The Slave by Laura Antoniou Read Free Book Online Page B

deliberately sought out books about slaves and
prisons and societies that maintained second and third class
citizenships. She was always careful to mix these books in with
books on other topics, so that the librarians wouldn’t suspect that
she was having evil thoughts.
    By that time, she knew that her fantasies of
surrender and degradation weren’t only unusual, they were very bad.
She knew because she read all these books. Slaves didn’t talk about
their former slavery in glowing terms. People were hurt, families
destroyed, and people died because of slavery. The whole country
went to war over it (or so she understood it), and the good guys
were the ones that didn’t want it.
    To make things worse, she became aware of
the social realities of her time and life. When she read about the
beginnings of women’s emancipation, she decided to do a school
paper on women’s lives in earlier times. And much to her dismay, it
seemed that her mind had divided into two distinct parts which were
absolutely incompatible with each other.
    One the one hand, she was absolutely
horrified at what women had to live with in the past, and even
right now, in different countries. She had taken much of her life
for granted. But the thought that few women ever attained the level
of education that she had right now, that they couldn’t vote, or
own property, that they couldn’t go to college or be doctors or
lawyers, this was all amazing to her. It made her angry.
    Now she understood the news stories about
the women who marched in Washington, or through other city streets.
She extended her research to modern feminism, and liked what she
read. She was as good as any boy! She could be whatever she wanted
to be!
    She was a teenage feminist.
    Who had evil thoughts. Thoughts that were
just not acceptable to her political beliefs, but were in fact
betrayals of the simple feminism she had been exposed to.
    Because even as she began her tentative
reaching out to the world of feminism, she also retained those
intense fantasies of her childhood. They invaded her dreams, and
they waited for her to lie awake at night, tossing and turning
until she knew that only one thing would let her sleep.
    By now, those thoughts had evolved into
full-fledged, soap opera style stories. In one, she was a Greek
slave, clad in a short, diaphanous tunic, utterly owned, totally
dominated, available to the members of her master’s household. In
this one, she grew to a position of some authority, getting to
manage the other slaves. But when that became too threatening, she
imagined that the other slaves planned a revolt and that she was
terribly punished for not seeing it early enough, and demoted as
well. That scenario lasted for years.
    In another, she was a rebel spy in some
mysterious, futuristic government. (This one came about after she
discovered science fiction.) She was captured by the ruling forces,
tortured, and often, brainwashed into joining them. That fantasy
was full of fetish images, boots and capes, cuffs and collars. She
imagined that they had drugs to make her fantasy character pliable
or confused, or to cause her pain. It was a much darker fantasy
than her Greek one, but it had its rewards.
    She didn’t know how to masturbate to orgasm
yet, not quite. But she did know that thinking of these stories
made her feel good, and that when they were accompanied by select
touches and pinches, she felt even better. And the enforced silence
of her nightly explorations only added to their power. She couldn’t
afford to let Mom or Dad hear as she experienced the pleasures of
her fantasies.
    And she knew, absolutely knew, that her new
feminist heroines would never, ever approve of such visions and
dreams. They shamed her. But she could not reject feminism because
she had secret evil thoughts! The best that she could do was master
the thoughts and put them away.
    Robin found a refuge in academics, burying
herself in more books and more studies. No one was surprised