Bitter Sweet 00

I grabbed the back of the chair to swing it around and rest my feet on the rim of the toilet. I found it was fixed to the floor. Scowling at it in frustration when it didn't yield; I sat down with a resigned sigh, hoping this would all be over soon. I had a half hour of boredom, dwelling on thoughts of what I could be doing if I wasn't stuck here. Then, finally the screen blinked into life.

"I have reviewed the evidence," a fresh faced young man said, looking up at the camera. "Your defense is that your offensive blow was defensive because he was about to strike you."

"It wasn't an offensive blow, I was trying to hook his leg and pull him over," I countered. "I didn't want to hurt him. I was just stopping him from starting anything."

"He claims you were offensive to his fiancé and belligerent towards him. He's making the same claim you are, that you were about to get violent. The evidence shows both of you were ready to strike first. You'd have gotten a fine if you'd pleaded guilty. Your story of kicking him because you were trying to pull him over is so much BS that you're getting a day's servitude for your audacity."

"What!" I exploded at the shrinking picture.

The room light went out as the door opened. I sat there in shock, not believing what had just happened. A screeching noise began blaring from hidden speakers, forcing me out into the corridor holding my ears. Only one way was lit, and I reluctantly walked down to the door at the end.

I walked slowly feeling like the condemned man, desperately wondering if I'd get the chance to appeal. I felt the ache of my battered body returning, my buttocks throbbing the worst from the pounding they'd taken.

The door opened to reveal a lift and I was zoomed up to a small concrete room with a shuttered door where a taxi sat waiting. Its door opened as I approached and wearily climbed inside. The canopy darkened as the door sealed and I heard the shutters grind up.

I was on the road for what must have been at least an hour before the vehicle slowed and came to a stop. The canopy cleared as the door came down and I looked around to find myself in an identical concrete chamber. Set in the back wall was the waiting open door of the lift that would carry me down to my fate.

I got out of the taxi as the door opened and pointlessly dawdled to the lift, following the monotonic directions till I found myself in a near identical cell, this one having a desk and monitor instead of a screen. I lay on the bunk where my aching body would be more at ease.

I spent an hour on a plastic covered sponge, tossing and turning, trying to get comfortable before the speakers bing-bonged to announce food. It took another few minutes till a six-inch section of the door flapped down and a pair of robotic arms thrust a tray through onto it.

I rolled off the bunk and collected it, bringing it back to sit and take the cover off. It was processed protein, what I had grown up calling soylent. About the only good thing that could be said for it was that it was nutritious. It tasted more of the flavour enhancer than anything else, with a texture that crumbled as you chewed into it.

The coffee was coloured hot water, but it was wet and welcome and by the second swallow, tasted near enough for me to get used to. When I was done I put the tray back on the little flap and peered through it at the opposite wall which had two other slotted doors.

I felt my aches start again as I bent, only taking a quick look before returning to the solace of my bunk. About a half hour later, the screen sprang into life, attracting my attention as a jingle started playing. I sat up and looked over. There was writing on the screen but it was too small to read at this distance.

Hoping there would be information on how to appeal I got up and walked over. As soon as I sat in the chair the room's lights dimmed. I read the words -- it was the official confirmation of my sentence. There followed a list of the rules and regulations, which I read through to see if there were any other avenues open to me.

I was reassured to find that I was to suffer no physical harm and that my sexual preferences had to be honoured, though I thought that allowing ten hours labour was a bit much. I also thought another of the rules I had to follow was extreme. Refusing any reasonable order could get me an extra day's sentence with the same owner.

I stood and walked dejectedly back to my bunk. It seemed there was no escape and I was fated to stand on the auction block tomorrow. The way my luck was running I would probably be snapped up by some old dowager as a fuck-toy for the day, not quite the fucking I'd imagined myself doing.

It was at least an hour after that the lights dimmed, leaving me in an eerie, blue lighted cell. I turned over to face the wall and conjured up the image of my favourite vid star, thrashing my cock as I played out a scene of her worshiping my cock and sucking it dry.

The bunk vibrated under me and I woke with a start, blinking my eyes in the bright light. I jumped off the bed as the shaking got more violent. I stood and stretched, then scratched and tested my tender spots, finding that all but the worst had faded.

I used the toilet. As I stood and flushed, it slid back and a shower head descended with a little tray appearing out of the wall, carrying soap, a cheap plastic toothbrush and a tube of depilatory cream.

