I saw her standing there.
         My eyes were fixed on her as soon as I entered the slave market. There were about twenty slavegirls on display in the market that day, and each one of them, I had to admit, was of the best quality. All of them were pretty; some were indeed beautiful. But she seemed to have a unique atmosphere around her that I found especially attractive.
         Like all the other girls, she was completely naked. Her hands were cuffed behind her back, and her ankles locked in a set of heavy iron shackles--too heavy, I said to myself, for her slender ankles. On her neck was a black iron collar, attached to a chain dangling from a wooden beam above her head. She was forced by the chain to stand rigidly straight, waiting to be examined by potential buyers in the most humiliating way, much in the same manner as the other girls in the market.
         Yet she appeared somewhat different from the rest of the slavegirls. While all the other girls were tall and well built, she was petite, no more than 5 feet 4 inches tall, with a waist small enough, it seemed, to be held in a man's hands. The others were all gorgeously blond; her hair was of a silky chestnut color. Surrounded by well tanned breasts and thighs, her skin looked vulnerably pale, through which her veins could be seen as winding thin blue lines. Against the smooth whiteness of her limbs, the rough, dark surface of the irons that imprisoned them made a sharp contrast. While the other girls were making all efforts to present themselves to their future masters in the most beautiful and sexy way, she simply stood quietly and almost motionlessly in her corner, with her eyes rooted on the concrete floor. A few bunches of long wavy hair climbed over her slim shoulders to her front, as if in a desperate attempt to cover her bare breasts.
         Unlike the other girls, who must have been bought and sold in a slave market as a way of life, she had the freshness to one's eyes that belonged only to a girl who was having such a traumatic experience for the first time in her life.
         I stopped in front of her. She raised her head slightly to glance at me, but quickly hanged it again. I saw her bare feet trying to move back away from me, but the chain on her collar held her firmly in place.
         "What's your name?" I asked, lifting her chin with a finger.
         "Stephanie...sir." Her voice was trembling a little, but nevertheless extremely sweet and melodious. Meanwhile she tried hard to keep her eyes on the ground to avoid confronting my inquiring eyes. This made her look very lovely.
         "Your last name?"
         "It doesn't matter, sir," she said with a sigh. "A slavegirl doesn't need a last name any more."
         She might be new in her bondage, but she certainly understood her situation quite well already.
         I brushed aside her hair with my fingers to expose fully her breasts, and the pair of delicate nipples. Her breasts were small and firm, and jiggled at the touch of my fingers. She could not be more than twenty, I thought.
         "How old are you?"
         "Eighteen, sir."
         I took her breasts in the palms of my hands, and started caressing them gently. This immediately send a little quake through her body, causing the chain on her collar to jingle. A faint groan came from her throat, and I could feel the two small patches of soft pink skin on the tips of her breasts hardening into thrusting nipples. She closed her eyes, apparently scared but nonetheless enjoying my touch. I was pleased with her response.
         Perhaps I should have her nipples pierced if I bought her, I thought.
         "Turn around," I released her breasts and ordered her.
         With the jingling of chains, she slowly turned around, revealing about a dozen whip marks across her shoulder blades. The fingers of her cuffed hands rubbed against one another nervously.
         "Were you whipped recently?"
         "Yes, sir. This morning."
         "Why?"
         "I don't know, sir. Honestly." She gave a sigh and added in a soft voice: "But I guess whenever a slavegirl is whipped, it's always her fault, one way or another."
         I smiled. She is cute.
         I examined her hands carefully, and lifted her feet to look at their soles. Everything I saw bore the marks of an easy and comfortable life before the first chain was locked around her neck. Even after being forced to walk barefoot for days or perhaps weeks, as all slavegirls were, her feet were amazingly tender and clean.
         "How long have you been a slave, Stephanie?" I asked, turning her around to face me again.
         "About two weeks, sir."
         "What were you doing before that?"
         "I was a student at St. Julia College...sir."
         "What was your major?"
         "English. I was an English major..." She raised her head and stared blankly into the blue sky above the chains and the beams. I could see tears in her eyes.
         "How did you become a slave?" I was genuinely curious.
         "It was a long story...," she answered after hesitating for a short while.
         I walked around her nakedness and gave her a full examination again. The youthful and natural beauty of her petite figure, enhanced by the chains and shackles she wore, pleased me immensely. There was no permanent brand anywhere on her body; she had only a fading blue stamp on her left hip that read: "E&L Slave Traders." But the inscriptions on her collar indicated a different owner: "Property of Tony Francera, Springfield."
         "Stephanie," I informed her, "I think I'm going to buy you."
         "Are you going to be kind to me, sir?" She raised her head again and for the first time let her eyes meet mine. Brown and clear, her eyes were very charming.
