THIS TIME AROUND EVERYTHING WAS REVERSED
By Pete Brown petebrownuk @ yahoo.com
Read all of Pete's stories at groups.yahoo.com/group/petebrownseroticstories
Part 1
There were all those stories circulating about "slavers" operating in the USA, but most people thought it was like that stuff they do for the free sheets in the supermarkets "Skeleton found on the moon", and that sort of crap. When I went off by myself to Florida for a break before starting college, mom and dad even joked about it, telling me not to go out by myself at night. Ha fucking ha - that was he whole point of getting away, wasn't it? - to be out by myself, having fun, cruising the bars with the fake ID I'd knocked up in Photoshop and picking up any women I could find, for a good time.
I'd spent a couple of hours, and a stack of dollars on drinks for her, talking to this woman before she just said she was going home to her husband and patted me on the head just as if I was a kid! I was pretty pissed off - and just a little bit drunk - and on my way out to my truck they grabbed me. I was putting the key into the lock when a sack or something was pulled over my head, I was punched hard in the gut that caused me to keel over, and my hands were pulled behind my back and cuffed. Gasping for breath, hooded and cuffed, I couldn't stop them - although I did try to kick out at them - as I was dragged across the parking lot and thrown into the back of something, which drove off.
Judging from the sounds and that characteristic smell of kerosene we must have been somewhere near the airport in Miami when I was dragged out and stood on my feet. There was a ripping and cutting sound, and I realised I was being stripped - my jeans and shirt, and then my T, were cut away from me, and they pulled my sneakers and socks off my feet. I was standing there still hooded and cuffed in just my boxers, and when I tried to shout and protest at what they were doing to me, a cane slashed across my butt. I screamed out with the sheer surprise and indignity of it. "That will give you something to shout about, buddy. Now, shut the fuck up!" a gruff voice said. I'd never felt anything like it before - the hot, stinging sensation, that was now being followed by a dull ache.
I mean, my parents didn't believe in corporal punishment, and even if dad had wanted to punish me physically, he wouldn't have used a cane with such sheer calculated viciousness as that.
"He's the last one this trip - get him loaded" the voice said again, and I was half pushed, half carried across a whole lot of tarmac - it was hot under my bare feet - and then up what must be the steps of a plane as there was that roaring noise from the engines as I was herded past. They pulled my hood off then and I almost gasped with astonishment - inside the plane there weren't any seats or anything, just a series of barred cages running from floor to ceiling, with a narrow isle down the centre. The cages were full of men like me - in just their underwear - although I could just see one cage full of women who were mostly naked too. The two men holding me - big blacks, and I mean big - way over my own six two - unlocked the nearest cage which was already really full as the guys in there were standing up as there was no room to sit down, and pushed me in. They then cut the cable ties that had been cuffing me, and left the aircraft.
There was none of that crap about seat belts and safety and life jackets and all the other stuff they do, as a few minutes later the aircraft started to taxi, and then took off. As it climbed we were all thrown against each other in our cage, and I guess that's why we were in so many separate cages as otherwise it would have been even more dangerous. I'd never been in such intimate contact with other guys before - well, I mean, when you're changing at school and at the public pool, you keep well away from the other guys and certainly don't touch skin to skin, do you? And now here I was in just my thin boxers with a whole lot of other guys kind of on top of and around me.
One of the guys was totally naked, too - he was in his early thirties, I'd guess, but in superb physical condition. I could see he had one of those "Semper Fi" tattoos on his arm, so I guessed he must be, or had been, a marine. He saw me looking, and made no attempt to cover himself. "Guess I made a bad choice to go out in just my jeans last week", he said, smiling.
"Last week?"
"Yes. They grabbed me when I was off duty and going out for the evening. I've been kept like this in that fucking holding centre for about a week. You're lucky, just having been grabbed..."
"What do you mean?"
"Look, isn't it obvious? They're slavers. We've all been captured. And we're being flown somewhere - the fuck knows where - to be sold. This is like the modern equivalent of those slave ships you read about bringing niggers from Africa to the American plantations all those centuries ago - now we're the slaves, I think."
