A Mere Fleabite (A Time Changes Everything story) Part 1 of 3.

 A Mere Fleabite

Peony D. Beckside

Chapter One: Leg-work

 

I’m not supposed to.  Chief Brainerd had made it quite clear that I, Detective Hannah Greenwood, was to hand over all documentation with regard to the attempted abduction of Ginger Stowell, by the self-professed slave Alyena and as yet unidentified accomplices.  The likelihood that Alyena’s owner is the one who gave her the order to abduct Ms Stowell and/or to collect her is strong, but not yet confirmed.  Chief Brainerd also ordered me to wipe all related computer files.

Damn that, for a lark!  I was so mad at his high-handed attitude that I quickly photocopied everything and copied all computer files onto a memory stick, before appearing to comply with his demands.

I mean, it’s so out of character.  A man as powerful as the Police Chief of such a city as New York, doesn’t just drop everything to rush and free a suspect that’s been caught ‘dead to rights’, and to attempt to cover-up the investigation!  Who is, was this Alyena woman anyway?!  That she’s completely deluded with her tales of slavery and another planet, or is a brilliant actress, is clear. Sure, she is good looking, perhaps even stunning, but then since I’m not a lesbian I can’t see her that way.  Is she some kind of celebrity that I’ve never actually heard of?  But then, I’m not interested in the current celebrity-driven culture that we seem to live in.

No, clearly Chief Brainerd’s been ‘got-at’, bribed or blackmailed somehow.  That disappoints me intensely!  I always thought of him as an honest man.  If someone as high as he can be compromised, then how high and how widespread is the corruption in the Police Department?  Graft goes on, of course.  Even I’ve been offered bribes from time to time.  So far I have managed to resist such temptations.  Call me naive if you must, but I’ve always only ever thought that such was in the lower ranks of ‘New York’s Finest’.  I thought the upper echelons to be better than that!

So bribery or blackmail?  The first, I suspect.  I was looking out of the window as the Chief, the Alyena woman and that good-looking man introduced to me as Professor Morbius...

Oh stupid me!  I’ve just realised!  Morbius!  That ancient Science Fiction film Forbidden Planet, with it’s ‘flying saucer’ space-ship, had a Dr Morbius - played by Walter Pigeon, as a chief character.  More than a coincidence, I suspect given that Alyena talked about having been abducted to a clearly fictitious planet, and having been a slave since the 1920’s.  Perhaps the man was ‘taking the pee’ by calling himself that.   It obviously isn’t his real name!

Ah yes, I’d been looking out of the window as the three of them left.  This ‘Professor Morbius’ definitely gave Chief Brainerd something before getting into a big long limousine.  What he gave the Chief, I’ve no idea.  I can’t believe it was money.  To bribe the Chief would take more than a handful of dollar bills, even high denomination ones.

I was quick enough to get the licence-plate of the limousine.  It’s registered to a Steel World Inc. with offices in the downtown business district round Wall Street.  So far I’ve not been able to get a clear picture of what business Steel World are into.

I’ve been working on this case on my own time, calling in favours when necessary.  When I do get to the bottom of this case, it’s my hope that I can use it to pull down that pompous and clearly crooked Chief Brainerd.  Who knows, it might be my passport to a significant promotion. At the very least it will show that I have integrity and can’t simply be swatted like a fly by the higher-ups.

I wish that I’d been able to question this Alyena some  more.  I sense that trying to crack her out of the delusion that she is and has been a slave for a long time, is not the way forward.  She’s so deeply into this fanciful story that on balance, I’m sure she does actually believe it to be reality.  There is a real danger when confronting fantasists is that you can drive them deeper into their psychosis just as easily as waking them up from such.

No, the way to have questioned Alyena, was in what she could see through the windows of wherever her base is.  By triangulating which of the city’s skyscrapers she could see, finding at least the district where she lives, is possible.

Sure she could lie, but it would soon be possible to determine if she was trying to misdirect. That in itself would clarify whether she is simply acting the naive and unworldly slut, or playing us for mugs.  The one thing about Alyena is that she doesn’t seem to be reluctant to answer questions; it’s just that her answers confuse because of their total improbability.  That hope however is academic now, thanks to Chief Brainerd’s intervention.

