Tales of the Thousand and One Shades of Alanis, the Goddess (part 7)

7. 
Slavedog training

147 days. 147 nights.

When the heavy iron door opens after 147 days and Yema appears, as always immaculately beautiful in her black silk suit, as always with an expressionless coldness in her gaze, as always with soft, almost floating steps – it is already summer in the forgotten world outside. 

Slavedog has spent the entire winter and the following short spring in GODDESS Alanis’s catacombs. 147 days without sunlight, 147 nights on bare stone and old straw. 147 days of terror, darkness, torture, pain and humiliation. 147 days that have transformed a self-confident businessman who once went by the name of Max Magma into a slave who has given up all thought of freedom and dignity. Into a creature that obeys blindly and trembles with fear at the lift of a red-painted finger. Into Slavedog of Alanis. 

Yema walks down the long corridor to the last cage. Slavedog’s cage. Slavedog’s home for 147 days.

147 days that have transformed the man Mr. Magma into Slavedog. Even on the outside. He hasn’t worn any clothes since his first hour in Alanis’s power. Nakedness now – after almost five months – seems to him to be his most noble state. His skin is covered in scars from countless whippings and canings, from torments with fire, wax, nails, needles, sticks, electricity and sandpaper. His forehead bears Alanis’s mark, permanently and deeply branded. After five weeks, when the brand gradually scarred, the outline was re-tattooed with blood-red ink. Since then, the branded initial A has shone from afar and is a sign to everyone: This creature belongs to the Vampire witch GODDESS Alanis. 

His body hair has been regularly removed over the 147 days, only his head hair has grown into a mop. Alanis loves holding her slaves by their hair, playing with it, pulling it and directing them with it. Slavedog has learned that for her it is another pleasurable sign of power and possession. Slavedog’s nipples have been pierced with needles and rings now hang from them, which are used to attach chains or bells. A narrow metal ring also encloses his penis and scrotum, and the eyelets can also be used to attach leashes and chains. Just as the Queen of the Dark pleases. 

Slavedog underwent the last permanent change just a few days ago: Yema pierced a hole under his nasal septum with a heated needle – without anaesthetic, of course. She then slowly pulled a silver ring through the fresh hole – and closed it with a hard click. It was the final act of his transformation into mere cattle. 

But at the same time, the day of the nose ring was a day of hope for Slavedog. Because putting on the nose ring was a sign. A sign that Slavedog was ready to serve his mistress. A sign that the ordeal of the roughest training could soon be over. 

And so it was. Since the day of the nose ring, Slavedog was no longer whipped, hardly ever beaten or tortured or even bitten and blood sucked (which happened on a daily basis). No more new injuries were inflicted on him, old wounds were allowed to heal, chronic inflammations were treated medically by Yema. “The Goddess wishes you a pleasant sight,” Yema said only yesterday, and it was one of the few times that Yema ever spoke to him in anything other than a curt tone of command. But by then Slavedog knew that this hell would soon be over. 

What awaits him now, of course, Slavedog does not know. 

The Chinese jailer stops at Slavedog’s cage. She is not holding a whip or a cane, but an elegant silver chain that matches the nose ring, finely polished and shiny. She comes to take him upstairs. Up to the villa. Back into the mysterious world. Into Alanis’s chambers. In Alanis’s service. Slavedog kneels in his hovel like everyone else. He feels Yema’s shadow on him in the darkness. His heart beats loudly.

Yema indifferently holds her right foot in front of the bars, and Slavedog immediately bends forward and licks the foot. It is a ritual that is burned into Slavedog’s soul after 147 days, like Alanis’s initials on his forehead: if Yema or even Alanis herself appears before him, he must immediately kiss and lick her feet. Yema opens the bars and fastens the silver chain on Slavedog’s nose ring. A gentle tug is all it takes. Slavedog crawls out of his dirty cage on all fours, crawls docilely next to the young chinese, holding his head close to her feet, as he has learned to do. He is excited.

As he passes the maltreated bodies of his fellow sufferers behind the bars of their cages, step by step, always keeping an eye on Yema’s heels and feet in front of him, it seems to him like a path into the light. Away, just away from here.

