A Miscellaneous Bondage Story
Author’s Note: This was inspired by Aboneart’s “Vignettes Based on Single Words” on Deviantart. I took the same ten words and wrote my own set of vignettes, using my own settings and characters. The vignettes are in six different settings (Cern, Demancipation, Gold-Home, Hostage Corps, Iowa/Steel Worlds, Lorelei Station) which is why I posted it here with the “Misc Bondage” Stories.
“Master, it’s time to reinforce my sales package,” Blue Judy said. She had dressed for the ritual: Bare feet and bare midriff, a short skirt, and a thin and translucent top.
Master Don nodded his appreciation. “Once every thirty days, Sapphire, whether you need it or not. Wrists, please.”
Blue Judy held out her wrists to be cuffed, and cheerfully allowed Master Donald to lead her to the station chair where further restraints awaited.
They were both human, but Master Don owed his allegiance to the Orion Brotherhood and still had his natural human coloration. Blue Judy, on the other hand, had been born in the petty, misogynic, and human-chauvinist North Sector Empire.
She had then had the misfortune of serving on NSIS Dire Wolf when Captain Hurst made his play. After the excitement had ended, she had been ‘blued’ along with the rest of the surviving crew: Infected with a pentano-resistant quadro-cyanothece strain that changed their skins and hair from human-natural to an alien azurite shade.
Following standard procedure, the female crewmembers had then been sold. But in a cruel and criminal twist, their ‘sales package’ implants had first been disabled.
Master Don secured the last lock and paused to let Blue Judy test her restraints. He gave her a quick caress, teasing her slave collar. She returned his smile. He stepped back and punched in a command. “Now,” he said.
Blue Judy’s smile grew broader as her sales package activated and the happy began to flow. She was happy that the Brotherhood had restored her sales package. She was happy that they had kept it activated while displaying her for sale. She was happy that Master Don had purchased her. She was happy with his continued ownership of her. And she was especially happy that he called her ‘Sapphire’ rather than ‘Blue Judy.’ Not even the sales package could make her happy about the way a nasty minded official had formally changed Second-class Spacer (Female) Judith Peck’s name after her bluing.
Judge Noland required all the women who appeared in his courtroom to wear barefoot hobbles instead of hobble-heels. He sometimes made exceptions for women born prior to Demancipation, but the Nineteenth Amendment had been ratified sixty years ago and Dominique Jean was still short of forty. Her hobble-heels were in the keeping of her Master Corey, and the court-provided barefoot hobbles were now locked on her ankles.
The barefoot hobbles were two inches longer than she was accustomed to, which made them perversely awkward as she walked to the witness stand. She wore the plain collar of a house slave, but Master Corey had permitted her to work as a bank teller – and she’d been terrified when the bank robber had suddenly stuck a gun in her face. Now she saw the prosecutor give her a nod of encouragement. She was a woman, which in 1980 meant that she was a slave woman, collared and with a Mark of Sheba tattooed on the back her left hand. But she could still bear witness and hope for justice.
Tiim Nuneez Dameen was pleased to have his Marci-slave returned to him. He was… less pleased about the packaged way she’d been shipped back. The human woman had been stripped nude and heavily shackled – and then she’d been seated on a packing-pallet and the packing field activated. The thickened air within the packing field (“gelatin-like” was the cliché, but it wasn’t, really) had then kept her mostly immobile in the package and protected from the bumps of transit.
Fortunately, she’d also been given a breather. If she hadn’t been, Tiim would have demanded the horns of the snotpisser responsible, and not just as a figure of speech.
Tiim released the packing field as quickly as he could punch in the code. The breather came off nearly as quickly, and Marci inhaled deeply, twice. She then smiled at him, human-style, attempting to reassure him. In response, Tiim ran his hand ran down her furless body, a long stroke from her neck almost to her ankle. He then began to unlock and remove the shackles, now acting slowly and with care.
With the last fetter removed, Marci stood and stretched. “Thank you, master!” she said. She danced in a quick circle and suddenly embraced him. “Thank you, master!” she repeated. He hugged her back, taking in her familiar alien femaleness. He felt her fingers move through the fur of his arms, a sure sign of her affection.
