Through the Side Door, Pt. 01
(This story is set in a world where legalized, non-hereditary slavery is common-place for serious crime, unredeemed debt, or voluntary self-indenture. Eighteen years of age is the minimum for anyone in this world to be enslaved or be involved in slave business operations. This is strictly a FANTASYâconsent is always mandatory in the real world, and no one should ever be enslaved.)
(This story takes place in the same environment, and with some of the same characters, as "Trying on a Collar," although reading that series is not a pre-requisite to understanding this one. This tale taking place about two years after the end of "Trying on a Collar.")
(
Jack Murtha's viewpoint
)
I had only turned 21 a few months earlier, so I'd never entered a bar before that Friday evening when, feeling particularly lonely, I decided to try one. Yet, within 90 seconds of walking in, I heard a laugh that I recognized instantly. It started as a giggle and ended almost like a braying donkey, which could only come from one person: Willow McDonald.
To understand my subsequent behavior, I need to tell you a few things about Willow. First, her offbeat sense of humor had made us almost inseparable throughout high school and community college: two smart, snarky misfits who shared a sense of the ridiculous, but were otherwise nerd loners.
Second, as Willow herself often remarked, her parents must have had a sense of humor when they named her. She was, indeed, as flexible as a willow tree, but otherwise would best be described as an oak, not a willow. By the time she stopped growing she was at least an inch, perhaps two, over six feet tall and far from slenderâher body was well muscled, weighed close to 200 pounds, and built like the proverbial masonry restroom. Not an ounce of fat, but muscular legs supporting a curvy body with, to be crude, fantastic boobs and a shelf-like butt. Even her curly dark-red hair, usually gathered in a sloppy ponytail, matched the brick metaphor. A magnificent physical specimen, but so unlike the stereotypical high school beauty queen that our classmates had shunned her as a freakâand she also seemed to have a low opinion of her appearance, despite my best efforts to convince her otherwise.
Third, in case you can't tell from the preceding COMPLETELY objective description, Willow was (and is) the love of my life. Only I'd never had the guts to tell her that, for fear of losing her as a friend. She did let me kiss her on prom night, after I'd nagged her into going even though she insisted that she would look hideous in a dress (I thought she was breath-taking). But, she always held me at arms' length and I didn't want to push the matter for fear of offending her.
Not that I had much to offer her physically. I was perhaps three inches and thirty pounds less than Willow, a skinny nerd with the usual BCG glasses. In high school, I had heard some clowns refer to us as "Jack and the Beanstalk." So, even though she kept deprecating her own appearance, I had to believe that part of that was because she was trying to avoid admitting that I didn't attract her physically.
Instead, while we were in community college she took up with a hulking ex-football player, nick-named "Tank," from our high school who used her both to tutor him in college courses and to satisfy his baser urges. She cried on my shoulder when this clown, having taken her V-card (apparently in all three orifices, although she wasn't that specific), described her as an ugly elephant when he dumped her. I was prepared to go fight him (and probably get my face bashed inâthe guy was almost twice my size), but she insisted that I leave it alone, arguing quite correctly that she was capable of fighting her own battles.
We'd finished our associate degreesâhers in psychology, mine in computer technologyâabout two months before I entered the bar that night. (Without Willow's tutoring, her ex-boyfriend Tank flunked out.) Since then, we'd both been working long hours trying to start our respective careers, so despite occasional phone calls and text messages we hadn't spent much time together. The sound of her laugh gave me such a surge of joy that I wondered why I'd allowed that separation to happen.
I went over to her table, where Willow introduced her friend Gwen, another full-sized woman, although slightly smaller and older in appearance with chin-length brown hair. They were both wearing work boots, jeans, and polo shirts with the logo of a longhorn bullâhead shaped like an isosceles triangle with two long, hooked horns sticked out of the sides. Willow had gone to work at one of the few places that valued her imposing physical presenceâthe Longhorn Slave Market, Houston's largest. I couldn't imagine any slave or indentured servant, however unhappy about being in a collar, arguing with her! I knew she could beat the crap out of ME any day.
I nursed two beers while the women got increasingly "happy," to the point where they began telling me about their antics at work. I was especially surprised when Willow whispered that they had taken turns pretending to be slaves on the night shiftâone of them would volunteer for an extra shift, collar and cuff the other, and leave her naked in a cage with genuine slaves for a few hours, then extract the fake slave before morning. They were vague as to what went on in those cages with one exception: A fight had broken out between slaves where Gwen was penned up, and the night shift wranglers whacked her with a rubber strap and made her give them blowjobs as "discipline." Only two hours later could Willow sneak in and rescue her. Both women claimed that, because they worked days, the night shift didn't recognize them, which I found unlikely because they both seemed so memorable. The idea of Willow slave-naked and collared on her knees thrilled me, but I saved that image for later daydreams while expressing genuine concern that they might get in trouble playing such tricks, perhaps even be enslaved for real! They shrugged the possibility off, but I got the impression that the risk was part of the excitement for them. Eventually, the two women were so sloshed that I drove them home to the apartment they shared, offering to pick them up the next day (Saturday) if they needed to recover their car from the bar.
*****
(
Willow McDonald's perspective
)
I actually like my job at the Longhorn. It's like an extended psych lab, where every day I see people under great stress. OK, part of it is a power trip for the nerdy elephant girl to be in charge of other, more attractive, people. Although I have to be firm and assertive, I try not to be cruel or vindictive. Several times already I've seen new pieces of slave inventory that used to lord it over me in schoolâusually enslaved for defaulting on college loans. I never betray that I recognize them, nor do I torment them by reminding them how far they have fallen. That would make me as mean as they were a few years ago. Still, I can't help feeling a guilty pleasure about their cum-uppance (pun intended.)