Caroline -- Part Seventeen

Caroline was on the whipping post again in Mexico, but this time, her back was to it, and she was facing outwards, tightly and helplessly bound to the heavy post. She could feel the rough wood on her back, a few splinters poking into fresh whip marks, but she was filled with competing emotions of desire and dread. The only light on this starry night was from a fire blazing forty or so feet from where she stood, and she could make out Rachel and her master in silhouette.

"Who owns you, slave," she heard Allen say in a thunderous voice, like he was Thor, the Norse god of thunder.

"You own me, Master," Caroline replied, feeling at peace with his ownership, but still feeling some unnamed dread that she couldn't quite identify.

"And I plan to own you for the rest of your life, Caroline," Allen said, his voice still thundering, as if from far above, filling her. She really couldn't make out his face as he approached her in the starry night with the flickering fire backlighting him, but then she felt her hair being pulled from behind, and felt cold steel on her neck as he snapped a collar in place on her. "And this collar will go with you to your grave, slave," he said.

"Oh, God," Caroline moaned. "Thank you, Master."

"We're not quite done yet, Caroline," Allen boomed at her as Rachel's grasp in her hair tightened. Caroline watched as he walked away from her to the fire, and returned with a branding iron, a brightly glowing representation of his initials, presumably the brand that had been placed on Rachel's chest in a long-ago ceremony perhaps much like this one. Caroline's eyes widened and she could hear her heart pounding forcefully and rapidly in her ears as her breathing quickened and deepened, bracing herself for the burn that was to be hers in mere seconds now. And then the brand sunk into her skin, right above the valley of her breasts, and Caroline screamed to the heavens, and her scream woke her from her nap on the sofa in her living room, where she'd fallen sound asleep reading one of the manuals sent home with her.

She was in a cold sweat, but was also dismayed that the dream had ended, and she knew that she wanted to go through the rite of passage that had just played so vividly in her dreams. She spied her clock on the living room wall, and saw it was nearly four in the morning, and as her poor mind came to a fully conscious state, she realized the last time she'd noticed the time before she fell to sleep was at around midnight. She stood from the sofa and groaned as stiffness and soreness asserted themselves in her exhausted body. The sofa was hell on her for sleeping, at least in the awkward position in which she had slept. She went to the kitchen for some water, and drank the glass down, then went to the bathroom and stumbled off to bed, where she knew nothing more until her alarm jarred her awake at six-thirty. She showered and got dressed, leaving a bit early so she could find some powerful coffee for the drive into the office. She suspected she'd need it, with the day ahead and the shopping to follow.