Danielle Sutton, Danni to her friends, wandered through the last of the gardens and down to the sea front. The weather was mild and there was weak sunshine, not that bad for early in a British summer. Around her were a cluster of fairground rides varying from the classic merry-go-round with its horses rising and falling to the latest simulator gyrating on its platform, no doubt terrifying whoever was locked inside. Danni imagined that her friends would probably have a ride on at least a couple of these before the day was over; certainly once they had a little more alcohol in them.

It had been many years since Danni had been to the British seaside. Instead, throughout her life, she had seen far more Spanish and Greek beaches than UK ones. However, this one seemed decent enough, clean and with enough things going on to keep people occupied. Of course, the highlight of today for Danni and her friends would not come until they had visited one or two of the night clubs which the town seemed to have scores of, often sitting next door to each other. For a moment they were dark and silent, so Danni had headed towards the beach. She walked over to the railings and looked out across the sand and the sea beyond. There were clusters of families digging in the sand, a few teenagers jabbing each other and laughing, plus some lounging couples.

Danni breathed in the air, it certainly smelt better than what she usually inhaled in the busy streets of Hackney. The wine she had drunk on the train down probably helped her mood, though its main purpose had been to allow her to walk around in her shortest spaghetti strap dress without feeling embarrassed. Danni had the sense, however, that she was feeling good because this was what she needed: to get away from the city for the weekend and not worry about anything except who was next to buy the drinks.

Danni worked in an office dealing with the shipment of metals between different countries. It was not particularly exciting, but it paid reasonably well and in the current economic climate it seemed pretty secure. Aside from some people she had known from the area where she had grown up, who, like her had moved to London for work, most of her friends were similar to her: women in their twenties doing various administrative jobs in offices in the same part of London. In total there would be ten of them coming down for this hen weekend. Danni did not own a car, there was little point in the flat she lived in with a railway station a short walk away. The bulk of the others, however, were coming in various cars. They were supposed to be here by now. Danni’s train had got in on time and she had checked in at the small hotel they were all staying at, but she could see no sign of any of the others there. The receptionist confirmed that none of the hen parties they had booked that weekend had arrived yet.

Freed of her overnight bag, Danni had headed into town, donning the pink angel wings that were going to be the identifier for her particular group of hens. The bride-to-be, Amanda, had chosen them. Looking around her now and spotting groups of men in matching teeshirts and women with glittery bowler hats, Danni knew that she, Amanda and the others were going to be far from the only party celebrating someone’s forthcoming wedding.

Danni checked her mobile phone for the hundredth time. There were a couple of text messages she had missed. It seemed that both the car holding Amanda and the one driven by Lisa were stuck in traffic some miles short of the town. Information seemed scant: it was either a broken down coach or a car pulling a caravan that had turned over, that was causing the congestion. Danni knew from going caravanning in her youth with her parents, either explanation or, most likely, a combination of the two, would certainly be to blame. Consequently there was a chance that the rest of ‘the girls’ would be delayed for an hour or three.

Danni walked away from the railing into the wide area which held the rides. They were grouped around a building that looked like some Victorian’s idea of a sandcastle. It held various small stalls and in its heart was an amusement arcade. Danni walked idly around it, wondering if there was a caf� where she could get some coffee. In the end she settled for an ice lolly and sat on a bench a short way off, trying to remember how long it had been since she had eaten one of these.

The lolly finished, Danni sat back on the bench and closed her eyes. She let the bubbling sound of footsteps and people chatting in half-a-dozen languages as they passed her, flow into her ears. She told herself, perhaps she should head down here more often. It was only a couple of hours on the train and yet she felt so removed from the jammed-in streets and underground trains of London that were the key feature of most of her Saturday mornings. Perhaps she and Amanda, or Caroline if Amanda’s Keith was going to keep her on a short leash after they were married, could come down for a weekend and see something like a band or even a play at one of the theatres.

Too many of Danni’s weekends over the past few months seemed to have been spent sat at home waiting to see if Carl, the man she had been seeing for the past two years, could get away from his wife for an afternoon of passion in some featureless hotel on one of the radial roads out of London. Initially she had liked the frisson of having an elicit relationship and there was no denying that sex with Carl was very good, it was just that these days it seemed to be that so much effort had to be put in just for a couple of hours of reward. Danni was coming to feel that she needed a man she could call whenever there was a problem or she simply wanted to chat with him; with Carl such things were impossible. She did not like the way Keith was establishing ground rules for how Amanda was going to live her life as a married woman but she did wonder if she could get herself into a relationship with a bit more, well, quite a lot more, stability in it.

