Chapter 9

“OK, Jess, now, I want you to lick your fingers, suck your fingers, run your hands down the chains, and start fingering your pussy, then back in your mouth, same fingers. Smile at the camera all the while, OK?”

Jess Soniya was nearing the end of a grueling four months of training at Pembroke’s complex in southern Turkey. Conditioned to endure and trained to satisfy, she was now fully prepared to be sold and delivered to her master.

Bound in chains, with a heavy collar fastened tightly around her neck, and shackles clamped around her ankles, she was draped submissively over a large antique wooden chest. Her raven-black hair had been meticulously curled, and her bare face, free of makeup, highlighted her youthful features. The stark pallor of her skin, a result of prolonged deprivation of sunlight, was highlighted in contrast to her black hair. She was clad in just a sheer transparent long cloth which only highlighted what she was doing between her legs to herself.

“Master, I am yours, your property, to command as you please. My sole purpose is to fulfill your every desire. I have no will of my own, only the absolute obedience to serve you for the rest of my life. I am your slave, your tool for pleasure, existing only for your satisfaction.”

Jess now obeyed instinctively, her mind no longer questioning. She had long passed the point of rebellion; the relentless pain, punishment, and degradation, along with four months of brutal conditioning, had stripped her of resistance. She had become what they wanted—a sexual being, an object for pleasure and pain, mostly for the pleasure of others and the pain of herself. All she could hope for now was that the owner she was being prepared for might be somewhat attractive and not excessively cruel. The hope of ever seeing her family again had long since faded.

The cruelty she endured knew no bounds. Beyond the physical torment and psychological control, she was subjected to the constant reminder of what else was at stake. Above her in the communal cell, pictures of her family hung alongside those of the other girls’ families. The threat was clear: escape wasn’t the only offense—disobedience, lack of enthusiasm, even the slightest failure could result in punishment not just for her, but for her loved ones. This was compounded by the knowledge that her mother was already dead, murdered by the very people who now held her captive.

The threat was real. She had heard of a girl who had taken her own life before she arrived. In response, the girl’s cousin had been kidnapped, with the willing participation of one of the overseers, Nadim, who seemed disturbingly pleased by the enslavement of his own female relatives. This twisted reality she now lived in was a far cry from the safe, secure home she had known just four months ago—a nightmarish world of depravity, perversion, and unrelenting cruelty.

“Excellent, Jess!” Pembroke lifted her off the chest, his hands massaging her breasts, which had filled out during her captivity, blossoming her into a beautiful young woman. He smiled, pleased with her transformation. “That pale look suits you well. A scarlet whip mark stands out beautifully against your skin. I suppose to black people, white skin is just white skin,” he remarked, grinning at the thought that she would likely never see much sunlight again for the rest of her life.

Her buyer, Professor Winston Harris, was a Jamaican-born scholar of Post-Colonial History and Literature at Harvard, as well as a popular podcaster, author, and TV personality. He was soon to retire and move back to Jamaica, living far beyond the means of even a tenured professor. Harris was eager to indulge his wealth in a way that echoed the suffering his ancestors had been forced to endure.

Pembroke was happy to find out he wasn’t solely driven by racial animosity, though his unnerving desire to inflict severe, race-based punishments on the poor girl was evident. The half-Spanish, half-Moroccan 18-year-old was strikingly beautiful, not just in the promotional material filmed at the complex, but also in her social media presence and the tributes that followed her “death.” Harris had become captivated by her.

Pembroke’s primary concern, however, had been the transatlantic nature of the transfer to Jamaica. While recent transfers across Europe had become relatively straightforward, he had devised a particularly ingenious method for moving slaves across the Atlantic.

As Pembroke ran his hands over Jess’s soft yet toned buttocks, he whispered, “You will soon experience your very own transatlantic slave crossing. It’s going to be just as painful as it was 300 years ago, but you’ll earn me as much as an entire slave ship.” He punctuated his words with a sharp slap to her bottom.

Jess stared down with dead eyes as her “container” was prepared. She was nothing more than a slave, captured to serve, a victim to be forgotten—except to her owner, who would use her as a disposable plaything. She had joined the ranks of all the forgotten souls she had once campaigned against and had nightmares about as a youth. Tears welled up in her eyes as she wondered if this was what they had felt like too.

Victoria Carter sat alone in her parents’ house, struggling to keep steady after finishing her second bottle of wine. Her elderly parents were asleep upstairs, leaving her isolated in her old bedroom. Nearly fifty years old and back in the countryside with her parents—how had it come to this? She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror; just three months ago, she could have passed for thirty. Now, her face was lined, dark circles hung under her eyes, and her grey roots were clearly visible. She stumbled, then hurled the empty wine bottle against the wall, screaming and sobbing.

