Human Commodity Read online

  The big man leaned down and whispered, “Just follow my orders, and you’ll be fine.” His hand pushed down on her shoulder, “Kneel.”

  Kayla sank to her knees. Her legs really did not want to hold her, anyway. She watched him secure the cuffs and collars on the other girls, and all but one was told to kneel next to her. One of the ‘street’ clothes was pulled from their group, and she watched the other trainers each select a young woman. The women were sobbing as they were secured to a wall across from them, and Kayla cried as she clenched her fists that were secured by the wrist cuffs locked together and resting on her bottom.

  The big man with the ponytail turned to them and said, “Count the strikes. If you refuse, you will be exchanging places with them.” When the crops lashed out, Kayla quivered and choked out the count as the man had ordered her to do. When the whipping was over, her group of five followed the trainer out of the room down a hallway of the Training Compound.

  While Kayla had spent the previous night wondering fearfully if she was to be contracted for this unknown terror, Mason Sanford had spent the evening in his fifty-seventh floor quarters with one of the hastily trained contracts that had been rushed through a quick semblance of the program. The girl, US18BB9, was part of a lot he had sold to their firm in Japan. Pushing the BB commodity overseas would drive the commodity price higher. She was set for transport in the morning.

  The girl, though quickly following all of his orders, was nervous and obviously more worried about punishment than devoting efforts towards pleasing him. It was a sacrifice he had agreed upon, to get his commodity firm moving. The group that would be properly inducted in the morning would be the first to be guided through the full ten levels of training.

  This one had spent a few months at the firm boarding school where psychologists adjusted her psyche from a sobbing reluctant mess to a resolved slave who only slightly balked at being trained quickly through level three. The first levels prepared them for sexual requirements without the additional erotic scenarios they might have to endure when sold on the open market.

  Mason sat in his overstuffed chair with a glass of scotch while the BB swallowed his cock. Even trembling in half-trained compliance, she allowed his stiff rod to travel the length of her throat, gagging and clenching her fists but not daring to pull back from the owner of SHCI. Patsy’s trainer had already threatened her with punishment, and he had swiped a crop down the soft exposed flesh of her pussy to make sure the bruised throbbing would remind her of the consequences of displeasing Mason Sanford.

  While the BB sucked his shaft, Mason thought back to what had delivered him to the level of owning the flagship of Human Commodity firms. He had offices and compounds in six overseas companies, as well as this firm on Wall Street. He closed his eyes and pictured life six years ago, when his partners thought that he was crazy for staying with a degree in economics in college.

  Mason and Eddie rang in 2011 with two girls in their economics class wrapping tequila and champagne coated tongues around their cocks. It was a noxious combination that could be tolerated by those in who were in their twenties, but hell, almost any combination of booze and sex could be tolerated by college hormones.

  Their roommate, Phillip, had gone to his room at 11:00, missing the final moments of 2010. They invited him to stay and celebrate with them at midnight, but as soon as Andrea slammed down her third shot of tequila and began a slow striptease in time to Eddie’s beat of the saltshaker on the stained coffee table, Phillip’s eyes widened and he made predictable excuses. Issuing a final depressing departing statement, he muttered, “I don’t know what the fuck is so ‘Happy’ about this. I feel lucky my scholarships were funded in bonds.”

  Mason pumped into Sherry’s mouth, hurrying his thrusts because he felt the heavy weight of unconsciousness beginning to overtake her. She had stopped stroking his cock with her tongue a few minutes ago, and her hand was working his balls more in the distracted method of dreamlike reaction than sexually aroused effort. His load shot into her mouth, and as he gripped his fingers through her hair and pushed up, he felt his sperm slide back down his shaft and dribble between her lips onto his thigh. “Fuck. First blowjob of the New Year, and I’m wearing it on my leg.”

  Eddie commiserated with Mason as Andrea had passed out with her head on his thigh and his cock resting in her slack-jawed mouth. He had not come close to erupting, and after her teasing all night, his stiff rod would be celebrating 2011 wrapped in his fist again. He ran his fingers through her bleached hair. “Wouldn’t it be great to live in a world where the slut finished her job and didn’t pass out on you?”

