The Black Gang

Cecilia was considered a bit shorter and certainly too stout for an actress even by standards of the late nineteenth century. A girl of wider girth with ample hips and large teats to match she may have represented one of the more ancient examples of older Yorkshire Saxon stock. It may have been her folk having lived in the West of England for generations had offered little in the way of glamorous opportunities to wayward girls without husbands. Especially those who dreamed of far off places in the guise of assuming the titles belonging to the titled elite and princesses. A fate that most of the common sense working men of that shire would have been hesitant to admit at best to harboring a longing for. The Mediterranean and the Orient beyond were places related only in ale sodden late night boastful tales by ex-grenadiers who had taken the King’s coin and had with God’s good mercy had come back from those faraway shores to live to tell them. Much of this bluster was considered bluff from too many liberal tankards of ale by this innkeeper’s daughter. But the lingering ring of place exotic had nested itself ringing constantly in the ears of her otherwise empty head. This physically ample female taking on certain foreign aires over local ones and remaining ever eager to listen to any late night braggadocio spouted by a pensioner. A mental goal congealing that she would one day take the opportunity to visit these places, given the right opportunity of course. In the meantime somewhat emboldened by her attenuated romantic nature she was subsequently caught in taking a flagrant tumble with the local merchant’s youngest married son. This being someone that had a family in high standing with the local gentry of the surrounding community. And now her as continued near presence posed a moral dilemma for the reputation of the community for peaceful harmonious country values she was considered a person of unpardonable unscrupulous standing. The following Sunday she was called out in church the next Sunday as a Delilah and thus began to descend down the road that eventually led to her banishment format he shire. This event setting in motion a series of events would find her set out unexpectedly set out upon the road engaged upon a journey that would ultimately find her very far afield in such rare places as she had oft heard told of. The pittance that she had in her purse to travel forth affording her a quick passage to London.with was mostly purloined from a random coin here or there snatched swiftly off the table from that previous trade in blindly drunken men gone temporarily sightless. Now in the clutches herself of the vagaries of this same sort of blind luck she arrived at the great metropolis’ meager outskirts with little to sustain her.

Several days of wandering these outskirts of London growing closer to penniless by the hour with little awareness of city slicker guile. The combination of same leading young girls of her age ever closer and in some cases gullibly too willingly to the possibility of falling prey to the iniquitous devises from unprincipled male hands in residence always there. Cecelia being no exception. She became the prime candidate of the hour as the wandered unescorted and aimless into the grounds of a traveling sideshow soon awed by the declared pageantry of gaudy banners announcing the virtues of many exotic acts. Her Svengali spying her from afar in his jet black frock coast with its spectacular gold and green chevron striped vest. A somewhat twisted looking impresario he ran one of the smaller less visited exhibits of the carnival whose banners garishly claimed to harbor the rarest most talented exotic beauties garnered from the four corners of the known world. The four corner described in fact being any corner that he could scrounge the interest of any willing maiden sufficiently down on her luck to have not tasted food for the let day or two. A meat pie and several mugs of brown bitters later accompanied by wonderful tales of the life available as a performer upon the grander stages of Europe entertaining dukes and kings giving him another game hen for his collection. These Baroque tales of faraway places and the accompanying generosities being wined and dined as a minor ’cause celebrate’ by its teller sufficing to assure her of easy opportunity to rise as a star of the theater under his long experienced and well-versed hands. The thought of which no doubt suited her well. Yet at times become tarnished by the arrival of another curvy beauty of over ample proportions in line with her own. It was a bit disappointing to think that she might be required to share her title as the center of attraction with this quickly growing small ensemble of three other women captivated by her impresario’s easy promises of fame and notoriety. Ones that vied in a near to equal robustness to her own bodice and hips. But she felt confident of herself in turning the heads of any likely audience of males much better than the rest in consideration her own previous experience in plying the local lads back in the shire.

The train to Southampton taking the small retinue to a packet steamer south scheduled to dock first at the port of Calais. The size of the ship excited the girls almost as much at the generosity exhibited by their new employer. Once on board each allowed to choose a new frock from one of his two larger steamer chests making up the entirety of his luggage. Though she was unaccustomed to sea travel the embarking of this small company of some four females superintended by her employer and his valet enflamed a newly discovered unkindly desire for ocean travel. Cecelia was sad that their that their schedule demanded disembarking at Calais to catch a train south to make an urgent booking in Marseilles. The ever insatiable demands of being in show business as her employer reminded them all took precedence over any individual desire. A small price to pay for the fame awaiting them. The train journey seemed as arduous as it was swift. The group having to hurriedly make connections at several depots with only moments to spare between stops. The taste of coal dust and periods of monotony betwixt frenzied transfers taking its toll on the exhausted women. After more than a full day’s travel they arrived at their destination on the coast of the blue Mediterranean. A carriage from the depot depositing their weary revue at a small dingy dockside hotel on the harbor’s edge. The fuming impresario having just before stomped about mightily in a display of frustrated rage beside the steam issuing sympathetically in consort from the train’s engine. The source of his discontent coming from a small penciled note that his man had presented him that had forced him to about apologize for the inconvenience of having no lodgings available that day to house his entourage. This situation only to be a temporary one as their accommodation at the Grand Palace Hotel which was in the throws of finishing its highest season of occupancy had overbooked but had promised with profuse apologies that the situation out be rectified by the next day.