A lot of the men around seemed to agree with him. We all seemed to be much the same type - I think I was the youngest, at eighteen, and the marine was probably the oldest, at thirty-something, and the rest were somewhere in-between. We'd all got reasonable bodies, though, and there were none of those "tubs of lard" you see everywhere these days: I guessed they all worked out, or were like the marine, or had manual labouring jobs. And then the other thing struck me - we were all white guys, no blacks, Asiatics, Hispanics: just good old plain and simple Anglo-Saxons.
The plane sped on and one guy near the window said we'd been over the sea all the time since shortly after we took off, so he guessed we must be crossing the Atlantic. Another similarity between the plane and those slave ships then started to make itself felt - we were all caged in, and there was no provision for rest rooms! I mean, you hear how the bilges in those ships stank with the slaves' waste as they weren't let out on deck or anything, and it was the same here: it must have been a couple of hours into the flight when one guy said he was desperate to piss. We all tried hollering for someone to come, and a guard strode down the narrow central gangway and told us to shut up as it was annoying the Captain. I guess he was a guard as he was in some sort of uniform - khaki shirt and shorts, with a leather belt from which hung a cane, a couple of sets of cuffs, and some other stuff I didn't recognise. He was carrying a gun.
"It's a fourteen hour flight", he told us. "So if you need to piss, do it. You can't hold out that long. But don't expect any food or water." He strode back, and we all looked at each other - well, my bladder was starting to make those little painful sensations that says it needed a bathroom "soon", and now I started to almost panic. The first guy really was desperate, though, as he finally just had to stand there, close to the back wall of our cage, and let fly! Well it really was gross - as well as the smell of his piss, the stream of it ran across the floor of our cage and there just wasn't room for everyone to get out of the way - including me, and I got my feet wet.
I was stamping around and almost crying, trying to get clean, when the marine guy put his arm around my bare shoulder. "Easy, boy", he said. "It's not worth it. Things are going to get a whole lot worse. He was only the first, and none of us is going to be able to hold out for fourteen hours. There must be seven hundred men crammed in here, and the floor's going to be petty wet by the time we arrive. Still, it's only piss - it's pretty sterile and you won't die of it. Now, I may as well make myself comfortable...."
I watched as he just held his dick and pissed, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He shook himself dry, and saw the look on my face. "In the marines you get used to pissing in front of your buddies, I guess. I'm Joe...."
"Steve", I replied. And now I could see what he meant, as spurred on by his example, several other guys had started to piss as well, and the floor was getting very wet. "You'd think they'd let us out, to go to the bathroom..."
He just laughed. "Think about it, Steve. Seven hundred of us on here - how many guards would they need? It looks as if they're only flying with one as we're all securely caged. If they had to unlock the cage, get a guy out, escort him to the heads, then bring him back... They'd need dozens. And it would be dangerous - someone, like me, would try to attack them..."
I nodded. "Where do you think we're going, Joe?"
"I reckon somewhere in Africa. Somewhere deep in the heart of it, where it's kind of 'private' and where they say slavery still flourishes."
"But we're not slaves..."
"Steve, we are now! Do you think they'd capture all these guys - and some gals - have that holding facility, this chartered plane... It's an old 747 I think, but even so the charter rates are thousands of dollars a day, and they've had it fitted out with these cages.... They wouldn't, or couldn't, do all that unless there was a big profit in it. And this must be a hugely profitable business - we cost nothing, and will probably sell for very high prices. And that's why we're all fit, young guys - they're going to get a lifetime of hard work out of us."
"But my monm and dad will go looking for me..."
"And the mariens for me. But what progress are they going to make? Hundreds of young men go missing every week in the USA. There's no chance they'll uncover something like this. I was just snatched off the street, and there's no 'trail' to follow - they junked my cell phone, and you can bet they haven't been using my credit cards. No, Steve, it's us they want, and us they've got..."