  The three young men were brilliant achievers but with very different strengths. Mason was the pie-in-the sky schemer, with white papers tacked all over the light blue walls of his room like the clouds of his pipe-dreams. Eddie was a behind the scenes activist who took the plan on the table and honed it, fine tuning the tools necessary to enact it. Phillip… Phillip was a kind of moral compass who had been raised by a conservative minister, and had left to college in an attempt to escape the fanatic ideology. Phillip could find soul pacifying methods to stretch the bindings of his restrictive background, as long as the methods were legal. Somewhere along the way, compassion and the scale of what was good for mankind had become fraudulently weighted with the loosened chains from Phillip’s youth. These unique traits that had brought the unlikely trio together in college, became the strengths that would eventually make them partners in a business with global repercussions.

  The year 2011 had begun for the young men with a depressing lack of oral attention from the drunken co-eds. There was also the not so small matter of their decision on a degree in economics becoming a questionably poor choice, as things in the world of finance had been pushed to a staggering, dripping flow. Countries shuffled non-collateralized loans between each other on the same level as the increasing practice of people ‘kiting’ checks to cover expenses, and they took their focus off social matters until they could no longer be ignored.

  The overburdened coffers of virtually every nation were stretched to accommodate skirmishes of war and civil unrest, as employment dropped to poverty levels and the citizens’ outrage was reflected in elections. And who was to blame for the misery… the ‘golden boys’ handling the paper trade in places such as Wall Street. Bone crunching regulations were forced onto the firms who were rapidly running out of maneuvering room with any possible investments to offer nervous buyers.

  There stood Mason Sanford in the middle of the mess, with two years left towards his Economics Degree. Students studying towards any degree involving finance were frantically changing majors… mostly to law and medicine if there were still openings to accept them. Mason’s final semester had two classes that comprised of less than ten students, and even the professors looked at their students as if questioning their mental stability for pushing towards a degree in a completely unstable career. His roommates had bailed on economics in the middle of their third year, with Phillip switching to law and Eddie picking up medicine. They thought that Mason was crazy for staying in finance, but they made an agreement for the future with him anyway.

  Mason bounced around temporary jobs… always on Wall Street… as he waited for something to take hold. It happened six months after he had graduated top of his class of ten, in the summer of 2013. He was working in the mailroom at Dugan Securities when the man he was sorting the meager letters into the plastic tubs for, conveniently died.

  Mason, with a full degree from an Ivy League college, had been offered full-time employment in the mailroom. Due to the derisory amount of correspondence, Mason was the only employee in the mailroom… although he had named the copier ‘Lance’ and began a close relationship with his new friend.

  Over time, the associates forgot that Mason had the same accreditation as they held, and better than some of them. He was the cheerful kid from the mailroom, whose smile had nothing to do with their stale jokes. While Mason toured up and down the flo
ors in the brass-doored elevator, he reflected on his plans for redecorating the fifty-seventh floor to his personal tastes.

  Mason took a sip of scotch and brushed his fingers through the girl’s blonde hair. She was still taking long pulls on his cock, though he could tell her throat had tightened with frantic anxiety at the thought of not fulfilling her duty. He lifted his hips and her fingers reached to pull his sack forward. He could imagine her inward groan as she realized he had not so much as tightened in preparation to spewing his load. Mason chuckled softly and returned to his musings… the day when he finally realized a method towards a rich reward for his persistence and struggle at Dugan Securities.

  Epiphany Day had arrived three years after Mason had sequestered himself in the mailroom. It was a Friday when Mason slipped on some jeans and grabbed a bottle of beer after ending another busy week. His employment with Dugan had reaped its rewards… Mason was certain of this… although he was still trying to determine exactly what those rewards were. He lived on the third floor of a house that had been divided into four apartments.