The women sighed collectively as they took in the lackluster exterior of the two-story rat trap that to a couple of them was all too familiar to what they previously privy to. In a fatherly tone he twisted at his mustache an consoled the group that it was best that they all settle into these quarters to get needed rest this evening. The early morning would soon be upon them after a good night’s sleep when they all would travel by motorcar to better surroundings in the best part of town where their hotel was located. The impresario’s servant appeared as if by magic bringing forth a carafe of dark red wine quickly passing glasses to the rest. “Drink deeply my beauties for tonight the greatest adventure of your lives beginsI”, said the executor of their collective dreams. “An odd toast?”, Cecelia reckoned to herself? “But then theater folk were nothing else if they were not an odd lot!”, she quipped equally silently. And she tossed back the contents of her glass draining it’s refilling several times in a like same manner. None of the others seeming at all unfamiliar with the free consumption of these heady spirits that all happily toasted. The woozy girls suddenly feeling the fatigue of their trip and the past day’s excitement slogging dizzily up the dingy unlit steps to their respective berths .

The pulsing of Cecelia’s head seemed constant in the dark room within which she was bundled away within. It seem to maintain a constant booming sound that, along with her head, seemed to slightly sway back and forth in an unending cyclical continuous rolling motion. One would have thought that she might have been back upon that previous packet steamer that left them off on the coast of France? It seemed odd to her that she heard other low moans from what turned out to be the a women positioned somewhere just above. She slowly came back to incremental consciousness hearing similar sounds to her side. Laid low she supposed by that damnably heavy dark wine that all of them had so freely consumed. She made the attempt to rise up but realized something restrained her. Laying her head back she found her eyes focused upon three sets of wide straps tightly poised against the slats supporting the thin mattress heavily occupied just above. One of her companions made a gagging noise as if to confirm her equal incapacity in movement. To her shock she was firmly encased in a large sack up enclosing her up to her neck. A coverlet above that which was strapped to her bunk. Startled into a frenzy she looked over into the semi-darkness of the side and heard the sound of muffled voice from other women from the company. It was obvious that they had all awakened to the exact same dilemma of being held in captivity upon similar bunk bed. Her companion heavily testing the bunk’s rafters just above her seemed partly comatose due to the woman’s droning on in a gargling tone. Cecelia tried to speak out but her tongue was unexpectedly restrained by a foreign object. She choked a bit from the rivulet of drooling saliva that skid slowly over her tongue and down pooling in the back down her throat. She flung her head to the side and coughed trying to dislodge it. Her chest now pounded with an absolute terror as the realization that not only was she incapable of moving all her limbs but her tongue was equally sequestered as well. Cecelia impotently moaned out equally in a collective chorus along with her other similarly fettered companions, their speech restrained by the intercession of a brank upon tight upon their the tongue. The hellish device allowing them breath but preventing the possibility of any intelligible speech. Some moments of frantic struggle against these foolproof systems of physical restraint proving only their effectiveness. Despondent, she sank back down into a frustrated fearful silent exhaustion. “What terrors were in store for her now?”, the question echoing about her mind continuously. What had happened? Her mind cycling through all the events of the past week. Questions that in light of her former stolid secure existence of before made no sense. Explainable only in the scenario of being caught within a lucid sinful dream. Confined by her guilty conscience within some form of inescapable ongoing nightmare that she seemed unable to awaken from.

The journey to wherever continued with its uninterrupted vibrationally mechanical hum. Where she and the others were being taken was anyone’s guess and may have by virtue of unending bouts of terror and monotony taken days? A coarse looking swarthy man arriving each day through a small swinging hatch located out of view somewhere to the side serving as there attendant. Their eyes now tested by the interruption of familiar darkness of his tiny lantern’s light. The hollow metallic echo of his footsteps suggesting the location being within some hollow steel bulkhead of a tramp steamer far below its decks. He routinely checked their bonds and carefully dripped water into the side of their mouths so the could swallow it without choking. Cecelia now recalled the many stories told of such ships plying trade as smugglers in slaves throughout all parts of the world. But especially to the Islamic ports of Northern Africa just across the blue waters of the Mediterranean from civilized Europe. The fact of herself now being yet another unwilling member of a shipment of human cargo making its way to such a location gave her a strange sensation. Something barely describable but involving both terror and a small unexpected degree of delight. It was incontrovertible that their dapper dressing impresario along with his swarth assistant were revealed as nasty procurers involved in this loathsome trade. The bunch of them as cargo off somewhere to an undisclosed city located somewhere along the unknown coastline of one of the ruling dependencies of the Turkish empire or its vassals? At least her clothing remained upon her soiled limbs such as they were from the sour cups of soupy broth that were spooned into each of them by their scowling attendant. The endless darkness and the constant ‘rum dum rum’ vibration of a reciprocating ship’s engine somewhere in the next bulkhead producing a hypnotic effect that sent each into more fitful dark dreams.

