Zelamir

Tragedy in Black

Chapter One

Somewhere on the floor were his pyjamas. He knew he ought to be wearing them and that he had better put them back on before his mother came into his room in the morning to get him out of bed if he wanted to avoid comments and awkward questions. He thought about putting them on again now but decided against it. He liked the feel of the bed clothes against his bare skin and somehow being naked gave an added reality and immediacy to the stories and pictures that his imagination seemed increasingly to conjure up out of nowhere whenever he was alone.

He knew they would start again very soon. He felt already that disturbing but very exciting stirring down below that signalled their approach. Nobody had said anything to him but he knew instinctively that he had to keep them secret. It was not only the feeling and the strange but the very enjoyable sensations that followed it accompanied by some peculiar physical reactions that persuaded him of that.

The very nature of his imaginings made him feel doubly guilty. He couldn't understand really why such thoughts should excite him but he knew that he and his kind in particular should not get pleasure from them. After all his grand-dad or his great grand-dad or his great great grand-dad, he wasn't sure really how long ago it had all happened, must have experienced in terrifying reality from what now, in the comfort and safety of his bed, he got that strange guilty pleasure in imagining. And so, when he came to think of it, would his gran or great gran or whatever and that made it much worse.

But still these thoughts came. Even now his comfortable little bedroom with its single bed, computer, a poster of Ledley King in his Tottenham strip stuck on the wall, cluttered with all the other possessions of a healthy twelve year old boy, was being transformed into the dark creaking hold of a slave ship in which he lay crammed in among other naked and chained Negro boys.

He was just beginning to imagine the smell the heat and the terror when a noise from downstairs jerked him back to reality. He didn't know what the time was but he was pretty certain that it was very late. Long after the time his Mum and Dad came upstairs to bed.

He listened intently. Again he heard a faint noise from below. It must be his Mum and Dad he decided staying up late to watch the television or a video or something. He was sure they would be up soon. After all Dad had his job to go to at his construction company and Mum would need to be up to get them their breakfasts.

He pushed his imaginings of the middle passage from his mind. He knew Mum would look into his room when she came up to bed. Just, as he told himself, as if he was still young. It was unnecessary now but he rather liked it. It was sort of reassuring. Anyway he didn't want Mum catching him when he was doing things.

Nor Dad either for that matter. He thought Dan was the best Dad he had ever had. He didn't ignore him like Winston and Graham, nor make fun of him like Randy, nor hit him like Len, though Mum had put an end to that one in short order. Dan was really nice to him. It was Dan who had bought him the computer and the television for his room and his new football boots as well. And he spent time with him, took him to watch football games and other outings, talked to him seriously almost as though he was another grown up. It was like Dan was his real Dad which was funny because Dan was white. But that didn't matter except that sometimes when he was imagining things Dan would be the captain of the slave ship or the plantation owner.

And his house was good too. Before Dan Mum and he had always lived in what he recognised as pretty crummy flats. Dan's house mightn't be as big as the houses of some of the other boys in his school but it was really nice, standing by itself and facing onto the park with its football pitches and ornamental lake and big green house full of tropical trees.

The noises coming from downstairs were getting louder. It sounded like Mum and Dad were watching a really violent video which was funny because neither of them usually went for that sort of thing. Just look at the fuss they made when he brought that video game back from school with girls being chopped up in it. Sometimes he knew grown ups said one thing and did another but not Mum nor Dan either for that matter.

Cassius swung his legs out of the bed and padded quietly across the room on bare feet. He eased the door open. Now he could hear the sounds much more clearly. It sounded like his Mum and Dan talking but their voices were strangely distorted. He could not hear the words but his mother's voice sounded somehow huskier and softer than usual while Dan's was raised and had a harsh demanding tone. It didn't sound as if they were exactly quarrelling. Indeed Cassius wasn't really sure what it did sound like.

Drawn on by curiosity he stepped out onto the landing at the top of the stairs. Still he couldn't work out what was being said. From their voices it sounded almost as though Dan was angry and Mum was pleading with him. Anyway it seemed to Cassius that something was very wrong.

Very quietly he began to descend the stairs. He felt he had to find out what was going on and he was certain that the two grownups were making so much noise and were so involved in whatever it was that they were doing that he was quite safe.

He crept across the hall. The door to the sitting room had not been properly closed . That no doubt was why he had heard those noises in his bedroom. A strip of light fell across the floor of the darkened hall from the gap on the hinges side of the door.

He applied his eyes to this and gasped as shock drove the breath from his body. His mother dressed in what appeared to be the briefest of shifts was crouched on the floor one arm thrown up in the air as if to ward off a blow. Over her towered Dan stark naked a thick leather strap doubled in his right hand. Cassius's eyes focused on the man's cock, jutting erect and curving, scimitar like, from his dark forest of pubic hair. Used to his own small boy's prick he was surprised at its size. He was also surprised at the amount of hair on the man's body. It wasn't just round his crutch. A thick pelt of coarse red hair covered his chest and spread more sparsely over his shoulders and back.

Cassius recovering a little from his initial shock realised he could now hear as well as see what was going on.

"Get that nigger arse up in the air bitch," Dan grated and cut down with the belt catching the cowering women across her bare flank. There was the sharp crack of leather striking naked flesh.

Cassius forgot his slave fantasies. He forgot his own nakedness. The man had hit his Mum and he had to defend her.

He hurled himself through the door and onto Dan, grabbing at his right arm, his only thought to stop the man striking his mother again.

Dan, suddenly attacked by a naked black boy tried to shake him off. Later Cassius would remember that Dan made no attempt to hit him with his free hand. At that moment though the only thing he was thinking about was hanging on to the man's arm and stopping him hitting his Mum again with that strap. Desperately he sank his teeth into Dan's wrist. "Jesus Christ," Dan yelled and tried to jerk his arm away.

"Mum's got to help me," Cassius thought as he fought to retain his grip on the man's arm. She was fast enough helping him the time Len started to hit him, going for the vicious lout like a wild cat and raking his face with her nails.

This time though was different. Cassius felt her close behind him, reaching round him to catch hold of his hands.

"Cassie, Cassie," she pleaded, "let go. Please let go. You don't understand sweet. You really don't understand."

Cassius relaxed his hold on Dan's arm and the man pulled away. Blood welled from the bite in his wrist and trickled down the back of his hand. He clasped his injured wrist with his left hand attempting to staunch the flow of blood. Dan saw that his cock had shrunk and now hung limp and shrivelled between his legs.

"Liz," he said as he gathered his clothes together from the floor where he had abandoned them, "I'm sorry to leave you with this but I think I'd better go. "

"There's no need Dan 3;" Cassius's Mum began.

"It'll make things easier all round if I do. Try and explain things to the boy 3; if you can 3; please. I 3; I'll telephone tomorrow morning. Cassius please belief me it isn't really what it looked like."

With that Dan scuttled from the room. Cassius thought he sounded once more like the mild mannered gentle person that he was used to.

"What' does he mean Mum? What does Dan mean it isn't what it looked like? What don't I understand?"

Liz sank back into a chair and buried her head in her hands, the white shift riding high up her thighs.

Cassius heard the front door slam and a car engine start in the street outside. Dan must have pulled his clothes on in the hall and hurried out of the house, half dressed in his eagerness to get away.

Cassius suddenly aware of his own lack of clothes moved his hands to cover his nakedness. He would have fled to his own bedroom but his mother's obvious distress held him fast. He couldn't leave her when she was so deeply upset.

Liz sat huddled in the chair her head bowed for what seemed to Cassius an eternity. At last she looked up at him her lips trembling.

"Cass," she said "I don't know how to tell you dear. What you'll think of me I don't know 3; I'm so ashamed 3; I won't do it ever, ever again 3;We'll pack up and go 3; I'm sure we'll find somewhere else to live" and she began to cry.

Cass had never seen his mother cry before. She hadn't ever cried in front of him, not even that time she and Len had fought. The slaps Len gave her had only made her wilder and fiercer and in the end Len was the one who backed off. To see Mum, his champion, who had faced and overcome so much reduced to tears bewildered him. All he could do was to hunker down by her and throw his rams round her neck.

Liz drew her son onto her lap and buried her face in his tightly curled dark hair.

"Cassy," she said, speaking in a low shameful whisper, "people are odd and get their thrills an things in all sorts of funny ways. I just wish you weren't going to find that out from your Mum. Dan and I 3;"

"Yes Mum,"" Cassius prompted her.

"Dan and I," she said speaking in a rush, "Like to pretend we're back in Jamaica or the Southern States and he is my master and I am his Negro slave only he calls me nigger and Cassy, I'm so ashamed, I enjoy it."

Cassius hugged his mother tight. It was as if he had been released from a grim dark prison. No longer was he alone with his strange and up to then shameful thoughts. He didn't any longer have to hide things from his Mum or from Dan. At the same time he was very nervous. Nervous about how he was to explain things to Mum nervous about what was to happen afterwards. He turned his face towards his mother, burying it in the side of her neck, breathing in her comforting familiar smell as he thought out what he was going to say.

Liz hugged the naked boy to her, not knowing what was going on in his mind, but grateful that he had at least not fled from her in disgust.

"Mum," Cassius said when he had worked out what he had to say in his head, "I'm the same. I get the same ideas. We could all pretend together if Dan and you would let me."

Cassius, with his simple direct boy's mind had expected a quick and enthusiastic acceptance of this suggestion and was startled when that did not come. Instead Lizy remained silent for a good few minutes as she thought things through.

She was a responsible mother and wanted to do the best thing possible for her son. She wanted him to be happy. She wanted him to do well in the world. She wished he had been spared the instinct for service that was so powerful a part of her own nature. She wished that he had not stumbled upon her own and Dan's shared fantasies at all and certainly not at so young an age. On the one hand she thought she should gently but firmly reject her son's proposal. Tell him that such things were for adults only. He should concentrate on his school work and his football and put such imaginings out of his mind. Maybe if she did that these urges would pass.

On the other hand she knew from her own experience how strong those urges were, even before you were twelve years old and how they were liable to increase in intensity, rather than to diminish, as the years passed. As Cassius had them perhaps it was best to absorb him into Dan and her own games rather than to leave him to find a release for his fantasies with some stranger with all the attendant dangers of that course of action. She would much prefer her Cassius not to have these tendencies but as he did have them wasn't it better to accept it and act accordingly. She and Dan, she told herself, would at least provide a relatively safe setting for him to act out his fantasies and could ensure those fantasies were kept in bounds. Perhaps in thinking like this she forgot that it is the nature of fantasies to grow ever wilder and more extreme and this is never more so than when people with similar fantasies meet together.

"Maybe Cassy. I'm not sure. I'll have to discuss it with Dan and see what he says." She knew whatever her own opinion she could not commit Dan without discussing the thing with him.

"But Mum what do you think he'll say?" Cassius demanded disappointed at so lukewarm a reaction.

"Cassy darling I just don't know."

"But what do you think Mum?"

"Well maybe. If Dan says yes."

And with that uncertain endorsement of his suggestion Cassius had to remain content, despite a number of ever shriller and more plaintive efforts on his part to get a more definite commitment from his mother, until he was ordered back to bed.

Chapter 2

Previously it had not occurred to him that anyone, especially anyone of his colour, could find excitement in such sick fantasies. Believing this he believed also that he was uniquely wicked and depraved. Over and over again he tried to banish these thoughts from his mind and over and over again they had returned increasing his feeling of guilt and loneliness, self disgust alternating with brief but frequent periods of high excitement. Isolated by his own ignorance, only half understanding the urges that racked his young mind, he lived a life of secret despair and guilt from which he escaped only through brief solitary fumblings.

Not of course that he was constantly miserable it would be a very strange twelve year old who was that. Boys are creatures of the moment and Cassius, despite the underlying misery, had many happy moments. He was happy playing football, hanging out with his friends, on his outings with his Mum or with Dan, even occasionally in class at school. But when he was not occupied, then the thoughts and the feelings of guilt and isolation would fill his mind and torment him.

Now he had discovered that he was not alone. The two people he trusted and loved most in the whole world, his Mum and Dan were companions in that cruel but fascinating world of domination and subjection. It was the end of pretence and deception between his Mum and himself. He had someone in whom he could confide and with Dan someone who could, if he chose give reality to their shared fantasies.

But the relief of finding that he was not alone was tempered with fear.

Would Dan come back and if he did would it be to return their old happy existence together, spiced now with an added excitement, or just to reclaim his house and eject Mum and himself? If only he had stayed in his room and minded his own business and not interfered. But if had done that he wouldn't have known about Mum and Dan and all the exciting but frightening possibilities that knowledge brought would not exist. Still he didn't have to, when he came downstairs, get involved. He should have waited and seen what was going on and then crept quietly back to bed leaving the adults to get on with their game. Then he could have told Mum about his own fantasies the next day or later still when they were alone together leaving her to tell Dan. Instead he rushed in, bit Dan on the wrist and drove him out of the house. If Dan did chuck them out he thought miserably it would be all his fault. Mum wouldn't say anything but he knew it would be so.

Even if Dan didn't chuck them out it didn't mean that he would be willing to allow him to become part of their game. Mum wasn't sure he would and Mum should know one way or the other if it was certain.

And if Dan did let him join in how hard would he be on him. Cassius remembered the explosive crack of the strap against his mother's bare flesh and her squeal of pain. He had never had the strap but it had looked and sounded pretty fierce. He didn't want to be hurt, not really badly hurt. He knew getting hit was part of being a slave. That was how a slave was schooled and kept in order. He just hoped Dan would not be too harsh on him. But if he was would he be able to take it? He imagined kneeling naked on the ground, Dan standing over him the strap in his hand. He felt the familiar exciting tingling in his crutch. His hand crept down towards it.

'I won't need to make sure I get my pyjamas on before Mum is around in the morning. I don't have any secrets from her now,' he thought as he entered a world of cruel white slave traders and harsh masters and naked Negro boys.

Liz, alone in the bedroom she shared with Dan, pulled her shift off over her head and stood facing the full length mirror. She twisted her body about, inspecting herself. She felt good and she looked it, dark skin gleaming with health, firm breasts and rump, strong legs. A good quality nigger wench, she thought as her throat tightened in excitement.

She turned her left hip towards the mirror and, smiling faintly, traced with her index finger the mark etched into her flesh just below the hip.

Was it she or Dan who had first proposed she should be branded? She couldn't remember, though she did remember how Dan had hesitated when the decision had been made, over and over again asking if she was sure.

She moved the finger away so she could see the brand a small neat ? of slightly lighter skin incised into her coal black hip, an indelible badge of servitude on her part and of ownership and approval on the part of her master.

She was proud of her brand. Cassius would not be able, even if Dan was willing, to offer him a similar proof of devotion, sport a similar quality mark. It would be too risky to brand a boy who was still at school. She, she thought with satisfaction, for there is rivalry even among slaves, would be the better and more complete slave.

She dropped to her knees. Stretching her arms out in front of her she lent forward till her lips were pressed to the floor. Often Dan would require her to keep in this position while he read, making her stay with her naked bottom raised and open for hours on end, exposed and utterly vulnerable, waiting, not knowing whether he would require other more personal services from her before she was allowed to sleep.

That night though, in the absence of her master, she simply knelt there not thinking but feeling his presence, longing for his service, in a comfortable twilight zone between trance and sleep.

Eventually she rose to her feet. Collecting a blanket from the bottom of the fitted wardrobe she wrapped herself in it and stretched herself on the floor at the foot of the double bed. It was here she slept unless summoned into the bed by her master.

Liz while she waited for sleep was assailed by none of the doubts and fears that assailed her young son.

She was confident that Dan would return. Any other possibility was too awful to contemplate. Anyway their mutual fantasies complimented their roll playing too exactly and the game itself was too important to them both to be abandoned as it would have to be if they split up. Master and slave, nigger wench and white owner their very polarity bound them together.

Nor did she have any doubts or regrets about her decision to tell Dan of Cassius's wish to be involved in their play. She would have liked her son to have been free of that instinct for servitude that ran so strongly in her own veins. But he was not and that being so it was, best to acknowledge the fact and help and guide him towards a similar acceptance as she had achieved. Such a course would spare him many years of misery as he struggled to deny his true nature. A struggle that he could never in the end win.

