Well, I don't quite remember how it all started. I can only recall from the point when the elevator in the library made the five-hundredth stop on its way down to the first floor. "Great," I remember thinking, "my accounting class has already started, and this stupid elevator has to stop on every stupid floor!"
       I was stamping my foot impatiently. But when the doors opened, my whole body suddenly froze, and my eyes popped out more than five inches from their sockets.
       Standing outside the elevator was Brittany Christiansen, the most beautiful, most graceful, most intelligent, most adorable girl on campus. Not just that, but she was completely naked. I mean, COMPLETELY naked—bare breasts, bare ass, bare legs, bare feet, bare all. Not just that, but she was in chains. There was this huge steel collar locked around her neck, with a thick heavy chain dangling between her mouth-watering little tits. And her cute ankles were shackled. The chain between the manacles was pulled up toward where I bet her wrists were cuffed together behind her back.
       The poor thing was sandwiched between two hairy big dudes wearing some kind of uniforms, each of them at least a foot taller than she was. At the first sight, I swear, I thought they were actually giant gorillas in human cloths.
       Before my eyeballs could find their way back, the gorillas began to move. Each holding one of Brittany's bound arms, they practically lifted her into the elevator, and dropped her right in front of my nose. I could almost see the long wavy brown hair on the back of her head fluttering in my heavy breaths.
       When I finally regained the ability to speak, I managed to stammer out a question: "Wha-wha-what's going on, B-b-britt?"
       All three of them turned their heads to me, but none of them said anything. That was when I noticed this large rubber-ball gag stuffed in Brittany's mouth.
       She only gave me a miserable, tearful glance, but that said everything I needed to know. And the two gorillas, boy did they stare at me! I felt like I was pushed back and pinned against the wall by their eyes. Those big buffalo eyes were clearly saying in one loud voice: "None of your fucking business!"
       I shrugged and gave them my best "all-right-all-right-whatever" look, turning my eyes away to read the "Josh loves Jessica" graffiti on the wall. But in the meantime, an important decision had formed in my mind, maybe the most heroic decision so far in my boring life: I was not going to let these gorillas take away my dream girl like this.
       When the elevator reached the first floor at last, I sprang into action. I waited for the gorillas to drag Brittany out, then roughly pushed aside the bunch of guys and gals waiting to get in, dashed out after Brittany, grabbed her by the waist, jumped back into the elevator, just in time for the doors to close in the stunned faces of her captors.
       I pushed the button for the top floor, but of course the stupid thing once again stopped at every single floor. Every time the doors opened, I was greeted by folks stunned out of their wits at the sight of us, and by the shouting of the gorillas coming from a distance. In the back of my mind, I thanked the architect of the building, along with all of his ancestors, for putting the staircases so far from the elevators.
       Once we got to the top, I pushed the button for the bottom, and the whole thing started all over again. As the elevator took its sweet time from one floor to the next, the thought crept into my mind that I could actually be doing this with the gorillas all day long.
       When we were at the first floor again, though, I decided to make run for it. So I picked up Brittany—who must have fainted in this whirlwind of events—on my shoulder and dashed to the exit. Somehow, the gorilla heads appeared above the crowd less than thirty feet behind me. I was just about ready to feel their huge claws on my neck, but their stupidity saved my day. One of them fired his gun into the ceiling, sending the whole crowd screaming and running around in panic like a disturbed nest of ants.
       We escaped from the library in the middle of this incredible chaos. Phew!
       With bullets flying over my head, and wide eyes and dropped jaws greeting me all along the way, I sprinted into the parking lot, towards a shiny black Jeep Wrangler with fiery red designs on both sides, which I immediately recognized as mine.
       I dropped Brittany in the back seat, and started the engine. But before I could drive out of the parking lot, there they were again: the two gorillas, standing right in my path, with their guns pointed at me.
       There was no other choice. So I ducked under the dashboard, and pushed the gas peddle all the way down to the floor.
       Again the stupidity of those gorillas saved my day. Instead of shooting at me or my Jeep, or jumping out of my way, they simply stood there and looked at each other, as if completely lost. Then, amazingly, they turned around and began to run in front of me. I mean, they actually tried to run faster than my racing Jeep! Ha!
       By the time they finally realized it was smarter to get out of my way, it was too late. The bumper of my Jeep had already caught up with their asses. The Jeep bounced up and down like crazy when the wheels ran over four muscular legs, and from down below came screams that were at the moment better music to my ears than the Boston Pops and AC/DC playing together.
