Shura's Auction by Peony D Beckside

 

Shura’s Auction

Peony D. Beckside

It’s my turn now.  I am to be sold like a piece of meat at a butcher’s shop.  It’s embarrassing, but I’ll not show that.  I cannot however hide my resentment.  I wonder at that; that they’ll put me on the block before they’ve truly broken me.  Sure they’ve taught me with the whip, chains, and other torments that I must obey, that I must be polite, that I must present myself dressed and made-up, or otherwise, as ordered.  They have not however broken my spirit.  I ponder about that.

It doesn’t help that I’m in a high state of sexual need.  They’ve had men and even other slaves caressing me intimately and frequently ever since that toad Cadmus had sold me to the slave house.  As for his doormat, Kiki, I’d strangle her if I could.  It’d been her who’d proposed that I ultimately be sold to the ‘most demanding of Master’s’.  They mean to turn me into something like her!  She could have been free!  In a way she was.  Instead, she knelt before Cadmus, her previous Master and begged to be re-enslaved.  I’d never have done that, even if it meant my death.  But do I lie to myself?  There’s a tiny part of me that says, ‘don’t be so sure’.

Inwardly I wriggle in my need; the effort of holding my body so as to not show this openly is great.  Back in the forest, my beautiful, wild forest, I’d simply have bound one of the male slaves, aroused him, and ridden him until my need was extinguished.  Yes, we usually had a few captured unwise travellers around, having secured them, shaved a stripe across their head as an ignominious mark of slavery.  Occasionally that pathetic worm Tarburto would bring new slaves.  Sometimes I would allow him some relief of his needs, other times cruelly denying him such; I being the only one able to grant that.

Unusually I gather, I am held at the foot of the steps up onto the sales block.  I can hear the spiel of the auctioneer.

“Gentlemen, Ladies, every now and then I find this job most irksome.  Occasionally a piece of merchandise comes along that I would dearly like to bid on myself; but I am forbidden to do so. Management will not have it said that I did not try to get the best price that I could for a slave I’m selling, or that by bidding, I’m forcing the price up.”

What is he prattling on about?  Is he saying that he himself wouldn’t mind owning me?  I’d make his life hell!  I would, as I will any man that does buy me!

I don’t see the signal, but the auctioneer’s men thrust me up the stairs onto the large wooden ‘block’.  I feel sawdust under my naked feet.  I’d not expected that, but then, I’ve never been a slave before, never been sold before.  I’d fled to the forest to escape from an arranged free-companionship with a toad I despised.  That I’d survived and more was down to my own prowess and daring.

I slouch forward with bored indolence and insolence.  There are hisses, catcalls, and even boo’s from the audience.  I gather that such an attitude is unheard of and unacceptable.  The slave before me on the holding chain had been a bright-eyed eagerness to present herself well, presumably hoping that she’d get a better, richer, Master, making her future life that little bit easier than a perpetual grind.

“Nadu, Kajira.”

Petulently I obey, but take that extra second or two to register my protest at conforming to this shaming order.

Even in the display cage where I and the others were examined by prospective buyers, I’d condescendingly lounged around, moving contemptuously when ordered to a given posture.  I’d arrogantly and defiantly issued the expected words ‘Buy me, Master’, but in a manner that made clear that was not at all what I wanted.  When the other slaves who would not be allowed such disrespect, or offended potential bidders, enquired, they were told that the Auction Management, in this one case they expected that the buyer would want to correct such audacious presumption, themselves.  To the potential bidders, they would add, ‘Wouldn’t you like to be the one to put this impudent she-sleen in her place?’.  I may have been storing up trouble for myself later, but I am not going to play ‘their’ game, and appear a nice little ‘ready to fuck’ slut.

“Ah yes, Gentlemen, lot number 126.  This arrogant little she-sleen used to be called Shura. Now she is only known by her pen number.  We will however for the present refer to her as Shura.

            Shura is a genuine captured and enslaved Panther Girl!  Yes, one of the wild women that preyed on travellers passing through the forest lands.  More than that, she was the very leader of her own band of these verminous outlaws!  You can understand then how it is that she still thinks she is superior not just to other slaves, but to free men and women too.”

