Through the Side Door Pt. 01

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 FANTASY—consent 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 slender—her 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 freak—and 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 in—the 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 degrees—hers in psychology, mine in computer technology—about 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 bull—head 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 presence—the 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 shift—one 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 school—usually 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.)

As for the little games that Gwen and I have pulled, that's also a lot about power exchange. It's neat to watch my roommate and co-worker, Gwen, strip down and submit as a pretend slave. I'll admit it, I get a thrill out of collaring and cuffing her, then walking her around with my hand on her butt, completely controlling her. After she got punished, she willingly called me "Mistress." I also get a thrill when the exchange goes the other way, when it's me stripping down and abasing myself to her. Once, before she left me in a cage, she demanded that I kneel as a slut and kiss her boot—what a rush! It was even more fun the few times that other wranglers, not knowing my identity, felt me up and (in one case) demanded a blow job. To be honest, I would hate to be a slave, but there's a thrill in risking slavery while, at least for a few minutes, I can feel that I'm desirable.

The night when this story began, I wasn't really that drunk, but I let Jack drive us home because I saw he was concerned about my safety. He's always been protective like that, even though I'm bigger and stronger, and I didn't want to offend him. That was what frustrated me about being around him—he was so sweet and generous that I was tempted to kiss him. I had to resist that temptation. I mean, enough people had told me I was a freak that I didn't need to risk losing my best friend for an impossible dream.

As soon as Jack dropped us off at the apartment that , Gwen only compounded my frustration by interrogating me about him.

"OK, girl, spill!" She urged me. "Why aren't you dating this guy Jack?"

I tried not to laugh. "Be serious—I know it's a cliché, but we're just friends. He's a great guy, but there's no physical attraction."

Gwen replied, "I'm not drunk enough to believe that line of bull. You just blossomed when he showed up, and he couldn't keep his eyes off you. Unlike the other guys in that bar, most of the time he actually looked at your face rather than your chest—now there's a gentleman."

I insisted that she was mistaken—I'd be happy to date him, but he'd never go for someone as big and ugly as me.

Gwen snorted. "Oh, come on—I wish I had a guy that cute and nice who looked at me the way he looks at you. Jack obviously has the hots for you; I bet he'd do ANYTHING to spend more time with you, let alone make love with you."

I'll skip the rest of our long, slightly inebriated discussion that Friday night. Suffice it to say that she pressured me into a test that, she claimed, would prove Jack's devotion to me. I was to begin with asking Jack for another favor and then escalate the situation to see how far he would go. I agreed, but insisted that he was such a good friend that I didn't want to hurt him or risk losing him. Still, since Gwen and I found playing slave to be a turn-on, perhaps Jack would, as well?

*****

(Jack Murtha's perspective)

I still don't know how I got roped into helping Willow practice slave yoga. The details don't matter—the moment she asked me for a favor, it was a given that I would agree, no matter how embarrassing or irritating the favor. I could never say "no" to that woman, and she knew it—at least she didn't abuse the leverage she had over me. In this case, she told me that she and Gwen would soon be tested at work in both performing and conducting Slave Block positions, which is the slave industry's explicit format for displaying and arousing slaves before and during auction—"slave yoga" was the watered-down version popular among free women.

Sunday afternoon I showed up at Willow apartment's for the practice. At her request, I was wearing (under my jeans, until I got there) an old pair of gym shorts. When I saw how Willow was dressed, the trip suddenly seemed worthwhile—both she and her roommate were showing a lot of skin, wearing sports bras, boy-shorts, and tennis shoes. As so often before, I had to struggle mentally to stay focused on her face when that body was on display. Given our height differential, I could have gotten away with staring at her magnificent breasts, but I always (except in my dreams) tried to treat her as a person rather than a sex object.

We had all learned the rudiments of slave yoga when, at age 18, we took the high school senior course, Introduction to Slavery. Actual slaves, as well as young women who temporarily entered a slave market for the purposes of slave grading, had to perform "slave naked," but fortunately Willow did not ask me to go to that extreme of realism (the thought did cross my mind that I'd kill to see HER exercising in the buff, but THAT would never happen). Other than more suggestive moves, such as twerking hips, spreading buttocks, and fondling groins, the main differences between slave yoga and slave block positions were verbal rather than visual. The slaves were expected to repeat very suggestive come-ons, such as "Please ram your shaft up my ass," "I live to serve you, Mistress," and "I long to swallow your massive prick, Master." (To avoid shocking the suburban women who took slave yoga classes, these phrases were SLIGHTLY toned down and passed off as "slave mantras.") For me as a guy, saying such things was truly embarrassing, but as always I did it for Willow.

The other part of the verbal difference between slave yoga and the real thing was the manner in which the slave wrangler critiqued the slaves performing block positions. Gwen and Willow took turns acting as slave wrangler, using language for which they apologized in advance, while I and the other woman were the "slaves." A typical comment, as I assumed a bent-over position, head between widespread legs, called Display, was "Come on, Asshole, get your butt up higher—your Mistress wants to peg you!" [If you're not familiar with this language, all male slaves are called "boys" or "assholes," just as all female slaves are "girls" or "cunts"—part of the process of reducing them mentally to the status of subhuman servants who had to provide sex on demand.) Needless to say, I was blushing furiously throughout our practice.

When we finished, they both thanked me profusely and again apologized for embarrassing me. I was still a little red-faced, but gave the usual "glad to help, it was kind of interesting to see what you do" response. I saw Gwen nudge Willow, gesturing with her eyes in my direction as if telling her to say something to me.

