“Okay you lazy sluts! I suppose that’s all the work I’ll get out of you today, but you’ll have to work harder tomorrow to make up for it!” With the rest of the slaves, Maisy gave a sigh of relief as she set down her tools. Despite the overseer’s words, she and the other captives had, as always, toiled to the point of exhaustion in a vain attempt to avoid feeling the short, braided whip he carried across their backside. 

The young woman turned and shuffled out of the fields, the fetters around her ankles and the chain joining the shackles on her wrists and the steel collar around her throat rattling noisily, along with the similar restraints of the other captives as they too made their way to the near edge and lined up for inspection.

There were nearly a dozen slaves on the farm now, three of them young men, the rest women and girls in their teens or early twenties. Some, like Maisy, had been waylaid while backpacking in the nearby mountains. Others had been stolen away from their homes by their captors on ‘hunting expeditions’ like the two most recent captives, a pair of sisters, the youngest recently turned 18. 

What their captors planned for their victims long-term, none of them knew for sure, though snatches of overheard conversations between the men about “taking them to market” at the “end of the hunting season” filled them all with dread. Not that there was much they could do about it. A few had made escape attempts. One girl had made it nearly a full mile through rugged woods before her hunters, well familiar with the countryside, had tracked her down and dragged her back to be severely punished. This left the slaves with only one option: work hard and try to avoid punishment as best they could. 

The overseer went down the line, counting his captives to ensure all were present. When he was satisfied there’d been no more escape attempts today, he gave the order: Left face! March!” That facing led to the barn where the slaves were penned up each night, like livestock. But before they reached it, and the meager rest the slaves could find there, they had one final ordeal. 

Glumly, Maisy lined up with the rest of the slaves against the side of the barn. Like the rest of them, her naked body had picked up a fresh coat of dirt and grime from toiling out in the fields. Ordinarily, she would have welcomed the chance to clean herself off. But the slaves didn’t clean themselves.

As the captives stood waiting, the overseer went to the side of the barn. He unfurled the long hose from the reel installed at the corner. Stepping in front of the line, the man raised the hose, pausing a second, a grin on his face, before he turned the valve at the end. A jet of water arced from the end, hissing with the pressure. The first few girls it hit squealed. As always, the water, coming up from underground cisterns, was icy cold. 

Standing near the middle of the line, Maisy waited her turn, doing her best to steel herself, but as always she couldn’t help but yelp as she came under the hose, the jet of cold water stinging her naked body even as it blasted away the dirt and muck. 

“Turn!” The overseer called, once he’d reached the end of the line. Maisy and the other slaves turned in place, exposing their backsides to the hose as their captor went back down the line, cleaning the rest of them. After a minute or so, they stood, dripping and shivering, but as clean as they could be under the circumstances. 

“And march!” Sighing with relief, Maisy obeyed, trudging with the others towards the barn. As she did every evening for the last few months, once back in her stall, she would fall to the ground, instantly asleep. And before she knew it, it would be morning again, time to wake up and trudge back out for another exhausting day of slavery…