A Mere Fleabite,A Time Changes Everything Story, Part 3 of 3 by Peony D. Beckside

A Mere Fleabite
Peony D. Beckside

 Due to increasing difficulty in navigating image generation restrictions, all illustrations in this post are archival.

Chapter Four: Futility

I do not scream as I awaken in this cage.  The concept of finding myself locked in a cage is no longer so shocking, so bizarre.  It’s an experience I’ve had before.  I don’t like the situation.  I no more want to be kept like an animal in a cage than I did before.  It’s simply not a surprise anymore.

This cage though is in a much more dark and dank room than had been the one I had inhabited on Earth.  At least the previous prison-room had fluorescent lights, here the lamps seem to be some kind of oil-lamp, with its concomitant reduction in light output.

Whilst the room is warm, there is a dampness in the air.  The floor too seems perpetually damp.

Similarly to my previous awakening, I have been fitted with a new collar.  It is not a lot different to the previous one.  As before it has pendant, a sliver of metal.  I can feel engraved marks on the tag, but cannot tell by touch what the marks tell about me.  Of course I cannot see what is inscribed.  You try looking at something held closely under your chin without a mirror!

I look around the room.  There seems to be as many caged women as there had been before. Some of them I recognise, but not all.  Also we are not sorted as we previously were.  I suspect that we have each simply been thrust into the first available cage

There is the same kind of quiet.  A prohibition on talking.  The first to awaken perhaps having this order given them, they in turn shushing each of the others as they awake.  I suspect that I am one of the last to regain consciousness.

I know not what time of day it is.  I know that it’s very difficult to gauge the passage of time when one has nothing to do, or in our case can do nothing.  We judge such by outside cues such as meals, guard changes, etc. or comparison with the known expectation of time in our duties or entertainments.  Our bodily rhythms give some indication, but here in a different place, perhaps a different planet our bodies have not yet had time to adjust to the reality of daytime and nighttime at this location.

There being little else to do, I decide to sleep.  I want to be ready and rested in case there’s an opportunity that I can exploit.  Besides, I still feel a residual tiredness from whatever drug or gas was used to anaesthetise me in that capsule.

My dream, a long one I sense, evaporates as I am roused by the sounds of men opening cage doors, dragging frightened women from their imprisonment and chaining them in a coffle.  I am treated no differently.  The men manhandling me are too strong for me to break free.  I seem to be the last one on the chain.

We are instructed to walk, starting with our left foot.  Presumably they don’t want the coffle to come to a halt from some of the girls walking contra to the rhythm of the chain or damaging us by treading on the feet of the person in front.  Even with specific-foot discipline, that can happen. One girl’s stride being longer than another’s.  I surmise that most of the time these effects will cancel themselves out.  One person’s short stride makes room for another’s long one.  There must be times when such a column becomes unbalanced, and even perhaps starts to deviate from it’s course.  Doubtless it’s the job of the man leading the coffle to ensure that this ‘wriggling snake’ of female humanity keeps to a consistent course and speed.

The room where we are led smells like an engineering shop or a boiler-room.  There is a smell of hot metal and the sound of hammer on anvil or something akin.  As we arrive from a point at the side of the room a willowy graceful woman rises from her knees and stands in front of us. Her voice is stronger than her frame suggests, but her accent is strong.  What accent I cannot identify, but I sense is probably local to where we are.  Nor is the accent indecipherable.

This woman, like that Alyena girl, also has a locked collar on her throat.  Hers though is a kind of metal band rather than the crude shackle-like thing on our throats.  She wears a tunic as skimpy as that of Alyena, but its colour is blue with a yellow trim.

“I am Harima.  I will be your trainer for the present.  Like you, I am a slave, but I am at a higher level than you.  You will therefore address me and acknowledge me as ‘Mistress’. Failure to do so is punishable.”

She pauses.

