Slaves of Xi Ling

The cries of protest had seemed inextricable mixed in his own intimate experience, they had become a part of a harmonious whole that begged to be repeated as often as thirty silver dollars lay in his purse.

'But we have agreed to meet!' thought Adam as he waited at the waterfront bar. 'So I suppose that I am obliged to keep my word and thank him for taking me to that heavenly bordello.'

Somehow the relationship that the two diverse Europeans had forged in this nightmare and celebrated city seemed suddenly fragile. A stuff made of porcelain and glass. Garry had spoiled that little feeling of friendship that Adam had created by his gross mistreatment of Xi Ling even though it had added to Adam's excitement.

With a gin in front of him and his eyes cast wide to anticipate his friend's arrival, Adam pondered when it was that he could next afford to sample the delights of Chai. He had heard, second or third hand, of Europeans buying their whores from the brothels. Paying vast sums to keep a beautiful captive to use privately in all sorts of ways, but Adam was just a lowly clerk and such things were so far out of his reach. A fantasy dream to relive once a month behind the Red Gates.

There he was at last. Garry. The man who shoved all the little Chinese out of his way like some sort of late Manchu overlord. Scattering them to all sides he arrived with a broad grin and a small bag of coins that he slapped down with a decisive clink.

Scattering the silver coins on the table he said, "So what do you think that these represent?"

Somehow the lack of a proper greeting from his erstwhile friend caused Adam to feel almost pure dislike for this boor. This noxious product of European superiority over Eastern subtlety!

Garry was nothing but a chimpanzee, a boastful lout, whose pleasure was rape and to soil the very fountain of womanhood that he had paid for, been gifted.

"I can't imagine," replied Adam in a frosty voice. "I suppose they amount to thirty dollars but what it is that they represent escapes me."

Entirely missing Adam's displeasure in his triumph, Garry laughed out loud. A sudden sound that made the drunks on the neighbouring tables start and look round in consternation.

"I got my fuckin' money back," laughed Garry.

"Pardon?"

"From that whorehouse," replied the American. "That sorry whore was so unwilling. So I asked for, and got, my money back!"

Adam could only start at the comment. The thought of visiting the brothel had scared him. The idea of going back and claiming a refund was beyond his inexperienced imagination.

"And they gave the yellow slut a good caning into the bargain," he continued. "Seeing the thrashing was almost enough to make me want to pay Lin the thirty back again! They thrashed her with wet bamboo until the blood ran and I almost came in my pants."

Clearly Garry was enjoying the memory of Xi Ling's suffering. The leer and the tone of his voice denoted his satisfaction and his own righteousness.

"Then I bought that little puppy that you had a shove at," he continued. "Too soft, but ripe for a good shafting, she was limp with exhaustion after I tied her and fucked the living daylights out of the bitch. She was so tight at the beginning..."

Adam's head was in a whirl at this evil revelation. His delicate flower had been shafted by Garry the rapist and he knew instinctively that it would never be the same. That he would no longer be able to find it in himself to return to the Red Gates.

*****

That was the last of Garry that Adam saw for several months. No longer did he answer the entreaties of his erstwhile friend. The relationship was severed, but not for good.

Because misfortune follows in the footsteps of fools and the adventure had really just begun, were they to know it.

Part The Fifth

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Knives and opium.

Several months after the events recalled in the narrative above there came a curious coincidence. But a coincidence it was. Nothing more! Sometimes the fates coddle men with hope and extravagance; sometimes they curse them with ill fortune.

*****

Adam had learned a smattering of that impossible Chinese language and had settled into life in that sink of humanity that is called Shanghai.

Many times had he been to brothels, bordellos and places that the denizens of Shanghai called dives. But never again had he visited the Red Gates. The golden memory was overlaid with the pain of Garry's betrayal behind those bamboo walls.

Nevertheless, Adam had become quite the epicure of sin. Occasional visits to opium 'parlours' and gin palaces gave him the contact with indiscretion that he had begun to crave.

It was that fateful day that he, with clay pipe in the hand, met up again with Garry. They were in an opium den that passed itself as safe for the myriad of foreigners who haunt Shanghai.

