Westbound - part 1

[dtrelsky]

Hi everyone! I wrote a new story, and wanted to post it here as a Thank-You for all the great stories I've read on this forum. I hope you like it!

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.

————————

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!”

————————

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.

————————

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.”

————————

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.”

“That was the hardest part for me,” added Janet, “Walking in as a businesswoman and a valued customer but walking out a, an, an object.”

“Because I was last in line, I got the most people grabbing my breasts and slapping my butt,” said Rhonda, a brown-haired woman with truly heroic boobs and a large posterior — I remember thinking there were other, more obvious reasons you got the most grabbing, Rhonda — and she grimaced at the memory. “Then the slaver had us stand out on the sidewalk in front of the bank — in public! — completely naked and shackled, while he straps gags in our mouths and “waits” for his van to show up. Meanwhile, everyone is yelling and touching us and getting their phones out, and he’s handing out business cards with the name of the auction house on it, complete with our lot number! It was the most humiliating thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life.”

“Wait,” I said, “Didn’t you say there were four of you?”

“Dee went to auction with us, but she was the only one who was sold,” Tracy replied. “Mister Edwards, our loan officer, bought her for himself. I sometimes wonder if that was his plan all along.”

————————

I already knew some of red-haired Mary’s story from seeing her file. She spoke quietly with a thick Oklahoma trailer-park accent, had a cute upturned nose, and sat with her arms wrapped around her knees.

“I knew he was gonna rob the place, we needed the money for,” — she exhaled — “you know, our stuff. But I swear I didn’t know there was a guard. I just drove the car. Anyway, the judge said I could choose to be a slave and the money from my sale would be the victim’s restitution, which sounded a damn sight better than being a felon out in the oil fields or somethin’. I spent some time in a lockdown detox clinic, and some in a slave boot camp, and then I wound up here.”

She was silent for a moment. “Honestly, I kinda hate it right this minute. But since I’m not strung out all the time I can see how it might be okay. I mean, whatever I wind up doing, I won’t have to worry about food or a place to stay or gettin’ laid off,” — she suddenly let out a harsh laugh — “or gettin’ laid neither, I reckon. Boot camp was the first thing I done well in, like, I don’t know how long. Maybe my whole life.”

“Really?” I said. “What was that like?”

“At first I was real mad, and I didn’t want to do nothin’ they told me. I expected them to beat hell out of me, but they didn’t, they got me into detox and I talked to a doctor and got some medication and boom, I started feeling better — I didn’t hate myself all the time. And once I felt better I could do the things they asked me, and to tell th’ truth, it was kinda fun… and hot.”

“Hot?” I asked.

“Yeah, hot. Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t got nothin’ ‘gainst lezzies, I just ain’t one. But spending day after day with naked women, talkin’ about sex and learnin’ about sex and practicing sex and how to act sexy, talk sexy, walk sexy, after a while it’s kind of a turn-on. And I found out I’m really good at givin’ head, like I can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch, and I actually kinda like doing it. The trainers were real pleased with me, I even got a diamond for best in class,” and she showed me the small brand on her left butt cheek.

“That’s it, kiddo,” silver-hair said from the far end of the cages. “Keep up that attitude, show off that diamond, make them want you some kinda bad, and you’ll do well at auction.”

“Think so?” Mary asked. “My first time up I didn’t even make reserve.”

Silver-hair shook her head. “Big houses like HCI are a crapshoot, especially if you don’t look like a Prime. But smaller ones like we’re probably headed for? More intimate, more chance for buyers to get to know the goods. Believe me, for every guy who likes ‘em scared and shaking, there are a hundred guys who prefer ‘em willing and enthusiastic. Show them you can’t wait to prove how good you are, and there’ll be a bidding war for you, I guarantee it. And the higher the bids, the more likely you’ll avoid a brothel and wind up in a decent man’s bed.”

Mary chuckled to herself, and I saw her hide a smile. “Thanks, Ma,” she said.

————————

The last two were the very young blonde girls, Brooke and Kenzie. They had been listening to everyone else with wide eyes and held each other’s hands through the bars.

“We were on school break in South Padre Island,” started Kenzie, the bustier of the two. “And we got arrested.”

“What were you arrested for?” Silver-hair asked from the far end of the opposite cage row. “MIP? Public Intoxication?”

“Narcotics,” replied Brooke, the one with the heartbreakingly angelic face. “A boy on the beach had given us some X to hold so we could party together later. That night the cops busted in to our hotel room and found it. They threatened to call our parents and throw us in jail and give us criminal records, but if we signed an acknowledgment of surrender we could leave with a fine.”

Silver-hair sighed. “An acknowledgement is effectively the same as a confession. What happened next?”

“Yeah, the cops totally lied to us, because they brought us to the jail and in front of a judge,” Kenzie said. “The judge offered us a choice: being prison slaves or being indentured servants for a short period of time. So we took the indentures.”

“Who’s monitoring your indenture?” Silver-hair asked.

Brooke and Kenzie glanced at each other. “What does that mean?”

“Did you have a lawyer present?”

“Nnnno?” Kenzie said.

“It all happened so fast,” Brooke said. “We were still in our bathing suits from the beach when they arrested us, and we’re standing in front of somebody’s grandpa who looks really disappointed, and we were tired and buzzed from partying all day, and we just wanted to go home.”

“Did the judge do anything else?” Silver-hair asked, sounding a bit exasperated.