Slavedog hears the desperate moans and sighs of the other slaves as if in farewell. Except for the first day, when his older neighbor had murmured something to him in broken German, he never again heard a slave speak without a request from Alanis or Yema. This is because slaves are forbidden to speak to each other under severe punishment. On the second day of his captivity, Slavedog learned that his devilish tormentress has eyes and ears everywhere. He found out because his neighbor was taken out of the cage that day. That neighbor, a 62-year-old balding Brazilian, who had broken the ban on speaking to answer Slavedog’s question in a whisper.

Yema was carrying a long, thin bamboo stick in her hand at the time. She looked coldly at the man, who was whimpering with fear, and said something to him in a language that Slavedog didn’t understand. The old man threw himself on his stomach, crawled to her and begged for mercy. Yema didn’t care. She began to chastise the old man with the cane without mercy. Slavedog stared at the gruesome scene right in front of his cage. The 22-year-old Chinese woman was beating the 62-year-old with her bamboo cane while the man whimpered and screamed and ran his tongue over the feet of the young Vampire, who looked not older than his own granddaughter. All you could hear was the whitsling and hissing of the bamboo, the slapping on the skin, the moaning and crying of the slave. It was an eternity before Yema let go of him. The bamboo stick was bloody. She licked the blood from the stick. She looked down at him like a bug and ordered: “You crawl behind me on your stomach. The mistress wants you to personally apologize to her. And she wants to punish you personally.” 

That was then. 146 days ago. Slavedog never saw him again. His cage remained empty. Spiders went in and built their homes.

Since then, Slavedog has never spoken a word to any of his fellow prisoners and has never heard another one. All suffering for themselves. 40 men in their cages, one next to the other. All alone with their fate and their fear. Slavedog heard nothing from them. Only when Goddess Alanis visited the cellar and dealt with one of the slaves did he hear a name, learn a fate. Signore Bertucci, the emasculated Italian industrial spy. Mr. Gilmore, the formerly proud and arrogant American millionaire, whom Alanis regularly took out of the cage to torture him for hours in the large torture room next door. Mr. Mayr, a former powerful Swiss bank director, now Alanis’s cattle like everyone else here. Names, fates, shadows.

And it goes without saying that all these former men now serve the vampiress as a constantly available meal. It sometimes happened that the Vampire Goddess or her servant Yema grabbed a victim and feasted on him on the spot until there was hardly any life and blood left. When the blood smeared Goddess had enough, she looked smilingly at the horrified Slavedog – and disappeared. Obviously he was still being spared.

But now his horrible time in the catacombs were over, apparently. As Slavedog leaves the dungeon through the heavy iron door like a dog, his eyes fill with tears of happiness and he still wants to kiss the Chinese woman’s feet out of sheer gratitude. But Yema doesn’t stop, so he hurriedly crawls on.

Yema leads him through several successive cellar rooms, none of which Slavedog knows and all of which confuse him, until they finally arrive in a large barrel vault whose walls are divided by open chambers with drains containing water taps, showers and hoses. A washing room. Two naked slaves, whom Slavedog has never seen before, are on their knees cleaning the stone floor of the washroom with toothbrushes and small rags. When Yema appears with Slavedog, they immediately drop everything and scurry into the darkest corner of the vault like woodlice in a sudden burst of light, pressing their faces to the floor, making themselves invisible. Slavedog could hardly look at them properly. They appeared to him like chalk-white ghosts when he entered. 

Yema pays no attention to them. “Against the wall,” she orders. Slavedog follows her lead and crawls into one of the chambers up to the wall. Yema takes a hose, turns on the tap – and points the hose at Slavedog. The jet of ice-cold water hits him with brutal force and sweeps him clean off his feet. And as he tries to stand up again against the pressure of the water, Slavedog hears something he has never heard before: Yema laughs. She enjoys sweeping the slave off his legs with the water again and again.

The slave cleaning procedure takes over an hour. After Slavedog has been hosed down for several minutes, Yema rolls up the sleeves of her silk suit, pulls rubber gloves over her hands, takes a bucket, cloth and soap – and begins to soap Slavedog! 

She systematically circles him, giving brief commands: “Abdomen — On your knees. — Right leg up. –” and cleans every millimeter of his battered body. Of course it hurts in many places, the soap burns, but… Slavedog doesn’t feel the pain. He has the feeling that he has never been treated as lovingly as he is now by this Chinese lady: “– Ass apart. — Back. — Eyes closed –” She nimbly rubs the cloth over his legs, his bottom, his feet, his stomach, his sex… Yema pauses for a moment. She grins.

