21st Century Gladiators Read online

  I shuddered, hanging there, upside down, my mind in a blue funk at the coming pain and my body trembling in fear. At least I thought it was. Peter later told me it wasn’t and for that at least I was glad. I would have hated to think our fellow slaves thought me a coward although I did indeed feel like one.

  As usual, Obb feinted with his whip a couple of times, but even though I should have been expecting it (for by then I had seen it all so many times I knew exactly what was coming), I still screamed and wondered where on my body each crack had landed.

  When the first real stroke did connect I was caught unawares and didn’t scream at all — at first. I heard the crack of course and flinched but by then I had decided not to scream as it was a mark of cowardice. But then the pain kicked in.

  He had landed it in the tip of my right breast — right on the nipple itself and as I became aware of the pain which almost instantly built up into excruciating agony, I did let fly — with both voice and bodily reactions.

  I screamed long and loud: “Aaagheeeaaaghooowwwghaaagh!” it went, although for much longer than I can write down here and as it did, my whole body, securely held by my ankles writhed, contorted, twisted and bucked, my hands coming up to my breast, trying to ease the burning, searing pain there while the rest of my body reacted as we all do to severe pain.

  No doubt I presented a wonderful show to those disgusting reprobates who were gathered around my dangling body, delighting in my pain, my screams and my contortions. Obb, the master sadist waited while I absorbed the pain for Jake liked to draw this show out for a long time, aware how much his paying guests enjoyed them.

  I was therefore not ready for the next stroke—which landed right between my legs, cracking on the vagina itself, the pain instantly spreading inside to my clit, the inner lips and from there to my whole lower body. I suspect my scream was even more strident this time and certainly went on longer than the first, for bad and all as the lash to my nipple had been, this felt like it was ten times worse.

  Once more my body reacted, contorting into weird and wonderful positions, showing it off in all its so naked glory, my sexual organs particularly pulsing and opening and closing in a perfectly involuntary display of wanton lust — or so it must have seemed. The truth of course was that it had nothing to do with lust at all. The muscles down there were merely trying to somehow assuage the dreadful agony.

  What did it feel like? Like someone had laid a red-hot poker down there — and held it there indefinitely! That’s what it mostly felt like; but also it was a bit like the electric shocks in the cage when one of those horrible wands had touched me down there — for those fiends mostly aimed their tips either down there or at my breasts.

  Once more Obb waited while the guests drank in my distress. Oh God how I hated those men at that time. I hated them with a virulence I wouldn’t have believed possible in me for normally I am a most tolerant person, forgiving people for just about anything. Peter says it is one of the most endearing qualities he loves in me but I think right then I would cheerfully have consigned every one of them to the fires of Hell.

  The third stroke landed on my left cheek and it stung like hell but nothing, nothing at all like the sheer agony of the two earlier strokes. And from then on, each of the lashes, although painful, were mere nothings compared to the first two. I was careful though, to pretend to a hurt as bad as them for the guests delighted in our torture and if they thought Obb was giving me less than the most rigorous pain I was capable of taking, they would have felt cheated.

  As I realised what he was doing, I felt a weird tenderness towards our master torturer. Up to that time I had hated him only slightly less than Jake and at times, more than him; but at that moment, while his whip continued to lash at my body — all over it now, the strokes were nothing compared to those first two agonising lashes.

  I screamed at each one and I made my body writhe and buck and I made sure my hands reached up to wherever the lash had struck. I remember my belly came in for one or two of them; so did my other breast, my thighs and legs and my back of course. Yes, there were twenty in all and they hurt. God they hurt, but those first two had been so bad I thought I would pass out from the agony of the pain. The rest were very painful but bearable.

  When I got home I researched this too. And in my delvings, I found that convicts in Port Arthur, the notorious penal settlement down in Tasmania, were often sentenced to fifty and a hundred strokes of the Cat. I don’t know the relative pain of the nine lashes involved with a flogging by that terrible instrument compared to the bullwhip but I suspect the bullwhip may have been worse for its oiled lash could open a person’s flesh in one hit if wielded by an expert such as Obb, whereas I think it would take a number of strokes for the Cat to do the same.

  I also found that slaves on the plantations of the southern USA were routinely given fifty to a hundred strokes of the paddle or ‘ol’ snake’ as they euphemistically called the bullwhip, so perhaps the twenty strokes we had to suffer were not so bad? That may or may not be, all I know is that they hurt like hell and I resolved there and then that this was the last time I was going to suffer the punishment. I would fight like the devil at whatever style required of me — and I would win!

  Chapter 7

  The routine continued unabated.

  It was now months after Ukanda had visited the island and I had all but put out of my mind his promise to rescue us from this Hell-on-Earth. I was now sure it had all been a put on and that the handsome Nigerian had been toying with us and was even now grinning hugely as he thought of our distress as we slowly came to the realisation that he was a fraud and we weren’t going to be rescued after all.