What Dan would decide she did not know but she was sure the decision was rightly his to make. Indeed there was never really a choice for her to make. A slave's child belonged to the slave's master. She was Dan's slave so he had to decide the fate of her son.

She wondered if she was confusing reality with fantasy. She knew since moving in with Dan she had been increasingly doing that. Indeed at times she found herself wondering which of her lives was the reality. The slave one was certainly more exciting and vivid than the humdrum one of housewife and mother.

Anyway the prospect of offering Cassius to Dan was an exciting one and if Dan did accept the boy his involvement would give an added edge and excitement to a situation that was already deeply satisfying and fulfilling.

Liz imagined Cassius and herself united in servitude to their Master. She would have to help Dan train the boy. That too would be exciting and what greater proof could she give her master of her devotion than in assisting in the schooling of her own child.

And she could and should give such proof even before Dan had made his decision or knew that there was a decision for him to make. It was her duty as a good slave and as a good mother, for she had no doubt that what she was planning was for the boy's ultimate good, as well as being very exciting to contemplate, to begin preparing him for his new life.

Liz woke the next morning long before the central heating clicked on. That would come only at 7.30, half an hour before she was due to rouse Dan with his morning cup of tea so that the house would be nicely warmed for him when he got out of bed. In his absence there was no need for her to get up so early but the floor was hard and the single blanket she was allowed a poor protection from the chill of the morning air.

Pressing her head to the floor, she knelt for a moment beside the empty bed, a naked slave paying homage to her master. The fact that he was absent was no reason to omit to honour him. Then pulling on her shift she slipped from the room.

No doubt in the future, when he had been fully schooled, Cassius would be required to begin his day at a similar time and share with her the chores, which would be expanded to more than fill the time available to perform them, of preparing for their Master's awakening. Now though it was too early to expose him to the full rigours of the life of servitude for which he was ultimately destined. Before then Cassius had to be stripped of all the qualities that set a human boy apart from the merely animal; modesty, pride, and self respect. That should not be too hard a task, for by the boy's own admission, in doing this they would be working with the grain. Cassius had the instincts of a slave. These only had to be cultivated and encouraged.

The boy would balk at too harsh and abrupt an introduction. He had to be led on till he was firmly and irrevocably hooked on that exquisitely exciting mixture of excitement spiced with trepidation that made servitude so addictive.

It was Liz's task to begin her son's initiation. She knew it had to be carefully judged, neither so cruel to frighten him off nor so mild as to give him the impression that he had any choice but to submit and obey.

In the past it had been Liz's practice to allow Cassius to remain in bed until just about an hour before the school bus was due. She would then call him from the bottom of the stairs. She would only go into his room to rouse him if her call was not followed by the sound of movement, the pad of feet across the corridor and the flushing of the toilet. Shortly afterwards he would tumble down the staircase to gulp down his breakfast watched indulgently by Dan.

Now though the boy faced a future where he would find little indulgence or indeed kindness and it was time to begin to make clear to him how much things had changed.

Cassius was lying face down in a tumble of bedclothes. Liz pulled the duvet from him and landed an open handed smack on his nicely rounded naked rump. The crack of her palm meeting firm bare flesh was followed by a squeal of pain and protest.

"Come on nigger," she ordered, grabbing her son by a thin boy's arm and hauling him bodily from the bed.

"Mum¨ Cassius gasped but Liz, ignoring the implicit plea, pushed him roughly towards the door. Liz suppressed a smile as she noticed that despite the boy's obvious surprise and confusion his erect prick betrayed his continuing excitement.

Out on the landing Cassius started towards the bathroom.

"Where do you think youˇ're going boy?" Liz demanded grabbing him once more by the arm and turning towards the stairs.

"I got to go to the toilet Mum," Cassius almost whined in his distress.

"Don't go using fancy words to me nigger," Liz snapped slamming her clenched fist down on the boy's head, "us niggers jus shits an pisses an don't you forget."¨

Cassius his head ringing from the blow staggered and clapped his hands to the top of his head.

"Down to the kitchen with you," Liz snarled sending the boy tumbling down the stairs with a sharp kick up the bum.

Cassius landed at the bottom of the stairs in a jumble of naked limbs. Before he could recover himself Liz was on him. Grabbing him by the nape of the neck she force marched him into the kitchen and across it to the backdoor.

She pulled the door open and Cassius shivered as he felt the blast of cold air against his bare body. It was not yet light. Rain slanted across the open porch and wetted the square of stone flags that lay immediately outside the back door. Beyond the beam of light from the open door the back garden stretched away in black obscurity. A cracked and yellowing chamber pot which had long ago lost its handle stood on the wet pavings to one side of the door.

"Squat on that boy and empty yourself," Liz commanded pushing Cassius out of the house. "Get on with it nigger, " she added impatiently raising her hand in a threat to strike him once again.

Cassius crouched miserably over the pot, the rain cold against his bare skin. His humiliation was total but, confused, shivering with cold and fear, he hardly felt it. Under the shock of his mother's abuse, previously his unwavering champion, he had regressed to early childhood. As the years had been stripped from him so had any sense of shame or modesty.

Liz stood for a moment watching the cowering boy before turning away and stepping back into the kitchen.

Cassius heard the sound of a tap running. A moment later his mother reappeared in the open doorway a bucket of gently steaming water in her hand.

"Clean yourself up with this," she said holding out a sheet of crumpled newspaper.

"Now come here. Quickly," she snapped stepping out of the kitchen onto the damp flagstones.

Cassius shuffled across to stand in front of her, head bowed, shoulders slumped, hands open by his sides, fearful and despondent.

Placing the bucket on the ground Liz damped a rag in the soapy water. Tipping the child's head back with her left hand gripping his chin she began to sponge his face clean. The boy shifted and sputtered as soapy water got into his eyes and mouth. Liz twisted his head about as she washed and sponged making sure that no part of her son's body escaped her attentions. His ears and the area behind them, the dimples at either side of his mouth, his nostrils, his neck all attracted her attention.

She worked her way down his body. She made him lift his arms so the she could wash beneath them. Warm soapy water trickled down the boy's chest and stomach slicking his dark skin with silver.

Squatting on her haunches Liz smiled as she saw her son's prick, small though it was, stiff and quivering with excitement. Cassius feeling her breath warm against his naked crutch stirred and whimpered in excitement.

"Quiet now," Liz murmured softly, "we must get you sweet and clean down there for Master."

"Mum" the single word was half protest, half an expression of rising excitement as his mother steadied his swollen penis between the finger and thumb of one hand while gently sponging it with the damp cloth held in the other.

It seemed to Cassius that his mother spent more time washing his cock than she had any other part of his body, at least up to then. The slit at the top, the pink helmet in which it was set, both were teased and caressed. The foreskin was rolled back and washed. Then Liz turned her attention to her son's balls, especially the tender skin on each side and immediately behind them at the very top of his thighs.

Cassius's breath was coming harder and faster, there was a roaring in his head, dim mist began to rise in front of his eyes. The dark garden, the cold rain on his flesh, all began to drift away from him. The swelling excitement in his loins seemed about to totally possess him.

Judging the moment to the second Liz pushed her finger tips hard into her son's body just behind his balls. Cassius's prick, deprived of blood wavered and shrank. The boy shuddered, moaning with frustration.

Liz completed washing the front of the boy's body, sponging his firm young thighs and slim shins before ordering him to turn round.

Cassius felt the damp cloth against the back of his neck and wriggled in response to the delicious sensation as little rivulets of lukewarm water trickled over his shoulders, down his back and over the sweet curves of his bare rump.

"Good boy, good little nigger," Liz crooned reassuringly as she worked.

She took her time, deliberately letting the excitement build up again in Cassius as she ran the damp rag across his thin shoulders, and then down his back to the point where his tight little bottom began. Her heart softened and swelled as she felt how vulnerable the child was, standing there meekly as she prepared him for a new and harsher existence. She felt pity for the boy but she did not for one moment consider halting the process. Cassius by his own admission longed for servitude. It would be cruel and ultimately pointless to deny him.

"Lean forward," she said placing the palm of one hand between the boy's shoulder blades and pushing gently.

She worked the rag into the cleft of the boy's bottom.

"Get your feet apart," she added impatiently, "I want to get right in there."

Cassius obeyed and then gasped as his mother ran the cloth down the lips of his anus.

"Hush now and stand still don't be a foolish child. We must get you clean in there," Liz said gripping the boy's shoulder with her left hand to steady him as she pushed the cloth into the boy.

She released her grip on Cassius's shoulder and reaching round his body held him between the legs.

"Why you are a hot little slut," she said with a giggle feeling the boy's prick hard and throbbing against the palm of her hand. "Maybe Master will have to do something to calm you down a bit."

As she spoke she forced her right index finger wrapped in the damp rag past Cassius's sphincter.

Cassius, with his mother's finger working inside him and the palm of her other hand pressing against his testicles, lost control. Blood roared in his head, blackness shrouded his eyes and his little prick convulsed as he squirted boy's seed.

"I'm sorry Mum, I'm sorry, I couldn't help it," Cassius whined cringing away from his mother, the new fierce unfamiliar mother who was so ready with her hands, waiting to be hit.

His mother did not hit him. She just sponged away the cum.

"What are you sorry for Cassy," she said laughing and slapping his bottom. "It's only natural, healthy young nigger boy like you. Now back into the house with you and get yourself dry."

Back in the kitchen with the outside door closed, the room warmed by the heat from the stove, Liz draped a coarse towel over the boy's narrow shoulders, the white of the material contrasting with his glistening dark brown flesh. The warmth and his mother's vigorous towelling revived Cassius. He ceased to shiver and began to feel less frightened. It was comforting he felt that he no longer had to hide things from her and that she even accepted his involuntary orgasm as just part of the natural order of things.

He did not reflect that that what distinguished the behaviour of even a human boy from a mere animal was the observance of the very taboos that his mother had encouraged him to brake. A human does not excrete or copulate in public, a dog, for instance, does. It may be natural to do these things but civilisation requires the observance of certain rules of behaviour. By making or encouraging Cassius to ignore those conventions she reduced him to a lower and more primitive condition.

Cassius did not realise this but his mother most certainly did and her actions were planned and deliberate. She was pleased with what she had achieved so far and by the boy's progress. She had one more lesson for the boy before he was allowed a temporary and very brief respite.

She knew that what bound her to her master more effectively than any chains could do was the potent and intoxicating mix of terror and lust that her servitude engendered within her. It was this and the mind numbing, stomach churning excitement that went with it, more addictive than any drug, that ensured she would endure whatever cruelties and whatever humiliations Dan inflicted upon her and come crawling back for more.

Cassius was too young to understand or analyse such emotions but the instinct for servitude was powerful within him. He had taken the bait now the hook had to driven home before he was let back out into the everyday world.

Chapter3

Cassius nodded silently. His mother's change of tone from brusque command to soft affection momentarily confused him but he certainly was hungry. Her voice too was subtly different her usual workaday tones, huskier and deeper. And she was using words he had never heard her say before or using them in a completely different way like 'nigger' and 'child'.

"Well come over here by the stove and take this bowl child and I'll give you some. "

Cassius took the bowl, a plain white earthenware crock, from his mother and stood holding it out with two hands as she ladled porridge from a saucepan into it.

"You've been a good little nigger," she said when the bowl was all but full, "and good little niggers who do as they're told and try their best get special treats."

She took an open tin of sweetened condensed milk from the kitchen unit beside her and dunked a desert spoonful of the sweet white viscous fluid into the porridge.

"Now Cassy sweet," she said, "get that into your belly child."

Cassius turned away from the stove and headed towards the kitchen table only to be brought up short by his mother.

"Child, child," she cried, "don't you go putting your black bottom on a chair now. Those are for the Master and his friends. You squat down in the corner where you belong."

There was a square of old carpet on the tile floor in one corner of the kitchen and Cassius settled himself there. Cassius was surprised at how hungry he felt. The porridge and condensed milk mixed together was warm and sweet and strangely comforting after being chilled to the bone in the open porch.

It was not long before Cassius was scraping the bottom of the bowl clean with his spoon. Liz slipped a disc into the CD player and pressed the play button. The kitchen was filled with the sound of violins playing some classical tune and the TV set situated on a bracket above the stove sprung into life as credits in a strange script rolled across an otherwise blank screen. Liz crossed to where Cassius sat and took the empty bowl from him. Tipping his head back she wiped his mouth clean with the damp dish cloth from the sink. Then she settled herself, stretching her legs out straight, on the fragment of carpet beside the boy and lifted him up onto her lap.

Cassius felt odd sitting on his mother's lap. He could not remember when he had last sat there. It must have been very many years ago. It was not an unpleasant feeling. It made him feel very young but it was also comforting and reassuring. At the same time though it was unlike any previous occasion that he had sat on his mother's knees. He couldn't remember ever sitting on them before naked. Probably he had done so when he was very little but that was so long ago he could not remember. And Mum was wearing so very little. Just that little vest that didn't cover much of her at any time and now it had ridden up and he could feel her bare thighs under his naked bottom. And the vest was very thin too. He could feel her underneath it. He wriggled his bottom nestling into her, his head cradled in the cleft of her breasts.

He was puzzled too by the music on the CD. Why had Mum put it on? She knew he wasn't into classical stuff. She should have known anyway after the fuss that she and Dan had made last Sunday morning just because he was listening to MTV in his room.

The credits ceased to roll and the screen sprang into life. A fair haired boy just a couple of years older than himself was lying on a bed in a small room. There was a knock on the door. The boy swung his legs out of bed wrapping a towel round his waste to hide his nakedness. As he opened the door the towel round his waste slipped to the floor. A man stepped into the room and embraced the boy kissing him on the lips and fondling his naked body.

Cassius shifted in his mother's lap. Liz's hand crept round his waste. Cassius felt her fingers toying with his stiffening prick.

On the television the man and boy were on the bed, the boy fumbling with the man's flies. He got them open. His hand was inside the front of the man's trousers. Then the man's cock was standing up erect and swollen, the boy's hand gently stroking it.

Suddenly they were both naked. There was no undressing of the man. One moment he was clothed the next he was not. The man had his hand on the back of the boy's head. He was trying to force the boy's head down into his crutch. There was some token resistance but it was soon overcome. The camera moved close into the man's crutch, his penis jutting upright out of the dark forest of his pubic hair. The boy's lips closed around it.

Cassius had heard of cock sucking, of course he had. He had even accused other boys of it in the school yard. It was part of the normal repartee of the playground along with bum boy, brown nose, fag, gay. He even knew roughly what was involved. The phrase was more or less self explanatory after all. This was the first time though that he had he had actually seen it done. It never occurred to him that he might do it himself. Take someone else's prick into his mouth and suck on it. Now he did see it he wasn't sure about it at all.

"Mum," he said, "Mum would Dan want me to do that?"

And then squeaked as Liz pinched his balls hard.

"Don't you go calling him Dan child," she said sharply, "Master, you call him Master and don't you forget it. And how should I know what he'll want you to do. That's for him to say."

"I don't know if it's very nice Mum taking that thing 3;"

"Nice! Nice! if Master wants it, it's nice enough for you."

It certainly didn't look as if the boy on the CD had any doubts about his roll. His initial reluctance having been overcome he was performing his task with exemplary enthusiasm his head moving as he worked his lips up and down the man's swollen cock.

Liz lightly rested the tip of the index finger of her free hand, the hand that was not engaged in toying with her son's small but rigid prick, against Cassius's lips.

"You've got nice soft fat nigger lips boy just made for sucking Master's cock," she murmured softly.

On the TV screen the boy was teasing the man's cock with his tongue, running its tip along its slit and around its swollen pink helmet.

Liz ran her finger tip along Cassius's lips. The boy's lips parted at her touch. She felt his tongue teasing her finger as he took it it into his mouth.

"That's right child," she crooned her lips almost touching the boy's ear, "suck on it, suck on it. Pretend it's white cock. Show me how you'll suck on Master's cock so I'll be able to tell him what a hot little nigger slut I've got for him."

The sounds track from the CD, the wet slurps as the boy worked with lips and tongue, the pants and groans of the man as the moment of his climax drew nearer, merging with his mother's voice raised Cassius's excitement to new peaks.