The latest downloaded tune rapped its way into Danni’s sub-conscious and she snapped her eyes open. It was Amanda. Danni took the call and got a mix of Amanda sounding already rather drunk plus shouts from Lucy and Jeni, coming in from the background. Her estimate was that they were about an hour away; Lisa’s car, they believed was only ten or fifteen minutes up the road behind them; Gemma and Sara had yet to leave London on their train. Danni told them it was no problem, that they should check in at the hotel and then meet her at the sea front, which had been their original agreed rendezvous point anyway. From where Danni sat she could see a surfer bar a short way off which she guessed she could hang out in. Whilst she liked strappy high heels like these, the scarlet pair she had worn to match her red dress, she knew that with a night of dancing ahead of her, there was no point in trekking around and getting sore feet this early in the proceedings.

If her friends were still an hour away, Danni guessed there was no need to rush and she sat for a few minutes more watching tourists go by. The sun was brightening and she did wonder if she should have actually put on some suntan lotion. Danni had always liked getting a tan, but not one out of a bottle or off a sunbed and with the British weather having been rather dull this year, she had not been able to get prepared for her Summer sun-worshipping and so felt herself rather pale. As it was coming up to noon, she guessed it was probably not a good idea to bake out here in her scantest outfit. Danni got up and walked back to the sandcastle-style building deciding whether to head straight to the surfer bar or go back into the gardens she had passed through coming here.

Whilst deciding, Danni walked around the building and this time noticed a dark red door, set into one of the mock towers, with a neatly painted sign on it saying: ‘Madame Xerovouni’. It sounded like a typical name of the kind of fortune teller you found at the seaside. Danni read her horoscopes when she saw them on a discarded newspaper, but hearing how accurate a ‘reading’ Amanda had had done a year previously, had built up a new respect for such things in Danni’s mind. Danni read the smaller writing beneath the name to see which approach to telling the future this woman favoured. It said ‘Madame Xerovouni opens portals in time and space, allowing you to actually step into your future, to see, feel, hear and taste what it will bring you.’ It certainly sounded a little different to the usual claims of clairvoyants and Danni wondered if Xerovouni used some kind of hypnosis in the process. That certainly seemed interesting: to hypnotise you to see the future rather than a past life. Intrigued, Danni pushed the door open and entered.

The first thing that struck Danni was the stillness inside compared to the bustle outside. She pushed past a chiffon curtain and stepped fully into the room. It was larger than she had expected and was octagonal in shape; heavy dark green velvet drapes hung over each wall. Four ornate oil lamps on intricately carved stands stood around the room giving a low, orangey glow. In this light Danni could see, sat at an octagonal table in the middle, was a woman with skin the shade of terracotta. Her hair was long and black; her eyes heavily kohled, her lips a dark plum shade. Danni guessed she was Spanish or Moroccan. Dressed in a long black brocade robe over a tightly laced bustier she certainly seemed to fit Danni’s expectations of a fortune teller; she guessed that was the point. Danni imagined that the furnishings and, in particular, the lighting helped to give the woman the rather otherworldly appearance she imagined she intended.

“Madame Xerovouni?” Danni asked, though felt foolish as she did.

“Yes, that is me. Come, sit.” The woman’s smile reassured Danni at once.

The woman had a sonorous voice with the hint of an accent that Danni could not place. Her words almost seemed to sound inside Danni’s head and there was a strength in them that she could imagine would be difficult to resist. Danni pulled out the heavy, apparently antique, chair and sat down on it. As she did, she noticed the slender grandfather clock that stood behind Xerovouni, she guessed, so that both that woman and her customers knew how long they had been here. Danni waited for the clairvoyant to speak, but Xerovouni sat with her eyes closed and moments later, as the clock chimed twelve, Danni realised why she had paused.

“So, you want to see your futures?” Xerovouni said as the last chime faded; snapping her eyes open as she did.

“Erm, yes, yes, that would be interesting. You say, futures?”