I did consider putting on a business suit and going undercover as some kind of sales-person to Steel World Inc.  That option is effectively on hold.  How can I talk-up a good line of patter and intelligently pitch a sales idea to them until I know what they sell, buy, or invest in?  They don’t appear in any commercial directories.  They don’t even appear to have an internet website.  I use several different search engines to try and find something about this company.  Not one pulled up any information at all.  I mean, how can any organisation function, or even survive, in this day and age without a website.  If they are using a different name, then why register the vehicle, have an office, in this name.  The New York Department of State has their ultimate corporate headquarters in Lichtenstein.  That alone is a bit suspect.  Lichtenstein is a major centre for hiding ‘crooked money’.  Is Steel World engaged in money laundering?  Is that what they do?  I can find no turnover figures anywhere, that in itself is a bit dodgy.  I’d like to know about their tax situation, but I am reluctant to ask yet, in case such enquiries get back to the Chief.  Getting that kind of information would have to be done at a higher level, and I’m still looking for someone who can, and is willing to swing this.

As yet, it’s almost as if the company does not exist.  It’s got fancy offices, but no sign that it actually does anything.  I suspect that it’s some kind of ‘front’ for organised crime.  If that’s the case, I’ll need to be very careful indeed.

For that matter, where does Alyena fit in?  She claims to be the slave of one Kyril Flavius, yet she is collected by this Professor Morbius with the help of Chief Branerd.  She and this Morbius guy drive off in a car owned by Steel World?  What’s the connection?

I call a colleague I know on the ‘organised crime’ section.  We had a brief affair before he moved out of the precinct house and into his present job.

“Morning George.”

“Hannah?  Lovely to hear from you.  You are well, I trust?”

“Yes, George.  Thanks for asking.”

“To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”

“Steel World Inc….”

I give the address of their offices.

“What do you know about them?  Are they on your radar?  Are they a cover for one of the drug cartel’s or a mafia front?”

“You know that I can’t divulge that kind of information.”

“Not even to me?  They may be implicated in a kidnapping.”

“Interesting…  I can’t say that they have come up before, in connection with any of the ‘nasties’ we try to keep tabs on.  Should we be watching this company, Hannah?”

“I’d rather you didn’t, at least not officially.  There is the potential of Police corruption at a high level.  I shouldn’t even be asking.  I’ve been told to drop this case, but you know me. Tenacious.  I don’t like my cases being ‘whitewashed’.”

“If that’s the case, Hannah, then watch your back carefully.  You’re a good cop.  It’d be a shame for you to be suspended or worse over what it is you’re investigating.”

He pauses.

“I’ll tell you what.  I won’t dig into this company as such, but if I hear of anything regarding them, I’ll let you know on the Q.T.^[1]  If you find anything that you think will be of interest to me, you’ll let me know?”

“Definitely.  Thanks George.”

“Dinner, next week, sometime?”

“You’re a lovely man, George, but please, let’s not rehash the past.”

George laughs.

“A man can try!  Keep well, Hannah.”

“You too, George.”

I walk past the front of the office building.  At a desk, though I can’t see all of her, there is a beautiful-looking woman wearing what looks like the same kind of skimpy dress that Alyena had worn, in light blue though in this case.  I can’t be sure at that distance, but it looks as if she might be wearing a similar kind of collar to the one that Alyena wore; one that is locked on.  I debate going in, pleading ‘urgently needing to go’, and asking to use their staff restroom.  I’ll save that one for another occasion.

There’s a small diner across the road, with a window view onto the street.  The car I’m using is parked a few yards up the street, on a meter.  It doesn’t matter if the meter reports a parking violation, the vehicle registration is listed as ‘Police’ with ‘ParkNYC’ so there’ll be no charge or fine to pay.

Shortly before five PM a limousine, the same one as collected Alyena, in fact, pulls up outside the Steel World offices.  A chauffeur gets out and holds the door open for a striking African or Caribbean woman.  I abandon the dregs of my coffee and get to my car in time to follow.  I hold back a couple of vehicles, so as to avoid being seen to be following.

Damn!  I lose them at the beginning of 1^st Avenue when the car in front of me stops for a red light.  Going uptown, hmmm.  Sadly, there’s an awful lot of ‘Uptown’.  Perhaps there’ll be other opportunities to see where this woman goes.

I consider going back to the Station House and requesting traffic-cam data to try and track the limo.  No, I’m going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.  I don’t want to leave a trail of what I’m doing, in case Chief Brainerd is checking up on me.  There’s any number of other reasons, other cases that I can use to explain me ‘working the street’.