Both eyed the other up in assessing glances. Garry was falling to seed. His violent lifestyle and uncontrolled vices were plainly destroying his physical presence. His face was red and he sucked the opium from the pipe with almost passionate strength and then blew a cloud of blue smoke over his former friend.

"Well I never, it's 'too good' Adam!" exclaimed Garry with a leer. "Too fuckin' good to talk to the likes of me. Just a goddam clerk and he's too grand for Garry!"

"No! It was your depraved behaviour that led the parting of our ways," replied Adam in a stilted voice. "You are no gentleman."

"Gentleman, you say? To hear you speak like that brings a poetic tear to my eye," said Garry with heavy sarcasm.

"Oh, just fuck off!" cursed Adam. This was not his normal tone but the ejaculation of months of pent up anger at Garry.

"Oooh! Fuck off! That's a bit high and mighty from you, you English tadpole."

It looked as though there was about to be a fight. The righteous clerk against the drunken, drugged American, but as Adam raised his fists to signal his readiness to spar, a sudden fracas broke out on another table.

Two Chinese in coolie dress had drawn knives and were circling around each other with grim implacable expressions.

The blood was already flowing from a savage cut on the larger man's face but it had by no means disabled him.

Knife work at close range is almost as much a matter of luck as skill. A blow can ram home or slice flesh with no significant disabling result, but small nick can cut a vein and all is lost.

Around both combatants there was now a respectful gap that allowed the spectators of this dispute to watch and enjoy the blood and pain without a chance of becoming involved.

Adam and Garry found themselves pushed together, the excitement of the knife fight expelling all thought of their own petty disagreement.

It was then that Adam felt his wrists being held in an iron grip by someone behind him in the yelling crowd. He had but a moment to react before the rough scratch of rope bound his wrists and he was knocked to the floor in a welter of blows.

To his side he saw three Chinese dressed in black cotton who were giving Garry the same treatment as he was receiving, before a kick aimed at his face forced him to turn away.

As the excited crowd yelled and the two knife-fighting Chinese feinted and thrust, Garry and Adam were pulled free from the back of the yelling crowd and pushed into a small funeral rickshaw that was waiting in the noisome alley at the back of the opium den.

They were captured! Rough hoods like bags were pulled over their heads and the lacquered top of the rickshaw was closed to imprison them both in a nightmare smell of death, incense and horse dung.

Part The Sixth

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Philosophy and rickshaws.

In later years Adam often thought about that ride in the rickshaw. Bumping heads with Garry, the smells and cries of the city all about, but accompanied by a stygian darkness that was deeper than the grave.

Was it an hour or ten? For sure it was further than the two former friends wanted to go because it was the road to captivity.

*****

But the author is getting ahead of himself and giving away the plot of this tale to his own distress. I cannot any longer call it a story because a story is a fiction, a white lie, a fantasy and no closer to the truth than a rhyme or joke.

This is the first and last time, in all my myriads of written words, that I pray the reader understands that this is no simple and entertaining fiction.

No, this is a elucidation of the actions that actually happened, there is a compact core of truth in the matter. It is all clearly remembered and told and this moment was the first 'worst moment' of Adam's life.

Worse was to come.

The truth is that Adam was the victim of fate. To be with the man that had been shadowed for a week by the Tongs at the moment of his kidnapping was nothing more than an outrageous twist of providence.

That is the truth of it...

...there in that curse word, 'Fate'.

Part The Seventh

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Whips and Fetters.

When the ride finished, both of the victims of that kidnapping were battered and bruised. The team who pulled that yellow lacquered cart had no interest in the comfort of the ride as far as their passengers were concerned. They had been paid to do a job that, today, was the transport of two gwialo who were going to feel the whip of revenge that lay comfortably in the slender hand of Xi Ling.

The cart stopped, not for the first time. But for the first time the lid was lifted and the two Europeans were unceremoniously dumped on the rough ground in a welter kicks administered by soft sandals but hard feet.

Both looked up to see coolies dressed in simple black cotton and emerging from behind them, into full sight, Xi Ling.

In her red sheath of Chinese silk she looked like a goddess. Not a goddess of mercy because she had a whip in her hand. No she was the personification of Chu-Jung, that Chinese goddess whose breath is the fumes of the lotus, revenge is in her heart and her cunt is the grave that men go to die in pain.