“Was there such a thing as divine punishment for the collective multiplicity of her petty sins?”, she wondered. Could this be the reason for her current repugnant circumstance after being so easily being tricked into redoubtable company. Now helplessly bundled off to to suffer an uncertain fate? Totally at the mercy of what she had surmised would be the doubtful benevolence of the Mohammedans? As much as her inert limbs ached having been mercilessly restrained, her soul throbbed ever harder with earnest repentance. “If only she could have yet one more chance!”, she tried to sob aloud in a steel restrained gargling tone. Just wake up from this interminable situation and realize it was naught but a chastening dream! She cried to herself in her mind. Try as she might aft more fitful sleep, she always returned to the disheartening reality of that same pulsating dull rhythm beside their dank steel chamber. And, of course, the endless whimpering of her fellow inmates. Trying even harder to fight the mental pictures congealing of herself and her fate at this journey’s end. Tied or chained or worse at the indifferent whim of some malicious Turkish Bey. Or worse yet driven on in the caravan of an itinerant tribal merchant. She had heard stories told by old ‘lifer’s from the ranks who had marched over desert sands the company stopping on occasion dismissed for the night to inhabit Arab bordellos where women of all races were kept interned to serve the baser pleasures of men. The pleadings of the ones newest to the imprisonment having not become used to routinely being despoiled a source of amusement to be laughed at and ignored in favor for the immediacy of quick satisfaction of lust and loins. These pleadings if overheard by a harem attendant leaving the pleader to be faced with a merciless encounter with some form of scourge. Their backs and buttocks soon to be beaten black and blue under the knout applied in the heavy hand by the house’s most trusted ‘papaluna’. Cecelia shivered at the thought of the kind of damage such a weapon might impose upon her own tender flanks.

The steel door burst open. Cecelia realized that in the midst of her fearful muse the engines had slowed and now were coming to a halt. This time several voices announced by a multiplicity of footfalls trailing their trips quarrelsome attendant. Some dark complexion men malformed in appearance and dressed in dirty caftans and red fez’s climbed one at a time through the bulkhead door. Each one directed by their voyage’s attendant towards a particular girl’s bunk. Each briskly releasing the sets of straps holding them down upon their respective mattresses. Each woman still ensconced within their bag tossed over strong wide-shouldered backs. The stevedore carelessly shifting them about like any sack of potatoes. The leader of the group advising them in a strange tongue as they dipped down to load their burden carefully through the rounded enclosure of the opening. Cecelia’s turn coming last. A pair of large dead dark brown eyes floating above her own as she was summarily swayed out and over a burly arm. Her own foul smell unleashed from within the bag. Her own nose unable to block out its animal smell. Or for that matter, to distinguish it from that of the composite body odor of the man who held her aloft. It hovered between a stinging combination of exotic spices processed by unchecked pores and untended bowels. Her heart began to accelerate again in a mortal dread of what the next destination had in store. The small caravan of bundled cargo now brought forth hastily into the blinding light of day. She closed her untrained eyes tight to shield them from the unbearable harsh glare of midday sun. All the while detecting a cacophony of guttural sounding loudly in a chatter from every where about her. What she imagined in her mind’s eye to be a bustling dock replete with every type of imaginable prattle characteristic of of Mohammedan. Their subservient chattels responding in the same incomprehensible unaccustomed manner of speech. Something completely enigmatic and unfathomable to her ear. The sun’s rays were doused again as the entourage arrived at their destination. And each of the bundled were deposed in turn before a rude adobe wall balancing as best they could upon their long untried limbs.

Cecelia opened her eyes to see one of her party slumped upon the ground. The other two like herself bouncing against a wall respectively just below a pair of iron cuffs that dangled from the ceiling just before each of them at shoulder’s height. The smallest most active of the turbaned man bare chested in a red vest stepped forward towards each bundle fielding a small curved shiny blade. It’s sharp reflection eliciting a whimper from the closest girl nearest him. He began vigorously slitting open the cloth covering surrounding starting with the cincture enclosing her neck then sawing downwards to her feet. He then pulled forth the swooning female yanking her upwards to a standing position the pair of cuffs just tapping lightly against the front of her shoulder. One by one he pressed her weak wrists hard into each cuff. The wristlet firmly secured requiring her to totter as best she could shakily maintaining her balance upon her feet straight upright. Her initial attempt to swoon and sink back down cut short by the pain inflicted upon her wrists by the irons attached firmly to the ceiling eyelets above.The threat of further injury to her tender wrists encouraging her to hoist herself back up as quickly as she was able to a standing position. Cecelia gasped in amazement as the gaoler grabbed the top of her bodice and insert the same knife, edge reversed, into its peak. Then pulled the blade’s curve downward splitting the garment into a swaying rag. Her breasts dropping out heavily bouncing. Their rosy tips standing hard and erect from their days of bondage now finally released. Some more studious but furiously applied strokes of the knife and her dress had been deposed into a pile of stinking rags. The woman’s face now contorted in grief as she swayed naked and fully exposed to view. Cecelia felt her own heart sinking as she watched all the eyes of the men sought out the thick matte of her own dark hair covering her most private region.

