Chapter 23: Chastisement

There was a curious backlash from Zubeydeh's striptease which affected the Emir's hunting. Not all the women raised and trained for the hunt were satisfactory. It was necessary for a good quarry to think independently and invent tactics 'on the hoof' to make good sport for the hunters. The balance between this independence and the training was a fine one. Some of the women never achieved such independence of thought and were predictable in their tactics; others of them were too independent in their thoughts and resented being used for such a purpose. Such a one was Amanda Pritchard, a twenty-year-old with short mousy hair, provided by Ramzy El-Najjar to the Emir for a hunt a year or so later.

She had been "recruited" in response to the demand for dancers after Zubeydeh's striptease. The African recruiter in London had taken the request and the offer of double the usual fee without giving it much thought and had bent his mind to where the best dancers in London were to be found. The answer from what he considered an impeccable authority was the Chandos pub in Trafalgar Square and it was there the 'rich African Prince' as he took care to appear, found a young up-and-coming member of the Sadler's Wells corps-de-ballet. Dined, wined, dazzled, bedded and besotted in a matter of days, she willingly agreed to fly out with him in his private plane to a magical holiday island just off the coast of Africa which his family owned.

In the plane he fucked her one last time because he had genuinely enjoyed plunging into her lithe athletic body. He didn't mind that she had almost no tits and was thin as a rake; her cunt muscles moved in wonderful ways and she was beginning to be able to do the same with her arse. He had introduced her to sodomy one night after getting her drunk and she was bravely learning to cope with it. She liked it that he encouraged her to continue her ballet exercises after she had given up her job to spend more time with him, believing he was about to propose marriage. Although she had lived with him in London for only three weeks, she seemed to have lost touch with her old friends completely.

As the plane came in to land it was dark and one airport looks much like another. A car took them from the steps of the aeroplane directly to his family's property, she thought. As she walked through the door, two men grabbed her and a hypodermic needle was brusquely shoved into her buttock, such as it was, and she knew no more until she woke, naked, in a cage, among other cages, most of which also contained naked young women. She felt ravenously hungry which was the only indication that she had been kept drugged for three days. She had been given water regularly; expensive slaves are not allowed to deteriorate significantly in transit, but she had not been fed.

When the time of the sale came three days later Amanda had been examined intimately by several large and smelly Arab gentlemen and had been made to dance for them. She had been appalled to discover that she was now a slave to be sold to the highest bidder as a highly skilled striptease dancer. She tried to explain that she was actually a ballet dancer and knew nothing of striptease, but the auctioneer, who had paid good money for a dancer was not to be put off. She had only been raped twice, because her emaciated ballet dancer's figure did not appeal. Some of the other slaves who she considered positively obese were much more in favour and had to endure six or more visits a day from the auctioneer's staff and from potential buyers.

On the auction dais she was mortified that, although not speaking the language, she understood from the tone and gestures that she was being derided as a possible purchase. Eventually a very plump dark-skinned man bought her and the auctioneer was very angry because the price was apparently so low that he would lose money on her. Whatever happened next, she was determined to get back to England and she thought she could probably afford to buy herself, if she could access her own savings.

Shortly after the sale Amanda was given an abaya which covered her from head to toe, and even found herself feeling gratitude to the big black man who gave it to her; at least she was no longer naked. She was bundled into the back of a windowless van and driven for a few minutes over bumpy roads. When the van stopped she was dragged out and pulled at breakneck speed through some corridors and then thrust into a big airy room with only one chair and a small dais. The black man who had given her the abaya now removed it unceremoniously and pushed her up on to the dais.

When she tried to get down again, he warned in good English delivered in a curious high-pitched voice, "Your new owner will be here in a moment. If you are not on the stand when he comes I will be using this on you," and he brandished a wicked looking multi-tailed whip.

Just then an opulently dressed Arab came in to the room and stared at her as though he could not believe his eyes.

"Are you a woman?" he asked with the eunuch translating, "Or are you a scarecrow? I do not believe that men pay to watch you dance. You have no breasts and you have no derrière; why would any man want to see you naked?"

"My figure which you deride did not stop the men in the sale room from raping me, and I expect this brute will do so as soon as your back is turned."

The Arab laughed aloud at this suggestion and then finally managed to splutter, "That is about the only thing he won't do to you. He is in charge of my harem and will beat you and train you but he is a eunuch, so rape is not to be feared. Are you truly a dancer?"

"Yes, I was in the Corps de Ballet of Sadler's Wells in London. Everyone who spoke any English seemed to think I was a stripper."

"Show me."

Amanda did a graceful jeté en tournant down from the dais and went into a pirouetting movement which took her in a semicircle to end in a splits just in front of the Arab.

"Get up. That was most elegant," he said, "What clothes will you require for a striptease dance?"

"I keep on saying, I don't know the first thing about striptease. I don't know what they wear. I have never seen one. I only know ballet. If you let me go back to England I will repay what you paid for me when I can get at my savings."

"If that is true, that you cannot do a striptease, then I will sell you again. First we will ascertain if you can or cannot do such a dance."

He nodded to the eunuch, who proceeded to lash out with his whip catching Amanda neatly across the buttocks. She let out a series of screams of agony as she experienced the first thrashing of her life.

"Do you know how to do a striptease now?" demanded the Arab when she calmed down.

"I told you," she screamed, "I'm a ballet dancer, not a night-club tart."

"Very well. We will thrash you again every hour and see if that changes your mind. I will see you in one hour."

"Wait, wait," she wailed.

"Yes? You have changed your mind?" he asked.

"No. I don't know how to convince you of what I can't do, but whipping me will only give me pain and will not teach me what I do not know."

"I'll see you in one hour," was the only reply as he strode from the room.

The eunuch took the chair out of the room and left Amanda locked in the bare room with no means of telling the time. As she waited her foreboding increased and she dreaded the kiss of the whip being repeated. By the time the eunuch returned with the chair, she was a nervous wreck, shaking with fear and crying. A second eunuch entered pushing a trolley on which it seemed an empty door frame had been mounted. The two of them had no difficulty in shackling her wrists to the two top corners of the frame and her ankles to the bottom two, so that she was stretched in the frame like a saltire.

The Arab strode in and surveyed her tear-stained face.

"Have you decided to admit you do know how to do a striptease?" he demanded.

Amanda shook her head and said, "If you get a film of someone doing a strip then I'll try to learn, but please don't ... Aaagh."

Her scream as the whip bit into her already well-marked buttocks was ear-splitting.

"I believe you," said the Arab and waved the eunuchs away.

Coming close to her he fondled her tiny breasts and gently pushed two fingers into her vagina.

Through her sobs, Amanda said, "So it's rape now is it?"

"No, my dear, for two reasons. First I own you, so it would not be rape if I chose to use what is mine. Second, I wouldn't let anything as bony and scrawny as you anywhere near my bed. I am passing you on to someone who will have a use for a creature which moves as gracefully as you do. Even your thrashing about in this frame has a graceful air about it and I have a friend who has a good use for one who can move with the grace and speed of a cheetah."