Claudia felt her stomach turn over as the ship lurched beneath her. For a moment, the young woman felt like she was about to throw up. She reached for the metal bucket in her cell, but she managed to hold it down. Even if she had managed to avoid throwing up, one or more of the other captive’s hadn’t been nearly so fortunate. The stale air of the ship’s hold held the distinct reek of vomit. Outside the ship, rain poured down, waves lashed at the large yacht as it powered its way through the rough seas. Even down in the hold, Claudia and the other slaves could hear the water pounding against the hull.
The former school teacher looked through the bars of her cage, looking at the other poor girls, sharing her prison. In the three days since they had been purchased from the slavers and brought onboard, Claudia had had a chance to get to know her fellow slaves. The women were not kept gagged, except as punishment for talking back or some other disobedience. The sailors didn’t seem to care if their cargo talked amongst each other, so long as they didn’t try to plot escape or insult their new masters.
In the cage, directly across from Claudia, looking rather green as the ship continued to rock in the storm, was a tall, slender blonde woman named Diana Rose, a former waitress. Late each evening, she’d help close and lock up the place, and then walk back to her apartment. The slavers must have been spying on the young woman. They’d learned her normal route, and jumped her, along a dark, quiet street. Despite her struggles, Diana had been dragged into the slaver’s van, and trussed up for the long ride back to the slaver’s dungeon.
Next to Diana was a slender brunette named Katherine Willis and past her, a blonde named Jane Baker. The two of them had been stage actresses, or wannabe’s at any rate. They had gone to an open audition for a new stage production. One at a time, the women were brought back to meet with the director who told them part of the play would involve the female lead being tied up on stage and suggested he tie them up. It was only when the hapless women were trussed up and gagged did he reveal his real purpose: to kidnap and sell the helpless women into slavery.
On Claudia’s left, lying on her pallet, was a short Asian woman named Amanda Lee. She was the oldest of the slaves, at 31. Before her abduction and enslavement, Miss Lee had been a manager in an office building. She’d come home from work, one evening, to find three men ransacking the place. Before she could run, she’d been grabbed, bound and gagged. The robbers were not, themselves, slavers, but unfortunately for Amanda, one of them had contacts with the white slavers and he convinced his partners to take Amanda with them. The poor woman was helpless to do anything as she was picked up and thrown in the back of the burglar’s van with the rest of the loot. They sold her to the white slavers, who in turn sold her to Miss Chang and her criminal syndicate.
The final slave, another tall, athletic blonde named Brittney Parker, the youngest of the six at 18 years of age. She was, or used to be, a cheerleader at her high school. She and the other cheerleaders, and their coach, had taken a bus to an away game. During the game, one of the slavers secretly replaced their bus driver. Excited over their team’s victory, none of the girls had noticed anything wrong until, during the bus ride back, the man suddenly pulled off the highway onto a small, deserted stretch of road and stopped.
Suddenly, three more men rushed onto the bus, brandishing pistols. The frightened girls were quickly cowed, as the slavers went down the line, confiscating the girl’s cellphones. The frightened cheerleaders had their hands cuffed behind their backs and were gagged. After a long, terrifying bus ride, the newly captured slaves were brought to the slaver’s base.
It was amazing how much simply sharing their stories with each other, discussing their fears and sorrows, helped to restore their sanity. Of all of the miseries Claudia had endured since her abduction, the worst was her enforced isolation from her fellow captives. Being able to talk again did much to distract her from all her other miseries…
***
“Come on, slaves!” One of the sailors called out, mockingly. “Put some effort into it!” He swished the leather flog in his hand threateningly, warning them what would happen if they didn’t toil hard enough to suit him.
Glumly, Claudia wiped the wet rag across the deck of the ships, cleaning. Her knees ached, from kneeling on the hard wooden boards. The storm clouds of the previous day had cleared up. The hot pacific sun shone down out of a clear sky, making things uncomfortably hot for the young woman. Luckily, there wasn’t much risk in sun burn, the sailors had been more than happy to make sure all of the women had been thoroughly rubbed down all over with sunblock.
Beside Claudia, two of the other slaves were busy “swabbing the deck” as the joking sailors had teased. She didn’t know where the others had been taken, or what task they’d been set to by their captors, but she knew one thing: it would be some menial, degrading task, designed to break down their wills and prepare them for the life of slavery that awaited them.
Scrubbing every inch of the large yacht’s deck by hand, performing exercises, pushups, sit ups while wearing shackles. Once, the girls had been forced to write out, by hand: “I am a slave. I must obey.” 1000 times…and then, there was the…other part of their training…
Claudia’s cheeks blushed as she dunked the rag into the bucket of soapy water next to her. The chains of her shackles rattled as she returned to scrubbing the deck. Her hands were cuffed in front of her, with only a few inches of chain.
Nearby, the sailor on guard decided one of the slaves wasn’t working hard enough to suit him. The leather flog swished through the air as he brought it down suddenly across Katherine’s naked backside. The young woman howled in shock and pain, her cry muffled by the large ballgag fitted between her teeth.
