Labor alone could never get you into a city, investment was the only way to build up funds like that, smart investment over time, passed down a few generations until the family had enough of a vault and a name to get past those high walls. Time and effort, and a little smarts, and even that was asking too much of the average Joe. I never really thought of myself as average though. I spent nearly the whole of my forty four years in towns, the poor man’s city, working odd jobs and trying desperately to put the little cash my father left me to work in the stock exchange. He farmed his whole life, and in that regard he succeeded in raising me above him, and it would have made him smile to know I was on my way to have his great grandchildren in one of those glass and steel towers, never having to do any real work for a day in their lives. I think he might have cried if he saw me now.
I sized up to a place worth a sacrificed generation. 86th floor, technically the 87th as well, but the elevator skipped the second on purpose, no need for two front doors. It might not seem like a special number, 86, I certainly didn’t have any draw to it when I read it on the listing, but I didn’t buy the place until seeing it in person, and it was impossible not to see what an 86th floor had to offer. The entire western wall, all two floors of it, was glass, one seamless piece. The view from the main room right there was priceless, the sunsets behind the skyline especially. Thankfully nothing is ever really priceless.
Two master bedrooms, twice as many as I’d ever know what to do with, but there was never a necessary excuse for excess in the city. This was a place where wealth came to die, in a brilliant fire, just to warm it’s master’s feet. The two nearly-twin masters, separate only in their accessories (the size of the closets, quality of the bathrooms, and since the westerly of them was the best in both, it too had a share of the wonderful view outside), both sat side by side and made up the entirety of the enclosed space on the second floor. Outside them, a broad catwalk lined the outskirts of the grand mainroom, with places for seating, viewing, eating or any other excuse for socialization. The bulk of the home, however, came from that enormous mainroom, a living room, dining room and kitchen and office stitched together so perfectly as to leave no scar at all. Each flowed without error into the next, with an open ceiling above for an entire extra floor and the window of a wall, both come together as a perfect illusion. That room might really be never ending. No soul could feel confined in those walls, impossible.
The kitchen came furnished with all the benefits of a new, and expensive, construction. Not a single shelf, cupboard or burner wasn’t wired into the home’s central computer, and with a few presses and a couple swipes, the kitchen could sum up its inventory and go about cooking a meal all by itself. It took me all of two days playing around with it to get used to how it worked, intuitive to an extent yet annoyingly organized when trying to find that one dish with an unmemorable name. I must have loved complaining to find a fault like that worth mentioning.
The television and wrap around couch were nothing worth bragging about, other than how much I loved them anyway. There was only so much comfort you could fit into a cushion, and as long as the screen was big, there wasn’t much else I needed from it. The fireplace was massive, and made for quite a cozy little spot to read with all of its own seating, but it was primarily the view outside that made the mainroom so overwhelmingly impressive. For the whole of the day, I saw the truth of my success, there was no forgetting where I lived, where I made it to, and when the night came, it transformed from a living symbol of my pride to a glowing portrait of the vanity of man, and nature, as always, behind.
For each of the grand master bedrooms, there was a pair of smaller ones just below, four guest bedrooms total for those visitors I wanted to keep beneath me. I could only think of so many uses for any of them, but I wasn’t going to let something like too many extra bedrooms keep me from buying the place. Besides, it had to be worth something to walk into a room the size of one of my old rented places and think awfully cramped in here. It was a novelty that would surely wear off in short time, but a welcomed excuse regardless.
Metal and glass, the sun and clouds, the whole outside was a clash of the world’s most powerful forces, man and nature, those passionate lovers that gave their all to each other, forever, yet could never keep from asserting their dominance, and pushing for the other’s submission. And just the same, within my walls, the technology of man’s latest trivial subjugation of nature’s secrets was hidden behind a stained layer of wood, all around. Plants, big and small, sat in pots to make an oasis out of every cushion, or a piece of living art where a corner should have been. It was all so nice. So alive, and so fake. I could look outside my window at all the buildings around me, and still it was easy for these decorations inside to make me forget I was part of the hive too.
The cost, though, if I could forget it I would, but I’d have lost everything I owned already if I could forget that much money. It hurt just to think of the number, not the kind of money a man could just find walking around, but apparently the exact kind of money a man could find in the corner of the internet. I was an investor, with moderate success, good enough to keep from losing what my father had given me and, for the forty four years of my life, good enough to leave a decent bit more for my children. I had an eye for opportunity, to at least some small degree, and I swiped up little steals here and there as I found them, but I never had the nerve or the excess funds to really make big plays off my finds. It was always dimes into dollars, great returns, but still dollars at the end of the day, but then I happened across a budding industry in desperate need of funding.
