On a rainy day shy book store owner Barry Simpson decides to experiment with astral projection. He doesn’t really believe it’s possible to travel out of your body to other dimensions, but the experiment works and he ends up in a most disturbing situation:
He opened his eyes and realized he was in a world that was completely different from his own. It was hot here. Hot and humid as if he were in the jungle. He wasn’t though, at least not as far as he could tell. A big whitewashed house stood opposite of him. It had several balconies and a slanted roof. A black horse was tied to an iron fence. Above the house the sky was the kind of blue that he had never seen in England. More intense, probably caused by the bright sunlight. It had recently rained though, because when he looked back at the horse he saw it was standing with its hooves in the mud. There was no pavement here, no asphalt either. Just mud, everywhere around him. He moved his feet and felt that he too was standing ankle deep in it. He lowered his head to take a look and his heart skipped a beat. He was naked, he saw, which was unnerving enough, but the real shocker was that his penis was hard and pointing upwards. He couldn’t believe it and desperately tried to cover himself, but that’s when he realized he wasn’t free to move. His arms were chained to the wall behind him. They were spread wide, as if he were crucified. He also realized that he wasn’t alone here. Both to his left and to his right were more men, all chained to the wall like him and all naked. He looked down again, at his penis that was hard, even though there was no apparent stimulation anywhere. Oh, the embarrassment to find himself here like this! He, Barry Simpson, who had only once gone to second base with a girl, who had buried himself under thousands of books, was now chained to a wall in public, butt naked and with an erection.
‘Chin up, Barnaby Simpson,’ a woman’s voice said.
He raised his head in alarm and looked into the blue eyes of a woman who was towering over him. She was at least a head taller than he was and looked intimidating as hell, not in the least because she was holding a riding crop in her hand. It was also the way she was dressed though. She was wearing beige jodhpurs, leather riding boots and a tight white top that made her breasts look enormous. Her hair was blonde and thick and fell all the way down over her shoulders. She had a beautiful face too, with full lips, white teeth and strong features. Because she was so much taller than he was, his eyes were at the same height as her breasts and once they focused on her cleavage he found that he couldn’t take them away from there. It was the strangest sensation. He was a decent man and would never stare at a woman’s breasts, but he had no choice it seemed. The force emanating from her cleavage was magnetic and overpowering. He was sucked into it as if he were falling into a hole without a bottom. All in all it was extremely disturbing, because his free will and sense of personality were quickly fading away. In his mind he scrambled and tried to pull himself together. He needed to get out of here and wake up now. He tried to close his eyes and break the spell of her cleavage, but to no avail. He couldn’t even blink or move his head. Next he pulled at the chains around his wrists, but the same thing there.
‘Don’t bother,’ he heard the woman say. ‘Here you are mine, like all these other perverts.’
‘I’m not a pervert,’ Barry said.
The woman poked at his erect penis with her riding crop and said: ‘Liar.’
As disturbing as the conversation was, the magnetic force that was emanating from her cleavage was decreasing now. At least he could blink his eyes again and look away from those breasts. He looked up at the woman’s face. A thin smile played around her lips as he demanded to know what was going on.
‘Who are you? What’s happening?’
‘You’re not supposed to talk to me like that,’ she said, ‘but I can see why you’re confused so I’ll let it go for now.’
She folded her arms across the chest and said: ‘My name is Rose. In this dimension I own you. That is until someone buys you of course.’
‘You own me? Are you insane?’
‘Watch your tongue now, Barnaby Simpson.’
‘How do you know my name? My real name? Hardly anyone knows that.’
‘Oh, I know everything about you, Barnaby. Your name, your history and every dirty little secret too.’
Barry tried to break free again, desperate to wake up from this crazy dream.
‘This is not real!’ he yelled. ‘None of it is.’
‘If it’s not, why are you still here?’
‘What do you want from me?’
‘The same thing I want from all of you,’ she said and she pointed her riding crop at the other men in chains.
‘You are merchandise for me. I put a price on you, someone pays it and you’re gone from here. Now that you’re awake I expect to have a buyer soon.’
‘You’re selling me?!’ Barry yelled. ‘Are you mad?’
Her left hand landed on his cheek with a loud smack. Dammit, that hurt! And the humiliation, God, this was all just insane. And now she put an index finger underneath his chin and lifted it up. It made him feel like a schoolboy and her strict look reinforced that feeling.
‘I have better things to do than talk to little Barnaby Simpson, but I’ll be back later. In the meantime try to wrap your mind around the fact that you’re at my slave market.’