Kenzie looked at Brooke, and mouthed the words Tell her. Brooks swallowed hard, then replied: “Well, the judge wanted to make sure we weren’t hiding anything else, so he had his bailiffs take off our bikinis and do searches, then we had to squat and cough with our hands behind our heads, and then turn around and bend over and spread our butt cheeks to the judge to show we weren’t lying.”

“We haven’t worn clothes ever since,” mumbled Kenzie.

“How long are your indentures?” I asked.

“Eighteen months,” Brooke said.

“With time off for good behavior,” Kenzie said.

“Oh my God,” Silver-hair said; now she sounded amused. “Out of curiosity, where were you two graded?”

“In South Padre, at Señor Pancho’s Slave Emporium,” Kenzie said. “We each got Select, which I think is BS.”

Silver-hair laughed. “Jeezus, they aren’t even trying to hide it.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “What do you think these two are trying to hide?”

“Not these two,” Silver-hair replied to me, then turned her attention back to the girls. “Let me guess, you were staying on the north end of the island, the Willacy County part?”

“Maybe?” Brooke said. “We’re not from there, we’re from Massachusetts.”

“Both Willacy and Cameron counties are crooked as corkscrews, but Cameron is much more sophisticated about it. Willacy cops behave like the ones in those little speed trap towns in West Texas.” Silver-hair explained. “One last question for you two: the boy who gave you the drugs. Was he maybe a little older than the others? In good shape with a really short haircut, and maybe talked like he learned the words on TV? Drove a super expensive car with out-of-state plates?”

Brooke and Kenzie looked at each other, then looked away.

“So what happened to our Wonder Twins here, Miss Reporter, was pretty much the oldest trick in the book,” Silver-hair said. “Their drug connection was an undercover cop, probably part of some state anti-drug task force so he wasn’t local, driving a car seized in another case. He spies two hot but not-too-sharp young women from out of town, and plants drugs on them. His buddies arrest them and bully them into signing a piece of paper. The judge knows perfectly well that it’s all BS, as the kids said, but he gets a cut of their sale price along with the arresting officers, with a little strip show as a bonus. Meanwhile these two are deliberately under-graded by a shady auction house, meaning they can be shipped to another market, re-graded as Primes, and sold for a lot more money while also making them more difficult to trace.”

She shook her head ruefully. “I can’t believe they still think they can get away with that stuff — if the Rangers find out they’ll come down on those idiots like a ton of bricks,” she said, giving me a significant look, to which I responded with a slight nod; the Rangers would indeed find out about this, CNS would make sure of that, “— but I guess they still do it because, more often than not, it still works.”

————————

We felt the truck slow and begin to rumble in its lowest gear before coming to a halt. A few minutes later Nicolaides opened the rear door, the lights changed to bright white, and he said: “Ladies, this is a rest stop.”

Nicolaides opened the cages one at a time, latched a leash to the woman’s collar, and led them out of the back. I followed after the first two; Chuy stood on a concrete sidewalk, holding a length of chain and Nicolaides was connecting each woman to the chain by her collar — a coffle, it’s called.

We were at a highway rest stop, over on the side portion where the trucks park, and when all eight women were coffled Chuy led them to a large grassy area surrounded by a chain-link fence. It was like an open-top cage the size of a horse corral. Nicolaides stood by the gate, closing it after the women were inside and Chuy had come out.

“What’s going on?” I asked Nicolaides.

“Mandatory rest stop. They can stretch their legs, get some fresh air, and take care of any bodily needs for about,” — he checked his phone — “Twenty-five minutes before we put them back in and continue on.”

“No bathrooms?” I asked. “No water fountains?”

“No water fountains until we get to the meal stop, I don’t need them pissing in their cages,” he said. “As for bathrooms, they’re in one already. See?”

Ruzanna had pulled as far away from the group as her chain allowed, and was squatting on the grass while the rest of the women turned their backs to her. I could just make out the sound of streaming urine.

I looked at Nicolaides, and he must have thought the look on my face was funny because he snorted a laugh. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “It was strange to me the first time I saw it, too. But think about it: putting each one in a private stall is very time and labor intensive, not to mention opening up the possibility of self-harm, slavenapping, escape, and who knows what else. Besides, slaves have no expectation of privacy, much less a right to it.”

I heard some loud voices to one side. A small group of male truck drivers were gathered at a picnic table near the fence, laughing to each other and calling out to the women. The women’s reactions were interesting: Brooke and Kenzie huddled close to Silver-hair, sneaking worried looks at the men; the three older ladies talked quietly among themselves, looking at their surroundings more than anything; Silver-hair ignored the men completely, lying in the grass and basking in the morning sun; Ruzanna ostentatiously stretched her finely-muscled athletic body in yoga-like ways that were both practical and at the same time highly suggestive, much to the approval of the men based on their hoots; and Mary was dividing her attention between watching Ruzanna and openly flirting with the truckers — one of the men kept shouting “HEY RED” until she turned and swung her legs open in his direction; the men cheered and slapped him on the back.

Chuy returned from the vending area with three containers of coffee.

“Chuy,” I said, “You are now officially the hero of this story.” Chuy grinned and both men chuckled.

We sipped our coffee quietly and watched until Nicolaides’ phone alarm went off, then we gulped down the remainder. I offered to dispose of the empties while they returned the women to the truck, and they both thanked me cheerfully.

I stopped by the trash can next to the trucker’s picnic table. The little group was beginning to break up now that the show was over. I caught the attention of the young man who shouted at Mary.