       I gave them one last glance in the rear-view mirror. Seeing them rolling and groaning on the ground, I couldn't control my laughter.
       And off we went. Eeeeha!

       About an hour later, we arrived at my favorite mountain resort. The place was always packed in winter and summer months with upper-middle-class folks who kept their vacation homes deep in the forest, but during the months in between it was totally deserted. A perfect hideout for us.
       I stopped the Jeep and went around to find a house without an alarm system. The rest was quite simple. Five minutes later the door was open, and I parked the Jeep behind the house and carried Brittany into the house.
       We settled on a large couch. She was still shaking, and began sobbing as soon as I removed the gag from her mouth. I wrapped her shivering little body in my arms and gently caressed her bare back. Her skin was soft and warm, and felt wonderful under my palms.
       "It's OK now, Britt," I told her in the sweetest voice I could ever put together. "You are perfectly safe here."
       After a while she finally calmed down. "I don't know how to thank you, Kevin," she whispered into my ear.
       She curled up on the couch, and twisted and turned a little in my embrace—trying to make herself more comfortable, I figured. Her wrists and ankles pulled vainly against the jingling shackles and chains.
       "Kevin?" she whispered in a small, pleading voice, and I could feel my heart melting into hot chocolate right on the spot.
       "Yes, Britt?"
       "Is there some way you can take these...things off me?"
       I let the hot chocolate cool off a bit, and answered with a wicked grin on my face: "I can't, Britt. I don't have the keys. Besides, you look fabulous in these chains."
       She bit lightly on her lower lip, and blushed beautifully. Oh did this babe know how to blush! No different shades of red and purple; just a light touch of pink spread evenly over the creamy fair skin of her cheeks and neck. Yum!
       "Besides," I went on, "I think you owe me an explanation on what's going on. I can't free you before I make sure you are not an international terrorist wanted by the FBI, right?"
       She fell silent for a while, and murmured: "It's a long story..."
       "No problem. I've got time!" I was truly curious. You don't run into a naked girl in chains on campus every day, now do you?
       She was again silent for a while. Then she freed herself from my embrace and sat up straight on her heels, looking quite serious.
       "Kevin," she drew a deep breath, "I'm not who you think I am. I'm a...I'm a runaway slave."
       "A WHAT?" I couldn't believe my ears.
       "It's true, Kevin. I'm a runaway slave."
       "Now wait a minute. Slavery was abolished by federal law in, eh, 1820, wasn't it?"
       "1865. Slavery was abolished in 1865 through the Thirteenth Amendment."
       "So?"
       "So what? Prostitution and drug-trafficking are both illegal, aren't they?" For the first time she looked at me straight in the eyes.
       "Huh? Oh, eh...right. So you mean...somewhere out there they still keep stables of slaves?"
       "Girls. Mostly girls. They keep us locked up in hell for their own pleasure. I was a sex slave, if you have to know for sure."
       "Really? But how did you...I mean, how did they make you...?"
       "My stepfather, that bastard!" her voice started to tremble at the memory. "After my mother died, he sold me to an old Texas oil baron, so he could send his own son to Harvard."
       "Old Texas oil baron? How old?"
       "He was sixty-seven when he bought me. He had three other girls he'd bought before me."
       "Geesh!" I tried not to chuckle, but just couldn't help. "At that age, I don't think he could handle one of you girls; and this guy was sleeping with four of you at the same time! What a stud!"
       "He never did sleep with us. At least not with me. We were not even allowed in his bedroom. We were always locked up in a basement dungeon unless there were visitors and he wanted us around to show off."
       "Hm. I bet the old dude kept you girls totally nude on these occasions, didn't he?"
       "Kevin!" she bumped me lightly with her shoulder, and hanged her head in a new wave of blushing.
       "Sorry, just wondering. So what did he do with you girls when there were no visitors?"
       "Sometimes we didn't even see him for days. He didn't come down to the dungeon all that often. He had a servant, a South American woman, to take care of us. But whenever he showed up, it was like...gosh, I can't say it." My sweet angel closed her tearful eyes and shook her head, as if trying to drive the horrible memory out of her mind.
       "Eh, like...what do you mean?"
       "You really want to know?"
       "Well, if you don't mind..."
       "I don't mind. I just don't want to shock you."
       "Try me."
