Kajirus of Gor Chapter Thirty Nine

 

Dexter and I were taken to a small cement floored cell, or a kennel, as the ranch hands tend to refer to it. We were to be kept separate from the females, for obvious reasons.  

 

“Big day for you tomorrow,” remarked Hawkins as he oversaw the two men who chained us by our wrists to a central iron ring bolted to the cement floor. “And for the fillies you came in with.”

 

“There is no Gor,” I said. “Just because everyone here has been conditioned to believe in it, doesn’t mean it exists.”

 

“Whatever, mister. Get some sleep. You’re being shipped out to Priest’s Hill tomorrow night.”

 

The barred door was slammed shut, followed by a clatter of a key turning in the lock. The men left the kennel shack, switching off the lights on their way.

 

“You belong to one of the families,” I said to Dexter, in the darkness. “What’s going on?” After having ranted and raved all the way to the lock up, telling Hawkins that he was a Bannon, and must be set free, Dexter was now uncharacteristically quiet. I sensed an air of despair in him that wasn’t encouraging.

 

“This is bad,” he said. “We’re in deep shit.”

 

I moved back to test the length of the chain attached to the iron ring. I had maybe five feet in length to the set of manacles confining my wrists. “I get that much,” I said. “Details?”

 

“This is the round up and corral branding the night before a ship comes to Priest’s Hill.”

 

“Okay, so let’s be clear on this, Dexter. You think there’s going to be a space ship?”

 

“Fuck knows. Yeah, possibly.” I heard his chain move in the darkness across the cement floor. “This is what the families do. They’re heavily involved in the slave business.”

 

“Okay, but space ships?”

 

“That’s what they claim.”

 

“Have you seen one?”

 

“Nope. But too many guys are damn straight that they have.”

 

“It couldn’t just be a big cargo plane?”

 

“I really don’t know. Thing is, there’s something landing tomorrow night, and that means we’re going somewhere.”

 

“Gor?”

 

“Yeah. So they say.” He was silent for a moment. “There are books, you know.”

 

“Books?”

 

“Yeah. Sort of sword and sandal stuff. Game of Thrones, without the dragons. It’s a slave world. Like ancient Rome. A philosophy professor writes them, or rather, he claims he edits stuff written by the real authors on Gor. Some of them are accounts by slave girls of their abduction and training. They go into a lot of details.”

 

“Seems a bit weird, publicising a secret alien world that’s all about abducting women, through a series of pulp paperbacks? What are they trying to achieve?”

 

“I dunno. Prepare our world for the day when it all becomes obvious, perhaps? It’s like a meme, I guess. Put the idea in people’s heads. Make them actually like the idea. Then, wham, reveal to them it’s all real. And they’re halfway to accepting it already.”

 

“Men like the idea of enslaving women?”

 

“Of course. And it’s a fantasy to a lot of chicks, too. They get really hot on the idea of being taken by Gorean slavers. It’s a guilty pleasure. It’s not politically correct to admit it, but guys like the idea of having a submissive slave at their feet, and girls want to be that slave. They all win.”

 

“Felicity did not seem like she was living out a pleasurable fantasy.”

 

“Yeah, well, the reality can be very different to begin with. Tough fucking luck to Felicity.”

 

“She was screaming, Dexter. She was terrified.”

 

“Yeah. Look, what do you want me to say? I didn’t fucking do it to her. And anyway, the bitch handed us over to the wyld wymen. I hope she gets fucked in her tight little asshole every night by big Gorean masters with big Gorean cocks. Fucking bitch.”

 

“She said things about your ring?”

 

“Yeah, well, every family has one. You can come and go with it. I guess Felicity believes there really is a Gor.”

 

“So what’s going to happen to us? I mean, we’re not women.”

 

“Doesn’t matter.” He stirred in his chains again. “We’re actually worth more. Silk slaves command a high price on Gor.”

 

“What’s a silk slave?”

 

“A Lady’s slave. Free Women can own slaves, too, provided they can afford to buy one. You’ll be trained and then sold to a Gorean Free Woman.”

 

“Do you have any idea how crazy that sounds?”

 

“Yeah, well, we’ll see, won’t we.”

 

I heard Dexter try and make himself as comfortable as he could on the hard cement floor. We had each been given an old horse blanket that smelled strongly of horse sweat. I put mine down on the cement floor and tried to get some rest. 

 

We were given slave gruel to eat in the morning. 

