called Peaches allowed her some water (but not too much) through a tube and they took her to the station.

She lay on the platform with a freight tag giving the destination of the cage and its contents ("live animal"), an object of curiosity to waiting passengers. One man recalled seeing her at the brothel and described her to his friend.

The cage was loaded on a flatbed car with other boxes and crates; good, she would be able to view the scenery, she always enjoyed that.

The train began to move and soon they were passing fields and orchards; she tried to guess what was growing in each. The wind whistled through the wires of her cage and she lay on the bottom for warmth, peering out at the moving landscape.

Pastures and forests swept by. In the past she only viewed them through the window of a parlor car, a tourist in her privilege. Now she was like the cattle outside.

At her destination the stationmaster and his assistant pulled her out of the cage by her feet and stood her on the platform. It was crowded with passengers waiting for the next train into the city.

He put a blindfold over her eyes and told her to kneel. She knew what that meant and opened her mouth to receive him.

Once in, he proceeded with an efficiency born of frequent practice on girls like her; and when he had satisfied himself his assistant used her the same way.

By this time a crowd of onlookers had begun to gather; Anne could not see them, but she heard the approaching steps and the shuffling of feet.

Someone grasped her hair and she opened her mouth again. Three or four men used her this way. She heard the sound of money changing hands.

The stationmaster told her to lie on her back; she obeyed and spread her legs for the next set of customers. At least half a dozen, she lost count trying to please each of them.

Next - she was not surprised, such a large group always included these - a man wanted to take her from behind. She was helped to stand and bent over a baggage cart as he spread her cheeks.

The small opening had not been lubricated and was uncomfortably stretched as he penetrated her; but she was used to it and merely sighed a little. After that the passage was able to accommodate others who followed him with little difficulty. She was happy to find she retained some of her allure and tried her best to please them.

A customer at one of the brothels she was kept at, she could not remember which, described this view of her as her "best side". She smiled at the thought until the next man demanded entrance.

She tried to recall if she had ever been used on a railroad station platform before. She did not think so but she could not be sure; so many places, they ran together in her mind.

The train arrived and the crowd boarded. Anne was left alone on the platform still bent over the cart, exhausted and breathing heavily when Helene and Lise with a hired man came to fetch her.

Lise removed her blindfold and examined her, exclaiming at the sight of her breasts; still so large. Helene said the change was a lasting one.

She looked thoughtful; Anne might have a career as a milker after her appeal faded as a whore. It might give her a few more years before she had to be put down.

They slid her into the back of a pickup truck and drove to the farm. As they took her out her the man touched her in a sensitive place; she squealed and they laughed.

Lise led her into the barn to her old stall with its hay-strewn floor and left her.

Anne looked around at the familiar environment, comforted by it. Little had changed since her first stay two years ago. The milk cows Clytemnestra and Penelope; in the center of the floor the straw bale she was bent over for use; and the steel hook below the ceiling where she was hung up by her heels for slaughtering.

She shuddered a little at the memory; she still bore a line down her belly to guide the eviscerating knife. How close she had come and what a lesson it was to her. Her life was in her owner's hands, she must never forget that.

The thought of her status once again brought her peace of a form she had not known in her former life. She lay in the straw, as passive as the animals.

Lise emerged from the house with a dish of feed pellets and a treat for her: a handful of potato peelings. Anne tilted her head back and she dropped them one by one into the open mouth of her girl who smiled and thanked her each time, grateful to have such masters.

Early the next morning Lise led her outside and chained her to the back of the utility cart. She was briefly afraid Lise would attach it to the ring between her legs, but the young woman smiled and put it on her metal collar. Helene drove out to the fields, with Lise in back watching Anne to see if she fell on the bumpy dirt road.

The crew was already there, setting up empty crates to hold the produce. To her surprise she recognized the foreman.

It was Cesar; he had bought her a year ago at the lady-market in his home country, for the price of a mango when she was left unsold at the end of the day and about to be given to the carnivores.

Even in his farmworker's clothes he carried himself with dignity and authority; she found herself falling under his power again, and remembered her joy when he branded her.

Lise poked her with a spade and recalled her to the present. They removed crates from the cart and assisted the crew under Cesar's watchful eye; Anne grew warm with the hope he would use her again.

She got her wish; after lunch, on her back in the dusty field between two rows she was offered to the men. Cesar went first, followed by a dozen others; Lise joked she was not at risk of sunburn, someone was always on top of her.

Afterwards she rose and bent over the wooden table clearing it of plates and utensils when a worker told her to stop and spread her legs. He took her from the rear, followed by another man.

When he was done she resumed her work; contented, docile, filled with their warm seed. She felt some escaping and running down the inside of her thigh, that was to be expected; this was what she lived for.

At the end of the day she followed the cart on her chain back to the barn where she was fed, and drank from the water trough before lying down in the hay for sleep.

This went on for a week or so, until one day after lunch with a man in her she heard familiar voices. Her parents and her younger sister Miki appeared overhead.

They waited for him to finish - he was the last in line - and get off her. She stood and Miki brushed the dirt from her back.

They put her in her parents' sedan with a folded towel under her (at Helene's suggestion, a wise move), and the reunited family drove back to the highway with Anne wondering what this meant.

On their way home, Miki explained. She wanted to be a master of girls. A tutor was instructing her and she had applied to study at St. Malo Academy this autumn. Her parents were borrowing Anne for her to practice on.

Anne understood; Malo was the patron saint of swineherds. She was to be a slave to her little sister.

Miki discussed her plans. She might become a trader; or a trainer selecting and grooming girls who chose a life like Anne's.

Or a scout, finding candidates and turning them over to a trainer. Anne recalled Eugene who had introduced her to her present career. So many possibilities.

They arrived home late in the afternoon. Miki took up her older sister's leash and led Anne not to her former bedroom but down to the cellar. It had been prepared for her with a litter box in one corner. And a large steel hook in a ceiling beam.

There were no feed or water bowls. On account of the rats, Miki explained. Anne shuddered a little.

Her sister fastened her bracelets in front and suspended her from the hook. Anne was used to this and waited with her feet just touching the floor and her head down while Miki inspected her.

"I think Odette will like you," she said simply and without explanation. She turned out the light and went upstairs leaving Anne in the semidarkness.

She viewed her new home. It was no worse than other accommodations she experienced since giving herself away; the cement floor was bare but clean. It would be cold to lie on at night, or perhaps they would leave her suspended from the ceiling. That would be colder; she felt the breeze from an opened cellar window.

Well, her opinion was of no concern to her new masters; she had given up the right to any long ago. She closed her eyes and rested, awaiting developments.