         "It depends. On how you behave, of course. But anyway, I'll keep you naked and chained like this all the time. And I'll whip you at least once a week. Also, how would you like a pair of little rings pierced through your nipples?"
         "...Do I have a choice?"
         "Of course not, you silly little slave!" I laughed and patted her on the back. Except for the fresh whip marks, her skin was soft and smooth, and felt good.
         "Where is your master?"
         Before the slavegirl could say anything, a man's voice came from behind me: "Nice choice, my friend! She's real good stuff, isn't she?"
         I turned around and found myself facing a short, dark skinned man with a black mustache. With a friendly smile, he stretched out his right hand and said: "I'm Tony. This wench is mine. Isn't she a real sweetheart?"
         "Oh yes, indeed," I agreed as we shook hands. "I haven't seen anything like her in the market for quite a while. Where did you get her from?"
         "From the hands of the E&L guys. Those bastards! They would have wasted her. The day I went there, they had her hanging from the ceiling by the wrists tied behind her back, and they tied a concrete block to her big toes. Man, it looked like they were going to break her arms and ruin her for good. When I got there they had a pair of damn big alligator clamps on her nipples. They wired them up, and a guy was giving her electric shocks right through the tits. The poor thing was jerking like a fish out of water. Man, you never heard a girl scream like that!"
         "Good God! Did they really do that to you?" I turned to the slavegirl.
         "Yes, sir," she answered briefly. Her voice was noticeably shaking with terror at the memory.
         "Why did they do that?" I asked Tony, truly unable to imagine the necessity to torture this sweet and helpless girl in such a horrifying way.
         "It turned out some big brothel wanted to buy her, and they were only softening her up for the johns. Damn fools! I told them they were ruining genuine crystal to make a piece of common glass. And I told them the best thing they could do by beating her up was to turn her into a whore just like those," Tony pointed at the sexy blondes chained next to Stephanie.
         "That's true," I agreed sincerely.
         "Yeah! I could see at the first glance this babe was something special. High class stuff; you know what I mean? She deserves better than that. So I made them a better offer and took her home. I trained her myself. It didn't take too much hard work. She's a real good girl. Aren't you, sweetie?" He turned to the slavegirl and started rubbing the back of his hand against one of her nipples.
         "May I ask why you whipped her this morning?"
         "Oh that! That was nothing at all. You have to use your whip on these girls once in a while, you know. Just to make sure they know who they are." Tony winked at me and changed the subject: "So you want her?"
         "Well, how much?"
         "She's going on auction in a moment. I'm asking only eight grand for a start."
         "Eight thousand? That's pretty high a start, don't you think?"
         Tony winked at me again and said: "Well, she's not just any slavegirl, right?"
         "True. Do you have her papers with you?"
         "Sure thing!"
         I had just started looking through her identification documents when suddenly a loud and rough voice burst out right next to my ears: "Well well well, little bitch! I knew we would meet again!"
         Startled, I found myself staring at a very big man with a heavy beard standing in front of Stephanie. Twisting about fearfully in his shadow, the naked slavegirl looked all the smaller.
         "Stephanie Dartville, right?" the man continued. "Still remember me, you little bitch?"
         She obviously recognized him too. Her face turned pale, and her body shivered visibly. She turned her face left and right, as if searching for help, and struggled vainly against the shackles and chains to escape from him.
         "Mr. Johnson!" Tony was suddenly all smiles. "How are you doing, Mr. Johnson? You know this wench?"
         "Boy, do I know this little bitch!" the man burst out again, the words coming along with the heavy odor of beer and tobacco. "She's one of those chicks working for the New Underground Railroad, and last year she helped a number of my slavegirls run away. I've been looking for her all over the place. And what do you know! Here she is, the freedom fighter herself in the slave market! God, I love it!"
         "For your information, bitch," the man turned to Stephanie, "I have caught all my chicks one by one, and I gave everyone of them a lesson that she'll forever thank you for. And that friend of yours, Jennifer Stanistow, she ended up in my stable too. I showed her a living hell and then nailed her to the cross. Tell you the truth she didn't enjoy it at all. Next it's your turn!"
         I remember seeing the girl named Jennifer Stanistow, a willowy young blonde about the same age as Stephanie, being crucified on Davis Square a few months ago. She was marched down the boulevard wearing nothing but chains, and forced to carry the heavy crossbar on her shoulders to the execution ground. Her body was covered with horrifying marks left by unspeakable torture, and I noticed both of her nipples had been severed. Since that day I had always wondered who would be so cruel to an innocent looking teenage girl. Now the thought that the same fate of horror might be waiting for another innocent girl sent a shiver down my spine.
         Johnson suddenly grabbed the naked girl's nipples between his fingers and pinched them very hard. Poor Stephanie threw back her head and screamed in pain.