By the time we landed, I was exhausted. The whole place stank, and I was bone tired and had mostly dozed, as you do on planes, resting up against the marine. How quickly I was losing my inhibitions about not touching other guys' bare skin. Still, we had no choice, as the cage was so cramped.
They took us off cage by cage. Guards in the same khaki uniforms,, carrying guns, lined the plane steps.
At the bottom I stopped for a moment to take it all in - the almost deserted runway, the furious scorching heat of the sun, the strange smell of rotting vegetation in the air, the shouting in some strange language form the guards. And then I screamed - one of the guards had slashed at my bare back with a whip!
It stung, and I leapt forward, and I guess the words he was using meant "keep moving". Look, I'd obviously never been whipped before, and I didn't even really believe all that stuff you read on the Internet about men whipping each other. But my back was stinging with angry pain, and that kind of makes you think that it's real enough! I was to discover later that I was fucking lucky - the guard only "encouraged" me to keep moving, as when the guards use the whip in earnest it usually breaks the skin and makes you bleed. Still, I expect they were under orders not to damage the new arrivals, before we'd been sold.
The guards patrolled up and down as a long line of us formed on the runway, so there was no possibility of escape. All of the guards were big blacks, and they were generally herding us towards a tent that was set up ahead. It felt so odd to see us white guys in our tattered and grimy underwear (or naked, like Joe), when the blacks were so immaculately dressed. The line seemed to move, then stop, and move again, and obviously something was going on, and then as I got closer I saw that each of us in turn was being looked at by eight big black guys who were sitting behind a long table in the shade provided by the tent - it was fucking hot for us men out there in the sun! They were not in the uniform the guards wore, but had a variety of "western" style dress - a couple had suits on, with ties, and others were more casually dressed in open necked shirts and well-cut slacks. When I at last got to the head of the line and I stood there in front of the men, I saw why it had kept jerking to a halt: they started to gabble and chatter at each other in their language as they looked at me. Then they shouted something to the guard who was immediately behind me, and he simply pulled down my boxers before I could stop him. I tried to cover myself as I wasn't going to be looked at like that, but one of the men said calmly, in English, "Raise your hands, boy, or else you'll be whipped."
Well, having felt the whip once already and knowing there was a guard behind me, I did as he said and I could see them all looking at my dick. "Turn around!", the command came, and so I did so, and then "Turn back", followed by "How old are you, boy?"
"Eighteen" I said, and this seemed to spark off another round of discussion amongst the men as they sat there. I just stood there, feeling very conscious of my nudity, and not knowing what the fuck was going on as their language was completely incomprehensible. Remembering what had been said on the plane, I thought that his is how those black slaves must have felt when they were first landed in the USA, hearing all the settlers and people speaking English. But almost before I could complete this thought, they seem to have decided, and the guard stepped forward and marked a big green cross on my chest, with a magic marker! He pushed at me to move on then, and I went to pick up my boxers, but he pushed at me again and I got the idea that I was to leave them. Little did I then realise that that was the last time I was ever to be clothed, even minimally.
On the other side of the tent there were ten trucks drawn up, and the guards, seeing the green cross on my chest, pushed me over toward the third in line. It was so fucking humiliating - I was being "sorted", based on the green cross, just as if I was some sort of package in a warehouse and not a man. It was a kind of open bed truck, but they'd built an enclosure on it - a few poles sticking up, and wire mesh all around. I was pushed up into this enclosure, and saw that all the other guys there were marked with a green cross, as I was. A few moments later, to my great delight, Joe came too, and he just grinned at me. "So we're both naked now, eh, Steve? Sill, never mind - you're like me, you've got nothing to be ashamed of."
The enclosure gradually filled up until it was "standing room only", and then they closed off the entrance to our enclosure, and the truck started up and moved off. We drove a mile or so until we entered a town, and it looked pretty prosperous - there were expensive looking shops lining the main thoroughfare, and at pavement cafes well groomed blacks in beautifully cut clothes sat sipping drinks. The sight of our truck with its cargo of naked guys didn't seem to be causing any special stir, and the only other unusual thing that I noticed was that the only white faces we saw were doing pretty menial sorts of work: at a traffic signal, for example, there was a white street sweeper brushing the sidewalks vigorously, and he only seemed to be wearing some sort of skimpy loin cloth.
