Hyperalgesia

Hyperalgesia is an increased pain response -- basically, pain being more painful than it should be. I have probably exaggerated the effect for the story.

Charged and sentenced

"You'll almost certainly be given a full whipping and then put on the block at the next auction and sold as an indentured slave, Katherine," the court appointed adviser told me with a little smirk on his face, "The only uncertainty is the length of time you'll be indentured. If it is a short period like two years, the judge will probably expect your buyer to be one of the brothel owners who specialise in what is known as BDSM and slaves don't last too long in that situation. If the judge allows me to say anything, I can plead for leniency but there's very little in the way of mitigating circumstances because you knew the old, untested, uncertified heater, might be unsafe. Your testimony on the truth machine revealed that." I rightly surmised the adviser wanted to gloat over my predicament and increase the fear and dread I already had for my future life.

The woman I killed was none other than my own mother, a woman I loved as one does the woman who looked after you through childhood and hated because of her demanding nature, a woman whose nagging caused her death, a woman whose body resided in the mortuary while I languished in a prison cell awaiting my court appearance and the almost certain horrendous punishment meted out to offenders these days. The police recorded my confession on the truth machine so my guilt wasn't in doubt and only the fact that I hadn't intended to hurt mother and indeed I'd tried to add to her comfort, brought the charge down from murder.

"I'll never survive a full whipping," I sobbed as I sat with my knees drawn up to my chin on the low bed in the cell, "That's ninety-six lashes, forty-eight on my front and back. They should know from my medical records that I have hyperalgesia and my pain threshold is so low I usually pass out at the slightest hurt, even when they give me the contraceptive injections I have each year. I'll be better off dead but they aren't going to allow that, they've only allowed me this short smock and watch me on the monitors all the time. How will I survive being raped in a brothel when it is over ten years since I last had a man and if it is a BDSM brothel like the adviser suggested? I'll probably pass out before they start to have their so-called fun with me and they'll probably punish me more because of it. Then there's the indignity of standing naked in front of a crowd of people, my friends and work colleagues as well as strangers and the dealers in slaves, while they place bids to own me. When passing through the square on market days, I've seen them standing there stark naked and looking downcast. At thirty-two and not glamorous by any stretch of the imagination, only a few will wish to pay money for me except for perverted reasons. What a pity it wasn't me who touched the heater and was electrocuted. They couldn't have blamed mother. Why did she keep complaining of the cold when she knew the heating to the whole block had gone off and the engineers were already trying to fix it? Why did I keep that old heater? I've never used it since finding it when I moved into the flat ten years ago and it looked old then. Why did mother try and move it when she got out of the shower and water dripped on to it? Why did she even want to take a shower in my flat? To try and get warm, she said, even when I said it the water was only tepid." So many questions without answers ran through my mind, as I lay awake on the thin mattress awaiting the morning and the court judgement that would seal my fate for years to come.

Already the manslaughter case, a rare occurrence in the small town, provoked wide coverage on the newscasts and forthright debates on the communications 'comms' social media during which my previous life came under their scrutiny with the participants exaggerating minor misdemeanours into major crimes. Never before had I been in trouble with the police, or with staff at school or college, but unsubstantiated rumours spread like wildfire.

Two guards escorted me, shivering and still dressed in the short smock and shoes the police issued, to the courtroom at ten a.m. where I quietly cried until the judge arrived. Judge Susan Harris, known for her strict adherence to the guidelines for awarding the maximum penalties for any offence, walked to her seat at the high desk and looked sourly at me. From past cases I read about, I knew she didn't allow the rumours and hype to sway her judgement but in my case she had more than enough evidence from my statement to have me flogged and put into slavery for many years.

"Katherine Annette Jenkins, I find you guilty of Culpable Manslaughter in that you did give your mother an electrical appliance that had never been tested for safety and knowing she intended to use it in a wet environment for which that type of heater is illegal. That your mother nagged you to provide heat for her while workmen repaired the system for the flats, is no excuse and you should have foreseen the danger and realised that it could be and was, lethal. You had a good job as an accountant and funds enough in your account to have walked to the store only two hundred metres away and purchased a new and safe one but you were reluctant to go out in the cold, with disastrous consequences, to your mother and now, to yourself. I cannot allow this negligence to go without a suitable punishment for your needlessly causing her death. Notwithstanding that you have hyperalgesia and may not stay awake for the whole of your punishment without the assistance of drugs or other stimulation, I hereby sentence you to a full body whipping and to be sold as an indentured criminal slave for two years. All your assets will be seized and passed to your father although they are little compensation for the loss of his wife. Take her away bailiff."