One by one each woman was treated in kind. The white bodies of each now fully uncovered and shivering performing a nervous dance in place. Their wrists tugging at the irons side to side despite the knowledge of being firmly secured to the clanking chains. Rough male hands dragged down the soft skin of each. Tracing a path through the middle of her breasts down over her quivering bellies. Glancing carelessly over her ‘Venus moons’ eliciting a shiver of the receiver’s loins. Up and down upon the top of each thigh and then back up under the armpit and over each arm. The fews shreds of remaining clothing cleared away. The piles of same now a disused chrysalis and each shivered transformed into a new definition and a new fate. Cecelia felt a cool draft upon her naked thighs struggling to avoid the cold intrusion of men’s stares. To her surprise she felt a rambling sea of mixed emotions burning the interior of her belly. Though fearful of what awful fate the next moment might bring she wintered what one of these men’s fingers would feel like deeply probing within her? An irrepressible unheralded desire suddenly unleashed to willingly push forward to embrace it. The wetness of her own sweat trailing down her front to mingle with her own stirring juices. The sensation building as her mind began to assess the fact of her being completely unclothed and arms restrained on high within a room full of unsympathetic substrata males. The startled wince of the woman right beside her dispelling such thoughts as water from a wooden bucket was tossed. Catching another movement from the corner of her eye the cold contents of another was thrown unceremoniously hard over the woman’s head as she responded dancing angrily in place beneath it. Each in turn receiving the same service. In contrast to the stifling heat flowing steadily through from the room’s doorway each woman stood shaking from the water’s unexpected coldness. She trembled as a sponge was pushed hard across her body unhesitatingly into each of her most remote openings. A second and a third bucket being applied for good measure. The indifference of it all irked her. There was no attempt to force upon her what her own romantic thoughts had recently pondered! What might quickly be expected as a determined unchecked intrusion forcing her into an uncontrollable passion of surrender had not been inflicted? She now became aware that the fate awaiting her was much darker. Something bound up closer in the realm of a form of animal husbandry rather than as a waiting carriage expressly for exotic male pleasures.

An old gray bearded man in a striped headdress hobbled into the doorway. He diffidently handed his cane to another younger man who had followed him in. He growled a bit at one of the handlers in what one might suppose to be a local greeting. Then went over to examine each specimen in detail. His calloused well-worn hands eager to encompass the girth of each thigh and buttock to test its firmness. The pair of his two hands to weigh down heavily upon a the shoulders of each woman as if a beast whose physicality in prospective serve needed careful assessment. Attending more to the underlying musculature of each as opposed to the softness of the surface of a breast or the deepness of each woman’s central female fold. The level of uneasiness grew ever stronger in the pit of Cecelia’s stomach. The man methodically worked his way over each girl continuing to test flesh and muscle, occasionally commenting over his shoulder to the man in the fred fez. The man’s grip was now upon Cecelia. She jumped with a start as his hands encircled her and squeezed hard. Her teeth ground hard upon the steel of the brank that still encumbered her mouth. His grip seemed experienced in female flesh as much as any horse trader might have been back home in her shire. Her eyes closed now, imagining herself back there whinnying just as naked as he reached down squeezed the bottom of her buttock then unexpectedly pulling both both apart to poke at her anus with his hard forefinger. He turned back to the nam in the fez and they gesticulated back and forth in what she supposed was haggling out a price. His back towards them he wobbled upon his cane once more. Many minutes past until a deal was struck. Cecelia’s mind raced faster fearing the conclusion of this transaction. Knowing that it would result in the next installment of what uncertain fate that was irrevocable waiting in store for her. and the other women when this bargain was struck.