"What's going on, Joe?" I asked, as Joe seemed to know about this kind of stuff.
"I expect we've been split up amongst the men who financed this slaving expedition, Steve. It must have cost a lot to hire that plane, and to arrange for us to be captured and warehoused and so on, and I think they were entrepreneurs who got together to finance the whole thing. Then, when we arrived, they needed to divide the spoils equably between themselves - that's why they were spending a lot of time discussing you, as presumably, being a young guy, you're more valuable as you've got a longer working life. It's just like when they got together to mount slaving expeditions to Africa - the first thing they did when a ship landed in Virginia was to apportion the slaves to the 'promoters', as they were called."
"But what's going to happen to us, Joe?"
"I don't know - but I'd guess they're going to make us work. I think we're slaves, and that's what slaves do."
"But why would they want that, Joe? Surely they can hire people.... It's not as if there's full employment, is it?"
"It's not about employing people to work for you, Steve. It's about power. Some men have a desire to totally control others, and what better way than this?
Have a man captured, bring him here and strip him, then turn him into a slave. A slave has no choices, remember. He can't walk off the job, he can't take a day off sick, he can't refuse to do a job..... I should think the joy of having that total control must be a real thrill to some men, and they're indulging their fantasies by reintroducing slavery - although now it's the blacks who are the masters, and us white guys who are the slaves. And instead of bringing slaves form Africa to America, they're bringing us from America to Africa."
The truck sped on along really bumpy roads, and any inhibitions I may have had about touching other guys not totally evaporated as we clung together. You may think it was stupid of us not to try to escape, but firstly there was a guard with a rifle cradled in his arms who sat in the front of the truck, but facing backwards at us. And secondly, as Joe said when I whispered to him that we could probably overpower the guard and the driver "And then what, Steve? We're naked, we have no idea even where we are, or in what direction to escape to, even if we could. They taught us in the marines to bide our time if we were captured, as you need to have some reasonable chance of success before you sell your life in an escape attempt: and that chance is hugely improved if you know where you are, and where to head to. If we broke out now, we'd just be a bunch of naked guys running around here in the middle of this wilderness."
Well he was right, I suppose, and so we just huddled there as the truck sped on, trying to keep the burning sun off our exposed bodies as best we could. It took about an hour to get to our destination - a walled city, rather like you see in those old desert stories, with towers at each corner and with walls the colour of dark dry brick. We went in through big double gates, then along narrow alleys and passages until finally we turned in through another set of gates, and the truck stopped. The now familiar guards started to gesture to us to get down off the truck, one at a time, and under their watchful eyes we were led, one by one, into one of the buildings.
The first thing they did was hose us down - my skin was really burning, and the cool water splashing all over me was a huge relief. Then we were given cool water to drink - a lot of it - in sort of metal flasks. I didn't want to drink all of mine, but Joe whispered that we must be sweating gallons, and we needed to drink, so I did. I hated the next bit: in two, we were made to crouch down on an open grill, and the guards made gestures and noises indicating that we were to crap! I did need to, actually, as it was more than a day since I was captured in Miami, but all the same it's hard if you've never done it in public before, isn't it? It was only because Joe squatted down alongside me and said "Hey, kid, it's no worse than being on manoeuvres in the marines... We often had to do stuff like this if we were on exercises in the woods.." That I managed to at all, but I was blushing a bright red by the time the guards told us to move on, so the next two guys could come behind us.
They fed us then, and I have to say it wasn't all that bad - some sort of porridge, but full of nuts and dried raisins and currants and stuff, although I wasn't used to eating with my fingers; but perhaps it was just because I was really hungry. But I saw Joe actually licking his bowl clean, and he whispered "You need all the strength you can get, Steve - don't waste a scrap. We've no way of knowing when we'll next be fed."