“Is this normal?” I asked. “Seeing slaves at the rest stop?”

“I dunno if I’d call it exactly normal,” he said, “But I see it from time to time, at least on this route. That’s the twice-weekly 6am from Houston, so if I can time my outbound rest stop right I get a show. If I time it right on the way back…” he shrugged and smiled.

————————

“So tell me about yourself. Who are you, and what brings you here?”

“My name is currently 515904,” Silver-hair said. “Before that it was Linda, maybe it will be again. I’m here because my master died, and his estate was liquidated. His children didn’t want an old slave.”

Over the course of the conversation, she told me she had started off as a pleasure slave to an oil baron in Oklahoma, part of his stable that he used both personally and to entertain at large and infamous parties. Periodically he would “refresh” his collection, meaning he would sell off the older ones to make way for younger ones. Linda was purchased by the baron’s personal lawyer as a housekeeper, and she spent years as his maid, personal servant, companion, and sex object.

I couldn’t help thinking that the kids were idiots: despite her sags and silver hair, Linda was an attractive woman, hourglass-shaped with large breasts, wide hips, and a round bottom, but no extraneous fat at all, and she had years of professional-level sexual experience. And that didn’t even touch on her obviously sharp brain.

I looked at her naked body, wrinkles and all, and wondered how many men she’s had sex with. And how.

“How do you feel about being an older slave, back on the market?” I asked, “Uncertainty, worry, fear, anger?”

Linda laughed. “I’m a slave, I don’t get to be angry. Not about anything. Uncertainty is my lot in life, being handed from owner to owner. I learned a long time ago to not worry about things outside my control, and so I don’t fear, at least not about things that may or may not happen. I take them as they come.”

“Excuse me for saying so, but you seem highly intelligent, very knowledgeable,” I said. “And you have some leadership ability — even women close to your own age defer to you. Why is that?”

“Think about it, Miss Reporter,” she replied. “Slavery hasn’t been legal all that long, so I can’t have been a slave when I was eighteen. I had a life before I became a slave.”

“Please,” I said, “Call me Frankie, everybody does. What did you do?”

The short answer is that she was an educated and successful woman who had moved into the world of government and then business. She had an MPA (Master of Public Administration) as well as a BBA (Batchelor of Business Administration), and had worked as a regulator in the oil and gas industry. When slavery was legalized, she started encountering more and more slaves, both professionally and socially. After a painful divorce, she was lured to the private sector and worked for an oil company, becoming friendly with the founder, and started getting invited to his private “parties” where his collection of Prime slave girls entertained the guests.

“Those parties were crazy, the sort only a very rich man with a very creative mind can throw. My sex life with my ex had been pretty bad, so after the first one I attended every one I could. I had my first encounter with a girl there, my first three-way with two guys, and my first real orgy.” Linda sighed. “Those were some of the best days of my life. After a while, I realized that I liked to do many of the things the slave girls were doing; I was a corporate executive by day, naked willing sex toy by night. On “Buffet” nights, for example, I would be sure to get there early, disrobe, and join the line of slave girls waiting on their knees for the guests to arrive. I was a Prime+ when I was younger, so I could get away with it.”

“You still look Prime to me,” I said, then suddenly blushed.

“Thank you, Frankie, you’re a dear to say so. Of course the sex was great, but the part that was really lighting my fuse was the uncertainty: what would happen? Would I get picked by my Purchasing manager, a subordinate whom I bossed around during the day and sometimes had to reprimand, but now find myself kneeling in front of him with his cock in my mouth? Would I be handcuffed and led away by his jealous wife, who was wearing a strap-on dildo? Would I find myself in a group of women licking the shriveled assholes and wrinkled sacks of a roomful of very old but very wealthy men? It was all so incredibly hot, I couldn’t even begin to count the orgasms I had each time I went.”

“Finally Russell — the founder, my boss — approached me about what I was doing, and I asked him formally if I could be part of the entertainment rather than part of the audience, and he agreed. Before long I was on the regular menu of girls, and I started down the slippery slope.”

By that she means that she entered into a submissive relationship with her boss, who was amused at having a smart and successful free woman as a personal sex toy, and he moved her ever-so-gradually into becoming a FINO, which is a term I was unaware of: “Free In Name Only,” meaning a free woman who chooses to live life as a slave without being formally, legally enslaved. The other men and free women found it amusing too, so she was quite popular, especially among her daytime subordinates.

“If you had told me when I was still married, that men would verbally and sexually humiliate me and that I would grow to love it, I would have had security toss you out on your ear because you were clearly mentally disturbed. But there I was: the frat boy who got his do-nothing job because Russell owed his daddy a favor, a kid I had to ride herd over because he couldn’t even do that job competently, was now calling me a slut, spanking my ass, and making me beg for his cock — which I did, and it made me cum, over and over and over.”

Before long her boss and dominant lover had her wear a slave collar (first leather, then later metal), spend more time at his house completely nude, call everyone “sir” or “ma’am” at work and “master” or “mistress” at his home, and otherwise maneuver her into adopting the attitudes and mindset of a slave. Eventually he convinced her to sign voluntary enslavement papers, making her his slave. They celebrated with an enormous party-slash-gangbang, with herself as the star attraction.

But the very next week she was laid off from her job, had most of her possessions (apartment, car, etc.) liquidated, and was moved in to a kennel in the basement of her ex-boss’ mansion. Shortly afterward he informed her that he was going to sell her, and in fact the auction happened the following weekend at his estate.

