F Campbell - Chain of Jedrah

“Do you wish to be gagged, my Lady?”

“No. I will try not to scream, but if I do then let me.”

“It is time then?”

“It is time, Yousef. Whip me.”

Yousef’s bow reminded Stacie of the deference accorded a good customer when it came time to tender an extravagant bill. The girl bound for punishment acknowledged it with a quiet smile. With her eyes she followed him as he took up his stance. When she had seen enough she turned her lovely head away, smiled one last time at her breathless slave girl, and looked straight ahead of her at the wall. Stacie believed she had never seen anything more beautiful.

Yousef whipped his Master’s naked daughter with immense competence. Having received his orders he followed them: no mercy but a modicum of blood. With a kurbash it was no easy line to draw. He whipped Rannah conventionally from her knees to her shoulders, but he allowed the lash to curl so that hip and belly and thigh were scored as was her back. With care and judgement he cut the tied culprit across the level of her breasts: great snapping thwacks of ringing leather that raised their weal but sent no searching tail to cut either of the twin cones with their scarlet nipples: nipples so vivid that the watcher resolved to enquire if they were dyed for the occasion.

The whipped girl swung and shivered beneath the impact of the length of hide, but she did not scream. She catered to the weakness of her flesh only by panting moans to accommodate the gasping breaths evoked by agony, soon she glistened with the sweat of shock, but her gaze remained steadfast on the wall. Stacie knew she was exerting every nerve and sinew of her will not to scream. For the daughter of Mohammad Yasin a scream would be dishonour.

Stacie watched the wounds mount upon her loved one’s flesh. They were terrible to see, here and there was blood. Yasin was less tolerant of fault in his daughter than in others. Rannah was paying a cruel price for failure to obey. Stacie longed to share the cost, then realised with a thrill of fear that her own day had scarce begun, almost certainly something awaited her.

When the twentieth slash had left its carmine wound upon the naked loveliness of the errant Arab girl the torturer who had delivered it circled her slowly to admire his work and to admire the body on which his tracery of stripes had found a worthy canvas for the brush of his kurbash. For Yousef all that he now beheld was wholly beautiful. Lust had left his eyes, he worshipped. After his protracted moments of homage he made his polite bow, set aside his kurbash, inclined his head once more to the girl bound to the pillar, then left the room and closed the door. Stacie and her mistress were alone.

The silence of the pain room seemed all the deeper for the anguished breathing of the whipped girl, it was the only sound. Stacie stood breathless and helpless watching her love. Instinctively she fought her cords. They fought her back with pain and held her tight. She did not move her feet, the rattle of her chain would have seemed a sacrilege. Rannah leaned against her tractioned wrists, her damp hair against a raised arm. She had not lost consciousness, but her eyes were closed as with a child covering its head with the bedclothes to find a sanctuary from demons. Intermittently her breasts rose from an inhalation that became a sigh, drops of sweat formed beneath her arms and trickled down her flanks, the weight her seeking toes could not support hung cruelly from her punished wrists.

It was a long time before she returned to the world where Stacie was. The bound girl watched the suspended nudity slowly tense, the toes accept a greater burden, the head shake itself into awareness. When the dark eyes focused on Stacie’s anguished gaze the red lips twisted into a half smile.

“Calm your fears, slave girl. I still live.”

“Oh, Rannah, you were wonderful! I would have screamed and screamed.”

“I envy you. It must be good to scream. It is a Jedrah thing that we be mute when whipped.”

“Why has Yousef left you tied now your punishment is done?”

“You should know, slave girl. You were tied as I am. It is a ritual that we stand naked and hurting to reflect upon our sins.”

“Oh Rannah! You have no sins. Are Jedrah fathers always so cruel to their daughters?”

“My father is not cruel. It is I who was cruel by my disobedience.”

Stacie tossed her head angrily. “It is neither of you. It is Jedrah. A girl is nothing here except a body to be used or to be whipped.”

“Come, slave girl, is that truly all I am!”

“I wish I could get free. I want to kiss you . . . No! That is not all you are. I don’t know what any of us are, I’m lost and I don’t care. Now that I’m going to stay forever I suppose I’ll sort myself into the scheme of things somehow.”

The dark eyes became intent. “Stay! Forever!” Rannah smiled, “You do not appear to be going anywhere.”

Stacie told her.

The Arab girl listened quietly, her features softening as though the stumbling words washed away her pain. She nodded understandingly feeling a great surge of love and something akin to awe. “Slave girl!” she laughed delightedly. “I told you, did I not! You seek slavery as a river seeks the sea.”

“Only to you . . . and to Yasin.”

“So you include my father! He has fallen prey to your seduction as have I. You are beyond the dreams of fantasy, I shall whip you daily.”

“Thank you, my Lady. But, please, not the kurbash.” Eyes sparkled.

“That is what I mean! You are a bundle of eroticism so potent you ignite us all, a walking explosive . . . And you don’t even know it.”

Stacie Blair examined the premise and was intrigued. She shook her head positively. “No, my Lady, I don’t know. I think you tease. But if it is so then I think it must be of Jedrah. I was not . . . what you have said, before you brought me here.”

“At least then, you owe this poor desert of ours some small gratitude.”

“l owe it everything,” the tied slave considered. “Oh Rannah, are you sure it is not just you . . . just us!”

“Can you explain away the adoration of Mohammad Yasin. He has just offered you more than any other man in this land would yield.”

It was true! Stacie knew it so. She absorbed the riches of adoration with gratitude, they would sustain her should she be ever tempted to look back. But she suddenly remembered another offering of which she was doubtful.

“Rannah . . . Those rings . . . ! I can’t believe it. But he said today?”

“Well? Are you not proud?”

“But it won’t happen . . . not really . . . will it?”

“Most certainly it will happen. I have just been whipped because I failed to have it done. I was expressly ordered. My father wished it.”

“Why aren’t you ringed?” Stacie asked triumphantly.

“Silly girl! I am not a slave. You are.”

“You have just been whipped as a slave is whipped.”

“I was punished. A girl being whipped has nothing to do with a girl being ringed.”

“If only slave girls are ringed it means some sort of degradation.”

“Don’t be argumentative. I am helpless now, but tomorrow I will not be tied. I can whip you then: if you insist on being difficult. For a slave girl to be ringed is the highest honour her Master can bestow. She wears them with pride. They are of love. Yours will be large and costly. You will adore them.”

“No anaesthetic . . . ?” The question was a vivid fear in Stacie’s mind.

The whipped mistress laughed at her slave girl’s dismay.

“Again you must forgive Jedrah. It is considered that a girl so honoured will bear her pain with the same pride she would bear a son.”

Stacie squirmed. Jedrah had all the answers. She was ashamed of her own feelings: thrill matched fear, excitement countered pain. If told now that it would not happen she would know disappointment. She confessed her mixed emotions.