A bing-bong chimed with the breakfast announcement as I air dried myself. I was waiting when the slot opened, taking my breakfast as the mechanical arm slid it in. I had a bowl of some porridge and a mug of water; it seemed around here the condemned man didn't get a hearty breakfast.

The door opened ten minutes after the trays were collected, and my curiosity was aroused when there was no accompanying announcement. I walked over and looked up and down the corridor. There were five other men, all of them looking older. At the end of the corridor, a door opened and the lights above started to fade. I walked with the rest to the lighted doorway, walking through to find tables and chairs.

"You'll be alright," said the man next to me. "You won't be out picking litter with a dong like that."

"No, he'll be the plaything for some rich bitch; they'll be salivating at the sight of that monster," said a balding guy coming over. "I'm Sam, from Asimov."

He held out his hand, and I reached over and shook it. "Hi. I'm Rick, a spacer."

"Greyham, Delta IV," said the first guy. "I've got two days." He looked enquiringly at us.

"One for affray," I said, looking at Sam.

"A week, but it was worth it." He chuckled.

"What happens next?" asked Greyham.

I shrugged my shoulders looking at Sam.

"I think we're waiting for the ones that were auctioned out yesterday," answered Sam.

We drifted over to sit around one of the tables, the hard plastic feeling cool on my bare skin.

Greyham started staring nervously around. "I wish things would hurry up."

Sam laughed. "You may wish you hadn't said that, not with some old dragon out there with money enough to buy you."

Greyham gave a nervous giggle before resting his head in his hands, a miserable expression forming on his face.

I laughed. He looked like a man with more problems than me.

"You shouldn't be laughing either; some of those rich bitches will wilt your dick with a queue of friends," Sam said as he turned to me.

"How come you know so much?" I asked.

"It's my third time around; I'm being deported after my week is up."

I was bursting with curiosity about his crime.

"I won't be here to get caught again and I'm never coming back," declared Greyham.

"I've got a six month contract to start when I get out, this was supposed to be my fucking holiday," I put in.

"My wife is going to kill me when I get out," complained Greyham, plonking his elbows on the table and resting his chin in his hands.

"Yes, but you'll have a tale to tell the boys back home," said Sam laughing again.

A monotonic voice blared through the speakers. "Attention, attention. Prisoners will follow the yellow line."

"That's us," Sam said standing.

I stood and followed him out the newly opened door, tracking the lighted line in the floor. It led us to the back of a queue of other men who were already wearing the dreaded green collar. As we waited, I heard a voice calling out names. Looking to the side, I peered up the line to see a guard approaching.

When he got to us six newcomers at the tail, he handed each of us a green collar as he marked us off on his pad. I looked at it in my hands. There was a red patch on one side of the ring for the leash and a grey one on the other.

"Put it on," the guard ordered on his way back up the line.

I slipped it around my neck, feeling the magnetic clasp close to seal it there. Soft though it was, I was acutely aware of it. For those like Greyham it was a badge of shame, to me it was a wasted day. Whatever happened, it wouldn't kill me and it just might be that a beautiful girl bids to win me.

The line began moving in fits and starts, having us shuffle forward. It wasn't till I got to the front that I found that the delay was in sending us singly across a walkway, stopping in the middle to do a three sixty before walking off the other end.

As I turned in front of the chattering crowd, the sight of some of the hungry faces had my cock twitching and thickening. I also saw a screen with a live feed showing a close up of me with my vital statistics displayed on a sidebar.

Behind the display and the auctioneers' lectern, I could see the first of the prisoners seated on tiered benches with more joining them. As I exited the walkway, I joined a smaller shuffling queue and climbed to my place on the highest occupied row.

I studied the crowd, watching the bidding as most went for a hundred or so, with some of the younger men breaking five hundred credits. I wondered how much I would fetch, hopefully above that as the pick of the bunch.

We shuffled some more, moving from seat to seat as the next up was drawn from the end of the front row. The crowd had shrunk considerably by the time my turn came. There were still two bidders when I hit the two thousand mark. I was rooting for the girl in the tight red leather dress rather than the anonymous guy talking down his sleeve to some unknown bidder at the other end of the phone. Two thousand two hundred fifty was the winning bid, leaving the woman bouncing as the auctioneer's gavel came down and me ogling the way her tits bounced.