"The entrance is over there darling.  You better take a deap breath, before we go in.  
The air down there is very stale and humid.  

"Please open gate nr. 1 Tom.  
Me and my wife are going in. "

"You see honey.  To prevent any escapes, the gates are contructed so they can not be opened simultaneously.  If any convict manage to get through the inner gate while it is open, she will be stopped at the outer gate, and will instantly be shot by the guard. you see here." 
  
It gave a shiver in her, when she head him say "she" about the convict.  She couldn´t wait seeing, what was behind those barres. 
 

"Here we are darling.  If any of the sluts are in you way, just kick her aside." 

"But it´s only girls, and they are so skinny.
Uh - They are also filthy, and they stink. 
 I don´t want to dirty my boots tuching them."
 

"Are they always chained, and do they always go barefooted ?" 

"Yes - Even the whole mine is secured against escapes, the slaves are always kept in chains.  It erase any hope, they might have of getting free again, and makes them more submissive.   
 
 New slaves hurt their soles and bleed all over, but soon their soles get so hardened, they can run around  on the hard stones without any difficulty."

"Time to unlock their leg irons from their collars, so they can start working.  I have 50 women in my shaft, so I better get started.  As soon as I have got it done, I will show you around." 

Through the entire coal mine, the women begine working.  The strong girls pushes the heavy waggons the long way to the elevators. 
 

Other women starts hacking out the hard coals. 

"They have to work very hard all day to meet their work quotas.  My head girl Maria helps them by beating them, if they slack off, so they don´t get behind." 
 

"Oh no - Look at that poor girl, 
she is nothing but a skeleton !" 

"Don´t feel pity for her.  She has spend all her time here crying instead of working hard.  Only women who meet their daily work quotas are feed.  The company can´t afford wasting good food on lazy sluts.  This one has cost the compagny money.  She has only been here 8 months, but will end up in the bone pit soon.  I must ask the head girl to beat her extra hard from now on, so she can pay back at least some of the expenses, she has cost us." 
 

"Then try to look at this one.  Do you recognize her?  It´s Sara Merlin.  The fat and lazy jewish girl in the class under yours, when you went to school.   Less than a week after her rich father died, her stepmother sold her to the mine.  It must be over 6 years ago.  Look at her now !  All muscles and vigour.  I now understand, why jews are so much sought-after as slaves in the North African mines.  Can you see Elisabeth, she is a very lucky girl?  If she had not been sold to us, She would now have been a fat and lazy woman, drinking tea and eating chocolates with her friends all day long. 
   

"Here is my favourite !  Her name is Pia Schenke.  You can´t see she is 32 years old.  She had already been here a long time, when I got the job as an overseer 7 years ago.  She  had immigrated from Germany together with a good for nothing boy friend.  While traveling through on their way West, he lost her to the sheriff in a poker game. 

 It is hardly ever necessary to beat her.  The scares on her body come from, when she was brocken in long ago.  If we had more workers like her, the compagny would earn a lot of money." 
 

"We are now in the furthest end of my shaft. 
When I have unlocked these two wenches, I only have one more to wake up.  You will see her later." 
  

All the slaves in Carl´s area of the mine are now working hard, trying desperately to reach the very large daily work quotas demanded by the regulations.  
 

All - from the youngest girls, -
 

- to mature women in their 40´th, are straining to their outmost limits, trying to avoid the whip, and hopening they this day also will reach their quota and get something to eat. 
   

"You see that girl? Look at her ankles.  Before evening they will be turned into open wounds.  It is a continuing problem.  It comes from her leg irons rubbing her skin, because she has to run all day long pushing waggons.  It happens to all girls put on that duty.  Tomorrow I will have to transfer her to other work, until her ankles are healed again." 
 

"Why are you working so slow?  You must work much faster slut!  Is it necessary to call Maria to punish you?"

"Sorry honey, but sometimes I have to raise my voice, or they don´t understand.  She is cutting out logs for props and repairing works.  That kind of work don´t count in the daily quota, and she knows, she after doing this, will not have time to hack out enough coal today, so she will not get anything to eat tonight."
 

"This black woman is also on repairing duty today.  Of course you don´t know it, but until last year that  face belonged to the most beautiful black girl at the city brothel.  A customer got violent and kicked her right in her face, knocked out one of her teeth, and broke her nose.    The violent customer apologized and said he had been drunk, and because he was a regular customer, Madame didn´t report him to the sheriff. 

Madame found it would be to expencive to call the doctor only for a hore, and feed her until she had healed up again, so she gave her to us for free, so she was rid of her."
   

"Now isn´t that Charla? It´s now the third time, you have got in trouble only this month.  Ken, who had the evening watch, left me a note about you.  He writes, you slapped his face, only because he tried to be a little nice to you.  You just don´t get it - Here you are nothing!  You don´t have any will of your own, and you must always obey any order given to you by me, Ken or Maria."
 