“You were legally slaves the minute you left Earthly jurisdiction.  The word is kajira, if you are not aware of that.  Here on the planet Gor there are only three types of people outside of the caste and home-stone hierarchy:  Priest Kings, who are gods, outlaws, and slaves.  You do not have a caste or a home-stone.  There is no-one to fight for you to intercede for you. You are not gods.  An outlaw by definition is not protected by the law.  He or she can be and usually is hunted and killed or enslaved by anyone.  Every hand is turned against the outlaw, every door shut against such.  You as slaves are property, owned, chattels.  You have no legal rights whatsoever.  Though biologically human, legally you are animals, livestock. Hence you have no human rights.  The very concept of human rights does not exist here.  A free person only has what rights he or she is prepared to defend, or their city can maintain. These are the facts of your existence.  Understand and respect that.”

One of the women near the head of the coffle asks:-

“When are we going to get some clothes, miss?”

“‘Miss’ is an unacceptable diminutive of the title by which you are to address me.  Ask correctly and you will be given an answer.”

“When are we going to get some clothes, Mistress?”

I wonder if she realises that in using the word ‘Mistress’ she is acquiescing to the subservient position, effectively accepting the status of slave.

“Slave tunics will be issued to you when your Masters decide that you have earned them, that you are learning your slavery adequately.  Note the word ‘issued’.  As slaves you can own nothing.  Can a trained sleen…”

I know what a sleen is.  I wonder how many others do.

“… own it’s collar, can a tarsk own its own sty?  You are owned.  You own nothing. Anything given to you is not yours by right.  It is only the use of it that’s given to you, not the ownership of it.  Whatever it is, it can be taken from you at any time, for any reason.  I trust that you are now beginning to understand what it is to be a slave?”

She barely gives us time to take in the full import of her words.

“We will now make the fact of your slavery manifest.”

I have a horrible premonition, supported by the metallic tang to the air in this room.  I recalled from the trashy Gor novel how slaves are identified.  Someone is ahead of me.

“No way are you going to brand me, you stupid cunt!”

“Ah! A volunteer!  Guards.  Please do this one first.  For your outburst, for using an insulting term, for failing to use the appropriate honorific, for simply failing to be pleasing, you will have eight lashes afterwards.”

There is a hubbub of muttering.  Not loud enough for anyone to challenge the woman, to be picked out.  I assume that the rest of us, like me are dumbfounded not just that we are to be branded, but also that we can be, and the one who spoke will be, whipped in some way.  My own sotto voce comments are not cowardice, simply prudence.

“Silence!”

Harima’s voice cuts through the chatter.

“A single word more from any one of you and you will all be whipped.  Am I clear on that?  You may respond!”

The acknowledgement is ragged but clear.

We watch as the woman who had protested is removed from the chain.  She is taken to a kind of vertical rack.  Her wrists and ankles are secured, and particularly her left thigh is fastened tightly in some kind of wooden vice, so it cannot move.

We cringe as a brawny man in a leather apron removes a metal stick from the fire using a heavy mitt.  The head of the stick is shaped into some kind of design, it is also white hot.

I suspect that I know the design from description in the Gor book I had read.  Whilst I know that there are other kinds of brands, the standard ‘Kef’ brand is the most common.

We wince as the man presses the hot iron into the flesh of the helpless woman.  He holds it there for a few seconds.  The scream of the woman is long, loud and shrill.  We all feel for her, even though we fear and know that we too will be driven to such agony.

I for one, decide that I will be stoical.  I will not give these brutal animals the satisfaction of hearing me cry out.

The branded girl is weeping as she is released.  Her hands are secured behind her back and her collar is fastened to a new chain.  This Harima goes to her and rubs some kind of salve on the raw wound.  Being cynical, I wonder if her doing so is from care, or that fast healing will discourage the woman scratching at the brand, marring it.

One by one woman are taken from the chain and we are impelled to shuffle forwards ever closer to the fateful branding rack.  Each woman having her moment of torment, not one of them suffering it without screaming.

The chain ahead is gone.  I am at the front.  It’s my turn.  I am seized, released from the chain and dragged kicking and wriggling towards the rack.  I writhe, attempting to free myself, as much as each of the other women.  Why do I struggle so?  I can’t see that I can truly stop this happening to me.  I suppose that it’s natural to struggle against something horrible happening to one, even if one can’t prevent it happening.  It’s like the spider in the bathtub.  You turn the tap on, the spider will drown.  Out of kindness, you seek to aid the spider, but because it fears you more than it does the water it tries to run away from your hands.

