Westbound Pt. 01

Westbound - Part 1

This is my attempt at a Tracy-style story, but set in the HCI universe from my other stories on Literotica. Themes include bondage, slavery, bureaucracy, public humiliation, corporal punishment, interstate commerce, and not-completely-consensual sex.

One of the most clichéd ways to start a story is "It all started with..." but honestly that really is how it all started, so here we go:

It all started with a phone call from Marla, my editorial contact at Central & Western News Service. She was pitching me an assignment — usually it's the other way around, me pitching her on an idea for a story, or picking up an assignment from their stringer board. Now things were reversed because CNS had a story it really wanted covered, but couldn't find any takers on short notice.

The parent company was about to launch a new web drama series about the staff psychiatrist at a slave market, and as part of the promotion they wanted to do a standalone lead-in piece on the "real slave trade" with different aspects like grading, auction, and so forth. A total fluff piece no doubt, just to gin up interest in the show.

CNS wanted to include the scandal-ridden slave transport business, and they needed someone with journalistic and video experience since it would be subject-only (in other words, I would not be in the video except as an off-camera voice asking questions). Marla explained that the gimmick was to ride with a shipment of slaves on an overnight trip, show what it's like, and do interviews. They really wanted what's called in the the industry a "one-man-band," as well as a freelancer they could rely on, so she thought of me.

I wasn't crazy about riding in the back of a truck with a bunch of slaves, and I especially wasn't crazy about dealing with the treacherous lowlifes in that industry — even if I was careful, I still might wind up collared and caged. At the same time, though, I got into this business because I love a challenge: I've ridden with African game wardens tracking poachers, covered the attempted coup d'etat in El Salvador, been threatened by gangsters in Hong Kong, you name it. While the possible consequences are scary, risking the consequences is exhilarating — it makes me feel alive.

But I wasn't gonna tell Marla all that, so I got her to offer me anti-enslavement insurance, complete with an emergency beacon, paid for by the bureau. The beacon is a little button-like thing that goes in your mouth, you glue it on to the side of a tooth so it's out of the way, to activate it you knock it loose and bite it hard, which sends out a repeating distress signal using the 911 wireless frequency. I'd used one when I was in Central America, they're pretty good and they are not cheap. With that, plus a truckload of money, I agreed to take the assignment.

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Y'know, there are a lot of bad things about being a slave but near the top of my list is the hours.

Fast-forward a couple of days: it was 5am and I was at the loading dock of HCI Houston, the largest slave market and auction house in a state where everything is big. I met Marla, who looked just like I remember (shoulder pads in her jacket, big blonde hair, still failing to quit vaping but being cagey about it, hiding the barrel in her hand) and her technician (some chubby, ponytailed community-college geek girl I'd never seen before) who fitted me with a suite of standard hands-free digital recording gear: camera built into glasses with directional and ambient microphones, cellular network transmission, backup recorder drive and signal booster in my pocket, communications earpiece with bone mike, all that kind of stuff. I was dressed in my usual Christiane-Amanpour-meets-Indiana-Jones style (green army jacket, knit top, khaki cargo pants, boots, leather bag) so I had plenty of pockets, but this compact gear was designed to keep going even if I lost my jacket and bag — or, come to think of it, my pants.

We met the general manager of HCI, some thin old white dude named Hastings, and his work-booted forewoman Grace. Did a quick interview with the two of them, talking about how HCI takes transport very seriously, follows federal and state laws, maintains high standards, and so on and so forth; we weren't gonna use any of it, but it made them feel important so what the hell.

Grace offered to let me watch the "cargo" getting processed, and then get me tagged for the trip.

"Tagged?" I asked.

"Regs," she replied, "Anyone in the back of the truck is considered cargo for liability purposes, so everyone has to be checked in, plus federal law says everyone onboard has to have an up-to-date ID chip. We call it tagging 'cause slaves wear a tag on their collar, but for passengers there aren't any tags involved." I saw her give me a side-eye, then said, "No collars, neither."

I watched one of the slaves get processed for transport: she was a skinny redhead with some really awful black-line tattoos, no tits to speak of, and a nasty snarl on her face. Processing isn't just seat assignments and some Dramamine, it's every bit as invasive and humiliating as you think.