 

“Is this going to give me tits and a big ass and glossy hair?” I said as Hawkins handed me the bowl.

 

“No, mister, it won’t. We only put that additive stuff in the brightly coloured Nutri-Girl packets you can buy in the shops, along with the flavouring and the appetite suppressors. This is just the Nutri-Girl K Basic. Run of the mill slave slop, just like you’ll eat on Gor, so you might as well get used to it now.”

 

I spooned some of it into my mouth. It was bland, greasy, and unpleasant.

 

“Would you accept a large cash bribe?” asked an anxious Dexter.

 

“How large?” asked Hawkins.

 

“One hundred thousand dollars.”

 

“Sure. Hand it over.”

 

“I don’t have it on me,” said Dexter.

 

“Shame, that.” 

 

“I can have it transferred to you.”

 

“Don’t have one of them electric bank accounts, Mister. Like to do things the old way with cash.”

 

“I’ll draw the money out in cash, then,” said Dexter, anxiously. 

 

“Okay. You’ve got ‘till six tonight.”

 

“Well, I have to go to a bank first!”

 

“You ain’t going nowhere, except to Priest’s Hill.”

 

“I’m Dexter fucking Bannon! I can buy and sell people like you!”

 

Dexter screamed as Hawkins kicked him hard in the face.

 

“Shut your fucking mouth, you rich, pampered, fuck.”

 

Later that day we were taken outside for some exercise. I was chained in what Hawkins referred to as a sirik – a collar ring with a long chain that terminated at a set of close ankle shackles. Half way down the chain length was a pair of wrist cuffs. I could walk, but only at a slow, shambling pace. Hawkins followed closely, cradling his rifle. We were walked many times around the corral compound. I could see through the steel bars and observed the girls, naked, muddy, some still covering their bodies with the horse blankets. Each girl was ear tagged and branded. I saw Felicity sitting alone in a corner, looking miserable. Anthea sat against the side of the corral pen, looking equally forlorn.

 

“Where’s Chelsea Frick?” I said. A mile away I could see the house where a lifetime ago, it seems, I was having dinner and sitting out on the veranda, talking to her.

 

“You ain’t seeing Miss Frick.”

 

“Does she know I’m here?”

 

“Nope.”

 

“Let me talk to her.”

 

“Nope.” Hawkins gestured with his rifle for me to keep walking.

 

“She’s a friend of mine. She wouldn’t want this.”

 

“Tough.”

 

“Aren’t you worried she’ll find out?”

 

Hawkins laughed. “What if she does?”

 

“She could go to the police.”

 

“She ain’t gonna do jack shit. She does what her uncle says, or she gets the belt on her sweet little ass.”

 

“He beats her?”

 

“Mister, you have no fucking idea how the families discipline their daughters. That’s what the Grannies are for. The Frick women do what they’re told. Just like the Bannon women and the Emery women. Besides, it wouldn’t come to that. Her uncle would only have to use some choice, sharp, words and she’d be demurely curtseying her little ass back up to her room to compose a tearful letter of apology on scented pink notepaper, covered in girlie hearts and baby unicorns, to the Frick patriarchy for acting up, out of line.”

 

“Aren’t you worried what the Bannons will do when they find out what’s happened to Dexter?’

 

“The Bannons ain’t gonna do jack shit either. They haven’t got their ring any more. The Bannons are gonna be the Frick bitches from now on.”

 

“Is this what it’s all about? Some political power play?”

“Just keep walking, mister. You’re asking too many goddamn questions.” 

 

I tried to catch Felicity’s gaze, but she had her head down in her hands, in despair at what had happened to her. I saw her brand, still ragged and raw, and ochre red against her bare skin.  

 

Dexter and I were led out of our kennel pen for the last time at about five in the afternoon . There was a sense of controlled hysteria in the air as we were walked out to the cement yard opposite the corral pens. Girls were being led out, one at a time, their wrists braceleted behind their backs, and collars fitted to their necks. A long coffle chain looped through the o-ring set in the front of each slave collar.

 

There was less crying out and pleading than I had expected, but this was because stern looking ranch hands patrolled the coffle with riding crops in their hands, ready to whip any girl who made a noise. But even so, there were anxious moans, sniffles, whimpers and so forth that seemed to be allowed. 

