In the morning, Carla felt as if she hadn’t slept at all. The light seeped through the bars of her cage as the guard came in and tossed cardboard boxes with foil-wrapped burritos and water bottles into their cells.
Carla opened hers and felt the warm wrapper against her skin.
“Where will they take us?” she asked the other two.
Kofi chewed slowly. “The mainland… Labor farms, mines—hard work. Normally we’d go to prison. But with the ‘Investment Act’ they are putting more people in prison. Gets expensive. So they decided to make us slaves and work.”
Musa snorted, and added, “And they send us to the mainland because they think open slavery will spook investors. Naked slaves sully their precious image,” while staring at Carla’s breasts.
Carla’s skin crawled, her hands twitching to cover herself. She was annoyed that he could just stare at her goods at will. She wondered if he was doing it to find enjoyment. So she looked at his penis to check if he was aroused. His penis was flaccid, but Musa had noticed her glance. He grinned at her. Carla was annoyed that this guy would flatter himself to think she had nothing better to do than check out his penis. She really had more pressing problems right now.
Shortly after, a guard entered, with a long chain rattling in his hands.
He approached Kofi’s cell. The iron door creaked as he unlocked it. With a swift motion, he snapped handcuffs around the prisoner’s wrists, then fastened the chain to the D-ring of his collar. Then he did the same with Musa.
Finally, the guard turned to Carla’s cage. By now, the routine was clear. She sighed, and turned, offering the guard her hands for cuffing behind her back. The cuffs snapped shut around her wrists. He guided her back to the others, and locked her collar’s D-ring to the coffle chain with a metallic click.
The guard took the lead and moved forward. Carla felt a tug on her neck as the chain pulled taut, as he led them out of the room. Their bare feet scuffed the floor as they followed him.
The guard led Carla and the two men out of the jail’s dim interior. The heavy door groaned as it swung open, spilling them into a dusty backyard parking lot bathed in the harsh midday sun.
Carla felt the hot outside air against her skin as if she was walking against a wall. As the coffle chain pulled her further out, she felt the warm rays of the sun against her bare skin and the warmth of the cracked asphalt under her feet.
The guard led them outside into a dusty backyard lot.
She anxiously looked around as she stepped out, trying to spot people who would see her naked. She hoped there would be no one, but at least no one she knew. She was afraid that Tara, or someone from Celtic Circuits might be there for some reason and would see her like this.
Or maybe the beach shower guy was lurking here. Now he could see her naked. Had he orchestrated this, using Grabesh’s corrupt courts to deliver her straight to him, naked and chained? Would he be waiting for her, wherever it was that she would be delivered?
She scanned the dusty parking lot frantically. Her heart was pounding, but all she saw was a battered pickup and a worker unloading cartons. His eyes traced her form before turning away.
The guard halted at the pickup truck. He nodded to a large man approaching from the pickup with a lazy grin.
“Hey Dongo,” the guard greeted. His tone was brisk as he handed over the coffle chain with a metallic clink. “Here is your cargo.”
Dongo took the chain. He didn’t pay much attention to the two young men with her on the coffle chain. Instead, his eyes lingered on Carla with a mix of curiosity and amusement.
“Oh, a white girl! How rare!” he exclaimed. His gaze swept over her exposed curves before unlocking the trailer’s gate with a rusty key.
The guard nodded, “Yeah, she came in yesterday evening unexpectedly.”
Dongo guided the coffle toward the trailer, opened the back gate and fastened the chain to one of the bars of the trailer from the inside with a padlock.
Carla was now chained to the trailer with the other two.
The guard unlocked their handcuffs.
“In with you,” Dongo said, ushering them inside with a wave. He smiled at Carla as she passed him to climb into the cage.
She was the last to get in and heard the gate clang shut behind her as she sat on the wooden floor. Carla looked around. The cage was empty except for them. The bars now framed her view of the parking lot with Dongo and guard outside.
The guard waved, “Safe travels, Dongo.”
Dongo leaned against the trailer and squinted at the sky.
“Alright,” he said, looking at his involuntary passengers in the confines of the trailer cage. “Looks like a nice day today, huh?”
The pickup lurched onto a potholed road, each bump yanking the coffle, forcing Carla to brace against the bars.
Through the gaps, she saw the roads and houses on the island as they drove along the coast.
Carla knelt up and moved to the bars on the other side of the cage to get a better view of the beach. The coffle chain was long enough, but she had to turn the collar locked on her neck so the D-ring was on her backside. She knelt up and held the bars to look out. This proved too painful on her knees soon, so she knelt down and looked out as the scenery passed by them.
