This one's on Smashwords because I just couldn't figure out a way to realistically describe the goings-on for women captured and enslaved in Bronze Age times in a way that made it seem consensual. In fact, doing so would be wrong: it wasn't consensual, not by a long shot.
Instead, I used the greater latitude allowed by Smashwords to describe the goings-on very directly and accurately. And my guide for this: the Bible, specifically, the Old Testament. It describes very clearly the fate of a conquered city: standard practice for the Hebrews (consistently portrayed as the Good Guys in the Bible, compared to other groups) was to kill all the males over 12 years old and enslave all the males under 12 and all the females, period. In one case the Hebrews were so pissed off at another tribe that they killed everyone, including the women and children, and also slaughtered all the livestock. (They said God told them to ... yeah, right, bastards. The truth is that the Old Testament was written by a bunch of Bronze Age tribesmen committing the atrocities that were standard inter-city relations at the time, and then telling on themselves because they just didn't know any better.)
I wanted to bring that horror to life, so I figured out a way to do it that I think made for a good story, so here's the blurb, see what you think and then hasten over to Smashwords and get some kinky Biblical horror going:
Archaeologist Pam Stone had a gift. When she handled artifacts, sometimes she got visions of what the people who had handled those artifacts in the past had been experiencing when they handled them, even centuries in the past.
Some called it psychometry. Archaeologists called it quackery. That’s why Pam told no one about her visions. She just used them to to blaze a brilliant career as an archaeologist.
It’s a dangerous gift, Pam discovers. On a Middle Eastern dig she handles a chain that was used to restrain a recently captured slave girl. The chain gives her an up close and personal vision of what it is like to be a woman captured and enslaved in Bronze Age times in the Middle East.
The experience shocks, horrifies and intrigues Pam. It also saves her life and the lives of others. And it gets some soldiers killed. You’ll have to read the story to find out how and why.
This novelette is over 13,400 words long.
I'd classify the story as a pulpy adventure story of the Lara Croft type, only with graphic sex slave sex scenes. But that makes it erotica in most people's eyes. Meh. I wish people weren't so weird about fictional depictions of sex. And sex in general.