The rigamarole included photos (full-body, front and back, and headshots), fingerprints, measurements, blood and urine and DNA samples, and then a medical inspection. The male medic asked lots of personal questions, like where she was in her cycle, when she last ate, when she last urinated, when she last had sex (she muttered, "About two hours ago"), whether she had ever been anally penetrated ("About two hours ago"), cataloged her tattoos, looked her all over for piercings ("Left nipple but no jewelry present" he said for the dictation bot), implants, and signs of disease, took her temperature and blood pressure and all that "medical baseline" stuff. He bent her over an exam table, naked, and gave her some shots in her butt which she bore stoically. I remember thinking that if a reporter wasn't there watching, hypodermic needles wouldn't have been the only things stuck in her butt.

If you think that was humiliating, just wait — it gets worse.

I then got to watch her be cleaned and deloused by a young (maybe just out of high school?) black kid wearing a yellow rain suit (unlike the medic, he took a good long look at her, up and down, clearly enjoying the sight of her naked body; she instinctively hiked one arm over her almost non-existent breasts, and put her other hand over her crotch, but the young man just smiled). He swiftly cuffed her and hung her by her wrists from a hook dangling from the ceiling, then scrubbed her all over with a strong, green-colored soap and a stiff brush, concentrating on her ass and her crotch, which he then sprayed with a depilatory foam — totally unnecessary since she was already clean shaven. The sting of the foam on her naked, scrubbed skin made her grimace in discomfort, and the kid grinned even wider. After he rinsed off her now bright-pink skin, he spread her legs and shoved a nozzle up her rectum. She started to yell but he just slapped one butt cheek and told her to settle down or he'd gag her(!). When he was done, he unhooked her and she got to empty her bowels into an open toilet in front of all three of us; afterward he rinsed her again and she assumed "the position" (like the cops say) against the wall while he slowly but forcefully shoved a suppository up her squeaky-clean rectum — apparently to stop her from soiling herself during the trip. Finally she stepped through a frame fitted with blowers that dried her like a car in a car wash (by which I mean quickly and poorly), and he turned her over to Grace.

Grace led her by her collar into a room that reminded me a bit of the mail room at CNS: lots of steel tables and machinery and stacks of forms and tags and stickers. Grace scanned the ID chip in her chest, and showed me the results on the screen of her data pad: Mary Anne Guthrie, now known as Inventory \#655041, born in Ardmore, Oklahoma, last known address here in Houston, twenty-three years of age, voluntarily enslaved as part of a plea bargain to avoid judicial enslavement (which, Grace told me in an aside, is pretty awful), slave rated Select (which is like a report card grade of "C"), basic obedience training (conducted over several weeks at the auction house — not much but better than no training at all), no prior owner, no sale at last auction, marked for transport.

Grace tapped a button, a printer burped out a sticker, the sticker went on a square blue plastic tag, the tag went on Mary's, er, 655041's metal slave collar. Grace turned to me, brushed aside my shirt collar and scanned my ID chip. She showed me the result: Francesca Ontkean, Inventory 888291 ("That's a dummy number for the system," Grace told me), born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, last known address in Houston, twenty-nine years of age, free woman, no rating (my parents have money so I could avoid it), training, owner, and sale history all N/A, marked "Transport Only - NFS" (NFS meaning Not For Sale). Out of curiosity, I looked at the physical attributes: 5' 7", 124 lbs, 34B bust, 34-inch hips, white, fair skin, brown hair (I keep it in a short bob for ease of maintenance), brown eyes, no correction (not yet, I thought; I'm starting to need reading glasses for print because of all the screen time), no piercings, tattoos, scars or birthmarks. Not bad, I hadn't updated since I got chipped years ago but it's all the same — I run regularly and watch what I eat, it's the only way to be in this business — so my stats are not too different from when I graduated high school.

Grace pasted my sticker onto a plastic tag, dug out a safety pin and attached it to my jacket. I asked if it was really necessary and she said, "Federal law, everything in the back of a transport truck must have a bill tag on display." She lowered her voice and said, "Tell the truth, the tag is for Mr. Hasting's benefit. Once you're gone, just keep it in your coat pocket so you're in compliance, but unless you get a trooper who's being a dick it shouldn't matter."