All of the slaves were kept cuffed and gaged at all times, whenever their captors took them out of the brig, to discourage any thoughts of escape the women might still have. A few times, the ship had come within sight of land as it traveled down the coast. At times, the shore seemed close enough Claudia thought she could jump overboard and swim to it.
But not with the heavy manacles locked on her hands and her feet. She knew she’d be quickly dragged to the bottom. All the poor captives could do was watch in agony, as the ship turned back out to sea and freedom, so tantalizingly close, slipped off into the distance. More than once, Claudia had contemplated throwing herself overboard anyway, letting her bonds drag her under. Surely a quick death by drowning would be better than the years of awful captivity that lay before her.
Each time, the young woman had balked at the thought. Even the life of a slave was still life. She didn’t want to die yet. And while she was still alive, there was always still the faint hope of escape or rescue, however slim a chance it might have been.
While these thoughts went through Claudia’s mind, another sailor came up to the deck to the group. “We’re coming up on the spot. Get these slaves below decks.”
The first sailor nodded. “Yes sir. Come on, ladies! Time to come in. You can finish swabbing the decks later!” Along with the other two, Claudia stood up and shuffled after their guard toward the hatch. Over her shoulder, she could see the green hills of land coming closer as the sip steered towards the coast.
Claudia ducked under the hatch, descending the steep staircase into the bowels of the ship, as best she could with her feet chained together. In the bring, the women’s restraints and gags were removed, one at a time, and the slaves were forced in their cages. When the final girl was locked in, the sailors turned and hurried out, shutting the door behind them.
Trapped in the windowless room, the women could only speculate what was going on, amongst themselves. They had no way of knowing what was going on outside of the walls of their prison, save for the faint motion of the ship as it bobbed in the waves. Still, one thing quickly became apparent to the captives: the ship had come to a stop. They’d all felt the muffled thump when the hull had brushed up against a pier of some sorts.
Had they arrived at their destination already? Claudia wondered quietly to herself. It hadn’t even been a week since she and the other slaves had been brought onboard. But if they weren’t, then why had the slavers stopped? For the better part of half an hour, the women anxiously discussed the question, and what each possibility could mean for them.
Suddenly, with a rattle, the metal hatch opened and one of the sailors entered, and he wasn’t alone. Claudia saw the rope in his hand. He tugged on it and a moment later, the naked young woman at the other end of it shuffled into view. Behind her were three more captive girls. All of them were gagged with tape and their arms were bound behind their backs with rope.
They also had an expression of horror on their faces and looked to be on the verge of tears. The poor girls cringed at the touch of the sailors on their naked bodies, as their bonds were removed. One of the men walked past the caged girls, unlocking four more, empty cages, to accommodate the newest prisoners. Glumly, the trembling captives were herded into their cells and locked in. One of the girls was placed in the cage on Claudia’s right.
“What’s going on?” The younger girl asked, nervously, after the men had left, shutting and locking the door behind them, as usual. “The woman…she said we were…were…going to be made into slaves. That can’t be right? Can it?”
“I’m afraid it is.” Claudia said. She remembered how scared she’d been to, in the days after her kidnapping, after finding out she was going to be sold into slavery. After days upon days of captivity, terror had slowly given way to miserable acceptance. These girls couldn’t have been kidnapped very long ago, she guessed. They hadn’t had time to come to terms with what had happened to them.
“My name is Claudia…Claudia Donavan.” She said, as calmly as she could. “What’s your name?”
“Natasha…” the younger girl replied, her voice trembling. “Natasha Braun.” The three other girls introduced themselves as well; Molly, Susan, Paula. The youngest of the four, Molly, was eighteen, her friends, Susan and Paula were a year older. Natasha, the odd woman out, was 22. Natasha and Susan both had dark hair, while Molly and Paula were both blond.
Gradually, in fits and starts, the four told their stories. Several had to hold back tears, as they retold the traumatic events that had brought them here: naked, caged, being shipped to a far off island, to begin their new lives as sex slaves.
They were all college students, on spring break. Apparently, the yacht was currently docked, somewhere, off the coast of Mexico. The four of them had gone, as a group, to a nightclub, one evening. Once a few drinks had lowered their guard, somewhat, one of the girls had accidently revealed they were travelling as a group, with no one else. The girls’ next round of drinks had included a dose of knock out drugs. They’d come to, later, in a back room, stripped, bound and gagged.
The helpless girls had spent two nightmarish days and nights, held captive in the backroom, by their kidnappers. Their pleas for release and their frightened questions fell on deaf ears. The hope that they might be held for ransom gave the four some slim hope.
Then, earlier today, their captors had come into the room, accompanied by a strange woman, Miss Chang, who had been negotiating with the men. Money changed hands, and like that, the four found themselves sold into the international slave trade. Helplessly, they were dragged out of the room to a waiting car and were stuffed in the trunk. After a horrifying ride, they’d been brought onboard this ship and informed they were now slaves.
As the other captives filled in their new companions on their own stories, the ship’s engines growled into life, and it slowly pulled away from the dock. It turned, and sailed once more out to sea…