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AUDIO MEMO; NEENA ALEXANDROVNA TO SVETLANA NIKITECHNA
Physiology has played into my hands and provided an excellent teaching opportunity!
I went to collect Vyera early this morning to get her started on her work for the day. She has had a language lesson each day with regular testing, to make sure she is absorbing what she has been taught. Afterwards, she has been working as an assistant to the Domestic Staff and has been given all the menial tasks to do, such as cleaning the floors in the detention area, pantries, store rooms and so on. I found her sitting on the edge of the bed, looking as if she was trying to squeeze herself into a tight little ball. She was obviously worried about something, but what? I did not say anything at first. I thought ‘If she has something to say then let her get on and say it.’
Here, as far as I can remember accurately, is how the conversation went:
“Gaspazha Neena?” she breaks the silence in the cell.
“Yes rabinya?”
I'm looking at her, still wondering what problem she is conjuring up now.
“It’s, err, well.” I can tell that she’s feeling embarrassed by what she is about to say. She manages to gather herself. She looks up at me and says, flatly. “It's my period. I am bleeding.”
I exude an air of exasperated tolerance. “Oh, is that all? Stand up. Let me see. Yes you are. There is blood on the inside of your thigh. What are you doing about it?”
“Well, I have washed myself. I thought I should stay in my cell and keep out of everyone’s way until the bleeding stops.”
Surely she can't really imagine we'd let her get away with that? But you have to admire her nerve! Now this was the opportunity to teach Vyera some deeper truths about her new situation and in particular, the chance to teach her slavery is not a matter of playing exciting BDSM games as she had done at Inward Bound. I continued:
“I see. And just how long does this usually take?” I look down at her, tapping my foot whilst I wait for her answer.
“It should be over mostly, in two days.”
“Two days? Two days! You think you will sit around doing nothing each month for two days? Why, that’s twenty four days each year. Whoever heard of a slave enjoying twenty four days complete idleness every year?”
“Well, you could let me use tampons. I could still work, then. It's only because I have nothing here. If you could get me some …..”
“Get your tampons? I am your Supervisor! I am not here to go off on errands for you!”
“No, I didn't mean that. I just meant... If I had….. then... Oh! You are so unfair!” She doubles up on herself sobbing.
“Oh, Vyekra!” I shake my head slowly, showing my irritation. “We can't have this inconvenience every month - and I suppose we have to blame your difficulties last week on pre-menstrual tension? Will we have that every month a week before your period comes? We can't have this! I shall ask your Owner what to do. If there are plans to breed you then I suppose we shall just have to put up with all this and keep you intact but if not, we might just as well have you spayed. Have it all over and done with. You would still be available for fucking. All the better, if you ask me. No worries about contraception, hmmm?”
Her look of horror tells me that this is an idea that had never occurred to her before now.
“Vyerka, for goodness sake! What are you looking at me like that for?” I try to convey astonishment at Vyera’s unwillingness to embrace bodily modifications for the convenience of her new Owners. I press on. “After all you are only a slave now . The Owner has complete rights over your body to do whatever they wish. That’s what slavery is, Vyerka. You just accept what is done with you and concentrate on doing what you are told to the best of your ability. If you exceed expectations, you may be rewarded. If you meet expectations you will probably be kept. If you consistently fail to come up to expectations, you will be disposed of. You are as good as the work that you do, as desirable as the service you provide. My advice to you is to be the very best slave you can be and leave everything else to your superiors.”
The girl still stands there, as if she has taken root. She stares blankly at me. Clearly my words have hit home very hard. Of course my threat to have her womb removed is just that; a threat. It is important for her to be as sexually alert as possible, sexually ravenous in fact. In that context, a hysterectomy would be the last thing to do; but Vyera does not know that!
“This is your problem Vyekra. You are not thinking of your new life in the right way. Slavery is a calling. For some, it’s a calling they hear when they are free and they delight in surrendering their freedom to an Owner who is prepared to accept their service. Others – like you – get taken, They have – to paraphrase your Shakespeare – their slavery thrust upon them. So you have to work hard to learn your new calling. Your focus needs be on what is good for your Owner. You must forget your own wishes and desires and only think about what is good for your Owner. Whatever they wish; whatever they desire - that must be the centre of your life. Your time at Inward Bound gave you completely the wrong idea. You are not here to play games – although if you are good, you might get a spanking or get put into bondage as a reward but that is not what you are here for.”