War was big business, always was, but I never knew how profitable dropping bombs and shooting bullets could be. That alone should have turned me off from putting money into a mercenary group, peace keepers they called themselves of course, but at the same time I knew there was always a line of people willing to pay a high price just to turn somewhere else into rubble. With all the war going on in the world, there had to be a slot in the market for professional soldiers, but I could see why an offer like that was pushed off into a corner. I put a little bit down, and considered myself rather snart for it.
I was on my way to someone’s house, a family man way out in the country but willing to barter for someone who could help look at his books. I wasn’t exactly a liscenced expert in finance, but I knew a thing or two. My car, an old gas one my father passed down, had finally gone to meet its old owner, and for once there I’d wished he’d sucked it up and raised me to understand those types of things. Not that I mind keeping my hands clean, who would pass up the opportunity, but status is a costly thing, no matter how worthwhile a purchase it may be. Fate said I would have to call someone to fix it, so I could go do work for someone else, and likely end up with less than I started with.
The mechanic came with his tow truck, just in case, and checked me out. Seemed he saved himself some time that day, as he did have to drag me into his garage. He was a gritty looking fellow, the kind to wear his day’s work under his fingernails like an accomplishment, the kind of man that reminded me of my father, and I think that’s what bothered me so much about him. There was no worse a feeling than putting money into the hands of someone behind me in the race to the top. Make habits of it and I’d be the last man left out here. No, it hurt to put someone else closer to my goal than me, but I didn’t have a choice, and by the color of his teeth he wouldn’t be putting anything into savings anyway. I was never going to get anywhere nickel and diming my way above everyone else, I needed something big. I needed to find my opportunity, I needed to find what would set me apart from all the beggars and handymen.
Over the next week, by chance, a sizable number of eggs all hatched at once for me, and I found myself sitting on a hefty pile of money needing a place to work. My eyes went looking for that mercenary group again to see how low their offer was getting now, and I was shocked to see it hadn’t budged a hair. That should have been the second reason to leave them be, but there is a part in every man’s mind that is seperate from the rest of him, and by that I mean completely stupid. I had to find my way up. I wasn’t going to be behind that mechanic. I put everything down on them. Two thirds of my savings was riding with the Ramirez Rangers.
It seemed Ramirez was only an alias, I never would have found out had it not been for my investment, because that man was Jesus Christ himself. I had fantasies of doubling my money and spending just a sliver of it on a nice reward for myself, but I didn’t get double, I got thirty eight times my investment, and more was still coming. I would have loved to say that it was skill, that it was hard work and determination that made me a made man, but it was in large part luck, with just enough smarts to know luck when I saw it, and of course Ramirez, however he did it, turning water into wine, and the ruins of India into pure fucking gold. I didn’t care at all what kind of magic he’d learned or which sort of devil he sold his soul to, not when I got the keys to my new penthouse, not when I spent that first night sleeping like a baby with my face turned towards the city below, not for the next two months of adjusting to a new norm of absolute luxury. Not until I got that first delivery for the Rangers.
I opened my door, one set for my hand only, and there was the box on the other side, a big one. I thought it was a fridge, but it was too thin, like a coffin but made from plastic. I couldn’t tell what it was, and I couldn’t just send it back either, the system had already brought it up and put a picture pasted to the top, picture proof of delivery. The address on the label was definitely mine, my name too, curious, but the sender was written in Chinese. I didn’t order anything from China. I stood there staring at the thing for long enough to look up at the security camera with a tint of embarrassment. I resigned, and dragged the thing inside. First I leaned it against a wall, but I figured it would be best to lay it down instead, softly, but that was a little hard to do with how uneven, and unsecured, the weight was inside. I could not for the life of me put together even the most vague of a guess as to what could be inside, so much so that when I popped open the latches, pulled the long lid back, and looked at the terrified woman inside, I couldn’t believe what I saw.
“Who…” I stumbled over my tongue, “are, are you alright?” She was skin and bone, shivering from either fear or hunger, or both, with big, dark eyes that stood out even more against sunken sockets. She wasn’t alright, not nearly. As stupid a question as it was, she couldn’t understand it anyway. She was south Asian, Indian by the look, fairly light in her skin tone if she was but I had a feeling that she hadn’t seen much sun in a while. With barely anything on her bones, her cheeks were jutting, her chin was sharp and collarbone standing out almost on its own. I couldn’t imagine what she looked like beyond just starving. She didn’t say a word, just laid there and curled into herself feebly.