“I had seen auctions before, when Russell wanted to rotate some of his slave stock, but he always took them to one of the markets in Dallas or Houston. He had never held one at his house before, and this one reminded me of a wedding: out on the manicured lawn, a big stage with an awning, lots of booze and well-dressed people sitting in folding chairs, but they were there to see me get sold.”

“How did you feel?” I interrupted.

“Betrayed! Terrified! I had no idea what had happened or why. Had I upset him? Had I done something wrong? I was so worried about what was going to happen to me, which was my first real experience of what it truly means to be a slave.”

“In one respect it was unusual, because everyone who bid at the auction was someone I knew personally, some very well, some were even close friends. Hell, Russell even invited some of my old colleagues from the Railroad Commission whom I hadn’t seen in years, and knew nothing about what I was up to or anything! What was usual, though, was the shame and humiliation of walking out on an auction block, slave naked (Ed. note: completely naked except for a collar), in front of all those people, looking at me like a piece of meat, appraising me, wondering how I might be in bed, how tight my pussy is, how good I am at eating pussy, oh so that’s what her tits look like when she’s not wearing a suit, all kinds of stuff; and then the bidding started.”

We felt the truck slow down again, and waited in the warm yellow light for it to halt.

————————

“Why are we stopping?” I asked Nicolaides. “It hasn’t been four hours.”

“Lunchtime,” he said. “A brief pause to feed and water the livestock, then another two hours to the next rest stop for a bio-break.”

Nicolaides and Chuy passed out rubber bowls of slave kibble, the bland brown pellets that were a staple of the slave diet, and plastic bottles of water.

“We’ve got some sandwiches in the cab that you’re welcome to,” Chuy told me quietly, “Or we can stop at a burger place or something…”

“Actually,” I said, “I’ve never had kibble before. Can I get a bowl?”

Chuy literally did a double-take, but silently gave me a bowl and a bottle out of his crate; and we were moving again.

The reactions of the women to their meal fell into two camps: the experienced slaves ate quickly, without much thought, while the newer ones dejectedly pushed the pellets around the bowl or nibbled at a few pieces.

“Eat it up,” Ruzanna advised Brooke and Kenzie, “You never know when you’ll get fed again. Besides, might as well get used to it now.”

I tried it: it wasn’t particularly bad, but it wasn’t good, either — reminded me of some dried vegetable chips my sister got at a health food store once. It made me really thirsty so I drank up the bottle quickly, and Linda commented, “At least they’re not using that stupid “high protein water” that’s just water with bull sperm in it.”

“Seriously?” I said.

Ruzanna scrunched her face up. “Ugh, I hate that stuff. It’s supposed to get us to like the taste of spunk, but it just tastes like shit.”

We talked about food, it’s uses in training, punishing, and rewarding slaves, food they’d had, food they wished they could have, and I noticed some of the women starting to squirm.

Before long we stopped again, the men put the women in a coffle as before, and led them to the “restrooms.”

This rest stop was bigger, with more amenities like a travel center with a cafe. The slave area was more developed too: it was still out in the open in a fenced-in area, but it had a sort of half-bench over grating-covered troughs, water faucets that could be used as bidets, and hot-air dryers mounted at waist height. The coffle approached the bench, and each woman straddled it, squatting so that her orifices were over a gap running up the middle, and when Linda (the first woman in line) reached the end of the bench she squatted, resting her naked bottom on the rough boards of the bench, and began to urinate; the others followed suit, and when they were all done she stood and led them to the faucets and dryers. All-in-all, a much more civilized display than the earlier stop.

Also like earlier, they attracted the attention of a crowd but instead of cat-calling truckers this one consisted of ordinary travelers and staring tourists, including families with children. I thought for sure that the mothers would hustle the children away, shielding their eyes, as I had seen in Central America. On the contrary, the parents would point out the women to their children, telling them who they were and what they were doing. The young men and boys were transfixed, of course, and Mary and Ruzanna put on a show for them. I even saw Linda running her fingers though her silver hair like combs, which made her large breasts heave up and down suggestively; she looked over at one open-mouthed father and winked at him. The father clamped his mouth shut and turned bright red, but didn’t stop looking. Of his two daughters, the older teen scrunched her face up like Ruzanna remembering the “high protein water,” while the younger teen appeared to be fascinated. I wonder what was going through her head?

As he was herding the women back into truck, Nicolaides mentioned that our next stop would be in six hours for supper and turndown.

“Turndown?” I asked.

“We adjust the temperature up a little, turn the lights red, and hand out blankets so the cargo can rest. At that point, you’ll probably want to move into the cab with us — it’s a sleeper, so there’s a bed in the back you can use.”

“Okay, thanks,” I said.

————————

Linda shifted in her cage so her face was closer to the bars. “What about you, Frankie? What’s your story? Why are you here?”

“You know why I’m here,” I said, “CNS is doing a story for—“

“No,” Linda interrupted. “Why are you here? I get a sense that you don’t understand a lot of what’s going on here, like you’ve been out of the country for a while. So you’re a foreign correspondent, right? Why come back? Why do a story about the most boring aspect of slavery, transportation?”

I sat back, and realized that every woman in the truck was looking at me, even Brooke and Kenzie.

“I just got back from Central America, and I needed a rest. It was pretty rough.”

“I saw your video,” Linda said. “Why this story?”