  The training in our various disciplines continued and Peter and me were now really good at kick boxing. Actually we weren’t half bad at the other disciplines either. My skills as a wrestler and boxer and in some of the other unarmed combat sports featured on the island also improved out of sight.

  I think actually this was the one saving grace about our time there for just about everything else was bad. The forced sex; the pony duty… here it wasn’t so much the fact that I had to pull the gigs for as I’ve said, I am not a snob and there are many people in Asian countries who still pull rickshaws to this day. No, it wasn’t the fact of pulling them; it was our nakedness while doing so and, far, far worse, the way we were harnessed to them with the dildos up our rectums and, in the case of we girls, the other one in our vaginas — and of course the degrading bridles around our heads with their horrible bits that were pulled so tight as to force our mouths open and to cause us to slaver all the time, that were so awful.

  Peter and I were regularly scheduled to fight, of course. As I said before, it was usually about every third visit but sometimes more or less depending on whether a guest or guests had asked especially for one of us. Jake usually catered to these requests and so then we might be put back a visit, or alternatively, brought forward.

  I didn’t mind the fights. As I said, I had improved out of all sight under Jake’s trainers and in any case I have a very competitive streak in me and competing and winning was something that I had always strived for. Added to my competitiveness however were the two incentives: win and I got to spend a night with Peter in a real bed in a luxury bure; lose and I faced twenty strokes of the bullwhip wielded by Obb after hanging upside down for a day on naked display to all and sundry and my body available to any of them to come and feel.

  I didn’t like the sex sessions, though. Not even when my buyer was a handsome, reasonably set-up man. Peter has been my life-long love and I have never had thoughts for any other man. To be forced to make love to one as a whore was about as low as it could get for me and especially when Peter was right there, forced to bugger the man as he raped me…

  Perhaps I should elaborate on this aspect a little more for you may be confused that all these men required this of Peter — virtually admi
tting they were at least bisexual. No, it wasn’t that way. Some of them did, yes, but most merely required his body behind them (or beside them if they preferred to mount me), simply required him to caress their flesh as they raped me.

  I think it was a perversity on their part — a sense of power that they could blithely make love to me while he, my husband, was forced to lie beside them and watch. We both got used to it eventually but it took a huge effort on Peter’s part not to strangle the man as his cock ploughed in and out of my so unwilling body.

  Alas, we knew, for Jake was at pains to tell all of us slaves that his surveillance system was so good that if one of us even made a false move towards one of his clients, his security people and the systems they operated would be on to us like a flash and the guard outside the door, in there and the slave concerned on his or her way to his death — in as slow and a painful a manner as he could devise.

  By now we had no illusions that he wouldn’t carry out his threats. We had all seen how bad his punishment tortures were and many of us had suffered them. Indeed, we had all seen the threat actually carried out.

  A very handsome boy from Malaysia had just cracked when a Japanese guest had brutally raped his young wife and had tried to stab him with a fruit knife. He had actually inflicted one small wound to his back before the guard disarmed him but then Jake was there and the boy taken away.

  He was hanged the next day.

  But this wasn’t your merciful breaking of the neck that brings about an instant demise. This was an infinitesimally slow and exquisitely painful death by strangulation and by the infliction of a series of additional very painful indignities to his body.

  First they hung him.

  His thumbs were cuffed behind his back and the noose placed around his neck. It was not a running noose but was fixed, and allowed a few inches of spare rope around his neck. They then hauled it aloft so that his toes dangled a foot or so above the grass. We were all assembled around the gallows, of course, guests, slaves and staff, all staring up at the so handsome boy now dangling by his neck so forlornly.

  Our implants were all tingling, advising us that the global mode was on and one false move by any of us and the lot would receive either a punishment or perhaps even a short lethal burst of current. We didn’t move. Each of us felt so sorry for Pada, up there, but we also knew there was nothing we could do for him.

  Jake left him dangling for a long time, perhaps half an hour but then he signalled to Obb to come forward with his whip.

  One lash was all it took. One loud report and both the boy’s balls as well as his scrotum disappeared. There was some blood but Dr Sing soon sewed the gaping hole up — roughly, for while Jake didn’t want him to die quickly, die he would and so fine stitches would be of little use here.

  A half hour later and he was branded. Two guards brought a glowing brazier out of which poked a couple of irons. Jake did this job himself, branding the boy’s belly with a large ‘S’, presumably for ‘slave’.

  Pada had moaned a little as they hauled him aloft but then, as the rope bit into his neck, I think it may have paralysed his vocal chords for all we heard from him after that were a series of inarticulate grunts, his body however told his agony. His eyes were wide and staring and his tongue poked out of his mouth.

  As Obb’s whip castrated him, his body contorted and struggled, his legs kicking and his arms struggling behind his back. Two guards held his body still while Jake branded his stomach but when they let him go his wild contortions resumed.

  By now his eyes were just about popping out of their sockets and his whole body was covered in sweat. He could still breathe but only with a lot of difficulty.

  He had now been hanging there for over an hour, perhaps two — it was very hard to judge time without any reference except the sun and I wasn’t too good at guessing anything but a few hours at a time from it.

