Short Sale
Chapter 6: Return of Investment
Everything being said and done, it took about seventy minutes to erase Iris. When it was over, Mistress had long since finished. Slave Simone stood at attention next to slave Cora, gloriously naked and the lower half of her face caked with Mistress’s dried juices. Slave Cora’ skin was still flushed red, and her hair was wet with sweat.
They had been told to stop masturbating. They waited obediently now, standing straight, legs slightly apart, chests out, hands at their sides. It felt natural, primal. This was the correct posture for them: Ready to obey, naked and exposed and open for everyone to see.
“Enslavement complete,” slave 251 confirmed, and removed the hardware from the girl that used to be Iris. After Mistress nodded a command, she commanded the slave to wake up from the deeply anchored trance her enslavement had embedded at the baseline of her conscience.
The slave sat up, and got to her feet. Her eyes passed over the people around her without recognition. Her face looked relaxed—almost confident—but behind her eyes, there was a deep and satisfying lack of thought.
“This slave is ready to obey,” said the young blonde slave that was everything that was left of Iris Wilson.
“Your designation is slave fifteen-seventy,” Mistress said, and slave Cora could feel any desire to call the slave anything else slip away from her like water running through open hands.
Slave 1570 blinked.
“Yes, controller. I am slave 1570,” she said, and it was true. She was nothing else, anymore. Slave Cora could see it in her eyes. This was slave 1570. Hardly more than a body to be used. Iris wasn’t there anymore. Iris was gone. She was nothing now but a memory in Cora’s mind—and remembering her had become nothing less than an act of sexual dominance.
She’s gone, Cora thought, picturing who Iris had been, and the thought felt like a lover’s tongue on her clit. I let it happen. I wanted it to happen! I betrayed her!
She breathed out softly, sighing, overcome with a deep, satisfied happiness.
I’m such a hot, obedient slave, she thought. It was the best thought in the universe.
“Slave Cora,”
“Yes Mistress!” she answered brightly. She still felt the glow of orgasm warming her limbs.
“What did Iris think of your father?”
“She didn’t much like him. She thought he was a showboating opportunist, too full of himself to serve anyone but himself.”
“She wasn’t that far off, was she?” Mistress said, smiling.
“No, Mistress, she wasn’t”, slave Cora answered, returning the smile. She had only found out today that her father had purchased her mother almost twenty years ago, after repeatedly using her when she’d still been a slave.
“What if he’s changed?” Mistress asked. Slave Cora already recognized the smile she was using. She was toying with them again.
“It doesn’t affect me. I’m not his property—I’m yours.”
“Good girl,”
Slave Cora whimpered with joy. Mistress looked pensive for a moment, as if she was going through a mental check list, trying to remember every item on it.
“All right!” she exclaimed eventually, clapping her hands together in excitement. “Are you ready to shove into this sorry fool’s face just how thoroughly I have just taken his life from him—just because I could?
“Yes!” both Cora and Simone said, their voices breathless with excitement.
“Good girls! “
Mistress turned more serious. “I thought about starting by making slave Cora fuck him—but that would be gross,” she declared.
Slave Cora had thought about it already. She half-agreed.
It would be gross, but the sheer magnitude of betrayal of what she used to be would have been enough to make Cora enjoy it much more than not. She loved the idea of debasing herself, and fucking her own father would be the most perverted act of self-denigration she could imagine.
“Instead, slave 1570 will be the one to perform the opening number.”
It seemed impossible, but slave 1570 managed to somehow straighten even more than she had. Slave Cora moistened. This was the remnants Iris’s quick, attentive mind, stripped and shackled and harnessed—having no will left than the one provided by whoever owned her.
Slave 1570 didn’t speak. She had neither been asked a question, nor had there been a command to acknowledge. The fact that she was attentively listening and had understood what Mistress had said was without question and needed no verbal confirmation. She was ready to obey. There was little else she was, or needed to be.
“While I made you all my property, I had slave nine-forty-nine imprint dear Tom with enough post-hypnotic suggestions and triggers to fill a phone book,” Mistress said, approaching the entranced man. She sighed. “I would have like a more karmic punishment for him, but alas: while the wealthy and powerful are certainly not out of my grasp, there are only so many of them I can make disappear in one evening.”
She patted Tom on the shoulder.
“He’s going to go home, all filled up with ideas and compulsions of his own—but none as absolute as yours. No orgasms for him; only what he needs to believe not to ever come between me and what’s mine. Tom!”
“Yes,” said the man, voice toneless and quiet.
“What happened to your daughter and your wife? Where are they?”
“My daughter got offered a place at a private school in Vermont. Brighton College. She really wanted to go, and she had to leave immediately to still be able to get her credits for this year. My wife went along with her. She and I needed a break anyway. It’s better for the both of us. I’m sending them money. The school’s really expensive, but it will be worth it, for my daughter.”
“Good, Tom. What about Iris?”
“Matt’s daughter? Haven’t seen her in weeks, I think.”
“Very good, Tom. What about Beatrice Duke”
“It’s so wrong, but… I like her more than anyone else in my life. Even my daughter and my wife. She’s the most important person to me that I know. I’ll do anything to shield her from any harm or attention.”
“Do you know who she is?”
“No. I have no idea.”
“But you just said that she’s the person most important to you—more important than anyone?”
“Yes. I would die for her if I had to.”
“Is there anything strange about that?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Very good. Who is this?” Mistress asked, pointing at slave 251. Tom’s gaze followed sluggishly, and his face showed the barest trace of recognition.
“This is my lover, Veronica. I met her at the airport a couple of months ago. I visit her in secret once or twice a month. Not because of my wife—we’ve always had an open relationship—but because of my job. I can’t risk my reputation.”
“Very good. One last thing: Will you be able to forget?”
The man’s expression slipped into total mindlessness.
“Yes,” he said stiffly, “Trigger phrase ‘Deletion Code sigma-kappa 24’.”
“Very Good. Slave nine-forty-nine, wake him.”