Kat
By S. A. Freeman
Kat, Chapter One
The courthouse was elegantly decorated, with rich redwood tables and green draperies and the flag of the United States on the walls. Her court
room
, however, was drab. Benches, leading up to the dias, standing before the judge's seat on high. There was nothing standout about it. Gray walls and a gray ceiling. She remembered it very well though. The sound of the rain on the roof as a storm pelted the building. The unbreaking silence in the room. The pain and despair she felt. It was all like a fresh wound whenever she thought about it.
And for what? Petty theft? It seemed like everyone was being committed these days.
She remembered Aria's face as the gavel swung down and clacked against its base. How the color drained from it. The lonely tear that crept down her cheek, dripping to the carpet below. The way her eyes glazed over. That was the last memory she had of Aria.
The guards came in and handcuffed her, leaving her too stunned to speak. She stared up at the judge, mouth agape, as if to protest, but the words caught in her throat. They led her to a holding room where they stripped her, dressed her in a white jumpsuit, shackled her, and threw a choke chain around her neck to pull her by.
They'd pushed her in the back of a van, then, in with another man who claimed he'd been there for illegal possession of some amounts of this drug or that. It was his third offense too. They didn't speak much, and she couldn't even remember his name if she tried, but the look on his face was haunting. Pale, ghostly, glossy eyes that stared at nothing and through everything all at once. He looked like a dead man walking. She wondered if she looked the same to him.
The van pulled away, leaving all she owned, all she knew behind. It would go to her next of kin, or, barring that, her family. So her family, then. She thought of them, now, as she rode in the back of the rickety police van to the Auction House. She thought about everything that had just happened. The theft, the loss, the grief. The shame. She felt a pang of pain within her core, and she nearly doubled over, but she just managed to quash it. There was no room for pain here. There was no room for anything. At some point during the ride, she went numb.
She remembered the housing facility, if you could call it that. More like the cell block. Each new slave was given a small cell with a bed, a toilet, a mirror, and a sink. They replaced her neck chain with a simple black metal collar, which had a leash ring on it. They led her to her 'quarters', and gave her a pamphlet with a series of rules on it for new and soon-to-be slaves. And here is where she stayed, for a week. Let out to get fresh air every day at noon and six PM, with three meals that consisted of some kind of protein, a vegetable, and a simple carbohydrate. With water, of course.
When she looked at herself in the mirror that evening - evening grooming was required for all slaves - she barely recognized the woman staring back at her. The dark bags under her dazzling, if empty, sapphire eyes. The way her short black hair frizzed and knotted up. The puffiness in her eyes and the frown on her lips. She wasn't one to frown. She was a happy person. This person was... someone else. Alien, to her. Foreign. Not her.
But then, how could she be?
She thought back to it all now, sitting in a small holding room with two other slaves on the bench with her, all three of them leashed to the wall. The red cushion beneath them provided some comfort, as it was incredibly soft, but otherwise, the room was bare and claustrophobic. Jim sat to her left, and Alice to her right. At least, that's what they called themselves. Who knew what their original names were. For herself, she knew herself as Kat. God knows what name she had before. She couldn't even remember at this point. Five years in the system will do that to a... person.
The fluorescent bulb overhead flickered, flashing ghostly light throughout the gray room. Really, the only color here came from the bench cushion. They all had nice bench cushions in the pre auction cell, all of the Auction Houses did. Kat theorized that it was because they wanted slaves asses to be pristine for presentation, instead of red and marked from a hard wood or steel bench. Just one more way to make a profit.
Jim, apparently, had been sold for beating his Master - luckily he wasn't imprisoned, and was simply sold. Alice, on the other hand, just wasn't what her Mistress was looking for. So, like an object, she was returned to the "store" without a care, thrown to the wayside yet again. And Kat... well, her Master had grown bored of her.
Good, she thought. He was a monster.
She thought about her next buyer. Her next Owner. Anxiety crept into her veins, spreading like needles in her body. She started to restlessly tap her foot on the floor, as she pondered who would purchase her next. Would they be male or female? Kind or cruel? Man or monster? There were only two choices in the world anymore, it seemed.
Footsteps echoed outside the door that led to the Auction stage. Naked, Kat huddled deep into herself instinctively, protecting her fragile, slim body. She wished they'd at least give them robes, or some tattered semblance of clothing. The cell was cold from the outside rain, and her skin prickled with gooseflesh. She shivered. The place was freezing. She hoped the actual Auction House itself was warm.
Jim didn't seem to mind. He sat, elbows on his knees, in some sort of lost state, staring at the floor with a blank expression. Alice, somehow, had fallen asleep, and was laying on the corner of the bench. Nobody spoke. They'd had a single conversation that lasted for all of five minutes before the familiar silence crept back in. She couldn't tell how long it had lasted.
Every so often she could hear sobbing outside. Another one being marched off to auction through the dole corridors of the back of the Auction House. It was a familiar sound, as familiar as the concrete walls of her cells. Kat listened, then sighed, huddling back up again. They would come for her cell next. She just knew it.
In moments, the door creaked open, and an officer dressed in a blue button up shirt and black khakis stepped in, and pointed to "Jim".
"Jim," he said.
Jim looked up at him without a sound and stood.
"Don't cause no trouble," said the officer, placing his hand on his revolver at his hip. "Would rather do this nice and easy. Okay?"
Jim said nothing, but showed him the palms of his hands in surrender. The guard led him out, and closed the door behind him, leaving Alice and Kat alone. Kat turned to Alice, who had woken up and was blinking the sleep from her eyes.
"Wake up," she whispered. "They're here for us."
Alice looked at her, then the door, and nodded with a yawn. "Looks like it," she said. "You nervous?"
Kat looked at her, then the door, and then finally the floor, before sighing. "Not anymore."
Shaking her head, Alice said, "Me either. Not anymore."
And that was that. The silence returned in full force, with nothing but the HVAC system's whirr and the sound of the rain on the roof to fill the void. Minutes passed. Maybe thirty or so, Kat guessed, before someone else showed up. This time it was a short woman, a little heavier, but clearly built. She slid the door open and looked directly at Kat with an expecting gaze.
"Kat, let's go."
