Chapter 1

 

Theresa was smitten by Joel's handsome face the very first time she saw him.

She was attending one of her father's regular summer garden parties at Ravenscroft. She attended for very different reasons than that for which her father hosted these parties. He used them as a means of assessing his up and coming young executives in an out-of-the-office, more relaxed environment; she to look over the handsome young meat they offered.

Theresa Barnes was beautiful; perhaps even striking. She had good bones and a superb body and she had that tiny, indefinable quality that turned handsome into beautiful. She knew it but she was also rather sensitive about it.

She also knew that most of the young men who sought to go out with her did so for her money and not for her as a person and over the last ten years she had become highly attuned to the signs that told her what her current escort was really thinking.

But when she met Joel, she fell for him straight away. It wasn't just his handsome good looks or the obviously athletic body under the smart casual clothes he was wearing. And neither was it his velvet-smooth, chocolate brown skin either - or not one of those things, anyway. It was probably a combination of all three together with that weird human chemistry we call love.

She knew the moment she saw him that she loved this man. She moved up to him and introduced herself, engaging him in conversation designed to discover everything there was to know about this dazzlingly handsome young man.

Within a few minutes she had found out that his parents were middle class, his father a minor bureaucrat; that he was a commerce graduate and considered a 'high flier'. That he had excelled at athletics at school and university and still trained and competed.

He thought her very pleasant but he already had a girlfriend - and in any case, knowing who she was, shied away from getting too close. It went against his grain to be seen to be toadying to the boss's daughter. She wasn't having any of that, however, and contrived an invitation for a date.

Joel felt guilty about having been coerced into the date. He was less than outgoing during the dinner and resisted her attempts to pull him into her body during the dance that followed. He also refused to come into her apartment when he escorted her home.

That night she cried herself to sleep, knowing that she wouldn't be getting another date with the handsome young stud. The next morning however, her grief had turned to fury (that of a woman scorned?) and every time she thought of him, her mind flitted from one thought to another, as if it was revolving on two opposing radii, both turning on a single axle: the one with adoration and lust for him; the other with cold fury that sought to wreak the fires of an eternal hell upon him.

She thought up all manner of terrible tortures she would heap upon his beautiful body (which she still hadn't seen more of than beyond his neck and wrists, but knew it had to be superb) and the next second imagined him making the most wondrous love to her.

She pined away and both her parents worried about her, even suggesting she come and stay with them for a while. She refused, thanking them for their concern but knowing she had to snap out of this soul-destroying spiral into which she had sunk.

She was shocked, therefore, when a few weeks later, she read that Joel had been arrested for possession of commercial quantities of drugs. She didn't believe it but it seemed the evidence was irrefutable. Her father couldn't understand it. The boy had been a favourite. He was exceptionally bright and had such a flair for business that he had moved him into his inner think-tank and was even considering promoting him to head up the planning and research department when Bill Smithers retired in a few months.

The young man protested his innocence throughout the trial but the evidence was there and, while it was all circumstantial it seemed proof enough and he was convicted. The penalty these days for serious crime was not jail. Indeed, jails had been abolished decades ago. Nowadays, convicted felons were sentenced to periods of slavery and while Theresa was still flabbergasted that the man she so desired - and so hated for his rejection of her - had been convicted of drug-pushing, now however she also saw the possibilities...

 

Slavery had been reintroduced to the United Kingdom, and for that matter, around the world, as a practical solution to jails bursting at the seams and to their now clearly understood uselessness as deterrents to crime. Slavery was cheap - actually it ran at a profit since it transferred the costs of housing and feeding the prisoners to their owners. And because of the shame involved, it had the other distinct advantage of working as a very serious disincentive to commit further crimes.

Slaves, unlike prisoners, worked out in the public arena and to shame them further, they went naked - totally naked. They weren't even permitted a rag around their loins or, if female, over their breasts. They were all depilated below their eyelashes as part of their initiation as slaves and their scalps were then shaved naked as well. They could be kept that way throughout the sentence if the owner desired or the hair allowed to regrow.

They were not permitted an easy existence and the only cost to the system was the inspectors who regularly but randomly visited registered slave-owners to ensure they were not being hidden away or given a sinecure - say, by a mole paid for by wealthy relatives. Of course relatives and friends were not permitted to buy prisoners. No, slaves had to be worked hard all day and at night too, if desired. Slaves were to understand what they were and that they were being punished.

The system worked extremely well and was accepted by everyone. This was what had gelled in Theresa's mind the moment she watched Joel being sentenced on her wall-screen. Ten years slavery! Ten years of naked toil at hard physical labour. That was all that was open to them... You couldn't employ a slave at office work, no matter what his intellectual capabilities were.

The very next day she drove down to the Central London Slave Admission Centre, having telephoned its manager the moment after she had watched the sentencing. She had a desire to observe him inducted as a slave and then she would make her move.

This was all perfectly legal and quite common amongst the wealthy who might desire to purchase a particular felon as a slave and provision had been made in the centre for stands so that such prospective buyers might sit and watch in some comfort as a citizen was reduced to slavery.