 

It’s been a long day.  I return to my apartment.  I open a bottle of wine and begin to cook a simple meal.  Something’s wrong!  I don’t know what it is.  I have an odd feeling, a sense of violation. Before I became a cop, I’d been burgled.  It’s that same sense of invasion, of my space, of my privacy.  Has someone been in my apartment?  I can’t pin down what it is that’s spooking me. There’s no obvious signs of things having been moved, searched, etc.  I shrug this odd feeling off. Without some indication of change within the apartment, it has to just be me being fanciful.  I think back on Alyena’s conversation and the implications of it.  I dismiss the idea that those involved with the attempted kidnap of Ginger Stowell are investigating me.

I mean, it’s too soon after the release of Alyena for whoever it is that’s involved to know where I live.  For obvious reasons, where Police officers live is kept highly confidential!  And, for that matter, why is it only here in the apartment that I got that weird feeling.  I’m not being followed, I’m pretty sure of that.  I’ve been a cop for long enough to get a sense of knowing when I’m being followed.  That sense has saved my life on more than one occasion in the past.  If someone is following me, they must be experts for me to not sense it.  Naah.  It’s nothing!

 

It’s been two days since I ‘lost’ the dark woman in the limo, and I’m no further forward.  Frustration is not something that I take well to.  I’m clearly not getting anywhere tonight.  I decide to go home. Perhaps I’ll have more luck tomorrow.

I live close enough to the station house that I can walk to and from my office.  I don’t have a car of my own.  If I did I could park it in the Police parking-lot during the day, but finding a regular parking spot close to my apartment block is a nightmare, hence it’s easier to walk.  If I need to go out of town, I hire.

Fortunately this is a lovely and warm summer evening.  I feel a sting in the side of my neck. A bee, no doubt.  Little more than an annoying flea bite.  I reach up to swat it.  It isn’t a bee sting, it’s a dart.  I feel the feathers, but don’t have the strength to pull it out.  I know that I’m falling, but cannot stop myself.  I’m not out-cold.  I can see and hear everything that’s going on.  I just can’t move.  I’m paralysed!  I make to cry out, but my lips and even my vocal cords won’t obey me.  I can swivel my eyes but that’s about all I’m capable of.

A man approaches me, clearly with the intention of helping.  Rare enough in New York City. Usually if one falls down, no-one helps, they just walk by.

Inwardly, I sardonically laugh; though I recognise the seriousness of my predicament.  The man is the so-called Professor Morbius!  I feel him surreptitiously pull the dart from neck and pocket it.  I hear him issue a command.  I shouldn’t be surprised, but am.  The recipient of the order is that Alyena bitch!

“Call an ambulance, Alyena!”

Other people are now starting to take notice.

“I’m a Doctor.  She’s fine!  I’ll take care of her.”

Sure he will!  I so want to protest, but can’t!

The onlookers move away.  I hear the sound of a siren.  An ambulance pulls up.  Two men get out.  Despite me trying desperately to shake off the drug that’s pole-axed me, I am lifted onto a stretcher and strapped to it.  I and the stretcher are slid into the back of the ambulance and the door is shut.  I know that I’m caught and there’s nothing I can do to save myself, to free myself!  This is like something out of the movies.

One of the abductors, the so-called ambulance man injects something into my arm.  I try desperately to remain awake, but the anaesthetic has me.  I remember no more.

Chapter Two: Reassessment Of The Recent Past

 

I’m rather groggy.  That changes instantly.  I cannot believe what my eyes are telling me.  The utter awfulness of my situation drags a shriek out of me unbidden.

Bars!  Right in front of my face!  I raise myself onto hands and knees.  From this position I cannot raise my head any more.  A cage!  I look around.  Yes, the bars are all around me, only the surface below me being metal sheet.  I’m locked in a cage!  Like an animal!  I consider if this is simply a nightmare, but if it is it’s the most believable dream I’ve ever had.

Nightmare it is, but no dream.  A real-life ‘honest to god’ reality of a nightmare.  I’m convinced!  I really am locked in a cage.

I examine the cage, every inch of it.  The bars are strong, it’s firmly welded at all the joints.  The door is equally firm.  The hinges and locking hasp are seriously heavy-duty.  I’ll not be able to break the cage, but then what would be the purpose of a cage that the incumbent could escape from?  The lock is a standard, but expensive padlock.  I wonder if even bolt-cutters would be able to shear it.  Not that I’ve got bolt-cutters, or the space to use their full leverage.  There’s a hole in the floor at the back of the cage.  The hole seems to hang over a channel that has running water flowing through it.  I have to assume that it’s for peeing and pooing through.  The channelled stream carrying our wastes away to a sewer somewhere.  A way out, even if filthy?  Not a way out of the cage, as the hole in the floor is too small, but a way out of this imprisoning chamber?