“There are ropes waiting, my Marci-slave,” Tiim said when the embrace ended. “They can continue to do so, however. For now, refresh and dress yourself, and then bring me your slave bells. I will not hobble or leash you until I am convinced that you are well, but I do intend to make you jingle, my pretty human woman.” He gestured. “Now shoo!”
“Yes master!” Marci said, and scurried off to obey.
“The Low Court of Brost will now enter!”
Kalid ib Tazkey shook his head slightly and laid a hand on the arm of his cousin Bibar, stopping him from standing. Bibar sat back after looking around and seeing that none of the Cernians were rising. In particular, Geoffroy del Rodez, the Cernian merchant disputing against them today, remained seated on his cushion.
Three nude slavegirls entered, assisted by their masters. They needed this assistance, as heavily chained as they were. They were also thoroughly, even disgustingly, cheerful. Cernians were known for spoiling their slavegirls rotten. All the Island Kingdoms were. Kalid had come to tolerate this, with his decades here in Brost. It helped that the pampering they received made Cernian slavegirls incredibly beautiful, as well as intolerably saucy. Bibar, however, lacked Kalid’s experience, and his expression changed from indignation to outrage as the slavegirls were seated at the judges’ low table and secured there with even more chains.
“The Low Court of Brost is now in session!”
Again Kalid laid a hand on his cousin’s arm, this time making a commanding gesture. Be silent! Be still! Vent your outrage afterwards!
All of Kalid’s words beforehand had blown through Bibar’s ears like the wind. Legally speaking, the slavegirl ‘judges’ were mere arbiters and the disputants could choose to ignore their findings. But it would take a triple fool to reject the judgments of the Low Court. In addition to being disgustingly cheerful and saucy, Cernian slavegirls were smart.
“It’s a goblin slavegirl!” a voice cried out.
Elarra froze. She was a goblin slavegirl, living in the burrow-home of her Master Tilborn. In the Furfoot Counties, a halfling land where goblin slavegirls were the only goblins tolerated. On the other hand, she was a well-known goblin slavegirl, at least here in Broadstump. Master Tilborn was a regular at the Anvil and Barrel, and she had become one too, after his purchase of her.
“Is that allowed here?” another voice called. “Shouldn’t she be in a cage? I thought this was a halfling land!”
Neither voice was that of a regular. In fact, neither voice was that of a halfling. The first speaker was an elf, and the second one a dark-elf; part of a group – no, two groups – passing through Broadstump on their way to Ovalmere in Pondor. They were both sticking together and bickering with each other, the way elves and dark-elves sometimes did when they met as strangers.
“It’s Elarra! She’s welcome here!” That was Mr. Bil Claypipe. A number of other halflings join in with him, arguing with more enthusiasm than logic.
“Best have a quiet seat, Elarra,” Mr. Liftbeam said in her ear. “I’ll have a half-pint of your usual sent to you. Will Tilborn be along soon?”
“So she’s green!” someone shouted from the other side of the tavern. “She’s still more welcome here than certain noisy beanpoles!”
“Yes, Mr. Liftbeam,” Elarra told the tavern owner. “He said he’d follow within an hour.” She took the quiet seat and waited for the brouhaha to blow over.
Cutting a ballgown so as to make it look good with both hobble-heels and bare feet turned out to be trickier than Susanna expected. She had to do a lot of consulting and fiddling around to get that right. The peacock-blue fabric was a given; all her friends said it looked well against her brown skin. It wasn’t her favorite – she preferred green and yellow – but she had to admit that her friends were right. Green and yellow looked stunning on Gina, but only so-so on herself.
A low neckline was a given. There were those who actually liked a high neckline that concealed a woman’s slave-collar, but Susanna belonged to the majority who found that gauche. She wanted a deep scoop, the better to show off the glass bauble on her collar, the one that marked her as a bond witch.
Susanna’s master smiled and declined to comment on the gown’s planned cut and color. Master Guy did insist on a small reticule, leaving to Susanna and the other slave women the problem of making it look elegant and in-place. He wanted to have Susanna carry a pair of handcuffs; handcuffs that he could lock on her wrists when the whim took him.
It helped that Susanna would not be wearing any jewelry on the gown itself. A hair ornament in her tight-curled black hair, yes. Whatever slave bells Master Guy chose to lock on her wrists and ankles, of course. Nothing beyond that, however.
