The Slave World (17)

(17): Kassa

I was a secret slave now. My life had changed and for five days I didn't dare leave my tower block flat or even answer Adam's calls. If I did I might meet one of them. One of the Goreans. One of the slavers.

I was scared. They could be anywhere. They were patient. They would hear the signal ping on their phone and know that an ankle chained kajira was within a hundred yards. It would be a game to them. With just a couple of taps on my profile they would have all my intimate details including nude photos. If they liked what they saw...

Kassa noticed the change in me almost immediately. She watched from the kitchen table as I made myself a coffee.

“You are not happy, Caitlin. It was the date, yes? It did not go well?”

I nodded as I held the coffee cup in both hands close to my lips. An ankle ring was locked on me. I wore long pyjama bottoms to hide the ring from Kassa's eyes. It was a slave ring. I was effectively a slave.

“Has he not rung since?” she seemed sympathetic, thinking my date had gone badly, which in a sense it had.

“No.” That was a lie. I was receiving regular texts from Adam that I mostly ignored. Only when he seemed genuinely concerned that something might have happened to me did I text back to say I wasn't planning on leaving my flat.

“We should go shopping together,” suggested Kassa. “Shopping is always fun. Take your mind off stupid man. Maybe meet nicer man?”

“Not in the mood.”

“I can set up a Tinder profile for you?”

“I don't want a Tinder profile.” Kassa's life was simple and she had few regrets. She slept, ate, worked and fucked. Life rarely disappointed her because she had relatively low expectations to begin with.

“You can't stay home forever,” said Kassa. “No man is worth it.”

Oh yes I can, I thought to myself.

Adam had kept me informed over the last few days. He continued to visit the House of Three Moons and ingratiate himself with Andromedus. He wanted to gain the man's trust and to do that he continued to play the role of a man obsessed with the Gorean lifestyle. He was true to his promise though and refrained from taking me with him. He generally chose to stay at the house in Hampstead Lane overnight, coming home in the morning. It occurred to me that he might possibly be sleeping with one or more of the slave girls there, but I didn't feel I could ask him. He wasn't my boyfriend after all. If he was having sex with the slaves he would probably claim in all innocence it was to maintain his cover story as it would seem strange if a man interested in the Gorean lifestyle didn't take advantage of such temptations on offer.

I resented the thought of Adam taking one of those girls to his bed. I thought of it as abuse, and I was angry with him, even though I didn't actually know for sure it was happening. They obviously had psychological issues and were vulnerable. It was like one of those cults, like David Koresh, or Charles Manson, where vulnerable emotionally estranged young women would do anything their cult leader demanded.

It was wrong for Adam to take advantage of that.

But of course, I didn't know for sure. The fact was I couldn't stop thinking about Adam in bed with one of those silk slaves. I was so angry. I didn't want to think about it.

I mostly watched day time TV and sat on the sofa listening to the neighbours upstairs shouting at each other. When the weather was hot, which it generally was, I would hear loud hip-hop music playing outside. I would have to close the windows to get any peace and quiet, which meant the concrete flat became stifling hot and muggy.

I would gaze out of my window at the patch of grass that belonged to the tower block and at the teenagers riding their skateboards and BMX bikes down below. I would watch men and women walk past in the street and I would wonder if one of them was a Gorean slaver.

I was scared of meeting or interacting with anyone and so I sat alone in my tower block prison.

Kassa would come and go, working, shopping, going out to meet friends. I would flinch every time I heard the front door open and relax when it was simply her. Twice now she had brought a man back with her and I had run into my bedroom and locked myself inside from a panic attack. He might be a Gorean slaver. He might have met Kassa with the intention of assessing her for the collar. I should warn her, but what would she think if I told her to avoid contact with strong men (the type she preferred)? If I warned her that there were men in London looking at women like her and considering their value on some auction block.

She would think I was mad.

And so I would hide in my bedroom, hiding under my duvet as I listened to the sound of Kassa entertaining the man in the living room. I would hear their laughter, possibly the clink of glasses and then after a while they would retire to her bedroom. There would be the sound of fumbling followed by the sounds of intercourse. I lay in my bed terrified that perhaps the man had seen me and would come to my door and simply tell me to open it. He would speak the word 'kajira' and he would expect me to open my door, kneel before him and call him master. I would stay in a state of heightened anxiety until eventually the man left and Kassa returned to the living room to watch some TV. Only then would I emerge, possibly looking like a frightened panda.

“You should speak to someone, Caitlin,” she said to me on the sixth day. “If not me, someone else. I am worried, Caitlin.”