I can see Vyera has been completely taken by surprise at my attack. I press on.
“Here’s how you could make a start. Your period and your hair,” Vyera’s hand goes up to her shaved but still bristling scalp, “they are making you ‘high maintenance’. Think – do you really want to remind your Owner, on a regular basis, about what a trouble you are?” Vyera is staring back at me, open mouthed. “We could do something by having your hair lasered off. Just look at your arm pits and your legs, and your crotch. Just look at the ugly hair sprouting out of your skin. Think how much less trouble you would be to your Owner if you could be permanently smooth. It means a treatment every four months or so, over about two years and, of course, it’s going to be our decision in the end but if you ask me to make the arrangements, then I’m sure that the Owner would be pleased to know you are trying your best. Perhaps even impressed. It will reduce your maintenance time which looks better on our job planning schedules. Less for us to do. You get to keep your working bits and that way some of the men we give you to, will get a real kick out of fucking a fertile slave, especially a slave who has just ovulated and they are fucking her to get pregnant. Nice feeling for the man.”
For what seems like minutes the girl stands wracked by indecision. Both choices I have given her are unpalatable but she knows she has to choose one. I will have wrung it out of her, but, she can still make her own choice, perhaps the last choice she is able to make for a very long time. She can still play one card in this game, if she is brave enough. I have pointed out that this card is still in her hand. She can play or she can hold. If she holds then the card will merely taken away by us in due course. I wonder what she will do?
“Gaspazha Neena?” she says, hesitantly with tears in her eyes.
“Yes?”
“Will you consider taking my hair away please? Forever. To make me easier for you to keep me?”
So she decides and she plays the card! She decides to make a positive choice. It’s a small statement of independence from her but she chose to affirm our interests. Another victory for us!
When I awake, I feel wetness between my legs. I glance down immediately and see blood. Oh, blast! Its ‘the-time-of-the-month’. It had to come, I suppose but I was almost hoping that they were giving me something to stop my periods. Something in my food … I have not had a period in ages. How long is it? One month? Two? I suppose it’s the terror of being here has upset my cycle. What am I going to do? I am naked so I can’t wear pads. There are no tampons. I am just going to have to ask. It is another level of dependence. It makes me feel like some sort of kept animal.
All too soon, Neena breezes into my cell. I am sitting in a tight ball. I have washed myself but I just feel crushed with embarrassment. She immediately wants to know what the matter is. I stutter and stammer and finally get it out. She is a girl, like me. Surely she will understand? But she is just horrible! She deliberately misunderstands what I am trying to say when I ask for some tampons. She starts to rant about how I have to leave games behind and how I should be looking for every opportunity to serve my Owners and how this is a great inconvenience and perhaps they will just have me spayed if they do not want to have me breed.
Have me spayed? Like a cat? Breed from me? Which is worse? I stand before Neena completely aghast at what she is saying! I begin to feel very cold and sick and afraid. I stare at her with my mouth open. I thought she was vaguely on my side, as my Trainer. I thought she understood what I was going through. I thought she cared! But what made me think that? There is nothing in my experience of Neena to make be think she has any benign feelings towards me what so ever. And, anyway, I do know that slavery is about service – what about the time I spent as personal servant to Gerry at Inward Bound and what about the way I have tried to look after Joe? Even though Joe did not properly recognise what I was trying to do.
I stare into a bleak future. What sort of choice is it – to lose my womb and my future or to keep my womb and have my children taken from me as they surely would be? Fear and nausea wash over me. This is so different from the consensual domination games at Inward Bound, so different even from being in the hands of ‘The Agency’. Of course Inward Bound gave me the wrong idea! For goodness sake, they cannot know what real slavery is. To be completely lost to everything you have loved. To be all alone and completely at the mercy of someone who has appropriated your body. Stolen you. Can use and abuse you, at will. Their choice. Their whim. And me? Left. Alone. No one to speak up for me. A future painted in the coldest grey, brown, blue and black.