“Like you said, I’d been out of the country for a while,” I said, “When I left, slavery was still fairly new and unusual, now it’s been largely assimilated into society. I was curious to see what things are like now, meet some slaves and talk to them, and get paid while I do it.”

“What was going on in Central America?” Linda asked. “We don’t know; news is for masters, not slaves.”

“Um, well, there are a number of rebellions going on, bloody armed conflicts, because several governments are trying to legalize slavery there, probably under pressure from the US.”

“Uh-huh. Tell me,” Linda pressed, “What was the story with that burned village in your video?”

I looked around, every woman in the truck had crept closer to the fronts of their cages so they could better hear the conversation. I was feeling a bit uneasy for some reason.

“It was a rebel village. Or at least the government said so when they attacked it. They killed most all of the men, carried off the women and children, and burned everything they could. The rebels couldn’t stop them.”

“What do you mean, carried off the women and children?” Linda asked, quietly.

I looked around again. “I mean that the inhabitants of the village who weren’t killed and didn’t flee into the jungle, mostly women and children, were declared outlaws so they could be legally enslaved. The children will be handed off to the old women, and sent to a government camp somewhere. Any men not executed out-of-hand will be made into conscript labor. And the younger women and older girls will be sold. It’s brutal, but it’s how it’s done down there.”

“Did you witness any of it?”

“Of course,” I said. “I was actually not accredited with the government at that moment, so I was fishing around, got a tip about the attack, and took a jeep up to the village to see for myself.”

No one said anything, so I continued: “On one level, it was like something out of a movie: columns of smoke, big holes in the ground, helicopters flying around, soldiers everywhere. But on another level, it was outside of my experience: the soldiers rounding up the women at gunpoint, sorting them out by age, all the crying and pleading and shouting. Then a senior officer shows up — a colonel, I think — with some male civilians in a truck. The colonel orders the women to strip — the soldiers tore the clothes off of any who were too slow — and the civilians started unloading boxes of shackles. Then they separated the naked women into groups of six, chained them hand and foot, looped ropes around their necks and began loading them into some of the army vehicles. The ones who wouldn’t stop crying or begging got duct tape over their mouths, and the ones who moved too slowly got a rope end across their bottoms. They must have hauled off a couple of hundred women, maybe more.”

“Where were you?” Linda asked.

“I was watching from a safe distance, concealed, recording it all.”

“Were you scared?” Kenzie asked.

“Petrified. I was afraid they’d shoot me, or worse.”

“Or worse?” Linda asked.

“Or I’d find myself shackled and on a truck headed to an uncertain fate, never to be heard from again.”

Silence.

Finally Linda spoke. “Do you really think slavery is a fate worse than death?” she asked.

“Well,” I said, slowly, trying not to offend, “in Central America? Probably, or close enough. Those women were being enslaved against their will by a brutal regime, kind of like the trans-Atlantic trade in the nineteenth century. Here? That’s a good question. Slaves in Western countries are either volunteers or debtors or convicted criminals who had court trials — at least in theory. America also has much better rules and a regulatory system-“

“In general, I mean,” Linda interrupted. “Not as a comparison between countries. Assuming it’s here, is it that bad?”

I looked at her for a moment, before turning to look at each of them. Then I gestured at the security cameras.

“Can they hear what we’re saying?” I asked.

“No,” Linda said. “Look at the camera housing, if it had any sort of decent microphone you’d be able to see it, or at least the grill over the opening, and I see no wiring for separate microphones. Besides, HCI is weirdly cheap when it comes to cameras; they only have black & white video, and they never have audio capabilities at all. I have no idea why, but you won’t find a single one in any HCI facility that can hear what you’re saying.” She turned back to me: “So, would life as a slave in America really be as bad as death?”

I really had to think carefully about how I was going to answer that. “I was raised to be an educated professional, to expect that I would live my entire life as a free woman, that slavery was something that happened to other people. My default opinion was yes, it would be, at least for me. But now?” I said, looking around, “I’m not so sure.”

————————

“Have you ever spent any serious time around slaves?” Janet, one of the three entrepreneurs, asked. “Have you ever known one as more than a casual acquaintance?”

“No,” I confessed. “I’ve been served by them in stores and restaurants, seen them on the streets, knew some who cleaned my friends homes growing up, passed them in hallways, but I couldn’t tell you any of their names, no.”

“So how do you know?” Linda asked. “The answer is: you don’t know. Have you ever tried putting yourself in our shoes for even a minute? Actually, I have an idea,” she said, looking around.

“Get in a cage,” she said.

“What?!” I said, a little too sharply.

“Get in the cage opposite me, and stay there for the rest of this trip,” Linda said, “Or no more interviews.”

Unbelievable. My first time among slaves, and I’ve managed to trigger a rebellion.

“But you’re all slaves,” I said, “You told me yourself that I can order you all to talk to me, and you have to do it.”

“No, I said we wouldn’t talk to you until ordered. How much we talk, and what we say, is up to us. For instance, we could limit ourselves to yes and no answers, and there goes your video program,” Linda said, her voice steady.

“But I could-“

“You could snitch to that oaf Nicolaides or call management at HCI, but what would you tell them? The slaves aren’t talking enough? The slaves are giving answers that aren’t interesting? The slaves don’t like me?” Linda snorted. “Come on: put yourself on our level, just for a little while, and see how it makes you feel.”

Actually, it might be useful, to shoot some conversations from inside the cages, give a cinéma vérité feel to it. And as I looked around at their faces, I realized they do kind of have me over a barrel.

