Sold, Packaged, and Shipped

Chapter 9: Transferred to a Cell
They began with Darlene, unbuckling the straps that held her inside the coffin. Even with all the straps off, she was still limp and
unable to stand by herself. One man held her upright while the other locked handcuffs on her wrists behind her. Then she was
picked up like a sack of potatoes and carried to one of the more modern cells that Sir Sedgewick had had built in his basement.
He enjoyed having the ancient stone cells as a reminder of the history of the house and his family, but knew that keeping naked
women in cold stone cells was detrimental to their health. And he did want to protect his investment, after all.
The cell was in a heated portion of the dungeon (as Sir Sedgewick thought of it) but small and designed to keep a woman
securely imprisoned. There was a small bed of steel tubular construction, a tiny privy in the corner, and a couple steel rings set
into the walls with chains hanging down from them. In traditional prison fashion, there were steel bars across the front with a
door also of bars that could be shut and locked securely. There was no window.
They set Darlene down on the bed, which was small but at least had a thin mattress and one blanket. The end of one of the
chains from the wall rings was looped around her neck and padlocked in place. Then the door was closed and locked, leaving
her far less restricted than she had been at any time in Crofton’s safe house. She was, however, just as secure as she had been
when she was tightly bound with ropes.
Melinda was then removed from her coffin, but it took both of them to hold the struggling girl. She was weak from the long trip but
still put up a considerable fight after the straps were off and she was lifted from the coffin. One held her while the other struggled
to get the handcuffs on her wrists. Having done this before, they were careful to avoid her kicks, which, even though bare-footed,
would have been painful had any landed between their legs where she was aiming. Each held an arm while they marched her off
to the cell next to Darlene. Again, she had to be held tightly while the chain was looped around her neck and locked in place.
They retreated and slammed the cell door, leaving an angry young woman glaring at them and hurling curses in their direction.
“Scream all you want to, poppet,” one told her. “This place is soundproof.” He laughed as she called him several really nasty
names, then suggested he remove himself to someplace else and fornicate with himself.
They closed the door to the cell area, but surprisingly left a small light on. Melinda immediately tried to reach through the cell wall
to touch Darlene, but the chain around her neck halted her a few inches short.
“Wake up!” she called out.
Darlene stirred and opened her eyes slowly. “Melinda...? What...? Where are we?”

“In some damned jail cells someplace,” exclaimed Melinda angrily. “From the accents, I would guess we’re in England. And they
called that old man who looked at us ‘His Lordship’.”
“Oh, my!” was all Darlene could say. She struggled up to a sitting position and looked around. “It does appear to be a jail, all
right. I think I passed out. I vaguely remember someone squeezing my breasts and poking me in the pussy.”
“They did, damn bastards! What can we do? This is terrible!”
Darlene looked around, noted the chain around her neck and sighed. “Nothing, dear. Nothing at all.”
Melinda walked the few tiny steps allowed her in that cell, tested the firmness of the chain and ring, then bent down, brought her
handcuffs hands down by the floor and stepped through them backwards so that her hands came up in front of her.
“Oh, I didn’t know you could do that,” Darlene said, then awkwardly repeated what Melinda had done. With their hands in front of
them, they could just touch hands between the bars. It was not much, but the mere touch brought some comfort to the two naked
women.
After a while, when they were both sitting on their beds, Melinda asked, “Do you think that Dad is searching for us?”
“I’m sure he is. But what can he do? We’re not even in the U.S.”
Her temper diminished considerably, Melinda curled up into a ball and said, in a little girl voice, “I’m scared. These men might do
terrible things to us.”
“So far we have been treated harshly but not harmed,” Darlene pointed out. “That is a good sign. From what that man in that
house said, we were bought by a man. He even told us we were slaves.”
“That’s ridiculous! There aren’t any slaves any more.”
Darlene was silent. She wished that Melinda was correct but knew otherwise. Men with money and power did as they pleased.
Especially in countries less civilized. She recalled reading somewhere that women in some middle eastern countries were
treated more like property than humans.
Melinda pulled the blanket around herself and drifted off into an uneasy sleep. Darlene pulled her blanket up, but she did not
sleep.