  The owners lived in the basement, and rented out the top floors in an effort to meet the mortgage payments. When the couple had purchased the brick building, the man had been the CEO of a company that had liquidated five years previously without being able to cover the ‘golden parachute’ he had counted on. Being CEO of a firm that had gone bust without the foresight to cover his own ass had effectively made him unemployable.

  Mason studied his bulletin board, which was the one solid wall in his living room. He had copies of correspondence and finance reports… courtesy of ‘Lance’… stapled or tacked to almost the entire surface. The television was set on the news channel, and Mason glanced at the clock. It was five minutes until the financial reports that no one wanted to listen to any more.

  He continued to stare at his wall and mentally shuffled memos. Something was gelling just out of reach, and Mason’s eye twitched in anticipation as he made his way towards the TV. The poor newscaster… Mason actually did feel sorry for Paul Morrison… looked like a beaten man. He had given up months ago trying to paste the smile on his face. Now he looked weary, and slightly afraid of the flood of scathing e-mails he would receive from the few that still held onto hope his news would make mention that something… anything… was rebounding.

  The screen changed from Paul’s cheerless, wary face to a crowd in Amsterdam divided between angry sign bearing… mostly female… protestors being held behind police barricades and a ‘normal’ mix of citizens whose faces were smiling with nervous relief. Paul’s voice droned his news script from behind the frenetic scene.

  “Amidst a barrage of opposition and potential lawsuits from the Preservation of Humanity Organization, Holland is the latest country to legalize the sale of women. In an attempt to appease POHO, Holland has restricted the trade to women twenty or older. In a somewhat surprising move, feminist backed POHO has aligned itself with local prostitutes, who are claiming that it is unfair to legitimize the female commodity while stripping them of their source of income. Legislators have received wide support from constituents that see this new law as a temporary means of financial recovery until employment opportunities are on the rise. In other news….”

  Mason did not listen to the list of floundering stocks and bankrupt corporations. His mind had frozen on two words… words that any first year economics student knew… ‘trade’ and ‘commodity’. His brown bottled brew almost slipped from his hand as he somehow managed to drift to his wall. Holy shit! Mason put down his beer and quickly rearranged several sheets. He stood back from the new display. Holy shit!

  Mason cradled his cell phone pinched between his ear and his shoulder while he pushed the sofa and chairs out onto the balcony. Eddie and Phillip had never expected Mason to be the one who would call. Still, they hopped on a red-eye flight to New York and they met at the airport in the morning. They discovered that the trip was a leap of faith for both of them, as they had no idea what the hell Mason was up to. Anything was better than dealing with an endless pile of bankruptcies and divorces, Phillip told Eddie. Eddie countered with his mundane proficiency treating depression, ulcers and migraines… of which he was one of his own most steadfast patients.

  The two men exited the taxi and stood on the cracked pavement of the sidewalk, looking up at the old brick building. They were both quietly dismayed at learning they would have to climb the threadbare carpet on the stairs to the third floor, and they were wondering if the strain of working finances had caused their former roommate to go nuts. Shit, they were both better off than Mason was, if living accommodations were any indication.

  They knocked on the door and it opened immediately. “Hi, guys. Glad you could make it.”

  Eddie studied his former roommate. He had not seen or even talked to Mason in almost three years. He looked pale and exhausted… and the damn twitch was practically break-dancing next to his left eye. The questionable state of Mason’s mind was not helped when the two men followed him into the living room.

  They could see the sofa and some tables out on the balcony. The living room… if that was what it was… held two chairs and a coffee table with a copier surrounded by mis-fed sheets of paper that littered the floor around it. Mason noticed them staring at the machine, and said casually, “‘Lance’ junior. You guys want a beer?”

  “Shit, Mason. It’s only eleven,” Eddie replied.

  “Right. Sorry. I’ll put some coffee on.”

  “Never mind,” Phillip said. “What the hell is all this, Mason? I mean, what the fuck?”

