This was the most difficult class, Valerie had warned me, even worse than the afternoon sessions in rendering prolonged and humiliating sexual services. In this class, we were trained exactly as animals - with commands we could not understand, leashes, choke collars, and whips. We were being taught our new place in society, in which we no longer even counted as persons, but merely as a particularly attractive form of animal property. Each day the set of commands would change, although they might be repeated at long intervals. The semantic content of the commands was largely constant from day to day, consisting largely of the basic commands by which a slave girl may be put through her paces - kneeling, on her belly or back, standing, bent over, grasping her ankles, and so on - but each day we would have to learn which verbal signal corresponded to each position or task. One of the by-products of the sessions is that we were being taught this basic set of commands in a number of languages, but sometimes the "language" of the day was pure nonsense, concocted solely for the benefit of our training. It was almost impossible for a girl not to emerge from the session with several red stripes across her back and thighs, and more importantly with a desperate eagerness to please her trainer. I knew I would be no exception.
Valerie had prepared me for the day's activities as we chatted briefly in the showers earlier in the morning. That morning, my first in the mansion, I was awakened by a natural-light alarm at a time I guess to be around 7:30. I looked around me and saw the beds I had dimly made out the night before. There were six other girls in the room, all nude and chained like me to their beds. All were stunningly beautiful. These slavers, I concluded, knew what they were doing.
A man entered the room and made the rounds of our beds, releasing us from our leashes. We followed him down a corridor and down a flight of stairs into a large exercise room. None of the girls seemed in the least concerned with her complete nudity. I gathered that that was something that we slaves quickly grew accustomed to. Once in the exercise room, each of us was given a card describing our workout routine for the morning. The man briefly explained what it meant to me. His manner was completely matter-of-fact, as if he were entirely used to managing a group of naked, enslaved beauties. But of course, I realized, he was entirely used to it. At the same time, I realized that my beauty, and availability, in all likelihood meant very little to these men. Before, I had been able to influence men with so little as a short skirt, a smile, and a touch of my hand on their arm. Now, completely naked, my body at their disposal, I was utterly powerless. Whatever they might want, they would have from me, simply by snapping their fingers.
The exercises were largely aerobic, with some stretching and a small amount of weight training. I gathered that our bodies were being carefully toned and exercised to make sure we were in optimum physical condition. Masters would want their slaves to be both excruciatingly attractive and physically fit, and could enforce their will upon us.
After the exercise period, we entered an large, adjacent rest room where we showered in a large, communal shower. That was when the other girls, including Valerie, introduced themselves to me. They had been in the mansion anywhere from one to seven weeks. Their stories were similar to mine. All had shown some interest in slavery, whether by attending a fetish night at a club, role-playing in an online chat room, or simply allowing a boyfriend to tie them up, and shortly thereafter had been forcibly abducted and brought here. They were resigned to their fate, although hardly enthusiastic about it - there was little appealing, one remarked, in attending training classes all day and being periodically raped as a diversion. They knew no more than I about the fate that would await us once we "graduated" from this school. But about one thing there was no doubt at all: we were, truly, slave girls, in the fullest sense of the term. We were completely subject to the whims and desires of our masters, from the most mundane to the most exquisitely sensuous, and could expect nothing in return.
After cleaning and drying ourselves, we were allowed to proceed to the kitchen back on the ground floor, where we were served breakfast. "Served" is perhaps not the most appropriate word, in that we were required to eat on all fours, not using our hands, from bowls on the floor containing hot oatmeal and water. On my hands and knees, my hair falling about my face, my breasts depending from my body, I lowered by head to the floor and lapped up the food and water with my tongue. Glancing to my left and right, I saw that the other girls were eating and drinking comfortably. I supposed that they had grown used to this particular humiliation. I expected that I, too, would become accustomed to it.
After breakfast our lessons began in earnest. The first class was what the other slave girls called our "dog-training" class, where we were forced to learn and respond to commands in a foreign or nonexistent language. After my initial bewilderment and confusion, I found that I was quite adept at making out the nuances of the trainer's commands and quickly complying with his wishes. Often I could read a simple gesture and understand his will, whether it was for me to crawl to his feet, to spread my legs in apparent preparation to be used, or to fetch his switch in my teeth. I even felt a brief surge of pride at my apparent facility in this exercise, until I realized that I was simply demonstrating my utter subjection and obedience to men.
At one point in the class, a short, blonde girl named Gretta had trouble understanding and obeying a command. I saw her trainer flip her onto her stomach, lift her bottom in the air, and use her from behind abruptly and fiercely. I could not help staring, horrified, as she cried out as much in shock and humiliation as in arousal. So casual rape was not only a convenient means for the trainers to indulge their physical desires, but also was a form of discipline. But inside me something, dimly, envied Gretta her sudden abuse. Here I was, finally living out my most ardent fantasies, but strictly forbidden to gratify my own needs. I realized that I had been constantly aroused not only by the uses I had been subject to the night before, but also by the casual, mundane humiliations I had suffered that morning - from being exercised, nude, to eating from a bowl on my hands and knees, to now being put through my paces literally like a domestic animal. It was not only being forced to give up my body to my masters that excited me deep in my belly, but also having my degraded status constantly impressed on me by the routines of slavery.
I wondered how many of the other girls were similarly aroused by their very subjection, were secretly or openly excited to be the slaves and playthings of men and women. Perhaps I was an anomaly, a girl who not only accepted her enslavement, but secretly reveled in her utter submission. Or perhaps all the girls in the mansion, in their hearts, had always longed to be slaves and only now could be truly fulfilled. Most likely, I supposed, we were all somewhere in between.
After the obedience class, we proceeded to another room outfitted like a small seminar room, with a long table surrounded by chairs. Claudia, the mistress of the house, stood before us. After kneeling before her, we were permitted to take seats at the table.
"So we have a new student among us," Claudia began. "Jenny?"
"Yes, mistress?" I answered.
"Why are you here?"
I hesitated, my mind spinning in confusion. In secretly accepting my slavery the night before, I had expected to be commanded, abused, humiliated, and degraded. I had not expected to be quizzed like an unprepared schoolgirl. "Because I am a slave, mistress," I attempted.