Marketplace (22 page)

Then, she began to invite
her friends over to laugh at me, and help with my training. She
loaned me out from time to time, to different women, all mistresses
like her, who would torture me and laugh. She would take me to
strange, underground clubs, I guess like the ones that Sharon used
to go to, and she’d show me off. Sometimes, she’d make me lie on
the floor, and she and her friends would flick their cigarette
ashes onto my body and dig their heels into my flesh while they
talked and gossiped.

Of course, she still had a
lot of other slaves, who each had their own special times with her.
If our rivalry became too obvious, she would set up sessions with
the offending slaves and make them do awful things. Once, she
thought I was not understanding enough of her time constraints, so
she set up a session with another one of her big sissies. She made
us oil ourselves up and wrestle for her entertainment. Anytime it
looked like one of us was winning, she would stand over the
dominant one and beat him with a carriage whip until he cried out
and relaxed his hold. The match seemed to go on forever! I remember
feeling so exhausted that I couldn’t fight one more second, and
then the other slave pressed me down. Because he won, he got to...
my Mistress told him to... use me.

While he did, she stood
over me and told me how much of a woman I really was, how much I
enjoyed being used like one. And I knew she was right. Before he
was finished, I had made a mess on her floor.

She made me lick it up. And
then she used me too, first in my mouth and then in my
ass-pussy.

Before too long, I didn’t
know who or what I was any more. Was I a man, or a woman? Did I
have a life of freedom and responsibility, or was I a slave? I
couldn’t quit my job, because then I couldn’t afford to buy my
Mistress the trinkets and clothing she liked, and I couldn’t afford
to bring her tribute. But at the same time, it got harder and
harder to concentrate on my job. All I wanted was to be with her.
Or just to be near her! Finally, one night, I begged her to decide
for me. What should I do?

She told me that if I
wanted to be with her full time, I would have to give up the thing
that made me so repulsive to her. My cock. My nasty thing, as I had
learned to call it.

At first, I recoiled, and
tried to tell myself that there had to be easier ways to find a
mistress. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that
sooner or later, balancing between being a free man and being her
abject slave was going to drop me on one side or another. Slowly, I
began to investigate how it could be done.

It’s not easy! You just
can’t go to a doctor and say, “lop it off, I don’t want it any
more!” If you do, they’ll lock you up. They have programs for
people who feel that they‘re born into the wrong bodies, though, so
I started looking into those. I figured maybe I could find a
psychiatrist who could help me out.

Instead, I found Mistress
Allison. Mistress Allison is... well, she was... she’s very
different. A very special kind of lady. She saw me at one of these
meetings, and she knew I didn’t belong. I was just trying to
masquerade through this the way I did through the rest of my life.
She knew I really didn’t want to actually be a woman. I’m not good
enough to be a woman! When she explained it all to me, I just cried
and cried. Now, I had no hope at all. I couldn’t keep on faking a
real life forever, and my Mistress wouldn’t take me as long as I
had a nasty thing between my legs.

Mistress Allison took pity
on me. She went to see my Mistress, several times, in fact, and my
Mistress tried her best to show me in a good light. But I am just a
big, clumsy idiot, no matter how much training I have, and I’m
afraid I made my Mistress ashamed of me. Within two weeks, she gave
me to Mistress Allison. And Mistress Allison told me about the
Marketplace.

I quit my job just two
weeks ago. And I came here hoping that I could finally find a
Mistress who wants me for what I am. Instead, I’m realizing that
I’m not much of anything. And everyone knows it.

Chapter Eleven

Grendel and Alex met after
dinner one night, having sent the four applicants off to bed for
the fifth night in a row without taking any of them for the
evening. Chris was doing a wonderful job of constantly reminding
them how disgusting it was that in a week, none of them had
polished themselves enough to be considered as even minimal
entertainment or use to the owners of the house. And from all
observable signs, the four slaves were suffering in their perceived
rejection. Every chance they got, they tried to impress the owners
in any way possible. It always seemed to fail, or fall to an
entirely indifferent audience.

“Of course,” Grendel noted,
“suffering is good for the soul.”

“And who would know better
than you?” Alex teased back. She was very pleased with the way
Claudia was shaping up. For all the disappointment that Robert
engendered, Claudia was getting stronger every day, and more
willing to do things she had balked at before. She had spent a lot
of time with the girl discussing the relative merits of tears, and
how and when a good slave should shed them, and Claudia was
responding like a true champion.

In contrast, Grendel was
not doing too well with his brace of failures, as he called them.
The two of them are so superficial, he had noted one day, that
repeated washing would no doubt make them vanish into nothing.
Sharon, at least, was getting the benefits of real labor and the
joy of getting one’s hands dirty on a daily basis. It couldn’t end
up as anything but character building. Fortunately, Jack was a
horny bastard who could be every bit as sadistic a taskmaster as
Chris could, just for short periods of time. The hours Sharon spent
in the stable were hours that Grendel didn’t have to think about
her, which was just fine, except that for the rest of the day, when
she was training with him, he had learned to have aspirin handy.
She was abysmally ignorant of the most basic things. Grendel
smiled, remembering something Chris had reported.

“Did you hear what her
first question to Chris was?” he asked, pouring himself a brandy.
(Chris was still upstairs yelling at the slaves.)

“Do you mean Sharon’s?”
Alex looked up and frowned. “No, I don’t think so.”

“The first night, before
anyone else could even think of something to ask, Sharon pipes up,
‘Why am I stuck working in that disgusting stable?’ Chris replied,
‘To teach you humility and dignity in labor’.”

“That sounds like Chris,
all right,” Alex laughed. “He can be so pompous
sometimes.”

