Chapter 1: Prologue

Repression

Book Four: Retribution

by John Savage

Published by Running Wolf Books

Copyright 2010 John Savage

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means except by prior and express permission of the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used as an element of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

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Chapter 1: Prologue

After playing with the sharks and spending another night compressed in a tiny cell while acid rock blasted her every time she manage to fall asleep, Dawn was about to undergo more punishment the next day. She had been taken to a fairly large room that already held one occupant. Julie was there, her slender body hanging upside down in one corner. When the cart carrying her came to a halt and the ropes of her hogtie began to come off, Dawn looked over to Julie. The girl had her arms behind her but it did not look as if she were tied with rope. Looking closer, Dawn could see that the girl’s thumbs had been bound together with what looked like wire. She could see where the strands cut into the girl’s thumbs and where the ends were twisted tightly closed.

They had finished removing the ropes from Dawn’s legs when she realized that Julie was hanging by her big toes! It looked as if that wire had also been used to bind her big toes together, then tied to the hook at the end of the cable. The suffering girl had been lifted up by those toes until her head was a couple feet off the steel floor. The wire was thicker than that used on her thumbs, but Dawn could see that her toes had nevertheless turned a dark purple. As Julie slowly rotated around, she could see that the girl had been gagged with something stuffed inside her mouth and then held in place by windings of more wire around her head.

Dawn moaned. How that must be hurting Julie!

Just then she was dragged over under a winch and a rope was tied to that already on her wrists. The motor hummed and her arms were lifted up behind her back, forcing her to lean forward as her arms went up, then straighten again as they went even higher. It felt as if her shoulders were being ripped out of their sockets.

One Nun gripped her jaw on each side with a powerful hand and squeezed until her mouth opened wide as it could. Then she shoved a rubber wedge inside. It filled her mouth and nearly made her gag. They duct taped it tight in place with a dozen windings of the strong tape around her head.

The motor hummed again and Dawn felt herself being lifted from the floor by her arms! The strain was terrible and she moaned through her nose. As her toes left the floor, she wondered if the purpose of this was to actually dislocate her shoulders. She had heard that it was most painful when that happened.

She felt herself slowly twisting at the end of that rope when they released hold of her, but that slowed down until she hung motionless. She was afraid that if she struggled, her shoulders would be dislocated, not to mention that it would cause more pain. She watched to tearful eyes as the Nuns left the room. It would be hard but she vowed to maintain stillness. If she did dislocate one or both arms, she would be hanging by them and feared how much damage that would do to her.

Two naked women looked at each other, felt each other’s pain, and together suffered for the whole day.

* * * * *

The world was in sad shape. After a disastrous war, the entire world was taken over by the victors who formed One World, the first true world government. And to assure a future where wars would not occur again, a harsh, repressive reign was begun; one in which individual freedoms were suppressed for the greater good of society. The government told the people what was right for them, and then enforced the new laws with a cruelty that would have made the Nazis proud.

Behind One World, the true power was the Church. Or what the Church had become. No longer a kind, caring establishment dedicated to the religious needs and physical welfare of the people, it became as harshly repressive as the One World, driving the people towards “right” thinking and conformance. Religious training centers sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, really little more than prisons where those deemed unfit to live in the new society were retrained in the politically correct way of thinking. Training consisted of constant imprisonment in harsh restraints and punishment delivered by eager hands day and night. Sexual abuse as well as physical was the order of the day.

Carrying out the demands of the Church as the cadre of this retraining were the Nuns. Women alone held the power and men were pushed into subservient roles as labors, guards and a few token religious leaders. The hand that held the whip was always female. Only those with sadistic natures and a desire to hurt were chosen to be one of these black-leather clad Nuns who ran the retraining centers.

It was a time of repression; a time of crushed freedoms and mangled laws. All forms of dissention were banned and that ban cruelly enforced upon the population. One theology had come to rule the land and you either adhered to it with all your heart or you suffered under its stifling might. “Land of the Free” no longer echoed through the halls of authority nor in the minds of the people. Another Dark Ages had come to human history.

What had once been a shining model of civilization and reason was now a rigidly regimented life rife with fear. Even the name that once stood for hope was no more. The United States of American was only Zone 11 of One World. True, the uniting of the world under one government has brought an end to the horror and destruction of war. Hunger was, for the most part, eliminated. Diseases were being pushed back, and violence of nature was being tamed slowly. Some would argue that the world was a better place now. But at what price?

You obeyed, did your job, did not question, and dared not even think against those in control. Do those things and you lived. Those who did not were quickly and harshly dealt with. If you were young and pretty, it was the retraining center for you. If you were not… you disappeared.

The theology of the victors was purified, made rigid, strong and unbending, and became the Law. You will worship in the right way, the only way. You will perform your duties without question. You will not doubt for a second that what the Law tells you is absolute Truth. You will obey. All this was necessary to please God and insure the tranquility and survival of the global community.

And no one – No One – was to question, let alone take the slightest action against the One World Law. Retaliation, as it must be in such a world, was swift and sure.

Into this harsh existence there came an innocent young woman, Dawn Cranston by name, who, only a couple days after her eighteenth birthday, was picked up off the street by a squad of Guards. She was restrained in a steel box and shipped to the nearest retraining center: Saint Secundina’s, a place of evil if ever there was one. Her crime: expressing disapproval of One World’s assigning her a husband in some foreign land, a husband she had never met but must marry, on her eighteenth birthday. It was thus with all women of that age. One World knew what was best for the whole society.

At Saint Secundina’s she was constantly restrained, abused, forced to “pray” every day for hours on end while tightly bound with ropes, and often punished harshly for some infraction or another – or for no reason. Her virginity was even taken from her, given as a gift to a high ranking priest.

But Dawn was intelligent and clever. In the whole world only a handful of prisoners had ever escaped from one of the retraining centers. Dawn was one of these. Once outside and on her own as a hunted fugitive, she made contact with an underground movement dedicated to fighting the rule of One World and the Church. This ragtag group, like most underground movements, lived in constant fear of discovery while they planned their noble but useless fight against oppression.

Dawn was taken prisoner again, this time sentenced to a harsher place than Saint Secundina’s.