“Yes, none of us has a single future, we all have many. They are not infinite, but there is certainly more than one. If you leave this second or the next second or the next second after that, it will make no difference to the universe. However, there is a different version of the future for you if you leave now not having seen your futures, to that version which you will experience, twenty, thirty minutes from now when you have done so.”

“Okay, I get that. Yes, I can see we all have choices and they can take us down different paths.” She remembered Carl saying something about all this when they had been watching some movie on the hotel television one afternoon after sex.

“Precisely. You are a very clever young woman.”

Xerovouni seemed genuinely pleased by Danni’s ability to grasp what she was saying and, in turn, that made Danni feel happy that she had done right.

“How do you tell the future, erm, show me my futures?”

The clairvoyant suddenly spread her hands wide. “Through these. Behind each curtain is a portal. Each portal leads you to a different future. Some will be subtly different, some will be very different. For a bright, attractive young lady like you, these portals will whisk you to Xylae.”

“Xylae – what’s that some kind of trance, some sort of dream?”

“Well, it is like a different world, yes. You will be fully awake when you go there and you will leave your life here behind you.”

“Okay.”

To Danni what Xerovouni was saying seemed as much like some stage magician’s trick as it did the standard kind of fortune telling. She guessed that this Xylae was some kind of hypnotic state and stepping through the portal, she imagined a plain door behind each curtain, would allow the clairvoyant to probe her thoughts on options for the future and reflect them back to Danni as if she was really experiencing them. She remembered seeing a stage hypnotist with Caroline who started off making people think they were chickens and by the end of it one woman was convinced she was a lapdancer and another that she stripped for a living.

Danni reined in her thoughts, she realised she was rushing off down all kinds of speculation that probably had very little connection with what Xerovouni would actually do. After all, was not most fortune telling little different from chatting through options with a friend or some kind of life coach? The clairvoyant would lay out vague options and if you chose to go with one, probably one you had been thinking about for a while anyway, well, then, you thought she had predicted your future. Danni realised that that was probably what she needed right now, it might help her clear her mind about Carl, leaving London, changing job, even how much she should drink during the evening ahead and whether she should get off with any of the men she might encounter.

“Does that sound something you’d like to try?” Xerovouni asked softly.

“Yes.” Danni said, realising that, in fact it was.

The clairvoyant smiled and told Danni the price for a forty-five minute session. Danni had a purse full of cash for the weekend and it seemed reasonable for trying out a new approach to seeing her future and probably a lot less than she was going to spend on the first round of drinks.

Xerovouni tucked away the cash and then made herself comfortable. Now Danni noticed she had a small pad of paper and a pencil in front of her. These looked rather mundane props compared to the crystal ball or the tarot cards Danni had expected when first coming in.

“Before we begin, there are some questions that I need to ask you.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Your name?”

“Danielle, erm, Danni Sutton.”

The clairvoyant scribbled something on her pad, but in the low light and at this angle Danni guessed she had little chance of making it out.

“And you are twenty-four?”

“Yes, yes I am.” Danni responded a little surprised that Xerovouni had got it right, but she guessed that was part of the fortune teller’s skill.

“Are you in a relationship at the moment?”

“Erm, well, yes, sort of.”

“Ah, a married man?”

“Yes,” Danni blushed a little to admit it. “yes he is.”

“Danni, everything you say or see here is entirely confidential, remember that.”

Xenrovouni’s tone gave Danni confidence in that reassurance.

“Do you have a male or a female boss?”

“A female boss, Karen Johnstone.” Danni said, not really sure why she had to add the name.

“Are you comfortable working under her?”

“Yes, yes, I guess I am.”

“Is this what you’d normally wear on a Saturday?”

“Well, not the wings, that’s because it’s Amanda’s hen weekend, but the dress, the shoes, well, you know, not for doing the shopping ...”

“But for a fun night out?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“Do you own many necklaces, bracelets?”

A little self-consciously Danni’s hand went first to the chain necklace and then the cluster of slender bangles on her wrist.

“Not loads.”

“But you like them?”

“Yes.”

“Do you own a leather jacket?”

“Yes, two.”

Danni wondered for a moment what the relevance was of these questions concerning her wardrobe, but then it seemed logical that the clothes she owned gave an idea of her current income and how trendy she was. She guessed, in part, that might give clues to what sort of man she might end up with.

