Chapter 5: Training

The trainer barked out a short, authoritative command in a language I did not understand. I looked at him in shock, not understanding what was required of me. I was standing before him, naked. In his left hand was one end of a six-foot, light chain leash. The other end was attached to a choke collar around my neck. In his right hand was a long, flexible switch.

Suddenly the switch flashed across my back and a sharp downward tug on the leash pulled me down to my knees. I cried out in pain. The trainer kicked my knees apart and repeated the same monosyllabic command.

Then he shouted another command, again one I didn't understand. This one had two syllables and began with a hard "k" sound. I was again struck by the switch, but this time there was no tug on the leash to instruct me. I decided that I was to supposed to guess what this command meant, and tried rising to my feet. For my pains I was greeted with three more blows from the switch, and a brutal tug on the leash and took my breath away and threw me onto my belly on the hardwood floor. I lay there, not daring to move, my face and breasts literally pressed against the floor. In an attempt to pacify my trainer, I spread my legs as widely as possible. That at least seemed expected of me more often than not. The switch was really not that terribly painful, but my back was smarting from the multiple blows.

I heard the second, two-syllable command again, this time in a calmer voice. I decided that it probably meant "belly," or something to that effect. In any case, I was apparently not being beaten again, for the moment at least.

I heard a gruff, single-syllable command. It sounded slightly familiar, so I rose to my knees, hoping to have guessed right. Instead, a pull and a twist on the leash turned me onto my back on the hard floor. The switch burned across my stomach, and then on my thighs. Again I spread my legs in a belated attempt to placate the trainer. Even if I was slow to learn the trainer's commands, I would do everything in my power to convince him of my utter obedience and eagerness to please. I found myself hoping that he would rape me - anything to give me a chance to show my worth to him. An instant later I hated myself for the thought. Yes, I had been kidnapped and forced to obey the dictates of my abductors. But there was no need for me to crave their abuses.

My thoughts were interrupted by a two-syllable command, again beginning with a hard "k" sound. I instantly rolled over onto my belly, my hands at my sides, and spread my legs widely. I held my breath, waiting for the whistle of the switch. But this time I was not beaten. I had guessed right. Perhaps I could learn to be a good slave. Perhaps I would survive. Instead of using the switch on me, the trainer pushed his shoe in front of my face. I instantly kissed it, and then began licking the shoe as sensuously as I knew how. I knew that if I learned quickly, I would not be beaten. I resolved to be the best student the school had ever known - even if it as a student of the arts of female slavery.

This was the most difficult class, Valerie had warned me, even worse than the afternoon sessions in rendering prolonged and humiliating sexual services. In this class, we were trained exactly as animals - with commands we could not understand, leashes, choke collars, and whips. We were being taught our new place in society, in which we no longer even counted as persons, but merely as a particularly attractive form of animal property. Each day the set of commands would change, although they might be repeated at long intervals. The semantic content of the commands was largely constant from day to day, consisting largely of the basic commands by which a slave girl may be put through her paces - kneeling, on her belly or back, standing, bent over, grasping her ankles, and so on - but each day we would have to learn which verbal signal corresponded to each position or task. One of the by-products of the sessions is that we were being taught this basic set of commands in a number of languages, but sometimes the "language" of the day was pure nonsense, concocted solely for the benefit of our training. It was almost impossible for a girl not to emerge from the session with several red stripes across her back and thighs, and more importantly with a desperate eagerness to please her trainer. I knew I would be no exception.

Valerie had prepared me for the day's activities as we chatted briefly in the showers earlier in the morning. That morning, my first in the mansion, I was awakened by a natural-light alarm at a time I guess to be around 7:30. I looked around me and saw the beds I had dimly made out the night before. There were six other girls in the room, all nude and chained like me to their beds. All were stunningly beautiful. These slavers, I concluded, knew what they were doing.

A man entered the room and made the rounds of our beds, releasing us from our leashes. We followed him down a corridor and down a flight of stairs into a large exercise room. None of the girls seemed in the least concerned with her complete nudity. I gathered that that was something that we slaves quickly grew accustomed to. Once in the exercise room, each of us was given a card describing our workout routine for the morning. The man briefly explained what it meant to me. His manner was completely matter-of-fact, as if he were entirely used to managing a group of naked, enslaved beauties. But of course, I realized, he was entirely used to it. At the same time, I realized that my beauty, and availability, in all likelihood meant very little to these men. Before, I had been able to influence men with so little as a short skirt, a smile, and a touch of my hand on their arm. Now, completely naked, my body at their disposal, I was utterly powerless. Whatever they might want, they would have from me, simply by snapping their fingers.