She stripped off her clothes and sighed at the sight of her now flabby stomach, a painful reminder of how far she had strayed from her once strict exercise regime. No man would want her like this. Her husband had thrown her out, unable to bear her presence after she lost their daughter. He still had his older children, but Victoria had lost her only child, her only friend. Now, with nowhere else to go, she was forced to live with her parents—not quite homeless, but feeling just as lost, with no future in sight. Naked and curled up, she wept uncontrollably, as she had done countless times before, night after night.

She had been a tabloid’s dream. The story of her passing out from alcohol and partying at 10 a.m., only to wake up and find that her 14-year-old daughter had supposedly fallen off a pedalo and drowned, led to accusations of negligence and worse. Some even suggested she had drowned her daughter while in a drugged and drunken stupor. MDMA, cocaine, and alcohol were all found in her system. Tragically, the drug used to tranquilize her and Alice was well disguised by the others and had mostly left her system by the time she was tested.

The police didn’t suspect the group of three men who had flown out of Ibiza by private jet that morning—why would they? Alice had ventured dangerously far out on a pedalo, her mother was too intoxicated to remember anything, and the girl had apparently drowned, though her body was never found. Meanwhile, stories about Victoria’s wild partying and affairs with different men every night were enough to drive her husband to fury, blaming her for their daughter’s death. Alice was declared missing, presumed drowned.

Naked photos of Victoria surfaced, along with tell-all stories from ex-lovers, further destroying her reputation. Now living with her parents, with no future and no hope, she turned to alcohol to cope with the relentless pain and shame.

It could be argued that Alice Carter had endured an even worse three months than her mother. She had fallen asleep to the gentle sea breeze, under the warm summer sun, with the waves lapping peacefully around her. But when she awoke, it was to blackness and silence. At first, she believed she had died—that this was hell, and that this suffocating darkness, leaving her dead, dumb, and blind, contorted and uncomfortable, would be her eternity. Her mind screamed for an end to the torment.

When light finally pierced her eyes, it revealed a world entirely different from the idyllic childhood she had once known. In every way, it felt as though she had indeed descended into hell.

She had barely been touched by anyone in years, save for her mother, but now she was being manhandled, rubbed, disrobed, and then ... the violence. The threats. The huge, ugly, towering men, their screaming faces. A part of her had believed that if she got angry enough, if she threatened them, they would leave her alone. But the first blow to the side of her face shattered that illusion. The shock of physical violence silenced her, forcing her to realize this was real—she had been thrust into a different, terrifying universe.

Branded with a tattoo, strange lasers scanning and marking her naked body, exposed to brutal, leering men and women, she was then thrown into a cell with fourteen other equally naked, equally lost, and frightened young women. The entire experience left her disoriented and broken. Her pleas for help, for mercy, for information fell on deaf ears, even among the other captives. Few were willing to offer any words of hope or comfort. Instead, they urged her to do as she was told, their own spirits already crushed.

Outside the cell, beyond the transparent glass walls, lay a vast hall where unspeakable acts of debauchery and punishment unfolded. It didn’t take long for her to grasp the horrors that awaited. Hidden beneath carpeted drapes were three ominous, coffin-like boxes, each crawling with a living nightmare—snakes, spiders, and rats. The first time she witnessed a rebellious girl forced into one of these glass coffins, every vile creature visible as they writhed over her body, she was overwhelmed with terror. The sight was so horrifying that she vomited on the spot before collapsing into unconsciousness, her mind unable to process the sheer dread of what she had seen.

The girls were pulled out every day for hours to perform degrading tasks and drills with no purpose other than to humiliate them and titillate, and sometimes directly pleasure, their overseers.

For the first few days, roaming hands had been the worst thing to happen to her, giving her nightmares. She had woken up crying next to other girls, a sea of flesh, but received no sympathy—only being told to shut up and go back to sleep.

Then, the games got sicker for her. She had her private parts touched by hands, then by the mouths of the other girls and her overseers, and was forced to kiss, as she had only seen in movies, on the mouth—the girls and the horrible men.

Her flesh constantly felt dirty, crawling with evil, horrible sensations. The most mind-numbing thing of all was the leader of this horrific group. Philippe Papin, the “heroic” Frenchman who had slept with her mother, was actually Master Pembroke, the architect of everything. The thought that her life had been destined to end up here made her past life feel almost unreal now. Thinking of the contrast, he was the only memory or connection to her once happy life, but the smiling, genial hero was now the evil, cold ringleader.

Barred from wearing any clothing, she had been naked for so long that she had almost grown accustomed to the sight of the other naked girls around her, clinging to the hope that this forced familiarity might somehow offer her some protection. She was surrounded by the overwhelming atmosphere of vaginas, period blood, sweat, and other female scents. But it never got easier. The first time she was forced to bring her mouth to the vagina of another girl, she had vomited immediately, only to be beaten and then compelled to continue. With shaking hands and a heart full of dread, she had to move her tongue over an organ she had barely even glanced at on her own body before this nightmare. Vaginas, assholes, armpits, feet, necks, lips, tongues—her mouth was constantly filled with the taste of others, a taste so vile she wished she could cleanse it with acid.