The shouting continued. I thought there were other bids but I was trying to listen for the auctioneer’s whispered instructions to avoid a punishment, so I couldn’t focus on the crowd’s discordant shouting. I realized my hands were shaking and I was becoming queasy with fear as the awful act of selling me continued.
I beg you to think about and understand my state of mind at what was being done to me, what was happening to me at that moment, and what it meant to my abused sense of self … I WAS BEING SOLD LIKE A COW! I was becoming property!
After an eternity on stage, the noise finally died down, though it never stopped completely. I heard the auctioneer shout, “280,000 nakfa! Tubae!” I’d been sold to someone for 280,000 nakfa – a little over 17,000 dollars. I’d be leaving the Control Institution for Delinquent Women an indentured servant. I was in a panic, terribly afraid of whom would own me, or what I’d be indentured to do.
**********
A matron nurse entered the stage from my right and led me back the way she’d come and off the stage. I’d been in this section of the auditorium facilities when I’d cleaned it with Altaf and Erij. I remembered being curious about this corridor, because it looked like a part of the infirmary. It was a collection of small examination rooms, each containing a reclining chair with gyno-exam stirrups, equipped with a plethora of straps. I didn’t like being taken there. I didn’t want to be bound, and I didn’t want anything else done to me.
My concerns would have been ignored, if I’d even been able to express them. I was placed in the chair, of course, and strapped down: arms, legs, head and chest. The chair was turned so that I was facing the door to the small, white room wherein I was bound when the tall man, who had demanded that I fellate him, entered.
The matron turned to me. “This is Mr. Negasi Senai, Karimah. He has purchased your contract for your remaining six years.”
“You will call me, Negasi, as soon as you are able,” he told me as he gently but firmly squeezed my bound hand. I knew that Eritreans, including Kingdom citizens, typically had only one name, like I did. What appeared to be his surname, “Senai” would actually be the first name (the only given name) of his father. “When we are done here, you will return with me to my place of business.”
“Negasi owns the finest brothel in all of Eritrea,” the matron said, apparently trying to impress me.
“I prefer to think of it as the finest in all of East Africa and the Middle East,” he told her, a faint smile playing over his lips, I think to show he’d taken no offense at what she’d said.
From where I was bound, the words struck me like a sledge hammer! I was going to go to a whorehouse! Based on his occupation revealed by the matron, and the comment about American whores he’d made to me during our encounter, he was going to make me fuck people for money! Money paid to him – not that it made any difference. I WAS GOING TO BE OWNED BY A PIMP! I tried to shake my head side-to-side, to indicate that I didn’t want that life in any way!
My head was bound and I couldn’t shake it to relay my objection to their plans for me. I suppose it was impossible that they’d consider my wants and desires in any way, even if they recognized them. I lay there, bound and still incapable of speaking.
“Her controller is yours, Honored Sir,” the matron nurse said. “You can make of her as you wish, or allow your servants to do the same.”
“That is true,” he noted. “However, I need a few things in place before we depart.”
“I will do whatever you wish, Agha.”
“Does she speak Arabic?” He asked. “I assume she speaks no Tigrinya?”
Tigrinya was the language of the people of Tigrinya, a prominent area within the break-away Kingdom, and probably half of Eritrea. I’d heard the matrons speak of it.
“In the past year and a half, she has spoken nothing, Agha. Like all inmates, Karimah is mute. I don’t know what she can speak or understand. Karimah, do you speak and understand Tigrinya?”
I couldn’t move, of course, nor talk, so I said nothing.
“By Allah’s goodness, woman! Release her head from the strap holding it and her controller from its inhibiting her speaking! Then ask her again!”
I thought that was a sensible request. By the look on her face, the matron thought she might have screwed up with this apparently powerful man. She nervously fiddled with the inmate controller remote she held.
Once again, I felt a tingling in my head. Then I became very dizzy and somewhat confused. From seemingly far away, I heard the matron say, “What languages can you speak, Karimah?”
I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t speak, of course, and my bound hands couldn’t move in any recognizable sign language.
“Ahhrrrggghhh,” I said, involuntarily. I had actually made some sounds! She must have released my mind from its inability to produce speech!
“You can speak, Karimah. Tell Azid Negasi what languages you speak.”
Azid is an honorific equivalent to Mister in English.
I realized then that I could make sounds with my vocal chords, but couldn’t make any discernable words. I tried again, attempting to speak English, my native tongue.
“Aaahhh spekkk Englllesht ahnnnnn Aribbbek, notung elzzeh,” I said. Suddenly, I could actually use my vocal chords, though my control of them was totally inadequate for speaking.
I could see Negasi struggle with my words. Finally, he asked me directly if I could speak English.
“Yaaaah … Yeshhh,” I croaked.
“And Arabic?”
“Yeshhh, I said again.
“Do you realize that I now own you, Karimah?”
I paused and looked into his calm, almost-black eyes. This man owned me. HE OWNED ME!
“Karimah?”
“Yeshhh,” I said.
“Restore her pussy and nipples,” Negasi told the matron. I saw her fiddle with the controller remote. I felt a tingling in my brain, but I couldn’t tell if my nipples, clitoris and vagina had feeling again. After a year and a half, I didn’t even know what that would be like anymore.
