Page 9 of The Seller

It has been three days since she was brought to me. If she was any other girl by now I would have been dick-deep in her a dozen times. She’d be well on her way to learning how to please me perfectly. She’d suck cock like a professional, never forgetting the balls, or the ass.

I’ve been waiting to see if law enforcement shows up, which has put a damper on things. My personal helicopter has been fueled and ready to go every hour of the day, and I have lookouts stationed across Cephalonia to tell me if trouble is coming.

Nothing has happened.

If someone is trying to set me up, they’re taking their time about it. And if law enforcement has sent Siri to catch me in the act, they’re leaving her in my grasp an awfully long time.

I no longer think she’s a cop. I do think she’s a very strange, very intriguing young lady. One I should be fucking.

So why aren’t I now?

Something about her has made me treat her with kid gloves. I don’t know what it is. Objectively, I’ve had more vulnerable, even younger women here. I seduced them, just as I should be seducing her. I lured them into a life they would never leave. Some of them call me the devil. Others worship the ground I walk on. None behave the way she does. Maybe it’s not that I’m being nice to her. Maybe it’s that she scares me in a way no woman should be able to.

After I got her home, I put her back down in the basement, but not before I stripped her out of the dress, tearing the seams as she stared at me with outright defiance and a look which saidyou’re not going to get away with this.

“I am though,” I said, balling the dress up and throwing it, useless and torn, into the corner.

“You are though what?”

“I’ve done this a dozen times. I’ll do it a dozen more. You’re not going to change what happens here.”

I pulled a short length of chain around her neck and secured it with a padlock. There are no fancy collars in my world. Maybe one day she’ll earn one. In my basement, she wears a simple chain. A heavy rope attaches her to the ring in the floor, three feet of length the outline of her entire world.

Once I had her naked and chained, she looked like a different woman. She should have looked weaker, chain tends to humble a woman, but her arrogant bearing made her look defiant and strong, as if nothing could break her.

Since then, I’ve had my attendant go down and feed her, take her to the toilet, give her enough water to wash her face and between her thighs - the bare minimum of what it takes to keep a girl in useable condition.

Isolation is the most effective human punishment there is. I’ve had girls who would rather be beaten than be left alone for twenty four hours. My attendant reports that Siri does not seem to be affected that way, but I suspect she’s just as affected as anyone else - she’s just better at hiding it.

Siri has done something no woman has done in quite some time. She’s made me think.

Selling women is not a past time for the soft hearted. It is a filthy business, one of the worst in the world, and yet, where there is demand, there will inevitably be supply. The outside world wants to pretend that humanity has changed over the course of a few thousand years, but that’s not enough time for any species to lose its essential characteristics. Men are driven to possess women, but most get along with the scraps society allows them. Those are the good guys. The ones who sublimate their violent warrior urges into sport and boardroom takeovers. They tame the raging caveman who wants to take a woman he desires and claim her for his own and they satisfy that part of themselves with material things which never quite sate their desire for possession. If you ask me, materialism is a symptom of being unable to have the one thing one truly wants.

Then there are those who cannot tame that part, who act out rashly and stupidly and hurt people in the process. They become vicious and brutal, are sentenced as criminals and are rightly looked down on with derision. They are put behind thick concrete walls and they see the world through narrow bars. I’m sure many people think that should be my fate, but I am a man in another category altogether.

That is the category of the rich and very powerful. To be in this category, a man must be capable of controlling himself. He must never act rashly or without thought. He must be the master of his impulses without being slave to common law. To him, what is written in legal texts holds no intrinsic value. It may as well be written in crayon. He is a man who understands that behind the veneer of civilization, the world crawls with vice.

I have never been part of good society. My mother was a prostitute. I can only assume that my father was a client. I was born out of a transaction, and I grew up watching every decent and indecent human thing be sold. Now I run a legitimate global import-export business, but I pay homage to my origins by turning a few select girls every year into the most priceless commodities. Siri might think this torrid and filthy, but by the time I am done with her, she will gleam like a jewel. My girls are not cheap or nasty. They are expensive and rare, perfectly trained, utterly beautiful. They are excellent companions, willing bedmates, and several of them have even become wives.

I do not feel guilt for what I do. There are many who do worse. In this world, women are not the only ones who are commodified and sold. The flesh of the common has always been owned by those in power. Smartphones and global internet coverage don’t change the fact that when the king decides it, peasants will die. Social media hashtags, democratic elections, online polls, they’re all lies designed to make a person think they’re choosing the terms of their imprisonment, when the truth is much more simple than almost anyone dare admit. They were born to labor, be taxed, and die having spawned a new generation to take their place on the wheel.

All the world is a cage, and I am but one of many jailers.

Bing!

My email alert interrupts my thoughts.

With bad news.

Siri

The darkness won’t last forever, I tell myself. The light will come. This is just a game he’s playing. He wants to break me. He told me that himself. He hasn’t forgotten about me down here. The little old man who brings me food is testament to that.

I have spent the last several days tied to a small radius, a chain looped around my neck, the weight of it worse than the cold which saps the natural heat from my skin. He has made me feel the humiliation of confinement. He has left me to sit in the dark and feel the helpless desperation which comes with the total absence of light. At times, I’ve been close to tears, but there is a reason for all of this, and I hold on to that reason.

When the door at the top of the stairs opens, I’m expecting the old man, the one who doesn’t seem to speak English. Almost immediately, I know it’s not him. The stairs don’t creak the same way, stood upon with arthritic hips and shuffled down one step at a time. This time the steps are smooth and quick and athletic.

Stavros is back.

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