To talk and talk! And of such frightfulness! To hang like this in agony at the mercy of a black buffoon. Stacie longed to weep, but feared to show tears to the mistress she so loved. She hung silent awaiting the next stripe of the whip and thinking of the sjambok and the awful post.
Mr. Moghere sat and surveyed his prizes. He felt quite secure. Yasin would yet come to terms. Certainly when he received the photographs . . . ! The two girls swinging on their cords were quite extraordinarily beautiful. They made a picture of unique appeal. He resolved to enjoy the aesthetic treat quite often. It was one more of those perquisites of office of which he so heartily approved. He rose and replenished his glass and took the opportunity to slash each round bottom as he passed.
It was a frightful way to be tied, the strain upon the naked shoulders was appalling. Such suspension was a torture, it could be called nothing else. Stacie mused miserably on what she might have done or said had Rannah not been hanging beside her, a prideful hawk watching its young. She felt certain she would have begged and abased herself. But even so it might not have saved her from the sjambok. It was evident their captor approved its use and its effect. Could a naked Rannah survive it and retain her pride! Probably she would! But Stacie was not so sure about herself. Cold fear clutched her at Moghere’s next words.
“I gather you and our good Hamid Boshan found each other mutually agreeable while I was gone?”
“Yes sir.” What was the use! He knew everything. “You rejected me. I am chagrined.”
Nothing she could say would be right, but she had to try. “The training on the farm you sent me to made me see how silly I was, sir.”
“An unusually rapid conversion!”
“Yes sir.”
Mr. Moghere beamed. “You will be happy to hear that Mr. Bashan’s execution was painless. He was a soldier before the firing squad.”
Horror on horror! Stacie was shocked at the instant welling of tears. She had a vision of the smiling white toothed face of the man who had been kind to her and with whose body she had found a strange affection. It was the death of a brother, of someone loved without passion. He had died because of her, because of his desire for her. Had he known of his risk! She might never find out. She sobbed chokingly in a fresh desolation.
“You are a black bastard,” Rannah said bitterly. “That was fratricide. He was your man. He respected you.”
“He fucked the woman I had chosen.” The Ruler’s voice was bland.
“You killed him for that! For pride! You can penetrate my slave girl and I endlessly, we can’t stop you. You men are absurd!”
“I am a man and you a chattel, remember it.”
“Lower us then, and show your manhood. I’ll spread my legs for you. I may as well do it first as last.”
“Why the change of heart, bitch?”
“Why should we hang like this! Enough’s enough.”
“Excellent! You do not like the pose I have arranged for you. But you will hold it, and I shall continue to use this whip on you. You are both quite beautiful as you are now. I will not forego the pleasure.”
“Very well, enjoy our bodies. But when you tire of us allow our fathers to ransom us. You can only gain.”
“I will make myself another drink,” said Mr. Moghere. When Amatar Moghere finally left them alone the two naked tortured girls hung motionless and moaning. Neither made pretense of bravery or anything else save despair. Both were well marked by the slender whip, mostly on their legs and thighs for, as Mr. Moghere pointed out as he slashed at them, it was a pity to waste the backs and bottoms that the sjambok would slice on the morrow.
“The swine will leave us like this all night,” Rannah deplored.
“Then we’ll be half dead when they tie us to the post. He won’t want that,”
Stacie clung to hope.
The hope was justified. Two soldiers lowered their feet to the rug and removed the cord, but the hurt wrists remained tied as they were. The two girls, not caring about their nakedness before the men, sought each other’s eyes in thankfulness and gasped and panted with the pain of shoulders and arm sockets returned to normal. They could not struggle to free their hands, their arms were lost to them in numbness. Even the dreary cell with its two pails and its chunks of bread seemed a blessed haven. They ate and drank as best they could without hands, then slumped against the wall in painful weariness. Each felt a devastating sense of total captivity. They were lost without hope.
It may have been one hour or two before the men returned.
One held a length of chain, the other a padlock, both were grinning hugely. They also carried a heavy rug they threw upon the floor.
“For sleep. Very nice,” said number one.
Number two placed his chain across the heavy mat and waved invitingly to Stacie. “Please to lie on back.”
Glimpsing possibilities, none of which she liked, Stacie obeyed. Her hands were tied so that she could dispute nothing. But the crossed wrists at her back made the laying down awkward.
But it was not awkward for the men. They knew what they were doing. “Come,” said number one to Rannah. “Now you on top . . . other way round.”
Rannah was as helpless as her slave. With a shrug and a sardonic grimace she did as she was bid. The chain was brought up on each side, a heavy foot exerted its weight on Rannah’s back, the chain was pulled and cinched and padlocked. The slenderness of the two waists were made as one, stomach flattened on stomach, two nudities were welded as a single entity.
“And a pleasant lesbian goodnight to you both,” said Mr. Moghere from the door. He held up a key. “See. I put it on this hook in the passage. If you can open your door you may reach it.” He gave them one of his broadest smiles and slammed the door. They heard it lock.
“Oh Rannah . . . !” Stacie’s mind was a whirl. For the moment she was conscious only of the heat of her beloved’s flesh. The chain hurt, her hands and arms hurt, she felt the welling of an irrepressible giggle. Rannah’s furry sex was before her eyes, its pungency vivid to her senses. For that moment only the intimate closeness mattered.
They fed avidly. The last meal of the condemned! The surge of lust that drives men to the prostitute in times of ultimate travail. Mankind has always turned to its genitals when faced with that it dare not see. Tomorrow the sjambok, tonight their love. Before morning Mr. Moghere’s inspiration might torture them, the chain was brutal. But for a little while they wallowed in ecstasy. The hurt of their tied wrists did not matter, the hurt of the chain could be forgotten, but not their need. Flesh of each other’s flesh, blood of each other’s blood, they found surcease in the wiry hair and within the swollen lips of woman.
“If Jane lived I suppose we can,” Stacie said after a very long time.
“We will live, slave girl. You and I will outlast that black pig.”
“I wish I had my hands, I love you so.”
“You have your lips, child. Use them. I am on fire.”
“I have never called you darling, Rannah. May I?”
“It is you who are the darling, but yes . . .”
“And tomorrow . . . with our cut backs, our wounds bleeding on the sheets . . . Can’t it be?”
“Of course, slave girl. We will not be the first or the last to have our backs sliced by the sjambok.”
“Moghere will . . . he will . . . fuck us?”
“It does not matter, child. We have been pierced before. What does one more matter!”
“I wish I had my hands. I want to hold you. Damn this rotten chain!”
“Slave girl! Be just with Fate. We could be in worse condition. I would not want still to be hanging as we spent the afternoon.”
“Darling . . .” Stacie savoured the word with joy.
“Darling Rannah, do you think we might turn, that you might take me for a little while?”
They laughed, their helplessness was comic. They struggled and achieved. Rannah moaned with pain and then with ecstasy. After a long time she asked dreamily: “Can you free your hands, slave girl?”