Feeling Blue

The receiving dock was crowded with girls in their cages. I had introduced adjustable metal frames which allowed cages of various sizes to be stacked, up to twenty to thirty feet high. It wasn't particularly pleasant to be in a cage 30 feet in the air, waiting for a forklift operator to retrieve you, but it was even less pleasant to be in a lower cage, where the girl above might pee on you.

Too bad, so sad: my redesign of The Big D was about profit, not pleasure.

I was surprised at how crowded the loading dock was, but I didn't have time to count the unhappy girls around me as the Asian girl controlling my handcart quickly wheeled me away from receiving, using my cage to BANG open two swinging doors with the ominous word PROCESSING on them.

The black woman in coveralls and the woman in the suit with the long red hair were waiting for me there. As I entered there was a conversation in progress, and in my cage, I stared at the black woman's leather working boots and the woman's cheap low heel shoes hoping to learn their identities.

"Are you sure you don't want to just walk through each section?" The black woman asked.

"No, I'd rather follow one slave through the entire process," the redhead replied in a clipped British accent. "It might be better for my readers to personalize it a bit and see how one girl goes through the entire system. I can get some pictures of her, too. I'm not sure if we can use them in the newspaper, but my editor said I should get them anyway."

"I bet he did." The black woman in the coveralls shrugged.

The British reporter's accent wasn't cockney, exactly, but it wasn't Royal RP. She sounded like she was trying to sound better than she was. She was a little striver, with cheap shoes which were a pale imitation of my Gucci shoes back in Becky Lou's office. This limy cub reporter was going to do a story about me? How insulting! But soon I had bigger problems.

Unlocking the absurdly tiny metal lock which had held me firmly in place for the last several hours the Asian girl grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and yanked me to my feet. I could feel a surge of pain in my wobbly legs as I was finally allowed to stand.

"Oh, my!" the British reporter said. "She is a tall drink of water, isn't she?"

"Yeah, that probably helped her get her Prime Minus grade," the black woman said, reading my grade off her iPad. The iPads had been my idea - they were faster than shuffling papers.

The Asian chick reached up to pull back my upper lip, which was easy to do since I was still gagged. She did a read-back of my Slave Registration Number tattoo, which the black woman checked against the number on my bill of lading. She did a second read-back, which the black woman used to pull up my file on her iPad.

This "double check" of the SRN had been my idea - it only took a few seconds but making sure the receipts and shipments were correct was the key to proper inventory control. I had redesigned The Big D's inventory control system. Now I was inventory.

The reporter was about 5'6", and the black woman was only a bit taller. I was nearly a foot taller than Miss Saigon, who I supposed was in college but was the size of a little kid. I could have easily kicked her ass, but my hands were cinched behind my back, and I was still gagged. Without even looking at me she snapped a slave collar around my neck. The prongs were much sharper than the "play collar" I used at home, and there were pointy metal prongs in both front and back. I winced into my gag as she snapped it on, and the automatic locking bolt SNAPPED into place.

"Oh, my," the reporter said. "Do those collars hurt?" I glared at her. Stupid English bitch! Of course it hurt!

The black woman held up the remote control to my collar. "You're a Prime Minus, so you know what happens when I press this button, right?"

I nodded obediently, and sincerely. The battery pack on my neck was large, and she'd get no trouble from me. I also knew that if I made a run for the gate with the collar on, the perimeter security would drop me like an insect running into a bug zapper before I got ten feet from the building.

The black woman turned her attention to me. "Prone!" She barked. "Nose on the cement."

My hands were still cuffed behind my back, so I had to kneel first, and then sort of fall face forward onto the concrete. As per her instructions I pressed my naked body and nose hard against the freezing cold cement.

"Oh my, she is... obedient," the reporter said stupidly.

"You'd be obedient too, if they put a shock collar on you, bitch," I thought.

The next part of the conversation was so horrible it didn't fully register in my brain.

"You got her lot tag?" The black woman said.

"Yeah, right here," the Asian girl replied.

"Let's get her clipped."

I winced when the black woman's work boot clenched down on the back of my neck, holding me in place. "Hold still," she commanded flatly. "This is going to hurt."