"Look at that stupid wench, Elisabeth. 
Charla was the succesfull manager of a large fashion house on the East coast,
 when we were paid by one of her competitors to abduct her.
But she still, after having spend over 2 years here, thinks she can decide everything.  Lets see if three days like this and with no food or water, can teach her anything.  If not we might have to select her for destruction."
 

"Say hello to my head girl Maria, Elisabeth. 
 I have got one of the best head girls in the mine.  She always keep a very watchful eye on all of my workers,  How is it going Maria?"  

"Very well master Carl.  I am just teaching Lisa, this stubborn white slut, she is no more the pampered daughter of a rich businessman.  
Now she is only a slave. 
 Keep on crawling white bitch.  You must not stop, before I order you to do so!" 
 

All of the women, Elisabeth sees under her tour, looks apathetic and worn out.  Like this one, who has just crawled out of one of the many very norrow shafts, where Carl admits, neather he or the other male overseers ever come. 

"But they have no time to relax, even we can´t see them.  They know, If they don´t deliver the demanded quantity of coal, they don´t eat." 

















 

Suddently she sees a tall and strong woman running 
with a heavy log in her arms.  She is somehow different.  Just like Sara and Pia, this woman seams to have adapted herself to a life as a slave. 

"Oh Carl look at her.  She is so beautiful! 
Look at those muscles!" 

"This is one of my good workers.  She has been here 4 years.  Tell my wife why you are here Amanda!"
 
"How do you do mrs.?"  Amanda says hoarsely: 
"I´m very lucky, I am here!  
As a spoiled teenager I ran away from home and joined a travelling theatre, dreaming of getting to Hollywood. 

One weekend we performed in this small town,
and we were a great success. 

But Sunday evening the sheriff arrested 
all us eight showgirls, just after our last show,  and 
we had to run in handcuffs and a long chain, still 
in our dancing costumes, through town to this mine. 

The first year I was in despair and cryed every night, but then I realized it was fate, which has placed me here to protect me against my vanity and my  sinful lusts. 

Thanks to this I will now never be tempted to sin, and will always remane a virgin!"  
 

"What will you say darling trying to be like Amanda.  Only durring a short time of course?" 

"What - You want me to try to be a slave?" 

"Only for an hour or two - And you will of course not be treated as the real convicts.  I know you have had such thoughts, and why not try them out for fun." 
  

Yes, Carl´s right. She thinks. I must admit, I have had such dreams frequently durring the last months. Ever since I,  accidentaly saw some chained convicts from a detention farm arrive to the mine entrence.  I have not been able to forget the looks, of their sweaty bodies, in their wet and dirty stripped field slave uniforms.  It had also been clear, they had not been wearing any kind of underware.  Only strippes and chains. 
 

"Don´t be shy honey.  All down here are used to see naked women daily, and don´t fear any of the slaves will ever be able to tell anybody up on the surface, about they have seen you.  In all the time, the mine has existed, not a single slave has ever succeded in getting out from here, and I don´t think it will ever happen." 
 

"Here honey, take this sack and put it on. It has holes for your arms and head.  It´s what most of the other girls are given to wear, when they first arrive here."



 

Ugh - The material is coarse and scratchy, but what els can be expected of a old used sack.   But at least it will cover my body.  I don´t want to show my intimate parts to Maria or the convicts. 
 

"It smells Carl! 
Has someone been wearing it before me?" 

"Yes - The young blond, you saw Maria discipline.  She  wore it one week, before we took it from her as a punishment for her stubborness.   So it is real slave sweat, it smells from, how do you feel about that honey?" 
 

"I have only padlocked them my dear.  
The real slaves have them rivetet on, as they are to wear them for life."

Elisabeth feels some kind of spark inside her, as Carl puts the cold steel rings first around her neck, then around her ankles, and turns the key in the locks.  
And the sack, she is wearing - It is real slave sweat, which tuch her body.  She really looks like a slave now, she thinks! 
 

"Try to walk about a little, darling." 

"They are so heavy!  
I am glad, I only have to wear them for an hour.  But what about all the slave girls?  I can´t understand, how they can stand, wearing these things all the time, and even have to work with them on."
 
"Well honey.  They just have to!  
The regulations say so, and nobody asks the little sluts, if they mind or not." 
 

"I have to leave you for a short while honey. 
I have things to do. 
 Maria will attend you in a moment.  I have explaned to her, you are only visiting the mine, so she will not get to rough with you.  Now enjoy yourself.  See you in an hour!"
 

Enjoy myself !  -  This is allready harder and more  humiliating, than I had ever imagined.  This old sack continues slipping down, if I don´t hold on to it all the time.  And these shackles.  They have allready given me a sore on my left ankle. 
 

"Start walking mrs. Carl - I have been told to show you your work place for the next hour.  It is only a few hundred yards down this shaft."

