The Roommate Chapter 21 New Beginnings
From the end of Chapter 20
I clanked toward the door I had entered as a different being not all that long ago. I had trouble walking because I was not used to the weight and the restrictions of my shackles, and because I had the bundle of clothing to carry with me, holding it before me as if I had been given a wonderful gift to carry home with me.
One of the court officers opened the door. I couldn't help smiling to myself when I realized that although I was the life hard labor servant, it was the freeman guard who was opening the door for me. But as I went clanking down the hallway to the elevator, I began to appreciate how much hard labor I would have to do just to move in my new status. We reached the elevator, and again the guard operated the controls. Soon the elevator chimed, the doors opened, and we were descending. My mind continued wandering. I thought it was the last symbolism: I was descending into the hell of my new life.
The Roommate Chapter 21 New Beginnings
I had entered the elevator facing the back of the elevator, and that is how I experienced its descent. My expensive education showed itself as I imagined myself descending into hell as in several classic works of literature describe this fateful journey. However I was not descending to the land of the dead, at least dead in the physical biological sense, but I was descending to the land of the dead at least metaphorically. The descent was not accompanied by the tiny bell announcing each floor that the elevator passed.
As we descended I received my instructions. "When the elevator stops, you stay facing the doors you just came through. You do not move until you are instructed what to do. This rip will begin to teach you your new life. You stay where you have been placed until you receive your orders on what you are to do next. You do not make any movement without receiving instructions on what to do. If no order is given for you to do something, you are remain motionless."
I could feel his breath on the back of my neck as I received my orders. I suddenly was afraid. Should I acknowledge that I heard his orders, or not say anything unless I was asked a question or told to respond. As I pondered what I should do at the end of my descent, I almost laughed.
Somehow I knew that whatever I did would be wrong.
I heard the sound of an object moving rapidly through the air, and almost instantly I felt the sharp sting of something striking my butt and stinging blow.
"Slave, all slaves acknowledge hearing an order given to you by your betters, and for hard labor scum like you, that is almost any living organism that has speech."
I tried to show my understanding of my new status by replying loudly "SIR YES SIR!"
Immediately, I received another swat across my butt cheeks, but this one was much less forceful than the first had been.
"Good job slave." was the response I received for my guess. I decided that it was through a leather strap caressing my butt that all my education would be communicated. I mild swat would affirm my correct response, and a hard butt blistering blow would indicate that my response had been incorrect. In any case I was no longer thought worthy of adult human communication. I was to be trained as the primitive people trained their animals by the carrot and stick approach. In the case of hard labor life servants - and I did note that the euphemism of "servant" seemed now to be replaced by the less politically correct term but more accurate term "slave." A correct response would be reinforced by an absence of punishment, and rarely by a verbal statement of "good" or "correct."
My descent down into what I guessed would be the basement of the court building seemed to take a bit time as the elevator moved slowly as it descended. Soon I heard the little bell-like ding which I supposed meant that we were passing a place where the elevator could stop, but we did not stop and continued our descent into the lower levels of the building. My expensive classical education at William soon showed itself by my recalling my required reading of Dante's Inferno in my Humanities 1 class. Soon the elevator slowed and bounced to a stop.
There had been just the one bell before we came to a stop and so I assumed that this elevator only took convicted individuals down into the lower levels of the jail for their final processing into involuntary servants. The elevator finally bounced a bit as it came to a stop. I heard to doors open, but I resisted my natural inclination to turn around to see where I was. Locked in chains, and with a hand controlling me by its pressure on my back, I accepted that I would only move on command.
The officer snapped a leather lead onto my collar, and with a bit of a pull on the lead, I was moved backwards out of the elevator.
I continued backing until I was stopped about two feet away from the doors to the elevator which I saw closing as I moved away from them. As I continued backing and working at keeping myself from tripping on the chain that connected my two ankle cuffs, I was stopped by the loud and emphatic order "STOP SLAVE."
"Keep your left foot in the same place, and turn around using your right foot to make the turn." was the order I heard. I was taking a moment to mentally understand how I was to proceed, when a painful swat across my butt from the little leather belt like strap that I had already learned
was the standard method of instructing a hard labor slave to begin some task. I began to carefully begin my maneuver to turn around without getting my ankles chains entangled, and soon was proud of myself that I actually was now facing a hallway, but separated from it by a set of floor to ceiling steel bars.