All though the hearing, I couldn't control myself and wept and sobbed. Her words brought back the horrors of that morning when, on hearing the loud bang and seeing the smoke issue from the bathroom, I ran in to find my mother dead, her face distorted from the shock and pain. I almost fainted at the sight but called the emergency services and they immediately pronounced her dead. Although expected, when the verdict came and the judge announced the sentence, I collapsed and two constables carried me from the courtroom to the Punishment Hall.

Whipped

By arrangement with the media companies who wanted to get their equipment set up before the hall filled with people, the court scheduled mine as the first case heard that day and therefore I would be first in the punishment hall. In a way that was a blessing, although I didn't appreciate at the time, because it meant that I didn't have to sit and watch others being whipped before me. With the lights full on, cameras filmed my smock being removed, captured my blushes and then panned down from my tearful face and unkempt dark hair, focussed on my small breasts set on a thin body for a while and then down to the bush of dark hair on my mound. All were shown in detail on the huge screen in front of me. Very fearful of the forthcoming ordeal and shivering uncontrollably, a bailiff had to hold me while cuffs were put on my wrists and ankles before they fastened me, spread-eagled and face-down on the low platform ready for the Japanese style whipping. Meanwhile, the announcer gave the crowd that packed the hall, a brief résumé of my life and the heinous crime I'd committed. Had I murdered mother he couldn't have been more scathing in his remarks. He ended by commenting on the device I felt them fitting to my neck. "Katherine is notorious for passing out at the least pain and to ensure she receives and feels the full extent of her whipping without sleeping through it, they are fitting a sensor that communicates with the monitor on the wall; a regular bleep indicates she is awake, a continuous tone will signal she has passed out and will invoke an electrical pulse to stimulate her brain into action again." On cue, the monitor started bleeping.

"As I'm sure you know," he continued, "We use what has become known as the Japanese style of whipping because a much greater area of the body is subjected to each stroke of the whip and the lashes are not concentrated in one small area. The whip mistress stands in line with one leg and about two metres from the foot and will apply twelve strokes that will redden the area from the top of her thigh, over her buttocks and along her back to her shoulders. With the whip's long, flat blade and the skill of the whip mistress, her skin will be severely welted but not broken or bleeding. The procedure is repeated for the other leg and for each arm, thus she will receive forty-eight strokes that criss-cross and cover almost the whole of her back. There'll be a short pause while she is turned over and the flogging repeated on her front. To those of you who believe this is cruel, please remember she will live afterwards whereas her mother is lying cold and still and her father is grieving for his lost wife. Today's whip mistress is Marianne."

I cannot remember too much of the whipping apart from the horrendous pain that almost immediately sent me into unconsciousness, but a reporter on the local digital paper wrote lyrically and with a certain amount of license:

'Katherine hardly heard the announcer but when the hall quietened, sensed the imminent start of her flogging and involuntarily tensed. Out of her sight, Marianne took the tail end of the whip, brought it back well over her head and taking a graceful step forward, almost like a dancer, swung the whip and brought it crashing down on the defenceless girl's back. The loud crack when the whip struck resounded throughout the hall and, knowing her efforts would feature on prime time news, Marianne tried to show her skills and her ruthlessness in order to keep her job, and, judging by the hint of a smile on her face when she stepped forward to administer each stroke, a job she enjoyed. Seconds later an almost continuous red stripe appeared diagonally across Katherine's body from her right knee to her left shoulder. Immediately the monitor wailed a continuous tone and the audience groaned at her poor showing. Two clicks and the bleep returned to normal. Katherine screamed.

Marianne took up her position and sent the second lash searing Katherine's flesh almost but not quite on top of the first one. The bleeps faltered but resumed a little erratically. Again on the third stroke, Katherine passed out and it took nearly half a minute to revive her. Even at that early stage, murmurs of dissatisfaction were heard and Marianne, exasperated at the delays, applied the fourth stroke with less force but it made no difference, Katherine slipped into unconsciousness and remained in that condition. Half a minute later, when she had still not woken despite frequent stimulating pulses to her neck, Michael O'Creath, the officer in charge, called for the doctor who took a considerable time to carefully examine the unconscious girl, much to the annoyance of those watching. They'd paid a considerable sum to see the action, not to hang about while nothing happened. Only a few seemed to have any sympathy for the woman. Hearing the heckling and realising he needed to explain to those present the result of his examination, the doctor went to the microphone, "I'm sorry for the delay, Ladies and Gentlemen, as you saw, I examined Ms Jenkins and find that she is fit and well enough under normal circumstances, to take the prescribed whipping but I see from her medical history she has an affliction with a name I won't bore you with, but it means she may actually feel the pain from each lash up to ten times stronger than it actually is and this causes her brain to shut down and it would appear the electronic stimulus has no effect or the pain from each shock it gives may even make the situation worse. Physically she should be able to take her whipping but it is unlikely that she will feel the effects of it until long after it is over. This is the first case of it I have come across but there is a recorded case of a man in Siberia where they continued to whip him and he remained comatose for twenty-four hours before coming too and feeling the after effects which were still extremely painful but somehow his unconscious mind learned to cope with that but not with any further sharp pain. Apparently he succumbed again when a guard whacked his bottom once to make him move faster. In my opinion, physically she can take the whip but she may not feel the effect until well after you've gone home. I guess it is up to Judge Harris to make the decision as to whether or not to continue but for those of you watching, it won't be the spectacle you expected to see. I'm sorry."