“Do you own any leggings?”

“Erm, yes, four, no, five pairs.”

“Black?”

“Yes, they’re all black.”

“Boots, do you like boots?”

“I have a few pairs, three or four.”

“Flats or heels?”

“Well, a couple of pairs have heels.”

“Do you use bottle tan?”

Danni shook her head. “No, but I like a tan, you know a real one. I love your skin tone.”

“Thank you.” The clairvoyant gave her sweet smile once again. “I believe I have all I need.”

Xerouvouni sat for some moments looking at the scribbles she had made. Then she closed her eyes and grasped the table. She threw her head back abruptly. Danni guessed this was all part of the procedure and wondered if the woman would now slip into some kind of trance. She had to admit that she was enjoying the whole thing and she sat with her breath held, waiting to see what would happen next.

“Now, a range of futures have opened up for you. Behind each of the curtains is a different path for you to follow. Do not rush to pick any particular one. Sample each in turn and then you will be in a position to make your choice. You may choose to simply leave. That is up to you. I just open the portals and let you decide which ones you will step through.”

“Okay.” Danni said.

Madame Xerovouni stood and gestured for Danni to do likewise. She complied.

“Which one should I try first?”

“That is up to you. I might suggest that one there, for starters, just to get you familiar with Xylae and its ways.”

Danni look towards the curtain Xerovouni indicated, it was the one just to the right of the curtain that she guessed covered the door she had come in through. Saying that though, Danni now felt no confidence that she could pick the correct wall for the entrance. She walked over to the curtain Xerovouni had indicated and pulled it back. There was a fretted wooden door behind it. It seemed impossible that anything could be behind it, given the size of the building she was in, but she guessed this was where the hypnosis part kicked in. Presumably the series of questions had not been what they had seemed and had, in fact, led her into a trance. Danni had to admit that it did not feel unpleasant, in fact quite the reverse. In moments she was very conscious of the figure hugging dress she wore and how it felt against her breasts, how she liked the way the high-heeled shoes made her walk. As the quarter hour chimed on the grandfather clock, Danni pressed on the door, it swung open and she stepped into the room beyond.

Danni continued stepping forward but was suddenly brought to a halt. There was a chain circling her waist and she quickly ascertained that it was locked to her and lashed to the wall. Standing around her were a number of other women, most pale-skinned like herself. Bar brief floaty skirts hanging around their waists, all of them were naked. Some were turned against the wall, others were standing more prominently as if to attract attention. With her hand over her breasts trying to cover her nipples without looking cowering, Danni began to take in where she was. It seemed as if rather than head into any future she had ended up in the past. It was quickly apparent that she was in some kind of slave market. The whole setting seemed to be from some Arabian Nights story, though the clothing and the style of the buildings looked more European. She guessed that Madame Xerovouni’s hypnosis had either gone wrong or somehow her own mind had distorted it into this fantasy.

The longer she stood there the more Danni marvelled at how real this seemed to be. It was as if she could feel the stone beneath her naked soles, as if she could smell the aroma of various perfumes and cloth of the rich clothes the people passing by wore. Given she was wearing so little it was certainly warmer here than anything she was likely to feel in Britain at this time of year. Whilst the setting was bizarre and her situation unsetlling, Danni realised that she felt no worry. She realised that part of her understood that however authentic it felt, none of this was real. She knew that in fact she was standing behind a curtain at a sideshow at an English seaside resort. Feeling more relaxed that this was all illusion, Danni began staring as blatantly at the passersby in the way many of them were looking at her.

Various men and women, most richly dressed, went by. Some led other people, slaves Danni imagined, on leashes at their heels. Some of these human pets were naked or scantily clad, others were dressed in skin-tight leather or shiny clinging clothes that Danni guessed were made of rubber. Danni wondered if, in this manufactured fantasy, that that was to be her destiny: to become a sex-slave striding at her owner’s heel, fawning and purring for him or her. Then she caught sight a man she would certainly not mind fawning for. He was tall and black skinned. He was walking slowly along the row of chained women. His hair was in thick dreadlocks, his body covered with a leather: waistcoat and tight trousers beneath a long black leather coat. He stopped in front of Danni. She suddenly felt shy, unwilling to admit how turned on she felt by what she was experiencing. The man reached down to lift up her face. Danni drew back but was entranced by his incongruous blue eyes and quickly found that she could not look away. A delicious feeling ran through her as she felt overpowered by this man’s will. He smiled at her and now the sensation was one of pure pleasure that she had done something so right.