My escort leaned toward his left side and began to talk into what to me seemed to be his shoulder. "Escort for hard labor slave 613-210-541 at gate 47. Request the gate be opened to bring the new slave boy into the holding area."
After a moment, a section of the bars began moving, and as soon as it stopped moving and a gate had appeared in the bars, my escort began moving me through the bar barrier and down another hallway with cement block walls painted a sort of institutional off white.
I was becoming a little better moving as fast as my escort wanted to move without fouling up the chain which connected my two ankle cuffs. However, I realized that I would never be able to sneak up on anyone as my movement down the hall was accompanied by the sound of my ankle
chain clanking against itself and on the floor.
After moving probably fifty feet down the hall, we turned a corner, and again we stopped facing a sliding solid steel door. Once again, my escort identified himself and me by my new name 613-210-541, and again the door opened for us. We traveled down this hallway, and finally to another solid steel doorway, and once again after the identification of the officer and the new hard labor servant slave, the door opened, and I entered a large room in which I saw all the coffle mates I had on my trip to the court and probably fifteen others. Most of these new created involuntary servants were sitting on the same thick wood plank bench along the wall that I had now come to realize was the normal parking place for servants. These new servants were in normal prisoner leg shackles and handcuffs through which a chain passed which effectively chained them to the bench and the wall to which the bench was attached by thick steel braces. However, I was not destined for this accommodation. We clanked by these servants and we became a novelty to these servants as they stared at us in our heavy chains and collars. I thought
to myself that I felt a little like the man who realized how much he was the center of everyone's attention at his hanging. His literal gallows humor exhibited itself when asked if he had any last words he stated, in his now somewhat famous statement, that "If it were not for the honor of being the center of attention at the proceedings, I would just have passed."
I was seriously trying to look only at the floor as much as possible until the guard stopped, and I looked up. I now knew why I was not going to be locked on the bench. For hard labor life involuntary servants, because we must be considered much more dangerous and animal like, for us there were cages made of heavy steel bars. These tall cages looked a little like the old telephone booths. They were perhaps three feet square and perhaps seven feet tall. The bars were fixed at the floor into the concrete of the floor and the roofed by more thick steel bars.
Another guard unlocked the front section of this cage, and I knew that I was gain to be outstanding...and here I mentally corrected myself...I would be in standing in my own personal little cage. There were accommodations for five hard labor servants in the line, and we would be locked into our cages, with no room to sit, and even to turn around. Our vision would be fixed on the ordinary servants who were luxuriating in rest on the bench as we were forced to stand and wait.
A guard opened the front part of the cage, and I was backed into my own personal cell, and then the front of the cage closed in front of my face, and with the clank of keys. The door was locked, and I stared at a wall from inside my own personal stand up cell. I looked at the cage to my right, and it already was inhabited by a heavily muscled man who had tattoos visible on his neck,face and for the little part of his arm that I could see.
"KEEP YOUR EYES STRAIGHT AHEAD 541." was an order I heard from beside my cage, and then the guard's cudgel loudly struck the bars in front of my face to make the point clearly and loudly. I was becoming clear that the approach of those in charge of hard labor life servants was that the servant was not too bright, and only clear simple orders, accompanied by some show of punishment if not followed explicitly was the only way to deal with these near animal-like beasts.
I stood in my little telephone both sized cage for a period of time that seemed like it might have been about an hour, but with no clock or watch or any source of measuring time, I have no idea how much time really transpired. I was amazed that with all the number of servants in the room, and even when occasionally no guard was present, still none of the common servants ventured to speak. The servants chained together on the bench looked at us in our telephone booth cages, and based of my knowledge of myself and the hard labor servant next to me, I would guess we caged servants stared at the bench servants. We stared at each other with just the occasional rattling of chains we hard labor servants tried to find some comfort in our close captivity.
Finally after what seemed to me to be a very long time, but which I suspect was much less actual time than it actually was, several servant control officers came into our cage area.