There is a collective intake of breath.

“Shura has been taught by the whip that she must obey orders to perfection.  She has learned basic household duties.  She has learned how to serve food or drink to a Master.  She has learned how to most effectively wear whatever a Master grants her; to use cosmetics to beautify herself.  She knows physically how to please a man in the furs.  She knows everything that a slave of her calibre is expected to know.”

The slave silk that I wear irritates me, in how little of me it hides.  I move so as to adjust the camisk. I miss my lovely animal skins and furs, and more particularly that I could wear them as I wished, not how some owner wants me to wear what he chooses.

“It is the view of the vending house, and we the auctioneers, that for this slave, simply whipping her into submission will be ineffective.  She has been taught, but she is still essentially unbroken.  See, she finds the softness of silk irksome.  She yearns for the wild-animal skins and the freedom they represent.  Don’t you Shura?”

How did he do that?  How did he read my mind so effectively?  Does he have a direct link into my very brain?  I respond.  I answer his question; not because I know that if I don’t I’ll be punished, but out of pure shock that he’s divined that truth in me.  My reply is true, genuine, and willingly, perhaps even joyously given.  My acquiescence startling even me.

“Yes, Master!”

“There is hope however for Shura.  Hope that she can become the delightful, squirming, loving, desirable slave-slut that any man could and would want…”

I shudder in horror as if struck by a whip at each of the descriptive terms used by the auctioneer, but somewhere in my head, my soul, my heart, a quiet little voice revels in and desires the possibility of me becoming just that.

“...and in her true heart Shura desires that more than she dare admit to herself!”

What!?  He’s done it again!  How does he read the most deeply buried thoughts and desires in my soul?  Is there nothing I can keep from this this the most intuitive man I’ve ever come across?  I worry!  A man that can read me to such a depth is a danger to me, to my psyche, or at least to the emotional walls I’ve built to protect that psyche.

“What she truly needs, and truthfully, deep-down desires is a powerful Master.”

NO!  No!  Absolutely not.  That’s the last thing I want, I need.  What I need is a weak owner, someone that I can bend with my womanly wiles.  Somewhere, I know I lie to myself.

“The man that brought this squirming…”

Mentally squirming, I agree!

“...little bundle of unfulfilled desires and self denial advised that she be sold to ; ‘the most demanding Master we can find’.  Now, Is there such a Master in the house?  A Master that’ll drive this resisting slut to the paroxysms of pleasure and joy that she wants and needs, unlocking for him the most wonderful and abjectly grateful slave anyone could imagine?”

From many parts of the hall I hear cries of ‘Yes!’, ‘Me!’, and ‘Here!’

Me, I’m quietly terrified!  This auctioneer has ripped the truth out from behind the barriers of my personality.  That’s precisely what I do need and even horror of horrors, want, but dare not allow myself to embrace.  He can read me like a scroll!  How can I hide any of my vulnerabilities from a man that can do this?  I’d be completely defenceless to this man, to a man like that?  My terror is justified!

“Are there any bids?”

“One copper tarsk bit!”

There’s laughter.  It’s a joke bid.  Even for the most useless slave, one would expect to pay more. The metal spear and arrow points, and even the candies we got for oar slaves from passing ships, while we recognised we were gouged, were more valuable than a single tarsk-bit.  No, I think that it’s just a ploy to get the bidding going.  Joke it might be, but it’s a valid bid.  I moan to myself.  In my new-found self I find a vanity I never knew I had.  Surely I’m worth more than a tarsk bit? What happens if there are no more bids?  I’d be sold for such a miserly sum.

The auctioneer holds up his hand to temporarily halt further bids.  What is he doing?

“Remove your garment, Shura.  Slave paces.”

I know what this means.  I’ve had plenty of training in this, in the pens, learning the positions and how to move gracefully from one to another.  But I don’t want to do this!  My old curmudgeon self is determined that I should obey in the most insolent and rigid way possible.  As inelegantly as possible I peel the camisk from my body.