She didn’t want anything to do with me but once the initial shock of our meeting wore off, she calmed to simply cautious, and deeply untrusting. I fed her, what choice did I have, and luckily she was smart enough to take the food I offered. For obvious reasons, she didn’t tell me anything about herself, but after she ate and rested, then ate again, she had the energy to leave the box she came in and all the straw that was stuffed inside, and I got an opportunity to check that container for answers to questions I couldn’t even put into words. There was only one thing in there, a rather obvious note printed directly onto the plastic on the inside of the lid.
Mr. Hilgrow,
Definitely me.
As a valued investor in the Ramirez Rangers and our peace keeping mission in the PINC region, we hope you are thoroughly satisfied with the tremendous returns of our project.
That I was, well satisfied. I owed every wall around me to their success. I read on, but a sickness started to rise in my stomach. The curious part of my mind started to really ask how all this money came about, and how the Pakistan India Nuclear Conflict (PINC) zone could become a bread basket after getting blown to bits. I had no idea, but I had a feeling, a vague and empty feeling that turned my stomach.
Due to our remarkable success, the value of our acquired assets have steadily dropped on the global markets, and so for the sake of maximizing investor returns, we’ve decided instead to directly reimburse those who made this mission possible with those very assets themselves, rather than that lesser value.
No, no I wasn’t reading this. I shook my head and turned away, but I couldn’t just walk away from knowing. No, I had to keep reading, no matter what it meant about the Rangers, what it meant about me.
As always, we will continue to pay dividends with future profits until such time as our mission is complete, but it is our hope that this share can be appreciated more fully than just another payment. Please enjoy this little piece of our efforts.
W. Ramirez
I remember sitting there for a few minutes just staring at the words like they’d twist and turn into something else, something that didn’t imply I was funding a slave raid.
I played loose with morals before, money does that to a man if he really wants more of it, but there were lines a man never wanted to cross, and then there were lines that never even occurred to him. This was one of the latter. It wasn’t even just the issue of what exactly was going on, but that fact that I actually had to run across it, face to face. I felt like a purse snatcher getting framed for a bank robbery, guilty, but still not taking the blame. I never imagined it could go this far.
I thought up ways to wash my hands clean. I could give her back, the most obvious and direct kind of reversal for the situation. My life would be right back as it was, assuming that it worked, but how am I supposed to lock a girl in a box and ship her away? They could, but I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. And even if I did, what about her? Am I supposed to forget she’d be heading straight to slavers, raiding a war zone? That’s not improving anything, that’s shutting my eyes to it. I couldn’t even try to believe she would survive the trip back anyway, with how horrible her condition was.
I could just open the door and let her out. Free to go. Poor girl would have a hell of a time adjusting, language and probably skills too. The city was by far the worst place for a man to be starting out, especially a woman. I couldn’t be honest without admitting she’d be homeless immediately and would either stay that way, or end up dancing on a stage if not bound and gagged in some man’s closet. But was that really worse than slavery? Well, I suppose, yes, in some ways, in many important ways. Letting her go out in the country might have her fare better, might, but I could still see some nobody pull her in a truck and never let her see the light of day again. Even clearer, I could see her just starving to death on the side of the road. There had to be some kind of group or agency for this, to help a stranded woman get on her feet.
My last idea was to sell her off. If the market for this was as global as Ramirez said in his letter, then I could get a bit of money and get rid of the problem too. That too was just pretending it away, but there was a bribe this time to go with it. Granted, prices were low, so he said, and I figured my conscious would need a pretty hefty sum to not stab me in the back every time I tried to go to sleep. Could I really sell a woman without anyone finding out? It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t impossible. I was being paranoid, of course, but it was another thing to consider, damning my name just as I stepped through the gates. Looking for an agency was my best bet, maybe an anti-trafficking one or battered women’s shelter, something had to be on topic. A little digging around online found a few that seemed to fit just perfect. I took down the contact information and made a plan, but first, I’d have to help this girl come back from the near dead.
Over the next few days I slowly gave her more and more food, up to fully overfeeding her, that’s the goal when the girl was a stick figure. I got her a doctor, a whole process it turns out when you can’t give a name or accurate age, but eventually I found one who didn’t ask too many questions, just if she was another “pinkie” girl. I caught the reference easily enough. There really was a whole industry around this, below everything. I shouldn’t have expected any less with how brazen it was to send a slave to my door, no questions asked. I wondered how well accepted the practice was in this city, maybe Ramirez only sent these girls out to the right addresses. If the feds got their hands on this, they’d have me in a cage by next week. Granted, the feds didn’t have any power in the cities, not anymore.