“I'm fine.” I wore a pair of pyjama bottoms to hide the anklet and an old t-shirt that had seen better days. I didn't bother to dress for the day any more or do anything with my appearance. What was the point if I wasn't going out? I checked my phone and saw another text from Adam. 'I haven't seen you in five days, Cat. Just checking how you are? Let me know you're okay.'

I texted back one word: 'Fine'.

But I wasn't. I was far from fine.

I was a slave. I was Adam's slave. Didn't he understand that? Didn't he understand that he actually owned me now? Not in the legal sense of British law, but in the only law that seemed to matter – Gorean law. What they decided made British law irrelevant.

I would never leave my flat. I would sit here gazing out of the window, growing gracefully old, with Kassa bringing me food from time to time. I would become a hermit, living off microwave meals as I no longer had the will to cook anything fresh. One day they would find me, withered and dead when Kassa eventually moved out and left me alone. 

There were texts from Rebecca as well, growing more urgent when she said she needed an update on her case. I kept making excuses, telling her that I was following leads, talking to people, but I couldn't tell her that I was a slave now, and that very soon she would be a slave too. I knew now they would come for her. She would wake in the night with a hand over her mouth and she would be drugged and shipped to the House of Three Moons and wake up with a collar around her throat. I felt sorry for her, but I was too scared for myself to warn her.

I at least had a master. She wouldn't.

At times when my paranoia subsided I would lie in my bed and I would think back to that night in the House of Three Moons on Hampstead Lane when I lay under the soft covers of that large bed. I would recall how aroused I had been with Adam next to me, his hands on my hips, his face close enough to kiss.

Why hadn't he done anything? He could have. He owned me.

He could have 'put his slave to use'.

I was angry. I would turn in my bed torn by conflicting emotions – the anger at being his slave and the frustration that he hadn't used me that night. How would I have reacted if he had parted my thighs, pressed my wrists above my head and then penetrated me?

I don't know. I would have hated him for it I suppose.

I would have perhaps loved it.

But he hadn't used his slave. He had tried to be careful not to arouse me too much, although frankly he had failed completely on that score. I had never felt so wet before in my entire life.

On the seventh day there was a knock on the door shortly before lunch. I let Kassa answer it because I assumed it would be one of her walk in/walk out boyfriends. But instead she returned to the living room with Adam in tow.

“Your shitty ex-boyfriend is here to see you, Caitlin.” She regarded Adam with a derisive sneer and added, “you wear cheap supermarket jeans. You don't deserve her.” She then walked away to leave us alone.

“Well, uh, that wasn't awkward at all,” I said as I sat on the sofa in my pyjama bottoms, cartoon t-shirt, with no makeup, unbrushed hair, looking like I'd probably slept in a hedge.

“Ex-boyfriend?” said Adam after a moment's silence.

“I never said that to her! For the record! I never said you were my boyfriend! Or that, uh, we'd split up. She's right about your taste in denim though...”

“Interesting t-shirt,” said Adam with a grin.

I now had one of those 'oh-fuck' moments when I suddenly realised what I was wearing this morning. The t-shirt was cartoon pink with a My Little Pony design on the front and the words 'pony number three' on the back. I cringed, wrinkled my eyes and felt like the ground should swallow me up. “Mimi's hen night... we all had to wear them. I've been meaning to throw it out... wouldn't be wearing it... obviously... if I'd known... you were coming round...” my voice trailed away a bit as I squirmed on the sofa. “We all had to wear pony tails too...”

“Interesting. Are there photos?”

“Like I'm ever going to show them to you...”

“Shame. I'm sure you looked adorable.”

“Can we just pretend the last ten minutes hasn't happened?”

“Of course.” Adam sat down on the armchair opposite me. He regarded the remains of several days' worth of 'heat in the oven' ready meal boxes stacked near the coffee table. “The ankle ring?”

“Still on me,” I slid my ankle towards him and pulled my pyjama leg up high enough to reveal it. “Still locked on the leg of your kajira, Master.”

“You don't have to call me master.”

“I don't know what I have to do any more, Adam. For the first time in my life I'm actually scared of another day dawning.”

“You need to get out of this flat for a few hours. Breathe some fresh air. Learn that you can walk down the street without a Gorean slaver pouncing on you.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“I'm taking you out for lunch. Go and get changed into something that doesn't make you look like you're ten years old. I'll wait.”

“I can't.”

“You can and you will. You're Caitlin Ambrose. You're not going to let them beat you. And you are going to come to lunch with me if I have to switch on the kajira app on my phone and give you thirty seconds to vacate this building. I've been looking for an excuse to actually use it.” He winked.

“Are all the Gorean masters as cruel as you?” I said with a half smile.

“These days I'm pretty much their role model.”

We stared at each other for a few seconds and then I began to laugh for the first time in a week.