I tugged on the cage door. “It’s locked.”

“It’s sealed with electromagnets to keep the door from swinging around. To open it, you need a collar. There’s probably some spares in that cabinet,” Janet said, pointing up at a spot on the wall.

“I am not wearing a collar,” I said.

“You don’t need to, you just need it to get the magnets to open.”

I opened the cabinet set into the wall (it wasn’t locked, it was barely held closed), dug through the collection of junk inside and pulled out a thin metal collar. I waved it next to the cage, and the door popped open. I put the collar in one of the oversized pockets in my jacket, got on my knees, gave a last look around, and crawled inside.
The door latched shut with a click. I tried pushing it open but couldn’t.

Before I could ask, Janet said: “The collar only opens it from the outside, not the inside; it’s a convenience for the slave handlers. Hold the collar through the bars and it will open.”

I looked around the inside of the cage. Nothing much to see, it was clean and the floor was padded, otherwise it was exactly what you would expect.

“It’s a little strange at first, but you get used to it,” Linda said.

“Mm-hmm,” was the only comment I could make; it was more than strange, it was, well, I don’t want to say frightening (I could technically let myself out), so I’ll say unsettling because my stomach became unsettled.

But at the same time, I could see how it might be comforting. I definitely felt safe from any wandering grizzly bears.

“The biggest reason I’m reluctant to stay in a cage,” I said, “is because of the reputation of transport companies and the people who work for them — some are little more than criminals. I’ve heard stories-“

“Slaves disappearing?” Linda asked. “Women headed for one place and never arriving, or another woman arriving in her place? That sort of thing?”

“That’s not really true,” Rhonda said. “On the rare occasion it does happen, it’s always with some cut-rate fly-by-night operator whose offices turn out to be a letter drop at a UPS store. Honestly, if an owner is willing to place something as valuable as a slave in the hands of someone without performing any due diligence, it’s the owner’s fault when they turn up missing.”

Linda nodded in approval. “Besides, this is an HCI-owned truck crewed by HCI employees, not contractors,” she said. “We’ll get where we’re going alright. Don’t believe everything you see on the Internet.”

At that, all of the women (except the two youngest) laughed out loud; I felt my face turn red.

In an attempt to re-establish my authority as the interviewer (and to help regain my composure), I asked Rhonda: “I meant to ask you earlier, the business the four of you were in, what was it exactly?”

Janet answered. “Purchasing and supply contracting for major corporate offices. Their office managers would give us orders from a catalog of our available goods, and we would supply them at a fixed price. Saves the managers time with bids and contracts for small lot purchases, or regular purchases of small items.”

“What kinds of items?” I asked.

“Office supplies-“ Janet said.

“Computer supplies-“ Rhonda said.

“Slave supplies-“ Tracy muttered.

Janet and Rhonda glanced angrily at Tracy, who shrank back into her cage. I wondered why Janet seemed to know how the cages worked, and Rhonda about slave transport; now it made sense.

“What kinds of slave supplies?” I asked.

All kinds, it turned out: from the obvious like restraints and tracking collars to disciplinary tools to hygiene and food products to, as I had guessed, cages.

“It is still strange to me,” Janet said, “To go from negotiating bulk purchases of slave kibble over drinks atop the nicest hotel in Houston, to eating kibble out of a rubber bowl three times a day while everyone stares at my privates.”

“Still annoys me,” Rhonda said, “That when we got processed for transport HCI used the cheapest industrial soap on us instead of something that wouldn’t sting our skin. It’s not like Greenfields or Dr. Bronson’s would have been that much more expensive, and a lot less toxic.”

“Like Linda said,” Janet added, “HCI is weirdly cheap on some things, and extravagant on others. Like these cages, they’re the basic model of the most top-of-the-line series available. At least we’ll be comfortable.”

“Do you have any concerns about your new status?” I asked the three former entrepreneurs.

“No,” Rhonda replied, “Not if someone keeps her mouth shut,” shooting another dagger at Tracy, who quailed back again.

“It’s a real concern though,” Janet said. “Bad enough if we get bought,” — she stumbled a little on that word — “by someone we used to work with, but if they own slaves from a company we used to supply…?”

“We sometimes had to demo items on slaves,” Tracy said in a small voice. “They would just have to smile and take it, no matter what. I didn’t think much about it at the time, because that could never happen to me.” She looked over at me: “Right?”


(End Part One of Three)

[jaws]

Great start, I somehow have the feeling that her decision to get in the cage is going to come back to haunt her, and her playing with danger might come with some fun consequences this time.... fun for us at least

[orflash64]

I've been waiting months for Gentlemanmariner to write a new story and I was not disappointed. A very excellent start, and I think he was right, getting into a cage is going to bite her in the ass down the line.

[Hooked6]

I really enjoyed the detailed personal accounts of the transported slaves. Their stories were not only varied and in-depth but realistic and interesting as well. Like many others, I have too have been eagerly awaiting another story from you (Gentlemariner). I was thrilled with your story, Three Sisters, the moment I first read it. YOU have a talent for this genre to be sure and I frequently check your Literotica site to see if anything has been added. Finding this addition here was an unexpected treat!

Hooked6

[jeepster]

Been waiting for you to write another! This is a good start!

[gary]

Glad to see another story from gentlemanmariner, like the slow but exciting build up, seeing some of the characters from his previous stories, and of course the stories of each of the slaves.