I become aware of other aspects of my illegal incarceration.  I’m naked.  Absolutely stark-naked.  Not a stitch of clothing, none of my albeit usually sparse jewellery.  Jewellery?  I do have a metal ring round my throat.  From that, appends at the front a small tag, something rather like the tag on a dog’s collar.  Do they think that I’m some kind of animal: a dog, perchance?  I tug at, twist, force this band of metal.  I cannot remove it from my neck.  Vain, I suppose to think that I might.  Whoever put it there surely knows that it’s staying right where it is.

For that matter, who are ‘They’, the ones who’ve locked me in this cage.  I have a horrible feeling that I know!

As my brain is assessing that, I look around beyond the bounds of my cage.  My cage!?  Not my cage, the cage I’ve been immured in.  There are some twenty or so similar cages lining the walls of the room.  Each seems to have an occupant, a woman, naked and with a virtually identical metal ring encircling her throat.

I call out to the caged woman opposite me, but in reality to all of them, any of them.

“Have you any idea where we are?  Any ideas as to how to escape?…”

Stupid question, I know.  If they did they’d have used their idea to attempt escape.

“Anyone know who it is who’s got us?  How often do the guards check up on us?”

The woman in the cage to my right shushes me.  She dares a whispered

“Talking’s forbidden!”

before shrinking back as far as her cage allows her.  It’s as if she’s afraid that even those two words might bring some kind of retribution down on her.  The supine nature of the women annoys me.

“What are you?  Sheep?”

It’s clear from their silence and body language that they are all terrified of breaking some kind of rule or taboo,

I shrug to myself.  If they aren’t prepared to talk to me, to help, to seek a way out of this predicament, then fuck ‘em!

I set to, mentally listing the things that I need to do, to know, to escape this trap.  In doing so, I can attempt to put a plan in place to circumvent the obstacles.  Of course, first on the list is ‘how do I get out of this cage’.  Since I can’t break the lock, how do I get a guard to unlock the cage?  Having the cage unlocked, how do I wriggle out quickly enough to do sufficient damage to the guard before he, I’m assuming it’s a ‘he’, manages to apply some other form of restriction on me?  Can I be ready to seize the initiative, when they do take me out of this cage for whatever reason they have in mind?  You get the point.  Until that potential opportunity arises, it’s all speculation of course.

I do however resolve to keep an eye out, noting times and patterns regarding such things as when we are fed? if and when we are allowed to bathe? when is ‘lights-out’ time if there is such a thing, etc.?

I wonder if, should an opportunity present itself, if in escaping, I should attempt to free these other women, these sheep?  It might be academic, but having our captors running around trying to recapture several people at once, might make my escape a little easier?

Whether escape is possible at all, or not, keeping mentally active, alert and optimistic is no bad thing.

 

I’m dozing; there being little enough else to do.  Being caged for any length of time is stultifying at best.

There’s a thump on the bars.  I jerk awake.  How have I let myself be so inattentive as to not notice a jailer entering the room?  I castigate myself for that lack of observation.

It’s Morbius!  Or at least the man who chooses to use that obvious pseudonym.

With him, heeling him is that doormat of a woman, Alyena.

“Alyena, kneel in ‘tower’^[2], this woman is nominally a free-woman, for now at least.”

I choose sarcasm.

“Why, good morning, Professor Morbius!  Or is it afternoon?  How lovely of you come and visit me?  Can I get you anything, a cup of tea perhaps?”

He laughs

“Good to see you haven’t lost your sense of humour, Hannah.  I may call you that, may I?”

He offers with equal irony.  I note that Alyena, kneeling, has her cheek up against this man’s calf. She has a look of trust, even adoration on her face.  This is her ‘Master’, the one who’s name is incised into the collar that the self-proclaimed slave wears.  I switch to contempt.

“I take it that you are the owner of that ‘thing’…”

I point

“...and that you are the Kyril Flavius named on the collar locked round her neck?”

My contempt is not at Alyena, or at least most of it isn’t, it’s at the man for reducing her to being such a thrall.

“Now be polite Hannah.  One day you too will kneel lovingly at the feet of your Master.”

My turn to laugh, but it has a bitter edge to it.  Despite my bravado, I fear as a woman, that he may one day be right.

“Never!  Not in a month of Sundays!”

