November 12, 2000

 

"The Oarsman"

 

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that this one is a little skewed, but...

Have you ever seen Ben Hur? Remember the portion where Charlton Heston was a galley slave? Chained to an oar all the time, rowing this huge Roman galley.


Well, one of my fantasies is that I am a galley slave. It isn't in Roman times though, it's modern. My owner, a very wealthy, beautiful and powerful woman (of course) owns an enormous galley as her yacht with a hundred men chained at the oars to propel it. It has engines of course and all the modern conveniences, but my Mistress enjoys the fact that all those men toil and suffer for her pleasure. She has overseers who drive us, using the whip to keep us in line.


Anyway, one day I'm chained at my oar, helping to row Mistress for a day of sunbathing and relaxation. One of the overseers, a woman of course, frees me from my oar and shoves me out onto the deck. I'm used to the dismal confines below deck so I squint in the bright sunshine. My Mistress is sunning herself on deck without a care in the world and certainly without a thought for the hundred men suffering belowdecks. As I said, she's incredibly beautiful. Jet black hair, piercing blue eyes. A goddess.


"Will this one do, Madam?" the overseer asks.


She lowers her sunglasses to look me over and then tells the overseer that I'll be fine.


"String him up," my Owner orders. With that, I might as well not even exist anymore. I'm an object to her.


The overseer hauls me up by my chained wrists so that I hang a foot above the deck. She pulls away the ragged loincloth that all galley slaves wear so that I hang there nude. Her task completed, she returns to her duties below.


I hang there for quite some time, my shoulders aching. Mistress continues to work on her tan for a bit, then goes to her cabin to freshen up. When she emerges on deck, it's to greet her guests who have just pulled up alongside in a motor launch. There are three or four women, each beautiful and each attended by a personal slave, a nude, muscular man on a leash.


My Owner escorts them to a table a few yards from me where lunch is being served by Mistress' slaves. The ladies are seated by their slaves who then kneel at their sides.


As I sway in the ocean breeze, the ladies talk among themselves, exchanging the latest gossip and whatnot. As they finish lunch, I hear my Owner tell the others that she's arranged for a little entertainment. She snaps her fingers and an overseer approaches bearing a bullwhip rather than the cat normally used on us belowdecks.


As the ladies watch with amusement and make appreciative comments, the overseer whips me brutally. Finally, with my back raw and bloody, as I hang gasping for breath, my Owner tells the overseer that the ladies are ready for something else. As the ladies are walking away from the table, the overseer asks my Owner if she wishes me to be taken away.


"No," Mistress says, smirking at me as I groan. "Let him spend the day there."


And that's what happens. I spend the day hanging by my wrists, the salt spray torturing the wounds on my back. The sun beats down on me, burning me. I spend much of the time unconscious, but during the brief moments when the pain brings me around, I hear the ladies talking and laughing. None of them are giving me a thought, of course.


Around dusk my Owner says her goodbyes and the ladies return to their launch. As they motor away, Mistress finally orders me cut down. I fall to the deck in a heap. Mistress looks down on me without a trace of pity. I'm just a broken object to her.


"He'll not be much good as an oarsman I don't suppose," she tells the chief overseer. "Put him over the side."


With that she turns to walk into her staterooms. She stops to give one final instruction to the overseer.


"Be sure to take the chains off of him. No point in wasting them."


A few minutes later, my Owner is slipping into a warm bath drawn by one of her more fortunate slaves. Naturally, she doesn't hear the splash as my half-lifeless body is dumped unceremoniously over the side.


 

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