The staccato of grunts and guttural utterances having come to finality as the bargain was struck. The universal slap of seller’s hand upon that of the buyer. A Mohammedan salute from heart to head thrown in for good measure. A purse was produced and the old merchant’s attendants produced several sets of items. Each was to serve as attire for his new purchases. The branks were then unceremoniously removed much to the communal sighs of relief by all the women. One by one each woman was fitted with a heavy iron collar secured around the neck, a large metal loop forged upon both front and back. Their newly chaffed wrists released from the manacles hanging overhead and the arms guided around to behind their backs into another set of waiting iron manacles so the pair of the wrist’s of each were firmly seated and hovered attached above the buttocks. A small knotted cloth gag now inserted to take up the task that the steel branks had formerly served. Another large sack of rough material was dragged down over their heads and down to their knees allowing each woman encased within the sight their feet and ankles. The bags were twisted so that a thin length of chain was attached through small holes upon both the front loop and its corresponding twin loop on the back of their collars. The short line of women now properly harnessed together as a small train the old man’s voice was replaced by that of his younger assistant who loudly barked a command at them. With a hard tug they were all pulled along stepping as best they could linked in tandem back into the street at a quick step. The unseen eyes of each naturally focused on the pavement busily struggling to conduct their movement in accordance with the other so as to avoid anything sharp or potentially obstructive to their quick passage. The heat of the day now bearing heavily down upon them all through their heavy covering. Their sweat flowing freely covering their entire bodies copiously dancing in droplets slippery across their limbs. Cecelia felt herself careen along by the neck for what must have seemed a country mile. The smells and sounds of surrounding Islamite’s with their animals passing careless bumping into them with a force that threatened to send one reeling to the ground tugging the others along for the ride. Any temptation to hold back was served with an unexpected blow of what Cecelia surmised was a hard leather crop. She felt her feet gain the smooth surface of wooden planks again. Slivers of restless watery refections blinded her eyes danced from below as it was evident that their ensemble was now being led over a pier. “Were they all being transshipped to some other port?’, she wondered? A hard right turn and a series of short blows guided them up a gang plank. The smell of fresh paint and teak wood along with an acrid smell of smoke. Coal smoke! Something from a ship’s boiler now insinuated itself into her nostrils giving her a start. “What sort of bulkhead would they be confined within this time?”, she wondered. A disembodied set of rough hands pushing the heads of each through a passageway door to greeted them. They were then gathered together in a line within a cabin.

One by one the rough cloth sheathing was dragged from their nakedness after the connecting chains had been detached. The necessity for public propriety to cover their exposed flesh to open view now fully dispensed with. Their group indoors safely cloistered from of public scrutiny of Islamic Sharia. The gags were quickly removed. The sound of collective sobbing from the unfortunate women rose up as they huddled close together in a mass arms still fettered behind by the irons as they all cried. One by one each one was taken strongly in hand. Their wristlets unlocked and tossed in the corner. The women returning to a mutual unfettered sobbing embrace as they shivered arm in arm pressing naked sweaty. An anvil along with a small brazier was now brought forward and placed before them. The women’s cried died to a whisper as new sets of heavy iron shackles were produced by two well-muscled men dressed in hopelessly coal soiled breeches. The arms, shoulders, and chests of the men being completely out of proportion in scale to the rest of their torsos. They pulled a woman away from the group towards the glowing brazier one bending her foreword hard over the anvil her buttocks high and vulnerable. The women letting at communal gasp as they saw one of the men pull a hot iron from the brazier. Its business end an intricate brand all aglow and red hot. Cecelia screamed along with the restrained victim in agony as the iron pressed hard into her flesh with a nasty sounding sizzle. The smell of burnt flesh immediately present throughout the room. They looked collectively a the cabin door which was now closed and fully secured. With no avenue of escape they huddled again like sheep pressing together hard and tight into the cabin’s empty corner of cold steel. Cecelia turned back around to the anvil as the others had turned away to hide their faces in the other direction of the branded woman now choking on her own sobs. One man pushed her down to kneel before the anvil. The other dragging the wrists of each arm towards the open shackle and methodically snapping it closed then inserting a glowing rivet fresh from the brazier into the hole upon the side of the iron fetter. His right hand taking up a sledge and banning upon the malleable rivet. Each of the blows sending a small set of burning sparks bouncing about on floor and exposed flesh causing the poor unfortunate to wince. Each ringing clang of metal on metal sending a collective shiver through the amalgamation of naked female flesh clinging together just opposite. One wrist now permanently secured, the other wrist of the woman was equally attended to with another shackle. The woman now roughly twisted around with each of her ankles presented in turn. The end result being that the woman’s two wrists and two ankles were linked each to its corresponding other by two lengths of three foot length of chain.

