Tara’s Luck

“You’re very lucky” the guard said as he attached the shackles to Tara’s wrists and ankles. Tara didn’t answer. The wrist- and ankle-cuffs and the chains that connected them to the walls in the back of the van were of some exotic plastic, much stronger than steel, and locked with a fancy encoded lock that couldn’t be picked.

It was the sort of restraint suitable for holding a violently pumped-up felon, and more than enough to hold Tara helpless. She was shorter than average, with bittersweet chocolate skin, curly shoulder-length hair, and a pixieish smile. She wasn’t smiling now, though. Legally she was a violently pumped-up felon, with an armed robbery and two murders on her record, and she was being sold to a private owner under the Horn-Stevens Act of 2017. Never mind that she didn’t even know of the crimes until long after they had committed. The real robber was someone she had vaguely known, but with the market being what it was, a felony conviction on her was much more valuable than one on him. He had lied through his teeth to burn her, and they had accepted it because they preferred it that way. He walked; she got sold off into the ‘burbs.

They had kept telling her how lucky she was, even as they processed her through the system.

“You’re very lucky” the cop had said, “but you’re endangering that by fighting the charge.”

“You’re very lucky” the court-appointed lawyer had said, “You’re going into a 807a program. Usually they’d put someone like you in a 1411 – nasty.” And then he entered a ‘guilty’ plea for her despite her protests.

“You’re very lucky” the judge told her as he sentenced her to life enslavement. “807a. No maiming, maybe not even any pain. It could have been much much worse for you, young woman.”

“You’re very lucky” they had told her as they put her through pre-sale processing. They fitted her with her slave collar, and told her how lucky she was as they locked it in place. They told her how lucky she was as they made her sit in a stuffy room and watch bewilderingly rapid-fire videos that were suppose to tell her What to Expect and How to Behave. “You should be grateful,” the last video said at the end. “You’re very lucky.”

Tara didn’t feel lucky. She felt small and alone and helpless. She was locked in inescapable chains, being taken to outer suburbia. Her clothing was a prison-issue paper jumpsuit and a locked electronic collar designed to prevent her escape even if she somehow got free of the chains. And she was barefoot. Somehow that was worse than all the rest. It made her feel more naked, more helpless, more owned than any of the rest. At least the floor of the van was carpeted and clean. A tiny morsel of luck. When they first took her in, the van had a rusty metal floor. But she had had her shoes, then. Now it was likely that she would never have shoes again.

Eventually the van came to a halt. The rear doors opened, and the guard entered, accompanied by the driver. The guard unlocked the manacles on Tara’s wrists, then stepped back and took a come-along from the guard. “OK, honey” he said, “you know the drill.”

As she had been taught back in high school, Tara wordlessly kneeled and extended her wrists, crossed, in front of her. The guard grasped them with the come-along and held them locked together as the driver unlocked the shackles on Tara’s ankles. The driver withdrew, and the guard pulled Tara to her feet and led her into the house of her new master.

They entered from the garage. Tara got a quick impression of a large, tiled kitchen before she was led into a carpeted room. A living room? A den? She didn’t know what it should be called. Framed swords-and-sorcery fantasy posters dotted the walls, an expensive stereo system played classical music quietly off to one side, and there were bookcases filled with more books than she had ever seen before.

Her new master was standing in the middle of the room, smiling broadly. He was white, of course. A big white nerd. He even wore glasses. Beside and slightly behind him stood an industrial service robot. Tara blinked. To have a robot like that meant that her new master must either be really nerdy, really rich, or more likely both. She couldn’t decide if this was good news or bad.

Tara’s thoughts were interrupted as the driver suddenly ripped the paper jumpsuit from her body, leaving her standing naked, wearing nothing but her collar. Her new master nodded appreciatively as he looked up and down her dark, nude body. “Good” he said. “Fred, put her on the whipping post” he then told the robot, nodding toward the polished wooden post that ran floor to ceiling behind him.

As the guard brought out the paperwork incidental to the transfer, the robot, aided by the driver, bound Tara facing the whipping post. Wrists above her head, in padded leather cuffs that made a pleasant contrast to the metal of the come-along. Ankles held apart by a spreader bar and also locked in padded leather cuffs. “Cushy” the driver commented, “You’re a lucky girl.” Tara fumed at the driver and at her predicament: Spread, nude and helpless. Then she shivered as it sank in more fully: She was bound to a whipping post.

By the time the driver stepped back, the master had finished signing the forms. “Enjoy,” the driver said as she and the guard withdrew. Then they were gone.

The master turned to Tara. “Do you have anything to say before we begin?” he asked. “Any questions?”

“I suppose you’re going to tell me how lucky I am,” Tara said bitterly.

“No,” he answered. “You’re not lucky at all. The system is against you. It had you marked as 807 material from the time you were twelve. It was just waiting for an excuse to rope you in. You remember taking a bunch of tests, just before high school?”

“I remember.”

“Those tests sent you from an academic middle school, to a high school with an arts emphasis, right? The system wasn’t going to risk letting you get away, the way you might have if you kept onan academic track. That’s because you had the bad luck to be marked as a future 807. If anyone here’s lucky, it’s me. I’m able to use the system, instead of being used by it. And I’m small-minded enough to take advantage of your rotten luck.”

“Now. I’m a traditionalist in some matters,” he went on. “So before anything else, I’m going to give you nine strokes. You will count them off.” He reached down and took something from beside the post. Tara glanced down – too late, he’d moved it away before she could see what it was.

