SLAVE TWINS

Slave Camp

Estephanie hated Sundays. Despite being subjected to hard labor during the week, she could not bear to remain locked up all day in that dark dungeon, slightly illuminated by a torch at the end of the corridor. Three months had passed since her transfer to that section of the slave camp, and yet, she could not get used to endure that shackle attached to her left ankle, fused to a chain of no more than three meters, which seemed to have been planted inside the thick wall of solid rock. It wasn't her first season with that kind of restraint, but this time the one in charge of accommodating the annoying metal object had gone to great lengths with her, leaving it a bit tighter, if compared to other occasions. Her protest had not been worth anything, being a slap in her beautiful face the only answer she had received. Nor was she accustomed to the dirt and straw floor, which served as a mattress on her dark and endless nights. In previous years she had not enjoyed a different kind of accommodation, but at least the dungeons for girls under eighteen had a little more straw, which made them slightly more comfortable places. She remembered her first day in that horrible camp, six years ago, when she was forced to fight with her sister, just minutes after she had arrived: ‘’Although no one here likes women, we know beauty when we see it and I think we have two beautiful twins here’’, a white man, of thick build, short black hair, who would introduce himself as Parcer, foreman of the camp, and who carried a whip at one of his sides, had told them. ‘’Here the women come to work and those who do not work may be subject to some hard consequences...’’ She had looked around, her eyes tired from so much crying, calling her attention to the groups of half-naked young women engaged in all kinds of work. Likewise, she noticed the high walls surrounding much of the place, the one-story stone buildings, countless posts from which chains hung, and some grim crosses and punishment stocks. ‘’But as you will see, we don't allow those pretty dresses here, so your first duty as slaves of the Dorian Empire will be to get rid of them but in a... different and fun way’’. It wasn't more than five minutes before she saw her bare feet submerged in a pool of mud, her twin sister standing mere inches away. ‘’They are going to fight until they remove their opponent's clothes. The one who does it first will be able to eat and drink before being locked up and chained in her dungeon, the one who loses will receive nothing and will spend the night working... and believe me if I tell you that it will not be an easy job’’, the man had said before seeing herself and Valentina rolling and struggling in the mud, using all her strength to free the girl turned into her opponent, from that suit invaded by dirt and mud. She never thought she would be able to treat her that way; she had always seen her as a reflection of her own self, towards whom she could feel nothing but love and understanding. But at the tender age of twelve she had already heard of the cruelty of the Dorians, widely feared and known by all the inhabitants of the neighboring states, the last thing among her desires being to become the object of their cruel punishments. But Valentina's strength and skill were superior to her own and a few minutes later she saw herself wearing only her small panties, her torn dress lying on the side of the pool, her body, face and hair completely covered with mud, her sister wearing what little remained of her, until recently, beautiful dress, but with the luck of having been the winner. Amidst the laughter, mockery and comments of some of their captors, they were forced to bathe in buckets of ice water and to wear a threadbare piece of brown cloth small enough to serve as a small pair of panties, which would be their only article of clothing for the next few years. She remembered receiving a tearful apology from her sister before seeing two men grab her by the arms and disappear behind a door a little less than fifty meters away. Immediately, the man with the whip took her by the arm and led her at a rapid pace to a water hole in the middle of a small square surrounded by stables. He took a chain from the tamped earthen floor, fastened it to her ankle and then secured it to a ring embedded in the wall of the well before telling her: ‘’You are going to draw water for what little is left of the afternoon and throughout the night, there are those buckets for you to fill them," -He said as he pointed to more than twenty buckets arranged around the well, "and when they are full you tell the guard on duty and he will tell you what to do next, and I recommend you not to stop if you don't want to be punished. Despite her cries and pleas, the man had looked at her with disdain and then left her to her work. Exhausted by the two days of walking, having received very little food and with few hours of sleep, the weight exerted by the bucket, on the loop that descended to the bottom of the well, was too much for her arms, being few buckets full for the moment in which she fainted. She remembered waking up in a similar place to where she was now, similarly chained to the wall and with a piece of stale bread and a small jug of water beside her. It had been the beginning of six hard years, surviving all kinds of injustice and humiliation.

Looking now, being eighteenth years old, at the surroundings of her dark dungeon, she remembered once again the conclusion she had come to years before, when she had been grateful for the benevolence of the warm weather, which had saved her from freezing to death. The strict regulations only allowed the use of the shabby breeches, being very few parts of her body covered by them. It did not matter to her captors to see her grown and developed, the only valuable reason for them being to have enough exposed skin to be punished by the whip, that instrument of repression well known to her and all her companions.