  But still Jake wasn’t finished with him. The guest had been outraged that one of his slaves of the evening had attacked him and he wanted his pound of flesh. Jake was quite prepared to give it to him.

  He now shoved a really enormous dildo up his rectum. Like many Malays, Pada was quite slight and this monster really looked quite enormous. I guessed it would be four inches in diameter although it started much slimmer than that — at about one and a half to two inches. It had a rounded end and then it thickened to the four inch thick behemoth that was well over three feet long.

  Jake was quite brutal in the way he forced this monster into the boy’s anus and as he did so, his contortions became even more violent, his feet trying to kick our hated master until two guards came and grabbed them, holding them still while Jake forced a good foot or more of the massive thing into his backside. He then anchored the bottom of it in the grass, stepped back and again nodded to Obb who grinned at his master, laid out his whip once more — and now neatly sliced off the boy’s penis.

  The guard beside the brazier was ready though and now cauterised the massively bleeding wound with a red-hot iron formed into the small plate. This left a horrible mess at Pada’s groin but effectively stopped the bleeding.

  He didn’t last long after that though. Mercifully, shock set in (I think that’s what it was, anyway) and he slumped unconscious. He didn’t regain consciousness. We got the message however. Touch a guest and this is what you face!

  Peter and I are home now.

  Given the length of time since Ukanda had been and gone — months, we, Peter and me had given up hope of ever seeing him again.

  It all happened in the wee hours of the morning. There were no guests at the time and we were therefore in training mode. All of us were asleep in the cage when I felt this light prodding against my body. I was awake in an instant and Peter woke up as well. It was black as pitch outside the cage and I couldn’t se anything at all. I heard the whisper though—and it was Ukanda’s voice.

  “Anne? It’s me, Ukanda … Shush! I’ll explain all in a while, as soon as we have taken control, okay?”

  I grinned hugely in the darkness and in a whisper as quiet as his, agreed to wait. Peter and I hugged each other fiercely, hoping that all would go well and that in a very few minutes, we would all be free and able to watch Jake, Obb, Dr Sing and all the rest of them arrested and in the proverbial chains.

  And so it happened. They were helped by the darkness for although one of Jake’s security men was always on duty, whoever it was at the time simply didn’t see anything and he was overpowered by one of the anti-terrorist squad sent to rescue us.

  The others, from Jake down, were all surprised in their beds, cuffed and then replaced us in the cage while we were found clothes and all gathered around Ukanda and the officer in charge of the squad sent to save us.

  Ukanda explained why it had taken him so long to get back to us.

  “It was all a matter of jurisdiction, you see,” he began. “Once I got home and made my report, my government got in touch with the governments of Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines, all of whom said they owned the island. The wrangling went on and on about who should send a task force to rescue you and arrest those scum out there.

  “In the end, our Prime Minister suggested that since they were unable to solve the matter themselves, we be permitted to undertake the raid and deal with the criminals ourselves—summarily, here and now.

  “Accordingly, tomorrow, they will all be arraigned before a judge whom we have brought with us. He will hear your evidence, inspect the site and decide on punishments for those found guilty…”

  We all crowded around him of course, most thanking him, over and over again, for our salvation and others forgiving him for the long delay — of course that was only Peter and me for none of the others knew who he was from his visit all that time ago.

  We all slept in the bures that night and after each of our implants had been disabled, made love together a
nd then slept long and late.

  When we did get up the next morning, preparations were well in hand for the trial. They were all going to be tried together since most of the charges applied to all of them and they numbered in the hundreds: Kidnapping, Unlawful Deprivation of Liberty, Assault, Torture, Forced Sex and Murder… The list went on and on and of course each charge (except that of Pada’s murder) was multiplied by the more than thirty young men and women who had been kidnapped over the period of our incarceration.

  The trial didn’t last that long. Nobody was interested in a long drawn out trial and then, at the end, the Nigerian judge who had presided stared down over his glasses at the prisoners now chained together facing him.

  “You have all been found guilty of crimes so heinous I can hardly credit that such things are possible in this new millennium…”

  He then went on and on about how bad they were and singled out the principles, Jake, Obb and Dr Sing for special mention.

  These three were each sentenced to life imprisonment — thirty times, and without the possibility of parole. They would be spending the rest of their lives in the worst prison Nigeria had to offer, toiling at hard labour all day, every day.

  The rest were given varying terms depending on their involvement in the more depraved acts carried out on us. Jake’s assets were forfeited and ordered to be paid to us. Not that they amounted to much when divided by thirty but still we were happy enough to be free and shortly to be on our way home.

  It was a one day wonder when we got home and the papers got hold of the story. We endured the notoriety for a week or so but then it all died down and we were able to resume our lives once more.

  We are back teaching now and although I will never forget the horror of those months I am glad of it in a small way for it really cemented Peter’s and my love for one another and our love-making is even better now than it was before, aided no doubt by Jake’s training.