“Oh, but that’s not the
funny part. The funny part is that Sharon stood up and said back to
him, ‘OK, so I’m
really
humiliated, OK?’, or something like that. Chris
admitted that he almost lost it.”

“Oh God. And she meant it,
too, didn’t she?”

“Of course. Chris sent her
down to the library and told her not to come back until she could
use the word ‘humility’ in three different sentences and explain
the meaning.” Grendel sighed and took a sip of the
brandy.

They had instituted an old
custom for their house, in allowing the slaves to each ask one
question a night, to be answered by Grendel, Alex or Chris. Those
questions, the slaves had been warned, would be the extent that
their curiosity would be indulged beyond simple questions about how
to perform their assigned tasks. They had also been told that the
mark of a good slave was not asking any questions at all. Only
Claudia had followed the not-so-subtle warning thus far, although
the two men had showed admirable restraint both in the subject
matter and in the pacing of their questions.

“Well, at least we’re
educating her. Shall we get down to business?” At Grendel’s nod,
she folded her own hands around her steaming cup of tea and began.
“I’ve found out what Robert’s two biggest problems are. The first
is his role confusion, obviously. He still has very inappropriate
responses to situations where there is any stress whatsoever,
whether it’s as simple as answering a question or as difficult as
taking a good strapping from Chris. It doesn’t do much good to
punish him, by the way, at least not in the ways we’ve been trying
so far. He seems to think that the more stress he’s undergoing, the
greater license he has to behave like a stereotype of a helpless,
clumsy serving wench. We’re working on that, both with the
insistence on his growing back all the hair on his body and with
assigning him some good outdoor work. He’s not happy about the
hair, especially the beard he’s growing now. But he does
surprisingly well on various heavy jobs. Chris says that Robert
could be some use maintaining the cars, so I suggest we start him
driving at the same time.”

“Good idea.” Grendel
nodded. “He’d make an impressive chauffeur.”

“My thought exactly. But
his second problem has to be dealt with before he could be an
impressive anything.”

“Oh? What is
it?”

“Stage fright.”

Grendel nodded again. The
oldest handicap in the world, and the one guaranteed to end any
sort of career in the Marketplace. For never is a person more on
display as when they are placed up for bid. And never is a
possession more exhibited than when you’ve paid a lot of money and
want to show off what you have acquired.

“So,” Alex continued, “I’m
going to start a series of confidence building exercises for him. I
know, confidence builders for slaves, what a concept. But he really
is dedicated, and I think he’ll be a gem once we break him of those
two training wheels.” She paused again, tapping her weekly schedule
book. “But it is so hard to reconcile the clumsy, inept man I see
when I meet with him with the same man who managed to catch a full
plate of cookies off a falling tray without dropping one. He’s got
a terrific sense of balance and a keen eye. He just can’t seem to
use them when anyone is watching!”

“Well, he’s still looking a
little bit better than he did last week. I think I have an idea
about how to discipline him without pushing him into full retreat,
by the way. I’ll talk to you about it tomorrow, or maybe Sunday. I
just want to see a little more of him before I trust my instinct on
it.”

“Tease!”

“And you love it,” he
retorted. “Actually, though, you sound like you’ve got things going
OK.” Grendel drank a little more brandy before starting his own
report. “I wish I could say the same. Brian hates the bows and
rhinestones Chris keeps coming up with, and Rachel says that he’s
able but not wonderfully eager to please. Rachel may be a little
severe, but she’s hardly unattractive. That says suspicious things
about his supposed bisexuality, I think. He may be a Kinsey
true-type, which makes it difficult to figure out what to do with
him. Are you sure you don’t want to try him out?”

“Positive. I have my hands
full. Why don’t you just play with him a little and see how he
responds? You can judge his reactions to you versus his reactions
to Rachel, and go on from there.”

“I was planning to, but I
think Paul and I have too much in common. He might be responding to
someone he sees as just another leather daddy. I was thinking of
letting Chris have a go at him, but Chris seems
unwilling.”

Alex’s eyebrow inched up.
“That’s odd.”

Grendel shrugged. “If I
press the issue, he’ll do it. But right now, I think he’s too
effective playing drill sergeant. You’re probably right, though.
I’ll take Brian personally in hand this weekend. Now, getting back
to my problems, there’s Sharon. She’s proving to be capable of
memorizing things rather well, but her retention skills don’t seem
to carry over to actually using the information she’s memorized.
Also, despite her lessons in ‘humiliation,’ it’s so clear that
she’s putting on an act that it’s embarrassing to be with her.
Maybe I did make a mistake there.”

“Well, if you did it’s not
a terrible one. Let’s start with her roughest spots. Can we do
anything to educate her further without enrolling her in a local
university?” Alex wasn’t exactly joking. They had done just that on
several occasions before.

“I have an idea, actually.
Robert seems to have a lot of background in seminars and coaching.
Perhaps we can combine his need for confidence building with her
need to not be so stupid. What do you think?”

“That just might work,”
Alex admitted. She glanced at the weekly schedule and began to make
notes. “In fact, that might fit in with what I had in mind! OK,
That’s one rough spot. Next?”

“Jack tells me that
although she does well in pleasing him sexually, she seems to have
a definitely class-based prejudicial attitude about it. Apparently,
she’s got it into her head that only the master will do, and she
resents any other circumstance. You know what I want to do about
that, no doubt.”

“You’ve got my approval.
Except for one thing. I still haven’t had Robert to myself for some
practical examination of that substantial tool between his legs.
Let me see what I can do with him over the weekend, and I’ll give
him instructions on Monday morning.”

Grendel nodded. “So the
boys get a workout, huh? Well, Claudia needs a little more time
finding herself. And after Monday, Sharon will wonder why she ever
complained.” He made some notes on his own schedule and looked
across the small table at Alex, who was finishing her tea. “I miss
you,” he said casually.