[GreyRose]

Glad to see your newest story and its developing quite nicely. As has been mentioned the details of each girls background gives them depth and creates a richer story environment. Linda mentioned the slippery slope and I think our intrepid journalist has taken the first true step on hers.

Looking forward to reading the next two chapters.

[gentlemanmariner]

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate your kind words, but I really REALLY appreciate knowing that you're enjoying my story!
(That goes double for two of my favorite authors, gary and Hooked6 - muchas gracias!)

[gentlemanmariner]

I really enjoyed the detailed personal accounts of the transported slaves. Their stories were not only varied and in-depth but realistic and interesting as well. Like many others, I have too have been eagerly awaiting another story from you (Gentlemariner). I was thrilled with your story, Three Sisters, the moment I first read it. YOU have a talent for this genre to be sure and I frequently check your Literotica site to see if anything has been added. Finding this addition here was an unexpected treat!

Hooked6

Oh Hooked6, now I'm getting all self-conscious
Seriously, thanks - means a lot to me!

[davidwcummins]

That was a great start, very detail story, can not wait for next part, well done.

[surferchick]

I really really love this beginning and hope that soon the next part will follow....it will follow soon....will it?
Please!!!!!!

[jaws]

All the parts are out, look in the subforum: viewforum.php?f=34

[ElJefe]

I'm having fun trying to figure out the timeline for this trip.

First, the route. I-45 from Houston to US 287 at Ennis, Texas (just south of Dallas-Fort Worth) to I-40 at Amarillo to Albuquerque.

Start with the first rest stop..."timed just right" for the 6 am out of Houston. That means either a 6 am departure, or 6 am at the rest stop. 6am Houston departure makes more sense to me, since the stock would have had to be up earlier than that for their processing. That's standard procedure for transferring prisoners from prison to prison: wakeup about 3 am, pack up belongings (15-20 minutes tops), belongings tagged, taken for transport, strip search, new clothing issue (transport clothes, can be disposable), placed in restraints for transport, roster checked, double checked, and triple checked, load the bus, bus leaves the prison about 5-6 am.

There are only 2 rest stops on I-45. The first one is only about an hour and 15 minutes from Houston. It makes no sense to stop there for a "mandatory break". Livestock must be unloaded after 28 hours, which is plenty of time to go all the way to Albuquerque. Truckers must take a 30 minute break after 8 hours, so nowhere near that. After the first stop, Frankie mentions that "it hasn't been four hours" when they stop a second time, for lunch. That implies that a "mandatory" rest stop must be before 4 hours, so...

First rest stop is Navarro County safety rest area, 3 hours north of Houston, so, 9 am. I don't know that there are any picnic tables near the truck parking area, but there is a separate truck parking area, and there is a sort of pavilion there where I presume there are picnic tables, so, good enough for me. No cage, of course, but by the time of this story, I'm sure it will have been built.

Half hour break, back on the road about 9:30 am. Another 4 hours would be 1:30. Lunch break was two hours before that, so 11:30 lunch. That would take us to about Decatur, Texas, on US 287 a little northwest of the DFW metroplex. There is a Shell station in Decatur that is a sort of small truck stop, with separate pumps for cars and trucks, and enough truck parking for a dozen or so semis (fairly small, as truck stops go). Given them 15 minutes to run to the back and give the girls some slave kibble, and we're at 11:45 departure from Decatur.

Our next problem is that no rest stop in Texas has a "cafe" like the one describe in the story. We will have to assume such amenities are developed in the future, they would certainly be popular.

So, we're either at the Wichita County rest stop which is an hour and 20 minutes past that Shell station (and 3 hours, 20 minutes from the Navarro County stop), or the Hardeman County stop at 2 hours, 10 minutes (4 hours, 10 minutes). Since we have another 6 hours to "turndown", I'm going with Wichita County. 11:45 departure from Decatur, call it a 1 pm arrival at the rest stop, give or take. 30 minutes to squat, pee, and exercise, and we're back on the road at 1:30 pm.

6 hours to the truck stop for supper and turndown gets us well into New Mexico, which is only a little over 4 hours away. Even with the stops, Albuquerque is available in 14 hours or so, so there's no need to drive late through the night.

But...when the girls get Frankie naked in the back, and the conversation turns to illegal enslavement, Linda mentions "the kind of judge you get in El Paso". Thing is, they aren't anywhere near El Paso. If Frankie was enslaved between Wichita Falls and Amarillo, no Texas judge in El Paso would hear the case. Even if it was a federal case, El Paso is in the West Texas district with the main court in San Antonio and a satellite court in El Paso, and Frankie is currently in the North Texas district, district court in Dallas and satellite courts in Wichita Falls and Amarillo. This raises the question...are they going to Albuquerque by way of El Paso?

From a logistics standpoint, that makes no sense. It's extra miles, extra wear on the tires, extra fuel, and extra time for the drivers to go from Houston to Albuquerque by way of El Paso. Unless there is some strange setup with the specific truck stop where the slaves are prostituted, it makes no sense to go that way, and even an outfit as sloppy as HCI would eventually get wise and pinch that penny. But honestly, if they're traveling overnight and need a sleeper cab with two drivers, that's the only thing that makes sense to me.

I-10 from Houston to El Paso to Las Cruces, and then I-25 from Las Cruces to Albuquerque? That takes 2-3 hours longer and at least in our timeline, runs you past a couple of Border Control checkpoints. I'm pretty sure they would have to stop to let inspectors verify they were transporting tagged slaves and not illegals. But at least you're still in Texas at a truck stop on that timeline. Well, maybe, I haven't checked. Curious...