“This one.” The man said, gesturing to a woman in long robes who hurried over to him.

“Yes my Lord Hesht, right away.”

Hesht reached some coins, that seemed to be of gold, from a pouch at his belt and handed them to the woman. Then Danni watched, a little dazed as her chain was unlocked from the ring on the wall and handed to a slender man who accompanied Hesht. Danni realised that she had been sold into slavery. Perhaps she had been a slave from the minute she had arrived here. Of course, she thought, her future here might be simply as some kind of servant, but she had an inkling that like those she had seen led on leashes she was going to be transformed into an erotic sex-pet.

“Sanberne bring her.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Hesht strode off, accompanied by a couple of other men and Danni found herself led through the streets by Sanberne. As she was, Danni wondered if she had taken Xerovouni’s description of what she would experience through the portal too literally. In her time, Danni had done some interpreting of her own and friends’ dreams and knew that they were filled with symbolism rather than a direct representation of the message the mind was trying to get across. Was this dream, vision, whatever it was, trying to tell her something about her real life? She tried to work out what it was. Did Hesht represent Carl? Was she his ‘slave’ because she waited around for him to find time to see her, only then to find him walking off when something else took his attention?

Danni was uncertain of the answers. In addition, she found that the vivid sights and sounds of this place, in what she remembered Xerovouni had called Xylae, kept on distracting her. Sanberne simply led her by her chain without roughness and Danni saw no reason to resist. She was taken into a spacious, two-storey white-walled house by a rear entrance then along a corridor and into a brightly lit circular room. Her buyer sat behind a large wooden desk smiling as he saw her enter. The belt was unlocked from her waist and Sanberne left her with her master. Hesht stood and walked up to her, his leather creaking as he moved. He lazily ran his hand across her waist and bum. Danni wondered why she did not protest or pull away and found herself admitting that she was enjoying the attention.

“You are wonderful; you will enjoy becoming my pet. There is something so sweet in taking a dull woman like you and transforming her into something so much sexier, just see what I mean.”

Hesht took her hand and led her across the room and into a lounge area. A long mirror stood there. He took Danni up to it and let her hand go free. Danni looked at the reflection of her naked body, not a new sight to her. She had to admit she did not look bad.

“Good, yes, but you could be so much better.” Hesht whispered softly into Danni’s ear. “Just imagine it and it will all become real.”

Danni tried to turn to look at Hesht, but found that she could not pull away; she stayed gazing at her reflection. Quickly, rather than being overwhelmed by concerns, Danni felt increasingly relaxed and comfortable, she felt herself saying that she could be what she wanted to be just by wishing it. Danni then thought of her buyer and the sort of woman he would prefer. She wondered what it would be to be like that, the perfect sex-pet for Hesht. As she thought this, she felt a strange but pleasurable sensation sweep over her naked body. She suddenly realised that she was changing. Danni imagined her breasts firmer and larger and they steadily grew; then became shiny and erect. As she looked at her changed body in the mirror she felt she enjoyed the alteration; her body looked sexier, more servile. She stroked her firm bum and thought of her skin becoming more tanned. She watched as it darkened and become shinier; soon it had gone beyond tanned to match the tone of Hesht. Danni found now that she was enjoying the sensation of change, barely noticing her hair was becoming black and cropped but when she did notice it reminded her of the style she had seen on the singer Rihanna.

Danni looked into the mirror and took in her shapely, dusky, naked body. She was filled with pleasure, she was pleased to look this sexy and just the way she felt Hesht liked. Slowly she began to sway her hips sensuously and was rewarded with increasing arousal. She ran her hands over her firm bum and her erect breasts. She began to pant with the pleasure of her body. Slowly she began to thrust out her hips provocatively. She stepped away from the mirror and turned towards Hesht.

“That was excellent: you have made yourself into my perfect woman. That, above anything else, proves you are ideal to be my sex-slave. Come, from now on, you are Tyta.”