“Sula, bara, bracelets, tower, nadu, collar…”

There are cries from the audience.  ‘She’s insulting us!’, ‘Whip her’, ‘Insolent slut’.  The auctioneer does not whip me.  Instead he quietly speaks so only I can hear.

“You can do better than this, Shura.  You know you can.  Don’t be afraid to try.”

I do, and he’s right, it’s my fear that’s holding me back.  I make the dare to let go of my resentment. My speed and flow improves, I sense that even the audience realise that at least now, I’m trying. The auctioneer speaks again

“You’re still disappointing.  Let yourself go, fully”

What’s happening to me?  I’m disheartened!  I don’t want this man disappointed with me.  Why don’t I want him disappointed with me?  I don’t now.  I can’t understand why.  I only know that I have to ‘up my game’.  I have to lose all inhibitions, even all control.  Somehow, I find a way to let my body respond almost without conscious thought.  I’m not aware of each position, each flow from one to the other, it’s as though I’m in a trance.  Somewhere in the background I hear the striking of jerkins in applause.  There are no more orders, no more positions.  I am in nadu.  The auctioneer gently musses my hair.  I take that to be a sign that he’s pleased with me.  Somehow I’m ecstatic that he is pleased with me.  Why? I can’t understand.  What is it about him that’s given him such power over me.  Him ordering me so, somehow has increased my need exponentially.  Between my legs, I’m leaking.  Embarrassedly, I wonder if the people  in the audience can smell my arousal.

“I’ve heard a bid of one copper tarsk bit…”

Before he can finish there are calls from several parts of the hall.

“One copper tarsk, One tarsk forty, two, tarsks.”

The bids climb.  Eight tarsks and forty tarsk bits is the last that I hear.

“Rise Shura, hands on head, legs wide.”

I’m like a puppet to this man now.  Gracefully. I rise.  The auctioneer comes behind me.  Reaching round my body he grasps my breasts, kneading them gently.  No, Master, please don’t do this to me. Can’t you see how aroused I am already.  I moan.  My hips are gyrating.  They are out of my control.

“A silver tarsk!”

There is a collective gasp.  I take it that for a girl like me that’s a high price.  The auctioneer steps back.  Underhand, between my legs, he flicks his whip up into my pussy.  The pain is minuscule, but it transforms me, lifting me to a plain of sexual pleasure I’ve never had before, not even when riding a bound man.  I’m surprised I can stand, so ‘out-of-body’ has been this experience.

“Two tarsks!  Two tarsks two copper.  Two tarsks six copper.”

The hall goes silent.  There doesn’t seem to be any more bids.

“I hear ‘two silver tarsks and six copper tarsks’, any more bids?”

There is still silence.  The auctioneer holds up his hand and closes it into a fist.  Even I know that this signifies the end of this sale.  I am sold!  I am owned now.  I know not who owns me, what they will want of me, what they will do to me.  Somehow I know that I can no longer hold up the protective shield of my past intransigence.  The auctioneer seems to have somehow stripped me of it.

I am hustled off the block and secured in a holding area.  The auction continues.  Shortly after a man comes.  He talks to the guard.  Money is paid to some kind of cashier.  Papers are handed over.  I wonder who he’s here to collect.  It’s me!  The man and the guard stand before me.

“You are the one who used to be called Shura?”

“Yes, Master.”

I know better than to ask who my Master is.  He will tell me when it’s appropriate.  He puts a loose rope halter round my neck.  Going behind me, my wrists are fastened in slave-bracelets.  The house-collar that I’ve worn since Cadmus initially sold me, is removed.  The ankle tether to the holding chain is removed.

“Rise and follow, slave.”

“Yes, Master.”

Strangely the man does not take me away to his home.  We go to a kind of refreshment area at the back of the sale arena.  I am bid to kneel.  I do so, not yet knowing where the ‘boundaries’ are of what Master will allow and will not.  A slave girl arrives and enquires if Master would like a drink. I could use something, even water, but I dare not yet ask for such.