Susanna fussed and worried over that ballgown, but when she displayed it, the bright light in Master Guy’s eyes and the broad smile on his face showed that she had gotten it right.
The bell rang, and Master Joted slapped Lyniva’s shoulder. Lyniva ran. She dashed for the green line on the far side of the Splat course. She jinked, making the first splatball miss. Then three other balls hit, expanding and webbing her. Her arms were trapped. Her legs were trapped. Lyniva fell to the ground, with the safety-belt she wore emitting a brief anti-grav pulse to cushion her impact.
Lyniva knew she had been defeated, but she still twisted, trying to roll toward the green line that was still much too far away. She had fifteen seconds. It was not enough, and the bell rang again.
The course’s rangefinder measured the distance Lyniva had made, and Master Joted came out to spray her with the two-percent alcohol solution that released the webbing. Lyniva sat up, locked on the hobbles that Master Joted handed her, and returned with him to the sidelines.
Master Joted had convinced her to try Splat, and in some ways it she was enjoying it. It was fun to pretend to be a dangerous escapee, a wild avatar of the Angry Green Woman from ancient history and myth. What wasn’t fun was her failure to even come close to the green line, and it made things worse instead of better when none of the other women – ‘Chicks’ in Spat jargon – had done so either. The Splat-shooters had defeated all four of them: Hanna the other green celtian, Helen the pale-pink human, Tigini the purple lekkain, and Lyniva herself.
“That’s only to be expected,” the Course-captain said in response to Lyniva’s grumbles. “This is the novice run, for the novice splat-shooters. The chicks will practically always fall in defeat here, unless the Spat-shooter is a complete Fudd.”
Marlon del Saville owned two slavegirls: The twin sisters Ceci and Daisi. Ceci wore glasses and was the more bookish of the two, while Daisi was more interested in crafts and practical things.
At first, Marlon took care to avoid favoring either sister over the other, going to some little trouble to do so. On returning to Cern after the second voyage to Nissle, he decided on a lazier approach. He put each slavegirl in a tight ife-tie, setting them side by side on their bellies, with their wrists attached by a short tether to their ankles. Having their full attention, he then tasked his two slavegirls with the duty of ensuring that neither would be favored by their master. He would sit back from that duty and merely supervise.
“You gave your word!” Captain Clark shouted. “You promised me free passage!”
“Yes,” came the response from Captain Emmtoom of the smuggler-pirate Lime Crate. “The Scoundrel’s Scimitar is free to proceed to Lorelei Station with you and your crew. Your cargo, however, is another matter. You owe me a cargo, Captain Clark, and I intend to collect. Now.”
Captain Clark considered various desperate maneuvers and rejected them all. Scoundrel’s Scimitar had the fiercer name, but Lime Crate had heavier weapons, heavier shields, and a faster drive.
The Scimitar was packed with stasis tubes, each containing a female beauty destined for Lorelei Station. The deal he had with Emmtoom was to deliver that cargo, make up another one at the station, and then bring that out to Lime Crate. Emmtoom, however, had twisted the deal like one of the pretzels served at the Triple Tea – twisted it until it broke.
“Cut power, Captain Clark,” Emmtoom said in the display. “I give my word that the personal possessions of you and your crew will remain untouched. No, you do not trust me. Consider, however, that looting your possessions would make it personal. This is just business.”
As an impromptu spiritual exercise, Clark deliberately did not hammer his fist against the consol. “Cutting power,” he snapped instead. “Standing by to be boarded.”
The new anklets and bracelets were made of narrow strips of wood, each threaded on a pair of leather thongs. Elarra watched as Master Tilborn placed the bracelets on her and then demonstrated how they could be cleverly attached to each other. The anklets followed.
It was a warm summer day, a lazy day, a day for cold food, and Elarra had obeyed her master’s command not to light the kitchen fire. She’d also anticipated his command to dress to be plundered, wearing no more than a loose tunic of thin cloth below her slave collar.
Elarra squirmed to lay her head against the chest of her halfling master. He stroked her dark hair and long, goblin-green ears.
“But I’m not done yet,” Master Tilborn whispered before abandoning her. He turned back with another pair of leather thongs in his hands: One to tie together Elarra’s thumbs, and the other for her two large toes.