I looked at the wooden gate in front of me. I was nearly 6 foot, but I was barefoot, and the gate was about 7 feet high, too high for me to peek over. I had designed it that way. It was better for the girl to look a bit disoriented when she left the dark chute and went into the auction pit. Fear meant adrenaline, and I knew that most buyers preferred it when a girl looked a little scared.
I could see a tiny speck of light peeking through the crack at the bottom of the gate where the rubber seal had worn off. I tried to stare at it, to let my eyes adjust, as I listened to the auctioneer finish his chant for the previous girl. I couldn't hear the words, not that they mattered, really. The sound of my heart pounding in my chest drowned out everything else.
Breathe, Sarah. Breathe. Don't be like one of those idiot girls who face plants when the gate opens. Fear is good. Fear is your friend. You designed it this way, remember?
Of course I remembered. I had stood in this very spot, explaining the entire psychology of the slave auction process to Jake Henry, the owner of the auction house. I had been dressed for success, in an elegantly tailored business suit, pearls, and Gucci shoes. Irony is a cruel mistress, and I now stood in precisely the same spot, barefoot and wearing nothing but my slave collar, which had my lot number, B-269.
I wasn't merely naked; in the shower I was naked all the time. I was SLAVE naked, which is an entirely different matter. I had no clothes to change into, no warm fluffy towel waiting on the other side of the gate. Being SLAVE naked meant having no clothes, and no way of getting any.
Naked was one thing; SLAVE naked was another thing altogether.
I struggled to breathe as I waited for the gate to open so that my shameful ordeal on the auction block could begin. The auctioneer's patter slowed as the final bids came in. It wouldn't be long now.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness. Looking down at the floor I saw some of the sand from the auction block had been tracked back into the gate area. The owner had wanted to get rid of the sand, a remnant of the days when cattle was sold out of these gates, but I had encouraged him to keep it.
"Make the sand part of your brand identity," I urged, bringing up a new slide in my PowerPoint show. "The slaves you sell are sometimes called 'Sandy Foot Girls', right? Make that part of your trademark. Only the highest quality pussy can become Sandy Foot Girls."
Now I looked down at the tiny dark grains of sand that decorated my feet and clung between my toes. In a few seconds the gate would open, and I would be a 'Sandy Foot Girl'.
It had all begun a week before when I had been giving the keynote address at The National Slave Association Show in Orlando, Florida. Becky Lou Bundy sat in the front row of my presentation, taking notes and listening carefully. When my speech was over she waited patiently for the other attendees to leave before approaching me to ask if I could join her for coffee to discuss a particular issue they were having in Texas.
Becky Lou was about 50, short, and squat, and spoke with a thick Texas twang, and listening to her spin her tale was cornpone pleasure. Becky Lou was a Supervisor in the Texas State Department of Agriculture, specifically in their Livestock and Slave Division. She dressed her role: cowboy boots, plaid shirt, and, of course, a white cowboy hat.
One of her department's duties was to conduct "pro forma" sales, sometimes referred to derisively as "sham sales" to verify that merchandise sold had been properly graded and the inspection, auction, and claim process was in order. The department would go in "undercover" as "secret shoppers", buy a slave, verify that the grading and identification were correct, and if all were in order, then immediately resell the slave on the open market. It was routine, actually, and nearly every state had some variation of this verification procedure.
"It was all goin' along fine," "Becky Lou explained, "but a few weeks ago the cow patties hit the fan when we outbid one of the Gov'ner's fishin' buddies. Seems we bought a slave girl the old coot had his eye on. He threw a hissy fit 'bout how we were interferin' with capitalism and drivin' up prices, and a bunch of other bullpucky, if you pardon my French. Problem is the regulations say we gotta do the verifications, but the Gov'ner made a ruckus and now we can't buy no real slave girls no more. It's a real pickle, and we don't got no answers. I figured on askin' you since you wuz a fancy consultant and college Professor and all. Whadya think?"
"You could have one of your departmental employees do it," I suggested. "Or hire someone to pose as a slave."
"Well, heck, yeah, but we ayn't got no takers. See, the girls got to get an authentic slave grade, so we can prepare what the auction house sells her as, and then we gotta go through the whole sales process, soup-to-nuts. And when the gavel falls..."
"The girl will actually be a slave," I said, smiling as I sipped my double latte.
"Sho'nuff," Becky replied. "Oh, we'll free her right away, and we'll tack whatever we paid for her onta' the slave house's annual registration fee, so it'll be a wash sale."
I smiled at her twangy extra RRR sounds in "waRRRsh."
"True, but even if it's a post-and-reverse entry on your accounting ledgers, the girl will still have to go through the experience of being sold. Wash sale, sham transaction, call it what you want, but that's no small thing, Becky Lou."
"Well, heck, I know that," Becky said, clearly irritated with my pedantic tone. "I been doin' this fer a livin' before you were born, girl. Just because I don't teach at no fancy college don't mean I'm DUMB."
"You asked ME for help," I reminded her, surprised at the way Becky slipped into "bossy mom" mode so easily. "It's just...there's a psychology to it that's hard to explain. "When you go through the grading process, you're not a person anymore. You're a thing. Chattel. Inventory to be sold."
"Ya reckon I don't know that?" Beck Lou replied dismissively. "Mom" was still annoyed.
"Yes, but it's different to know it, and another thing to ... feel it."
I looked around the coffee shop. Most of the other attendees were in the next session, which left the place empty except for a guy in the corner talking to his office on the phone and a bored barista reading his Chemistry textbook.
Swallowing, I held up my lip to reveal the slave registration number tattooed on my upper lip.
"Garsh!" Becky Lou said. "Y'all been REGISTERED? Like, 'fer real, in the Nash-uh-null Regs'tree?"
"Yes, I'm in the National Slave Registry," I admitted. "And I'd appreciate it if you could keep your voice down. I'm not a slave, of course, but I got registered to raise my grade. I'm Prime-," I said proudly.
"No shit!" Becky Lou whispered, clearly impressed. "That's a mighty find grade, girl! Well, I'll be damned! College Girl must clean up real nice. You slave hot?"
I frowned. Unless a girl could turn straw into gold, being slave hot was the only way to get a Prime- rating.
"I needed to get an official grading, for my research," I explained, not answering her question directly. "I went through the entire process, except the enslavement, of course."
Becky Lou looked at me as if a light bulb had gone off over her head. "Yer' jist the critter I'm looking fer! Yer' all ex-pert on this here slaving business, and ya' already have one of them-there official grades. I can slip ya' into the system and git ya' up on the auction block faster than a tick can jump on a calf!"
"I really don't think so," I said, rising from my chair.