The officers looked at the servants locked on the bench. "Servants you are now going to be transported to the involuntary servant reception and training facility. There you will be evaluated, classified, and after we decide how you will marketed, you will be trained to do the tasks associated with the classification decided for you. You would be well advised to pay close attention to your training. The more skills and the higher level of skills you have, and, the more you show your willingness to devote yourself totally to service the better the chance that more than one person or business may try to purchase your service contract. It is true in all things. The more you pay for something the better you treat what cost you a lot. Train diligently; show deference and acceptance, and if possible satisfaction in doing the servant tasks for which you have been trained. A hard working, polite, servant might find that the period of involuntary servitude is not a terrible experience. Indeed many times after the period of involuntary service, if a servant has shown both great skills and a great attitude, that servant may be able to continue that same job after being released from servitude, only now as a paid employee."
As I listened to this speech, I thought that someone in involuntary servant control had taken a course in motivational strategies. If those servants bought the spiel he just delivered, the servants would be more motivated and easier to control in their training period. After letting this first pep talk set in, the officer continued.
"After training, you will be put on the web site which is available on line for free citizens and businesses to look over servants in all the skill classifications, and either just put in bid for your involuntary servitude period, or indicate that the buyer wants to come in for a personal inspection. After the inspection and evaluation period to be over, and then you will available for citizens and businesses to bid. Bidding is normally done on line, and it's like any auction. Sometimes one of you products we have more than one bidder, and I might advise you, try to look as compliant and anxious to serve as possible because the maximum bid the bidder is willing to pay for you and your services and your obedience for the period of your indenture could dramatically affect your treatment during that period. You servants are also advised that
the person or entity who buys your service can apply for extensions of the period of indenture to compensate your buyer for the training period to do whatever job the buyer intends for you to do, as well as the extensions of service for the number and seriousness of your disciplinary infractions."
After the pause at which I characterized in my mind as a class "carrot and stick" motivational spiel, the servants all were escorted from the room, and I suppose off to work hard to get a high bid so that the state could really make money from selling the servant for his period of servitude.
I did note how little time was spent on the possibility that the time of involuntary servitude could be extended to compensate for unsatisfactory service in the original indenture. My management mind would like to see the figures. How many servants racked up enough demerits to have additions to their period of servitude, I wondered. I bet more servants faced extensions than were showered by offers of free citizen employment with pay, benefits, and vacations.
Off these servants all went, ready to learn hard, to practice subservience, and to strive to be the best servant ever. Since all this activity was the only entertainment which was available to we cage dwellers, as far as I could tell from the caged servants on each side on my cage, we all paid close attention as the supply of limited term standard involuntary servants dwindled, and finally the last batch of seven servants were chained together and lead out through the door at the opposite end of this large hallway like room opposite to the door through which we had entered our special waiting room, and left just we caged beasts who were too dangerous to be allowed the freedom of being just
chained but also had to be caged. I allowed myself in inner smile as I considered the difference a day can make. I went to sleep the night before this day the college educated, respected and somewhat important scion of a wealthy family, and awakened as a poorly dressed, ex-con who had driven his old and decrepit car to Pleasant Acres, and at which I had seemingly crashed my car into and destroyed a length of the vinyl fencing along the lane to the main house of the estate.
Now I supposed I might indeed find employment at Pleasant Acres, but not in the main house. I would be out of sight, and perhaps out of mind – another entry on the ledger of servants. I wondered how Beau would explain my disappearance to my family. It was certainly not my
concern, but I was sure Beau would have a plan. I suspect I would have an accident, and my body burned in the accident. I wondered if Beau would come out to see his hard labor servants, and take the opportunity to let me know how my services had gone.
After some time a squad of guards appeared, and I knew it was moving time for us. I was awaiting our motivational speech. I got a speech, but I am not sure I would classify it as motivational. The officer in charge took a position near the wall which had the bench from which the other group of involuntary servants had just disappeared.