         "Tony," he roared, "I want this bitch. What's your price on her?"
         "Mr. Johnson," Tony asked hesitantly, "you are not going to buy her just to kill her, are you?"
         "Of course not!" Johnson answered. "Not this one. Death will be a luxury for her. I'm going to teach her things could be much worse than death. I'll make a good example of her for all those chicks. She's going to spend a long time in the pillory on Main Street, but first I'll need to whip her hide into tiny pieces. Take a good look at this whip, little bitch! It's going to be your life long companion."
         The poor girl glanced at the whip in Johnson's hand, and her eyes were filled with horror. It was not one of the conventional whips designed for the tender skin of a girl. Made of raw cow hide, it was quite similar to the bull whips that cowboys used on their cattle, only much shorter. It was an extremely brutal thing to use on the naked body of a young girl.
         And the pillory on Main Street was also an extremely brutal torture device. Besides the utmost humiliation of being displayed naked in front of thousands of people every day, a girl locked in the pillory by her neck, wrists and ankles could support the weight of her body only by either standing on her toes, sitting on the sharp edge of the foot stock, or hurting her neck in the upper pillory. It had not been used for over three years since a slavegirl died while being punished in it, but the moans and tears that it had extracted from every girl it had ever imprisoned still remained vivid in everyone's memory.
         A bell rang at the center of the slave market, indicating the auction was about to start, and the men began moving toward the auction block. I took another look at the girl I had decided to purchase, and turned to join the other men.          
         "Sir..." It was Stephanie's soft voice.
         Turning around, I asked her: "Are you talking to me?"
         "Yes, sir," she looked at me earnestly. "Are you going to buy me?"
         "So you can run away?"
         "No, sir, please..." her voice became eager. "I promise I'll never run away from you. I promise! I'll be your faithful slave throughout my life. I'll do anything you want... I can cook. I'm a good dancer--I have learnt the belly dance. And I can play violin or mandolin for you. I can be very useful. And...you can do anything you please to me. Whip me all you want. Keep me chained. And you can pierce my nipples--please do. Torture me anyway you want to. But please...please buy me, sir. You can sell me again later if you don't like me. But just...just don't let that beast lay his fingers on me; please?"
         Tears ran down on her rosy cheeks. It was a plea that I could not say no to.
         I stepped back to her, and wiped the tears off her face with my thumbs. Holding her face in both hands, I kissed her gently on her lips.
         "Don't worry," I told her. "I'll do my best to outbid that old bully. I like you, sweetheart."
         "Thank you, sir."
         The auction started. Within an hour about ten of the slavegirls were sold, some for five or six thousand, others for ten or eleven. A girl with beautiful long legs and full bosom brought her master fifteen thousand and eight hundred dollars.
         Then came Stephanie's turn.
         She was led onto the auction block by an assistant of the auctioneer. The chain on her collar had been replaced by a leather leash held in the man's hand. The auctioneer kicked lightly on the back of one of her knees, and Stephanie dropped on her knees. She was told to sit on her heels, and the auctioneer's assistant kicked her knees apart to expose her sex.
         There she knelt, naked and shackled, with her head hanging low, her legs apart and her hands still cuffed behind her back, in a beautiful picture of female submission. Few people could imagine that only two weeks before this hapless slavegirl was sitting in a comfortable dorm room in one of the most prestigious colleges in the region, and perhaps writing anti slavery poems.          
         The response from the bidders was moderate. Most of the men around the auction block were middle-aged businessmen, who would much sooner prefer a mindless blonde sex pot to a girl of intelligence like Stephanie, whose reserved look was to them an indication of trouble in the future. When the bidding went over ten thousand, Johnson and I were the only competitors left. Yet the bidding soon reached and passed twenty thousand, much to everybody's surprise.
         Johnson was clearly determined to put his chains on Stephanie's neck, and for this he would pay any price. When he called out twenty eight thousand after my offer of twenty-five, there was a brief commotion around the auction block, and then there was complete silence. I could hear jingling chains on both sides of the block; the girls still waiting to be auctioned were also stretching their necks to see what would happen next. Twenty-eight thousand was almost an insane price to pay for a slavegirl, even for one as pretty as Stephanie.
         "Do I hear twenty eight and five hundred?" the auctioneer asked.
         "Yes." I said. It was far more than I could easily afford, but I was determined too.
         "Twenty nine thousand!" Johnson called out.
         I looked at the naked girl kneeling on the auction block. All I saw was a pair of expecting eyes.
         "Twenty nine thousand and five hundred," I told the crowd.
         "Thirty thousand!"
         "Thirty thousand and five hundred."
         "Thirty one!"
         "Thirty one and five hundred."
         It was all quite for a while. Johnson did not respond immediately to my new offer. On the auction block, Stephanie closed her eyes and bit her lower lip in great anxiety.