I am held, my thigh locked in the wooden vice.  I grit my teeth.  I see the indifferent implacability in the eyes of the man wielding the iron.  I feel the heat of the iron as it approaches my flesh.  I instinctively shrink away from it, but cannot.

I want to beg, to entreat the man not to do this, even knowing he will ignore such.  What stops me is the threat of every one of us being whipped if I do so.  I do not need the enmity of my fellow slaves.

Where did that come from!?  I am NOT a slave.  We are none of us slaves.  Why subconsciously did I associate myself and the rest of us with the status or lack of status implied by the word ‘slave’?

No amount of anticipation could prepare me for the utter agony as the hot iron chars my skin.  I goes on for hours, or what seems to be so.  My intention to remain silent is a pipe-dream. My scream is doubtless as loud, shrill and heartfelt as that of any of us.

Even understanding, I am horrified not just at the pain but at the implications of it.  Branding is something done to animals; only animals.  The iron has reduced, as Harima had pointed out, myself and the others to the level of mere beasts; no more than cows, pigs, or sheep.

I sob as I shake my head to try and dislodge the tears that the iron caused to be shed

The two men who’d dragged me to the branding rack grab me and impel me towards the chain where my sisters in bondage await me.

There is a loud clanging sound.  Some kind of alarm bar?  The men let go of me and reach for the sword hilts attached to their belts.  Quicker than I can recount it, I notice an open door; sunlight streaming in.  I go!  Like the wind!  Faster than if I had wings on my feet I run!  There’s been no conscious decision making about this, no anticipation, no thought of where I am running to, only the animal necessity to run from this chamber of horrors, from the life others prescribe for me.

I am through the door.  The sunlight strikes me in the face with an almost physical force.  I am in some kind of courtyard.

Suddenly, the sun is shielded.  I look up.  I skid to a stop.  My jaw hangs open.  It’s a bird! A huge one!  It’s at least five times my size.  It’s hovering there like a hawk that’s seen a mouse. On it’s back sits a man, a warrior.  The man points a long spear in my direction.  Memory supplies the name this flying behemoth.  Tarn!  Yes, that’s what it must be, can only be.  The man on tarnback threatens me.  I just know that he’ll be faster than I, that he can skewer me before I can get a further ten yards.

Four other men converge on me, spears surrounding me.  I stand very still.  I notice that the two guards from the branding chamber have come out into the courtyard.  They are laughing. Something has amused them, and I suspect that I know what.

“You didn’t think it would be that easy did you, kajira?”

This is a new man, one I’ve never seen before.  He is quite corpulent with small piggy eyes.  He wears voluminous robes of blue with a yellow trim.  A slaver then, If memory serves.  He doesn’t give me the opportunity to even ruefully comment.  I sense in him the ability to have me ‘snuffed out’ with a mere wave of the hand.  I consider it politic to sink to my knees.

“You didn’t think we would be so careless as to leave a door to the outside open while guards were not holding you, or you were in chains, did you?”

He turns to the men who’d been instrumental in manhandling us for our branding.

“Well done, you two.  Well acted!”

I realise with chagrin how I’ve been ‘played’.  The slaver addresses me again.

“You were allowed to, were given the opportunity, to make a break for it.  They told me about you, about what you used to do back on the slave-world…”

Is that how they see Earth, here?  Ah yes.  Kyril Flavius had said as much.

“…  They told me that you would need to be taught about futility, that for you there was no escape.  I did wonder if you had it in you to seize what appeared to be a chance of escape.”

The tarn backs off and settles on a perch the size of a log.  The spearmen step back a couple of paces.  The slaver comes up to me and looks me in the face.

“Where were you going to run to?, where were you going to hide?  On all of Gor, there is not one city where an escaped slave can gain her freedom.  The best that would happen is that you would change one collar for another, pointless.”

He pauses.

“It has been my observation of barbarian slaves, that would be you in case you are in any doubt, that it takes some time for them to really accept and believe that they are no longer on their previous world.  I trust that you are now in no doubt that you are on the planet Gor, not on Earth?”

His body language seems to indicate that he expects a reply, a true one, a suitably phrased one.  I understand, and am in no doubt.  Having seen the tarn, my answer then is at least honest.