She seems to come to some sort of conclusion. She suggests that if I ask to have my hair taken away permanently my Owner would be pleased to know I was trying to be less trouble.
My womb or my hair? What sort of ridiculous choice is that? And in the end, I choose to try and save my womb. I ask her to have them take my hair away …
Neena marches out of the cell and slams the door. I am left all alone. Cold. Lonely. Desperate. Bleeding. She is back soon enough and hands me a small silicone rubber cup.
‘Rabinya’, she says. ‘It’s a mooncup. (1) Do I have to tell you which way it goes in? You take it out after three or four times a day when you are bleeding and wash out the contents before re-insertion. Much better for us girls than tampons!’ Us girls? As though we are on the same side? I am just a chattel nowadays. I don’t think I am a ‘girl’ anymore. I am just something that works and causes inconvenience. I think about all the dreadful things she said to me when she had a solution to help all the time. Was this all just to get me to make some sort of choice? Or to teach me that I am really nothing to them?
It happens two days later. The man Andreii takes me to the Medical Room (as I call it). Its one of the white rooms along the corridor where they keep me. He holds my upper arm, very firmly. He wants me to know that there will be no going back. There is another man there I don’t recognise. He is young and tall with curly longish blond hair and grey eyes. He smiles to show a wide, easy, smile and even, white, teeth. He gestures towards the leather and chrome examination couch. I lay down. Andreii sits by the door. The minder. In case I make a run for it? Yes: that’s what I should like to do but there has been a trade – I think. I hope. I have condemned my hair and saved my womb, at least for a little while. I am feeling very low. I enjoyed being shaven because I know I could always grow my hair again. Now I am starting down a one-way street much as I did with my tattoos. By the time I reach the end, there will be nothing left of my hair and no going back. What if one of my trainers at Inward Bound had asked me? Gerry? Charlotte? Celia? Josephine or Joe my husband? Well, I would have gladly given it up for Joe, had he asked. So what’s the difference now? It’s a defeat. That’s the difference. Another one, along a road lined with defeats. I suppose I am just accepting what would have happened anyway: that they would take something from me. The list is getting quite long now: freedom, husband, parents, friends, job, country, language, and now part of my body: part of me.
I realise that they seem to be waiting for me. I look around. The man offers me some dark glasses. I see Andreii has put some on too. The man switches on a machine. It’s white, medical, malignant. He takes up a hand-piece which comes at the end of a long silvery flexible cable (as far as I can see in these glasses). It’s like a snake. He pauses above my right ankle. The snake is breathing cold air onto my skin and then, it bites. A small bright orange light spits onto my skin. Like a rubber band snapping against me. The snake bites and bites and bites, all round my leg and eventually stopping at my groin.
The man pauses. He has kept up a stream of conversation. Some of it is directed to me – a sort of soothing professional noise, like a dentist, not really expecting a response – and some of the conversation is tossed towards Andrei. Coffee appears for them and water comes for me. He offers me a napkin and I wipe my brow. I have been sweating. It has not been a pleasant morning.
After the break, the man starts again. In an exactly similar way he moves up my left leg to my groin once more. Then we are done. Some sort of soothing cream is rubbed into my skin and I am sent off to work. In the kitchens. Cleaning the work tops and kitchen cupboards. It’s as though nothing untoward has happened. Take something from her. Put her to work. It’s what she is for.
On the next day, I am taken to the medical room again. This time, my groin, bum and arms are spat at by the laser; burning away my hair. At the start, I am made to kneel, forehead on the couch, legs spread, bum in the air. They make me spread my buttocks with my hands, to expose all the skin between my vulva and anus. It is so humiliating. He guides the laser over every square inch of my skin. I can’t see but I can feel his progress. Not a spot is left alone. He turns me onto my back. My groin and labia are lasered in an exactly similar humiliating, meticulous way. I am left feeling violated - but then my body no longer belongs to me anymore, does it? I am something which lives inside a body which used to be called Jennifer McEwan and is now called ‘rabinya Vyerka’.
On the third day Andrei takes me back again. Surely there is nothing left to do? My back was not at all hairy and surely they do not want to damage my tattoo? Suddenly there is a pang of fear. Are they going to try and remove my tattoo? Surely not! It’s so big. It’s too big? But it’s an indelible link with the person I once was. Perhaps that’s why even my tattoo has to be destroyed.
