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Bonded Labour

Posted on May 30, 2007
Filed Under The Stories |

“Tell me that you love me.”
“I love you.”
“Tell me that you think I could be a big star.”
“You could be a big star.”
“Tell me you’ll help me.”
“You know I’d love to.”

She gave his testicles a hard twist and let him go. Though he wanted to scream from the pain, all he could do is groan into the hand she clamped over his mouth. They were in a nightclub and she was draped so seductively across him that anybody would have thought that the guy was getting a handjob, or more, right there in public. So if anyone had noticed the grimace they would have simply assumed that she had finished him off and he had suddenly realized that he stains to explain to a wife.

She slid off him and he doubled up and groaned again. Her administrations were going to hurt for a long time.Her face was impassive but there were emotional currents seething under the surface that would have drowned a large animal if it dared step in. He was a small animal, and a lucky one at that, because he got off with little more than bruised testicles. She didn’t really blame his for his inadequacy, she just wished the next one would be different.

Her name was Jessica, which was not her real name, but it was appropriate because of her astonishing resemblance to another, more famous Jessica. For those with no sense of history or taste that would be Rabbit, not Simpson. Poured into a gown that looked like a red satin membrane that breathed with every move she made, she oozed sex in a way that most girls could never dream of. It was because of the existence of girls like Jessica that most women got to have sex. The men laid eyes on her, were engulfed in a pheromone attack so complete that they went of and mounted the first available filly that would accommodate them.

She could have anything she wanted, except the one thing she truly desired.

Freedom.

The thing that annoyed her the most was that she had woven herself into her present situation by an accident of timing. Literally six hours before she could have been seated on a throne of fame and fortune she signed a contract to perform for Yuri at the Pelican Club. Most girls, herself included, would have been glad to receive a six-month contract at a prestigious club that guaranteed her a sizable income for shopping, cosmetics and anything else she felt in the mood for. In a stunning case of bad luck, not likely to visit too many women as beautiful as her, she was approached by a man who didn’t look like much, with an offer to star in a Bollywood film before the ink on her contract had properly dried. He had watched one of her first performances and he thought she would be perfect for a film he was working on.

She didn’t understand the term ‘item number’ but she had been assured that fame, fortune and glory could be hers in exchange for the work she was about to do. Unfortunately for her, Yuri was not the kind of guy who understandingly tore up a contract because a girl he employed had an opportunity to win fame and fortune elsewhere. He perceived it an affront to his generosity that a girl would consider another job more attractive than the one he had given her.

Yuri’s girls were handpicked by Yuri and he never got it wrong. The girls at the Pelican were legendary across Asia. Businessmen from Tokyo, oil tycoons from the erstwhile Soviet Union, generals from Pakitsan, politicians and movie stars from India, all of them had booked a table at the Pelican at some time during their travels through the region.

Since she had been hired, Jessica had been the star attraction at the club. There was something about the way she shimmied and swayed, the arch of her eyebrows and the pliable firmness of her hips and breasts that enthralled her audience and held them for the duration of her presence on stage. When her top finally came off, the collaborative sigh that crossed the room could sail a mighty ship up an uncooperative river.

Jessica knew better than to try and get fired. There were rumours whispered in very dark places that girls who wanted to get away from Yuri and the Pelican so badly that they dared shame him in front of his paying clients by performing unsatisfactorily were dispatched not just from the club but from the very land of the living. No proof was ever forthcoming but Jessica did not want to find out for herself whether being fired by Yuri involved a gun and a very effective bullet.

Yuri liked to illustrate that he was a businessmen and not a thug by offering ever girl the opportunity to buy herself out of her contract by paying a price he set as the value of that contract. The value could vary on any given day but there was no way a girl as popular as Jessica would have a cheap contract to buy off. Which is why she had tried to enlist the help of a couple of the Pelican’s clients in her search for a sponsor who would loan her the money.

The only guys who actually had enough money to make the contract go away were too afraid of Yuri to let her have the money. She checked her cellphone again but there hadn’t been any further messages from India after the last one, six hours earlier. It was the man, who she had since learnt was the director of the film, and he had said that the production in India could only wait one more day for an answer from her.

For one crazy moment she thought of killing Yuri. If she was clever enough she might be able to distance herself from the event and yet be free of the man.

Just as the thought entered her mind two gunmen on a motorcycle drove by the heavily-armoured car Yuri was chauffeured around town in and pumped the backseat full of armour-piercing bullets.

Jessica wouldn’t find out about Yuri’s death for several more hours. Until then, she fretted, paced and worried about the glittering career she might have given up by signing her life away into bonded labour. They might well have been the six worst hours of her life.

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