“No doubt at all, Master.”

“Even though it was arranged that you could, you have attempted to escape your slavery. Such is unacceptable.”

He’s walking round me as he talks.  Faster than I can see, he’s holding a sharp knife.  I have a moment of panic.  He holds the knife to the back of my lower thighs.

“The muscles here are hamstrings.  If they are cut, you will never walk again, never stand. You will spend the rest of your life on your knees.”

I’m terrified.  Would he really do that?  Yes, I’m sure that he would.  Will he?”

“Generally that is done to a slave who attempts escape a second time.  Death usually for a third.”

I sigh with relief.

“Bear in mind that when you are sold, the slave-papers that will accompany your sale, yours will show that you have already attempted escape once…”

“Yes, Master.  I understand.”

“Now, kajira, you must learn that there are consequences to every action.  Your punishment for attempting to escape is a whipping, a serious one.”

I go cold with fear.

“Randfeldt, Gorincus, secure this slut for a whipping, then bring the other new barbarian slaves out to watch.  Let them see what happens to a slave who’s been found to be displeasing.”

The two guards from the branding chamber grab me and drag me to a tall pole.  My wrists are fastened in shackles above my head.  My ankles are secured to shackles at the sides of the pole.  I have very little play in my movement.

I hear the chink of chains and the occasional light cry of women.  Graceful and efficient walking in coffle is not something that they, we, are yet skilled at.  I sense that punishment for my attempted escape will not be put off for much longer.

“Randfeldt, twenty lashes.  Lay them on well.  Make sure that the kajira feels them!”

“Yes, boss!”

At least that’s what I take Randfeldt’s acknowledgement to be.

A frieze of fire blazes across the top of my back.  I shriek, I cannot not do so.  I’m shocked! The intellectual appreciation of the effectiveness of a whip bears no relationship whatsoever to the reality of that experience.

The second lash falls.  I howl like a maddened dog.  The third draws a full-on scream.  After the fourth I am in a nether world of pain that’s almost as agonising as being branded.  I writhe as much as my bonds will allow.  I screech!  I beg.  My plaints, my entreaties are not consciously voiced, they are dragged unbidden from my lips, or my heart.  I have totally lost track of how many lashes I have had.  Nothing exists for me except the never-ending excruciation.

Yet there is in a minute corner of my mind a memory.  A memory of my youth.  An electronic arcade game where ‘space aliens’ are firing lasers at a wall of blocks, knocking them away so as to get to the defenders.  Each lash is for me, a laser blast.  Each one tears large gaps in my resistance.  The bolts of fire stop, leaving my back to be a sea of coals.  I hang from my wrist shackles.  My legs will not support me.  My ‘wall’ is totally destroyed.  My surrender is an accomplished fact.  I am beaten!  Figuratively, emotionally, as well as literally.

I fall into a heap as the wrist shackles are released.  I crawl sobbing, as I’m bid, before being reattached to the coffle chain.

I hear a woman screaming.  It isn’t me.  I know that I’m crying, weeping not just from the pain, but also from my defeat.  I remember then the other woman, the one who ‘mouthed-off’ to Harima about not accepting her brand, and had been promised eight lashes.  I feel for her.  I know her pain.

I recall what that Kyril Flavius had said when I was caged in that cellar back on Earth.  I understand now.  Everything that went before, all the basic assumptions that I lived with are no-more appropriate or relevant for me, here in this place.  They are meaningless, worse than inappropriate, they are counter-productive, even dangerously so.  I realize now that I can no longer seek to make my way in a masculine world, in competition with men.  I must abandon such presumption.  I am a woman.  Kyril Flavius explained it,  I must BE woman, only woman.  I can no longer be otherwise.  I’m not sure that I can do this!  I’m not sure I know how.  I don’t have the training, the skills, for this.  If I’m to survive I’m going to have to learn everything Harima and others can teach me, even if such lessons are embarrassing, even humiliating, by the precepts of my past.  Dare I do this?  Dare I be the  total wanton slut that everyone seems to want me to be.  Will I be allowed to be otherwise?  I doubt it!  If I am to survive at all, then so be it.

Why is my body awakening, arousing, dampening?

The past, my past is gone.  My future beckons.