“Paga, girl”

“Yes, Master”

She returns with his drink and serves it prettily.  She is waved away.  Master seems to be waiting for something.  It’s not clear what, yet.  The auction seems to be coming to an end.  People are gradually leaving.  Still we wait.  The last lot is sold.  Workmen begin clearing up the auditorium.

From the back of the block, a man approaches.  My breath catches in my throat.  It’s the auctioneer!  What does this portend?

“Vilebus, my friend.  It’s god to see you.”

“And you Trajani.”

“I thank you for doing this service for me.”

No, surely not…!

“It’s nothing.  What are friends for?”

“Two, silver and six copper was the bid.  Here’s three silver, and a small something extra. Have a paga on me!”

A small purse is passed.  My heart pounds.  Can it be?

“That’s generous of you, thanks.”

“Think nothing of it!  If you’d just sign this deed of transfer, I’d appreciate it.”

A signature is scrawled.

“I’ll file the paperwork at the Cyinder Of Records personally, tomorrow.”

Auctioneer Trajani turns to me.  I’m not sure I really need to be told, but there might be a formal reason for doing so.

“Slave, you belong to me now.”

I issue a strangled reply.  I feel very strange.  I don’t know what this feeling is.  Is it happiness?, joy?  I can’t recall ever feeling anything like it before.

“Yes, Master.  Thank you, Master.”

Though not given permission, I break permission.  I execute the peculiar twisting method of moving from nadu to being on one’s belly, when one’s hands are bound behind.  We learned it in the slave pens.  Gratefully and joyfully I kiss Master’s feet.

“You are Shura, slave.  The name is not the same as when you used it before.  It is simply what I choose to call you.  You are not the same entity you were before.  You understand?”

Yes, I do, in more ways than one!  What Master did to me on the block stripped me away from what I used to  be, permanently.  I am indeed a new person with the same name.

“Yes, Master, absolutely.”

“Don’t think that you’ll have an easy life with me.  I am that ‘most demanding man’ that you need, whether you want it or not.”

“I know it Master!  Please don’t be easy with me, soft with me.  Drive me to your perfection, please Master”

 

I buff Master’s boots.  This is not a demeaning task.  It is an act of adoration, of worship even.  I cannot explain the change in me during the last six months since my Master sold and bought me.  I don’t think the words exist, however I will try.

I look up from my position on my knees into the pitiless eyes of Master.  A chemical shock shoots through my entire frame, terminating between my thighs.  There is no hatred there; if there were Master could simply sell me, sell me into the most awful servitude that he could find.  No, his gaze is implacable, steely, inflexible.

Whether Master wants me, wants to use me, at this very moment, I cannot tell.  I see no bulge at his crotch, no look of lust in his visage, but that’s no indication.  I am often used to being slave-raped at any time or in any circumstances.  Master is just so demanding of me, at any and all times.

What is it about him that turns me into a burning bundle of abject need at the slightest glance from him.  Why do I adore it when he chains me up, making me so helpless, so vulnerable, so defenceless?  Is it the strength of him that he can, will, and desires to impose such restraints on me?  Master is not a particularly big man.  Bigger than me, but not a hulking brute.  What is it about him that negates any ability in me to rebel against his authority over me?  I have not forgotten my fighting skills from the forest; I could disable, perhaps kill him at any time.  Nor is it legality, my status as a slave, or fear of the kind of awful death I’d suffer if I were to attack him.

The only thing that makes sense to me is that in addition to the literal ones that I wear frequently, I am bound tightly by the unbreakable chains of love.  Yes, I’m sure that must be it.  I do love him unconditionally.  Is that what adoration and worship are?  Are they just outward manifestations of unquenchable love.

I do not, dare not, even entertain the notion that Master loves me.  It’s not in the psyche of Gorean men to have love for a slave.  Kajirae are readily available anywhere.  We are in a way interchangeable.  That doesn’t mean that Masters are indifferent to us.  No, they seem to value us, and not just on a monetary scale.  They seem to be interested in us, even in our thoughts, yet such cannot bend them to our benefit.  Our most potent wiles as women can be and often are simply ignored by them.  Masters simply refuse to allow us to change them, and that perhaps is the most thrilling part of being a kajira.