Eventually, the truck slowed to stop at a dock.
Through the bars, Carla’s eyes darted across the dock, searching for any familiar face who might see her like this. Someone like Tara to make sure she was being dealt with or that man from the beach. What if he had followed her, so he could see her now, naked and caged? Her breath hitched, as she grabbed the bars uselessly, stressed out under imagined eyes.
A dockworker was tossing crates nearby paused to skim Carla’s body. As their eyes met, he smiled at her. Then he resumed his work. A man on a motorcycle paused before the trailer. He resembled the beach shower guy, and Carla shrank back from the bars and turned away. Her nakedness felt like a beacon designed to draw stares, and she just couldn’t switch it off.
After a short wait, they rolled onto a weathered ferry’s deck and parked there.
Carla had a good view of the ferry and the ocean beyond, only tainted by the bars of her cage.
The ferry’s engine rumbled to life. She felt the vibrations through her bones. The trailer rocked with the waves, as Carla clung to the bars, watching the Kivana Islands’ familiar shore, palm-fringed beaches and whitewashed buildings, fade into the distance.
After a short time, the mainland emerged. Carla saw its white sand beach glistening through the bars of their cage. There were mud huts dotting the port, and dense jungle up to the horizon. She felt the sea breeze against her skin, and it felt strange to sense it tease her uncovered breasts and vagina, as the ferry cut through the water.
The driver, Dongo, a middle-aged Grabesian with a lazy grin and a sun-weathered face, climbed out of the cab to stretch his legs. He wandered over to the trailer, his eyes lighting on Carla with a mix of curiosity and casual interest.
“This is a first,” he said, his voice carrying over the waves with amusement in his tone. “A white girl in the cage! First time I’ve seen that on this route. What’d you do to end up here?”
Carla met his gaze through the bars, her cheeks burning. “Nothing,” she muttered. The chain tugged at her collar as she shifted. “I shouldn’t be here. I was framed.”
Dongo chuckled, “Of course!” He wiped sweat from his brow.
“Where are we going?”
“To the mainland. You’re in luck! You’re going to a tourist resort. It’s really nice there. You’ll love it!”
“I could easily do without it.”
“Fair enough. But I like longer tours like this. Away from the wife’s nagging, pleasant views of the sea. Grabesh’s nature looks nice from a distance, eh?”
He leaned against the trailer, “You’ll see the real jungle soon. Wild, but beautiful. My dad used to take me there as a kid. You’ll see. It’s great.”
Carla doubted she would find it great. The view was magnificent, she had to give Dongo that. If she had been free, instead of in a cage on wheels like a zoo exhibit, she might have enjoyed this view. Dongo could have at least let them out of the cage during the trip, so she could stand up and stretch for a change. And didn’t have to see all this nature through the bars of her cage.
The ferry docked with a jolt, and Dongo returned to his cab. The truck rumbled onto the mainland road, and the rain began.
The cage offered no protection from the elements, and so Carla just sat there and felt the raindrops hit her, drench her hair and run down her skin. Raindrops also bounced off from the bars of the cage and hit her from the side.
The rain splashed up from the cage floor, and she felt it prickle her thighs and vagina from below. It felt very awkward and unsettlingly intimate, so she shifted from her cross-legged position by straightening her legs.
She looked over to Kofi and Musa who just sat there stoically. Musa sensed her gaze, looked over to her and shrugged.
To her left she saw Dongo’s silhouette sitting dry in his cabin. She shivered and leaned back against the bars as the jungle passed by her.
Through the rain-streaked view, primitive settlements occasionally flashed by. Mud huts with thatched roofs, more rugged than Kivana’s attempts at presenting a modern facade. Naked, collared black slaves toiled in the fields. Their dark skin gleamed under the downpour. Sometimes one of them looked up, and their eyes briefly met hers. She saw a naked woman carrying sacks. The woman didn’t notice her, but Carla felt a bit of solidarity with her.
Carla’s hand moved up and traced her collar. She thought about how she was one of them now, a slave. But she didn’t see any other white slave. She sighed and thought how no other white girl had been stupid enough to get herself into this kind of trouble. Her friends would have kept their mouth shut in the same situation and just enjoyed their time working on the island.
The bumps shook her in the cage, her body aching from the strain. As her bare skin prickled under the rain, and she felt the cool steel of the collar resting on her neck, she wondered what awaited her at the end of the trip.