"All right assholes. It is time to move you out of your cages, and into your work. I am not going to give you all that shit I just spread for those dumb shits so that they would be happy little slaves and work their asses off to be released on time, and be well treated. It does work for some, but for you I will tell you that many of those shitheads are headed for many years, and their chance of living out their life back with family and friends does exist, but it is not the norm. Now for you piles of crap, I will tell you the truth. You have shown that you are not worthy of freedom. You need to be chained and controlled. You need the whip for instruction and chains for control. No one cares for your comfort, and indeed the fewer expenses have to be used to maintain your existence the better. The fact is that you better work hard. We sell most of you fairly cheap, and still the state makes good money on you. We only have the expenses of your chains as our cost. We sell you as is. We don't have to train you how to be around free people as you will never be around almost any free people except for the guards who will control you. Hard labor slave guards are not considered a skilled labor job. All a guard has to be a muscled, and be able to learn to apply a whip to motivate you bunch of animals. All human history has shown that this job draws a certain type of loser in free society. Most of your guards can only do a job of whipping you shitheads into hard work. Finally I am happy to tell you that the state has already sold all of you. All the training you will receive from us has happened. We have taught you that you will be chained; you will be cage; and I assure you, you will be oing hard labor. Your owners await with your nice cage to put you in to ride to where you will work."
This pleasant speech was greeted by shout and obscenities by my fellow hard labor slaves. I could feel the cages being pounded and rattled. I watched the guards smile as they use whips, electric prods, and other devices to tame to beasts. After only few moments of the sounds of pain and instruments of pain is use, there was relative calm in the room. Mostly I could hear the sounds of pain.
"Now that you have had your first lesson on what happens to noncompliant hard labor servants, we will hauling you sorry asses from you cages to your owners, and their cages and their whips, and to your hard labor for them for the rest of you fucking shitty lives. Gentlemen, you have now reached your destiny. I suspect most of you have been training to be treated and worked as animals much of your lives. You now can go to do what your ability level and skills have determined to be your life. You have just found disobedience is more painful than obedience, and the state has no laws to protect you. Whatever it takes to make you do your hard labor the state has said to your owner, `RIGHT ON!'"
The guards started moving down the line of cages. I could hear the locks being unlocks, and the sound of the barred doors being opened. The normally I heard the sound of some sport of scuffle, and then with curses I suspect from both guards and slave, and then the sounds of the servant's chains moving down the hallway. I was able to see the process up close when my neighbor was extracted.
"612, your leaving this cage can go either calmly and with no pain, or the way that is much more fun for us, with you being a dumb pile of shit, and trying to stay inside your little cage here and us making sure that with considerable pain on your part, we will take you out of it by force. The slave inside the cage was mammoth, but did not say anything but lived up to the prediction by grabbing the bars on the side of the cage, and doing his best to wedge his heavy black boots between the bars to lock his feet inside the cage. However he could not even fit his boots between the bars to wedge his feet in. The bars were too close together. He grasped the side bars with his hands and leaned back into the cage. I observed with amazement.
First why did the servant really want to stay in the cage? There was no future in a cage the size of the telephone booth. Secondly, he was clearly outnumbered, and had seen all the other servants extracted and led down the hall.
The guards smiled at him, and watched his, in my mind pathetic efforts.
"Last chance." was the very calm comment of the lead officer. The other guards just smiled...or rather smirked.
"I aint going to leave and be treated worse than an animal." the convict snarled.
"Slave, you are going to go to your owner, and you are going to do hard labor for your owner for the rest of your pathetic life. For once exercise that little brain of yours and save yourself some pain before you begin your life of pain... last chance."
I wanted to chime in and so "DO IT. YOU ARE GOING TO BE REMOVED FROM THAT CAGE. YOU ARE GOING TO WORK AT HARD LABOR ALL THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.
JUST GET ONE WITH IT!" but I kept all my advice to myself.
I do not know what signal the head guard gave to his men but all of a sudden there was a fury of activity. A billy club on both sides of a cage slammed into the convict's fingers, and the body's defense mechanisms took over from there. His hands released themselves from the bars. Simultaneously hands grabbed his belt and yanked his body forward, and as he launched forward another set of hands grabbed his head and pulled. His head brought the rest of him out the cell, and soon he was out of cell and on the floor,At a nod, the guards yanked the convict upright, and for his trouble he received a strong blow of the billy club into his gut, and bent over and groaning he partially shuffled and partially was dragged down the hall.
