After Sophia abandoned him in the hallway, to go eat her dinner, Dan used the time to consider his new situation. He was now this Sophia person's slave, plain and simple = in the eyes of this Sophia person anyway. His wife had taken a bundle of cash from her in return for handing Dan over. It was a bit like leaving a child with a stranger, Dan decided. Irresponsible. You just wouldn't do it. Yet Mary had just done it. Abandoned him. Sure, thought Dan, I am an adult, technically, but Mary has left me as helpless as a child. Tied, gagged and naked, unable to speak, unable to do anything for myself. Walked out the door leaving me at the mercy of this total stranger, who calls herself Sophia. Never looked back. Never said goodbye, even.
Driven by a shiver of apprehension, a long stalactite of drool slid around the side of Dan's ball gag, briefly hung from his chin, broke free and landed with a soft plop on the tiled floor beside his bare feet. Gravity, thought Dan, the scientist, briefly distracted. Where would you be without it? Turning back to the matter at hand, he decided he had every reason to be apprehensive.
In one mighty leap, Dan had gone from being a pretend slave owned by his wife to being a real slave owned by a total stranger. In his former slave life he had known his owner from way back -- she was his wife of long standing -- and she had known him. That set certain boundaries on what happened. He was willing to work for her and she was happy to work him for her benefit. She had given him a bit of a hard time, or a humiliating time, on a regular basis and Dan was happy enough with that too. But the thing about his previous owner was that Dan could still talk to her - as his wife, person to person. She had allowed him a bit of chat over breakfast. In short he had a relationship, even if it was seriously imbalanced in favour of his wife and owner. That was now in the past.
Going forward, as they say - when they have nothing to say, Dan had no clue what to expect relationship-wise. Already the attitude Sophia displayed to Dan the slave was very different to that she had shown to Dan the man. On the flight over and in the Metro she had been chatty and friendly. But once she had mentally moved Dan into the slave category, her approach had changed completely. She ignored him utterly when it suited her -- like now. She had walked past him in the hall several times like he wasn't there. She had stopped calling him Dan. This was not something Dan was used to and he found it a bit unsettling. Concerning would be the word du jour, as they say in France, where Dan now found himself enslaved. Ensclavé, en francais, Dan hazarded. He wondered briefly if he would have to learn French, before resuming his contemplation of Sophia as slave owner.
Take this very instance, Dan supposed to himself. Sophia had left him standing tied, gagged, and naked at the bottom of her stairway for almost two hours. Clearly, it hadn't cost her a thought to expose him to such physical discomfort. Then, after blithely telling him he was going to be punished every day for a week, she placed the instrument of his upcoming torture on the floor in front of him, a riding crop. Teasing and tormenting him with the sight of it.
Determined to beat her at her own psychological mind game, Dan resolved to ignore the riding crop on the floor in front of him, the intentional reminder that punishment was imminent. He would rise above the petty provocation, above her pathetic attempt at building the tension, so to speak. He was made of sterner stuff.
Instead he focussed on food. He was hungry. He hoped Sophia would bring something for him to eat when she returned after her own dinner. It has been at least six hours since the light snack on the plane. A small square of quiche, about three bites worth, garnished with a few tiny green leaves and a sliver of tomato, as Dan recalled, accompanied by a miniscule bread roil and a couple of grapes. Then coffee to finish. The coffee over which he had politely chatted with his neighbouring passenger and from which moment Dan's plan for a new life in Paris blossomed and grew from a dream to a hope. Dan, now with his dream stillborn, standing naked at the stairway, decided that, small as the airline meal was, it might be the nearest he would come to having a proper meal for a long time. He resolved to remember every detail.
Just then the door from the front room opened and Sophia appeared. No sign of food for Dan. She was carrying the leather cuffs that Mary had left for her. Dan almost felt nostalgic for his old slave gear from back home. As if putting them on would restore him to his safe slave state under Mary's ownership. Put things back the way they were.
Sophia cut one of the cable ties around Dan's wrist and fitted one wrist cuff. Dan didn't try to resist. Having considered his situation, he accepted he was her slave for now and for the foreseeable future. Looking at it from her point of view, Sophia had bought a slave in good faith and paid with her own money. And Dan happened to be that slave. Dan felt she could reasonably expect to get value for her outlay. Dan was a bit like that, too accommodating. Too willing to see the others point of view. He had decided, standing naked and tied at the foot of the stairs that he would have to work within those parameters as best he could. In other words, be a good and obedient slave.