Master is utterly merciless with me, in every way.  Under the lash, he well knows how to make me howl and scream.  He teaches me the error of my ways with no uncertainty.  Give him his due he does not use the whip indiscriminately.  In every case I have well earned, deserved, my punishment.  The artistry of the bondage contortions he often likes to impose on me, is truly creative.  Even I, despite the discomfort of same, appreciate to some extent the beauty he sees in having me secured so.  Perhaps the most sublimely evil, yet wonderful, of his cruelties to me is in his usage of me for his pleasure.  He drives me to extremes of sexual pleasure that I never knew existed, could possibly exist.  The surrenders, not only as orgasms, that he gives me no choice but to gloriously endure cannot be described.  He has taught me that my body is capable of infinite thrilling delights.  My first experience of the fabled ‘slave orgasm’ was a revelation, a delight beyond words.  With frequent use, he has kindled in me the ‘slave-fire’ of myth, allowing me to reach ever new heights of sexual intimacy.  His command and mastery of me making it impossible for me to fail in achieving such pinnacles  There is no aspect of my slavery that escapes the firm and controlling touch of my Master; and I adore it that such is so.

I muse, when I have the time to ponder, on the subjects of slavery and freedom.  Where is the line between them?  Is there such a line at all?  There is the legal act of formal or effective enslavement, but that is a kind of construct.  For a man, it’s probably different, but for a woman on Gor, is there truly such a thing as freedom?

I think back on my past life.  In the town, as a young free-woman my life was restricted in so many ways, by laws, social conventions, family considerations, is that freedom?  I had to wear highly restrictive clothing that effectively hid me as a person.  I’d look at the fit young men and be excited; nothing like the arousal I am now capable of, and in which I now exist almost constantly. But how could I entice such men into a free-companionship when they don’t know if I look like a she-tharlarion; and given the ready availability of kajirae and paga tavern sluts?  Whilst free-women can engage in business, the opportunities for a single woman to be able to earn enough to live a free and independent life, are extremely limited.  Effectively then we are the chattels of our families. We have little opportunity for independent action.  Being a financial liability and not an asset, the family tries to get a young woman free-companioned, ideally to someone who can increase the wealth of the family, or at the very least so as to not be a drain on the family finances.  This is what was intended for me.  The family arranged for me to be free-companioned to a man much older than myself and who looked like a toad.  I could never have been excited enough by him to want him in my sleeping furs.  Again, I have to ask ‘is this freedom’?  At that point, I fled into the forest seeking the mysterious Panther Girls.  I found them, or they found me.  I earned my place in the band at the expense of an existing member.  Eventually I rose to command the then much changed band.

In the forest I was free!  Or was I?  Was it not just a much larger prison.  Yes, I could go wherever I wanted in the forest, eating what I could gather or kill.  But the freedom to leave the relative safety of the forest simply didn’t exist.  We could not wander the whole planet, visit the great cities.  We’d be branded and locked in collars in very short order.  If the truth is known, such a life is not at all comfortable.  One is often cold, wet, vulnerable to being eaten by larger wild animals.  Yes occasionally we’d capture one or more men, enslaving them.  We would use them, by riding them, to assuage a sexual need that perhaps had not had any relief for some time.  We could not keep the slaves for long.  There was always a danger they would escape and turn the tables on us.  Is this then, freedom?

Now, I have no freedom at all.  I am branded, collared, legally slave.  I have a wonderfully controlling Master.  The only freedom that I have is in my head.  No!  I have more than that!  I have freedom in my emotions!  I can feel!  It is permitted! Indeed, it’s expected that I should be able to. Master doesn’t want an unfeeling stick of wood, a lump of ice!  He doesn’t want a spiritless beaten churl.  He wants an emotionally alive and feeling slave-girl.

Am I then, in a sense freer than I was when nominally free?  I’d better not expound such theories aloud.  Master will soon remind me of my slavery.

“Your boots are clean, Master.  How else may I please you?  Perhaps I could ‘grease your pole’, Master.”

“Importunate slut!”

“I am what you made me, Master; your ever needful kajira.”