In just a few minutes another group appeared and marched down to the front of my cage. I realized then that there were two guard groups, one taking a convict out and the other returning from depositing a convict wherever he went...and I knew I would soon find out.
"Well shit-for-brains, are you going to be like stupid shit and fight this or just get on with what will happen no matter what?" the head guard of this gang of guards asked looking me with a bit of curiosity.
"SIR," I said automatically. After all my whole life I had been taught to be polite and to engage in calm and civilized conversation. "I will come quietly."
The head guard unlocked the door of my cage. "Come out!" he ordered.
"I walked out, and as soon as I was clear of the cage, a number of hands took control on my movements. One guard held each of my chained arms, and another snapped a lead on my collar. With my chains clanking we went down through the door at the end of the holding area. Once through the door I saw that once again we seemed to heading for one of the numerous elevators with which I had become so familiar in just one day.
As expected I was stopped, an officer took charge of calling opening the door to the elevator by some device which he carried. Only by observing this little difference for the first time did I realize how hopeless any escape attempt would be. There were no button to operate the elevator. Without the device the officer carried, the door would have remained as closed and locked as any cell door in any prison in the world.
There is no need really to go over the steps and the security measures that were built into leaving the area where we had been staged to my arrival at the loading dock, and there saw who would be in charge of me on my way back to Pleasant Acres. There was George, the "gang buster" who had examined me so carefully when Beau and I stopped on the lane into Pleasant Acres just days earlier.
"Hello Mr. Black." the head of my escort gang said pleasantly. "We brought you one fresh-minted hard labor servant. When we heard that this miscreant (and yes, my ears did hear this guard who I had categorized along with my low opinion of most of the officers who had controlled me since I left the world of the free and entered the world of a prisoner and life servant.
"I see you have brought our new life hard labor servant up for me. Thanks."
"He looks pretty scrawny for a hard labor slave." my head escort said, as he looked over at me with a definite look of disdain.
I noticed that with the comment about whipping me into shape Mr. Black, who now caused me to tremble in fear, that he unconsciously tapped the coiled whip which was attached to his belt by his right hand.
My escort laughed. "YAH! There's nothing like making sure a hard labor product learns to respect the whip and really concentrate on leaning its duties."
"Well let's go take care of the paperwork, and while we are doing that would your officer's take it out and load it in the transport I brought to take it back to its home."
"No problem SIR. You know that everyone in the area respected Pleasant Acres and the Mastersons and consider it an honor to be of service."
I was tempted mentally... but too smart to make any actual movement...to make some sucking sounds with my lips. The guard's all too obvious desire to perhaps be considered for employment at the prestigious Pleasant Acres estate, was really pathetic, in my opinion.
However, I had already learned that any visual to any comment not directed to me would probably not be received too positively.
And so, while the two big shots went off to do "paperwork" the guards grabbed hold me, and with the usual passage through some locked portal brought me to the garage area that I had entered earlier. As I looked around, it was almost impossible for me to comprehend that it was not yet evening, but still afternoon, but in that short period of time, my life had changed incomprehensively.
I wondered, as I was led up to a sparklingly clean blue truck with the name "Pleasant Acres" on the door panels, what would my life really be like?
How would Beau explain my failure to return home? What job could I really do at the quarry?
As the guard opened the latch for the barred cage which was behind the truck's cab, pulled out some steps from under the back of the truck, and with a good stroke of their little leather staps across my butt, sent me up the stairs...with guards holding me securely to keep me from falling... And into the cage. I had to bow my head to fit into the cage.
"Just sit down slaveboi." The guard ordered, and with my hands still chained I was able to grab a bar and sort of slowly plop down onto the straw which covered the floor of my part of the truck.
As I waited for Mr. Black to be my chauffeur to my new home, I decided not to worry about things like how my absence would be explained and all other problems and concerns of free people.
I believe at that point I accepted that I would not ever live in that world again, and so just let those in charge be in charge... not as if I had a choice. And so chained, locked in my cage like an animal, and marked and registered as a life servant slave, I just waited for persons who were free to make decisions, make all the decisions about my life.