       "OK. The old bastard was totally impotent, OK? He got his kicks from beating us and torturing us in the basement."
       "Really?"
       "Yes. The first night I was there, he hanged me upside down by my ankles, and he had two of the other girls whip me so hard that I ended up passing out. When I came to, my body was bruised and bleeding all over, and the old vampire was licking the blood off my body with his tongue!"
       "Jesus!" was all I could say.
       "He liked blood, that old vampire. And I was his favorite victim. He used to make me kneel in front of him while he sat in an armchair watching old horror movies. Then he would stick long needles into my breasts and suck my blood off the needles."
       "Jesus Christ!" I took her again in my arms, and held her tightly against my chest. My fingertips could faintly recognize a few scars, undoubtedly left by whips and canes, across the smooth skin of her back.
       "Don't say any more, Britt," I blew the words softly into her ear. "Now tell me how you got away from him."
       "It was almost impossible. Actually it WAS impossible to escape from that hellhole in the basement. He kept us naked and chained twenty-four hours a day, and always kept the keys to our collars and shackles with him. He made sure our collars were chained to the stone walls of our cells when he was not around. And each of us was locked in a separate cell, so we couldn't help one another get loose. The old bastard must have thought we were all escape artists!"
       "Did you ever get to go outside the dungeon?"
       "Yes. Every day the servant gave us a few hours in the garden for a little sunshine and exercise. But even then there were always at least three armed guards and a bunch of locked doors between us and the world outside. Like I said, it was impossible. I was there for more than two years, and I never even bothered to think about escaping from the place."
       "But you did get out, after all."
       "I would have never made it alive."
       "Wait, Britt, wait," I'm not usually a slow person to understand things, but this was way too much. "You got me all confused. Are you going to tell me now that you're not even alive?"
       "I was hoping they all thought I was dead. But like you have seen, it didn't work. What happened was, after two years in that hellhole, I had enough of it. I decided I'd rather die. So one night, about a year ago, the old bastard was trying to drive a snake into my vagina, and I lost it. I totally lost it. I threw myself into him and knocked him flat on the ground. Then I kicked him in the face. I was hysterical. Doing something like that could only mean one thing to me: he would kill me for sure. But I didn't care at all. I just kept kicking him until his bodyguards rushed in and grabbed me."
       "And then? Geesh, you must have taken a real bad beating for that." I held Brittany even tighter in my arms. If I hadn't been there to protect her when all this was happening to her, the least I could do was to convince her I would have.
       "'Beating' doesn't even start to describe what I went through that night. The old bastard was furious. He wanted me dead, but he was not going to make it easy. So he had me hanging by my wrists and ordered his bodyguards to whip me to death. There were four of them, and they took turns. I don't know how long they whipped me, but I remember they broke at least two whips on my body. Then they switched to a whip with steel wires braided in it. God! You have no idea what it felt like to be hit on your bare skin with that monster. It felt like being cut into pieces with a dull knife. I passed out so many times, and every time I thought I was going to die. But every time they brought me back with cold water or smelling salt. The last time I woke up, I was lying in bed—you know I hadn't slept in a bed for more than two years. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
       "It turned out I was at the house of a man named Tsai. He was from Taiwan, I think. And he was involved in a lot of shady businesses around Houston, including an underground crematory, where he disposes of the bodies of dead slavegirls. But actually he was not a bad guy. If not for him, I would be dead for real. Later he told me he and his helpers were just about to dump me into the fire, but he suddenly felt a pulse. So he brought me home, gave me all kinds of Chinese herb medicines and, really, brought me back from death.
       "Tsai doesn't speak much English, but he managed enough to let me know that I couldn't stay in Houston any more. It was too dangerous, for both of us. So as soon as I could walk again, he bought me a Greyhound ticket for California, and gave me some money to make it here. It's been almost a year, and I thought... Well, I guess you never know..." My angel buried her face in my chest oh-so-sweetly, her tears soaking through my sweater and shirt.
       "Wow!" I finally remembered to start breathing again. "You know, Britt, for your age, you have really gone through a heck of a life. I hope one of these days you'll write a book about all this. I'm sure it'll make the best seller list."
       Brittany didn't answer. I didn't know what else to say or to do to comfort her. So for a long while, I just held her like a baby, and we sat in total silence.
       Eventually, Brittany began to squirm, and broke the silence.
       "Kevin?"
       "Yes?"
       "I have told you everything. Now can you open these shackles for me? At least the handcuffs first. They are hurting my shoulders."
