EXTRACT FOR
The Future Is My Oyster
(Author Unknown)

Chapter 1



I believe I was born with this extraordinary power.  I don't think there is any other plausible explanation particularly as my father had it too, although nothing like in the strength and accuracy that manifested itself in me.

     I'm not even sure that 'power' is the appropriate word to describe it.  Ability, Gift Talent or some such may be more appropriate.  As might be thought logical, I wasn't even aware I had it until my early teen years when I became interested in Dad's activities in buying and selling shares.

     Like him I became interested in the share market and took to reading the various publications current in Australia and overseas that reported on it.  When he noticed my genuine interest in it he began to talk to me about it and especially whether a particular company or enterprise showed promise or merit or whether it might now be time to offload it.

     As my understanding grew, so did this talent to actually know with 100% accuracy how a company was going to perform.  I can almost see your lips curl up in disdain.  No-one can read the market like that!  The variables and unknown future events are so much an issue that what I have suggested is a total impossibility!

     I was also old enough by that time to be careful what I said at home, never ever suggesting with any certainty that such and such a company was a certain success or failure although offering vague opinions at times and noting those occasions when Dad was right, and those he wasn't.

     I'm pleased to say that his knowledge and intuition more often than not stood him in good stead but he still made mistakes at times and in the privacy of my bedroom, I actually documented each prognostication he made ??" and what actually followed.  And against his opinion, on the right margin of that page, I would note my own opinion at the time, and over the years starting with mid-high school, but then continuing on with it right through my university degree in Business Management at Griffith University on the Gold Coast of Queensland, I kept it up.  I was careful, though, never ever to leave that folder lying around.  I certainly didn't want Dad to know that I was superior to him in judging companies.

     And in every case, I never made a mistake!

     From the foregoing you will understand that we were a very happy family. There was just him and Mother and my sister Jenny who was a couple of years younger than me.  Dad was a successful investor and had been able to afford us a very nice house on one of the canals in the middle of the Gold Coast.  It was double-storeyed and Jenny and I each had our own little suite including bed, bath and dressing rooms as well as a tiny sitting room in which to conduct our homework and later university studies.

     They were very sociable people and often hosted barbecues and dinner parties for their friends and during those I gathered that Dad was held in high regard for his ability as an investor and for his social and philanthropic activities on the coast including membership of Rotary and the local Chamber of Commerce.

     You may be wondering why I elected to study Business Management when my gift would virtually ensure that I could become an overnight millionaire once I started to invest in substantial sums.

     The point is, this power or talent or whatever it was actually frightened me silly.  In all the judgements I had made since my middle teens, I had never (and I mean absolutely never) made a mistake.  It smacked of insider trading which is one of the most heinous crimes in the business world.  If once I was discovered, what other conclusion could the investigators and courts come to?  Of course it wasn't true and would be impossible to prove but the suspicion would always be there.

     And that is why I thought that if I obtained high success in my degree studies, that might serve as a plausible explanation for my commercial success.  Fortunately, I also inherited a good brain and very much enjoyed studying subjects that interested me such as mathematics, accounting, business management, to name some obvious examples.  I wasn't quite so good in the humanity subjects but I did have a love for English and am often saddened at the extent to which its use has deteriorated in this century.

     I believe the fault with that lies in the various education departments around this country for whom the spoken and written language doesn't seem very important at all.  All right, I will get down off that particular hobbyhorse and return to my theme.

     I should perhaps though here just touch on a little more about me than this gift.

     My name is Corey Hemingway and I was fortunate enough to be born with an athletic body and enjoyed all sports at school but particularly tennis and gymnastics although I was also pretty successful at athletics, football and cricket in their seasons.

     This led to a rather muscular body and as I have a friendly smile to go with my curly blond hair and blue eyes, I didn't have any trouble finding girlfriends.  Of course I never ever discussed my talent either with my parents, sister, current girlfriend or indeed, anyone else at all.

     What I was doing was formulating a plan of action for my postgraduate years.  It might be thought I would seek a position in some successful business enterprise, or perhaps enter the realms of academia?  But no!  What I intended to do was to use my powers to amass a great deal of money.  This would be acceptable, at least initially, as it would merely be me following on in Dad's footsteps ??" at least it would until the decisions I was making began to stink of insider trading and once that label is attached to one, it is very difficult to erase it.

     Of course they would never be able to find the evidence to prove it ??" because there wasn't any.  It might be argued that this intuition (or whatever it was) was akin to insider trading inasmuch as I had a very distinct advantage over everyone else on the planet and in that way, they would be right.  But I reasoned that as long as I wasn't hurting anyone else, where was the harm in it?

     The basis of my investment activities was a $5000 endowment my grandfather had left me and which I obtained control of on my twenty-first birthday, however I very early decided to be circumspect in my dealings, undertaking each transaction anonymously through the medium of an investment trust fund rather than in my own name and I also made sure that the amounts being invested in any one transaction were not so big as to be remarked upon.