Suddenly, again without any apparent intermediate moves the boy was off the bed and kneeling between the man's open legs. The boy lent forward his mouth open ready for the man's cock. The man pulled it away from him. The boy turned his mouth still open, still reaching for it. The man let his prick briefly touch the boy's lips but jerked it away before he could close them about it. Again and again the process was repeated, the increasingly desperate boy seeking to take the man's cock into his mouth and being balked at the last moment, the teaser being teased.

Then there with another of those sudden breaks in continuity which was such a feature of the film and the boy was lying face down on the bed his delightful little bottom raised while the man was squeezing white cream from a tube into the cleft of his rump. Placing the tube of lubricant on the bedside table the man began to work the cream into the boy with gently probing fingers.

Liz slipped her arm under her son's knees. Cassius found himself tipped backwards into his mother's lap, his bum tilted upwards. Liz pulled her finger from the boy's mouth and reached round his bottom probing for his hole with a finger already well slicked with the child's own saliva.

A gasp and an anticipatory wriggle signalled her questing finger had found its target.

On the TV screen the man was kneeling between the boy's spread legs. Cassius watched fascinated as he attempted to probe the boy's bottom with his erect rod. It seemed though that he was encountering problems in forcing his way into the boy who whimpered and protested feebly at what was being done to him.

"Push out just like when you're shitting Cassy," Liz whispered in his ear her finger tip pressing hard into his anus. "It'll help it go in."

"Is he going to want to do that to me Mum?" Cassius asked, doing what his mother said, nervously remembering the sight of Dan's swollen cock, its size magnified by his imagination many times over.

"I don't know Cassy. I don't even know even if he'll want you at all but if he does you should be grateful to be allowed to serve him and be proud to be able to give him pleasure in any way at all."

"I suppose it will hurt having it in me?"

"First time it will a lot. It'll get easier as you go along. And loosening you up now will make it easier too, that is if he decides he wants you that way."

Cassius squeaked and flinched as his mother's finger tip forced his sphincter .

"There now," she said nibbling at his ear, "first knuckle, second knuckle 3; and all the way in. Isn't that a nice feeling Cassy sweet?"

Cassius made no reply. He was transported by new sensations of the most excruciating and penetrating kind, of an intensity that he had not previously experienced. Once again his prick convulsed and jetted boy juice.

Liz waited till the paroxysm was over and tipped him from her lap.

"Now the fun's over Cassius," she said, "It's time you went upstairs and got ready for school."

The hoarseness had gone from her voice and she no longer slurred her words. The boy noticed this and he noticed also that she had used his full name when speaking to him.

He understood that she was signalling an end to their play. It didn't mean though that he would like it or accept it without protest. He felt none of the shame that had followed his earlier solitary indulgence of his fantasies. The discovery that his Mum shared them and was ready act them out with him had liberated him from any feelings of guilt. He felt nervous, nervous as to whether Dan would include him in his 'games', nervous as to what Dan would require of him if he did, but he no longer felt ashamed or embarrassed. He was fearful of what was to come but eager to venture further.

"Oh Mum," Cassius whined.

Liz smiled. She recognised that she had succeeded in hooking her fish.

"Yes Cassius, I know it's the hardest thing of all being two things, a slave and a school boy but you've got no choice. Now you have to go back to being a school boy. So upstairs and get dressed. You have half an hour before the school bus."

Cassius, recognizing from the tone of his mother's voice that argument was pointless, obeyed.

He dressed quickly for he wanted to try to talk to his mother before he went to school.

When he came downstairs wearing his school uniform he found his Mum too had changed. Wearing trousers and a knitted jumper she was busy at the kitchen sink.

"Mum", Cassius asked from the doorway, "do you think Dan will come back here today or telephone or something?"

"I don't know what he'll do. But I suppose he'll probably telephone at least. There's things that have got to be sorted out."

"Will you tell him about me wanting to join your games?"

"If he telephones I will."

"Mum would you lend me your mobile then you can ring me at school and tell me what he says?"

"Cassius no. When you're at school you're a school boy. You're not to mix the two parts of your life. Dan would say the same. You will just have to wait till school is over to find out. It won't hurt you."

Liz knew her decision was condemning Cassius to eight hours of rising tension and fear. It would do him good and make him easier to manage. She could imagine his feelings as the day wore on and the moment he was to know his future drew closer. She knew well the sick anxiety, the apparent weakness behind the knees, the general lack of coordination, the tightness in the chest and throat that fear brought. Fear was an integral part of slavery.

Cassius fell silent for a moment digesting his mother's refusal. He didn't like it. He recognised that it condemned him to a day of uncertainty and anxiety. But there was nothing he could do about it. He could have tried arguing but he knew instinctively that this was one of those occasions that argument would not work. Anyway he had another thing that was worrying him and the time for the school bus was drawing nearer.

"Mum," he asked, "why did you say we were niggers. You've never used that word before."

"Dan when he's with me thinks of me as a nigger and if he let's you join in he will think of you as the same. That's why I think of myself as a nigger and why you should think of yourself as one as well. It'll be easier for you in the end."

Liz looked down into her sons puzzled face.

"Niggers are simple and only think simple thoughts and feel simple things. That's why I talk differently when I'm being a nigger. I talk simply because I think simply. I don't question things. I just accept everything. I fear my master, I love my master, I am grateful to my master. It makes being a slave easier and it makes me a better slave."

"Now the bus will be coming in a minute so off you go."

Liz accompanied her son to the front door and stood at the open door to watch him walk down the garden path to the road. A group of children stood by the bus stop chattering. One boy saw Cassius and waved. Cassius waved back and breaking into a trot ran towards them. The group parted to let him join them.

Liz turned back into the house to wait for the telephone call from Dan which she was sure was coming and would determine Cassius's future.

Chapter 4

"Liz, I'm ringing from the yard." Dan's voice sounded anxious and strained. "How did you manage with Cassius last night after I'd gone?"

Liz hesitated. Dan was two separate people inside one body; the stern and exacting master; the gentle modern man. She had to decide which of those two was speaking and reply accordingly. If she got it wrong the consequences could be painful for herself. Wrong Dan would either condemn her as 'an uppity nigger' or blame her for embarrassing him. Either way he would, when he got home, beat her. Not that she resented that. It was just the way things were and always had been. As Dan was fond of remarking "the strap well laid on is the surest and quickest way of teaching a nigger."

Certainly the knowledge that if she did get it wrong she would have her rump flayed concentrated her mind wonderfully. She could hear the murmur of voices and, in the back ground, an engine running. There were other people about and Dan's voice suggested he was not in a dominating mood. Anyway she had to make her mind up fast or she'd be in trouble for keeping him waiting.

"OK Dan thanks," she replied. "I explained things to him."

"And how did he take it? I hope he wasn't too upset? I wouldn't want anything to upset our arrangements nor for Cassius to be upset either."

Dan, Liz thought, sounded very worried and upset himself.

"He wasn't upset Dan 3; 3; I explained things to him and 3; he asked if he could join our 'game'."

"To join us?"

"Yes apparently he's been imagining himself a little black slave boy and getting excited by it for months, if not years."

"And what did you say to him?"

"That it was your decision and I sort of gave him a taste of what to expect if you said yes."

"Good I'll collect him from school this afternoon and make up my mind then. I'll be back home about half past four, five o'clock."

"OK. How did you get on after you took off last night."

"All right. I knocked Paul up and stayed with him and Ginny. We'll have to ask them over this coming weekend sometime to say thanks."

"Yes Dan," Liz replied dutifully.

She never enjoyed visits from Paul and Ginny though Dan found them amusing. Dan sensing the lack of enthusiasm in her voice chuckled softly.

"We'll have to lay something special on for them to show our gratitude, won't we dear?" Liz could tell from Dan's voice that he was enjoying himself.

"Yes Dan," she said again wondering with a sinking heart what Dan would think up as 'something special' and then asked in an attempt to distract his mind from that question. "How is your wrist now?"

"All right. Cassius hardly broke the skin and Ginny put a dressing on it. I was surprised at him doing that but perhaps he hadn't been told not to. I'll have to discuss that with you later this evening won't I dear?"

Dan chuckled again and put the receiver down. Liz stood for a moment holding the faintly buzzing telephone receiver in her hand. It hadn't occurred to her before but of course Dan would hold her responsible for Cassius's behaviour. She knew from painful experience what form the promised discussion would take.

Her eyes strayed towards the leather strap hanging unobtrusively among the rain coats, but visible to all who knew where to look, from the hook behind the front door. Dan said he wanted it out where she could see it. She shivered and then replacing the receiver got on with her chores. Dan didn't expect her to go out to work but he did expect the house to be kept spotless and she didn't want to get in any more trouble than she was in already.

For Cassius the day was one of mounting tension. It wasn't too bad when he was among his friends on the bus or in the school yard but when there was nothing else to occupy his mind, during Maths with Mr Lloyd or History with Mrs Lucas for instance, then his thoughts would turn to Dan and his mind would fill of images of Dan's swollen cock and the boy on the CD being raped and he would wonder if Dan would let him become part of the 'game' and if he did would he want 'that'.

But perhaps Dan would not let him get involved at all. What would happen then? Would Mum and he have to leave the house and find somewhere else to live and would Mum blame him?

As the day wore slowly on things steadily got worse. His head began to ache. His legs felt weak and he had difficulty in swallowing. He felt sick with anxiety and worst of all he seemed to want to pee all the time.

At last the bell went signalling the end of classes. Cassius joined the rush to the cloak rooms. Grabbing his anorak he made a hurried visit to the toilets to ease the pressure on his bladder before heading outside to find his bus.

The short winter's afternoon was already drawing to an end and driving rain mixed with occasional flurries of sleet swept across the school yard. In the gathering dusk, head bowed against the wind, hurrying to reach the buses Cassius almost failed to spot Dan waiting for him in one of his firm's vans. It was only when Dan blew his horn and flashed his lights that he spotted him.

Cassius detached himself from the crowd of children hurrying towards the buses and headed towards him. Dan watched him approach, a slight bare headed figure, looking deliciously vulnerable, huddled in an over large anorak. Liz had bought him one a couple of sizes too large so that he would grow into it.

Cassius hurried over to the passenger side of the van and Dan lent across to open the door for him. He looked down at the boy standing uncertainly in the pouring rain, water glittering in his tightly curled hair, eyes, startlingly white in his dark face, wide with anxiety. He saw the boy's lips move but the only sound that came was a faint unintelligible croaking.

"Oh get in," Dan ordered impatiently settling himself back into the driver's seat. "I don't want the inside of the cab all wet."

Secretly he was very well pleased to see Cassius so near panic. It would make him easier to handle but he was certainly not going to let the boy think he was pleased about anything for the time being at least.

Cassius cowered nervously in the passenger seat as Dan put the van into gear and eased it out into the traffic. His shirt was wet round the neck where the rain had trickled down inside his anorak and his trousers from the knees down clung clammily to his legs.

He could tell nothing from Dan's behaviour so far. He could as well be about to tell him that Mum and him had to pack their bags and move out or that he had decided to allow him to join them in their 'play'. And either possibility generated its own particular fears.

He had tried to ask Dan as soon as he had opened the van door for him but the words would not come. He glanced nervously across at Dan. The man's face seemed to be set in a grim mask that gave nothing away. Guiltily he noticed the plaster on the man's right wrist where he had bitten him. He felt he had to try to do something to break the silence that now reigned in the van. He took a deep breath and steeled himself.

"I hope you're wrist's all right," he said hesitantly. "I'm sorry I bit it 3;" His voice trailed off as he realised he did not know what to call Dan. To use 'Master' without being told whether or not he was to be allowed to enter that fantasy seemed cheeky while to fail to so if he was allowed to would be to invite trouble.

"Don't talk about it," Dan, his voice cold and his face expressionless, cut in as Cassius hesitated.

The boy relapsed into uneasy silence. He could tell nothing of his likely fate from Dan's tone or manner. He could equally well be facing acceptance or outright rejection. He could only wait for Dan to tell him which it would be, servitude or rejection. The heater was on in the cab but despite this Cassius began to shiver uncontrollably.

They were driving along one of the two roads that bounded either side of the park that ran like a long green tongue from the suburbs into the very centre of the city itself. It was almost dark now. Dan caught occasional glimpses through the trees to his left of the dull gleam of the water in the ornamental lake. The park at this hour on a winter's evening was usually deserted except for the occasional hardy and dedicated dog walker. Today with the rain driven by a freezing East wind no one at all was to be seen either in the park or walking along the pavement bordering it.

They were one in a stream of vehicles leaving the city, part of the early evening rush hour, all hurrying home, headlights on wind screener wipers struggling to keep their windows clear of the torrential rain, after a day in the office or behind the counter in a shop. A sparser column of traffic flowed in the opposite direction, the dipped car headlights reflecting upwards from the wet steely black road occasionally lighting up the cab of the van in which Cassius and Dan rode.

Dan signalled he was pulling off the road to his left. He eased the van out of the stream of traffic into one of the parking bays that lined the road. On a fine summer's day these bays would have been filled with cars taking children to the park to play and feed the ducks. Now there was not another vehicle in sight.

Now, Cassius thought as he shrank back into his seat, I will learn what is going to happen to me. There was still enough light for him to make out Dan's bulk looming darkly over him and he sensed the force and power of the man.

Dan turned to look at the boy. The headlights of passing cars provided a fitful light and he spent a few seconds savouring Cassius's evident terror. This was the moment he enjoyed, the moment of truth, the moment when the primitive and inescapable truths of nature asserted themselves with him as their agent.

"Well," he said quietly, "have you anything to say for yourself."

"Please 3;" Cassius managed but then his voice trailed off.

Dan reached out and gripping the boy's chin twisted his face to look into his. In the gloom he could make out the boy's eyes enlarged by fear staring up at him. He began to move the boy's head about with his hand, stroking, twisting, pinching. slapping not really hard but hard enough to make him feel his strength.

"You must have something to say to me Cassius," Dan continued allowing a hint of impatience to creep into his voice. "What did you ask your mother last night when she explained things to you?"

"If I could become a part of your game," Cassius said in a very small voice.

"'Game?' I suppose that's one way of putting it. Wouldn't it be as well if you asked me Cassius?"

"Why yes 3; I suppose so 3; please could I 3; please."

"That's not good enough Cassius. Try again and call me Massa not Master – Massa like a good little nigger boy," Dan said laying a slightly harder slap on the side of the boy's face to make sure he took notice.

Dan heard the boy gulp for breath.

"Please Massa can I be part of your game?"

The request was made in a hardly audible whisper and ended in a strangled sob.

"That's not good enough boy," the voice in which Dan spoke was gentle but the clip he gave Cassius's ear was anything but. "You want to be my nigger slave boy don't you?"

Dan paused and waited. An inarticulate murmur from the boy indicated acquiescence.

"Then ask."

"Please massa can I be your nigga slave boy?" Cassius quavered and then began to cry. His young mind couldn't anywhere near grasp the full consequences of his request but instinctively he knew that his life had been utterly and irrevocably changed.

Dan silently lent across the passenger seat and opened the glove compartment. Cassius heard the clink of metal and saw in the uncertain light something glint in the man's hand. His head was forced forward. He felt the touch of cold metal against the back of his neck and heard the click of a lock being secured. He put up his hand and touched the chain fastened around his neck.

"Take off your shoes and socks," Dan said raising his voice to be heard over the boy's sobs.

Quickly Cassius bent forward to obey, in his hurry pulling off his shoes without pausing to undo his laces.

"Good, a nigger in boots is just plain unnatural. Now get your trousers and underpants off. Quick now boy – You won't keep Massa waiting if you know what's good for you."

The implied threat was quite unnecessary for Cassius was busy fumbling at the zip of his flies before it was even made. Half rising in his seat he pulled his trousers and underpants off in one go. His anorak rucked up under him as he sat back and he felt the vinyl seat cover cold against his bare rump.

"Now get out."

Cassius hesitated, not being deliberately disobedient, but because, the order was so unexpected and in a way extreme, his mind had difficulty in grasping its meaning. Dan who certainly wasn't going to waste his time sitting round waiting, as he would have put it to himself, for a stupid little nigger to work out what was required, cracked Cassius across the side of his head knocking the boy sideways.

"Get out," he repeated. "I'm not having a filthy little nigger brat riding in the cab with me."

He reached across Cassius, opened the passenger door and pushed him roughly out of the van.