"If she has to suffer afterwards for the crime she committed, so be it, but please Marianne, don't ease up on her because she isn't reacting or screaming under each lash. Treat her like one of the dummies you practice your skills on," Judge Susan Harris ordered in a displeased voice. She, like most of the audience, wanted to see the bitch writhe and scream to attest the effectiveness of the punishment.

With no need to wait between strokes for the pain to infuse into the body, Marianne laid the strokes on fast and furiously until the whole of the poor girl's back was criss-crossed with a mass of raw welts and bruised flesh. Even her labia suffered because, when whipping from the end of Katherine's arms, Marianne skilfully made the whip tail curl between her legs. Throughout the ordeal, her body never twitched or moved. "Turn her over," Michael O'Creath ordered without much enthusiasm and again Marianne's whip did deadly damage to the poor girl's front, flattening her breasts and cutting into her mound until only her face, feet and the wrist end of her arms remained untouched. Finally a medic sprayed her lifeless body with an antiseptic and an ambulance took her to the hospital to recover. She'll be kept there for a few days to allow the doctor to interview and research her over-sensitivity to pain.

Louise Hobbs, Blethwick News.'

Locked alone in a small ward with a single bed, I had time to reminisce on my life and speculate on my future. The painkilling injection the doctor gave me in order to conduct his interview without my crying, allowed me to lay on my side get a little rest and for my thoughts to run wild. "At thirty-two, I'm still almost a virgin as far as male sex is concerned. Two boys at college and one at university, I can count the number of fucks with my fingers and if I'm sold to a brothel, I'll have more than that in one day. Ughh. The bailiffs seemed to think I was too old and not well enough endowed for a normal brothel owner to buy me and expected I'd go to one that specialised in allowing men to hurt women for sexual kicks. Don't know if that will happen now they know how quickly I pass out. There's a remote possibility of my being bought as a house slave but I doubt a man rich enough to afford a slave will want an older woman, especially one with well-publicised problems, more likely he'll want a barely legal teenager. What if no one wants me and I'm taken in as a ward of state and am forced to do hard physical labour? One of the so-called chain gang? I've seen them, mainly men, doing road repairs on my way to work and the guards treat them cruelly. I doubt I could stand that for long. Maybe I should look for a way of ending it all? No one will worry overmuch over my death. Dad might be upset for a while especially after losing mother and perhaps a few of my colleagues from work would come to my funeral but they'd forget me soon enough. I'll just have to go along with things until I see what happens at the auction and I find the opportunity and the means to do it."

Sold

At the time of my auction I didn't know of the behind-the-scenes planning and still believed I'd either be sold to a brothel or be on a state run chain gang but to keep this report in a chronological order, I will piece together information I found out later and will write it using a readable narrative style.

Unbeknown to me, twenty miles away in another small town, Kingsfield, Matthew Hanson discussed my life with his wife and brother-in-law, "I'm going to put a bid in for that girl when she comes up for auction, that is if the dealers don't up the price too much."

"Whatever for?" Heather asked, "You want to get a bit of young cunt now I'm over forty? Don't I let you do it often enough?"

"It's not that, dear, didn't you hear what they said before the whipping, she's an accountant and even though our jewellery business is small, I always have a problem with the taxes. Yeah, and I guess my prick wouldn't mind a change of scenery and would like to visit places you don't permit. You'd, no doubt, like to relive your college days and have lesbian sex and I'm sure the boys will welcome a girl they don't have to seduce."

"She can help with my taxes too," cut in Graham, "My gardening business might not be as big as yours but it is still not easy to figure out payments to the government."

"I'm not buying a slave for your use!"

"Okay, so I'll go halves with you and have her one day, and you the next. I'm sure we can work out an amicable arrangement, after all, it's all in the family and Heather is my old sister," Graham added with a grin at her.

