The Good Slave (6 page)

“Order!” the judge yelled as he repeated hammered his gavel.
 
“Order in the courtroom!”

Without any warning several rifle-wielding soldiers entered the room and stood with their backs against the walls, legs spread wide.
 
Everyone cowered and the courtroom was silent within seconds, and only sounds to be heard were the sobs of father and son.

 
“We will all now pray,” the judge said.
 
He closed his eyes and bowed his head.
 
“Our Father, who art in heaven...”
 
Everyone but the Messinjures joined in the mantra.
 
“Hallowed be thy name...”

Chapter Seven

The Compassion Visit

Aside from his father’s lawyer, Stephen Messinjure had not been allowed a single visitor since his arrest.
 
Nor had he been allowed to read anything other than signs in the hallway, listen to or view any form of broadcast.
 
He had been kept in perpetual solitary confinement in a dinky, frigid cell that was five-feet high, five-feet long, and three-feet wide.
 
He could never fully stretch out or stand up straight in the cell, so he sat all the time.

He was released for a single hour each day at noon to shower and eat a lunch, unfailingly served on a rusting metal tray and consisting of a single slice of bread, a tall glass of somewhat cool water (the glass was plastic, of course), a small piece of some meat and a vegetable, the latter two having had all the flavor boiled out of them.
 
Breakfast and dinner, which were even more humble, he ate in his cell.

A bare light bulb burned eternally overhead.
 
He unscrewed it once and was severely beaten, then placed in a straightjacket for forty-eight hours.

The only furniture, per se, in the cell was a seatless metal toilet, its sheen scrubbed dull.
 
It flushed automatically every six hours.
 
Stephen did his best to schedule his use of it.

An inlaid crucifix made of dark red bricks decorated the gray cinderblock wall behind the toilet.

The Church-State had granted Josef Messinjure a fifteen-minute Compassion Visit on the last day of his son’s life four hours before the broadcast of his execution, scheduled to begin at 8 PM Eastern, 7 Central, 5 Pacific.
 
Phoebus accompanied his master to the massive facility, one of ten foreboding mega-prisons built after the Holy Revolution to house ten thousand prisoners each.

An electronically garbled voice over a small speaker at the gate instructed them to park the car in a specific spot where all three—master, slave and chauffeur—were to exit the vehicle and walk to the Visitors Entrance on the other side of the gargantuan parking lot.
 
Above the entrance was a large, weather-beaten sign:

ALL VISITORS WILL BE SEARCHED FOR WEAPONS, DRUGS, ELECTRONIC

COMMUNICATION DEVICES AND ALL OTHER FORBIDDEN AND ILLEGAL

ITEMS. THE PRISON RESERVES THE RIGHT TO STRIP SEARCH
ANY

VISITOR. FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH ESTABLISHED REGULATIONS AND

POLICIES MAY RESULT IN WARNING, TERMINATION, SUSPENSION, OR

REVOCATION OF VISITATION PRIVILEGES.

The entrance was a simple, unimpressive door door that opened to a sizable room with three cinderblock walls painted stark white.
 
The fourth wall, if it could be called such, was made of black metal bars and had an imposing metal door in the center.
 
These vertical bars connected to a horizontal one connected to the walls just below the point where they began to curve in their transition to the high vaulted ceiling overhead.
 
The gap between the horizontal bar the top of the ceiling was filled with a nasty, thick mass of coiled barbed wire.
 
Directly above the door, welded to the crossbar, was a large golden crucifix.
 
Beyond this penal rood screen stretched a long hallway that seemed to go on forever.
 
Phoebus could see guards making their way from one place to another, but he didn’t see any prisoners.

To the left four expressionless guards stood in front of a long wooden table pushed up against the wall.
 
Their legs were spread wide.
 
The two inner guards held their clasped hands in front of their groins, and the two outer ones held long rifles.

To the right was a reception window where a sour-looking middle-aged man greeted them by ordering Master Josef to show his ID.
 
The little slave had been ordered to lift his shirt so one of the hand-clasping guards could scan the bar code tattooed high on his side near his armpit.
 
A large monitor above the reception window displayed Phoebus’ most recent annual photo, name, age, height, weight, blood type, and address, as well as confirming that he was the property of Josef Messinjure as of such-and-such a date.

Both master and slave were ordered to place the contents of their pockets into a small metal box (Phoebus only had a pack of gum), which Mr. Sourpuss locked and put onto a shelf after handing Mast Josef a ticket.
 
They they had to lift their arms so they could be patted down by the guards
not
holding rifles.
 
They found nothing, of course.
 
Then, as the burlier guard pulled on a pair of rubber gloves he turned toward Phoebus and commanded, “STRIP, SLAVE!”

Phoebus was mortified.
 
He looked frantically around the room, but not a hint of sympathy from any of the strangers.
 
Master Josef just stared straight ahead as if he were the only one in the room.
 
Didn’t even make eye contact when his slave looked at him imploringly.

“NOW!” the guard barked.
 
“And hurry up!”

Phoebus began to disrobe as fast as he could, humiliated at the thought of being naked in front of anyone, let alone strangers.
 
He hoped they’d think he was shivering from the cold air.

“Now, turn around,” the guard said when the little slave was completely nude, “bend over and grab your ankles.”

Phoebus obediently bent over and grabbed his bare ankles.
 
He began to feel dizzy as the blood rushed to his head though he didn’t dare look up.

“Wider!” the guard yelled and Phoebus had to let go of his ankles and rest his hands on the icy floor to spread his legs further.
 
He prayed for this to end soon.

 
The guard walked up beside the little slave, grabbed his waist with one hand to steady him against his own leg as he roughly shoved a finger slickened with cold gel into the his exposed anus.
 
It was very painful and the little slave was unable to stifle a small whimper.
 
He felt dizzy and sick to his stomach, afraid he might shit in the guard’s hand as the brute probed his bowel by turning his greasy fat finger this way and that.

A good slave’s gaze is always down and earthbound
, he repeated over and over in his head.

A good slave’s gaze is always down and earthbound.

A good slave’s gaze is always down and earthbound.

A good slave’s gaze is always down and earthbound.

When the guard was good and satisfied that the little slave wasn’t hiding anything up his asshole, he pulled out his finger, slipped off the rubber glove with a snap and ordered him to get dressed, which Phoebus did as fast as he could.

The cold goo stuck to his underwear.

“America needs a tidal wave of old time religion!” Josef Messinjure had often declared from his pulpit.

When Phoebus was small he’d sit on the floor next to Stephen’s chair offstage and watch, mesmerized, as his master preached to the entire nation.
 
In the darkness beyond the blinding klieg lights he could hear the massive congregation in the church-studio—ten thousand strong six nights a week—shout out
Amen!
and
Praise the Lord!
and
Amen!
again.
 
Other times he and Stephen would watch the sermon on the TV in Master Josef’s dressing room.
 
For years Stephen had refused to sit onstage or even among the congregants.
 
Some elementary school bullies had given him a pretty good beating after seeing him on “daddy’s TV show” the night before.
 
He kicked and screamed the next night when they tried to drag him onstage.
 
The last thing the network execs wanted was the sight of their star’s son whimpering in the background with tears streaming down his cheeks, so that was the end of that.