Taken by surprise Cassius tumbled from the cab and loosing his balance finished up on his hands and knees on the wet pavement. Behind him he heard the door of the van slam and it's engine accelerate as Dan drove off.

Cassius quickly scrambled to his feet. Cars drove by a few yards way from him not apparently noticing the young bare legged black boy shivering in the dark and the driving rain. It occurred to Cassius that in the falling night with his dark skin and dark anorak he was anyway practically invisible. This sort of thing, he thought to himself, would not happen to a white boy.

Anyway with his anorak reaching half way down his thighs there was no reason to stop. He was just a boy out in the rain wearing rather brief shorts. That is unless you fancied such a boy. He moved quickly away from the road and into the park.

He took shelter in the lea of a tree. He was cold and wet and getting, by the minute, colder and wetter.

He was also very scared. So far as he could see the park was deserted but it was very dark, especially under the trees. There could be any number of paedophiles with rotting teeth and terrible body odour lurking in the undergrowth waiting for a young boy to rape and kill.

There was a rustling in a bush near where he was standing. Frozen in terror he braced himself to face the inevitable. The rustling drew nearer and a fox sloped across the open ground in front of Cassius setting out no doubt on a night of upsetting and raiding dustbins.

Cassius who was an intelligent boy forced himself to think calmly. It was a horrible night and there probably was nobody out in the park. Anyway with his dark clothes and skin he blended into the background so he was quite unlikely to be spotted if there was anybody about. And if he did bump into anybody it was more likely than not that they would be harmless and in the dark they would not notice either his lack of shoes or the chain round his neck. In any case, he thought, raising his hand to touch it, with links hardly more than a centimetre across it was probably not unlike some of the jewellery the more trendy boys in school affected.

If the worst came to the worse he could always run. He was small and agile and he doubted if a paedophile hampered by his long dirty mackintosh would find him easy to catch.

One good thing was that, although he had about three miles [5 km] to travel to get home, it would not be difficult to find his way. The park was not broad. From where he stood just off the road bounding its Western edge he could see the lights of the traffic travelling along the road on the opposite side of the park. All he had to do was to keep walking out of town through the park until he was opposite Dan's house. Fortunately it was a long established municipal park and there were any number of asphalt foot paths that would not be too hard on his bare feet. Finally he would have to wait for a gap in the traffic to make a dash across the road to the house.

But what would be waiting for him in the house? Would Dan beat him? Would Dan have sex with him and would that hurt?

He didn't even really know for certain if Dan wanted him at all though the chain round his neck and at least some of the things Dan had said and done in the van indicated that he was now part of the 'game'. But Dan had not said he was part of it. He could have thrown him out of the van because he had decided he didn't want him. Perhaps the park was the haunt of a notorious child molester and Dan was feeding him to him like a Christian to the lions.

Though surely Dan in fastening the chain round his neck was claiming ownership. In which case perhaps this was a test of his devotion or one last chance to draw back.

He knew that he had only to cross the road to one of those large Victorian houses whose front windows glowed so invitingly in the dark, ring the door bell and explain what had happened to him to whoever answered it to receive help and protection. He would then be free of Dan forever. He wouldn't be able to hurt him or have sex with him or anything.

That would be the sensible thing to do but he knew he wasn't going to do it.

He was frightened. He was frightened of the journey in the dark through the park to Dan's house. He was frightened of what might be done to him when he reached that house. But he was also very, very excited. Wet, cold and fearful as he was his prick was erect and throbbing.

Moving from the shelter of the tree he began to walk.

Chapter 5

The kitchen was very hot. Leaning forward the short white shift that was her only clothing had ridden up her body baring the backs of her strong well muscled thighs. Sweat trickled down her face and slicked the exposed portions of her body, giving her ebony skin a silken sheen.

She sang softly to herself as she worked. She seemed contented even indeed fulfilled.

Liz when she contemplated, what she thought of at such times of introspection as her alternative life, believed one of its great attractions was that it allowed her to escape to a simpler less challenging world. Through submission to her master she was freed from all the complex rules and obligations of twenty first century civilized society; the more total the submission the more complete that freedom. Through her slavery she returned to a more primitive reality and one that was in accord with her own nature.

That is not to say she did not know fear. Fear is the ever present companion of a slave. But the fear of a slave is different in kind to that of a freeman. A freeman's fear is a challenge to be overcome. For a slave it is an inescapable part of its very existence and has to be patiently endured. The freeman struggles – the slave accepts.

Liz though, working in the kitchen preparing her master's supper, was not thinking about her 'alternative' life; she was living it and she was happy living it. At the same time though there were things that made her frightened or at least uneasy.

Dan had told her that he considered that she had been at fault in not teaching her son a proper respect for his betters and that he was going to discuss this failure with her . That could only mean a beating later on that night and she was not looking forward to that. Dan often remarked that the lash was meant to hurt and he certainly acted on that precept. Being beaten though was part of being a slave. If Dan had decided she was to be beaten she would be. There was no appeal, no chance of escape. It was as pointless for a slave to complain about the lash as it was to do so about the weather. She feared the lash as a slave should but she bore it as a slave must. She dreaded the moment which would surely come when Dan took down the leather strap from its hook but that did not prevent her meanwhile in finding happiness preparing a meal for a master she loved as well as feared.

She loved her son as well and she didn't know what had happened to him. Dan had said he was going to collect Cassius from school and then return to the house but when he came back to the house he did not have the boy with him. Of course he didn't bother to tell Liz what he had done with the child and just as naturally Liz did not dare to ask him. Liz was fairly certain however in her own mind that Dan had agreed to Cassius's request to be allowed to become a part of Dan and her own alternative world.

Liz who had a slave's dog like ability to judge her master's feelings without a word being spoken, could tell almost from the moment he arrived at the house that he was in a good mood. She could tell it from, the jaunty way he stepped into the house, the careless manner he threw down his coat on the hall floor for her to collect and hang up, and the patience he had shown while she knelt at his feet fumbling at the laces of his work boots, not a kick, not even a curse to hurry her up. She was sure that Dan would not have been in such a good mood if Cassius had displeased him, therefore, it seemed to her, the overwhelming probability was that Cassius's request had been granted.

It followed then that whatever Cassius was doing or whatever was being done to him was with Dan's knowledge and authority. Whatever it was would almost certainly be unpleasant and quite possibly positively painful, but Liz who like all slaves instinctively recognised the authority and expertise of a natural master, knew it would be designed to make Cassius a better and therefore a more useful slave.

She would like to know where Cassius was and she hoped he was not being hurt too much but she recognised his future was as a slave and that he had to be schooled and broken and the sooner and quicker that was done the better both for his master and the boy himself.

In any event her worries about Cassius were leavened with a certain satisfaction, perhaps even pride. One of the greatest services and one of the deepest acts of devotion a slave girl could perform for her master was to bare him a healthy strong slave child. The knowledge, for she was sure it was so, that Dan had accepted her child as his slave excited and pleased her.

There was one thing more. A secret that she had kept to herself, although she would have to tell Dan soon, for she was sure he would notice as soon as her belly began to swell. She was sure she was carrying again. She was sure it was Dan's child. It could not be anyone else's but bred out of a slave it would be a slave itself. She imagined kneeling at Dan's feet holding out the naked new born child for his approval. The thought made her damp between the legs – but then she began to worry.

Would Dan let her keep it? Would he feel that with her and Cassius he didn't need another nigger. It would be after all for a long time just another mouth to feed and another body to house.

She began to transfer the browned belly pork from the pan of bubbling goose fat into the marmite where the haricot beans quietly simmered.

Then the door bell rang.

Dan lounged comfortably in his armchair in the sitting room reading The Daily Mail, occasionally sipping from the cut glass tumbler half filled with amber fluid standing on the small table to his right. He sat with his legs stretched out to the coal fire that burnt brightly in the sitting room grate. Deadened by the thick curtains that shrouded the windows the sounds of the storm that raged outside could faintly be heard.

Laying aside his paper Dan glanced at his wrist watch. It was almost an hour and a half since he had thrown Cassius out of his van. The boy should be arriving fairly soon, he thought as he listened to the rain, driven by the viciously gusting East wind, batter the windows.

The thought of the boy half naked, out in the bitterly cold winter's night, enhanced his appreciation of the warmth and cosy comfort of the sitting room. Just as would later his enjoyment of the cassoulet that Liz was so laboriously preparing for his supper be increased by the knowledge that her evening meal would be a bowl of maize porridge. Indeed, he reflected, as he stretched out luxuriously in front of it, his appreciation of the sitting room fire owed a great deal to his awareness of the amount of effort it had cost Liz. He pictured, her bare footed, dressed only in her thin shift, kneeling before the grate in the chill early hours of the morning, raking out the dead embers of the previous day, then staggering bent under the weight of the coal bucket as she assembled the coal and tinder for the new fire.

His insistence on good food and a blazing fire, as with much else about the house, he told himself, was by no means wholly selfish. It illustrated to Liz in a simple graphic way that even her mind in its nigger mode could understand the great gulf that, in their alternative world, the world into which even now Cassius was being inducted, that divided the white master from the Negro slave. It gave her also the opportunity, by performing the tasks set her diligently and willingly, to show her master her devotion and her acceptance of his authority.

Even the ordeal imposed on little Cassius had a purpose beyond his own personal amusement. He had done some time in the British army. He remembered a Sergeant in a training battalion telling him that his task was to destroy a recruit and then rebuild him as a real soldier. That was the purpose of the six weeks basic training and it was achieved by driving the recruit to the point of exhaustion and beyond. Endless hours on the drill square, long marches in full kit, nights out in the open, until all the assumptions and values of civvy street had been erased; then the rebuilding in the Army's own image began.

Dan himself had experienced the efficacy of this process. He knew how at a certain point exhausted and hungry, cold and wet, even the toughest will succumb. He was sure that when Cassius eventually made it to the house after two hours more or less out in one of the nastiest nights of that winter he would be delightfully easy to handle.

The army had six weeks to destroy and rebuild. He had much less time than that but the army had to deal with young men and was bound by certain rules. He was schooling a twelve year old boy and was restrained by no rules at all.

His train of thought was interrupted by the ringing of the front door bell. He got up to answer it.

Cassius stumbled forward. He had no idea of how long he had been walking but it seemed for a very long time. Making his way through the park in the dark had been much more frightening and difficult than he had expected. He had met nobody but in the dark every tree or bush was a source of terror. It was not only human beings he was frightened of. There were other worse things that might be about, vampires who fastened their teeth in your neck and turned you into one of the living dead, or werewolves, or pig like monsters who fed on small boys or ghouls or monsters who 3; Creatures, that were pleasantly scary when watching cartoons lying prone on the sitting room floor in front of the television or telling stories in the play ground, assumed a much more menacing aspect in the dark and cold. At night the park was a place of dark shadows and impenetrable darkness, of strange rustlings and unknown things that caught at you or brushed against you as you passed.

Two or three times Cassius had thought he had caught a glance of something lurking behind a tree or following behind him. Panic had gripped him and he had run but that had just added to his difficulties. In the dark it was not so easy to keep on the paths as he had expected. He had run into things, scratched his bare legs, and fallen grazing his knees.

He had also become confused. Theoretically it should have been easy to find his way, even in the dark. The park was a comparatively narrow strip of woodland bounded on each side by roads and Cassius could see the lights of the traffic moving on each of them. All he had to do he told himself as he set out was to keep moving away from the centre of town along the many surfaced paths that ran through the park. Then a about a mile from the top of the ornamental lake he would be just about opposite Dan's house. He should have no problem in telling when he had got that far for it was there that he often went to kick a football about and play.

But it hadn't worked out like that. The very number of surfaced paths confused him and it got worse after he had panicked and run and fallen. Not that he had known straight away that it had got worse. He had picked himself up and told himself to stop being silly and set off walking again. It had only been after he had been walking for what seemed to him for hours and the lake was still there, the water glimmering through the trees to his left that he realised that it had been, when he set off, on his right. He had been walking in the wrong direction ever since the first time he had fallen and had to turn round and walk all the way back.

Now though he thought he must be getting near Dan's house. He had come to the end of the lake some time ago. He should have reached a part of the park that was particularly familiar to him but he found it hard to recognise anything. Everything seemed so different in the dark.

He certainly hoped he had come to the end of his walk. The rain beat down. The trees of the park seemed to give little protection from it or from the bighting East wind. His anorak had long since ceased to provide any protection. It clung to him cold and horribly clammy. His bare legs were bruised and torn. He was very tired, very cold and very wet.

It was surely time to cut across the park and see if Dan's house was anywhere near. Cassius set out to do so and almost stumbled into the stream that fed into the ornamental lake. In the darkness it was only the sound of running water that alerted him to the danger.

Cassius stood hesitating, the noise of water loud in his ears, the stream a dark gash between its steep banks in front of him. He should have crossed it using the bridge at the top of the lake but in his confusion and tiredness he had forgotten. Now he would either have to retrace his footsteps once again or continue to the next bridge above which was almost as far if not further. There was he told himself one other choice. He could wade the stream. It was shallow, hardly a foot deep if that and fast flowing. It would be no problem. He would have to scramble down the bank into the stream and up the opposite bank but that should be reasonably easy.

He began to ease himself face first down the bank, bare heels scrabbling for purchase in the wet slippery clay. The ground gave way underneath him. He slid down into the water. It was much deeper than he expected. He remembered belatedly that it had been raining hard for almost two days. The current tore at his legs. He fell sideways. Water closed over his head. He fought his way to the surface. He could just feel the bed of the stream under his feet. He lost his footing again and was swept further downstream. Again he regained his feet. The water was slightly shallower, waste rather than chest high. Painfully he edged his way forward. He reached the opposite side of the stream.

The bank loomed up over his head. He felt his strength ebbing away from him. He knew he had to get out of the stream fast. He reached up seeking for something to grip. His hand closed on a tussock of grass. He heaved himself upwards trying to find purchase with his knees and feet. The tussock gave way and he fell backwards into the water. Somehow he got himself upright again. He stood for a moment shivering as the water tugged urgently at him.

He knew this was his last chance. If he didn't make it this time the water would have him. He just wouldn't have the strength left for another attempt. He was going to have to find something more secure than a tussock of grass to heave himself out of the stream with. A yard or two down stream a tree grew out over the water. He gave way to the current letting it do the work of taking him down to the tree. He got his feet under him once again. But the tree was too far back for him to reach. In the darkness his hand closed round something sticking out from the bank. An exposed tree root formed a secure hold. There were others. He pulled himself upwards finding foot and hand holds as he went. Soon he was lying face down on the bank cold and wet and exhausted but at least alive.

Wearily he levered himself onto his knees and then up on to his feet. The road was only a few yards away. He staggered towards it. He could see by the light of a street lamp Dan's house almost exactly opposite him . He stood crouched in the edge of the wood for a few seconds. The rush hour traffic had dwindled away to nothing. The road was empty. He launched himself across it.

At that moment a police car driven by Constable Ried of the Eatansville Constabulary appeared catching Cassius's small darting figure momentarily in its headlights. Ried slammed the brakes on, bringing the car to a halt with a screech of tyres, as Cassius ducked into the front garden of Dan's house and crouched panting in the shelter of the hedge.

"Did you see what I saw?" Police Constable Ried asked his companion Probationary Constable Turner.

"A little nigger," Turner replied an edge of excitement in his voice, fumbling at the passenger door handle even before the vehicle was stationary. "The black bastard is up to some villainy no doubt. I reckon we better act to protect the innocent citizenry."

In fact neither Ried not Turner would have allowed themselves be persuaded to leave the warm comfort of their police car on such a foul night by any sense of duty to the public. They were much too sensible to allow something so insubstantial to interfere with their own comfort. However the opportunities provided for some innocent fun by Cassius's appearance were too inviting to be passed by. Neither of them liked niggers and both thought niggers should be kept down and this was an ideal opportunity to put their views into practice.

Both Turner and Ried had been on race awareness courses and had profited from them to the extent that they had learnt to be careful to whom they spoke on these matters and to be sure that when they beat up a nigger that there were no hostile witnesses. Cassius was alone and on a night like this there would be no witnesses about.

Cassius huddled on his knees in the shelter of the hedge heard the car screech to a halt and its doors open and slam. Then there were heavy footsteps on the pavement, the garden gate latch clicked and a strong beam of light swung in an ark across the narrow strip of lawn and came to rest on him. Cassius caught in the torch's beam knelt petrified like a rabbit frozen with fear in the headlights of a car.