Grace led the redhead out to the loading dock, and I saw a line of nude white women, handcuffed and connected to each other by a length of chain attached to their collars. These were my fellow travelers and documentary subjects. Off to one side was Marla and Hastings and Marla's tech.

A garage door rolled up and a young good-looking Latino with a dark goatee and a muscular build, wearing a blue work shirt and a trucker's cap, came in. Grace introduced him as Chuy, the driver, and he seemed nice enough; he had a sweetly endearing smile and the easy grace of an athlete.

He opened the door on the rear of the truck trailer backed up to the loading dock, and I went inside to have a look. The cargo section was spartan, just a double row of steel cages, one on either side, six cages in a row for a total of twelve. Chuy pointed out the racks that could hold another row of cages atop the first two rows, doubling the truck's capacity, but they weren't needed for this run. Bright white lights (I tested the video glasses, and the tech — named Amy, apparently — gave me feedback over the earpiece), ventilators, plastic tile flooring, thick insulation (which kept it quiet but also made it soundproof), small digicams in opposite corners for the driver, and a series of pipes and nozzles on the ceiling.

"Fire extinguishers?" I asked.

"Knockout gas," Chuy replied.

The cages were about waist high, and larger than the local delivery cages I'd seen around town — a woman could sit upright in one, and stretch her legs out a bit — but otherwise very simple with padded floors, powder-coated vertical bars, and an electronic-locking door with a little open space at the bottom for sliding things in and out.

Marla was busy talking to Grace and Hastings so I stood aside and watched the HCI employees bring the women in one-by-one, putting each in a cage, closing it, removing her handcuffs then turning her around to face the worker's data pad for a photo. Cross-checking her collar tag (the same kind I was wearing on my jacket, I kept thinking) with a printed shipping bill, the worker stuck the bill to a small metal plate on the corner of the cage and tapped the data pad to lock the cage door.

The first two were young, thin, blonde, and fairly pretty. They were shy, shrinking away from everyone and everything. The next three were a little older and curvier (or heavier, whichever you prefer) and had darker hair, ranging from dirty blonde to mousey brown. Following them was my skinny redhead; a short, compact, athletic woman with thick black eyebrows and a really big nose; and finally a middle-aged maternal woman with sagging breasts and silver hair — she was the only one who looked over at me while she was being caged.

Marla and Hastings entered with a shortish, balding, pot-bellied dad of a white guy with a bristly black mustache. He was Theo Nicolaides, the supercargo ("Supervisor of Cargo") for this trip — in other words, the HCI middle-manager riding along to make sure nothing went wrong while a reporter was aboard. I remember that even though he was smiling, when we shook hands he squeezed mine really hard, and I saw that the thickly muscled forearms sticking out of his short-sleeved HCI shirt were constricting; he was doing it deliberately. Instinctively I did not like him.

Marla wished me luck, Hastings turned and left without a word, Nicolaides told me we'd be on the road for about four hours before the first mandatory rest stop, then he and Chuy jumped down from the rear exit of the truck and closed the door. I heard a harsh scraping noise followed by a loud metallic thump, and we were locked inside.

"Hi Miss Ontkean!" Amy the tech chirped in my earpiece. "I'm really, really honored to be working with you: I've watched your videos since I was in high school, and I think you're amazing! Good luck — not that you need it — and we'll see you in Albuquerque!"

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The trailer swayed gently from time to time as it made turns, and we slid around a tiny bit as it accelerated and decelerated, but the ride smoothed out once it got on the highway. At least I assume so; riding inside a windowless box made it almost impossible to determine what was going on outside.

Once we got going, the lighting switched from a bright white to a warm yellow, and I started by giving to the women a little opening speech I'd rehearsed, to explain what I was doing, and finished with "So, who would like to go first?"

None of them said a word.

Most of them wouldn't even make eye contact with me.

"Nobody? Don't any of you want to tell your story?"

Silence... until the silver-haired lady said, "They're not going to talk until you order them to."

"How do you mean?" I asked.

"Slaves follow orders, they don't volunteer," the woman said, sounding a little annoyed. "If you want something from them, tell them directly."

"Then why are you talking?"

"Because I'm old and I don't care any more," she replied, "And I don't want to spend the whole trip listening to you try to figure out the magic word."