“Pleesh, Zir,” I had tried to say “Please Sir,” but it had come out distorted, “Ma bodeesh ish dishrubded and I cand talk properdee.” I was trying to say that my body had been disrupted, and that I couldn’t talk properly. Some of my muscles didn’t seem to respond as I remembered.
“I will try to ask you yes or no questions,” he said then. I nodded.
“Can you feel this, Karimah?” He said, as he rolled both of my nipples between his fingers.
I could! My sensitivity was back! I slurred, “Yessh.”
He touched me between my legs and I felt his fingers on me! Oh! It was so wonderful to be alive there again!
“I see that you can feel this,” he said as I lifted my pelvis to him reflexively.
I could feel it, of course. I wanted to be whole again … as whole as I ever could, at least. I would be forever without my teeth and eyebrows, I knew, and I was also a chubby girl now, so I couldn’t be the pretty American I was before … that I thought I was before. My body could be alive, though.
“I have bought you, Karimah,” Negasi said as though it were the simplest thing. “I intend to take you back with me. You will become a whore in my service. Do you want that, or would you prefer to stay in this place?”
I had enough presence of mind to ask, “Duh Ah haveh choize?”
“Do you have a choice?” He asked, repeating what I’d try to say. “Honestly Karimah, no, you don’t. In a few minutes, you won’t even want a choice. Do you understand?”
He was telling me that they were going to control my mind again, even as they let my body feel once more. I realized that there was no hope of me being my own person. At least not as long as I was controlled by that evil device. That would be six more years … six more years!
I was already changed from the young woman I had been when I arrived here. Beyond the obvious physical changes, they’d played around with my mind. I didn’t believe that my body was
mine anymore. It was a pliable shell that imprisoned me. Its docility was controlled by someone else, other than by me. It would accept commands that whatever the person controlling me wanted it to do. I had a set of compulsions that had pushed my thinking down pathways I would never have chosen for myself. For example, I wanted to be beaten. I wanted to shave my hair, I hated the idea of some things I had truly liked.
We’re the sum of our experiences, our choices, and our likes and dislikes. That makes us who we are. I no longer had choices that I could say were mine, belonged to me, or that I controlled at all. They had tampered with my likes and dislikes. All I had to tie me to my past were my experiences, and those had faded when they had first used the controller to overwhelm me with the new life I’d been forced into. Now my life would be differently constrained and I would be compelled to change again. I feared losing even more of Karimah, or more of Destiny, if that’s who I actually was before coming to this place. Sometimes I believed I’d been her, other times I thought she was just a story, concocted by the phantom Tia that I probably had created in my own mind. Even so, I had to acknowledge that I did think Destiny was in essence, even if not in name, who I really had been.
After a year and a half in the Control Institution, I was deeply frightened and suspicious of authority. Before all this happened to me, I thought that, as a basically good person, the authorities were on my side. I no longer felt like that at all. Everyone not an inmate was more powerful than I, and I was compelled to obey them. I couldn’t avoid obeying; the gripping disturbance that even a slight delay in following orders caused in my mind was awful, all-consuming if I failed to act quickly. Any delay in obeying felt like the worst possible screeching of fingernails on a blackboard confined within my head.
I was a slave. I was more tightly bound than anyone who was simply tied up or chained or put in a cell or a cage. I was bound inside me, down to the base of my mind. They could make me do anything, or prevent me from doing anything. I couldn’t even kill myself for a release from my indenture.
With every one of us in this place, they’d set out to create a submissive prisoner, a model inmate. They succeeded every time. They had wanted to completely alter my personality. They hadn’t destroyed it yet, but it had been forever altered. I’d become a very different person.
I no longer even knew who that person was. I really didn't know Karimah at all.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but this society was just getting started with transposing me.
“Alright,” Azid Negasi said to the matron and me. “Let’s get started. I want to get on the road soon.”
“Of course, Sir.”
“Tell me all the compulsions she has.”
“The usual set plus a few others,” The matron stated. “Of course, she is unable to harm herself unless ordered to do so, and she cannot kill herself under any circumstances. She cannot plan an escape nor actually attempt escape, even to protect her own life. She must remain within the Kingdom to receive the scheduled electronic key to keep her controller from initiating her shut down. I cannot remove any of those compulsions until her sentence is served. As you know, that’s another six years. However, if you should decide to take her out of the Kingdom, arrangements could be made with the Minister of Corrections.”
“I understand.”
“She must perform salat the usual five times per day. She can eat no food which is ḥarām. Ever. Both of those compulsions are permanent. Removing either is impossible.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“I will list the optional compulsions. First, she must obey authority.”
“I am her authority now. She is to obey only me and whomever I designate. I want that compulsion as strong as possible. Make it so.”
The matron did something with the controller and I felt the tingling in my head, as my brain was molded to fit his intentions for me. The matron respectfully asked him to, “Speak the words, Sir.”
He touched my chin to get me to look into his eyes and said in Arabic, “Obey me in all things.”
