“Two thousand going once. Two thousand going twice…”
In a panic, I looked down at the grizzled old dom who’d bid two thousand dollars for the right to torture and humiliate me. He was nearly as old as Old George and probably just as jaded and debauched. His head was shaven and his scalp was wrinkled and scarred from too much time in the sun and too many barroom brawls in his youth. He wore a black t-shirt and black jeans, and his body was thin and wrinkled but still hard and athletic. His face was lean and angular. Hard lines cut deep into the skin around his eyes and mouth and sharp cheek bones jutted through even more prominently than Kenyatta’s, only on him, with his eyelids sunken deep beneath his brow, it made him look sinister and cadaverous rather than regal. His thin lips were surrounded by a goatee that was turning from gray to white. There was something cruel in his eyes that terrified me every bit as much as the thought of leaving Kenyatta. I looked back up at my master just as he raised his hand.
“Three thousand dollars.”
I almost fainted. I was so overjoyed that tears leaped into my eyes and I began to laugh out loud. I didn’t care that I was going back home to that little box in the basement. All I cared was that I was going home with my master. He hadn’t sold me.
“Well, here’s a first. Master King is bidding on his own slave. Three thousand going once. Three thousand going twice. Sold! To King for three thousand dollars. You may claim your slave, Sir,” Mistress Delia pronounced with a flourish.
Kenyatta walked back across the room and up onto the stage. Everyone cheered when I ran across the stage and dove into his arms. I wept uncontrollably as he wrapped my fur coat around me once again.
“Come on, Kitten. Let’s go home.” He hooked his leash back onto my collar and led me from the stage as more applause rose from the audience. This was probably the most romantic thing any of these libertines had witnessed in years. I kissed my Master’s full lips and stroked his powerful jaw, then ducked my head against his chest as he wrapped his powerful arm around my shoulders and whisked me from the room. We walked quickly to the exit, pausing only for Kenyatta to pay for the merchandise he had purchased.
“Well, that was quite a little show. Why would you pay for your own property? Don’t tell me you’re getting soft?” the middle-aged woman in the red bustier said with a sarcastic grin as Kenyatta withdrew three thousand dollars in Bondage Bucks from his pocket. Roughly the equivalent of three hundred dollars.
“It’s for charity. Just having a little fun in support of a good cause.”
He turned his back and we walked together down the steps and out into the parking lot with me holding tight to my master and thinking I never wanted to let him go.
We drove home in silence. I held my master the entire ride, my head nestled against his strong chest, one of his massive arms draped around my shoulders pulling me close, feeling safe and protected now that I hadn’t been sold away. I had come so close to losing him that now I knew I loved him more than anything else in life. I knew now more than ever that I would do anything to keep him. He had taught me two lessons that night.
We pulled into the garage and Kenyatta hopped out and dragged me out of the car by my leash. He led me into the kitchen and I started to turn toward the basement when he jerked my leash and led me away from the basement door and toward the back yard.
Out in the yard there was a wooden shed. I couldn’t remember seeing it there before, but it looked old so it must have been there all along and I had merely overlooked it. Kenyatta pulled off my fur coat and ordered me to remove the hip boots. Finally he removed the collar too and then walked back toward the house leaving me standing naked in the yard. I became self-conscious of the neighbors and looked quickly around, noting that the six foot block walls that surrounded the yard had recently been raised another three courses and were now just shy of ten feet tall. No one would be able to see into the yard now.
I turned to look at Kenyatta as he opened the patio door and stepped back into the house. He said nothing to me, did not even turn to look back at me. He closed the sliding glass door without so much as a word, leaving me standing there wondering what I was supposed to do.
I wanted to ask him if he wanted me to follow him into the house or wait for him in the yard. He had always given me instructions and now without his orders I was lost and confused. For a moment I feared that he was abandoning me. Then I reassured myself that if he was kicking me out he would have stripped me down in the front yard and kicked me to the curb. This was something else.
But what?
The patio light went out followed by the kitchen light and a few moments later the light went on in Kenyatta’s bedroom. I still did not know what I was supposed to do. I could only hope that he would come back to tell me what to do. I didn’t even care if he came back with the bullwhip as long as he did something, as long as he came back to me.
Was there a whipping post in the shed? Would Kenyatta come back down and take me into the shed for a good whipping with the bullwhip? But for what? I had done everything he asked me to do tonight. Was I supposed to follow him up to the bedroom?
I didn’t know what to do. I stood there a while longer until the light went out in Kenyatta’s bedroom. I still thought he might be coming back down the stairs with the whip so I remained standing right where he had left me until another five minutes went by and he hadn’t returned. Then my own fear of someone, one of the neighbors, peeking over the wall and seeing me standing there naked, overcame me and I walked over to the shed and stepped inside.
The shed had a dirt floor with a large pile of hay stacked in the corner, a wool army blanket draped across it. There was a fireplace with wood and a cast iron pot I assumed for cooking. A hole in the ground and a bucket of water in the back of the shed was to serve as my toilet. I looked around with my mouth hanging open. I couldn’t believe he had kicked me out of the house. I almost wanted to cry before I realized that this meant I was through with the box in the basement. The auction had symbolized my arrival in America and now I was at my master’s house. Now, officially his property, officially a slave.
I had no idea what my duties were to be. I immediately realized just how little I knew about the life of a slave. Almost all of my knowledge had come from watching the mini-series of Roots on PBS. I didn’t know if he was going to put me out in a field somewhere and make me pick cotton or tobacco or if he’d let me work in the big house, cooking and cleaning and doing whatever else he required of me. That night I couldn’t sleep. I was too nervous and anxious, wondering what Kenyatta had planned for me next. The moon traveled from one end of the sky to the other before I finally awoke to the sound of my door being kicked open.
“Get in the kitchen and get breakfast ready. And then help mistress with her hair and makeup.”
Kenyatta stood in the doorway to my little shack in his bathrobe with a toothbrush in his hand, glaring at me as if I’d failed him in some way.
Mistress? What mistress? What new ingredient had Kenyatta added to the mix? Had he brought a new woman into the house to assist in my torment and if so, was he fucking her too?