I sat down cross-legged in front of the woman's cage. "I'm new to all this. Could you help me out?"

"New to all this?" she repeated back. "Are you really a reporter?"

"New to slavery, not to journalism," I said, and showed her a video on my phone of me reporting from a burned-out village in Central America.

She looked at me thoughtfully, and then turned her head to the girl in the cage next to her, and nodded: "It's okay," she said.

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The athletic girl with the eyebrows and the nose was named Ruzanna, 22 years old and had been a slave since she was 18. She had sold herself for enough money to support her family after her father's death: apparently slaves command higher prices than indentured servants. She had been bought by a wealthy family and trained as a "pony girl," which meant that she dressed in vaguely horse-like fetish clothing and was ridden or pulled carts like a horse.

"It was their hobby," she shrugged. "They bought me for their teenage daughter, she wanted to compete in junior-level cart racing. I was good at sports in high school, and I'm pretty competitive, so it was a good match. They treated me really well, I didn't have to do anything other than train, and I won several state meets and one regional."

"Why did they sell you?" I asked.

"The father made some bad decisions, I think; they went bankrupt and their creditors seized everything. Ordinarily I would've been sold on the racing circuit, but the creditors wanted to liquidate everything as quickly as possible, so here I am."

"Specialized slaves are a hard sell in general auctions, especially high-volume places like HCI," the silver-haired lady interrupted. "You'll do better at the next one if you can let the house know you're special, they'll send you to one of the circuit houses on consignment."

Ruzanna turned in her cage so we could see her naked bottom and pointed at a U-shaped scar on her left butt cheek. "That's a horseshoe with a star in it, I got it branded when I graduated from the Silverlake Harness School, the best racing school in Texas."

"Branded?" I gasped. "Oh my God, I've heard of it, but I didn't know it actually happened. Did it hurt?"

Ruzanna, Silver-hair, and my acquaintance Mary laughed. "Of course it hurts, it hurts like nothing you've ever experienced in your life," Silver-hair said. "Some girls pass out from the pain."

"I peed myself," Ruzanna said. "That's so common they actually put a pan underneath you to catch it."

"Weren't you embarrassed?" I asked.

"After what I'd been through up to that point," she said, "some pee running down my leg didn't seem like a big deal."

I decided to switch tracks. "What was it like, leaving your home of several years, knowing you were being sold to a stranger?"

Ruzanna shrugged again. "It's too bad, but it was going to happen sooner or later, I just hope I get to compete again," she said. "As for home, it doesn't matter anyway because it's gone, the banks took everything. Mister Waverly had to sell whatever he could to cover his losses, including Miss Leah, his daughter and my owner." She laughed. "I liked Miss Leah, but once she was naked and collared and locked in the same holding pen as me, it was my turn to have my pussy licked."

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The three older, curvier women were Janet, Rhonda, and Tracy, and they all knew each other. Newly enslaved, up until a month ago they had been partners in a purchasing and supply company, servicing the various corporate offices in Houston. The same business downturn that had taken down Ruzanna's owners had apparently hurt them too, and when they couldn't make their loan payments the banks had taken possession of their assets, which included themselves.

"It's pretty normal small-business financing," Janet, the tallest of the three with small breasts, wide hips, and dirty blonde hair worn braided, explained. "The four of us had a business plan, contacts, and experience, but no collateral so the investment banker had us sign ourselves over as collateral."

"Then the stock market dropped, all of our customers cut back, and pretty soon we were out of business," Tracy, light brown hair cut short, short and fleshy with average-sized boobs and hips and a little bit of a tummy, continued. "We wound down the business and reported to the bank office." She shook her head in disbelief. "They actually had us strip down in the office in front of everyone, and their slave agent restrained and collared us on the spot. We got led out in a line, collar-to-collar, just like when they lined us up for this truck, except walking through an office building with all the clothed people laughing and pointing and making comments and taking videos with their phones." She curled up a little tighter into her fetal position. "When they took us through the front lobby, there were a couple of young women there in professional clothing holding loan application packets, they looked just like we did when we started out. They were staring at us with their mouths open and whispering to each other; one looked like she was going to faint, the other like she was going to cry. I think reality hit them both right in the face."