"Tagging" had been my idea, inspired by a tour of the lot where I had noticed that the cattle had color-coded plastic tags hanging from their ears. The odd part is that although I had introduced the idea of tagging slave girls, I didn't even realize, until I saw the Asian girl take the belt punch off her belt and clip the blue tag into the punch gun that it was going to happen to ME.

It should have been obvious, but it was not. Many of the slave girls in the cages I had passed had the demeaning plastic tags stapled to their ears. But that was THEM; I was ME. After all, it wasn't like I was livestock! Surely they couldn't tag ME!

But they could tag me... and don't call me Shirley.

The tag had a practical purpose, in that it had a sticker which showed the lot number that would go into the electronic sales catalog, and serve as a quicker reference than the rather lengthy SRN number. The auctioneer could check the tag and announce, "we are selling lot FP-83897" and the buyers could pull up the details of the girl on their cellphones. Of course you could always pull up the girl being sold by just going to the "current" section in the menu and picking which sales arena you were in, but some folks preferred pecking in the numbers.

I had learned that on many ranches they used different colors for heifers and bulls and cows of different ages. I decided to have some fun with this idea and expand it to be part of The Big D's brand identity.

My livestock tags were similar to cheap plastic key chains for holding the lot numbers, but the designs were playful and humorous, and told you something about the girl at a quick glance. For example, lesbians had rainbow tags, whereas the Asian girl who was tagging me might have a Chinese dragon, and the black woman with her foot on my neck would have had a watermelon. Debt slaves often had green dollar sign ear tags, while offenders enslaved for some non-violent offense like marijuana possession had jailhouse stripes. Foreign nationals often had their national flag as an ear tag marker. The English reporter who had crouched down to get a closer look at my tagging would have most likely had a Union Jack ear tag.

The tags weren't meant to be a definitive guide: you could be an Asian lesbian from the UK, for example, and you wouldn't get three tags. The tags were actually assigned by the artificial intelligence engine I had coded in the system that matched the information in the girl's file with current market trends. If lesbians were selling well, my hypothetical Asian lesbian from the UK would most likely get a rainbow tag.

It had never occurred to me what sort of tag I might get, because the idea of having my ear stapled like a pig or a cow had simply been unthinkable. Could my entire personality be reduced to a 7-cent plastic ear tag? I think not!

However the computer system I had designed, when faced with the impossible challenge of transforming my entire life into an offensive stereotype, had devoted the necessary nanoseconds to accomplish precisely that. My tag was blue, and in the rough shape of the state of California, identifying me as one of the despised "liberal elites."

The category had actually been Jake's idea; I didn't even think such a thing existed.

Jake had laughed at my bafflement. "Well, being from HARRRR-VARD, you wouldn't think there were elites, would ya?" He teased.

The tag would be as humiliating as it was inaccurate. True I was tall and blonde. I had condos in LA and San Francisco. I had gotten my engineering degree at Stanford, but I was hardly a "California girl." Massachusetts was a blue state, and I taught at Harvard, but I was hardly liberal! I liked low taxes, particularly on my investment income, and didn't give a shit about the poor.

It was probably my income that did it. Fuck! Once again, I was being victimized for being richer, smarter, prettier, and more productive than the foreigners and white trash like Becky Lou who leeched off my success and wealth production.

I never understood why buying a "blue state girl" would be a thing, but Jake said a lot of his buyers like to buy "snooty liberal college girls and teach 'em a lesson." I thought it was stupid when I heard of it, but I did come up with an amusing classification for the unfortunate victims of red state animus in the catalog: BLUE, TATTOOED & SCREWED.

I looked up at the smiling Asian girl as she fitted the blue tag marking me as a member of a despised and reviled social class on my ear.

"NO! YOU'RE MAKING A MISTAKE! I DON'T BELONG HERE! I'M NOT REALLY A SLAVE. THIS IS ALL A MISTAKE!"

The problem was I was bound and gagged, so my protests were incomprehensible gibberish. As much as I was prepared to call the entire undercover assignment off, there was no turning back now.

"Wow, look at her drool!" The reporter said stupidly. "She's really excited about getting tagged!"

Fucker! I wasn't excited, I was angry, humiliated, and scared. I knew this was going to hurt. If I had a Union Jack tag, I would have wrestled her to the ground and clipped her fucking limey ear.