We were bedded down in a cell that just had straw on the floor, and I think we were all so tired and overwhelmed by what had happened to us that we actually did sleep. Then the next morning we were given more water and more of the porridge, and then, one by one, hosed down. Then finally, joy of joys, we were each given a pair of shorts to wear - you just can't imagine how great it is to be respectable again, even if the shorts had an open fly without a zip or buttons.
I was chained next to Joe when they put us "on display" later than morning - if he hadn't been there, trying to be encouraging, it would have been even worse than it was. We were led out in our shorts to one of the long passage ways that snaked its way through the town, and at about five foot intervals were simply chained to the wall by a cuff around our ankles. As they did this, the guards also cuffed our hands behind our backs, and then they simply left us. All that morning the crowds swirled along the alley, and many of the people stopped to stare at us - they were all blacks, and many of them were very well dressed in "Western" style clothing, although some were in brightly coloured long robes, and stuff like that. It seemed we were in some kind of "shop window", as passers by could, if they wished, feel our muscles, stroke our bodies, command us to open or mouths so they could inspect our teeth, and even plunge their hands into the open fly of our shorts to grope at our dicks and balls! I'd never been so totally humiliated, and the first time a man made to grab at my dick, I shouted and screamed at him to leave me alone, and tried to get away from him - utterly futile, of course, as I was cuffed and shackled to the spot. A guard came along, attracted by the commotion, and savagely slashed at my butt with his cane, so had that I was almost knocked over. After that I just stood there, head hung in shame, as the crowds did whatever they wanted to me.
The auction, as I guesses that's what it was, was held in the cool of the evening. They unshackled us from the inspection wall, gave us a bowl of the porridge to eat, and then we were lined up ready to go up onto a small podium in front of a crowd of a hundred or so potentially interested purchasers. Thank god I've not got to be naked in front of that lot, I thought, as I saw the fashionably dressed black men and women taking their seats, but when it was my turn to be sold, the auctioneer simply pulled my shorts down and then rotated me so that everyone could get a good look t my dick, and my butt (a butt with a couple of red stripes on it, from the caning. He must have made some sort of joke about that, as there was an amused murmur from the audience.). I stood there, utterly helpless, hands cuffed behind me as there was some sort of shouted question form the audience and, in response, the auctioneer grabbed hold of my dick and squeezed at the tip so that my head emerged, and I began to get an erection. He asked the audience something and they seemed to be satisfied, and mortified with shame and blushing deeply, I was left to stand there as the bidding proceeded - I don't think cut guys can ever really appreciate how private a guy's dick head is when is decently covered with his 'skin - at school, I always turned to the wall in the showers, of course, when I wanted to make myself really clean.
I've no idea how much I was sold for, as I couldn't understand a word of the language, but when the auctioneer's gavel fell I knew I had been sold. His assistant wrote something above my left pec in magic marker, and I was ushered off the stage, with no time to pick up the shorts. Guards and assistants read the stuff on my chest and sorted me into a cell with four others, all of whom had the same kind of Arabic-looking stuff scrawled on us, and I felt just like some sort of animal at a livestock market who gets marked with the buyer's name, so that they can keep track of who's bought who. We were all pretty silent, stunned by what had happened to us, but to my great joy we were joined eventually by Joe, who grinned at me, put his arm around my shoulder to try to cheer me up, and said "Seems like you and me have got the same owner, Steve."
"Joe, they can't have just auctioned me, surely...."
"They surely did, Steve. We were on display for prospective buyers earlier on, and then we were auctioned. We're slaves, buddy, and we've just been sold. That's how they dealt with the niggers who were brought to the good old US of A. I wonder who's bought us, though, and for what?"
"What do youthink, Joe?"
"Well, looking around here I'd say it was something that needed hard, manual labour - look at all of us, we're pretty fit and tough. And that's typically what slaves are used for, or were used for in the nineteenth century, anyway - growing cotton, sugar cane harvesting, that sort of stuff. I reckon our owner has himself a plantation somewhere, and we're all the latest additions to the workforce."
