Chapter 1

 

I am black. I am also a final year medical student, as is Jan, my fiancé. The pair of us are going to set up a medical practice when we have graduated. I say I am black, as is Jan, but I have also been a Negro, a nigra, and even a nigger ... Oh yes, I know those terms are not acceptable these days. Believe me, I know it very well.

In this more enlightened age, well into the 21st Century, we blacks are pretty well accepted, yes, even in Birmingham, Alabama. So much so that we mix well with the white students at the university and are accepted for our worth, not the colour of our skin.

Jan and I were on a summer hiking holiday through the backblocks of Alabama when it happened. We carried our own pup-tent in one of the packs and made camp wherever we liked, usually on the side of a small stream that provided us with drinking and bathing water.

The weather had turned bad quite suddenly and we had hastily made camp. And then the thunderstorm had come up. I have an unreasonable fear of lightning and thunder and suggested to Jan that we ride out the storm by making love. He had grinned in that boyish way he has and quickly stripped. I love watching him take off his clothes for, like me, he is a dedicated athlete and his body is quite incredible. He says mine is too but since breasts and a snatch do not interest me, at least sexually, I won't presume to comment.

Anyway, we jumped into the double sleeping bag we use on these trips and were well into it when the lightning struck. All I remember is a blinding white light as I clung to Jan's body, shaking in fear - and then nothing - until I woke up to find the tent gone, blown away by the storm, together with all our belongings and the sleeping bag also torn beyond recognition. Jan and I were naked, still clinging together in joint fear and his huge cock was still (for some unfathomable reason) still inside my pussy.

The storm had passed and it was now sunny once more but around us were three men on horseback. Three white men; and they were looking down on us with an expression that had me puzzled. It was triumph, mixed with hate but I also had time to notice their clothes.

They were dressed in the garb of a couple of centuries before: late 18th Century or early 19th and I suddenly had a horrible gnawing fear in my belly as I tried to cover my breasts from their lecherous gaze. Jan's cock had now slipped out of my quim and his face too registered fear.

Jan is no coward. Indeed, he is a very courageous sportsman and pushes his body to the limit but we both sensed something was very wrong here and that these three men were not going to help us.

Jan tried, though. "Good afternoon, gentlemen. We seemed to have been taken over by the storm. I wonder if you can help us?"

Jan's speech, like my own, was no backwoods southern drawl but bespoke our middle class backgrounds. His parents, like mine, were well schooled, being university educated, but it seemed to make the men even angrier.

"Ho, men, jes' listen to thet talk by this nigger. Who he think he talkin' to, eh?"

The others agreed with him and while the other two drew and held their guns on us, one now slipped down off his horse and, holding his quirt in his hand, strode up to us. "You two niggers is runaway slaves. Ah ken jes' smell it on you ..."

We stared at him in horror. "No we're not," I protested. "We are university students. Medical students. We got overtaken by a thunderstorm."

For my trouble, I got a nasty slash across the face from his quirt and when Jan tried to come to my aid, he too received a similar slash. Both of our cheeks now sported livid lines across them but they caused us to back off. They hurt - and hurt a lot and made us realise these men meant business and even more, that they really believed we were runaway slaves.

Jan had a sudden thought. "May I ask what year this is?"

The man stared at him strangely, no doubt confused at our mode of speech but he answered. "It Seventeen-ninety, why?"

Jan took a risk. "Ah, that explains it," he said. "Where we come from, it is Two thousand and ten ..."

For that he got another slash of the whip, this time across the other side of his face. "Don' you sass me, nigger. What for you talk sech lies? No way we believe sech nonsense, now you jes turn around and put yore han's behin' yore backs. We's goin' to tek you two in to the village."

With their guns trained on us we had no option and, just as we were, naked as jay-birds, they cuffed our hands behind our backs, placed rope halters around our necks and then led us into the village of Elyton, which, as I knew from my history books on the area was the early name for Birmingham. It certainly bore no resemblance to the modern city and was then just a very small hamlet, not even a town. In fact the town wasn't formed until 1813, twenty-three years later still.

We were deposited in the tiny jail and then hauled up before the local judge. And still they hadn't bothered to give us even a rag to cover our genitals. We were just nigger slaves, after all, little more than animals in their eyes.

The judge was just as suspicious of us as our captors had been, especially of our speech but he wanted a full-blown description of the manner in which we had been caught, especially our love-making and during the hearing his eyes constantly wandered up and down our naked bodies, yes, Jan's just as much as mine. After an ultra-short hearing which, however, he extended as long as he could so he could continue to look over our nakedness some more, he banged his gavel, finding us indeed runaway slaves who would be advertised and if no credible owner was forthcoming, would be sold and the proceeds of the sale paid into the village coffers.

"Tek they to the village square. Hang them up and put them on display each day from dawn to dusk," ordered the judge. If no comers appear in seven days, auction them ..."

The local sheriff, a part-time peace officer, took charge of us and bundled us over to the scaffold on which stood a gallows as well as a pillory, both of which were common instruments of punishment in those days. The gallows already had a noose dangling from it but the villagers threw two other ropes over the crosspiece and soon had us hanging by our wrists with our feet dangling a few inches up off the floor of the scaffold.