 

Anthea tried to stand proud, but it was taxing her reserves. She was truly as terrified as every other girl on the coffle chain. Did any of the other girls sense that she was a wyld wyman? Did they even care? She shuffled along each time the coffle chain advanced a few paces to permit another girl to be added at the far end. When ten girls were chained in line, that coffle was complete and it was led away to begin a long walk across the ranch towards Priest’s Hill. The walk was three miles or so and would take over an hour with the girls encouraged to maintain a brisk pace by the ranch hands who escorted the line on horseback. 

 

I could make out Priest’s Hill in the distance and could see some activity, with four wheeled drive vehicles lumbering there and back. Dexter and I had our wrists cuffed behind our backs in the same fashion as the girls, and we formed our own shorter neck chain coffle as Hawkins motioned for us to follow in the wake of Anthea’s ten girl coffle chain. 

 

“This is it,” said Dexter, anxiously. “We really are fucked, now.”

 

“That you are, mister,” said Hawkins. “Well and truly.”

 

Away from the men with the riding crops, the girls in the coffle ahead of us began crying loudly. They sensed their coming fate, like cattle do when they’re close to the slaughter house. The sense of despair seemed infectious and rapidly spread through each girl in turn, even the proud, arrogant, Anthea. 

 

Each girl could sense her fate. After all she had been ear-tagged, then branded, and then collared. That could only mean one thing.

 

Behind me I saw another coffle of girls, this one including Felicity as girl number three in line. I didn’t know if there was any particular order or meaning to the positioning of girls within a ten chain coffle, or whether their placement was purely random.

 

“Nearly there,” said Hawkins. “Take a last look around you. You ain’t never going to see Earth again.”

 

There were three vans positioned on Priest’s Hill, and between two of the vans a marquee tent had been set up for processing the livestock. There were a couple of vets in white coats preparing what looked like injections, and from one of the vans some ranch hands were unloading a number of long transparent plexi-glass tubes, each one large enough to take a human body. 

 

The coffle ahead of us had arrived and was ordered to stand still. The lead girl – a lovely looking black girl with long braided hair – screamed as she was unlocked from the coffle and led by a rancher with his fist in her braids, to where the white coated vets waited. She was held firmly in place as a ranch hand selected an ankle ring from a table, made a note of the number, and then locked it about her left ankle. The black girl was then given an injection in her hip and led to one of the open plexi-glass tubes that lay on the grass. She was already feeling groggy and was walking with a swaying motion, no longer offering any resistance. The girl was awake long enough to be placed in the tube, which was then sealed over her as her eyelids began to slowly close. More tubes were lined up on the grass in a row of ten. Some of the other girls began to scream as they saw what was happening, and so a couple of ranchers had to walk up and down their line, whipping their thighs until they quietened down to simple sobbing and blubbering. 

 

“Always the same,” said Hawkins. “Them fillies scare one another. A filly on her own, well, she’s reasonably easy to control, but put them in to a herd, and they rightly spook one another. Shame to have to use the whip to calm ‘em down. A lot of extra effort.”

 

Anthea was now taken from the coffle line and walked towards the waiting vets. I could see her legs trembling, and the once proud, once brave, girl seemed close to losing her balance. She shook her head wildly as a fist then seized her hair and led her along, bowed down to the height of a man’s hip. 

 

“I took that one out of the library last night,” said Hawkins. 

 

“Library?”

 

“It’s what we call the corral. Our lending library. Them girls have all got clever ways. Some right smart fillies we brand these days. Not just pretty bodies. There’s doctors, academics, fillies who can speak all kinds of languages. If you work here you can check one out for a night, or a few nights if there’s still time. Just like a lending library. The girl can teach you some things. Me, I like to learn about history. Love it when we have a history girl.”

 

“Anthea’s an academic?”

 

“She knows her history, yep. Went to one of them fancy colleges out west. Told me lots last night about the Cherokee wars of 1776 to 1794, in between me fucking her. Interesting stuff. Did you know that the Battle of the Wabash was the worst defeat ever inflicted by Injuns on the American military? Bigger body count than the Little Bighorn, yet it’s Bighorn that everyone talks about, these days. Now that’s worth knowing.”

 

“And then you fucked her?”

 

“Like to get full use out of a library book, mister.” He cradled his rifle and watched as Anthea, now struggling to stay awake, was placed inside another cylinder, which was then closed shut. As I watched, she stopped moving and seemed to be asleep.