"You won't be able to punish her is she misbehaves, not with a cane or strap, you heard what that doctor said," observed Heather.

"We'll find other ways if necessary."

Two days later, "She's going to the auction block tomorrow but there's not been any online bids. They're asking a 'buy-now' price of 20,000 credits but I think that is way too high even for a normal woman of her age. Probably they are upping the price because of her notoriety. Between us we could go to 10,000 but no more than that. I thought I'd put in a bid of 3,000 credits in the morning if no one else has. What do you think, Heather?"

"I'm not sure she is worth that much. Poor girl could hardly stand when they filmed her for the auction and we'll be responsible for her until she recovers, take it down to 2,000, you can always put in a higher bid later."

"I'm sure someone will up the price even if the dealers don't want her, but we could still get ourselves a bargain," commented Graham looking forward to having a woman share the basement flat in their house.

Back now to my personal account of the events.

My fate was decided on a cold November morning. A robot police van took me to the market square and the guards stood me under an awning that provided only a modicum of shelter from the cold and wind. Here the guards removed my prison smock, the last vestige of warmth I had and stood me naked before a small crowd. As usual with my case, the media were there in force but the pain of standing blotted them out and I clung to the back of the auctioneer's chair to keep myself upright. My eyes scanned the crowd and I wondered who, if anyone, out there would buy me.

"And now we come to this slave, the woman who killed her mother and slept through her punishment," the auctioneer started his spiel while the gathering of buyers looked at my battered, discoloured body, shivering in the cold air of the market place. "You going to bid on her, Sam?" he asked.

"Not likely, mate, I could do with another MILF for the clients to play with but she'll likely pass out if they even put a pair of pegs on her nipples," the slave dealer replied, "She'll cost more to keep and in repayments to unsatisfied customers than I'll make on her." Other dealers nearby echoed his comments. I half heard them and began to think I'd end up on the chain gang.

Looking down I noticed how the cold had intensified the gruesome colours of my welts and unlike the other slaves auctioned earlier, I broke down and cried bitterly and, not caring what the buyers thought of me, had made no attempt to comb my hair or even wash when the guards ordered me to do so but not wishing to risk putting me in a coma again by using force, they left me alone. "I've an online bidder offering 2,000 credits which is well below the market value for a female MILF but even if she's only a house slave, she's worth more than that ... In a few weeks she'll..." He broke off when I collapsed and the pain of my tender bottom hitting the ground caused my over-sensitive brain to shut down again. "Any further bids?" the auctioneer asked hopefully and when none were forthcoming, "Sold to Messrs. Hanson and Croxley for 2,000 credits."

I regained consciousness in the hospital.

Matt, a well-dressed man in a rather old fashioned, blue pin striped suit and a tie with an insignia, collected me from there, received instructions for my care and bought the necessary analgesics and cream from the dispensary. "Already more expense, but we did get her at a bargain price," he muttered loud enough for me to hear, "And we knew we'd have to feed and clothe her. Need to keep account of what I pay out so Graham can pay his share."

The hospital refused to allow me to keep the tattered gown I wore but Matt asked for father's number and commed him. The message came back, "I've packed her clothing but haven't taken them to a charity shop, collect them if you want them," and after a short robot taxi ride we arrived at my childhood home and I wondered how father would react to seeing me after I'd killed his wife, but he willingly handed the clothes over and spoke kindly to me expressing his horror at the severity of my punishment. "I know it was really an accident," he said, "And I know what my wife was like when she wanted something done in a hurry. I had to put up with it for years. Look after her Matt please and maybe I can visit sometime."

Before heading to my new home we stopped at the bailiff's office where they gave Matt vouchers for three sets of the distinctive black and yellow criminal slaves uniform, which we exchanged at the store and I wore my new uniform as the satellite guided the taxi towards his home.

"Why did you buy me, Sir?" I asked tentatively as we sped along, hoping and praying it wasn't for some perverted purpose. I'd become reconciled to being used sexually and with only one man, it shouldn't be too bad, I thought, unless he wants me to do disgusting and abhorrent things. His answer surprised me.

"Kate, your job was the first thing that caught my attention when we watched your punishment, even before we knew about your pain problem. I wondered if I could afford you to help with my taxes and then, of course, sex. I rather fancied having a woman I could fuck as and when and how I wanted and my wife, Heather, thought she'd like to try lesbianism again after a lapse of twenty years. You'll have to help with the housework too and we've two boys, Mark and John, seventeen and fifteen who will undoubtedly want to partake of your services so you'll be kept busy. There's also Graham, Heather's younger brother who has a gardening business and does our garden and several others in the area and who has half shares in you so you'll alternate between us on a daily basis. You'll need to sort his taxes out too."