POP!

I was now tagged. The hole the tag made was tiny, but it went straight through the cartilage, and was heated to prevent infection. I screamed into my gag at the sudden jolt of pain. But I had no time to rest. Releasing her work boot from my neck, the black slave monger quickly pulled me to my feet.

As I struggled to get my sea legs, she briefed the reporter on what just happened.

"Her lot number, B-26969, is tied to her SRN number. I've used the app to tie her SRN - that's her slave registration number - to her temporary collar, too. Her catalog number on her blue tag and her permanent SRN number are now paired together, all neat and tidy."

Neat and tidy. I sobbed bitterly, causing the blue cattle tag to flop against the side of my face.

"Oh, I see what you mean now," the British reporter said, reaching out to tweak my dangling tag. "Those are fun!"

Bitch! I wanted so much to staple her ass!

The black woman pointed. "See those cameras all over? They are tracking her location in the facility, so we can see where she is at any time. Jake can run reports and see how quickly we're processing them, so we can constantly improve efficiency."

I knew all of this, of course - it had been my idea. "Constant Improvements in Efficiency" had been a slave management technique I had developed back at Harvard. I had presented it thousands of times, but what was different was hearing a slave wrangler in coveralls explain it to a reporter, while I stood stark naked before them, with a fucking blue tag dangling from my ear. It gave us a real advantage over the larger slave houses. They were huge in comparison to The Big D, but we ran a much tighter and more efficient ship.

None of this was news to me, but the slave monger's next statement surprised me. "The business is really about margins. In Texas, the local county, the local Sheriff, the enslavement officer, and the judge all get a percentage of her sales price. Everybody gets a little taste, so you really need to watch the pennies!"

I felt my stomach drop. I knew the process of skimming a percentage off a girl's enslavement was common in a lot of the Southern States - Louisiana and Mississippi were notorious for it. Popularly known as "skimming the sale," it was a controversial practice, for it gave the authorities a strong incentive to push through enslavements and sell girls for as much as possible. A lot of Southern Sheriffs and Judges had made themselves rich enslaving Yankee girls on their way to Spring Break.

As routine as this corruption was, it had simply never occurred to me that something like that might actually happen to me. After all, I wasn't some feckless co-ed who could be enslaved and sold to pay for pimping out Becky Lou's new truck or Judge Parker's new ten-gallon hat. Was I?

Suddenly sending me to be sold at The Big D took on a more sinister air. Becky Lou and Judge Parker had sent me to a smaller slave market where I could be sold quickly, efficiently, and without a fuss. My efficiency improvements and its proximity to Austin made The Big D the ideal place for the two of them to turn a tidy profit on my naked ass. The knowledge that they would both be making money on my sale threw everything into sharp relief and was as shameful as it was infuriating.

Why then, did my pussy spasm with pleasure as I imagined Judge Parker in his chambers, holding his monthly commission statement in his hand as he quickly scanned the list to find out how much money he had made on me? Why was the idea of him laughing at and enjoying the money he made turning my "gash-to-cash" such a turn-on? I squeezed my thighs together as I imagined him trying on his brand-new hat.

After years of studying the markets in slave pussy, I had developed a patented system for maximizing profit. When inventories were low, it made sense to prep the girls, put them through additional training, and leaven them in the pens for a long time in order to give the buyers a chance to "get a feel" for the merchandise, literally. The concept was that when you didn't have much inventory to sell, maximize PPP: Profit-Per-Pussy.

On the other hand, when there was a glut of slave girls on the market, my studies had shown that the marginal costs of the extra training, feeding, and upkeep for the girls exceeded the marginal profit one could make by maximizing the profit on each pussy. In those sorts of market scenarios, the best way to make money was to maximize your PPH: Pussy-Per-Hour.

PPP/PPH represented a fundamental disruption to the ordinary business model, but as I explained to Jake, the key to a successful business was not to resist change but to embrace it. Jake wasn't convinced at first, but income statements don't lie.

