Chapter 9: Naming

When she woke she had the mother and father of all hangovers and felt most uncomfortable. Opening her eyes cautiously, the light hurt so she closed them again and tried to move to a more comfortable position; there didn't seem to be any cushions under her and she groped for one. All she could feel was a hard cold surface and then her hand found a metal vertical rod about an inch thick. This woke her up suddenly and she forced herself to look around.

She was in a large room, a huge room full of cages that looked rather like the animal cages in children's book versions of zoos or circuses. The difference was that in most of them there was a dejected looking woman, naked. Simultaneously, Laura realised two things; she was also naked, and the woman three cages along from hers was being fucked hard by a big black African man. As she recovered from the drugs she had been given, she also noticed that a cuff round her left ankle was shackled to a ring-bolt set in the floor by a short length of very solid looking chain. As soon as she could she started to scream at the top of her voice. It hurt her head even more, but it did bring a guard running.

When he arrived outside her cage he shouted something at her in a language she did not understand.

Immediately she stopped screaming and said clearly and slowly, "I am an American citizen. I demand to see the American Consul immediately. I also want a lawyer and a written statement of the charges against me."

She had not spent her evenings watching television for nothing; she knew her rights as a prisoner in a jail. The guard looked at her uncomprehendingly and walked away. She started to scream again.

This time a different guard appeared and she started to recite her demands, "I am an American..."

As he opened the door of her cage she broke off, sure that he understood and was about to take action. She didn't care what they said she had done; no American citizen could be kept naked in a cage by any police force in the world without repercussions. The guard unlocked her leg shackle and pulled her along the edge of the room past cages with a number of women of various skin colours to a door in the corner of the room. Passing through the door they came into an office where a man in quite a smart uniform was sitting fiddling with a dress cane such as officers carry on formal parades.

"I am an American citizen. I demand to see the American Consul immediately," said Laura.

The man stretched out his hand and gripped her right wrist, pulling her round slightly. Then she noticed the pain in her upper arm, as though she had grazed it badly. Glancing down she saw EV1205 tattooed just below her right shoulder.

"You are EV1205, named Fatima, an indentured servant from Nigeria," said the uniformed man, "Doubtless you are the bastard child of a light-skinned prostitute there. Soon your indentures will be sold again and you will have a new master."