In what seemed to be an eternity of time and terror the women now stood silent and downcast. Each one attired in a new set of jewelry. Cecelia’s wrists and ankles throbbing from the heat of the rivets coursing through the shackle. The room seemed to have a familiar throbbing sound. Something in the collective unconscious reentry known but elusive in the midst of all this shock. Something pulling her away from what seemed glaringly inevitable. A slave to be held captive in uncivilized bondage naked and permanently shackled through all future existence. An inner voice prodding her insistently! “Go on say it!” she heard it whisper, “For you entire life!” The shorter of the two giants angrily pointed menacingly at a doorway immediately beyond which was a sharply vertical stairwell that appeared more a ladder downward to the interior of the ship. The second of the brutes now brandishing a small cat o’ nine menacingly up in the air. The first woman receiving a blow from it across her breast. It’s tiny metal scrounges leaving a few droplets of blood quickly forming along the resultant lesions. Crying out in intense pain as he breast bobbed up and down under her hand she clinked along through the opening and down the stairwell. The other three needing no further urging. Down into the interior of the ship their chains singing away with every step they felt the heat rising as they reached each steel gridded platform. The source of the throbbing sound revealed format he surroundings as an idling marine engine. Cajoled along by glancing blows and guttural utterances down turning twice more down two other levels of steep stairwells where they were abruptly buffeted back by another bare-chested evil giant who held them at bay keeping them from descending further into another abyss of throbbing machinery. The heat by this point was beyond bearable of that which was experienced from the sun up topside. The booming sound of articulating motor arms churning away extinguishing any normal level of human speech. The dejected women near to swooning. The stairwell that had led them down from above sat above a hatch composed of closely spaced horizontal iron bars with a hasp. The impression left by the sight of same suggesting a form of prison-like enclosure. The eyes of all the enslaved women obsessively focused upon the big open lock that was attached to the hatch by a tiny chain. All wee startled in unison as it as it unexpectedly swung upwards. A single tree trunk of an arm pushed the gate upward and the large head of an equally malevolent giant popped up through the opening. Over his bare shoulder was a rope tightly digging into the flesh of his shoulder. As he stepped out and over onto the gridded platform he turned to begin hauling something weightily attached to the same rope from below. The shackled women all gasped in unison. At the end of the rope appeared the corpse of an emaciated female. The bottom of the rope tightly looped around the top of her chest underneath her lifeless arms. The inert slumping figure covered in black sooty substance from head to toe. The torso of what was obviously a very dead woman. What had once been a glowing shock of blond hair upon the head of a once young and vibrant face was now a dirty wet mop of coal dust. The man dragged the corpse about roughly tossing it carelessly aside to make room for the group of newly-impressed slaves to pass. A wide evil grin upon his face accompanied a slight sarcastically deferential bow of his head signaling his two fellows conducting the party to urge them forth one at a time into the bowels of what now seemed the hellish chamber of horrors that awaited them below. Every women shaking uncontrollably in animal fear urged on by quick strokes from behind by the cat.

Cecelia felt numb and rubbery as it was her turn to bend down to grab the burning rungs of the steel ladder to descend down to what now seemed a very short and most probably an eternally tormenting end. Was this place in fact a lower circle of hell described by her former in hell that she was condemned to suffer within as a penalty for her immorality? The romanticism of life as concubine now fully flown from her consciousness by the brimstone burning her feet from unbearable heat ever rising as she descended. Her mind a blank, completely eaten away leaving a void containing one simple question as to what had occasioned the final fate of the young woman her remains having just been so carelessly discarded. As she stepped off the ladder her question was immediately answered by the sight of a naked woman in chains that were similar to her own tirelessly working away at diminishing a pile of coal by shoveling it bit by bit into the raging inferno of a boiler’s furnace. Her body hard and toned from unending physical labor. The inmate’s struggling torso clothed head to toe in a slippery blackness. Her nakedness clothed by the addition of a loop of chained padlocked around her waist adding the to rigor of the shackles clinking wildly with every toss of the shovel into the fiery glow of flames licking out of the open portal to the ultimate heart of Hell creating steam for the massive ship’s boilers. Two other women being equally scantily attired in iron shoveling coal with as much energy into two other open furnaces. The small ensemble working at an accelerated pace as if their lives depended on satisfying the boiler furnaces’s fiery wrath. Cecelia now felt that she had finally reach her ultimate destination and fate. To melt slowly within the insufferable intensity of this everlasting heat. She turned to see her other three companions being led to the other bay. Each to her place stopped before the open door as a chain was pulled up from the soot and padlocked tightly around each of them. The wall behind piled with large chunks of coal. Several inert female torsos slumped one atop the other over one of the smaller mounds. One of them stirring with a feeble moan as the the male gaoler having first opened each furnace doors of the opposite bay before the newly cinctured women took his long iron rod and pressed its glowing red hooked end into the side of the top most body upon the fleshy pile. The attendant then slapping hard upon the top of her buttocks with his scourge causing her to contort up painfully and crawl forth in great agony to what appeared to be a small jail cell enclosure located just behind the vertical ladder.

The guard alternately prodding the mass of her buttocks cooling its tip without eh sizzle of flesh from her scarred flesh. Motivating her to crawl faster to her goal opposite of the ceaseless turmoil of broiling heat. He then dropping the iron to run up to stand over her in front of the opened gate, half throwing her half stuffing her completely inside. Cecelia was grabbed by the same man and then shoved and kicked into the confined space on top of the jumble of what turned out to be yet another inmate resting within. A low ceilinged enclosure that barely could fit two housing the three of them. Cecelia’s head crammed awkwardly for a moment upon the pulsating belly of the injured woman who now was fighting for breath. Until grasped by another rough hand to be pushed off the first with a violent shove. “Let the whore breath her last you bitch!”. Cecelia strained backward against the vertical bars of the door that had now been secured shut with a metallic click. The black coal dust smeared face of the woman in the shadows who had pushed her off the other still prostrate now sneered. “Four hours shoveling!” “And four hours rest!” “Non-stop!” “And Forever!” “You can try to squat over the bucket just outside her when your are near to bursting with shit.” “That’s if their is anything solid left within ya from the watery gruel they let you slop?” “Just piss and squirt it out from both ends when your shoveling on the coal spilling from the bunker.” The woman then went stonily silent as she cradled the inert form of the fully spent worker her chest pulsating erratically. Cecelia looked down at the wretch crunched over the thigh of the other coal soot black Madonna cradling her from above. Her quick shallow breaths barely audible. The woman cradling her looking up from her burden. “She won’t last!”, the woman spat out meanly. Then looking with utter hatred in her eyes at Cecelia, “And neither will the bunch of you!” Cecelia let out a short startled scream as she felt herself go faint. “Last . . . ?”, she trembled in a squeaky voice!” “Yeah!” said the other woman. “Die of exhaustion and then get tossed over the side as dinner for the sharks.” “The emir of this stinking island hates Christians.” “The Italians killed one of his relatives!” “We are his prize and gift to view for visiting European ambassadors!” “He likes to show to foreign travelers struggling naked under the lash for a lark!” The woman’s scarred arms and torso bearing fresh scabs from recent blows of the scourge. “Thinks he makes Allah happy by showing us to them shoveling non-stop until he works a few of us to death.” “You’ll see!”, the woman said giving out a maniac laugh. “Maybe the first one to go will be you?” “I don’t give you more than two weeks!” “Maybe three weeks at best!”