"There's the little coon," Ried said triumphantly. "I'll keep the torch on him while you get him."

Ried was carrying the torch and anyway he was the senior of the two and he saw no reason why he should get his shoes dirty walking on the wet lawn. Let Turner fetch the brat over to the path and he would have the pleasure of teaching it a lesson without muddying his shoes.

"Be careful," Ried added, "I expect he's got a knife, all niggers carry them."

Looking at Cassius he thought he probably didn't have one. He looked a pretty harmless boy without any fight in him at all. Of course he was black which was enough to condemn him and if he hadn't a knife now he would have one when they brought him into the station and a spiff too. Both items were in a plastic bag in the boot of the car ready to be 'found' in the possession of one of their suspects if the need arose.

"I'll be that," Turner replied drawing his truncheon as he set off across the lawn towards the exhausted boy.

Cowering on the damp ground Cassius, pinned down by the pool of bright light that encircled him, heard the man approach. He saw on the very edge of the pool of light a pair of highly polished black boots and a few inches of dark serge trousering.

Then an explosion of pain as Turner smashed his truncheon across his right arm.

"Little sod was going for his knife," Turner announced raising his voice to be heard over Cassius's howl of pain.

"I didn't 3; I don't have a knife 3;" Cassius protested clasping his injured arm in his left hand.

"Don't argue with me you filthy little nigger," Turner rasped cracked the baton down on his left shoulder.

"Now on your feet and get over to the path. Move it boy."

A boot thudded into Cassius's rump.

"Come on. Come on."

A blow across his shoulders sent Cassius staggering towards the path where Reid stood waiting for him.

As soon as the boy was comfortably in reach Reid drove his fist into his stomach and as he doubled over winded, punched him in the face.

"God he's giving us trouble," he announced as Cassius slumped to his knees, "resisting arrest and all."

He brought the base of the torch cracking down on the top of the boy's head.

"I bet the little nigger wishes he'd never left bongo bongo land now," Turner gloated as he kicked Cassius in the ribs.

"I don't know why the fuckers don't all go back to where they came from," Ried growled taking his turn to put the boot in.

"Makes me feel good kicking a nigger."

"Got to encourage them to go back to where they belong."

The two men paused for breath and stood looking down at Cassius curled in a foetal position on the concrete path. They had not used their full strength on him. If they had done so they might well have killed him. Their blows and kicks had been nicely calculated to cause as much pain as they could but stopping short of permanent physical damage.

"Shit," Turner exclaimed, "he hasn't got any trousers on."

"Probably been hawking its bum round to some rich nigger lover," Ried replied.

The boy's naked bottom represented too tempting a target to be ignored and drawing his truncheon he brought it thudding down across it.

The blow was a hard one. The intense pain led Cassius to a sudden and final access of energy. Past his tormentors he could see the front door of Dan's house. It seemed to him to present his only chance of escape. Twisting suddenly onto his face and getting his knees under him he suddenly shot between their legs towards the door.

Taken by surprise the men grabbed at him but failed to hold him. He reached the door and, before they could get at him again, pressed the bell. The door swung open.

Dan saw the bruised and bloodied boy standing on the door step and behind him two uniformed policemen.

He braced himself to deal with the situation. He didn't know what had happened, why the two policemen were there, or how Cassius had come by his injuries. He just hoped he could talk himself out of any awkwardness.

Cassius terrified of the two policemen, desperate to escape further punishment, freezing cold and utterly exhausted, let instinct take over.

He hurled himself to the ground at Dan's feet and clasping him by his knees whimpered, "Master please Master don't let them have me."

Chapter 6

He stepped back from the boy, breaking Cassius's grasp of his knees, causing the lad to fall forward onto his hands. Dan's mind raced to find some explanation to offer that would satisfy the two policemen.

He need not have troubled himself. Constables Reid and Turner interpreted events in the light of their own prejudices. A black boy out by himself at night, in a predominately respectable white middle class area of town, could not but be up to no good. Cassius's attempt to find refuge and protection from them in the house was merely the desperate act of a young burglar trying to escape arrest. They saw Cassius's throwing himself at Dan not as a plea for protection but as an assault on a householder, a view confirmed by Dan's reflex recoil. The boy's desperate pleas for help were to them simply the incoherent shouts of a young thug.

They sprang into action with a, for them, most unusual enthusiasm to do their duty as guardians of the law.

"Don't worry Sir, we've got the little tyke," Reid shouted as he dashed forward.

Down on his hands and knees Cassius's bare bottom offered a tempting target and Reid swung at it with his truncheon. Earlier blows that he had aimed at the boy's arms and head had been delivered with discretion for Reid knew how easy it was to crack open a head or break a bone. Now though there was no need to exercise restraint and Reid did not. You can hit a boy's rump as hard as you like and provided the blow is delivered square across its delightful curves it will break no bones. Reid smashed his truncheon down with all the force he could muster across Cassius bare bum. The boy howled and scrabbled forward on his hands and knees in a desperate attempt to escape further punishment.

Turner stepped quickly forward and raising his foot drove it down between Cassius shoulder blades. Pinned to the floor by the heel of Constable Turner's regulation boots Cassius squirmed and writhed as Reid slammed his truncheon down over and over again. The sickening thud of the heavy wooden baton formed a rhythmic accompaniment to the boys ever more frenzied screams and pleas for mercy.

Dan made no attempt to intervene. He stood watching, quietly enjoying the spectacle. He felt neither guilt nor pity. Why should he? In his view he was the master, Cassius was the slave. The boy had not made a choice. He had no choice to make. He was, what he was, a Negro slave. Cassius knew and acknowledged that this was so. Now he had to be taught what this meant in practice. The lessons he would receive would be rough ones but he would learn them quickly and well.

All good things have to come to an end. Tiring Reid straightened and stepped back from the where the boy lay prone and sobbing on the floor and Turner removed his heel from between the lad's shoulder blades. Cassius dragged himself forward and wrapping his arms round Dan's legs crouched at his feet whimpering quietly.

"We had trouble with him outside Sir, resisting arrest and assaulting us," Reid explained hastily. He realised that they might be accused of having used excessive force on Cassius and was keen to provide some explanation for their behaviour. In the heat of the moment he hadn't realised that Dan had made himself complicit in their assault on the boy by making no attempt to stop it.

"I didn't Master 3; I didn't 3;" Cassius protested.

Without a moments hesitation Dan backhanded him hard across the side of his face knocking him sideways onto the floor.

"Don't you dare contradict a white man," Dan rapped before turning to the two policemen and saying in the mildest tones, "I do apologise gentlemen for the boy's insolence. I can assure you he will be soundly whipped for it."

Dan had not been directly involved in Cassius's beating and he had had ample time to observe the enthusiastic way the two policemen set about roughing up the Negro boy. Watching them at work it seemed to him that they would probably be sympathetic to his own peculiar domestic arrangements. In any event, they could hardly make trouble for him, as if they did so he would report them for their attack on Cassius.

Turner and Reid gaped at him open mouthed. Clearly they were taken by surprise and were having problems in grasping the full implications of what he had said.

"Anyway," Dan continued after a short pause during which the two men remained silent, "I am sorry for any trouble the little nigger caused you. Perhaps you would care for a drink. Whisky or indeed something non-alcoholic if you prefer, though after your exertions I think a whisky would be in order."

The two men exchanged glances.

"A glass of whisky would be nice Sir," Reid replied.

"Very well. If you don't mind waiting for a moment while I secure the brat somewhere safe. I don't want him wandering off again."

"Up," Dan ordered lashing out with his foot at Cassius as he crouched on the floor.

"God," he remarked as he bent down and grabbing the boy by the arm, hauled him roughly to his feet, "look what a mess he's made on the floor mud and puddles of water everywhere from his wet clothes."

"Get them off boy before you make more of a mess."

Panic stricken Cassius hesitated. It was not deliberate disobedience on his part. It was simply that he was so terrified and confused that he could not make sense of the words shouted at him.

Dan though did not care why the boy had failed to obey him. It was enough that he had done so. He knew, he told himself, how to get a boy to do as he was told. He slapped Cassius viciously across the face to get his attention and shouted again.

"Get them off you idle lump of nigger shit. Get your clothes off boy."

Dan grabbed at the front of Cassius's windcheater trying to rip it off him by brute force. The material held but the gesture together with the blow and the shouted words were enough to make the boy understand what was required of him. With fingers still numb from cold and made even more clumsy by fear Cassius fumbled at the zip of his windcheater.

Stepping back Dan took the thick leather strap from the hook from which it hung discretely, but in full view, among the coats by the front door. Armed with this essential teaching aid he turned back to face the trembling boy. Behind him Dan heard the two men gasp in anticipation.

"Get a move on," he snarled, lashing Cassius viciously across the front of his thighs with the strap.

The crack of leather landing across firm boy's flesh was followed by a shrill squeal of pain. Dan raised the strap to strike again.

Finally the zip yielded to Cassius's desperate tugs. He pulled the sodden coat off and dropped it on the ground at his feet. Feverishly he tugged at the buttons of his shirt which was as wet and as clammy as his anorak. Suddenly he felt its collar seized from behind. Turner had decided to join in the fun. There was a sharp jerk and the buttons parted as the shirt was ripped away from him leaving him standing naked and shivering in front of the three leering men.

"I thought," Turner remarked with a laugh, dropping the boy's torn shirt on the floor, "that niggers were meant to be well endowed. I'm disappointed. You have to look really carefully to tell what sex the little brute is. It'll hardly be breeding any further darkies anyway and that's a good thing I suppose. Too many of the black bastards about already."

"Small but I think functioning," Dan remarked gently rolling Cassius's tiny boy's prick between his finger and thumb. "Yes there we are, I knew it, they're all the same, randy little tyke." Dan's voice was amused, even indulgent as Cassius's little penis reacted to his touch.

Indeed terrified and exhausted as he was, with his deeply bruised bottom burning fiercely from the recent savage beating, Cassius's cock had begun to harden and swell.

"Christ," Reid exclaimed, "fancy getting a hard on after all he's gone through."

"You mustn't think of them like us," Dan remarked, speaking with the voice of experience. "They don't think or feel the same way as we do. They're much simpler and much more nearer the animal than we are."

As he spoke he continued to play with Cassius's cock that was by now fully erect, its swollen pink helmet popping clear of the boy's foreskin.

Everything Dan thought had worked out remarkably well, even better indeed than he had planned. The two policemen turning up had turned out to have been a remarkable stroke of good fortune. He could not say that he had been glad to be relieved of the chore of giving Cassius a thrashing because he would have enjoyed doing it himself. However many further occasions would no doubt present themselves for him to do precisely that. Meanwhile the beating, being a savage one and being given by two people other than himself, should encourage a general fear and respect for whites appropriate to a nigger slave boy.

Then whether or not the boy was really 'nearer the animal' as he had himself just claimed, than any other twelve year old boy when he had left school that evening, he was certainly so now; standing naked and unresisting, being masturbated before two strangers, all modesty, pride and self-respect, everything that distinguished the human boy from the animal, destroyed.

Of course this had not been achieved without suffering on Cassius's part. Stripping him half naked and turning him loose in the park, leaving to him to find his own way home in the dark and cold of a winter's night was cruel. The beating inflicted on him by Reid and Turner was savage in the extreme. Wanking him off in front of them now, denying him any vestige of human dignity, was designed to humiliate and degrade. But softer kinder methods would not have achieved so much so quickly. The end result would have been the same and surely it was better for all concerned to achieve it as quickly as possible. Boys like Cassius needed and responded to firm handling. Anything else was false kindness.

Dan ran his thumb nail up the back of the boy's rigid penis. Cassius shuddered and moaned quietly. Dan tipped his head back with his left hand under his chin and looked down into the boy's face, noting the bruises and the smear of dried blood beneath his nose. His eyes were blank and saliva dribbled down his chin from his half parted lips. His breath came in short shallow gasps. Dan gently massaged the boy's glans with his finger tips. A bead of moisture swelled from the urethra. Suddenly his stiff little prick jerked violently and boy's seed squirted over Dan's fingers and dripped on the floor.

"There you see, as I said, fully functional," Dan remarked cheerfully wiping his fingers dry on the boy's bare chest, leaving a smear of glistening liquid across the dusky skin. "Now if you will excuse me for a moment I will just secure the brat."

Grabbing Cassius roughly by the scruff of his neck he bundled the boy through the door into the kitchen.

Liz working at the stove in the kitchen had heard every sound of her son's beating, the cries and moans of the boy, his desperate pleas for mercy, the solid thud of the baton striking his naked rump. In her mind she had felt every blow as if it was landing on her own bare flesh. She wanted to abandon her post at the stove, to rush out of the kitchen and to shield Cassius's frail boy's body with her own. But she did not. She knew it would be pointless. If she had done so she would have been pulled off the boy and the beating would have continued with redoubled severity.

Anyway she had known she must not. To do so would have been a denial of Dan's authority. It was part of the terms of their game that the slave had to submit to the master.

That at least was how she had thought of it when Dan and she had first begun to play – as a game with rules like any other game – rules that you obeyed because you wanted to play the game. As time passed she saw things differently. Dan's authority and the rules that flowed from it came to have, in her eyes, an independent moral force. This feeling was given added strength by the racial element in their fantasy. She was not simply his slave, she was his nigger slave. In their world her slavery was a consequence of her colour and her colour a badge of her slavery. To question Dan's authority was not only against the rules – it was positively wicked – a denial of the natural order.

But if her blackness made her inferior to Dan did not it make her, and all like her also, inferior to all whites? Increasingly she found herself reluctant to push herself forward when white people were about, hanging back at the super market check-out, standing to one side at doors, giving way on the pavement.

In her mind fantasy and reality had begun to merge and blend until she was unsure of their precise boundaries.

So when Dan appeared in the kitchen doorway gripping the bruised and bloodied body of her naked child by the back of his neck she showed neither anger nor resentment since she felt neither. She suffered with her son when he was beaten but she accepted, just as when Dan took the strap to her, that such beatings were, so far as he and she and all other niggers were concerned, part of life.

She glanced briefly at Cassius's tear drenched face and then with white teeth flashing as a broad grin split her dark face, dropped on one knee to welcome Dan before turning back to the stove. She would have gone down on both knees had the cassoulet not been at a crucial stage and she did not want to risk spoiling it. She hoped very much that Dan would approve her decision. She knew that if he did not she would once again get a taste of the strap.

One knee or two knees, it was just one of the many instant decisions that she had to make every day acting on little more than instinct. Trivial decisions, laughable often, to an observer but desperately important to the frightened nigger whose dark hide was at risk.

She had though, she knew, got much better at making such decisions as time had passed, as indeed Dan had promised she would. She could remember in the early days crouching at his feet, her bottom smarting from the strap, whimpering in despair, saying she was a stupid nigger and she would never learn and Dan comforting her; saying she was a stupid nigger but she would learn in time. That indeed she knew already. It was just a question of reawakening her nigger instincts, reaching down to the simple primitive animal that lay beneath the false veneer of civilization, and that the strap frequently and forcefully applied was the most effective tool to achieve this. And so it had proved.

Even the broad grin with which she greeted her master when he entered the kitchen was learnt as a consequence of these somewhat rough lessons. It was better to look cheerful than miserable for misery could be so easily be seen as a sign of resentment and discontent and those were faults that Dan would not tolerate in any nigger of his. A grinning slave was one that was happy and content in its servitude. Even here though, she had learnt, there were dangers and pitfalls. Grin at the wrong moment, when Dan was angry or upset and the consequences were likely to be painful and unpleasant.

However on this occasion it seemed Liz had judged her master's mood correctly for Dan simply snapped at her.

"Leave that for the moment whore. Get a bucket and cloth and clean up the mess this dirty little whelp of yours has made in the hall. Hurry up slut 3; Move."

Liz acknowledged the order with another deep curtsey and hastily grabbing a bucket from under the sink filled it with steaming water before hurrying into the hall. She was immediately faced by two big white men in dark police uniforms.

She had no time to think but she did not need to. She reacted instinctively, bobbing the two white men a respectfulcurtsey, before dropping to her knees and beginning to energetically swab the floor.