[orflash64]

It's a fictional story Dude.

[ElJefe]

Oh, I totally get that. It's a verisimilitude thing. Someone who never finished high school watches Braveheart, and they think, "That Braveheart dude was awesome. Even knocked up that king dude's wife before he got offed."

Someone with a Masters in Medieval History watches it and it's like, "Ok, they didn't do that. Oh, that didn't happen, either. And...wait, his age is about 20 years off. And...wait, that guy was dead years before that battle, that couldn't have happened." Finally, "Well, at least they got drawing and quartering mostly right."

So, for someone who has lived their entire life in Minnesota, this is a cool story with lots of interesting details about a road trip. For someone like me who has actually road-tripped from Houston to Albuquerque, it's, "Hey, is there a real place they could have stopped to do that? Wait...it doesn't take that long to get to Albuquerque..."

One "problem" (if it's a problem at all) is that about 10 hours of conversation is condensed down into about 2 hours worth of dialogue. I get that the multiple stops give opportunities to interact with the HCI team as well as the girls, and that he wanted stops to occur at rest stops so the slaves could be humiliated. And hey, if in the future, Texas builds slave cages and cafes at its rest stops, I don't have a problem with it building new rest stops in different locations and retiring old ones (it already does that). It just shows me that one particular part of the continuity was missed, or else there'd be a few bits like:

"After Ruzanna finished talking, everyone fell silent. I thought long and hard about what it meant to be a slave, lost in my thoughts as we rolled through about an hour or so of north Texas. I hadn't been through anything like that, not even in Central America. So, after bouncing along for probably about a hundred miles, I asked Linda..."

I can even deal with the El Paso thing, it was Linda talking and she's a liar. Maybe she once met a crooked judge in El Paso, maybe he wasn't crooked and with her pathology she blames him for her situation, maybe she heard a tale from some other slave about a crooked judge in El Paso and just worked it into her tale, not really thinking that they weren't near there or even knowing that it was extremely unlikely that Frankie would appear there. Who cares? She lied about the reason for the devox spray, I don't see where her word has to be taken as gospel for anything else.

The route is problematic. Depending on the time of year, it would be early evening when they got to the border, or it might be past dark. There would still be within a couple of hours of Albuquerque, so the bit about "bedding down for the night" is a little sketchy. You would need two drivers to do it in one stretch, it's just a little longer than one driver could legally handle, just not long enough to go all the way through the night. I mean, the last time I did it, dusk fell a little northwest of DFW (I left Houston much later than 6 am), and dawn broke in west New Mexico.
And my little crew made way too many stops, that truck would have beat us handily.

And from reading the follow-on story, yes, Albuquerque is a good location for the HCI office, so it probably wouldn't do to reset the rest of the story as happening in say, Flagstaff.

Anyway, I'm reminded of something I read in the science-fiction magazine Heavy Metal years ago (it might have been in the beautiful - and beautifully illustrated - story, So Beautiful and So Dangerous). And that was the quote from one of the characters, "Clever liars give details...but the cleverest don't."

I've found it applies to fiction. The more details you give, the more details you need to keep track of to maintain continuity. Westbound has a lot of details, and unlike a story set on the planet Xylon where you can make up geography as you go to fit the story, in this story, there's always the chance that someone who has been there might go, "Hey, wait a minute, there's nothing like that there..."

But it's all good. It's a fun story, set in a world that far enough apart from ours that I can roll with the little nits and not worry about them. It's just fun to pick this kind of thing apart sometimes.

[orflash64]

I'm just glad Gentlemanmariner put his effort into the plot and not mundane background details. He might not have ever been to Texas, but the other slave stories did and he created a good story in that area of the country that the attitudes of the region is more likely to fit. We never came up with a definitive explanation of how slavery is reinstated, so it could have happened forty years ago or twenty years or a hundred years from now. Main premise is a suspension of belief that it could happen. Try explaining to kids today that slavery use to be the law of the just 200 years ago, or that there were no cell phones before the late eighties.
I'm sure if it was essential to the plot Gentlemanmariner would correct those details in a final draft, but I think he'll put those efforts into new stories instead.
I drove through Texas twice, it's a big fucking state. It seemed like all night just driving to my daughter's house from the airport, but it was just 3 1/2 hours. Frankie's perception may likewise feel like the trip took forever.

[orflash64]

Oops, (Law of the Land)

[ElJefe]

Well, most of the plot was in Went West. The ending of Westbound had a feeling of, "So there she was, naked by the crates and the magic fairy went, "POOF!", and now she was enslaved."

And note that he wrote his way out of the ending of Westbound in the next story with the equivalent of, "...and it was all just a dream": "Linda lied, none of it was true."

That's not to say that it wasn't enjoyable as all hell, or we wouldn't still be trading messages about it.

Suspension of disbelief? Sure, some continuity problems, but I was still able to roll with it. Still want to be able to stake out the once and future location of HCI, though. (If they can fit an obedience school into an old Petco, I wonder how many square feet they would need for their mothership intake/processing/transhipment facility in Houston?)

I have noticed that since I've moved to Texas, I do think about travel, time, and distance differently. Texas is the epitome of the old saw, "In Europe, 300 miles is a long way, and in the US, 300 years is a long time."

[jerry606]

Read all 3 parts, loved it plus her continuation. Good stuff, I appreciate your craft.