     As my portfolio grew, I was able to raise the value of those transactions but they were never more than a few hundred thousand at a time in a particular company.  And when I did wish to either dispose of or buy a large holding I would make it in stages, say through the Brisbane stock exchange and then perhaps a week later another one over at Perth in Western Australia so as not to excite special interest and in this way I quickly managed to amass a sizable fortune which after ten years had grown to some three hundred million dollars and was still growing fast.

     

I now want to turn to another aspect of my personality of which I'm not very proud.

     In fact I am bisexual with a strong leaning towards the male side of things.  I was able all through my childhood and adolescence as well as the latter parts of my life thus far, to keep this both suppressed and hidden.  I didn't even confide in Jenny because I was ashamed that I couldn't be 'normal' like the rest of my family.  I was able to interact with girls and I think I made a fair fist of acting as the boyfriend for the couple of them I had dated during my school years.  But once I reached university level, I threw myself into my studies almost single-mindedly but more to cover the fact that I was more and more becoming disenchanted with taking out girls and so used the excuse of the need to undertake constant research in the library and so on.  

     As to my need for sex as a late teen and early twenties young man, well my good right hand served adequately, I think, although I was worried that my night-time reveries before going off to sleep began more and more to revolve around my (non-existent) slave herd of highly athletic, naked and nude, handsome male slaves all aged in the range of 18 to middle 20s and all either performing highly salacious dances or sex shows or being punished in the cellars of the ancient castle that I imagined was my home.

     I stress, however, that never in my waking hours did I ever even give a thought to such a scenario or with real people instead of the superbly-bodied athletes that I imagined were my slaves.  I did find though that during my masturbatory exercises, more and more, these fictitious paragons of the human form became my source of libidinous stimulation than the real-life male film stars or athletes that I had previously pretended were my very willing bed partners.

     None of the above actually impinged on my daytime activities that involved selling stocks in companies I knew were soon going to be losing their value and then investing in others about to experience a future upwards curve.

     You may be wondering if I actually had an aim during this period when I was amassing this huge fortune?  Yes I did but I well knew that it might be many years in the future before I would be able to put it into action.  The reason for that is that I loved my parents and sister dearly and couldn't bear the thought of their disappointment in me if I ever 'came out' and took up a life with a handsome young man.  I no longer dated women, pleading that my business affairs didn't allow me the time that I pleaded would be necessary in such a relationship but I did retain a few male high school and university friends and regularly went on weekend activities and sometimes dinner at night with them.

     I had continued to live at home although Jenny had now found the love of her life and had moved in with him so there was just Mother and Dad and me in that big house.

     Another few years and I was now in my late twenties and then Dad contracted pancreatic cancer that killed him in less than six months.  We were devastated but Mother never recovered from the shock and after only another couple of months, swallowed a whole bottle of sleeping tablets and never woke up again.

     By this time, Jenny was married and so I was alone in that big house.

     Mother had never even considered a full-time housemaid or other domestic help although a lady did come in each Wednesday to do the heavy work.

     But for me, that house held too many wonderful memories of my childhood and my family and I wanted only to sell it and make a new life somewhere else.

     By then, I had now again doubled my worth and fully intended to move up to McKay on the central Queensland coast from where there are literally thousands of islands ranging from small coral cays to spits of sand and thence up to quite large islands all of which together make up that incredible wonder of the world, the Great Barrier Reef and some of these islands are occupied and are freehold property.

     On one occasion, pleading a lightning roving motoring holiday, I drove up there and investigated with local estate agents what might be on the market and for what price.  I was quite surprised that there were many and that the prices were quite reasonable, particularly for the smaller ones while some, for example Hayman Island which is 400 hectares and is a highly developed tourist resort and would sell for many hundreds of millions of dollars.

     Of course at that time this was just a pipe dream and I didn't make any real moves to acquire any one of them as I didn't want my family to ever discover my true sexuality.

     But now, with both of them tragically gone and Jenny fully engaged with her husband and her art (she had become a very talented artist and her work both as a portrait painter and landscape artist were becoming well-known and a wonderful source of income for her), I wasn't nearly as concerned that she would find out that I was more gay than straight.  I could therefore now seriously look into acquiring an appropriate island and finding masochistic slaves to serve me there.

     No, legalised, institutional slavery had not been reintroduced into Australia, but there was nothing illegal in a man or a woman playing at being a slave to his pretend 'master' or 'mistress' and to 'suffer' physical and corporal punishments as well as nakedness and nudity if they so desired.

     You may wonder at my differentiation between naked and nude.  In the parlance I discovered in the underground network of information and photographs of such men, naked means the total absence of clothing of any kind while nude indicates that the so-called slave has consented or undertaken to have all his facial and body hair permanently removed by means of either an electronic process or the application of rather expensive creams and other preparations to effect that end.

     I am certainly not inclined towards the bottom side of these relationships but the photos I now managed to acquire showed male as well as female pretend slaves without any hair on their faces or bodies at all and I thought they looked very much better than the 'before' pictures and decided to avail myself of the expensive but very much quicker and more painless electronic treatment in an appropriate salon and very much approved of my new image when I stood up before the full-length mirror after it was over.

     I grinned as I imagined the horror on my parents' faces if they had ever seen me naked, but the thought was only fleeting and as I thought my body looked a lot better for its new total smoothness, I put the former notion right out of my mind.