       "I still can't, Britt," I looked at her innocently. "I don't have any tools. And besides, like I said, you look great in chains. Besides, it looks like we'll have to hide out here for a few days. And as long as we are here, I'll do all the work. You just relax and stay comfortable and beautiful in your chains, all right?"
       She blushed again, this time, I could see, with anger and frustration. Abruptly, she broke away from my arms, moved herself to the edge of the couch, and turned her back to me.
       "I'm talking seriously," she said.
       "I'm serious, too," I said. "In fact I'm more serious than I have ever been. I'm going to keep you naked and chained as long as we are here."
       She turned around, and stared me straight in the face. But her baby-blue eyes didn't scare me at all.
       "How can you do this to me?" To her, I guess, it was an angry and threatening voice. But to me, heck, I had heard a lot worse.
       "Why can't I?" I put on my most evil-looking grin again. "See, Britt, it works like this: You are a slave, right? That makes you, like, a piece of property, right? It's like, your old master had a diamond ring, and he lost it. And I found it, so it's mine. Finder's keepers, right? So you are my slave now."
       God, I'm proud of my quick-wit logic!
       Brittany didn't answer at first. She hanged her head and thought for a few minutes. Then she sighed and shook her head.
       "Well," she said, "whatever, I guess. I can't go back to school anyway. And I have nowhere else to go. I don't mind being your slave, I guess, as long as you are nice to me. Your are going to be nice to me, aren't you, Kevin?"
       "Oh you bet! Of course!" For a moment I was beside myself with joy. But soon I managed to get a hold of myself.
       "I mean I'll try," I changed to a cooler tone. "I mean in the future. But right now, I think I'll have to punish you first."
       "You mean you are going to beat me?" Her eyes widened in disbelief. And I loved it.
       "Yep, sure am," I tried my best to look calm and in control. "I'm going to whip you, to be exact."
       "But what for?" she protested.
       "For your excessive pride," I declared, imagining myself to be a rebel warrior addressing a captured princess. "Remember the letters I sent you about, eh, what, six months ago? I laid my heart out in those letters. And you? You never even answered them."
       The poor sweetheart tilted her head back, blinked her long eyelashes, and tried very hard to remember my letters. But I knew for sure she couldn't, even if her dear life was on the line.
       Of course not. I had never gathered enough guts to send them to her. But how would she know? For a wonderful creature like Brittany, I bet she had received more love-letters that she could ever read, still less remember.
       She looked at me with pleading eyes, but I kept my face straight and stern. You can't show your weakness in front of your slavegirl, I figured. Finally, she heaved a little sigh, and slipped from the couch onto her knees. Just like the well-trained slavegirl she was, she raised her butts and bent forward, offering her unprotected bare back and bottom to be the targets of my wrath.
       Still with that wicked grin on my face, I slowly drew my heavy-duty cowboy belt from the loops of my jeans. Slowly, because I had to savor every single second of this incredible pleasure. I mean, here she was, all naked and chained, kneeling at my feet to await the sting of my whip—the girl that I had been secretly adoring, worshiping, and dreaming about all the time! Wow!
       Slowly I stepped into position. Slowly I bent down to kiss her on her forehead. Slowly I sent my left hand down to fondle her firm little breasts, feeling those soft pink nipples harden into my palm. She lifted her chin and closed her eyes to receive the kiss, and jutted out her chest to enjoy my touch. Her sweet submissiveness pleased me enormously, but I had to whip the poor babe anyway.
       "Be brave, Britt," I told her. "This isn't going to be even close to the way you were whipped before."
       I raised the belt above my head, but that was where it stayed. In fact, my whole body was petrified and I couldn't move even one lousy little finger.
       Someone was pounding loudly on the door!
       Brittany and I looked at each other in astonishment.
       "Who's that?" my little lamb whispered from her alter of sacrifice.
       "I-I-I don't know." Shit! I didn't mean to stammer.
       Then whoever-it-was started calling me by my name!
       "Kevin!" an angry voice roared. "Kevin! Do you hear me?"
       Now this was where it got really weird: That voice sounded like my mother's!

       "Kevin! Are you in there?" It was my mother all right, but what the heck was she doing here?
       I opened my eyes and tried to reflect on the situation.
       "Kevin!" my mother continued pounding on the door. "Wake up, Kevin! You are late for your class!"
       I sat up in my bed, and blinked.