The exercises were largely aerobic, with some stretching and a small amount of weight training. I gathered that our bodies were being carefully toned and exercised to make sure we were in optimum physical condition. Masters would want their slaves to be both excruciatingly attractive and physically fit, and could enforce their will upon us.

After the exercise period, we entered an large, adjacent rest room where we showered in a large, communal shower. That was when the other girls, including Valerie, introduced themselves to me. They had been in the mansion anywhere from one to seven weeks. Their stories were similar to mine. All had shown some interest in slavery, whether by attending a fetish night at a club, role-playing in an online chat room, or simply allowing a boyfriend to tie them up, and shortly thereafter had been forcibly abducted and brought here. They were resigned to their fate, although hardly enthusiastic about it - there was little appealing, one remarked, in attending training classes all day and being periodically raped as a diversion. They knew no more than I about the fate that would await us once we "graduated" from this school. But about one thing there was no doubt at all: we were, truly, slave girls, in the fullest sense of the term. We were completely subject to the whims and desires of our masters, from the most mundane to the most exquisitely sensuous, and could expect nothing in return.

After cleaning and drying ourselves, we were allowed to proceed to the kitchen back on the ground floor, where we were served breakfast. "Served" is perhaps not the most appropriate word, in that we were required to eat on all fours, not using our hands, from bowls on the floor containing hot oatmeal and water. On my hands and knees, my hair falling about my face, my breasts depending from my body, I lowered by head to the floor and lapped up the food and water with my tongue. Glancing to my left and right, I saw that the other girls were eating and drinking comfortably. I supposed that they had grown used to this particular humiliation. I expected that I, too, would become accustomed to it.

After breakfast our lessons began in earnest. The first class was what the other slave girls called our "dog-training" class, where we were forced to learn and respond to commands in a foreign or nonexistent language. After my initial bewilderment and confusion, I found that I was quite adept at making out the nuances of the trainer's commands and quickly complying with his wishes. Often I could read a simple gesture and understand his will, whether it was for me to crawl to his feet, to spread my legs in apparent preparation to be used, or to fetch his switch in my teeth. I even felt a brief surge of pride at my apparent facility in this exercise, until I realized that I was simply demonstrating my utter subjection and obedience to men.

At one point in the class, a short, blonde girl named Gretta had trouble understanding and obeying a command. I saw her trainer flip her onto her stomach, lift her bottom in the air, and use her from behind abruptly and fiercely. I could not help staring, horrified, as she cried out as much in shock and humiliation as in arousal. So casual rape was not only a convenient means for the trainers to indulge their physical desires, but also was a form of discipline. But inside me something, dimly, envied Gretta her sudden abuse. Here I was, finally living out my most ardent fantasies, but strictly forbidden to gratify my own needs. I realized that I had been constantly aroused not only by the uses I had been subject to the night before, but also by the casual, mundane humiliations I had suffered that morning - from being exercised, nude, to eating from a bowl on my hands and knees, to now being put through my paces literally like a domestic animal. It was not only being forced to give up my body to my masters that excited me deep in my belly, but also having my degraded status constantly impressed on me by the routines of slavery.

I wondered how many of the other girls were similarly aroused by their very subjection, were secretly or openly excited to be the slaves and playthings of men and women. Perhaps I was an anomaly, a girl who not only accepted her enslavement, but secretly reveled in her utter submission. Or perhaps all the girls in the mansion, in their hearts, had always longed to be slaves and only now could be truly fulfilled. Most likely, I supposed, we were all somewhere in between.

After the obedience class, we proceeded to another room outfitted like a small seminar room, with a long table surrounded by chairs. Claudia, the mistress of the house, stood before us. After kneeling before her, we were permitted to take seats at the table.

"So we have a new student among us," Claudia began. "Jenny?"

"Yes, mistress?" I answered.

"Why are you here?"

I hesitated, my mind spinning in confusion. In secretly accepting my slavery the night before, I had expected to be commanded, abused, humiliated, and degraded. I had not expected to be quizzed like an unprepared schoolgirl. "Because I am a slave, mistress," I attempted.

