The Enslavement of Muriel MacInley Ch 01
Thank you for looking at my story. This is the first instalment of the adventures of Muriel MacInley, and it necessarily includes some introductory material. It is often difficult for a writer to decide on a category, and readers might think this part rather tame to be classed as "non-com." Rest assured that in later chapters, Muriel's experiences will go beyond anything to which she has given her consent.
Like most authors I welcome your ratings and comments, which can be influential in my decisions about later chapters and future stories.
The Librarian
Slaves are made in many different ways, and many of them make stories that are interesting or exciting, or provide "improving" moral tales. Young brides, on their way to join their husbands in distant parts of the globe, are seized by pirates and sold in middle eastern harems. Barbaric tribes ransack one another's villages, carrying off the young men and women to be sold at the nearest port and shipped abroad. Young men and women from the UK's biggest cities, living in the direst poverty and squalor, are lured into drug-sodden brothels from which there is no escape.
Doubtless these are real scenarios, but for those of us living prosperous lives in England's suburbs, small towns or villages, they are found in novels, documentaries, or history books. There might be rumours about nail bars and massage parlours, but most people do not expect to encounter slave-traders in their local supermarkets or furniture stores.
For Muriel MacInley, the first point of contact was the local library, where she worked. She was not a qualified librarian, so her salary was a pittance and she lived simply in a humble studio flat above a nearby hairdressers. She had no car, but did enjoy walking and cycling in the surrounding countryside, and that was her only luxury. She had no real prospects of getting a better-paid job, but what she did have was ravishing good looks and a bust to die for. She was only twenty, and cherished the hope of monetizing her physical assets.
Muriel was not a particularly assertive, enterprising or industrious young lady, and she was afraid of meeting the wrong people. She might be lured into prostitution, for instance, or find herself working in the porn industry. She was too full-figured to be a catwalk model, and probably too young and pretty for the catalogues. So far, she had conceived no better plan than to hope that a rich and generous man would visit the library and fall for her charms. In the meantime she lived a rather lonely life, shunning advances from men of her own age. Unusually, for one so young, she had no surviving close family.
Taking the country as a whole, there were probably tens of thousands of attractive young women with no better plan than to wait to be "discovered." Muriel was beginning to wonder how she could set herself apart from the crowd, but her ideas- of starting a "blog" or becoming an "influencer" (and she barely knew the meanings of those words) were not particularly original. Then, much to her surprise, her plan came together.
Hans Gallant was a German aristocrat with business interests all over the UK, and had recently settled in Muriel's small market town. He spoke English with native fluency but a faint accent, which gave him a mildly exotic air in such provincial surroundings. He was about forty-five; impeccably groomed and dressed, reasonably handsome and endowed with a distinct air of authority that almost amounted to charisma.
On his first visit to the public library, Hans spotted Muriel tidying the shelves in the "Cookery" section, and asked her advice on books about tourism in France. He needed no such advice, and she was certainly not qualified to give it, but five minutes later she had agreed to have dinner with him that very evening. She wore her very best dress but decided to wear the minimum of make-up. He had seen her at work and liked her, so it made no sense to present him with something completely different.
Recruitment
The town boasted several very good restaurants, but Hans was careful to choose one which, although quite expensive, was welcoming and informal. They sat at a very small, almost intimate- table in a window alcove, although the curtains were closed so they could not avoid looking mainly at one another. They began with home-made paté and toast, and then he had roast pheasant while she went for the sea bass. As he was fairly new to the area she was able to talk about its attractions without over-taxing her intellect, so the conversation was fairly bland. She did make a joke about the recent appearance of a sex-shop on the fringes of the town centre. She was trying to signal that she was not unduly prim and proper.
He was too considerate to bring up anything that might be controversial enough to cause her to walk away before she had been properly fed. The make-or-break moment came as they enjoyed their desserts; lemon meringue pie for her and
crème brulée
for him. While she ate it with her fork he took her left hand in his. "You know," he said quietly, "you are the loveliest girl I've met in a long time. I hope we'll see more of one another."
She blushed, but did not withdraw her hand. "I'm sure you say that to all the girls, Hans. I'm just a girl you met this morning in the library. Have you tried the supermarket? But this is a lovely meal. I can't thank you enough for inviting me."
She squeezed his hand as if to indicate that her gratitude might take a more tangible form. He moved his grip to her wrist, as if moving from affection to control. "Tell me about your family, Muriel," he replied. "And do you have a boyfriend, or a fiancé?"
"My parents died years ago, and they had nothing, so I'm not an heiress, I'm afraid. And 'No' to your second question. How about you?"