Slavedog is aroused. Panic strikes him. He is sure that his erection will have bad consequences! But his member remains stiff. Yema grins at him. But then she just says: “Face.” And while Yema runs her lap pen over his face, Slavedog closes his eyes and tries to force his member to shrink. He thinks back to the darkest days of Slave’s school.

He thinks back to the “language lessons” Yema gave him. Because Goddess Alanis was born in the Brazil jungle some centuries ago, he had to learn her motherlanguage. Yema’s method was very simple. She spoke the Portuguese word or sentence to him once, and then he had to repeat it, and if he made the slightest mistake he was beaten. Or he had to kneel on a board of nails until he knew the vocabulary. Or his head was held in a box of food scraps and garbage until he almost suffocated. Yema was always very inventive. There were no rewards for reciting vocabulary without mistakes, unless you want to consider the absence of punishment as a reward. An effective method. After just five days, Slavedog was able to count to one thousand in Portuguese forwards and backwards without making mistakes. After just three weeks, Slavedog was able to understand all the important commands. After just two months, Slavedog could understand what Alanis was laughing about when she turned up in the catacombs and had fun with one of the slaves living there.

While Yema washes his face, Slavedog thinks back to Alanis’s visits to the cellar. She came irregularly. Sometimes not for days, then every day in a row, then not for a whole week. But whenever she came, it was always something special. Something sacred. When she came, a ruler entered the gloomy room. A despot and tyrant, a … goddess! No less cruel than her servant Yema – but still very different. Where Yema beats and tortures, inflicts pain and spreads fear of death, Alanis reaches for the soul of her slave. If Yema’s slave is relieved when she lets go and disappears and they have survived the ordeal, then Alanis’s true torment only begins. For only when Alanis is gone do the thorns of her humiliations close tightly around the slave’s soul and maltreated heart… The blood of the slaves was in a state of constant boiling.

Suddenly Slavedog realizes in confusion that his member is swelling again at the thought of his Goddess Alanis … But fortunately Yema jumps up at this moment and claps his hands once. The cleaning is over. Slavedog immediately jumps onto all fours and presents his nose ring. But Yema sticks out her index finger. Slavedog understands and straightens up on his knees, stretching his upper body. He is rarely allowed to adopt this “upright” position, as his head would almost reach the Goddesses neck. These creatures of the night are petite and delicate as they are cruel and mighty. Yema attaches several small bells to the rings on the nipples – and the rings on the scrotum. She completely ignores the penis, which is still half erect. Only at the end does she reattach the silver chain to Slavedog’s nose ring. She smiles at him haughtily.

“Behave yourself when you’re with your owner,” she says. “Pretend you’re still human.”

Then she pulls on the leash. Slavedog follows her like a decorated dog. His ridiculous little bells ring with every step. He hears Yema laughing softly above him. But he hardly feels such humiliation any more.

Slavedog crawls up the stairs. Bare stone steps, then creaky wooden steps, then marble steps, they cross a huge foyer, Turkish carpets, Doric columns, ornate doors, then up another flight of stairs, soft runners on the steps. Oil paintings of Tsarinas and ancient Queens and female Demons on the walls, Olimpa, Cleopatra, Messalina… Valuable commodes, cabinets decorated with intarsia… Quiet voices, occasionally people hurrying through corridors and rooms… Scents of perfume, flowers, blood and fresh herbs… Light falling through the large windows, oh, the sun… 

Slavedog is intoxicated by this beauty and splendor. He feels dizzy. He staggers along like a drunkard next to Yema, who forces him to keep a better posture with a sharp tug on the nose chain. She wraps the leash around her hand several times and holds him closer to her body… Slavedog can’t distinguish any details on the way, everything blurs in the light and scent, but he notices how the people they pass fall silent and how they hide from Yema. The only permanent sound is the tinkling of the bells on Slavedog’s nipples and his privates. Who are these other people? Servants? Maids? Employees? Members of the Goddesses family? Slavedog wouldn’t know.