"How come you know all about this, Joe?"
"My folks wanted me to go to college and made me write a paper on nineteenth century practices in the South. But I went off and joined the marines instead, as I wanted to see the world. But not like this.....", he said, grinning at me to try to cheer me up.
"So what happens now, do you reckon?"
"Steve, I don't think you want to know..."
"Yes I do"
"OK, you asked for it! Well, what does an owner want to do next to something he owns? He..."
Joe stopped speaking abruptly as outside our cell there was a really big black guy - six-six, I'd say, and solid muscle. He was wearing a snowy white short-sleeved cotton shirt with a bright green silk cravat at the neck, and immaculately cut grey slacks fell to the expensive leather loafers he wore. He spoke in English, perfect unaccented English, of the kind you hear some Englishmen speak.
"You slaves are going to join my work force at my plantation." There was a shout of disbelief from one of the guys, and he roared "Silence! The next man to speak will have his vocal chords cut. Slaves do not interrupt their owners" We were stunned into silence at the casual way he'd said that, and he went on "You are now part of the work force at my plantation. As such, only two things are required of you: hard work, and total obedience. Failure to work hard, or to obey, means only one thing: punishment. All my overseers have my full authority to cane and whip idle and disobedient slaves, and in more severe cases I myself use the bullwhip to very good effect - and you will not wish to learn just how good I am at flaying the skin off a slave's back."
He turned to go, and one of the guys called out "Please..... Sir....."
The man whipped around. "You cannot have a question. Slaves do not question. Slaves obey. But as you have dared to risk your vocal chords, you may continue."
"Please, sir, can you call my wife... I've been missing now for several days, and she'll be worried sick. And she's pregnant, sir, and you know how worrying that is... I'm concerned that the stress will bring on premature labour. I can give you the number, and you can call collect...."
The big black just laughed. "You're lucky I'm in a good mood, or I would have had you muted permanently for daring to speak. Now, remember this: you're a slave. Slaves do not have families. Your wife and child are now your ex-wife and former child. You are a slave, the lowest of the low, and you owe your duty and obedience only to me."
He simply walked off then, totally uninterested in whatever else we might have to say, and the rest of us did our best to comfort the guy who'd spoke, who looked pretty cut up at what had been said. He kept repeating over and over "But Mary-Lou's going to have a little girl any day now....", and just didn't seem to understand what our owner - as I guess that's what I should call him - had said.
We were loaded into a cage on the back of a small pick-up for our journey from the slave dealer to our new home. And when I say cage, I meand just that - a barred thing, like you transport dogs in. We couldn't stand up, and just sat there bent over a bit as we watched the countryside speed by. Gradually the sombre desert started to turn green, and soon there were immaculate fields with all sorts of strange crops that I couldn't identify in them. I was soon to learn why they were so immaculate - it was going to be my labour, and that of hundreds like me, who kept them so! Joe was strangely silent - even for the short time I'd know him he always seemed to have something to say - but perhaps he was interested in the view, too.
There was a long driveway from the highway up to the "plantation", and it was impeccably neat with finely trimmed grass, a white picket fence all the way, and lamp standards at intervals. The labour to keep such a long driveway so immaculate must be immense - as indeed I was to find it was! The plantation itself was another set of buildings in the dark red brick stuff, surrounded by a high wall. We were driven around to the back of one of them, and at once guards came out in their now familiar khaki uniforms with their leather belts hung around with all sorts of stuff. "Hang in there, Steve", Joe whispered. "It will all be over soon...."
I didn't get the chance to ask him what, as a guard gestured at me with his cane, and pushed me into the building. More incomprehensible grunts and I realised I was supposed to kneel down in front of something big and heavy, looking rather like and anvil, and then a slave came over and collared me. How easy it is to say that now... "a slave came over..." - already my thinking was telling me that any white guy who was naked must be a slave, and this guy had the big, burly muscles that really hard manual labour gives you. "...and collared me." Yes, he put my collar on.