She did not glance up but she could feel the men's eyes on her and that excited her. She knew she was a striking sight, a strong young Negress, her jet black skin contrasting with the coarse white material of her skimpy shift. Her near nakedness and the thought of the two white men eyeing her made her feel sexy. Without pausing in her work she arched her back, pushing up her rump. Her petticoat rode up her back. She felt the cold air in the hall cool against her bare bottom.

Behind her in the kitchen she heard Cassius cry out in pain. She felt sorry for the boy but with the eyes of the two white men on her she felt hot, very hot. She wriggled her bottom provocatively.

Chapter 7

The boy collapsed on his knees on the floor. A further vicious kick on the side of his thigh urged him under the draining board. Dan looped a length of cord round the manacles passed its free end over one of the brackets hold the draining board in place and drew it tight. Cassius trapped on his knees under the shelf had his wrists yanked upwards behind his back as far as Dan could force them. He felt the iron rings biting into his thin wrists and the muscles in his back and shoulders screamed in protest at the strain put on them.

Dan moved out of his line of vision. Cassius heard him open a drawer in one of the kitchen cabinets. Then Dan was back holding a small metal ring in his hand. He squatted on the floor in front of Cassius who cowered away from him.

"Turn and face me boy," Dan commanded sharply and flipped him hard across the side of his head to enforce obedience.

Cassius, his ear burning from the blow, obeyed.

"Knees apart 3; That's better, you're beginning to learn."

Reaching forward Dan took hold of the boy's balls between the finger and thumb of his left hand.

"Easy now, steady," he murmured gently as Cassius tried to draw away from him.

"It'll be over in the moment now lad."

He got the tips of his finger and thumb behind the small hairless testicles, that were showing a tendency to disappear into the boy, and pulled firmly but gently downwards. Whistling quietly to himself in concentration he squeezed and pushed Cassius's testicles through the narrow ring that he held in his right hand. Once the ring was firmly in place encircling the root of the child's cock and ball sack he tightened its hold with a screw set in it's side.

"That," he said with satisfaction hunkering back on his heels to inspect his handiwork, "should calm you down a bit boy. Otherwise I reckon you'd be squirting nigger juice over the furniture every thirty seconds – randy little brute."

The ring set behind the boy's balls forced his testicles forward so that they stood out clear from his body giving them, small though they were, an added prominence. Displayed in this way they were too inviting for Dan to resist. He flipped the back of his hand upwards between the boy's legs. Cassius squealed and jerked forward as the pain tore through his body. He squealed again as the sudden movement wrenched at his shoulders.

"I'll be back later boy and then I'll give you something really to cry about," Dan promised as he walked out of the kitchen.

Coming back into the hallway Dan saw Liz on her knees before the two white men. She was bent forward scrubbing the floor, her tunic riding high up over her hips, her naked black rump thrust invitingly upwards. Smiling indulgently Dan bent forward and landed a resounding open handed slap on one firm ebony buttock.

"The black bitch is always on heat," he remarked cheerfully to the two policemen.

"You're desperate for a taste of white cock aren't you girl?" he demanded as he straightened up, chuckling good humouredly.

"Sure am Massa Sah," Liz agreed grinning, instinctively adopting the sing song whine and the debased language that seemed to come naturally to her in such circumstances.

"I is real hot an eager for Massa's cock Sah."

As she spoke she continued assiduously scrubbing at the floor while giving her bottom an appreciative wriggle.

"Cos you are whore." Dan replied. "all you nigger's are the same 3; Now you've done as much as you can scrubbing the floor get back to the kitchen. And bring a jug of water to the sitting room quick now. I need it for the whisky."

Dan gave Liz a sharp prod in the side of her thigh with the toe of his shoe.

"Come along gentlemen," he said addressing Constables Reid and Turner, "I am sorry you have been kept waiting so long for the drinks you both so richly deserved."

He opened the door to the sitting room and stood aside to let them enter it.

"Make yourselves comfortable gentlemen," Dan said waving the two policemen into two deep arm chairs on either side of the cheerfully blazing fire.

"The girl will be here in a minute with the water I am sure." he continued as he fumbled in the side board searching for the glasses and whisky decanter.

"I can see she has her uses," Reid remarked from the depth of his chair stretching out his feet to the fire, "but my own view is that we should send all niggers back to where they came from. This is a white man's country and it should remain that way."

"I agree with you about this being a white man's country." Dan replied easily setting out three glasses on the coffee table and pouring generous measures of whisky into them, "but not about sending niggers back from wherever they came from. That would be a waste. Niggers are damn useful to have around and this will remain a white man's country provided they are kept firmly in their places and treated firmly.

"And saying 'send them back from where they came from' implies they have right to that place where ever it is. That's nonsense to my mind. They don't have a right to anything. It is nature's law that the strong rule the weak and we are strong and they are weak and not fit to rule themselves let alone anyone else."

"Now where the hell is that bloody girl. I told her to bring a jug of water in here for our whisky and she damn well hasn't done it. Typical of the lazy brutes, unless you keep after them nothing gets done."

"You lazy black bitch Liz where is the water," he shouted storming out towards the kitchen."

Liz when she returned to the kitchen was greeted by the sound of her son's muffled whimpering.

"Hush child," she said as she hurried towards the sink, "don't make so much noise. You'll disturb Master and his guests and then you'll get hit again."

"Oh Mum," Cassius whined pitifully, "I really hurt Mum. Why did Dan let those men beat me like that and why is he so cruel to me. He wasn't before. He was nice to me then."

Liz looked at where her child was crouched under the open shelving beside the sink his wrists pulled up hard behind his shoulders. Blood trickling was down his arms from where the steel cuffs had galled him. His skin was lighter than hers, chocolate to her ebony, and showed the bruises more. The smooth curves of his bottom were ridged with livid welts while the sides of his firm young thighs were mottled with bruising.

Gently she reached out and turned his face, tear blotched and bloody, towards her own.

"Cassius child," she said almost crying herself, "you asked for it child. You said you wanted to be his nigger slave like me didn't you? And this is what it's like. We get beaten an hit an cursed at. It's how we is treated and how we is taught to be good obedient hardworking niggers. His being nice and kind to you was before, now that's over. You're a nigger now like you asked to be an white gentlemen aren't nice an kind to us. You got to just take it an try hard to please him an then maybe you won't be hit so much."

"Mum I want to please him Mum but he jus don't give me the chance," unconsciously Cassius was slipping into the slovenly half formed words and fractured syntax that his mother used. "He jus hits me Mum," and the boy began to cry in real earnest.

Crouching down so that she was level with the naked boy Liz hugged her child, feeling his body shudder as he sobbed bitterly.

"Where's the jug of water I told you to bring you useless idle whore," Dan demanded barging furiously through the kitchen door.

He caught sight of Liz huddled on the ground beside the tethered Cassius. His face went red with rage. With two strides he was towering over the two trembling Negroes. Smashing the toe of his heavy brogues into the girl's rump he knocked Liz forward onto her knees.

"You prefer to waste your time fussing your useless whelp rather than serving your master do you?"

Dan caught hold of the girl by her collar at the back of her neck and heaving her to her feet sent her staggering towards the sink. She finished doubled up over the basin And Dan took a running kick at her bottom, knocking her forward so that her head banged against the wall. Standing close behind her Dan clouted her across the side of the head over and over again.

Liz made no attempt to defend herself or ward off the blows just murmuring "Massa Massa" as the blows rocked her head from side to side and Cassius whimpered helplessly at the sight of his mother's beating.

In the end Dan tiring of the sport slammed Liz's face into the wall behind the sink. She groaned and sagged at the knees hanging onto the edge of the basin to stop from falling.

"Well fill the jug now you lazy bitch," Dan snarled, driving his knee into her bottom, "and don't think you'll get off with just that thumping girl. I'll flay your black hide from your rump tonight before I've finished with you."

"Yes Massa Sah. Very well Massa Sah. Thank you Massa Sah," Liz mumbled as Dan stormed out of the kitchen.

Choking back tears of pain and fear, her fingers clumsy with terror she collected a glass jug from one of kitchen cabinets and with unsteady hands began to fill it from the tap while Cassius sobbed hopelessly in the background.

"I'm sorry gentlemen," Dan said returning to the sitting room, "the bloody girl was paying more attention to fussing over her miserable whelp than serving her betters. I promise you I will see she gets her priorities right in future. "

"I have to keep after the bitch all the time." he continued as Liz sidled into the room carrying the water jug. "She's just naturally idle like all her kind."

"Well what are you waiting for you stupid whore," he snapped impatiently at Liz, "Take the water round and see what the gentleman want."

Silently Liz went from man to man bobbing a deep curtsy to each in turn before topping their whiskies up with water.

"So the little nigger boy we caught in your garden this morning is this bitch's whelp?" Reid asked allowing her to pour about a finger of water into his glass before signalling her to stop.

"Yes and an ill behaved, spoilt little animal she's allowed him to become," Dan replied angrily. "You'd have thought the brat would have learnt obedience and respect for his betters at the stupid cow's breast but far from it. Still I'll sort him out now I've got him. There's nothing wrong with him that the strap won't cure. And the bitch is going to get a lesson in nigger child rearing too."

"The strap?" Turner said meditatively. He wasn't, he told himself, against beating coloured people but he wondered at the efficacy of the strap and his scepticism showed in his tone of voice. He doubted if the strap however forcefully and frequently applied would match the solid deep bruising blows that the batons, which were Reid's and his own preferred tools for such work, delivered.

"Yes," Dan replied catching the man's tone, "the strap. I'll show you. Liz fetch me the strap. Now!."

Liz, her stomach churning with fear, for she guessed what was coming next, hurried from the room. She collected the trap from its hook by the front door and hurried back with it. Dropping to her knees at Dan's feet she offered it to him.

Dan took it from her and standing up moved round her. Kneeling on the floor, she could hear him speaking behind her.

"This," Dan said holding the strap up so that the two men could see it clearly, "is an excellent instrument for educating niggers. Of course for serious offences they need to be trussed and whipped but for everyday run of the mill discipline a thick leather strap about three foot long and perhaps four inches wide is hard to beat. You note this one is split at its tip to give it extra bite. Use it hard and use it often is my advice. They'll respect you if your firm, anything else they take as weakness."

"Strip bitch," he snapped poking Liz in the rump with his toe to give added force to his command.

This was the order that Liz had been dreading for she guessed when she was told to fetch the strap how things would go. However the order had been given and had to be obeyed.

Still kneeling she pulled the shift up over her head and dropped it on the floor in front of her. Now quite naked she knelt, waiting.

"Stand up," Dan commanded, "I want to let these gentlemen get a good look at you."

Liz scrambled quickly to her feet and stood, making no attempt to cover herself, her hands hanging open and loose by her sides. She stood with her head bowed humbly but not modestly for modesty was denied her and her sort. Indeed she was, as always when Dan made her strip in front of him, excited by her own nakedness. Even more so on this occasion with the two strange white men lounging in their arm chairs eyeing her with a mixture of prurience and hostile contempt.

"I think," Dan continued addressing Reid and Turner, "that you both hate niggers and think we would be better off without them. I on the other hand think they have their uses – when they've been properly schooled that is."

"Turn round and face the gentlemen slut," he ordered slapping Liz on the rump.

"Look at this one. Fine animal, black hide's gleaming with health, good strong shoulders, powerful legs – plenty of work in her, broad hips – for breeding. Pity to waste all that."

"And they're all natural whores. Not pretty or anything," reaching out he put his hand under Liz's chin and tipped her head back so that the men see her face, "woolly hair, squashed nose and fat lips, typical nigger, but hot as all hell, panting and eager for it."

Dan moved his hand away from her chin and Liz's head sank forwards again. He cupped one of her breasts rubbing one of her swollen nipples with the side of his thumb.

"Just aching for it," he continued moving his hand once again and pressing the butt of open hand against Liz's mons Veneris, "you can smell it on her and she's damp with lust."

Liz panting with eagerness pushed her hips forward, pressing herself up against Dan's questing hand. Oblivious to the presence of the two watching men, she felt no shame or embarrassment in offering herself to her master.

After a moment Dan laughed and removed his hand ringing a soft whimper of disappointment from the girl.

"Turn round and back on your knees," Dan ordered roughly.

Placing one heel between Liz's shoulder blades he pushed her forward so that she was kneeling, bum raised, forehead pressed against the ground.

"Now, he said picking up the strap and hefting it in his right hand, "for a demonstration of how effective this can be when applied to bare nigger flesh."

He swung his hand back over his shoulder and then brought the strap whistling viciously down with all his strength across Liz's upraised bottom. The explosive crack of leather striking taughtly stretched skin rang out like a pistol shot. Driven forward by the force of the blow Liz grunted as the pain drove the breath from her body. For a moment it felt as though the flame of a bow torch had been applied to her bottom. She fought to keep control of herself. Her instinct was to straighten, to clap her hands to her burning flesh but she knew from bitter experience that to do so would bring even greater suffering, even greater pain.

But it wasn't only fear of the consequences that kept her down. Almost as important, if not more important, was the wish to please her master, to prove to him by staying down her devotion. And they were being watched. She was not going to shame her master in front of his two friends.

Dan stood over Liz watching her struggle against the pain. He felt proud not of the slut herself but of what he had made of her. He remembered how, when he first took the strap to her, she had fought it, arguing, refusing to strip or get in position, forcing him to pinion her and then screaming and bucking against her bonds at every cut. That was not all that long ago but now she had learnt to accept it and with it his mastery. It was his will power that was holding her there trembling naked at his feet waiting for the stroke of the strap. He had broken and tamed her and he was proud of his achievement.

He waited until he was satisfied that she was settled back in position, bum raised, head pressed down to the ground. For a second, a third and a fourth time, he brought the strap cracking down across her naked bottom while Liz moaned and whimpered under the lash.

"Of course," Dan remarked panting slightly, "there's other places you can use it," and he delivered two slashing cuts across Liz's bare shoulders.

"Up," he commanded sharply.

"Well gentlemen," he continued as Liz scrambled hastily to her feet, "you are welcome to examine the slut's stripes. When you see the marks it has left I think you will accept that the strap is an effective means of punishment."

The two men heaved themselves out of their chairs and crowded round Liz. She stood shivering, trying to fight back the tears after her beating, feeling the men's fingers tracing the weals on her rump and shoulders, smelling the whisky on their breaths.

"It's ribbed her hide OK," Turner said, "but there's not all that much bruising I can see."

"It's there all right," Dan replied, "but it's masked by the colour of her skin. With a real black nigger like her you get a sort of dusky angry red stripe but the blue's an purples of the associated bruising doesn't show up. It'd be different with a lighter skinned specimen like Cassius."

"I'll show you."

"Stop standing there whimpering you stupid bitch. Go and fetch Cassius."

Chapter 8

"Get your wrists higher up your back Cassy," she pleaded. "I got to get some slack on this cord if I'm to untie it an Massa is waiting."

"I jus can't get them up higher Mum," Cassius whimpered, "my shoulders is aching real bad 3; I jus can't 3;"

"Aw fuck Mum 3; that fucking hurt," Cassius's protestations were brought to an abrupt conclusion as Liz in order to get some slack on the cord yanked hard on it with her left hand drawing his already galled wrists higher up his back forcing the steel manacles to cut even deeper into them.

Liz clouted him hard across the back of the head.

"That's for your own good child," she said as Cassius yelped with pain, "it ain't respectful for niggers like us to use bad language like that. If Massa heard you at it you'd get a great deal more than a bang on the head."

Cassius snivelled quietly to himself as Liz returned to struggle with the knot. He had hardly been hit before in his life and now it seemed everybody was at it all the time.

Then all at once the pressure on his wrists relaxed and his arms were no longer being pulled up behind his back.

"Thanks Mum," Cassius muttered as Liz pulled him clear of the shelve under which he had been forced to crouch. His wrists were still secured behind his back by the steel handcuffs but at least he could now lower his arms and straighten his aching body.

She made no reply as she guided him towards the kitchen door. She knew that her child's gratitude was misplaced. That she was taking him to be further abused and maltreated but there was no point in telling him so. To do so would only risk futile resistance on his part and further misery for both of them. Her heart melted as she looked down at her son's slim body, he seemed so fragile and vulnerable. She felt sick and near to tears. Like any mother she would have liked to protect her child from harm and suffering but Dan was their master and she was powerless. There was no one who could protect either Cassius or herself from him. She knew Dan was going to beat Cassius and there was nothing she could do to prevent him. She would just have to watch as the strap scored bloody lines across her boy's tender flesh and listen to his cries.