The whip was a snake of leather twice the length that a man is tall but she wielded it with skill and ferocious intent. The leather cracked across Garry and Adam with the sound of a strong man slapping wet meat. It tore their shirts, revealing its bite of red welts.

"Stop! You fuckin' whore-bitch!" cried Garry, as if a single word or order from him would set the world to rights and put this woman back in her place at the Red Gates.

At this outrageous interference in her revenge Xi Ling caused the whip to strike the cheek of Garry on its next stroke. Missing his eye with just an inch to spare, the end of the whip tore a ragged gash in the skin of his face. Adam felt the blood splash his face as the whip drew back with a flurry and a crack.

Xi Ling shouted in Chinese, but the meaning was lost. Each had received five strokes and Xi Ling was exhausted. Her high and emotional voice moved her companions to furious action.

With those slim Manchu blades that so many Chinese carry, they stripped the two gwailo of all their clothes. The razor sharp edges cutting cotton, leather belt and silk with ease. More than one blade drew against skin, slicing a bloody line on the soft white flesh.

Naked, and because they were exposed, vulnerable, the final act of the Manchu knives was to cut their wrists free of their bonds. But the respite was short lived as modern European hand cuffs were clicked onto wrists and shackles added to ankles almost like a cruel afterthought.

With a small motion of the hand Xi Ling waved over one of her entourage. When she spoke he translated almost as fast as she mouthed the words.

"You are truly the devil who thought that he could fuck the daughter of Sha Loung and live to tell the tale. I remember this," she said as she pointed the handle of the whip at Garry's flaccid cock. "You will not be needing it any longer, later it will be my pleasure to relieve you of its urgings."

Now she moved to stand over Adam. "You were with him when he chose. You could have spared me by choosing more wisely and quickly, but you did not. For that you too will suffer, but I have not decided if your life is forfeit, like his, or if you would make a nice gift for a woman that I know."

Adam just swallowed in abject fear. This was the worst nightmare that he had ever been caught up in. He turned his head to see where they were. If there was any sign of hope on the horizon. But the group stood alone on a track and no habitation or other persons were in view.

Xi Lin spoke to her hirelings and mounted one of the two rickshaws that were by the side of the road.

Adam and Garry were dumped again into the yellow funeral cart, the lid was slid into position and the ride recommenced with both men knowing that their lives were now in the hands of an Oriental woman who was seeking revenge for her rape.

Part The Eighth

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Journey.

They did not see Xi Ling again for weeks. Their captors took them from the coast, that haven for foreigners, deep into the dark underbelly of what used to be the Heavenly Empire. Now it was in the grip of the chaos of the Warlords who racked the country from one end to the other with their not so petty wars and strife as the Manchu overlords tumbled to the Triads, Tongs, White Lotus, Ming recidivists and the republicans.

Not a word of English was spoken by their captors, who also forbade the two captives to talk to one another. But they were fed some morsels and they were not unduly mistreated. It was rather that there was a monumental indifference to their fate.

All the while they were kept naked and chained, whether they were on the deck of a barge on the Yangtze Kiang or whether they were tossed over a horse. They were both on full display to the excited crowd that always gathered wherever they stopped.

Both were prodded and poked and many a woman weighed the gwailo's sexual parts in her hands to measure up how they compared to the local men in terms of form and size.

The sun beat down and both men became tanned as they never had the use of the sunshades that their captors reserved for their own comfort.

Only abject slaves had tanned skin in China.

Finally they left the river and started to go upcountry. The foothills of that plateau called the Himalayas start in rural China and quickly become a confusing mass of hills, cliffs, mountains and savage towering peaks.

Now the horses had been left behind! Both Adam and Garry struggled, naked and on foot, up the ill made roads that twisted around this forgotten part of Asia.

Continually exhausted, the party made its way up the hills that made up the realm of the Warlord known as Lo Liluoang, the angry dragon of the west, and his favourite concubine Xi Ling.

Part The Ninth.

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The eight cuts.

The fortress loomed over the huddle of the small town like a brooding presence. It was no more than a medieval fort but the modern, breech loading artillery on the walls said much about its owner and his local power.

