The Deserted Parking Lot

She looked into the eyes of the boy kneeling before her. There was such honesty in his eyes. This was what she was was waiting for. She caressed his cheek. "You're a good boy. Now, sit back. Open those knees, straighten your back, yes? Hold up your head." She took a few steps back to admire him, leaning against a wall. She started acting a bit masculine when training. "Yes, you look rather attractive that way. I'm sure you have questions. You may ask them now, but know I may not see fit to answer."

Joey thought for a moment. "This may seem a little open-ended," he said, "but its the best I can think of. What's happened to me- aside from the painfully obvious fact that I'm your slave- and where am I?"

His Mistress took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she thought about how to answer. "You are on Gor. It's a planet in the Solar System that your planet hasn't discovered yet. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Gor is hidden from the view of Earth, but I digress." She removed her veil and a layer of her Robes of Concealment as she spoke. "It is a well known fact that Earthenoids, or whatever you call yourselves, make excellent slaves. You've been bred to it, although you don't realize it. From the moment you are born, you spend your lives striving to please authority figures. Your fathers, your teachers, your bosses, your faceless governments. They give contradicting orders and you don't know who's to follow. 'I wasn't a slave!' you say. 'I could choose who I listened to. I could leave my job if I didn't like it.' I've heard it all before. Here, it is taken care of for you. When there is one road, no one gets lost."

Joey nodded. It did tend to make sense, although in a way he didn't expect.

She suddenly shook her head and blinked hard, she hadn't realized she had been staring off into space for quite some time. Her first impulse was to apologize to the boy for ignoring him, but she quickly disregarded that thought. "Well, now. I'm starting to get hungry. Come to the kitchen with me."

Joey got up and followed her. He sort of recognized everything from his boy scout days, but everything was a little different.

As the boy started the fire, the Mistress reached into the cold room (more like a cold closet in her small home) and retrieved a pot of bosk stew left over from the night before. She searched through the cabnets, collecting all the ingredients for biscuits.

It didn't take long for Joey to get a decent fire going. The tinder had actually been stored right, so it was dry and fresh. It also looked like cedar bark fluff. Once the fire was ready he hung the stewpot from a tripod over it and watched his Mistress make the biscuits, trying to memorize how it went.

Sourdough starter... egg... wheat flour (no white flour?)... milk from some critter he'd never heard of...

Mistress ate her dinner with the boy kneeling nearby. The look in his eyes that told her he wanted to beg for scraps of food amused her, so she rewarded him for begging properly by feeding him bits of sul or carrot with her fingers. There was a slave porridge warming for the boy. The fire was already lit for her dinner, and the boy had behaved himself, so she allowed him to have a warm meal. It was bland and looked like mud, but it was filling.

As he ate the slave porridge, Joey found himself a little surprised. Whatever it was, it filled him up. He only ate about two-thirds of the bowl before he was literally too stuffed to eat more.

"What should I do with the rest of it, Mistress?" he asked, "There was more here than I can eat."

She threw her head back and laughed. "Then I haven't been working you hard enough! Put it in the cold room, I suppose. Finish cleaning up, then come help me prepare for bed."

Joey nodded and did as he was told. He put the unfinished bowl into the reefer- it didn't look like a refrigerator to him, and the closest word he could think of for it was the "official navy terminology" for a refrigerator. Like a typewriter was a mill and a water fountain was a scuttlebutt.

Cleaning up wasn't too hard, but it did take a little thought. Everything was just that much different here. At least there was some running water, albeit at very low pressure. Joey figured there was an aqueduct somewhere, and that they were pretty far from the water source.

She was wearing only her undergown. She had already washed her face and was begining to take her hair down. Sections of her hair fell to her shoulders as she removed the pins that had been holding them up. She wondered if she had shown the boy too much mercy.

As he finished cleaning the last pots and pans, a cheap clay pot slipped out of his fingers and shattered on the floor. Joey's face turned bright red with embarrassment as he gathered up the pieces. So much for a good first day, he thought, I'm dead when she gets in here.

She heared the crash and ran back to the kitchen.

"You can't even be trusted with the simplest of tasks!" She smacked him across the face. "If I can't trust you with my posessions, I can't trust you to take care of those clothes. Strip! Now!"

Joey sighed as he took off his clothes. It wasn't one of defiance, more like resignation. He folded them carefully and waited for the punishment he knew was coming.

She grabbed him by the collar and led him back to her room. She flung him at the foot of her bed. He hit it, then slid down to the straw mat that was his bed. She chained his collar to the slave ring on her bed. She used a short chain so he wouldn't have much freedom. She bound his wrists together, then his ankles.

"Spending the night like this should change your attitude. Now get some sleep."

She finished getting ready for bed and didn't speak to him for the rest of the night.

Joey would have been cradling his ribs if he wasn't bound. He had hit the bed hard enough to leave bruises. He went to sleep, didn't have any particularly memorable dreams, and woke up a little before his mistress.

Nasty place, this, he thought as he checked to make sure he wasn't seriously injured. The women're as strong as the men, and they're all built like gorillas. Guess they must take smaller people from Earth for domestics or something, and maybe use the large ones for labor.

He heard the noise of some kind of work crew tramping past the house. Or soldiers, but they weren't shouting and singing like you'd expect marching troops to do. He wanted to peek out the window and get a look at them, but the chain wasn't long enough. As it was, there was barely enough play for him to be able to lie down.

Boy, it's like you can read my mind. Well, if you can, that was the wrong answer.

Mistress woke up unusually late the next morning. She knelt down next to her boy and cupped his cheek. "How do you feel this morning? Answer truthfully now, no sense in pushing your body until it breaks."

((Joey means well, but things just don't turn out right. Like when he accidentally dropped the pot. But life wouldn't be life if it was too perfect.))

"I've got some bruises from when you threw me against the bed," he said and motioned to them. They weren't serious, just painful. "Other than that I'm not injured."

He paused for a moment and blushed. It was something about being naked and bound in front of his mistress. He wanted to cover himself, but it just wasn't an option.

No. Don't think put dirty thoughts into her head. She just wants you to clean house and do the dishes. At least that's what he hoped she wanted him to do...

Mistress freed him from his bindings and gave him his clothes.

"Put those on, yes? Do you remember how I taught you to kneel yesterday? Yes, just like that."

She inspected his body, gently placing her hands where she suspected an injury. "Does it hurt here? Here?"

"A little," he said, "Feels like just a bruise, though. I don't think anything's cracked or broken." There was a visible bruise on his side, but it wasn't particularly serious.

"Very well. Let's start the day's lessons, shall we? First, I want you to answer a simple question: What are you?"

Joey blinked. Damn. Started off with a trick question.

"Your slave?"

"That's right. You are a slave. Your primary job is to be pleasing. Do you understand?"