Cassius checked at the door to the sitting room when he saw the two policemen. His body still ached from the working over they had given him with their truncheons. Liz urged him forward with a hand on his shoulder till he was standing in front of Dan. The room was totally silent. Cassius's stomach tightened as fear gripped him, drawing an iron band round his chest, weakening his knees, turning his legs to rubber. The silence lengthened and Cassius stole a glance up into Dan's face, in the past smiling and friendly but now cold and unforgiving. The boy dropped his eyes quickly.

Dan looked down at the small naked black boy standing quaking in front of him. He in contrast to the boy was icy calm. He felt neither pity nor anger. His attitude was coldly calculating.

He had reduced the boy to a state of abject terror and had stripped him of any last vestiges of dignity and pride. Now he had to make what was only a temporary condition permanent. In order to ensure the total unquestioning obedience that was the least that was acceptable from any slave of his the boy had to be taught to fear his master more than anything else in the world.

But there was an even harder lesson for the brat to learn. That obedience by itself was not enough. The boy would have to learn to anticipate the needs and wishes of his master and act to meet them without an order being spoken.

It was his task to school the boy accordingly and nothing would divert him from it.

Without warning he slammed his fist into the Cassius's stomach hitting so hard that the boy's feet were lifted from the floor by the force of the blow. The brat doubled over and Dan lashed out with his foot at his ankles. Cassius crashed to the ground. He huddled there on his knees his head resting on the ground, a little ball of naked chocolate coloured boy misery.

Dan smiled grimly. He thought the boy had probably learnt that he would be well advised to kneel when brought before his master. If he had not then he would simply be hit again and again until he had learnt this lesson. Dan saw no reason to waste words on the brat.

The silence dragged on. Cassius began to whimper quietly.

"Up," Dan suddenly snapped.

Obediently Cassius scrambled quickly to his feet. He stood in front of Dan, his hands bound, tightly behind his back, feeling the eyes of the three men on his naked body.

Dan gripping Cassius by one thin arm turned the boy away from him and lifted the boy's wrists so that he could get a clear view of Cassius's rump. Deep bruising had given the boy's café au lait flesh a bluish almost purple tinge.

"I'm afraid," Dan said addressing the two men lounging in their armchairs, "that I can hardly use the boy's bottom to illustrate my point about the strap marking lighter flesh. You gave it such a basting earlier with the baton that any further bruising will hardly show up at all."

"Mind you," he added hastily not wishing to upset his guests for he was a naturally courteous and considerate person, "that's all to the good really. He'll feel the strap all the more when I come to flog him this evening. Laying the stripes across his bum will be like cutting down into raw meat. It'll teach him not to contradict his betters – and there are other places you can beat a boy than on his bottom. Though personally I don't think there's a more satisfying or exciting one. However to work 3;"

Dan slapped Cassius on his bottom wringing a squeal of pain from the boy as the impact of the man's palm on his tender flesh sent an explosion of pain through his body.

"Liz you idle black whore," Dan snapped, "hold your brat for me while I show these Gentlemen how the strap will mark nigger hide if its not as black as yours 3; 3; no you stupid bitch turn him to face me and put your arms under his 3; clasp your hands behind his neck 3;"

"I'm sorry Gentlemen I doubt if there's a stupider an animal on the face of this planet than a nigger. Now let me show you how a strap can mark naked boy's skin."

Pinioned facing Dan, with his mother's arms under his own and her hands clasped together behind his neck, Cassius whimpered quietly. He pressed back into his mother's naked body, cringing in fear away from the man. Perhaps there flickered in his heart some faint hope that his mother would come to his aid now as she had done so often in the past.

Dan gently ran his hand over the boy's chest, feeling the ribs under the tightly stretched skin. He let his hand rest for a moment feeling the flutter of the child's heart under his palm. Then he stepped back and picked up the strap. He raised it over his left shoulder and brought it down back handed, diagonally, across Cassius's chest. The rich hiss of the descending strap was followed by the sharp crack of leather against tightly drawn bare flesh.

Cassius felt as if a red hot bar of metal had been laid across his chest. His body jerked convulsively in response to the tearing pain that emptied his lungs of breath. There was a moment of almost total silence as he dragged air back into his chest and then a strange, almost animal howl, rang shrilly out.

"Have a look Gentleman," Dan said calmly ignoring Cassius's cry, "it's marked him clearly."

The two men stepped forward. Reid ran a finger tip experimentally along the livid stripe scored by the strap across Cassius's rib cage.

"Yes," he said a little grudgingly, "I suppose we have to admit that and there's another thing. I suppose we could never risk hitting the brat across the chest with a baton, too much risk of cracking a rib or two."

"There's not the slightest chance of that with the strap." Dan said cheerfully, "stand back and I'll give him another one to show you."

"No." Cassius screamed fighting, panic stricken at the thought of another cut across his chest from the cruel strap, to escape from his mother's grasp.

Dan said nothing but abruptly turning on his heel marched out of the room.

"Be still Cassy, be still." Liz murmured in her son's ear as she struggled to hold him. "You real done it this time child. You real done it. Hush an be still fore you make things worse for both of us."

Cassius ceased to struggle. He hung unresisting in his mother's grip sobbing quietly. He knew he must once again have done something terrible to enrage his master but he did not know what.

Dan returned and, grim faced, advanced on the boy. Metal glinted in his hand. He was holding a stout steel bar, perhaps six inches [15 cm] long, with rings at either end from which hung two leather straps with a lockable buckle. The bar had been passed though the base of a rubber coated cylinder about two inches [5 cm] across and some four inches [10 cm] long with a rounded end. Cassius gazed at this object uncomprehendingly.

Dan gripped the boy, squeezing hard with his index finger and thumb on each side of his face, forcing his jaws apart.

"'No' is not a word a well trained nigger uses to its Master," he snarled trying to insert the end of the rubber coated cylinder into Cassius mouth.

"Come on boy," Dan said impatiently jabbing the cylinder head hard against the boy's teeth 3; you'd best get your mouth open wide or you'll get your teeth broken. One way or the other you're going to be bitted."

Straining Cassius forced his mouth open wide to accommodate the jaw cracking gag. Dan pushed the thing down into his throat. Cassius's body struggled to reject it, writhing in his mother's grip, trying to turn his head away from Dan's thrusting hand. His mother held fast to the squirming boy while Dan tightened his grip on his jaw as he joked and gagged at the thing that filled his mouth and reached down into his throat.

Panic gripped Cassius. His struggles increased and then ceased as his strength ebbed away. He couldn't breath. A black film began to form in front of his eyes. Just before he lost consciousness Dan relented, withdrawing the rubber gag just enough to allow Cassius to snatch a couple of breaths before thrusting its full length back down into his gullet. Once more the world swam and dimmed before his eyes. Through a darkening cloud he could see the men's faces leering at him and could hear, before the roaring in his ears drowned, their laughter.

"The brat can choke and struggle as much as he likes," Dan remarked smiling grimly, "but in the end he'll accept this."

"You don't think he'll suffocate?" Reid asked chuckling for he found the boy's sufferings highly amusing.

"Good God, no," Dan said withdrawing the gag again for a few seconds to allow the boy to draw breath, "he can take bigger things than this down his throat and no doubt will have to too before he's much older. It's good training for him. He should be grateful."

At which he pushed the plug once again down into in Cassius's throat.

"I thought last time his eyes were going to burst out of his head," Turner remarked they were bulging so much."

"They're doing so again now," he added laughing delightedly.

"It's only a question of the stupid brat calming down," Dan said. "Once he stops panicking he'll manage it all right."

Indeed for whatever reason, exhaustion, despair, the realisation that he could manage to breath even with the thing pushed down into the back of his throat, or a combination of all three, Cassius's struggles slowly diminished. Eventually he stood still, trembling slightly in his mother's grasp. Dan pulled his head forward. Then drawing the straps tight so that the gag was securely fastened in the Cassius's mouth he locked it in place.

"There," Dan said in a satisfied tone of voice, "perseverance is what is required when schooling young stock."

"Now take him back into the kitchen and tie him up again. I'll be out later."

As Liz hustled Cassius from the room the three men settled back in their easy chairs.

"You must have the girl well trained," Reid remarked cradling his tumbler of whisky in his hands, "for her to hold her own child for you while you beat it."

"A good slave is like a dog it loves and it fears its master. The first comes naturally to a nigger. The second has to be taught and it is fortunate that I have a talent for it," Dan replied smiling quietly.

"Love?" Turner said his doubt clear in his voice.

"Yes, perhaps a base, lowish sort of love. It could hardly be anything else with niggers but still love of a sort. You heard Liz pleading for cock and saw her wriggling her bottom at you. The bitch is permanently on heat and her whelp is the same. I've had to ring it to stop it squirting juice everywhere."

"But he's a boy," Turner said.

"A nigger boy," Dan corrected him, "it's not like he's really human. I don't think there's really much difference between one nigger hole and another. Anyway it's not necessary to use him only that he should want to be used."

"It's a pity," Reid remarked, "that we couldn't bring slavery back. It would get rid of one or two problems."

"The most prized stock for export from Africa to the Southern States were boys in their early teens," Dan said. "They were strong enough to work in the fields but young enough to break easily. What you need nowadays though is a boy like that without any family to miss him."

"Sounds like any number of our young runaways," Turner laughed.

"Well if one comes your way 3;"

The two policemen laughed and the conversation moved on but the idea had been planted.

In the kitchen Liz returned to the preparation of the cassoulet while keeping a keen ear open for sounds of departure from the hall. She hoped the policemen would be gone before too long for the cassoulet was just about ready and Dan, she knew, would be angry if it is was spoilt. Back beside the sink, his wrists wrenched up high behind his back, Cassius knelt, tears running down his face. His bruised and aching body was wracked by cramp but the only sound he could manage through the fearsome gag that forced his jaws achingly apart and reached back into his gullet was a soft moaning.

Eventually she heard footsteps in the hall and the sound of mane's voices loud and confident. Dan was showing his new friends out, thanking them once again for apprehending Cassius, apologizing for the boy's atrocious conduct in first resisting and then contradicting a white man and promising that if they called again they would find his behaviour much improved. The policemen replied thanking him for the drinks and promising that if they came across 'anything in his line' they would certainly let him know.

The front door opened and closed.

Liz heard Dan walk across the hall to the dining room. Quickly she lifted the steaming marmite from the stove and placing it with the ready dinner warmed plate and the carefully chambred bottle of Cahors hurried to serve her master. Entering the dining room she dropped a deep curtsy to Dan before placing the tray on the side board.

First on bare feet carrying the bottle of wine she padded across to where Dan sat and poured a quarter inch [5 mm] of the dark red liquid, so dark that it was almost black, into the wine glass set on the table beside him. He raised it to his lips. Returning it to the table a slight indication of his head, the only acknowledgement of her presence that he had made since she had entered the room, indicated that the wine was acceptable. Taking great care not to spill a drop she filled the glass and curtsied deeply once again before returning to the side board to ladle the rich stew that she had spent most of the day preparing onto the dinner plate. The scent from the cassoulet tickled her nostrils and caused her mouth to water as she carried the rich mixture of Toulon Sausages, belly pork, mutton, preserved goose and haricot beans generously seasoned with garlic and thyme to where Dan sat.

She placed the plate gently before Dan curtseyed once again and stood waiting for his verdict. He took a fork full of the stew, chewed and nodded.

"You're a stupid black bitch but you can cook," he said.

Liz thrilled at the hint of approval and rough affection in his voice

"Thank you Massa," she murmured softly, bobbing a curtsy, her pride and gratitude at this praise apparent.

Indeed she felt fulfilled and at peace. She sensed that somehow things were at that moment exactly as they should be and as they had always been meant to be. The formality of the setting, the crisply pressed, spotless white linen tablecloth, the cut-glass crystal goblet with the dark red wine glinting inside it, the glittering cutlery heightened this feeling. Standing beside her seated master, bare footed, her only clothing a short flimsy shift, ready to serve him and open and ready to his hand, she did not question the fate that made him master and her slave. Rather she embraced it. That she should be hungry while Dan feasted, that her food when she eventually got it, should be a meagre bowl of maize porridge gulped down hurriedly squatting on the floor in the kitchen she not only accepted as right and inevitable – she welcomed it. She welcomed it because it allowed her to show to Dan not that she accepted but that she embraced his mastery.

But there was a greater reason that night than ever before for her feeling of fulfilment. In the kitchen her son, huddled naked and whimpering, at the beginning of the very same journey that she had travelled before him. In her belly a new life stirred. What greater proof of devotion could a slave girl give her master than to breed fresh stock for his service?

Chapter 9

The cassoulet was followed by treacle art and cream, the pastry so light and crisp that it seemed as if it seemed almost weightless and crumbled at the touch of the spoon. Then a whole stilton girded in a white napkin was brought to the table.

At last, replete and warmed by the wine he had drunk, Dan pushed his chair back. He squeezed a firm black thigh, feeling Liz's skin, smooth and cool to his touch, in a proprietorial gesture.

"Clear the table girl and bring me my coffee in the kitchen," Dan commanded heaving himself to his feet.

Liz curtseyed her acknowledgement of his order and hurried to the door to open it for him. Dan did not thank her. In his book you did not thank someone, let alone a Negro slave, for simply doing their duty.

Hunched under the shelving by the sink his arms pulled tight up behind his back by the cord attached to his manacles Cassius twisted round to watch him approach. The boy's face, bruised and tear stained, weirdly distorted by the cruel gag that forced his jaws apart, was almost comical in the intensity of its expression of fear and suffering.

With only the briefest of glances at the cowering boy Dan walked across the kitchen. Following him with his eyes Cassius saw him take from it's housing fastened to the wall white plastic tube about yard [90 cm] long with a green handle at one end and a similar coloured protuberance at the other. Dan hefted the tube in his hand. He pressed a button set in the handle and the thing emitted a low menacing buzz.

Dan walked over towards Cassius carrying the green handled tube. Taking hold of a kitchen chair with his left hand he swung it round so that it was facing the boy.

"Turn to face me boy and spread your knees," Dan ordered seating himself on the chair.

The thought of disobedience did not even occur to Cassius. Slowly painfully, for every movement seemed to make the steel manacles bite further into his wrists, the boy shuffled round on his knees till he was facing Dan.

"Look up. Look into my eyes," Dan said almost gently.

Dan looked down into the boy's eyes and saw nothing but fear. The eyes, he thought, of a calf being led into the slaughter house. Which in a way was appropriate for, although the boy's life would be spared, it was his intention to kill his soul.

"I expect your jaws aching real bad now boy," Dan said still speaking in mild conversational tones.

Cassius tried to answer, tried to tell the man how badly the gag was hurting him, but the only sounds he managed was a strange mixture of groans and grunts. Desperate to get the message across he nodded bobbing his head up and down with the speed and vigour of a thrush smashing a snail shell against a stone..

"I reckon," Dan said smiling amused at the vehemence of the boy's reaction to his question , "that you know better than to contradict a white man now too boy?"

Dan's nodding continued with redoubled urgency.

"Well as you learnt your lesson now I suppose I could take the thing out except I don't want the neighbours being disturbed by your screaming."

Dan smiled coldly as the boy's nodding suddenly ceased.

"Get them apart," Dan said leaning forward and tapping the inside of Cassius's knees with the swollen green tip of the plastic tube.

"Further apart boy 3; Come on you've got nothing to hide from me or anyone else really," Dan added with a laugh.

He ran the tip of the rod along the inside of one of the boy's thighs until it reached the junction of his legs where his testicles would normally have modestly nestled but were now forced forward and upward by the ring about their base. He slipped its end under the boy's balls.

Dan paused for a moment. He was enjoying himself and there was no need to hurry things. Then he pressed the button on the wand's green handle. The boy's body seemed to rise upwards into the air despite the bonds that held him down on his knees as the seven hundred and fifty volt current thumped into him. . Strange unearthly noises were wrenched from Cassius's chest as the electric current surged through him. Dan struggled to keep the tip of the prod in its place under the brat's balls. A stream of amber fluid squirted from the boy's tiny cock and spread steaming on the floor as the lost control of his bladder.