         "Do I hear thirty two?" the auctioneer asked.
         "No," Johnson replied, "you hear fifty thousand."
         This caused an enormous commotion in the crowd. A man standing next to me exclaimed: "Give him that girl, young man! I could sell you my mother for that kind of money."
         Everybody laughed.
         I looked at Stephanie at a loss. Again I saw the pair of expecting eyes, which were now getting rather desperate. But I quickly calculated my financial situation and recognized that I had lost her.
         "Sold to the gentleman for FIF TY THOU SAND DOLLARS!" The auctioneer's voice expressed uncontrollable excitement.
         More excited was Tony. I was sure he still could not believe what had happened: he had just made fifty thousand dollars out of a girl he probably paid as little as four thousand for.
         I saw him talking warmly with Johnson on the block, patting each other on the shoulders. Then he helped Johnson drag the poor girl from the block. He removed the shackles from Stephanie's neck and limbs, and Johnson immediately tied her hands tightly behind her back with a long rope. Stephanie tried to put up a fight, but was easily overpowered by the two men. After they had tied her up, Johnson kicked Stephanie down to the ground, and lashed her several times with his whip, making her cry out in unbearable pain. Then they took her away into the blacksmith's shop behind the auction block. Shortly after, I heard her screams penetrating the wooden door of the small shop.
         I had let her down.
         Stephanie's screams lasted for what seemed to me like hours. When she was dragged out from the shop, she was apparently in such pain that she could hardly walk. She was told to kneel in front of the notary's office, while Johnson and Tony went inside.
         I walked up to her.
         Her whole body was shaking and covered with sweat. Her shoulders jerked with her sobs. She knelt next to the wall, and leaned on it, her head sunk to her chest. The rope, tied around her wrists and looped several times around her arms, was so tight that it cut into her tender flesh. The horrible cuts that Johnson's whip left on her back and shoulders were still bleeding. I noticed her nipples were bleeding too. They had been pierced, and a small chain was attached to the silver-colored nipple rings.
         On her left buttock, I found a newly imprinted oval brand: "B. S. Johnson." A few other words were cruelly tattooed on the back of her right shoulder: "Stephanie Dartville, member of the New Underground Railroad." I could imagine the dreadful humiliation these words would bring her when Johnson proudly showed her off in public.
         "Stephanie," I did not know how to comfort her, "I'm sorry."
         "No, sir," she said between sobs, without raising her head, "you did all you could. I know. But there was no hope from the beginning; I should have known that. He wanted me, and he had enough money to buy me at any price. Thank you for trying to help, sir. You have done me a great favor, and I'll remember it forever. I'll pray for you every day till I die."
         "Stephanie," I tried to offer my advice, "the important thing now is to take good care of yourself. Try to make the best of it. Try to please him, and obey him. Maybe he won't be too harsh on you after a while..."
         "There's no use, sir," she interrupted, raising her tear-covered face and shaking her head in despair. "There's no use. He wants to put me through hell, and he's going to do it no matter what. I know that beast..."
         Her head sank again, and she fell silent.
         "Well, buddy, still interested in her?" Johnson came out from the office. "That's all right. Just wait a few years. You can have this little bitch when I'm done with her. That is, you can have her bones after I've done away with her skin and flesh."
         He laughed savagely, and grabbed the small chain on Stephanie's nipple rings to pull her up to her feet, cursing and kicking her mercilessly in the meantime. Then he turned to me again and said, rather friendly: "Seriously, buddy, take my advice: don't waste your emotion on a slavegirl. There are plenty of them around. Why don't you go get yourself another one? You can get five of them for the money you just offered. And you'll forget all about this chick in a blink."
         Maybe he was right.
         I watched while Johnson led Stephanie away through the crowd, holding the chain on her nipples, which forced her to walk with her breasts thrown out in a peculiar way. Then I wandered in the slave market for another ten or fifteen minutes, browsing through the girls still on display, but without seeing or hearing anything.
         I decided to leave.
         As soon as I walked out of the slave market, my eyes fell on Stephanie again. She was now suspended in the spread eagle position on the back of a van, with fresh whip marks on her breasts and thighs. She bit her lip and suffered the agony in silence. A small crowd had gathered around her.
         The van started moving as I walked up, but Stephanie had enough time to smile at me sadly and say: "Bye bye, sir. God bless you."
         "Bye bye, Stephanie," I answered her in my mind. "I'll pray for you."
         The small crowd dispersed, leaving me standing conspicuously on the curb. A security guard looked at me curiously.
         Behind me the auctioneer announced over the speaker: "Good news, gentlemen! In a few minutes we are getting two more girls to be auctioned today. Both are incredibly beautiful. Authentic college chicks..."
         I ran across the street, and kept running.