Prime Plus

Dinner was but a couple of spoonfuls of rice and half a cup of water.

"That's it?" I complained, amazed at how little the mongers offered us to eat and drink. As I had skipped breakfast and lunch, I was hungry.

"Breakfast won't be any better," Nicky warned. "They don't want us bloated when we're sold. They'd rather we be lean."

After dinner, all of the newly processed slaves were assembled, stripped, graded, and sorted into eight grades: prime, choice, select, standard, commercial, utility, cutter, and canner.

Prime slaves were the real lookers; young people with exceptional bodies and faces, slaves with fantastic sex appeal, the fitness instructors, models, actresses, athletes, and other drop dead gorgeous slaves. Highly sought after for their sexuality and head turning good looks, a five year servitude commitment of a prime slave usually sold for north of a million dollars. The finest prime offerings were referred to as prime plus and usually sold last.

Choice slaves were attractive young people whose looks weren't quite prime, pretty but not perfect. Choice slaves possessed excellent sex appeal as well as young bodies suitable for hard labor. A female choice usually had a girl next door appeal as opposed to a model's beauty, a Mary Ann instead of a Ginger. Although they didn't have the million dollar and up values of primes, choice slaves still brought excellent prices, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and, because they were much more plentiful and the market for choice slaves was huge, the sale of choice slaves was where the mongers made most of their money.

Selects were relatively young slaves (20's, 30's, and a few 40's) with some sex appeal but were usually too old or heavy to be graded higher. Nevertheless, select slaves had bodies suitable for moderately strenuous to strenuous work with most of the men and many of the select female slaves, particularly the penal slaves, ending up in the mines, construction, or as migrant labor. The better looking select women could still find themselves working as personal concubines or as prostitutes.

Standard slaves were young slaves without sex appeal or middle aged slaves but whose bodies were still capable of moderate and light duty assignments and were reasonably intelligent with college or high school degrees. The standards often were assigned to sweatshop factory work, clerical, nannies, maids, domestics, or restaurant labor. Because their relatively low price made the standards affordable by even the middle class, some of the better looking standard women were still sold as personal concubines/companions to older men.

Commercial slaves possessed a valuable trade or talent which could be exploited, e.g. licensed electrician, nurse, carpenter, etc. When enslaved, they were usually employed in their trade or profession and worked for long hours with little or no compensation. Whether a good-looking or strong slave with a trade was considered commercial, select, choice, or prime, depended on whether the mongers felt they could get more by selling the slave for her body or for her trade. High value commercial slaves were rare as physicians, PhD chemists, engineers, architects, and other high earning professionals didn't risk slavery by defaulting on their loans.

Utility slaves were unskilled or semi-skilled workers with limited education or intelligence and without sex appeal but were sufficiently young and healthy to be used for janitorial, maid service, simple gardening, and other menial labor. Utility slaves sold well but their prices were low.

Cutters were slaves with advanced age, serious addictions, violent tendencies, sex crimes, or obvious disabilities. Many, if not most, of the criminals were classified as cutters. Four or five years of a cutter's life sold for about the price of a used compact car or less.

Canner slaves were generally elderly, ill, seriously disabled, or mental cases largely unsuitable for any serious work. Having more of a ransom value than anything else, canners were usually purchased by friends or family members or for medical research and their prices were rock bottom, usually well under $5,000.00 apiece, if they sold at all. The market for them was so poor, and public opinion of enslaving such helpless people so low, that canners were rarely ever repo'd.

A monger clipped a tag on the D-ring on my collar "Lot 147, Prime +." I smiled with pride. Prime plus was the highest grade, reserved for only the most valuable of slaves. Less than one in 500 slaves merited prime plus. Although Nicky's tag stated "Lot 146, Prime +" Nicky scowled and looked disappointed.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I'd hoped for choice or at worst, just prime, anything but prime plus," Nicky said.

"Why? Prime plus is better."

"Prime plus isn't better for us, it's just better for Ultra. It means buyers will pay more for us. But the more they pay for us, the more they'll want to get out of us. If they have to pay a ton of money for us, they'll use us any way they can to get the most money out of us."

I frowned. Suddenly being a prime plus didn't sound nearly as good as it did a moment ago.

"What do you think's going to happen to us?" I asked.

Nicky grimaced and looked concerned, "I hate to say it but I think we're about to be skinned."

Nicky's words chilled me to the bone; I certainly had no desire to be skinned – no slave did. To be "skinned" as a slave meant that you were sold into the "skin trade," aka the sex industry, strip clubs, pornography, bordellos, fetish, outcalls, harem girls, concubines, etc.

Although "skinners," slave masters in the skin trade business, represented only a fraction of the bidders at a slave auction, they purchased the majority of the choice and prime females like us. Worse yet, a majority of the skinners were foreign, bidding via the internet, meaning that it was highly possible that I'd be spending the next six years of my life getting skinned in some Asian, African, or the Middle Eastern whorehouse.

"Uhh," I groaned. "God, I hope you're wrong."

"We're prime plus and a six year servitude commitment for a prime plus always sells for over a million dollars. If someone pays more than a million dollars for us, and they will, they're going to want to make at least three million dollars off us and the easiest way to do that would be to skin us."

After grading and sorting, we were allowed to put our smocks back on and taken to our pens. We were placed in the holding pen labeled "F-1." The steel bar enclosures where slaves were stored were referred to as "pens" instead of cells as they were only temporary accommodations. It was but a cage with a concrete floor, a dozen sleeping mats, a portable camping toilet, a roll of toilet paper, and no privacy.

Neither of us slept that night, few of the slaves did. Instead we choose to huddle together and commiserate. I doubt we could have slept even if we'd wanted to.