Dan certainly wasn't going to attempt to make a run for it now. Not after the way his last escape attempt turned out. The failed attempt for which he going to have to endure a week of punishment as a result. What made it worse was that it was a failed attempt before it even began, only he hadn't know it. He was the sucker in the set up. Mary, sitting up front in executive class had known it. Sophia sitting beside him had known it. They were all the time quietly aware of Dan's already doomed fate that awaited his arrival in Paris.
As if to emphasise that things were not going back quite the way they were, Dan noticed that Sophia had fitted a short chain between the two ankle cuffs, and another short length of chain hung from the neck collar. She hadn't just been eating her dinner then, Dan thought. She seemed to be a thorough and organised person. The sort who would have quietly prepared for any sudden moves by her yet to be broken-in slave. If he did try and break free, Dan decided he'd probably get zapped with a cattle prod or Taser before he got very far. Dan meekly offered up his other wrist for the second cuff. On a positive note, he decided wearing the leather cuffs would be more comfortable than the hard plastic cable ties which were beginning to bite into his wrists.
Sophia bent down and fitted Dan with the ankle cuffs that now has a short length of chain joining them. Once she'd snapped them shut, Sophia relaxed. She knew her slave couldn't run now. At best he could shuffle carefully and slowly. Dan was well used to wearing the cuffs and the familiar click of the lock snapping shut didn't faze him. But the fact that, when ordered to move, he would only be able to take short shuffling steps was humiliating -- and sexy, in a slave sort of way. Dan's penis stiffened and rose steadily upright at the thought. Sophia ignored it as she unlocked the bicycle lock and slid it from her slave's neck. In its place went Dan's neck collar to which she had attached the short length of chain. She clipped Dan's wrists to the end of the chain in front. It was long enough to allow Dan reach upward to place his hands on his head and downwards to scratch his belly button, if he so desired. Fairly short in other words. Sophia had put Dan on a tight leash.
'I'm going to bring you downstairs, show you your living quarters, give you your first punishment, and feed you. I intend to feed you three times daily; eight in the morning, two in the afternoon and eight at night. Now bend down, pick up the riding crop and follow me.'
As Dan went down on his knees and bent over so he could reach the riding crop with his chained hands, he was thinking that Sophia's choice of phrase was a bit off. 'Feeding you' sounded a bit like a farmer talking about his animals; 'time to feed the pigs' or 'we feed the chickens twice a day.' She could have as easily said, 'we eat three times a day,' but she didn't. Maybe it was a turn of phrase among slave owners, discussing the mechanics of slave owning on their internet forums. They would ask each other how often they feed their slaves, or what do they feed their slaves. These thoughts flitted through Dan's mind as he shuffled along the short hallway after Sophia. His cock betraying him relishing the prospect of being fed like an animal. Bit of a humiliation kick to look forward to, he supposed, taking the positive view. Of course he'd had his share of eating out of a dog bowl on the floor under Mary's ownership, but that was more a deliberate putdown, between normal 'sitting at the table' eating. The casually unequal nature of the 'I will feed you' phrase set a different tone. No sense of sharing a meal, let alone sharing a table. Dan suspected a dog bowl would feature permanently in his life from now on.
The basement stairs curved down behind and under the main staircase to a small corridor at the bottom. Dan descended carefully to this basement corridor. The bolted door on the left of the corridor led into the front garage/workroom that Dan had been let into on his arrival. There were two doors on the right, close together. These doors also had solid, substantial, bolts fitted. When the bolt was closed over the door could only be opened from the corridor side. Sophia, slid back the bolt and opened the furthest door first. It opened out.
'This is where you sleep.'
Dan leaned in to see a room that was not much bigger than the single mattress that lay on the floor inside. Calling it a room was an exaggeration.. It wasn't really a room. It was a long deep cupboard in effect. There was no window and no light on the ceiling, just a vent for an extractor fan. A white metal bucket with a lid stood ominously inside the door. Sophia closed the door and slid the bolt home with a clunk. No getting out of that box unless she decides to let you out was the clear inference.
Sophia opened the adjoining door and told Dan to step inside. Dan shuffled in to a much larger room. It was dominated by a foot thick wooden floor-to-ceiling post in the centre that looked a hundred years old and, no doubt, supported the floor of the room above. The iron rings set into each side of the post towards the top grabbed Dan's attention. They were matched by similar sets of rings set at waist and ankle height. He knew where this was going.