Cecelia began to bawl out loud turning away from the howling fiend of her fellow inmate who ponded hard and violently upon the dying torso of the woman who had now had stopped breathing beneath her. “Wake up bitch!”, the crazed inmate screamed as she pounded even harder on the inert form of the expired slave. Looking back up at Cecelia with a toothless grin all of her front teeth having been recently smashed out. “You’ll see!”, the crazed banshee kept repeating endlessly with increasing venom. The three other women were now struggling mightily to respectively lift shovel full’s of coal upward to keep them them level with the open doors of the boiler furnaces. The bare chested gaoler striking out at one bare white back with the full fury of his scrooge. Urging all of his charges to help them conquer their sheer physical exhaustion through motivating them with more hammer strokes from his cat up and down all over their lower backs and buttocks. The flesh on each turning into red stripes dripping blood.The women now trembling mightily with greater exertion. Some still barely getting a shovelful into its intended target but doing same faster. Slowly mastering the feeding of the insatiable raging infernos behind the glowing red iron mouths of each boiler to burn a little hotter. Any near miss spilling coal from a scuttle earning the reprobate’s sweat slick red striped white back another two cherry red welts. The rhythm of each eventually coming into a steady cycle as each tortured soul was getting the hang of the right amount of coal to toss. The big man behind him taking relish in perfecting their aim by the constant threat of yet more pain to be inflicted on their struggling torsos if they dropped the pace. The voice just behind Cecelia chimed out, “They’re quick learners!”, she cackled, “And you’ll soon learn too!” “Ha ha ha!” Cecelia turned back glaring as the other woman with daggers as the former pushed the inert body of the unfortunate’s corpse hard up against Cecelia’s folded legs. She rose up abruptly and turning her hips hard to one side and let out a hard stream of hot urine splattering carelessly about. Much of it splashing across the dead woman’s head. The torrent dousing clean some of the black smudges of its body. Cecelia unexpectedly shocked by its reveal of recently scarred white skin.. “You’ll learn!”, the harpy chortled again. “Why don’t they send a squadron of ships from England to save us?”,loudly weeped Cecelia. “Hah!”, spat redoubtable her cellmate. “They’re all men!” “The emir has them stand up there just above us on the grid.” “They stand there watching us dying at the end of our strength suffering like the condemned from hell saying absolutely nothing.” “If you cry out to gain their attention for help you get hit harder!” “So you learn quickly push your scuttle harder into another pile of rock and just shovel and shut your trap” “You can feel their jizz raining down above sizzling on your bare back!” “You just keep shoveling faster giving them a good show.” “As far as they care you might be their sister or their mother and they won’t help ya!” “They don’t care!” “To them we’re just wild naked animals” “Something out of a zoo to look and laugh at like dirty monkeys!” “The fucking bastards!” Cecelia turned back again towards her former companions. They seemed transformed in some way from women into a more sinister forms of beasts. Their once white skin now peppered gray over red stripes now from the gathering dust of shovelfuls of tossed coal growing slowly blacker. The accumulation of sweat streaking through exposing the crimson exposed flesh torn here and there by the cat’s metal tips. The gaoler seeing Cecelia peering out, her chest hard pressed against the bars exposing the two ruby tips of her large breasts and flicked his lash out at one. She screamed in instant agony looking down to find a welt forming upon the top of one The maniac’s self-satisfied sadistic grin beaming down upon her as she cowered back as fast as he could scramble into the cell’s interior.

