Stories

 Judged, exposed, and claimed despite bleeding

 

My body had been polished for the occasion: a single glossy sheen of sweat, the patina of heat and exertion, and every limb burnished by the best rough lye they could pour into the troughs. They gave me two buckets of water to drink and none to wash.

 

When my neck and wrists and ankles were secured in chain - fresh chain, cold but already stinging from the forge - the auction master grinned at my owner, and said, “Shall we bring her to the block, sir?”

 

 

If I’d been asked, I would have said I was ready, but no one ever asked. The crowd gathered long before noon, the men stinking of tallow and impatience, the women with their noses wrinkled, pretending not to stare at the lot of us as we were led across the sand. The sun hammered on the pine boards, made the planks so hot that the flesh of my soles pulsed with every step. My nipples ached from the dry air and the teasing hands of my owner, who’d used me one last time in the pen before bringing me out.

 

It was not a quick fuck, either, and he made sure I was dripping with him before I was displayed. I could still feel the heavy slosh of his seed inside, could sense the slickness on my thighs as I walked, even as it mingled with the mucus and blood of my period, as though his ownership demanded permanent marking. He was not sentimental about it; he pulled my hair back after he finished and spat into my mouth as a last joke.

 

The chain was long enough that I could mount the platform without falling, but just short enough to keep my back straight and my arms slightly behind me. That was how the buyers liked to see us: pulled, tense, the muscles along the hips and spine standing out in lines. I had always been praised for my posture. As I looked out, the auction crowd returned my gaze with undiminished hunger, every eye hungry to guess the color of my cunt or the weight of my tits.

 

They had us stand barefoot for contrast, so the high arches of my feet, the length of my toes, the callus and the dirt, all these were visible. Some buyers cared for dainty feet, others preferred them battered and masculine. No one, least of all myself, knew which stance to take, so I alternated: sometimes lifting onto my toes, letting the chain run cool between my ankles, sometimes planting my heels wide to show off the curve of ass and thigh. Was it better to stand demure, eyes down, or to push my chest forward and lock eyes with the buyers?

 

My mother had taught me to never be the first to look away. My mother had also been sold. I tried not to remember the last time I saw her.

 

For a moment, they left me there alone on the block. I lowered my weight slightly, the strain in my legs easing just enough to let the tremor pass, but the chain kept my posture forced and open. Heat pooled beneath me, and then I felt it - slow, inevitable - the warmth slipping down between my thighs and onto the boards.

 

A dark stain spread beneath me, unmistakable, impossible to hide, marking the wood as surely as any brand would mark flesh. No one rushed to cover it; no one cared. I sat there in it, knowing that when they returned, it would only make me more visible, more judged, more theirs.

 

In the front row was the bidder everyone whispered about: the fat man, a mouth like an open sore, his clothes smeared with yesterday’s gravy. He was known to keep three, sometimes four, girls at a time, none lasting long before they turned up dead or “accidentally” crippled in the fields.

 

There was a rumor that he bred them, but the truth was even worse: he liked them broken, the kind of girl who couldn’t run, or speak, or even look at him without flinching. His gaze on me felt like hands.

 

A few feet over, by contrast, the cowboy. His face was lean and sunburned, his boots clean, his hat pulled down so you couldn’t see his eyes unless he looked up - at me, he looked up. There was a strange tenderness in his expression, as if he wished the block would creak and break, that I might fall right into his arms. But he was out of place here, his shirt too white, his jaw too clean. Men like him didn’t buy meat like me, not unless they needed something specific.

 

I twisted slightly against the chain and turned toward him, ignoring the way the movement drew more eyes to me. “Not today,” I said under my breath, forcing the words through a dry throat.

 

“You’ll lose money selling me like this.” I glanced down, just enough to make my meaning clear, then back up at him, willing him to understand.

 

“They won’t want me like this. Wait a day-two. You’ll get more.” For a moment, I thought I saw hesitation flicker across his face, but it vanished as quickly as it came, replaced by the same indifferent calculation that had brought me here.

 

The auction master called out my stats: height, age, milk potential (though my breasts were never full enough to make a living at it), weight, and finally “Prime for cart or sex, but must be kept well-tethered - she has a runner’s frame.” That always got a laugh. I’d never run. Where would I go?

 

“Let’s see the merchandise,” a voice called. The crowd murmured assent.

 

The master came behind me and unhooked the neck chain from the post, giving my collar a quick, sharp tug. “Face forward,” he said, though I already was. He gripped my jaw, wrenched my mouth open, let a few buyers come up and run their fingers over my teeth. I kept my tongue curled against the bottom, the way I’d been taught, so it wouldn’t get bitten or pinched. One of the women reached out and pressed her thumb into the soft spot under my chin, smiling at her husband.

