No chain binds as tight as the one you put on yourself.
Chapter 5: The Princess' Slave
After Marcie's highly traumatic experience watching King Gabriel's video, and then succumbing to her desires with Beth following it, she became obsessed with finding everything she could about the Spartan Kingdom. She didn't really know why, but she felt there was some connection between her father and King Gabriel that she needed to understand.
Her search for information wasn't hard. There was actually quite a bit about him and his kingdom on the web but it was mostly speculation, and a lot of it contradictory. There once had been an official web site, but the government had long since shut it down; all that was available of it was some cached pages that people had and were passing around.
Even still, Marcie didn't know what was real and what was just slander. Most of what she read said that the kingdom was based on complete male supremacy, yet the women she was seeing in pictures and short videos didn't fit the shy, cowering type. They didn't look subjugated at all.
By the time Marcie had seen the king's manifesto, three weeks had passed since it was made, so the Spartan Kingdom had already begun its punishment of Christians. The news reports of what was going on were as contradictory as the information Marcie was finding about them. The reports ranged from four to ten groups of twenty to fifty members each, crisscrossing the nation on motorcycles. They were never in any one location long enough for the authorities to stop them, and being on motorcycles, the police had a hard time just trying to intercept them. Of course, the hostages that they were carrying had something to do with the difficulties they had.
Still, Marcie didn't fully comprehend why they couldn't stop them until she saw a news report the following week. Instead of a quick hit and run, as was their usual MO, one of the thirty member gangs roared into a twelve-house cul-de-sac, in a small Nebraska town, and took it over.
The reporter that was on the scene shortly thereafter said that after setting a guard of five men at the opening, they immediately fanned out to all of the homes and began demanding the owners open their doors. Most complied, but a few had to be busted in; women were dragged from their homes, and led or pulled over to one of the homes towards the back.
The gang remained there that evening, the next day, and through the following night. It quickly became a media circus, and the police were having a hard time keeping the crowds back. They weren't kept back far enough, however, not to hear the occasional screams of pain from women being spanked in the home they were being held in.
During one particularly round of blood curdling scream sessions, a reporter thrust her microphone in the face of the police chief, and demanded why he and his men weren't doing anything to stop them. "Has it occurred to you," the police chief began angrily, "that maybe the intent of the screams you hear is to get us to do something rash, like barreling in there with guns blazing?"
His emotions as he responded to the reporter were pretty plain, and he was obviously quite distressed. He took a few moments to calm down before continuing. "In spite of what you are hearing, I have no evidence that anything different is occurring than what is happening all over the country. No one's life is being threatened, yet I am quite certain that if I do anything without careful planning, people will die; including the women we would be trying to save.
"There is no doubt in my mind that they are not bluffing when they say that they will fight and die to the man, if attacked. For now, I'm just doing my best to keep this from exploding into a bigger situation than it already is, and hoping an opportunity will present itself to do something more."
Before dawn of the second day the gang had busted down a fence in the backyard of the far house they had been holding up in, and had roared out through it, with three more hostages than when they came.
This particular incident prompted a lot of recrimination from both ends of the political spectrum, against law enforcement in general. Those on the right were calling on them to confront these gangs of the Spartan Kingdom and stop them, while those on the left had no desire to see them martyred. They were actually quite angry that these women weren't just saying they weren't Christians, and so were telling the police to leave them alone. As far as those on the left were concerned, the Christians of this country needed to accept the responsibility of what was happening to them.
It was no wonder that law enforcement didn't know what to do, considering these deeply conflicting messages from the politicians.
For several days after that, Marcie wondered what had happened to those women in that house. She had heard on the news some of the cries, and could only imagine what it would take to elicit them. None of the women involved would talk of what happened to reporters, and one husband was arrested after beating to a pulp one particularly persistent reporter. The fact that these and so many of the other women weren't talking, nor pressing charges, was just more ammunition for those on the left to say this was a situation of their own making.
Marcie didn't have to imagine about what happened for long, because the first of many videos was released from the Spartan Kingdom showing what they had been up to. The legality of these videos was a real hot potato, so places like YouTube wouldn't have them. Beth, of course, had the kind of connections to get them, and after viewing them herself, forwarded them on to Marcie.
Beth had told her that these videos had the same boring crap on the front of them like the first one, and she wasn't interested in sitting through them like last time. Yet she also said that if after watching them Marcie had any particular itch that needed scratching, she would be available in her room.
Marcie was now sitting at her computer almost paralyzed. There were three video files sitting on her desktop: SK_1.wmv, SK_2.wmv and SK_4.wmv (Beth was still looking for #3). She desperately wanted to know more about what was going on, but was afraid that after watching them, she would indeed end up in Beth's room over her lap.
Without allowing herself to think about the consequences too much, she drifted her mouse over the first file and double clicked. The image that appeared was again of Gabriel, but this time leaning against an outside brick wall with his right leg pulled up, foot planted flat against the wall. He was wearing the same outfit as last time, which was a white, billowing, long-sleeve shirt that did nothing to hide his lean, hard frame. He also wore the same black leather pants; the whole effect was that of a pirate.
"Hello America," he said as he pushed himself away from the wall by his foot. After taking two steps toward the camera, he continued, "This is the first of many videos that I'll post of the punishments my people are administering to Christians. I want to make sure these Christians are thoroughly humiliated by what they will be required to perform, so I'll be sending out to the Internet their recorded degradation for the entire world to see.
"Since there will be many perverts who will get off watching what's in them, I want to take advantage of this opportunity to elaborate more on what I spoke about in my video manifesto in order to clear up a lot of confusion. At the beginning of each of these videos, I'll answer questions from people who obviously have no idea what I am talking about. Considering all of the willing slaves of this nation, that confusion won't be hard to come by.
"For my first confused slave, I would like respond to one that is representative of an opinion that is quite common." Gabriel held up a sheet of paper and read from it. "Pete of Sarasota Florida writes. '
It is you and your ilk that are attempting to rewrite history. Our Founding Fathers were not the ones that put 'In God We Trust' on our money. Words like 'Under God' did not appear in our Pledge of Allegiance until the 1950's. Anyone can clearly see that our Founding Fathers did not want our government imposing religion on anyone. What else would you call having tax money that is forcibly removed from you, to then finance what you want to harmlessly characterize as religious expression? They did not voluntarily offer that money, so that makes it an imposition.
"'
And as for your bemoaning freedom