Suddenly Yema stops. They find themselves on the mansion’s main floor, which seems as huge as a castle to Slavedog. The Chinese woman knocks on an expansive double-leaf white door framed by exotic plants. Slavedog closes her eyes. They are there.

Yema looks down at him. “You’ll be looking at the Goddess the whole time. Slave posture. Not a sound,” she orders. Slavedog opens his eyes. Yema opens a door, gives the chain a quick tug and they enter.

Alanis is sitting there. 

The sight hits Slavedog with tremendous force.

She is sitting at a mighty old oak table directly in front of the huge window. The sunlight falls into the room in such a way that Alanis is lifted out of the gloom in an unreal way. The light dances around her. Alanis doesn’t even look up when Yema enters the room with the slave. She is working on her laptop, reading something on the monitor, making handwritten notes. This room, decorated in the Empire style of the 19th century, is obviously Alanis’s study. The Goddess appears like an ultra rich business woman with a taste for vintage style rather than a Vampire Queen and manhunter.

Yema leads Slavedog sideways up to the desk. She makes a curt movement with her finger and Slavedog opens his mouth, as he has learned to do. Yema places the end of the silver chain in Slavedog’s mouth. Slavedog closes his lips again and holds the chain in place. Then Yema bows slightly to Alanis and leaves the room almost silently. 

Slavedog, however, squats next to the desk, barely a meter away from Alanis, his upper body erect, his hands resting on his thighs, palms up, the leash stuck in his mouth so that Alanis would only have to take it in her hand if she wanted to. His gaze is fixed on Alanis, only on Alanis and nothing else. His mind is completely filled with the beautiful redhaired witch Vampire. He looks at her without blinking once. He doesn’t dare.

But Alanis ignores him. She continues to work on her computer. From time to time, she takes the handwritten notes, reads through them, crumples the paper into little balls and throws them carelessly into a wastepaper basket on the other side of the desk, which Slavedog can’t see. Every now and then she takes a sip of something.

She wears narrow designer glasses with dark horn-rims, which give her sensual face with its devilish features a slightly more severe nuance. Her long red hair is carefully braided into a plait that falls over her shoulder onto her chest. She is wearing a simple, dark green summer dress by Prada, which ends above her knees, a pearl necklace around her neck, her bare legs end in elegant high-heeled silver sandals by Jimmy Choo, her toenails are painted red.

And she still pays no attention to the adorned slave at her feet. She works with concentration and grace.

Slavedog would not dare to lower his gaze. He looks at Alanis unblinkingly, drinking in the sight of her. The hatred he felt for the woman who had taken everything in his life and degraded him to her animal has given way to a feeling of absolute powerlessness in the 147 days of merciless training. Now she is everything to him. Every fiber of his body knows that this woman can destroy him if she feels like it.

One of her cell phones on the table rings, Alanis answers it and speaks to the caller in a matter-of-fact, business-like voice. Some cool business transaction. Slavedog pays no attention. Then Alanis puts the cell phone away again – and carries on working. As if Slavedog were air to her. 

Slavedog doesn’t move. His eyes remain fixed on Alanis. He knows that she enjoys it. He knows from her visits to the catacombs. She loves being looked at by the people she has turned into slaves and animals. She also loves being told by her slaves what it was like when they lost their freedom and dignity to Alanis. It gives her great pleasure to see and hear how her creatures soften and begin to cry at the memories of earlier times. And then always having to thank the cruel enemy who now owns them.

Suddenly Alanis turns around. 

The look in her brown eyes with their greenish gleam hits Slavedog like a club. The gaze leaps at him out of nowhere like a predator and sinks its teeth deep into Slavedog’s soul. He no longer expected her to look at him. He had been kneeling in the same spot for an hour, his consciousness had drifted off… Now he was terribly frightened and his body began to tremble involuntarily. Alanis looks at him. She smiles.

“Mr. Magma.”

She turns to him. She notices how Slavedog trembles in front of her, how he cannot control his body’s reaction. She laughs softly like an amused girl. She likes that! She crosses her legs and looks at him. For minutes. Slavedog is now kneeling right in front of her. Her dress has ridden up a few centimeters. But Slavedog wouldn’t dare risk a glance at her thigh. Where a spider lives and hunts.

“My Slavedog.”