Cavalry paraded with red banners, the leftover elite dregs of the Manchu horsemen who had ruled China for hundreds of years. Now they were mercenaries who sought only to survive the revolutionary convulsions in China. Over their shoulders were the carbines of the former Emperor's select few and in their holsters were the latest Browning repeaters.

Not a single European face did the two prisoners see as they were walked up to the great ebony doors that guarded the citadel of Xi Ling's world. This was a part of the Orient that few Europeans had ever seen, or indeed ever wanted to see.

Weary and exhausted they were finally at the end of the week's long trek into the Chinese hinterland. There arrayed before them as if in some ironic diplomatic gesture was Xi Ling, her father and most of the inhabitants of the castle.

As Garry and Adam stood, silent, awaiting judgement, they once again went under that impersonal scrutiny that had become the hallmark of the whole trip.

Some discussion followed that both Garry and Adam could not follow but it finished with Xi Ling stamping her foot in anger as she pulled her chi pao robe to show the healed scars of the caning that she had received at Garry's behest.

In the end she stormed off in frustration as the warlord, Lo Liluoang, surveyed the two men who had been kidnapped at the behest of his concubine. He seemed fascinated by Garry and ran his soft hand over the slave's back with an almost sensual movement.

Suddenly he barked an order and Garry was knocked to his knees. Whilst four men stood on his wrists and ankles, the fetters were removed and his arms and legs were staked to the ground so that he was spread face down, naked, in the soft sand of the courtyard.

Another sharp order and a soldier arrived with a tin bath that was full of water and bamboo rods that had been soaking for weeks.

Adam looked away from the inevitable punishment and his eyes caught a small movement behind the blinds in a window.

Xi Ling was settling down to enjoy the beating whatever the argument had been previous to her storming off.

Sure enough the blinds were opened to reveal what could almost be described as a theatre box. Xi Ling and two other women sat in comfort and chatted whilst Garry was prepared.

On the courtyard sand a masseur came to administer a massage to loosen the muscles on the big American's back. All the while Garry cursed loudly, but it seemed as if that was all part of the show.

Finally the massage was over and a slender young woman, naked from the waist up, arrived to bow deeply before Lo Liluoang. They exchanged a few words and then at last the slim girl picked one of the canes from the water.

In Adam's head there was a moment, when the drops of water flashed in the bright sun. That remembrance would remain as a fixed memory for the rest of his life. The glitter of the water and the dark marks that it made on the sand when it splashed down. The slim girl, her breasts well formed and pert that moved in gentle sympathy with her graceful movement. The sound of the cane hissing through the warm air and the expectant look on Xi Ling's pretty face as the cane met the flesh of its victim.

Eight strokes.

Eight strokes of the cane does not sound like much at all. Every public schoolboy has to suffer as much. But there is a difference between the casual punishment of schoolboys and the administering of torture by an expert.

Each blow was placed by the hand of an artist. The cane rose, it circled and gathered speed. Then its orbit changed and it drew across the flesh as it contacted to rip the delicate and massage softened skin with the ridges of the bamboo rod.

The young woman was Lo Liluoang's torturer. She administered the most wicked punishments with a small childlike smile and a touch of the fingers to her full lips.

She filled the canes with lead shot and ensured that enough tamarind had been added to the soak water. She was so much more than a technician of terror, she was an artisan of agony.

At each blow Garry cried in agony. From the very first he suffered a world of pain that made him animal. Lifted the veil of thousands of years of civilisation and revealed the howling creature beneath.

But the slim girl ignored his struggles. She checked her cane before every blow and tossed it to the sand if any sign of splitting showed. So savage were the blows that four canes lay discarded after only eight blows.

She circled her victim with the intent of a wolf that has disabled a large prey. When she saw that, in his fright, Garry had an erection she kicked off her sandal and massaged the turgid member for a moment against the sand before placing the next blow.

After every blow she waited until her victim was still and calm so that he fully appreciated the next cut of the cane. Now barefooted she checked between his legs and occasionally massaged Garry's prick with her toes. The sensual becoming an creative composition mixed with the blood of the brutal.