"Filthy little animal," Dan exclaimed in disgust as he pulled the prod away.

"Mop that mess up," he ordered Liz who at that moment appeared carrying a cup of coffee.

She pulled a low table to beside where Dan was sitting and placed the coffee on it. Then she pulled a bucket and some rags from the cupboard under the sink. Getting down on her knees before Dan's chair she set about swabbing the floor clean.

Dan sat watching her as she worked. He wondered why he had not told her to lick the mess up. It would have been an interesting test of discipline though come to think of it he had no doubt that if ordered to she would have done so. Anyway he wouldn't fancy having her preparing his food after making her do that. There was after all such a thing as cross infection.

"Hurry up girl," he ordered using the tip of the prod to lift the back of her petticoat.

"All done Massa," Liz said hastily jumping to her feet and dropping the sodden cloth into the bucket. Dan had used the prod on her in the past and she didn't want a further taste of it.

"Swill that bucket out and rinse the cloth at the outside tap and wash your hands before you start on the plates," Dan snapped before turning his attention back to Cassius.

The boy's head had fallen forward and it seemed that the only thing that was keeping him upright on his knees was the cord pulling his wrists up behind his back. He was not unconscious though for when Dan touched him on the side just under the ribs with the end of the cattle prod. Cassius stirred and lifted his face to look at him. Dan noticed that foam had formed around the gag in his mouth and was beginning to dribble down his chin.

Dan ran the tip of the rod up one side of the boy's chest. The child tried to pull away but pinioned as he was with his wrists drawn high up behind his shoulders he could not move very far. Dan pushed the point upward still it was pressed into the crease of tender flesh at Cassius's armpit. Holding the boy's gaze he smiled coldly. He saw the boy's eyes widen in terror. He let the moment drag out a little before he pressed the button in the handle of the prod. The boy's body jerked convulsively as the current surged through him. His bare feet scrabbled frantically at the floor as he fought against the cord pinioning his wrists regardless of the narrow cuffs biting into his flesh. Blood welled from the cuts where the steel had sliced into the boy's wrists and streamed in ever widening rivulets down his thin arms.

Busy at the sink washing the dinner things Liz tried to block out the sounds of her sons suffering. There was nothing that she could do to stop or lessen it. In the early days of her servitude she had tried once or twice to physically resist Dan's authority but she had soon learnt that Dan was much stronger than her. In any event he had long ago had now established so complete a dominance over her that she was incapable even of questioning it in her own mind. She hated it, she wished with all her heart that it would stop, she would willingly have taken his place and suffered in his stead if that was possible but she did not even think of trying to make Dan stop. As for pleading with the man she knew from bitter experience that Dan would not be deflected from his purpose by the prayers of a mere nigger slave girl like herself.

But try as she would she could not close her ear to the sounds coming from behind her, the groans, the squeals, the desperate scrabbling of bare feet on the kitchen floor. Despite this Liz forced herself to concentrate on the task in hand. The only thing she could do that might bring her sons sufferings to a close was to complete her work and then present herself to Dan. He had said that he was going to beat her and he could not do that and continue to torment of Cassius. She was ready to suffer a whipping if that would bring the boy's sufferings to an end and anyway Dan would give her the thrashing he had promised her eventually, it was just a question of getting it earlier rather than later. First she had to get the washing up done and she had to do it properly to do otherwise would only be storing trouble up for both Cassius an herself in the future. So she washed and rinsed and dried with as much speed as was compatible with doing the job thoroughly.

Eventually she was finished and she went to stand silently beside Dan's chair. The man sensing her presence turned away from the naked boy.

"The washing up's done is it?" he enquired.

"Yes Sir an I've dried the dishes an everything an put them away Sir"

"Good, well we'll tidy up the brat and then I'll give you the flogging I promised you but first I'd better bring him back here. He seems to have wandered off somewhere."

Indeed as soon as Dan had turned his attention away from Cassius his head had fallen forward on his chest and he was now, hanging slumped forward, from his wrists.

Dan moved the cattle prod so that it's point was resting against the side of Cassius's neck just below his left ear. He pressed the button in the handle and the boy's head jerked wildly.

"There," said Dan rising from his chair, "that got the brat's attention."

He walked over to where Cassius knelt and began to unbuckle the gag's fastenings at the back of the boy's head.

"Take hold of him under the arms and lift him up a bit to take the weight off his manacles while I free them," he instructed Liz as he slid the gag from the n boy's mouth.

"And don't let him fall on the floor when I've done that. He'd better have some anti-sceptic cream on his wrists, we want them to heal cleanly."

Dan noticed that Cassius appeared, even though the gag had been removed, to have a problem closing his jaws. The boy was kneeling with his mouth wide open giving him a peculiarly half witted appearance. It was possible, Dan thought, that his jaw had been dislocated. There was a sure way of fixing that. Once Liz had hold of Cassius Dan slammed the butt of his hand under his jaw. There was a sharp click and a gasp of pain as the boy's mouth snapped closed.

Taking a firm hold of Cassius's forearm with his left hand Dan dipped the forefinger of his right hand in the jar of anti-sceptic cream. The boy squealed and jumped as Dan worked the ointment into the area of broken skin and raw flesh where the thin steel cuffs had bitten into his wrist.

"Come on now, easy boy easy," Dan murmured as if he was calming a dog that he was doctoring.

"Now the other wrist," Dan said a moment later.

Cassius whimpered miserably but made no further attempt to resist.

"All right," Dan said, "that's done. You can let hold of the brat and fetch me the strap."

Released from his mother's supporting hold Cassius staggered slightly and after a moments uncertainty slumped to his knees on the floor.

"Knees apart," Dan snapped reinforcing the command with a savage kick.

Hastily Cassius shuffled his knees as wide apart as he could. He felt neither embarrassment nor resentment in being forced to expose himself in this way. He was so sunk in misery and terror that he was beyond feeling further humiliation.

Meanwhile Liz was following what had become by now to her an all too familiar routine. Pulling her shift up over her head she draped it over the back of a kitchen chair. Then, stark naked, she fetched the strap from its place hanging on a hook beside the kitchen door. Holding the strap between her two hands she returned to where Dan stood waiting. She knelt, kissed the strap, and then held it out, offering it to her master. Dan made her wait a moment before taking the strap from her. Immediately he did so she bent forward pressing her lips to the floor at his feet.

Kneeling, naked her face pressed to the ground her bare arse pushed up in the air Liz acknowledged Dan's mastership and her own ineffable inferiority. Dan let a minute or two pass to allow her to appreciate her vulnerability and powerlessness and to give Cassius the opportunity to witness his mother's abasement. Liz waited the fear building up inside her. She dreaded what was to come but there was no escape.

Dan stirred Liz with his foot. She raised her head from the floor and knelt head bowed in front of him. Leaning forward he cupped her chin with one hand and tilted her head back. He stood looking down into her face, feeling his power, enjoying the terror in her eyes.

"You know why I'm going to beat you don't bitch?" he asked softly.

"Yes Massa Sah," Liz's reply was hardly more than a whisper, "I've been a bad nigger Sah."

Dan knew that Liz would not dare to say that she did not know why she was to be beaten even if in reality she did not have the faintest idea of the reason. He approved of this and a cold smile flickered on his face. Catching sight of it Liz began to whimper quietly.

"Yes," Dan replied softly, "you've been a bad nigger and your whelp's been a bad nigger too. That's why you are going to be beaten."

Dan ran a finger along Liz's slightly parted lips feeling them soft and damp to the touch. He made a slight gesture with his hand. Liz sighed and reached up to the top of his flies. As her fingers fumbled with the zip Dan continued speaking.

"Yesterday Cassius attacked me and bit me, today he first assaulted two friends of mine and then flatly contradicted them when they reported the matter to me."

Liz had undone the zip and was gently easing Dan's cock clear of his trousers. Dan continued remorselessly with his accusation.

"If you had taught him to have a proper respect for his betters none of that would have happened."

Dan's tumescent prick, now free of his trousers, jutted out in front of him. Liz leaning forward ran her tongue along it's length from where it emerged from his trousers to its swollen pink tip.

"You are a typical nigger, lazy and stupid and I will not tolerate it."

Liz's tongue teased Dan's glans, it's tip exploring the slit at it's top.

"I will beat it out of you."

"And Cassius," the boy who had been sunk in misery had hardly taken notice of what was going on around him was jerked back to reality at the mention of his own name just in time to see his mother take the white man's cock full into her mouth, "you can reflect while you watch the strap tear your mother's black hide and listen to her cries that it was your behaviour that has caused me to flog her."

"And don't think," he continued placing his hand on the back of Liz's neck and pulling her forward driving his cock down into her throat.

"You're not just going to be a spectator," he continued raising his voice to be heard over the strange gagging sounds coming from the boy's mother. "When I've finished flaying the skin from your mother's back it will be your turn to have me skin the hide off your bum."

"Now let's get on with giving you both a lesson that even stupid niggers like you won't forget in a hurry."

Grabbing Liz by the collar he jerked her head away from his crutch and kicking off his trousers that had tumbled about his ankles, he dragged her across to the kitchen table.

"Get down over that," he said throwing her bodily across the table, "and get that black arse of yours up in the air."

Less than twenty four hours ago Cassius had rushed to his mother's aid, challenging a full grown man, when he had come across her in a similar situation. Now however he knelt passively watching her being abused and assaulted. The maltreatment he had received over the past few hours had destroyed his spirit. Any way perhaps Dan had the right to treat them in this way. His Mum, who had stuck up for him so often in the past, would surely not have allowed Dan to do those things to him otherwise. Nor would she have accepted, indeed actively colluded in, her own abuse. Cassius could not clear from his mind the memory of his mother kneeling naked in front of Dan, her lips closed around the white man's swollen cock.

Chapter 10

He was stronger he told himself than the two niggers both individually and combined but one or other of them might wait its chance and then turn and attack him unexpectedly catching him at a disadvantage. Then he might have problems. He had better, he decided, take precautions. He turned on his heel and left the room.

Dan was soon back carrying a hefty wooden block with a length of stout chain attached to it. He placed the timber balk on the floor beside Cassius. The boy felt cold metal pressed around his ankle and heard a click as the chain was locked in place. Then there was a tug on his ankle as Dan checked that Cassius would not be able to slip the iron ring securing him to the hobble.

Satisfied that all was secure Dan straightened up.

"Come on wench," he growled, "shuck your rags bitch and get ready for your beating."

Liz was following what had become by now to her an all too familiar routine pulled her shift up over her head and draped it over the back of a kitchen chair. Then, stark naked, she fetched the strap from its place hanging on a hook beside the kitchen door. Holding the strap between her two hands she returned to where Dan stood waiting. She knelt, kissed the strap, and then held it out, offering it to her master. Dan made her wait a moment before taking the strap from her. Immediately he did so she bent forward pressing her lips to the floor at his feet.

Kneeling, naked her face pressed to the ground her bare arse pushed up in the air Liz acknowledged Dan's mastery and her own ineffable inferiority. Dan let a minute or two pass to allow her to appreciate her vulnerability and powerlessness and to give Cassius the opportunity to witness his mother's abasement. Liz waited the fear building up inside her. She dreaded what was to come but there was no escape.

Dan stirred Liz with his foot. She raised her head from the floor and knelt head bowed in front of him. Leaning forward he cupped her chin with one hand and tilted her head back. He stood looking down into her face, feeling his power, enjoying the terror in her eyes.

"You know why I'm going to beat you don't bitch?" he asked softly.

"Yes Massa Sah," Liz's reply was hardly more than a whisper, "I've been a bad nigger Sah."

Dan knew that Liz would not dare to say that she did not know why she was to be beaten even if in reality she did not have the faintest idea of the reason. He approved of this and a cold smile flickered on his face. Catching sight of it Liz began to whimper quietly.

"Yes," Dan replied softly, "you've been a bad nigger and your whelp's been a bad nigger too. That's why you are going to be beaten."

Dan ran a finger along Liz's slightly parted lips feeling them soft and damp to the touch. He made a slight gesture with his hand. Liz sighed and reached up to the top of his flies. As her fingers fumbled with the zip Dan continued speaking.

"Yesterday Cassius attacked me and bit me, today he first assaulted two friends of mine and then flatly contradicted them when they reported the matter to me."

Liz had undone the zip and was gently easing Dan's cock clear of his trousers. Dan continued remorselessly with his accusation.

"If you had taught him to have a proper respect for his betters none of that would have happened."

Dan's tumescent prick, now free of his trousers, jutted out in front of him. Liz leaning forward ran her tongue along it's length from where it emerged from his trousers to its swollen pink tip.

"You are a typical nigger, lazy and stupid and I will not tolerate it."

Liz's tongue teased Dan's glans, it's tip exploring the slit at it's top.

"I will beat it out of you."

"And Cassius," the boy who had been sunk in misery had hardly taken notice of what was going on around him was jerked back to reality at the mention of his own name just in time to see his mother take the white man's cock full into her mouth, "you can reflect while you watch the strap tear your mother's black hide and listen to her cries that it was your behaviour that has caused me to flog her."

"And don't think," he continued placing his hand on the back of Liz's neck and pulling her forward driving his cock down into her throat.

"You're not just going to be a spectator," he continued raising his voice to be heard over the strange gagging sounds coming from the boy's mother. "When I've finished flaying the skin from your mother's back it will be your turn to have me skin the hide off your bum."

"Now let's get on with giving you both a lesson that even stupid niggers like you won't forget in a hurry."

Grabbing Liz by the collar he jerked her head away from his crutch and kicking off his trousers that had tumbled about his ankles, he dragged her across to the kitchen table.

"Get down over that," he said throwing her bodily across the table, "and get that black arse of yours up in the air."

Less than twenty four hours ago Cassius had rushed to his mother's aid, challenging a full grown man, when he had come across her in a similar situation. Now however he knelt passively watching her being abused and assaulted. The maltreatment he had received over the past few hours had destroyed his spirit. Any way perhaps Dan had the right to treat them in this way. His Mum, who had stuck up for him so often in the past, would surely not have allowed Dan to do those things to him otherwise. Nor would she have accepted, indeed actively colluded in, her own abuse. Cassius could not clear from his mind the memory of his mother kneeling naked in front of Dan, her lips closed around the white man's swollen cock.

"Up in the air bitch and spread you legs," Dan commanded impatiently.

He slipped his left hand between her lags and lifted upwards forcing her bottom higher. He removed his hand ostentatiously wiping its palm on the side of Liz's ebony rump.

"Typical nigger whore," he sneered, "just the sight of a white cock makes you go damp. Doesn't it bitch."

An indistinct murmur was converted into a loud squeal as Dan cracked the leathe strap hard across her upraised bottom.

"Speak up bitch," he shouted, "tell me how much you want my cock 3; come on louder 3;so your whelp can hear."

"Massa please Massa," Liz moaned, straining to push her bottom higher, wriggling it in a wordless but blatant invitation. She was excited beyond measure by Dan's rough handling and language,.

"Please Massa I want your cock Massa please Massa."

She hated it that her son was a witness to her degradation but she was quite incapable of controlling herself.

"A nigger," Dan sneered, putting her own unspoken thoughts into words, "just an animal, thinks like an animal, feels like an animal."

Dan glanced across at Cassius. The boy was kneeling with his eyes tight shut and his hands clamped over his ears trying to block out the sight and sounds of his mothers humiliation.

A single stride brought him within reach of the boy a quick slash with the belt across the brat's thin shoulders secured his attention.

"Come over here by your whore of a mother boy," Dan ordered.

"Come on," he snarled as the naked boy stared up at him from confused and frightened eyes.

He raised the strap threateningly.

Crouching away from the white man towering threateningly over him, Cassius tried to stumble forward dragging the wooden balk chained to his left ankle.

"Pick it up and carry it you stupid nigger," Dan snapped impatiently.

The lump of wood was very heavy and it was as much as Cassius could do to get it up off the floor. But he managed it and staggered a few steps to come to stand close to where his mother was bent forward over the kitchen table.

"Put that lump of wood down on the floor. Don't drop it. Put it down gently."

Now look." Dan grasped the back of Cassius head with his left hand and held it, forcing the boy to look at his mother's bare rump lifted and open to his sight.