Vertigo overcame me immediately and the room started to spin. I thought I was going to vomit, but suddenly the spinning stopped as quickly as it had started. I noticed then that he was unfastening my hands from the chair, followed by releasing my head from the forehead band that held it unmoving. He handed me a very long needle with a sharp point.
“Push this through your breast from the center of the underside until it emerges from the top,” he ordered me.
The compulsion to follow his orders was instantly overwhelming, and horrifying. I was unable to control myself. All I wanted at that moment was to please my master. That obedience was the center of my being and for that moment, all that I wanted in life. I reached below my healthy-sized right breast with my left hand and held it up, available for what had to be done. Holding the needle in my right hand, I positioned it at the center bottom of my breast and immediately pushed it through without hesitation. I screamed at the abrupt, stabbing pain but continued to push on the needle until I saw about an inch of the tip emerge at the top. My screaming went on until he told me to be quiet. I stopped yelling at once.
“Pull it out,” he commanded.
I did. I wanted to scream at the repeat of the pain but he’d told me to be quiet. I made no noise as I withdrew the needle that had pierced my entire breast.
“It appears that the test confirmed her obedience,” Azid Negasi said. “Continue.”
“She has a compulsion for daily canings,” the matron announced.
“Really?” He seemed surprised. It wasn’t common among prisoners at the Control Institution, but I’d discovered that it wasn’t exactly rare either. “Remove it. I can’t have her marked with welts or cuts. It will affect business.”
I felt the tingling in my head again.
“Done, Sir. She has a compulsion to smoke. It also causes a modicum of sexual arousal when she does it. Even if we remove it, she’d remain addicted to nicotine, an addiction which is well-established by now. You would have to break her habit, if you didn’t want her to smoke. If you leave the compulsion in place, it would be impossible for her to quit under any circumstances. In addition, it will somewhat prep her for sex, but be insufficient in itself.”
“Hmm … leave it. Dependencies can be useful. If it ignites her sexual pilot light, all the better.”
“She was, but no longer is mute.”
“How long has she been here?”
“A year and a half.”
“That explains why her speech is almost unintelligible, I suppose.”
“Yes, Agha.”
“Can you make her able to speak, but with some difficulty? I want her able to converse, but I want her to have to think hard about everything she wants to say, and have to focus tightly on actually saying it.”
I noticed the matron almost puff up her chest and answer by way of bragging.
“Not all matrons here could do that, Azid Negasi, but I believe I can. May I proceed?”
“In a moment. Can you make it either impossible or very difficult for her to speak English, while making it only somewhat difficult for her to speak in Arabic?”
“Yes Agha, I believe I can do that. The controller allows for a selective aphasia.”
“Let’s try it then,” he said.
The matron told me to start telling about my childhood in English and to keep talking. My diction and clarity weren’t good, not only because I'd been mute for a year and a half, but also because I hadn’t spoken before with my dentures. I could at least talk. As I continued, the matron manipulated keys on the controller she held and then smiled as the tingling within my head began again, though it seemed to go on longer than it had before. My head prickled within and I became dizzy and disoriented for several minutes. In particular, I could tell that my eyes were vibrating rapidly from side-to-side, and I couldn’t make them stop.
I’d stopped talking and she told me to continue or I’d be punished. I started my dialog again
but it was very difficult to find and form the words I wanted. The longer I spoke, the more difficult it became, until continuing was almost impossible. I was able to speak only one word at a time and I could tell words were left out in between what I was able to say.
Five or ten minutes later, I couldn’t exactly tell how long, the vertigo went away and my eyes seemed to stabilize. My Master turned to me and asked, “Karimah, tell me about your last year in school. Use English.”
I didn’t expect that question and I was astonished that he asked it. As a result, I couldn’t say anything for a minute or two. I started to tell him and realized that forming the sentence and speaking it were very difficult. Speaking was much harder than it had been a little while ago when they released me from being mute.
I tried, as best I could, in English, to describe my last year at the university.
“Mash … Mash …Mashter, I wash a gra … shtudent … Archeology.” Oh my God! It had taken me more than a minute to say that. Something wasn’t working right in my head, and in the connection between my head and my vocal chords. In addition, I couldn’t remember the words I wanted to say. “Ah … Ah earned a Mashter’s … uh … “ I had wanted to say “degree,” but I couldn’t remember the word. I knew the Arabic word – it sounded like “sahedra” – but I didn’t have the English word. I tried to continue. A Mashter’s sahedra.”
“Are you having difficulty speaking?” He asked me.
“Ewan, Mashter.”
“Focus carefully on what you want to say, don’t think of anything else. Switch to Arabic.”
I did what he said, of course, and I did find it much easier, though it was mentally and physically exhausting to talk – more than I could attribute to not speaking for eighteen months. “That does help, Master. Thank you for the guidance.” I’d said all that in Arabic. It required concentration, but it was possible for me to speak reasonably. I probably came across as a woman with a slow mind. Which I guess I was, thanks to what the matron had done to me.
I didn’t think my Arabic was very understandable, but it was the best I could do with no actual practice for eighteen months, along with the dentures I hadn’t worn the last time I could speak.
Destiny Taken (Destiny Lost Book 1) Page 29