The voice from the dark behind her rang out again. “They’ll never touch you like a regular man would.” “Nor poke you between your legs or squeeze your tits!” “Never with their hands at least?” “Only with the lash.” “You won’t get fucked with a bid hard dick in this place.”, the woman’s voice lowered at the end of her outburst into a low grunt. Cecelia twisted sweatily back around dragging her breasts from any potential contact with the hot iron of the bars only to face the tormenting inmate once again. Her tormenter now sat with her own legs pulled back and spread wide apart like the fore legs of a malevolent spider. She was busily shoving three of her spindly fingers hard up as deep as possible into her own vagina. Vigorously pumping the well of her ruby red wet slit like some insane zoo monkey letting out low moans as she began to mount into intensity of a climax and began to spurt. The initial wave of her orgasm now spent. Sinking back for a moment into a more relaxed position the woman now opened her eyes and stared directly at Cecelia. “You better learn this trick fast, my dear!” “It’s the only thing that will keep you going!” “Coal dust and cunt don’t taste so bad once you get into it!”, the woman offered as she smiled wickedly. She slowly leaned forward towards Cecelia suddenly saying, “Maybe you’s like to try some now?” “Hungry?”, shrieked the woman with a big toothed grin as she grabbed hard at Cecelia’s head with her two hands forcing it down towards the wet gaping pink opening at the base of her legs. Despite every attempt by Cecelia to pull away, the accumulated strength gain from a small eternity of the other woman;s shoveling coal overcame all attempts to resist. The woman playfully washed Ceceli’s face with her vagina’s issue. Vigorously rubbing her crotch up and down all over Cecelia’s nose and lips. Another quick spurt of juices then unexpectedly summoned from the hole hurtling out into the poor girls mouth. “Lick me you fucking bitch Lick me!” The stringy muscles of the woman punishing Cecelia screaming. “Lick me or I’ll kill you!” I’ll smother you with my cunt!” The hags revelry was suddenly cut short as a hard male voice barked from outside. The small cell door swung open and Cecelia’s hair was grabbed from behind and she was pulled backwards out the clutches of her insane cellmate. Two arms forced her upwards to the sound of her own chains clanking. She found herself now fully puked to her feet and shoved before the exhausted frame of one of her original companions. The shift was being changed. And it was now her turn to shovel coal and tormented. The loop of chain on the other staggering barely able to stand was now removed and transferred tightly around her own waist. The front of the other woman’s face and body was completely black with a slurry of coal dust and body sweat. The man pushed the unfortunate back towards the cell where the other gaoler fresh from the other set of boilers was carelessly pulling the corpse of the dead woman out of the tiny cell by its ankle. A puddle of excrement trailing across the entrance from between the corpse’s buttocks. The new occupant now was pushed down to her hands and knees and forced to crawl through it. Listless and not resisting she struggled against exhaustion to slide across its slick surface. A gleeful cry rising up from within. Emanating from the toothless mouth of the original harpie as a new victim was introduced to serve her insatiable desire.

The long length of chain was running back through the groove of Cecelia’s large ass. She felt a big hand push her to towards the coal scuttle laying upside down on the floor. Though she was almost five feet away, the heat projected by the furnace as its door was opened seemed as if it might set her head of hair on fire! The instant pain of the cat stroking against her lower back forcing her instantaneous compliance to crouch over to pick up the heavy scuttle. Needing no further encouragement to begin her task she bit the edge of it deep into the cascading pile of coal rocks just to her side to toss them in. Her arms felt like rubber as she lifted it as high as she thought that she could just shy of the open door. The heat pouring from the furnace threatening to boil her eyeballs and she had to shut her lids into a tight squint. A loud crack of steel belt hitting hard into tender flesh helped boost her arms up higher just far enough to spill the contents of the shovel int the fire’s maw. She choked from the pain of the blow. She managed to get another shovelful almost perfectly into the white hot opening’s mouth. Another crack landed on the back of her upper thigh. And then a further one first directly on her tailbone. And as he thought to sink down from the unbearable passion yet another blow reaching up between her buttocks to graze her sex helping her to rise straight back up tottering with a shovel full of coal at the ready. The pain was now beyond unbearable for her conscious mind to comprehend. But her body snapped to like a marionette knowing exactly what was demanded of it. Meticulously scrapping the mouth of the scuttle across the floor to force up another hefty portion of coal. The blows becoming less frequent as she began to adhere to a continuous unbreakable pace. And so it went, on and on and on until she was a mindless robot struggling to best it’s last delivery. Stroke and throw, stroke and throw, again and again and again. Her buttocks like twin granite hard rocks. Her bleeding back growing ever harder the cords of newly discovered muscles bulging forth. The once human mechanism ever on the edge of collapsing! But seemingly ever being able to best itself with every successive attempt. A certain sense of burning now consuming invading he own belly independent of the flames of the inferno before her. The heat within it rivaling the fires that she fed as her own cunt began to throb and tighten harder and ever harder with every successive lift. The release of what seemed to be internal fluids and ocean spilling forth. Drops of it poring from below to sizzle loudly on the floor. And upon the bottom of the boiler’s steel with every thrust forward of the shovel as the coal was thrown. A brutal sense of ecstasy beyond anything imaginable had taken hold of her. Anything that once could have be considered civilized about her dead the wildness of mindless fury having taken control of her soul. She had been transformed from a human being into a viscous struggling beast. A wounded animal caught up in an all out struggle to restructure its former earthly boundaries into that of a demon. No longer pitifully asking for relief for some unexpected mercy. But begging for more blinding heat and the burning slash yet another blow upon her white hot flesh. A completely demented inmate initiated into the paradiss of an eternal Hell.

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