~o Thomas Gray and Associate o~
"Have you found a house yet?"
The street was crowded and Thomas had a difficult time pushing through it. "I have," he said to his friend as they made their way through the crush. "That strange house on Chestnut Avenue, just at the end there near the park and pond."
"That old gray house?"
"The Gray House! A splendid name for it, Desmond. Most splendid."
Desmond smiled a little proud of himself. They were nearing the docks and the crowd thinned a bit. Soon they saw the ships and galleons on the open water, their masts rising high in the air with banners flying in the wind. It was quite a sight. "Look at that," Desmond gasped upon seeing those great ships in all their glory. "They are stunning."
"Quite," Thomas agreed. "I suppose I shall take the name Thomas Gray then. What do you think?"
"I quite like it," Desmond said. "It has a ring to it. I must ask, why that house?"
"I have a limited budget," Thomas explained. "It was affordable and suited my needs. Besides, I like it in a morbid sort of way. It suits me."
"That it does," Desmond laughed.
Success, they made it to the docks. They were both young men of twenty, recently graduated from University. Desmond was going for a lordship, while Thomas had other ideas on his mind. "I think the pens are over there," Thomas said. They walked the docks, Desmond looking at the women being taken off the ships in collar and chains to be auctioned to the masters and the slave trainers.
Thomas and Desmond passed this to go to the pens. It was a dark, dungeon-like place with various women locked behind iron bars in cells, collared and chained like the women coming off the boat. These were the ones who weren't auctioned off right away. A man named Grady approached the two young gentlemen with an easy smile and gentlemanly charm.
"Good day," Grady said, "how can I help you today?"
"I am Thomas Gray and this is my associate. I am in need of something cheap. Preferably one that can cook and clean and that I can adequately train for household service. Do you have anything that fits those requirements?"
"In fact, I do." Grady took them to the third pen down. He pointed to a dark haired woman of thirty, slightly chubby with enormous breasts and a lovely face. "That is Sarah, a widow who sold herself to pay her late husband's debts so her son could be sent to school. I think she would be perfect for you. Being untrained she won't fetch much on the auction block. I'll sell her to you for a bargain, she isn't worth more than that."
"Agreed," Thomas replied. "Let's go to your office and discuss the details."
Thomas took a last look at her before following Grady into his office. A fair deal was quickly struck. After the exchange of some gold coin and a few signatures, Sarah was the property of Thomas Gray.
~o The Gray House o~
Sarah was from the city and so, she had heard rumors of the house by Chestnut Park. It had been abandoned for over a hundred years. By the state of the place, it certainly seemed like it. The house was choked with dust and neglect. The chandelier in the foyer looked ready to fall at any moment. There was furniture in all the rooms as though it had been abandoned suddenly the previous century, covered in moth eaten sheets.
Room by room, Sarah worked to get the house into a livable state. The kitchen needed to be scrubbed and the stove barely worked. Still, she worked during the day for the next few weeks to prepare for her master's arrival. At night she masturbated so that she would be prepared to serve him sexually if he desired.
Sarah had a locket around her neck with a drawing of her son and husband in it. She decided to keep it hidden in a drawer in one of the slave quarters she took on the lower floor of the house. At night, she would sit by a candle and stare at it, trying to ignore the creepy, silent house that was around her. It felt like a cold tomb and she looked forward to the day that she wouldn't be alone in it anymore.
Still, there was a dread in Sarah of the life ahead of her. She was a shy and pious housewife for several yeas before her husband's death. Sarah never knew about the debts and still knew little about what had happened. She just knew that the only way to clear them from falling to her son, she had to sell herself into slavery in order to pay them. At least she managed to get her son away from the awful city that had treated her family so cruelly.
Then there was the Gray House itself. It was a mystery on Chestnut Avenue, abandoned a century before with no known reason. Most of the local people couldn't even recall who had lived there once upon a time. Everything about it was just a little odd. All of the hallways and corridors seemed slightly askew. Doors opened and closed by themselves. The floors creaked in the most peculiar way. There were no portraits or paintings on the walls even though all of the furniture in the house looked original. The fact that the house hadn't been looted or vandalized at all in a hundred years was the strangest fact of all. In truth, it all seemed so remarkably preserved as if it was just waiting for someone.