She crosses her arms and looks at him. She purses her lips in pleasure. Licks her lips. She smiles mockingly. 

“How beautifully you are adorned.”

She lifts her foot and plays with the bells on Slavedog’s sex… She stretches out her arm and plays with the bells on his nipples. Makes them ring. She laughs softly. Then she puts her finger in the nose ring, plays with it, pulls on it very gently – and Slavedog immediately has to follow her movement and tips forward a little, almost losing his balance. Alanis laughs. She lets go of the nose ring and runs her fingernail over the scar on his forehead with the Initial A.

“The time in my cellar has been good for you, hasn’t it? Didn’t it?”

“Yes, Goddess Alanis,” Slavedog replies immediately. His voice is hoarse and raspy. He is no longer used to speaking.

“Did you miss me, Slavedog?”

“Yes, Goddess Alanis.”

Alanis runs her hand through Slavedog’s washed full hair.

“You know what begins for you today, Slavedog?”

“My new life, Goddess. My life in your service, Goddess.”

Alanis smiles mockingly as she plays with Slavedog’s hair.

“Very true, Slavedog. In my service. It is an easy life. Whatever you call it. You don’t have many worries anymore. In fact, from now on there is only one worry you have to have. One single worry, my Slavedog. Do you know what that worry is?”

Slavedog is sweating. He is unsure. “No, my Goddess…”

Alanis smiles. She leans forward a little and takes his face in her hands. She pulls his head close to her face. As she speaks, Slavedog feels her breath.

“Your only worry from now on is that you might no longer please me. Do you understand that, Slavedog?”

Slavedog shivers. He smells her fresh breath of lemon and mint and blood. Her eyes take possession of him. Her eyes change colors, from Brown to Green to Black. He nods. “Yes, Goddess.”

Alanis smiles – and kisses Slavedog on the mouth. She opens her lips and licks her tongue over his lips, over his face. She licks along the scar of his brand with the tip of her tongue. Then she pushes Slavedog’s face away, laughs and snaps her fingers. Slavedog realizes immediately: he falls to the floor and covers Alanis’s designer high heels with kisses.

Alanis’s voice gets harder now: “You are my slave until the end of your days, Slavedog. My private property. It is a privilege for you to serve me. You receive this privilege because you please me. If I no longer like you, I will change you into something I might like better. Into a pig, perhaps, and you’ll live outside in the stables. Or I’ll turn you into my farm dog. Or I’ll stuff you and hang you on my wall as a decorative piece. Or I’ll put you in my bedroom as a bedside rug. Do you understand, Slavedog? You are what I make of you.”

Slavedog licks Alanis’s feet. “Yes, Goddess.”

Alanis smiles and looks at Slavedog. “No, you don’t understand yet.” Suddenly she stands up. Slavedog flinches: “Do you remember the old slave who lived in the cage next to you. The first night?”

“Yes, Goddess,” Slavedog replies hastily.

Alanis nods and takes a step forward. Slavedog is now kneeling directly in front of her. His face touches her green dress. He looks up at her fearfully. Alanis strokes his face. She puts her finger in the nose ring and pulls playfully. “He was talking to you. Although I won’t tolerate it. He knew that. But he just likes to talk so much. I don’t like that. I didn’t like that. What do you think happened to him?” Alanis pulls gently on the nose ring. Slavedog moans softly. “Is he… dead?” Alanis smiles. She pulls on the nose ring again, harder now, so that it hurts. “Come.”

She leads him around the desk with her finger on the nose ring. To the left side of the mighty piece of furniture, which has so far remained hidden from him. Alanis lets go of the nose ring. Now Slavedog sees it.

A head is sticking out of the desk. The rest of his body must be crammed into the left side of the desk. But the head is looking out, facing the ceiling, the back of its head resting on a bowl bolted to the desk. It is the face of the man who had dared to say a few words to the newcomer at the beginning of Slavedog’s imprisonment in the cellar. Alanis stands next to the desk and looks down at his head, which is at the level of her hip. She pats his bald skull with her hand and then lets her hand rest loosely on the old man’s face so that his head is between Alanis’s hip and her hand. Slavedog stares at this demonstration of total ownership.

“This is Dr. Galao. Tell him who you used to be, Dr. Galao.”