With that she turned around and left him there, astonished, humiliated and chained against the wall. His gaze fell on her big, firm ass as she walked away and again his vision got hooked on it. The same magnetic force that had pulled him into her cleavage. Come to think of it, hadn’t he felt it before too, when he was drawn to the basement of the church? Fortunately the woman untied the black horse and climbed on its back. She took the reins, gave a command and rode away without even glancing at him or the other poor bastards that were chained against the wall.
‘She’ll be gone for three hours at least,’ a man’s voice to his right said.
‘Excuse me?’ Barry asked.
‘Rose. She is going to Moon Forest to hunt for more slaves.’
The man had an erection too, Barry noticed from the corner of his eye. Still feeling utterly horrified and confused, he nevertheless knew this was an opportunity to find out what was happening.
‘How long have you been here?’ he asked the man, who had an American accent.
‘That’s hard to tell, my friend. Time is different here. Let’s just say I have seen the sun set twelve times since she found me and brought me here.’
‘Who found you? Rose? And where did she find you?’
‘In Moon Forest of course. That’s where she tracks most of us down.’
‘Did she catch me there too?’ Barry asked.
‘I’m sure she did.’
‘I don’t remember anything about it though.’
‘You wouldn’t. Take a look at the guy on your left. He’s still asleep. Rose found him yesterday. Now she waits for him to wake up.’
The man on his left looked like a Mexican, with dark skin and big mustache. His chin was resting on his cheek and his eyes were closed. His penis was limp, Barry saw.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ the American said. ‘The sleepers are soft, without exception. The ones who are awake have a permanent hard-on. It’s how they keep us in their power.’
‘They?’ Barry asked. ‘Who else are you talking about?’
‘Oh, Rose is not the only woman you’ll see. Others come here to buy slaves. They all have the power that I think you just felt when Rose was here.’
‘Yes, what was that?’
‘Your deepest desires, man,’ the American said. ‘Your deepest desires exploited to the fullest by these women.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Barry said.
‘Suit yourself. Let me just tell you about me then. I have a thing for leather boots. I have always been aware of it, but back in Arizona I’ve got it under control, if you catch my drift. An innocent little fetish, nothing wrong with it. Then I did this meditation course and learned to travel out of my body and the next thing I knew I was here, getting sucked into the image of Rose’s boots. Not just once, but every time I see her. My whole life force, all my energy disappearing into that image. The way I see it, the women are aware of this. They control us that way. It’s all energy here. Electric and magnetic forces, man. I don’t know who these women are in real life, but I bet the men here are all submissive suckers with fetishes.’
Barry thought about it and although he didn’t admit it, he knew that deep inside he had always liked the idea of a cleavage like Rose’s. Perhaps the American was right and his hidden desires had come to light here with an intensity that was far greater than in daily life. Speaking about daily life, where did the American say he was from? Arizona?
‘Yeah, Phoenix,’ he said.
‘And that’s where your body is at the moment?’
‘You’re damn right it is. I work in the hospital and just did a night shift. When I got home I went to bed straight away and woke up here. Happens to me a lot since I did that damned meditation course.’
‘And every time you travel out of your body you end up here?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Does it affect your daily life? I mean, I can’t imagine what I’ll be thinking when I’m back in my bookshop tomorrow.’
‘I’ll be honest, it doesn’t affect me much on the surface. I mean, I go to work, I see my friends, etcetera, but I do think about it a lot. Let’s face it, a part of us is trapped here in this weird and strangely hypnotic world. I still don’t know what to make of that.’
‘Do you think it’s real?’
‘Let me put it this way. It’s my twelfth time here. By now it feels as real as my life in Phoenix. Rose looks the same every time I see her. She talks the same and follows up on things she has said before. There is a sense of continuity and stability to this world that might feel different than our everyday life, but not necessarily less real. You know what I mean?’
Barry nodded, but he wasn’t so sure. After all it was his first time here. Part of him still thought of this as a strange dream that he would wake up from and never return to again. He thought about everything the American had told him though. He wanted to ask him more, like what was going on with the hard penises. Did the man feel aroused the whole time he was here? Did he himself feel aroused, now that he thought about it? He looked down at his penis and realized that it didn’t feel unpleasant. He remembered Rose’s cleavage and then he knew that, yes, he had felt turned on when she was standing in front of him. He had just been too alarmed to realize it. She had known though. She had even called him a pervert. He blushed at the thought. God, what an adventure. Not what he had expected, but an adventure nevertheless. He looked at the house that seemed deserted now. The sun was higher up in the sky. Was it hotter than before as well? He wasn’t sure. He tried to break free from the chains one more time, but his attempt lacked conviction. He gave up and surrendered for now. Looking past the house, to a spot at the horizon, he drifted off, thinking a million things and hoping he would soon wake up in his chair at home.