  Eddie joined Phillip over by the solid wall covered in documents. There was a matching wall across from it, but Phillip disregarded it as making no sense to him at all. This wall had ‘Employee Compensation’ written on a piece of duct tape that had been plastered at the top. Phillip scanned a few sheets and almost groaned. It looked to him suspiciously like a method of blackmail.

  “Have a seat, guys. I’d rather not have you passing out on the floor when you figure out how rich we’re going to be.”

  The lawyer and doctor were skeptical… Eddie was trying to remember if he had packed any extra tranquilizers for his friend… but they were already there, so they might as well hear the financial genius out.

  After thirty minutes, they realized the offhand compliment was more accurate than they had assumed. Mason was a financial genius, and Phillip murmured, “Shit, Mason… this could work.”

  Eddie felt a fluttering in his stomach. It was a good feeling of all the pooled bile retreating back to their non-painful recesses. “My wife is going to be fuckin’ pissed,” he commented.

  “Your wife is going to fuckin’ divorce your ass,” Mason laughed.

  Phillip winked. “Eddie, I know a good lawyer.”

  They turned to the new bulletin board wall where Mason had begun to outline the new firm in blank sheets of the squared off hierarchy of their new empire. The duct tape at the top read SHCI, with Sanford Human Commodities Investments below it and Mason Sanford scribbled just underneath it. Fifty-six blank sheets were lined up beneath for each of the Dugan Security building’s floors.

  There were flanking columns on either side with Phillip’s name scribbled on the top sheet of one, and Eddie’s name heading the row on the right side. Phillip added ‘Commodity Investment Law Firm’ on the label over his, and Eddie titled his new enterprise ‘Commodity Training Compound’.

  They spent Saturday and Sunday formulating plans, with Phillip’s eyes barely leaving his laptop screen while he searched legal precedence. When his vision blurred, he helped Eddie iron out the details of his divorce from Nancy. There were no children to worry about, and with what they were looking at, he would merely use the house as a bargaining chip. Walking away from it would be the least of his worries, but he had to make sure that his ex-wife could not worm her way into any future money he earned.

  Nancy had quickly turned into a depressing mistake, and all of her sexual prowess had m
ysteriously vanished. Mysterious, until Eddie walked unannounced into his wife’s office at the clinic and found her on the leather sofa, flipped between the spread thighs of the receptionist. Nancy did not even bother to lie about the affair, and she admitted that she had married Eddie for a more acceptable ‘public face’… and his shrewd background in finance that would help them to establish their joint medical practice.

  To the shock and dismay of their employees, the two men took an unexpected week off work. While planning their new firm, they rented apartments in New York. Meanwhile, Mason took his first vacation since Dugan Securities had hired him. Being the outstanding employee his efficient reputation had earned him, he worked three hours in the morning separating the mail. The temp merely had to deliver it in the separated bins in the afternoon.

  ‘Lance’ spat out thirty-seven new sheets for Mason’s purloined collection, including the memo from accounting to Mr. Dugan of the salesmen’s commissions for the month, a letter from Jordan and Compton addressed to Dugan’s top associate acknowledging his purchase of thirty percent shares in the competitive firm and that he was free to place his top trades through them, and more dirt on the newest Mrs. Dugan who was currently screwing a tennis pro at the club.

  The blonde kneeling between Mason’s thighs was becoming irritating. He could tell that her jaws were aching, as her lips barely moved as she plunged up and down on his rod. Her hands had stopped squeezing his balls, at least. For a while, he thought she was trying to force his load into his cock. Fuck… she’s supposed to be the best they pushed through. I need to tell Japan to get the whole lot through some remedial training.

  Mason rose, and the silent girl watched him with her eyes filling. Patsy’s hand dropped to her bald pussy, and she tentatively spread her lips to take the pressure off her sore folds. Bill, the horrible masked trainer, would slap her pussy with a cane this time instead of using the crop. He had left most of the terrifying equipment in the training room unused, as he pushed her quickly through the sexual exercises to please her new Master. If she had known it would be like this… god how she wished she could send word back to Kayla and her girlfriends to run away and hide.