"Turn you head strait forwards mrs. Carl.  
Slaves are not allowed to look around."
 
Elisabeth feels a shiver, when Maria tuches her with her cain.  She can see, there is fresh blood on it.  It must be from the poor blond, she and Carl saw Maria punish a short time ago.  How awfull !!!
 

"Here is the place you shall try working.  Pick up the pickax and see how much, you can hack out before I come back for you.  In the meantime I have some other girls to attend to.  Some of the new ones are very lazy, and if I don´t help them with my cain, they have no chance meeting their work quotas." 
 

Oh my God! - It´s so heavy, I can hardly lift it. 
But I have to try to chop out some coal.  I have  been begging Carl for such a long time, being allowed comming down here, and it will be to humiliating, if I can´t do this for only one hour. 
 

Ow - I must stop now.  
I have only been working for half an hour, but it allready hurts all over my body, and I feels like dying from thirst.   I have to think about my hands and fingernails.  What will the other women at the dinner party on Saturday think, if they see me with callous hands and brocken nails at the dinner table! 

 

 Now I will sit here and wait for Maria shall fetch me again.  

 How can the real slaves survive working like this 18 hours every day?  

Well - In fact they don´t.  Not a single slave has ever left the mine alive.  Not even as dead.  Carl has told me, about a closed down old shaft in a remote part of the mine, with a very deep pit, which are half filled up with bones from discarded slaves.  Maybe he will let me see it, before we go back home tonight. 
 

Suddently Maria appears, but instead of giving orders, she kneels down quietly, and starts talking to her in a friendly voice. 
 

"Please mrs. Carl.  Look at this collar.  
I am only a slave like all the others.  
When you return to the surface, will you please go to my mother and tell her, where I am?"
 

As soon as the rumour spreads, that a free woman, who is to leave the mine again, is in the shaft,  and that she has become friendly with Maria, more and more slaves dare to leave their work places, and go to see her, telling her their sad stories, in a desperate hope she might be able to help them.
 

"My name is Sally Smith. 
Please tell my husband where I am! 
Say to him I will give him that divorce, he asked for.  He can keep everything, all the money, the house, the car and my fortune also, if only he can get me out from here.  He must - I will die, if I have to stay here . "
 

"She is Lucy Harris, and my name is Susan Hanson. 
We both come from Virginia.  She is my niece.  Her parents asked me, if I could drive her to Califonia, where she should begine her first year at the university. 

 We stopped for the night at a highway motel.  3 o´clock in the morning the sherif´s men came barging into our room.  They arrested us for being prostitutes.  But we are not. We only wanted to sleep for the night before driving on in the morning.  " 
 

"Carl, do you have a notebook and a pencil?
I have so many names and addresses to remember.  If I don´t write them down now, I might forget them." 

"I am afraid you didn´t pass the test Elisabeth.  Maria only did, as we asked her to do.  She only pretended wanting to leave this mine.  Down here she has the absolutely power over a lot of other women, and most of them are white.  She knows that back  up on the surface she is nothing.

We will have to ask you to sit down and lay you feet over the rail.  We will have to replace the padlocks with permanent rivets. "
 

Elisabeth is allowed to follow Carl to the inner gate, when he is relieved from his watch by Ken, who has the evening watch.  She feels a shiver and can hardly keep her tears back, when she sees her husband leave the mine, without being able to follow him.  

 "O.K. girl.  Let go of the barres, 
so we can open the gate."   

 "You don´t  have to worry about Carl.  
You know Marcy down at the hardware store?  Carl has been seeing her for some while.  She will move into your house next week." 
 

Girl ! - Ken had called her a girl !  Hers and Carls best friend, who so often had been in their home.  He calls her a girl !  Slowly she begines to realize, she isn´t Elisabeth any more. From now on she is only a girl, a slave.  And Marcy, the short blond salesgirl from the hardware store. - She was going to take her place? 

Oh - No ! 

Elisabeth spends her first night in mine.  She can´t fall asleep.  The cramps in her legs caused by being chained like this, are almost unbearable.  Her back is hurting, and she is hungry.  The other girls are snoring and seems to have become used to be chained like this durring the nights.  She will also become used to it, she thinks.  In a few hours her first 18 hours work day will begine.  She fears how she shall manage getting through it.  She must!  She will show Carl, that she is much more a woman than Marcy, that silly bleached bimbo!  Elisabeth thinks about Sara and Pia.  She shall also become a first class worker, so Carl can be proud of her.   She knows Maria with her cane, will help her to become that .
 
 She can hear Maria is bussy right now.  
Sally, Lucy, Susan and those other slaves, who left their work places without permission, to talk to Elisabeth are getting punished.  All night she can hear thuds and screams in the distants.  Some of them might not survive the punishment.  But that is not of any importants for the compagny.  One, two or three girls more or less in the mine, don´t mean a thing.