She smiled. "Yes, of course, but really, why are you a slave?"

I wondered what she expected me to say, what the right answer was. Was it because three men had broken into my apartment the night before and abducted me, a knife at my throat? Was it because I had been tricked into attending a club with Cristina? Or was it something deeper, more primordial, more unconscious? "I am a slave because I exist to serve and to please masters, mistress," I finally managed to say.

"Get up and kneel before me," Claudia ordered. I obeyed silently, my eyes lowered to the floor. "You are clearly trying to please me, which is to be commended. But you are not telling the truth. As a slave, you exist to serve your masters. That goes without saying. But it does not explain why you are a slave."

I wracked my brain for the answer. I began to panic. I knew I was a slave - that was now abundantly clear to me - but I knew it was not simply a matter of being abducted and raped the night before, of wearing a collar around my neck, of kneeling naked before my mistress. All these things felt unutterably right for me, but they were all simply consequences of my identity as a slave. A slave was simply what I was. It was not a matter of choice or historical explanation. It was part of my inmost nature.

"I am a slave because that is what I am, mistress," I said, softly but clearly. "I do not know how long I have been a slave, or why I became a slave, or if perhaps I have always been a slave. I only know that in every fiber of my being, I exist to serve my masters, to please them in any way that I can, asking nothing, accepting everything." I stopped, confused and scandalized. I could hear a couple of the other girls laughing, softly. What had I been saying? Was this really the logical conclusion of everything I knew about myself? I knew that this woman held the power of life or death over me, and that I would do anything necessary to satisfy her. But was I really a true slave, deep in my heart?

"A touching speech, slave," Claudia said. "Of course, you know almost nothing of what it is to be a slave. But you will learn. You may take your seat."

I got up and took my place again, my eyes lowered to avoid the gaze of my fellow slave girls. I felt I was constantly being tricked into crossing boundary after boundary, surrendering more and more of my previous identity and sinking deeper and deeper into the identity of an abject slave girl. I tried to tell myself that I had said those words simply to satisfy my mistress and avoid the punishments she surely could inflict on me, but at the same time I knew that was a lie.

As the class continued, I became more and more fascinated by Claudia and the power she held over us. She moved from one girl to the next, asking probing questions about our fantasies, our desires, our earlier relationships, and our feelings, drawing out our secret thoughts and confessions. One girl recounted her seemingly innocent introduction to submission years before in a brief experiment with a boyfriend, shuddering as she recalled the unexpected thrill she had felt being naked, bound, and powerless for the first time. Claudia forced another girl to describe, in excruciating detail, the sensations, thoughts, and emotions she experienced when pleasing a man with her mouth - everything from the physical sensations on her lips and tongue, to the constant mental anticipation of the master's desires, to the deeply submissive emotional charge she felt as he consummated his domination of her. I could feel the other girls almost squirming with uncomfortable recognition of their own experiences, and with silent but unmistakable arousal. She did not ask me any questions after the beginning of the class, presumably leaving me to listen to my fellow slave girls and absorb their lessons. By the end of the class, I was in awe of this quietly powerful woman, of her ability to make us explore the depths of our own submission, to confess our slavery not only explicitly but also with a level of detail and conviction that could not simply be denied after the class had ended. Each girl said things that, try as she might, could not be unsaid, and left the room knowing herself even more a slave than when she had entered it.

After class, we were permitted to eat lunch, this time from a buffet of salads and sandwiches, which we were allowed to eat with our hands, kneeling on the floor. I assumed this was because it was easier for our masters for us to eat this way, and the ritual humiliation we had suffered at breakfast, eating on hands and knees from bowls on the floor, exposing our bodies as slaves to any passers by, would be limited to that meal. After lunch, we were given time to ourselves, which we took advantage of in the inner courtyard of the mansion, enjoying the warm air and sunshine of the early summer. Of course, although there was no prescribed activity at this time, we were still under the absolute command of our masters. On separate occasions two of the trainers came outside and called one or another of the girls to them. I watched in fascination as they were made to please the men, intimately and unreservedly, in full view of the rest of us. After being forced to these degrading services, each rejoined our little circle, a little short of breath, but without ceremony, as if this were a completely ordinary occurrence. And, of course, it was. We were slaves, and sex slaves at that. This is what we existed for.