“As ostensibly a free-woman, it is your privilege to insult one seemingly ‘below your station’, and Alyena must accept your insult.  However I am not so unsophisticated as to not understand that your insult was also aimed at me.  Insulting those ‘above your station’ is not always wise.  I would advise you to keep a civil tongue.”

The man reaches for something out of my sight below the cage.  I screech in pain!  The whole cage has suddenly become electrified!  I very nearly lose control of my bowels.  The pain stops!

“I trust you will heed my warning, Hannah?  There’s another setting, where I can give the same or more to every cage in this room.  I should imagine that each and every girl…”

I note him using the insulting diminutive girl, for the women imprisoned here.

“...will remember when you get to your destination, if you cause them pain here.”

The implied threat is clear.  Some amelioration of my tone is called for.

“What is my destination then, Mr Flavius?”

“You already know, Hannah, you just don’t believe it.  You are going to the planet of Gor.”

Too right, I don’t believe it.  It’s just a fantasy land in some misogynistic pulp-fiction books.

“When you interviewed Alyena she told you no lies.  She is not permitted to do so.  Nor is she allowed to use dumb insolence when questioned by free-persons.  It is not her place to obfuscate, even when telling as much as she did was to our detriment.  Lying for her is seen as more heinous than telling an exact and literal truth.  Gor exists.  Alyena has spent most of her life there, as you will.”

Is it possible!?  Can the Gor stories be real autobiographies?

“That you are being sent there is not just that we don’t want you buzzing around investigating our business.  You are not displeasing of appearance.  You do have a beauty of your own.  Recognise it.  Doing so will help you adjust to your new life.  Fortunately for you, the aesthetic tastes of Gorean men are more diverse than those of Earth men.  After training, you should fetch a reasonable price when sold from a block.”

“Sold!?  Like an animal.”

“Yes, of course.  How else do you think Masters obtain their slaves?  The majority are sold and bought.  For your information also, a slave on Gor is for legal purposes an animal.”

I’m horrified.

“I think, Hannah, that you should begin to learn how to address those above you as you will need to on Gor.  You call and acknowledge all free men as ‘Master’ and all free women as ‘Mistress’. You may until you are transported use the Earth words.  However upon arrival, the Gorean words are respectively ‘Dominus’ and ‘Domina’.”

I may be shocked, but I’m not stupid.

“But if I use those words, that’s an acknowledgement of acceptance that I’m a slave.  I’m not!”

“I fear very much that your transition into your slavery will be very hard for you.  On Gor, all barbarians as Earth people are called, at least all the woman are by legal definition slaves. They have no home stone…”

I don’t fully understand that reference.

“...There is no place for you as a vigili, a Police officer.  There is no place for your feminist thinking.  The only value, the only purpose you have is as a woman.  All other roles are irrelevant to you.  Forget about equality.  You will be the biological complement of men, not their social equal.  Gorean men will not let you be anything other than a woman, all woman. If you wish to survive you will have to learn how to be the very best, most desirable woman you can.  Whilst the most honoured women of Gor are the free-women, the most desirable and desired, lusted after, are female slaves.  When awakened, barbarian slave girls, as Earth women are described, are deemed to be among the hottest and most sexually responsive of all slave sluts.  If you would have a rich and powerful Master, and having such will be to your benefit, then you would do well to surrender to and cultivate the most abject of sexual surrenders.”

I am horrified at this litany.  It flies in the face of everything that I feel that I am.  That is not me!  I’m not some lascivious little harlot that’s got no purpose in life but to crawl to a man and beg him to fuck me!  No, definitely not me!  I shudder at the thought… or is a shiver…?

I have no lesbian tendencies whatsoever, but I have fought all my life for a woman’s right to be equal or better than men in everything.  The thought of being reduced to being a mere toy, a plaything, a sexual doll, I find repugnant.  But do I, in my heart of hearts, lie to myself?  The thought of laying down the struggle of competing with men is seductive.  Can I, instead of trying to hold my own, surrender my very self to total femininity.  Wouldn’t that be the total surrender of my very soul?  Can I figuratively, and perhaps literally, lie back and become someone’s love-slave, sex-slave if you like, even if such requires me to be complicit in my own submission to a Master?  The thought frightens, but yet it also excites.

“Bon Voyage, Hannah.  Oh, by the way, arresting Alyena didn’t save that Ginger Stowell woman from being collected for her own enslavement.  She’s in that cage over there.”

The other woman looks up in interest upon hearing her own name mentioned.

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[1]     Verbal shorthand: On the quiet.

[2]     Kneeling with knees closed.