“We begin” the master said. Tara shut her eyes and tensed. Something soft and furry caressed her back. “Epp!” she squealed. It was a lambs-wool duster.

“Go ahead and count it.”

“O-one,” she said carefully, holding in her urge to giggle.

A second caress, crossing the line of the first. “Two.”

A serpentine pattern down her back. “Three.”

A stroke down her left side, from elbow to hip. “Four.”

A matching stroke down her right side. “Five.”

A slow stroke across her upper back, from shoulder to shoulder. “Six.”

Suddenly Tara felt that she could not stand still. With a wordless shout, she tried to fight her bonds, twisting in place, jerking wildly at the cuffs on her wrists, and trying to bring her legs together. Of course it did no good. The spreader bar holding her ankles apart was far too strong for her to break, or even bend, and she couldn’t get any leverage on it anyway. The cuffs on limbs were well made and well fastened. They were softly padded - she could pit her whole strength against them without hurting herself – but they held her perfectly. And as a finishing touch, they locked. She would not be escaping them.

As Tara subsided, panting, she heard the master comment: “Struggling is permitted. But if you scream, I will give you five extra strokes.” She was startled by his tone. It had a smile and a wink in it. The System might have treated her cruelly, and the master’s words might be those of someone administering a harsh beating, but his tone promised that he was a soft touch, that nothing too terrible would happen to her. She wondered briefly what it would be like to snuggle against him.

He was a literal soft touch: The lambs-wool duster ran down her spine from the nape of her neck to her tailbone. She began to giggle. “Seven” she gasped, remembering to count.

A long stroke followed: From the top of her left foot, up her leg, across her back, up her right arm, ending at the back of her hand. “E-eight” she got out between giggles.

Now a mirror stroke: Starting at the back of her other hand and winding down lazily to the top of her right foot. She was very glad her soles were inaccessible. But the feel of thick carpet on her bare feet was almost as sensuous as the lambs-wool. “Nine!”

“There. Finished.” The master hung the duster on it’s hook. Then he released her wrists from the whipping post and half-carried her to the couch. There he removed the spreader bar and settled her in new bonds: Wrist-cuffs connected by a short length of chain to a belt around her waist, and ankle-cuffs also separated by a half-foot of chain. Then, sitting beside her, he lightly placed a poncho-like thing of blue silk over her. Tara dug her bare feet into the thick carpet as she felt the silk caress her dark brown skin. It was better than being naked, this poncho-covering, but it was also .interesting. And exciting.

Fred the robot came trundling in, bearing trays that smelled wonderful. “Time to eat” the master said. Tara looked at him and jerked her wrists, rattling the chains to remind him that she could not feed herself. “Don’t worry,” he grinned. “I’ll feed you.”

And he did: He fed her by hand from trays covered with delicious little tidbits, giving her little sips of water or juice in between. He ate and drank himself, and smiled and joked until she began to relax and giggle. It felt very strange. It was more of a courtship than anything that any of her old boyfriends had given her, yet here she was, barefoot and collared, wrists and ankles closely bound, wearing only the merest pretense of clothing, and completely helpless. It was like being a captive princess from a fairy-tale, Tara decided. An ebony princesses, held captive by a wizard-lord in a strange and far-away land. Now he was attending to her, as a captive princess ought to be attended, but soon he would do something wonderfully terrible. Or terribly wonderful.

She wasn’t frightened at all when he picked her up and carried upstairs.

Now Tara was lying on a huge bed, her arms bound behind her back with silk-soft cords, her ankles likewise crossed and bound and the two connected in a hogtie. Her master sat beside her on the bed making her squirm with his touch as his cool white hands roamed over her warm dark skin. Tara could only mew and whimper in protest, as her mouth was filled with a bright red ballgag. The pleasant torment continued for what seemed like hours, here a caress, there a sudden tickle, now and again a quick kiss, and suddenly Tara was glad that she couldn’t escape. If she got loose, she would have to stop fighting. Then her master would have to stop, and she did not want him to stop. She felt desire rising within herself, and while she had worried before that he would ultimately ravish her, she now began to worry that he wouldn’t.

Not that it mattered at the moment. She was too well tied to possibly get loose. The knots were cleverly arranged to be out of the reach of her fingers, and there was just enough tautness in the loops around her wrists and ankles to frustrate her without cutting off circulation. She stretched and writhed and moaned and whimpered, but she could not escape the brightly colored cords that bound her dark body. Nor could she escape the touch of her master sitting beside her, as he grinned with delight and drove her mad with pleasure.

She suddenly found herself gasping. The ballgag had been removed, and her bonds retied to put her face up, spread-eagled on the bed. Her master was above her and in her as waves of delight crashed through her. She saw her master’s face above her own and kissed wildly at it. He kissed back with equal vigor. She fought madly against her bonds, causing the waves of ecstasy to surge higher and higher, until she was engulfed and forgot to struggle.

Tara came back to herself suffused with the glow of bliss. She was snuggled against her master’s body, with his arms holding her in a gentle cuddle. She could feel the warmth of his smile without having to see it, along with the warmth of her own smile. A shackle on her left ankle sent a tiny tingle through her, promising sharper pleasures in the future, but for now she just snuggled closer and relaxed in the bliss. She decided that she was a very lucky girl, after all.