The information surprised and shocked me. I never expected to do accountancy again. I knew my slavery would involve sex but somehow it seemed altogether different to be the sex toy for a whole family.

"We haven't told the boys about us buying you yet but they watched your punishment so they know a little about you. Obviously, until your body has healed a bit we won't expect too much but you should be able to use your mouth on our pricks or Heather's cunt without discomfort. Again my mind had to absorb the shock; never in my life have I sucked a man's prick and now I would be expected to do that for four men, maybe several times a day, especially with the boys and be forced to swallow their semen. At work, a couple of the girls openly admitted to doing that and said there was no real taste and their husbands liked them to do it. I did a mental shrug and decided I'd get used to it and it wouldn't cause me any pain unless they punished me for not doing it properly. Actually Mark and John heard the news on the way home from school and with the others, eagerly awaited our arrival.

"This is Kate." In my former life I would have rebuked Matt for shortening my name but now, perforce, I had to accept it. "Perhaps the change in my name will help to remind me of my social position," I thought.

"As you know," Matt continued, "Graham and I have agreed to share her on a daily basis and for this purpose her day will start at ten o'clock in the evening." I kept my eyes lowered as befitted a slave and only saw a pair of large, slipper covered, feet. "Tonight she will share the bed with Heather and me and tomorrow night at ten, she will be with Graham. You boys will get to play with her after your homework is done on the days I have her. At the moment we will probably have to restrict our play to oral sex but it shouldn't be too long before she's healed enough to fuck normally and even to try anal if we wish. Now I'm sure you'd all like to see what our slave looks like under that garish uniform, not that it's a pleasant sight at the moment. Slave, undress and let us look at you and the damage the whip has done."

"Urrgh! You poor thing, your body looks far worse than on the newscasts. I certainly don't want to look at it while I eat, those bruises and welts are revolting, and the stripes of her uniform make my eyes water," Heather exclaimed, "Has she any other clothes in those bags she can wear? A light dress or something to cover her? Take her downstairs Graham and sort through her stuff, you might even try putting it away now you've cleared a space in your wardrobe. You've half a hour before dinner."

"Come with me, gal, I think the others have seen all they need to see and we're keeping your stuff in my room because they don't have space up here."

My new life

Through tear filled eyes, I looked up and saw Graham's smiling face and took in his stocky form, his ruddy, bearded face topped with a unruly mop of dark hair and his very casual form of dress, the tee shirt and trousers he'd obviously worked in during the day, clean enough but not freshly laundered and it certainly didn't look as though he would change for dinner. "He's not the sort of person I would have associated with only a week ago and quite different from the tall, well dressed, Matt, but his smile seems genuine and friendly," I appraised him and his manner somehow melted any misgivings about him that I might have had. Slowly and painfully, clutching the handrail for support, I followed him down the basement stairs.

"This is my abode and yours too for part of the time. Only one room but it covers the whole of the ground floor area so everything is open plan and up to now I've more or less lived here alone. Bedroom is at that end, over there is the kitchen area, although I don't cook much and, except for breakfast, we'll have our meals upstairs with the family." I'd wondered at eating with the family when Heather remarked on not seeing my ghastly body at the table and now again, Graham's remark confirmed it. In my experience at meetings at my manager's house, slaves had their own place to eat and certainly didn't dine with their owners but I already realised I'd been bought by a less well-off family who could only afford me because of my bargain price.

"That desk in the corner is my office, the comms unit is a bit old but it works and I'm sure you'll be able to sort out the files ... eventually," he laughed. "Toilet and washroom at the end there, not good for when you need to get up in the night and have to walk the whole length of the house but it's not that inconvenient. I cleared this wardrobe and a couple of drawers for you so lets see what you have." The sight of Graham upending the bags and seeing my clothes spread on to his bed, brought memories of my former life flooding back and the tears that were already close to the surface flowed again. Before I realised what was happening Graham's arms enclosed me gently and held me close to his body, my breasts lightly pressed against his shirt, "It will be okay, Kate," he reassured me and when the sobs died, "Dry your eyes, gal, and pick out a dress, Heather gets annoyed if I'm late for meals."

Apart from my slow, slightly stooping walk, wearing a loose fitting light summer dress and with my hair brushed, I began to look and feel more like a normal person and at the dinner table, they treated me in that way although I had to answer many questions on my previous life and my experiences in the prison. During that time I began to appreciate the vast difference in my position as a slave in this household to what it would have been if I'd been sold to a slave dealer. My thoughts were brought down to earth when Mark asked, "Are you any good at giving blowjobs?" I shook my head and admitted I'd never done it.