The doctor had no problems getting us scheduled, but he did have a stipulation, she had to be physically restrained or drugged down, rendered a non-threat either way. Dehumanizing to the fullest, but not exactly illogical. I got the girl a pair of cuffs for her wrists, something soft, and naturally it took a little muscle on my end to get her to wear them. It was an annoyance to get her through the elevator and into the car, though thankfully the elevator opens straight into the garage. Had it been my old gas drinker parked in there, I wouldn’t have bothered to even try driving her there, but lucky me, and of course lucky her since it was her appointment anyway, I had already made the switch to something more suitable for the city. The Egoette was the perfect car for busy and typically dense roads, and the newest model truly lived up the name. It was a tiny thing, just the size for two and no more, with a small trunk under the seats, and why would anyone ever need more? There were modern cars with more storage, if a buyer was short on funds, but I had the change so why be afraid to show that I get everything delivered? It didn’t make sense to pretend I do my shopping in person just to scrimp. There was no wheel, no bulky excessiveness in the front and back like those old things, just slim and sleek. It drove itself, of course, a man would spend quite a while trying to find anything less that wasn’t held together by glue or a dead parent.
She didn’t seem excited at all for the ride, a reasonable response for a girl under personal arrest, and so we each stared out our respective windows while the car began our route. The city looked quite different from below, perhaps she was appreciating the same thing. The view from my penthouse, it put the world into a frame, and zoomed away. Here, though, that same world looked over me, swallowing the sky and putting me on par with the lowest window. There was a picture, my memory lept to, of a church in Europe, a picture I’d come across online, I wouldn’t remember how. The picture stuck in my mind regardless. The building reeked of awe, flaunted the wealth and life that was consumed for that offering. I remember thinking the next night, they must have been terrified of that god. This place, this city, it was a temple itself, a temple to us, the echelon of men, but I couldn’t imagine fearing myself.
Overall it was a pretty easy visit. Seemed she knew well enough to trust a doctor, regardless of where he or she was, and she let him take a blood sample, check her teeth (got an estimate of about 21-24 years old), and he even spotted a few tattoos on her wrists that I hadn’t gotten to see. Her uncharacteristic trust in him kept her from squirming enough to hide them, not until she saw they were already seen. He couldn’t tell me what they were, symbols to my eyes from my distance, but he insisted he could tell there was writing. He suggested I get a picture and look up a translation, a good piece of advice, though not quite worth the bill. We left, and she was somehow even quieter on the way home.
I looked into her tattoos the next day, of course after a struggle to get a clear photo, resorting to one held down arm at a time. Seemed the girl was a working professional before getting scooped up and shipped off, that is, she worked in a brothel. Someone felt the need to ink the hindi word for whore on her right wrist, and the left had some word that didn’t make sense until I realized it was a name, the name of a whore house. I could see why it was something she didn’t want seen. I was repelled by her then, yes, but that wasn’t her resume, it was a branding. She had been property, more or less, and that owner was whoring her out. I didn’t doubt times were hard and opportunities limited in a country halfway blown and burned to rubble, and it was even harder to not pity her when it clearly wasn’t a choice. The world was terrible out there.
Her blood came back that same day, in the afternoon. Nutrition needed a lot of work, and the doctor recommended some supplements in addition to her diet (a hard diet to figure out when it became obvious she wasn’t going to eat meat, picky Hindus), but that was all to be expected. With my new knowledge of her life, I expected to find out even more from her test, and that was next. She was sick, in more ways than one, yet the doctor didn’t blink an eye while he read off the list of everything she tested positive for. Exhausting, listening to all that. Heartbreaking too. Again, I was hit with a well mixed dose of pity and nausea. It wasn’t about me though. In addition to the suppliments, I’d be getting a week of medications to rid her body of all the perks of prostitution, then maybe after that, she’d start getting better. It’d be another blood test until we knew for sure. A week later, she tested healthy.
I couldn’t tell if she knew what I was doing for her, or if she knew what was even happening, as I saw no real change in her mood after her illnesses died away. She kept eating, kept taking her extra vitamins, and over a month she started to look like a new person entirely. Her cheeks rounded to a surprisingly human contour, her eyes kept their size, which would have been a shame to lose, but the bags and sunken sockets around them thankfully went away. Her lips became softer with the rest of her skin, and her hair wasn’t such a dirty mess, gaining a little sheen to the black. She once had a paleness to her before, a hard thing to describe as even with it she was darker than my natural fairness, but some time standing in the grand viewing window took that tint, or lack of tint, away. She gave me no credit though, only a constant need for distance.
—–
Thank you to any reader! If you would like to read any more, I have about two or three of these already edited and ready, too much for one post. It takes time to get smutty.
“Then she’ll swallow his cum, but first let’s just develope some characters a little”
-me
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/ju9cvi/pinc_mf_slavery_wmaf_indian