The creature gurgles unintelligible sounds. It tries to articulate itself, but is obviously unable to close its wide-open mouth. Alanis smiles and pats Dr. Galao’s cheek.

“No, Dr. Galao, you can’t speak that well anymore. Even though you like talking so much. But I didn’t like that. Dr. Galao apologizes, Slavedog, for not being able to talk about himself. Some hundred years ago, he was my teacher at school. In Brazil. He taught me languages. English, a little German. He at least tried. I hated him as a young girl, Dr. Galao with his arrogance and his lecherous look. And when later I was happily turned into my new immortal existence, i looked out for him and I found out where he now lived and was enjoying his retirement. That’s when I got him.”

Alanis pauses and lets her words sink in. She looks down at Dr. Galao’s face, which lies between her hip and her patting hand. She smiles.

Alanis looks at Slavedog, who has gone deathly pale. “For a long time, I wasn’t sure what to make of him. I never liked him. But you gave me the idea.”  

She takes a small piece of paper from the desk, crumples it up and drops the paper pellet into Dr. Galao’s open mouth. Dr. Galao begins to smack his lips. “Now he’s my little garbage can.”

Alanis looks at Slavedog again: “Now I like him.”

Slavedog understands this cruel demonstration. He bows humbly to his mistress. “I do everything I can to please you always, Goddess Alanis.” Alanis smiles. She lets go of her human wastebasket and goes to Slavedog. She takes the leash.

“Come then. Your service begins.”

Alanis leads Slavedog through the large study to an adjoining room. She opens a narrow door. Slavedog looks. It is an elegant and modern bathroom. With cupboards, washbasin, toilet, shower cubicle and shelves. Alanis leads her slave inside. There is a cage in one corner of the bathroom. The door of the cage is open. Like an invitation.

“So, my Slavedog. You will start as my house slave. There are many other kinds of slaves, but you’ll find out later. Of course, a house slave must not only know his mistress and obey her even before she has given an order. Above all, he must also know the house. You will get to know it. Room by room. You start in this bathroom. It’s the bathroom I use when I’m at work. You will not leave this room until you have gotten to know it very well. Do you understand, Slavedog?”

Slavedog nods. “Yes, Goddess Alanis.”

“You will start today by cleaning this bathroom. Millimeter by millimeter. Floors, cupboards, washbasin, toilet, mirror, lamps. Everything.”

Alanis claps her hands. Slavedog looks around, feverishly searching with his eyes for a bucket, rag, washing-up liquid.

“What’s wrong, slave? I don’t like your hesitation…” 

Slavedog panics and throws his face onto Alanis’s feet. “Forgive me, Goddess Alanis… May I find the cleaning supplies, Goddess Alanis?” Alanis smiles down at her humble slave. 

“You are the cleaning device, my Slavedog. You will use your tongue. You will lick my bathroom millimeter by millimeter.”

Slavedog straightens up and looks at Alanis desperately for a split second. Alanis raises her eyebrows. Slavedog risks no further hesitation and immediately bends down to the floor tiles and begins to lick. Then he receives a shove with his foot.

“You start there.”

Slavedog follows her pointing finger. He guesses where she is pointing. She points to the toilet. 

“I’ll leave the door to my study open. That way I can always see you when I want to. And I want you to stop every five minutes while cleaning, bow to me and say: Thank you for letting me be your slave, Goddess Alanis. Then you keep on cleaning. All day long. The whole night. The next day. As long as I want you to. And now get to work, slave.”

Broken, Slavedog crawls to the toilet. He kneels in front of it. He stares at the toilet. Fortunately, it is in a well-kept condition. Nevertheless, he has to forcibly suppress his surging shame and disgust. Then he begins to slowly lick the toilet lid.

Alanis watches him for a few minutes, smiling. How he licks the lid. How he lifts the lid and licks the inside. How he licks the toilet seat… Then she turns around: “Don’t forget, the whole toilet, outside and inside!”… and walks back into the study in her clacking high heels. She sits down, takes a sip from her cup, but the liquid has gone bitter. She tips the rest into her human waste garbage can. She resumes her day’s work.

After a few minutes, she looks at her watch.

Then she hears from the bathroom: “Thank you for letting me be your slave, Goddess Alanis!”

Alanis laughs softly.

And turns back to her work.

 

TO BE CONTINUED