The couch can be made to sit up. Like a dentist’s chair. It’s like a chair today. The man motions me to sit and Andreii wraps a broad strap around my upper body and around my legs. They have me so I can’t move. What on earth are they going to do this time? I am so frightened. I start to wail, and the man lays his hand on my shoulder and gently squeezes. He talks. I cannot understand the words but they sound reassuring, soothing. I calm myself and try and deal with whatever is coming. We all put on the protective glasses – and the he begins on my head. OH the bastards! They really are going to remove all my hair! I am going to be permanently bald. Wherever I go, everyone will see a bald female slave! There will be no hiding place. Neena says she is planning to have my slave numbers tattooed on my neck. With no hair, they will really stand out. I will always carry a placard: “Look at me. I am a slave!”
My tears start again. I start to struggle but the straps hold me firm. There will be no escape and all I have left to do is cry and as I cry tears of anger, regret, and dismay. I can feel the laser biting its way across my scalp until there is no patch or nook or crannie which has not been treated. The task is complete. My fate sealed. I will always be smooth always bald, always a slave.
When Sveta gets back it’s almost midnight. She insisted, when she married Anatoly, on keeping her own career - so she can't complain when her job keeps her late.
In the years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union there were exciting opportunities in the new media and Sveta had eventually found her métier in television. Her skills in interrogation and intelligence gathering made her a natural for a programme doing political and economic analysis. Her former superiors in the KGB were also keen for her to do it and helped her on her way. They much preferred to have one of their own doing things like that and although there is no longer an official censor, the media take care not to be overtly and aggressively critical of the Government.
It’s been a long day. The programme she hosts, “The Next Move”, goes out on Channel 1 after the evening news, "Vryemya", at 9:30. She’s well known for her interviews with “movers and shakers’, showing how and why the country is where it is. The debates that follow explore what ‘the next move’ should be. It’s satisfying but it’s exhausting too. The programme’s animated titles shows chess pieces spread across a map of Russia. A red king stands behind a fallen white queen. Sometimes Sveta can completely sympathise with the way the queen must be feeling!
She listens to Neena’s audio memo. At first she is pleased with the way Neena has stumbled across an opportunity to teach Vyera more about her position but then Neena begins to threaten Vyera with a hysterectomy, to force her into a choice and of course, for Sveta this is like running a knife across an unhealed wound.
Immediately she has travelled back in time. She is in the Lubyanka, walking out of Popova’s office, the doctor at her side. As soon as they are in the corridor, one of the security detail falls in behind them. She passes colleagues she knows. They begin to smile and immediately their smiles fade as they see the look on her face, the dark-suited man by her side and the guard behind. What has she done? Is she under arrest? And they slink away from her, back into their offices lest they themselves become infected with whatever crime Svetlana Naidenova has committed. Her memories begin to accelerate. Sveta does not wish to go where they are taking her. She is in the Recovery Ward, vomiting after the anaesthetic, feeling sore and oh! so empty. Still alone. Still an orphan. The chance of living in a family torn from her.
On the audio file, Neena is still speaking. Sveta wipes the tears from her eyes and once more turns her attention to Neena’s voice which seems so self–satisfied. Sveta almost feels she has, at this moment, more in common with the slave Vyera that she has with Neena.
Neena is explaining how she has brow-beaten Vyera into asking for her hair to be lasered off.
Sveta has heard enough. She closes the file and sends it to the Trash Bin – and pours herself a vodka. A very large glass of vodka.
There she sits, sipping the thin medicinal liquid, recovering from her day and from her memories. She recollects some of the photographs taken of Vyera when she was Jennifer McEwan. She really does look beautiful with her shaven head. Outsanding. Statue-esque. Perhaps being smooth permanently will be something nice for her? Something she will enjoy having done?
Sveta knows this will not be so. It is not so much the taking of the girl’s hair but very much the manner of the taking. Today, for Vyera, Sveta has become Popova. She weeps silent tears of regret until at last, she is ambushed by sleep.
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FOOTNOTES
1. Mooncups. Girls will immediately understand the technical stuff here but blokes who want more information should visit their web site.