“Clot!” Said Mistress Sonja “Bring me the right bubble bath now!”. She whipped him across the face with a desk diary and looked at the ceiling, “Why always must I endure these hopeless pigs?” she implored to an imaginary audience of fellow dominatrices. Her imperfect English sounded flawless to Nigel, like everything about her. He crawled from the room on his knees, naked except for his mask, feeling proud that he had finally pleased her enough to earn a weekend as her slave. It had cost him a fortune and a lot of punishment training, for being slow. stupid, disobedient and for coming when she’d put him in chastity. Now his weekend of pain and pleasure was here, he felt like he was experiencing a kind of divine ecstasy.

At night he slept in a small hutch with his hands and legs shackled.

“Imbecile” screamed Mistress Sonja slapping Nigel’s buttocks with a rolled up wall planner. “I said the dirty cleaner’s costume, the clean one is too good for you!! Remove it now!” “Yes Goddess, thank you Goddess” replied Nigel, feeling lucky to have witnessed the porcelain beauty of her skin and to have kissed her 10 inch heels.

He was not allowed a light and made do with a small bowl to defecate in.

“Useless Creature bring my Moet” commanded Mistress Sonja “and as a special treat you may drink the champagne of my piss while I enjoy the real one, then I will consider punishing you with my holy staple gun!” , it was the thing Nigel had fantasised about most whilst waiting so patiently!

He drank from a small pool of yellowing water trying not to cough up the tepid liquid and to remember that it gave him strength.

On Monday Nigel returned from his “golfing weekend” to his wife, his family, his house in Surrey and his job as senior office manager for a firm of stockbrokers. He felt somehow purified like a medieval priest who had worn a hair shirt to punish himself for impure thoughts. That evening he took his wife for a meal and to the ballet. He barked their order at the young Slovenian waitress without looking at her or asking his wife what she wanted and afterwards did not leave a tip because he felt the girl seemed cocky. Life was good and his weekend had cured him of the nagging guilt he sometimes felt when witnessing the sea of destitution outside the station on his way home from work.

Saeed, aged 11, shuffled in his tiny hutch as he had every night since he was 4 years old and picked at the hardened callouses where his too-small shoes had rubbed his feet. He waited hopefully for daylight and the 12 hours he’d spend working in the rocky field where he could at least see the sky. Was his gangmaster right when he told him he was lucky and that others would pay to be treated as well as he was?