That collar that I wear still today. The standard slave collar, that all slaves on our owner's plantation wear - nothing fancy, just a three inch wide band of heavy, black iron, with "eyes" standing out from it through which a coffle chain, or wrist cuffs, can be threaded. It was open at the time of course and he pulled it around my neck, then used a huge pair of pincer-like things to squeeze it back into a circular shape, with the ends nearly touching. They use a rivet, a red hot iron rivet, to join the two ends together and I thought he was going to burn my ear as he fitted the rivet, and then banged it flat with his huge hammer. I'd seen pictures of nigger slaves in the South wearing collars just like this, and now here I was, fitted out in the same way.
"Stand up", he said, and as I got to my feet I felt the weight of the collar bearing down on my shoulders - it's four pounds, actually, and Joe tells me that they always use heavy collars in spite of them affecting our efficiency as the sheer weight makes them oppressive, and there's no way of fooling yourself into thinking that you're not wearing this badge of servitude. I felt my head bowed down by the weight (although you get big corded neck muscles eventually by way of compensation). The blacksmith ran his fingers around inside he collar, and I flinched as he managed to pinch the skin. "You'll do", he told me. "Too loose and it will chafe. Too tight, and it will choke you. Now..... Over the anvil...."
I didn't understand at first what he meant, but his strong hands guided me to kneel down, and then to stretch my body over the cold metal. At once a leather strap was tightened around me, holding my waist down. I wondered what was going on, then the world stopped, as a totally consuming agony of pain went through me. I've never known anything like it before or since, and even now I can't describe how it felt as he pushed the red hot brand into my left butt cheek. I know I screamed, and carried on screaming until my throat was hoarse, and I had nothing left to give when he grabbed my right arm, stretched it out across his massive thigh, and burned the second brand into my upper arm.
The only pain relief they give you is to allow you to throw yourself into the big trough of cold water they keep in the blacksmith's for quenching iron as it's being worked, and I sat there, desperately trying to make some kind of sense at what had just happened. I could see the brand on my upper arm, some sort of strange Arabic character, and the way the skin was all blistering and puffy around it. I stayed there as long as I could, but when I heard the next guy scream, I had to get out and stand there so that he could try and ease his suffering. Joe did his best not to scream, I think, but even he did, and finally we all stood there, heads bowed, with the big "S" they'd put on our butts and the fancy mark on our arms.
Through chattering teeth Joe said "I thought that's what would happen next. That's what happened to a lot of black slaves on the plantations. They collar us to remind us that we're slaves, as well as to make it easy to chain us together and control us. They brand us because it's the ultimate sign that we are no longer free men - the 'S' was given to many slaves so that, if there's ever any doubt, a man's pants could be removed and his butt inspected. But the owner's mark is special - it's the ultimate symbol of one man's control over another: you are my property, and I have marked you indelibly, in a way that can never be removed, so that the whole world knows you belong to me."
He paused for a moment to draw his breath, as it was an effort to speak at all, the state we were in. He looked at his arm, and pointed at it. Our owner's mark was right over his "Semper Fi" tattoo. "I guess I'm no longer a marine", he said, trying to sound cheerful.
They led us off to the slave barn then, as it was evening, and that's where all the plantation's slaves sleep overnight. As the heavy door was swung open we could see hundreds of naked bodies sprawled out on the straw that lined the floor. A voice called out "fresh meat", and Joe put his arm protectively around m shoulder again (being careful not to touch the boiling skin where my brand was still hurting terribly). You'd think, wouldn't you, that men who had been enslaved would have some common purpose, would look out for each other - but I guess it's like being in prison: the strong prey on the weak, as men locked up together have a need for sexual release. In spite of the terrible hurt from his branding, Joe had to fight two or three of them to prevent them trying to drag me off to be fucked. When they realised he was a skilled fighter they ultimately stopped, but I was shivering and shaking at what might have happened to me if Joe had not been there.
He said that we'd better lie close together in case they tried anything during the night, and I remember my first night of slavery as being not only the terrible pain I was in, but the feel of Joe's warm skin against mine.
End Of Part One