 

The second coffle of girls filed past where Dexter and I stood. I saw Felicity turn with a desperate gaze in my direction. Her face was wet with tears as the ranch hands marched her column towards the veterinary tables. Her brand was raw and swollen. Her ear tag swayed with each step she took. As I watched, I saw two vets hold her in place as she received an injection in her thigh. She was pleading with them, speaking her name, begging them not to do this. And then within five seconds or so her speech began to slur and she had to be helped towards the waiting slave cylinder.  

 

A third coffle chain was slowly approaching, as, from the vans, men were bringing out more slave cylinders to house them all.

 

“You’ll both be in those, soon enough,” remarked Hawkins. “After the fillies, of course.” He was interrupted in whatever he was going to say next by the arrival of a man on a motorcycle. He parked the cycle and headed directly for Hawkins.

 

“Just to inform you, Sir, there’s a supercargo that will be arriving late.”

 

“Nothing on the schedule about that, Reynolds,” said Hawkins. 

 

“Late addition, Sir. I think there may have been some sort of mix-up. The original paperwork never reached us until now. The girl is being sedated and stripped back at the house. She’s being fitted with an appropriate ankle ring and on her way now.”

 

“Stripped? She was clothed when she came to us?” said Hawkins.

 

“Apparently so, Sir. Fully clothed.”

 

“Which family sent her?”

 

“Um,” the man consulted some papers. “The Bannons, Sir. She’s a Bannon supercargo. Delivered late, by car. To be conveyed directly to Argentum,  House of Diamandis, for processing and training.”

 

“Fucking amateurs. By car? An ordinary car?”

 

“Yes, Sir.”

 

“In the trunk?”

 

“Back seat, Sir.”

 

“Fucking cocksuckers, every last one of them.”

 

“Yes, Sir.”

 

“The Bannons are all cocksuckers,” he said, turning round to face Dexter. “Any comment?”

 

“Um, no,” said a terrified looking Dexter Bannon. 

 

“Say it,” said Hawkins.

 

“The Bannons are all cocksuckers,” whimpered Dexter. 

 

“LOUDER, boy!” Hawkins drew back the bolt on his rifle. 

 

“The Bannons are all cocksuckers!” he said, louder than before.

 

Whatever else Hawkins might have said was lost to posterity as a four wheeled drive car drove up the slope of Priest’s Hill. It stopped and men hurried out either side. They went and opened the boot, lifting out the body of a naked and sedated woman. She wore an ankle ring, a slave collar, and a slave hood over her head. This was the only girl I had seen wearing a slave hood. The hood is leather, tightly secured under the chin with straps that buckle at the back, with a small padlock to secure the straps, and breathing holes either side.

 

“Why is she hooded?” asked Hawkins. He walked over to where the female lay on the grass. He touched the hood and found it securely locked in place at the back of her neck. There was no key for the padlock. There was no way of opening and removing it. He opened her thighs and put his fingers inside of her. He touched and felt her breasts. He read the number inscribed on the locked ankle ring. And then he noticed the smooth unmarked left thigh. “She’s not branded. What’s so special about this livestock?”

 

“Supercargo, Sir. A special order.”

 

“Fuck it. What do I care. Load her into a slave capsule with the other girls.”

 

The last of the terrified girls were removed from the coffle chains and processed with ankle rings and injections, before being placed in slave capsules. Now only Dexter and I remained. 

 

“Please,” whimpered Dexter. 

 

“You want to be whipped, boy? Still time before we sedate you.”

 

Dexter fell silent. 

 

“I’ll give you this,” Hawkins said to me. “You haven’t been whimpering.”

 

“Didn’t want to disappoint you.”

 

He chuckled. “Tell you what, I’ll give you a last smoke, if you want.” He fished out a long cigar from his breast pocket and offered it to me.

 

“I don’t want anything from you.”

 

“Defiant to the last, huh, mister? Fair enough. See how long that lasts you in your slave pen.”

 

“I’m coming back, you know,” I said. “And when I do I’m going to kill you.”

 

“You and thousands of pretty slave girls, huh?” He placed the cigar in his own mouth and lit it with a match. “This is a one way ride, mister. I hope you’re good at licking pussy.”

 

One of the vets approached, carrying a hypodermic needle. As I stared down Hawkins, I felt the needle prick my skin. I began mentally counting to ten, and never got past five.

 

The next thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the inside of a slave kennel on Gor. 

 

Yeah, turns out Gor is real. 

 

 

 

To be concluded