And there we hung, still naked, for the rest of that day and for the six that followed it. Why didn't they give us a rag even to cover our privates? I suspect it was because we were both so athletic. Jan was a top track and field star at the university and his muscles, while not overdone, were smooth and sleek. I was a gymnast and that sport turns girls into paragons of lithe supple athleticism. I believe it was their lechery - their desire to come and look over our naked flesh each day that prompted them to deny us any clothing, for during that seven days we saw many slaves - all black of course - niggers to them, and they all wore clothing of one kind or another.

Not good clothes, of course. You didn't waste good money on fine clothes for slaves, but at least the males had on a shirt of sorts, usually sleeveless, and a pair of rough trousers and the girls a thin shift to cover most of their bodies. We could see they had no underclothing of any kind. Indeed, with the males there were normally just the two items: shirt and pants; and the girls, just the loose, sleeveless dress - but at least they were clothed.

We had nothing. Not a stitch and each day we were dragged out of the jail at dawn and strung up to dangle by our wrists all day. And each day, we were surrounded by more and more men and women who came to stare up at us, to ogle our bodies and stare pruriently at our sexual organs. This was no puritan village, believe me. They were quite open about it, yes, the women just as much as the men and even the children came out to stare up at our naked bodies.

As word got around the surrounding district, more and more people came to look us over and in the latter days, these included the local gentry: the plantation owners who lorded it over the mere village folk - but were just as lecherous in their examination of our flesh - but with one difference: they were allowed to mount the scaffold to look us over at closer quarters; and even to feel us down.

The first time it happened I cried in my shame as the tall and distinguished-looking southern gentleman reached out to finger my breasts, then, while staring me in the eyes, allowed his other hand to slide down my flat stomach to my sex - and then gripped it tight, delving inside with his fingers while his mouth creased in a cruel smile of triumph at my tears and cries of humiliation.

Jan was then similarly dealt with and while the hoi polloi below cheered him on, the gentleman squeezed my man's muscles, hefted his testicles and manipulated his cock to its full majestic ten inches of hard man-meat.

Now Jan was as embarrassed as I had been when the man had fingered my body but he was even more so as the man continued to masturbate him until he finally shot his bolt, sending a massive jet of his sperm up and out from his body. Jan is a most virile young man (we are both twenty-four years old) and I can testify to his sexual strength. It is one of the things that make him such a wonderful lover. There are others, including his tenderness towards me, but it is certainly an important part of him.

The mob below cheered mightily as they watched his penis continue to send shots of white sperm out over the scaffold and, from then on, they urged each successive gentleman who mounted the scaffold to do likewise.

They didn't forget me, however. Having watched the man masturbate Jan to climax, they urged him to return to me and bring me to orgasm as well. Nothing loath, he waved to them and came back to my side, allowing them to see my front as he delved even more intimately into my gash, seeking out my love bud and, when he found it, tickled it into a series of orgasms that had me twitching and writhing on the end of my rope while the crowd below went wild.

I knew the authorities would do nothing to stop this obscene display of our bodies for it would inflame those who had the wherewithal to bid on us and would add immeasurably to the price they would pay.

And then it struck me. They were actually going to sell us. Sell our bodies! We really were slaves and whoever bought us would be able to do anything they liked with our bodies - even use them sexually! They could whip us if they wished to punish us, brand us, even de-sex us ...

Oh yes, I had read about slavery all right. I knew what it involved and how some of the slave owners were quite beneficent - while others could be downright cruel, even sadistic. And as I stared down at the men and women who thronged around the scaffold, I could see it in their eyes. If some of them had had the cash to buy us, we would be in for a bad time of it.

And then another thought struck me. I had said 'us' but I now realised they would be selling us separately. The chances of us ending up with the same owner was remote. I would be separated from my Jan and be alone in this terrible time for us blacks - presumably for the rest of my life. Oh God! What had brought this horrible fate upon us, I wondered, my misery now overwhelming me.

And so the days wore on. Now, more and more of the gentry came to inspect us and I knew the judge had been right. This so obscene display of our bodies had kindled a district-wide interest in us. The town was going to be very well off after it had sold us to one of these exquisitely dressed ladies or gentlemen.

Ladies, you ask? Ladies indeed. My reading of slavery in the old South had indicated that a lady didn't see a slave, or at least a male slave, naked. Nor did she frequent places where slaves were sold or punished ... but these women did. They, almost invariably, accompanied their husbands in their fine carriages, drawn by matching horses and driven by a black coachman wearing the livery of their house. These slaves were finely dressed - at least when out in public attending their owners.

The women didn't actually join their husbands up on the scaffold but they weren't backwards in looking over Jan's naked body and to smile as his cock spurted forth yet another copious offering to please the rabble down below.

And what about our pain as we hung there all day? It was dreadful. You probably can't imagine how bad it was. Try it! Jump up and grab a tree branch or some such and then hang there from it for a few minutes - and then remember we were out there for the whole day! Remember too, we were bound by our wrists which made it even worse. And so from dawn to dusk we dangled there, our big toes not even able to touch the floor of the scaffold, stark naked, our bodies - the whole of them - open to the look and touch of all those people.

It is no wonder we were glad, if apprehensive, when the last day came and went and we were brought out and hung up there once more to be sold.

This time, however, it was even more shameful. They made us lie down on our bellies on the floor of the scaffold and placed the nooses over our ankles, then hauled us aloft, upside down, to dangle in that even more obscene position until noon when the gentry in their fine carriages drove up to join the throng down below us.