 

They worked their way down: arms, hands, the scoop of my waist, the sharp of my hipbones, the inner thigh. Each area got a comment, each touch was followed by a note written in a ledger. Someone hissed when they saw the dribble down my leg.

 

“She leaks,” said the fat man, and the crowd laughed.

 

“She was used just this morning, sir,” the auction master replied, as though proud of it. He took a rag and wiped the inside of my thigh, not gently. “She’s also menstruating, so you know you’re getting her at her most honest.”

 

A few buyers recoiled at that; others, judging by the subtle shift in their eyes, were more interested now.

 

The auction master spread my legs as far as the chains allowed, then bent to show the crowd my slit, opening it with two fingers for their inspection. “See?” he said. “Healthy, pink, wet as a July melon.” The sun reflected off the wetness, and the crowd pressed closer, each wanting a look at the details.

 

I should have been mortified, but I had long since trained myself to watch them as much as they watched me. There was a power in letting them see, and in giving nothing else away. I kept my expression blank, my breathing even. When he let go, I flexed the muscles of my ass, a trick that sometimes drew a higher bid.

 

“That’s a mare right there,” said a man in the third row.

 

“Looks soft,” said another, “but you can tell she’s strong through the legs.”

 

“She’ll scream,” someone muttered, “first night in the shed, she’ll scream like a feral.”

 

I wondered if the cowboy would like that, or if he’d prefer me quiet.

 

Then the auction master did something unexpected: he slipped his hand between my legs and shoved three fingers inside, twisting as he did, so that the whole crowd could see. “No damage,” he called. “Tight as the day she was made.” He pumped once, twice, and my body jerked forward on reflex, the chains pulling tight against my collarbone.

 

They all watched as his fingers came out glistening with semen and a trace of blood. For a second, my shame was so bright I saw only white, but the feeling that followed was stranger: a pulse of pleasure, not just from the touch, but from the look of hunger it drew from the cowboy, whose jaw now set in a rigid line. I wondered if he could smell me from there.

 

“Shall we start the bidding?” the master asked, his fingers still wet.

 

The fat man raised his paddle immediately, not even bothering to wait for the opening number. He called a sum higher than anyone else on the block that day. The cowboy hesitated, then matched it, but his voice broke as he did. He didn’t have the money, not really.

 

Round and round, the two of them, every bid a tug on my soul. I found myself hoping for the cowboy, and hating myself for the hope. Why did I care who bought me, when I would end up the same?

 

As the numbers climbed, so did my arousal. Maybe it was the heat, or the hunger in their eyes, or maybe just the way the master had handled me, but I felt my body slick and ready, as if being sold was a kind of courtship. The crowd pressed so close now that I could see the sweat on their upper lips, the pulse in their throats.

 

When the final bid came - a number so large the master whistled and bowed - it was the fat man who won, of course. The crowd jeered the cowboy, who stood silent and then turned away, his boots scraping the sand as he left. I watched him go, my heart a stone.

 

“Sold!” said the master, “Sold to the gentleman in the blue hat! Come claim your property.”

 

They led me down from the block and into the chain-room, where the blacksmiths did their real work. My old owner’s marks had to be removed, the new owner’s set in their place. They unlocked the collar, the manacles, the ankle cuffs - one by one, until for a second, for the first time in nearly a decade, I was free of iron. The absence of weight made me dizzy; my limbs floated, my head spun.

 

But they did not let me savor it. The new owner’s man had already prepared the next set, heavier than before, with shorter links between wrist and ankle, so that even kneeling would be a strain. The collar was thicker, too, and the blacksmith had to hammer it shut around my neck, sending little sparks down my skin.

 

They chained me hands behind, marched me to a cage in the back of the auction house, and locked the door. The fat man’s handler came by, pressed his nose against the bars and sniffed. “Smells like you’ll last a while,” he said, and then he left, laughing.

 

I waited in the cage, feeling the weight of the new iron, the stickiness between my legs, the dull ache in my pelvis where the master’s hand had been. I remembered the look in the cowboy’s eyes, the color of the sky above the block, the sting of sunlight on my skin. I tried to move my wrists, but the chain was too tight.

 

This was my price. This was the auction’s mercy.

 

When night fell, they would lead us out by torchlight, and I would go to my new life with the iron biting, but also with the knowledge that for one moment, on the block, I had belonged to myself. Even if only in the way I chose to look back at them, unblinking, unwilling to flinch.

 

Even if only for the heartbeat before the new chains closed.

 

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