When there was a glut of girls, the auction schedule slowed, and the emphasis changed from the sale of girls to the sale of peripheral products and services. Customers with our phone app would get notices about specials in our large "slave mall" which sold slave collars, whips, and other peripheral services. Two-for-one gradings or mother-daughter gradings would go on sale. The traders would be dispatched to the grading areas so they could make a "tender" offer and maybe pick up some excess pussy at low prices. For example, this might happen when a surprised father realized that he could reduce his college bills by putting his darling daughter on the block. Even better, he might find that exchanging his wife for a slave slut would be much more profitable if he got rid of his daughter at the same time.

The restaurant by the inspection pen would open, encouraging buyers to linger longer, have a drink, and give the inventory a good going over. The prices of the girls would rise, but the sales pitches would become more fulsome as buyers would learn the SAT scores and sexual peccadillos of the hot Asian slut featured as today's "Sandy Foot Girl." I had actually broken down the market into five states, which were visible in all the backstage areas, so the employees would know how to proceed.

1- Pussy Premium Red (severe shortage)

2- Slow-and-Steady Yellow

3- Steady-as-She-Goes GREEN (normal state - ideal)

4- Keep-It-Moving Yellow

5- Whip-Em-&-Ship-Em Red (severe surplus)

I hadn't thought much of the state of the market on the way to Becky Lou's office in Austin, as I really didn't care how fast or how slow Jake was moving pussy through The Big D in Dallas when I was going to be an Expert Slave in Austin, which was an entirely different product in a different market. However, given my current predicament, the "state" of the PPP/PPH system I'd perfected was of premium importance. The system I had designed had determined I was a "blue tag" girl and would eventually determine when I would be put on the auction block.

With my gag and cuffs removed, the black woman signaled Miss Saigon that she could go. She dutifully clomped away in her sneakers to receive the next truck of slave pussy.

"This is a pleasure slut from Austin," the black woman explained to the reporter. "Being a pleasure slut she's probably pretty randy, and she's been juicing herself for the last three hours on the road."

I blushed at the accuracy of her assessment.

"How do you know that?" the redhead asked.

The black woman smiled. "Because I KNOW, white girl," she said. "Shit, I can smell her from here!"

When she sneered "white girl" I suddenly remembered the black woman in the coveralls and realized for the first time who was controlling my fate. Her name was Jasmine, and she was a shift leader at The Big D. I remembered we had talked once, and I remarked that my family had made their fortune in the slaving business in the antebellum era, and "... my ancestors might have sold your ancestors." It was a joke, but she didn't laugh.

"That's why I like working at The Big D, white girl," Jasmine replied. "Whites sold blacks for years. Now it's time for this black girl to crack the whip and sell me some white pussy."

Jasmine didn't recognize me; she was either looking at her iPad or addressing the English reporter, scribbling notes for her idiotic story. But remembering our relationship I knew that even if Jasmine did recognize me, it wouldn't help me at all. Indeed, it would be sweet revenge to process the sale of the descendent of an antebellum flesh peddler.

The redhead with the notebook seemed quite interested in my processing, but a bit bewildered, as though she were visiting from Mars. I didn't appreciate her presence at all, as it was humiliating enough to be "processed" into The Big D without some English redbird oo-ing and aw-ing over all the humiliating little details, and even reaching over to examine the blue tag dangling from my ear, as though I were in a petting zoo.

The little English strumpet actually gave a sniff. "She does seem quite whiffy," the redhead noted, wrinkling her little nose at me. "But is she really... excited? I mean, how can you be sure?"

I shot her Majesty an evil glare. Yes, I stank, but I had been cooking for 3 hours in the back of a white panel truck, unlike the little office girl in front of me, who still smelled of her cheap, off-the-shelf perfume.

Jasmine pointed her crop at me. "Display!" She snapped.

I hesitated, but when I saw the controller for my shock collar was in Jasmine's hand and knowing how much agony my slave collar could deliver, I snapped to it. Biting my lip, I immediately turned, spread my legs to shoulder width, and bent my head down as far as I could, raising my ass high in the air.

I blushed hotly as I felt my butt cheeks lift and separate, opening myself up like a flower and revealing both my sex and asshole to Jasmine's and the idiot, English woman's peering eyes.

As if I weren't embarrassed enough, the English reporter bent over to get a closer look at my sex. "Oh, yes, I can smell her now. Quite pongy!" She observed.