Hesht led Danni through into a luxuriously furnished bedroom and guided her onto a large circular bed covered with white silk sheets and cushions. Danni was too bemused, too aroused by what she was witnessing to feel much desire to resist. Her master closed a gold rope necklace was closed around her neck. As he gestured for her to recline, without thinking Danni found that she did. She did not notice her past memories fading. The identity of Danni itself seemed blurred, and as she looked at her shapely dark-skinned body, she felt that this was Tyta and she was Tyta. Without noticing, Danni’s way of thinking began to shift too; slowly she became more subservient. Now rather than finding it difficult to resist, her mind went further and began to give up any thought of struggling at all against what her master wished: she would yield and obey her master without question. As her own will faded away and increasingly she felt she was becoming properly responsive to commands, they would be as her own wishes.

Tyta lay back on the bed, her legs splayed. She looked up to see herself so wonderfully reflected in the mirrored ceiling. It was apparent that she had yielded fully to the changes and had truly been transformed into a sex-pet for her master. Her mind had become servile, her master’s will was her own. Recognising all of these things as the truth, Tyta felt highly aroused. She felt delighted in her sexy body, she was hungry to feel her master’s hard cock in her juicy pussy. She began to finger herself and her words turned to grunts and moans.

Hesht stood over Tyta for a while, watching and smiling but then opening his leather trousers allowing his large cock to burst free. Tyta looked up as he grasped her legs and held them wide. She simpered as he thrust his cock hard into her slippery, wet pussy. His thrusts pushed her back across the bed and he clambered on it to keep pressing into her. Tyta loved the sensation of her leather-clad, dominant master using her this way. In the mirror above her she could see herself, her skin shiny and black, her hair cropped, as her master, his muscular body, the same colour, arched over her, riding her. Hesht grasped her firm. shiny breasts and slipping his other hand beneath her tight bum pressed her hard into his groin. Tyta moaned with pleasure. This was her purpose and she grunted, urging Hesht on and, she hoped, arousing him further with her submission. Then he spurted deep into Tyta and immediately she shuddered, conditioned to be thrilled at him coming inside her, ecstatic when he was. He pulled back and directed her to close on his cock and lick the jism from it. Tyta obeyed without question, pleased to be able to serve her master this way. . “Tyta, dress.”

Tyta loved that Hesht commanded her by her new name. The process of change was complete. Hesht stood up from the bed and crossed to wooden doors set into the wall. He slid them open revealing a small room beyond. Tyta left the bed and strode, her naked body swaying, into this room. She was only concerned with the erotic slave kit and thigh boots which stood inside for her. She picked up the glossy black miniskirt and slid it up her legs, she sealed her bum in the squealing slippery rubber. She then eased her arms into the corset top that covered her breasts in the gloss and but left her midriff naked. She eased her shapely legs into the thigh high glossy boots and rose on the high heels.

“Excellent my pet.” Hesht said as he ran his eyes over her.

Hesht ran a gloved hand over her slippery bum; Tyta purred with pleasure. Then suddenly, her master locked a glossy collar around her neck. However, to Tyta it seemed to complement the clinging rubber clothes she now wore, so perfectly. In moments she was loving this sign of her master’s ownership of her. Quickly he attached a leash to the collar and led Tyta by this leash, striding on her high heels, her bum swaying as she walked behind him. Hesht took Tyta up broad stairs to another room. Inside it stood a number of large cages floored with silk cushions. Another slave woman sat in one, she was dressed very like Tyta. As Hesht entered this woman rose and began dancing provocatively. Hesht seemed to ignore this woman and led Tyta to the cage in the middle and she knew this would be hers. Hesht pressed her back against the bars of the cage and pushing up her tight shiny skirt then freeing his cock which he plunged again into Tyta’s pussy. His thrusts were hard and fast, he grunted with each one he made. Tyta was locked in place but knew she had no desire to leave. Her arousal came quickly and soon she was letting out long moans of pleasure. As master shuddered and came inside her, Tyta’s body coursed with orgasm. Spent, Hesht stepped back. From his coat he produced a ring of keys. In a few moments Tyta was inside her cage, her leash tied to the ring at the back. Then she was locked in and master left her. Feeling weary Tyta curled up on the cushions and, looking forward to master using her again, she fell asleep.