"Ummm." Willow began, uncertainly. "Would you like to see more of what happens in a slave market?"

Truth to tell, the places terrified me. I'd never been slave-graded, in part because there were too many urban legends about free people (usually pretty women, not male nerds, of course) going in for grading and ending up enslaved. One reason why Willow and I had taken three years to finish community college was because we worked part-time rather than get slave-graded for student loans. So, when she suggested going to the slave market, I made noises about not wanting to be a bother, but Gwen jumped in.

"Oh, come on, Jack." She urged me. "You're all tuned up for block positions and obeying instructions, which is all you'll need to fit in. Remember I told you how Willow and I took turns pretending to be slaves? It can be a lot of fun—let us slip you in the side door some day and walk you around as a fake slave for a few hours—you'll get to see a lot of pretty women naked."

This was even worse than I had thought. I began with the gallant response "I can't imagine that there are many as pretty as you two," then retreated back to "I don't want you guys to get fired," and so on. Of course, my REAL concern, quite apart from the risk, was having to strip naked myself. In addition to my natural modesty, I was sure that one glance at my unclothed, weedy body would eliminate any residual chance of ever having a relationship with Willow!

You already know what happened—I repeat, I could never say "no" to that woman. Her combined cajoling and smiling got me to agree to come in the following Thursday afternoon at 3:30 p.m., when Willow was scheduled to take a break. She told me which side door to go to (the one nearest the staff locker rooms) and then call to let her know I was there. Wednesday evening I panicked, and telephoned to back out, but she coaxed me into coming, saying that Gwen would be off that day so that no one would know me except her. How could I tell Willow that stripping in front of her worried me as much as did playing slave? Having no idea how long this game would go on, I arranged to take Friday off from work. That was probably the only smart decision I made!

At my phone call, Willow promptly opened the door and hurried me into the female locker room.

"I'll keep watch," she half-whispered. "Just strip down; everything will be OK." And she turned her back on me.

I knew this was a stupid idea, but it was too late to chicken out now. I also turned my back on her and took off my clothes before I could lose my nerve, then stuffed everything into a bag I had brought. Not daring to face her, I said, over my shoulder, "OK, now what?"

"Oh, wow," she murmured, having obviously turned around. I heard a bang and a click, indicating she had locked my clothes into her locker. "You look great, Jack. Now, all you have to do is follow orders and let me do the talking. The only thing you need to say is 'Yes, Master,' or 'Yes, Mistress.'"

"Yes, Mistress," I replied, very nervous.

"That's the right attitude! OK, remember your block positions? Collar!" She ordered.

Having practiced four days earlier, my response was automatic. I dropped to my knees, put one hand on my hip and the other pulled up my hair, even though that hair was very short. The purpose was to bare my neck for collaring. In an instant, she wrapped a heavy leather collar around my neck. Two sharp prongs dug into the back as she locked it in place.

"Back Hands!" Willow continued, using the same firm but matter-of-fact voice. As soon as my arms moved behind me, she seized them firmly and cuffed them together with no give whatsoever. Gulp—this was the real thing. I was butt naked (usually called slave naked), collared, and bound helplessly, kneeling in a slave market. I had a bad feeling about this, but Willow gave me no time to hesitate.

Using a tone of voice normally reserved for addressing well-behaved pets, she was the consummate slave handler. "Goood Boy. That was easy, wasn't it? Now, Up! Let me hold your glasses for you—slaves don't usually wear them. Much better," she said, approvingly, brushing the bangs out of my eyes, since my hands were bound. The edges of my vision were blurred without my glasses, but I could still see her smiling face, which reassured me.

"Heel, boy!" My long-time crush and newly-installed Mistress led me out of the locker room on a leash, walking swiftly down the hallway, then turning right towards the noise that was presumably the main floor of the market. Ahead of us, I saw what at first appeared to be another wrangler leading another slave. In a second, I realized that I was looking in a mirror—the odds of another ecoomy-sized, red-haired female wrangler leading another weedy male slave were just too low for any other explanation. Willow was the model of controlled efficiency, acting as if it were perfectly normal (which in her world, it was) for her to drag a naked guy around on a leash. I thought I looked even more pathetic than I had feared; I had to remind myself that slaves are encouraged to think of themselves as powerless, which is certainly what I felt as I looked at myself in that mirror.

*****

(Willow McDonald's perspective)

I had to admit that Gwen seemed to be right. I mean, I'd always been able to count on Jack if I needed help, but going through slave yoga drills and dirty mantras and then, even more, showing up to sneak into the Longhorn—those were significant sacrifices just to please me. He was clearly mortified by being a naked slave on my leash, but his appearance made me long to take him in my arms. Damn, that man was cute, and his cock was bigger than I had expected. If he would do all this, maybe he really did care for me?

If we had been caught in or near the locker room, I would have had difficulty explaining what was going on. Fortunately, we had just made it back out onto the processing floor before the day shift manager, a lazy pain-in-the butt named Harold, stopped me.

"What've you got there, Willow?" He asked in a very tired, disinterested way.

I tried to bluff him, "Just some asshole being kennelled for the night."

His eyebrow shot up. "Really? There's no 4559 on my schedule for kennelling." 4559 was the number on the training collar I had put Jack in. I thought sure we were busted, and Jack looked terrified, but as usual Harold took the path of least resistance. "You're not trying to trick some guy into slavery, are you? No? Carry on, then, but make sure you straighten out his billing. I don't want any trouble, got it?" And he waved us on.