The Sound of Her Horn

[magbeam]

(Reserved for VelvetDarkness)

It was a bright cold day in November, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Yohannan Churchill walked slowly down the streets of New Jerusalem, the cold wind seemingly cutting through his black frock, the uniform of those serving the Commonwealth of God. A black van marked with the symbol of the Faith and Order Commission rushed past, followed by two armored personnel carriers filled with Martyrs. The bulk of the New Model Army was still engaged in the West, against the sinners of the new Babylon and the heretics of Deseret who had never accepted the rule of the True God; however, a sizable garrison still remained in New Jerusalem and the rest of the Commonwealth's east, in order to prevent any further problems from cropping up here.

The past week had seen a Purification Drive in the nation's capitol, the fifth in the year that had passed since the Deliverance in which the Prophet and his followers had seized power from the corrupt, sensuous, secular regime which had preceded it. It was a crime and a shame that even after four Purification Drives, each one more thorough than the previous, New Jerusalem - what had once been Washington, D.C. - was still the center of so much filth, degradation, and poverty. The Prophet was not a racist, of course, and a few of the Elders who sat in the General Convocation were men of color, but he believed that members of all races need know their place - as the Good Book itself stated - and the Children of Ham who still infested the slums surrounding New Jerusalem, taking their illicit drugs and engaging in promiscuity were a reflection of how far the secular putrefaction had thoroughly soaked through society.

The Commonwealth would one day eliminate such miseries. It had the strength of God behind it, and had wiped away the judges and politicians and bureaucrats who had tried to erect barriers between the people and the Word of God. But the Prophet had shattered the old government, swept them away just as Moses had swept away Pharaoh and ushered the Israelites to their new home. Churchill had been there with him, fought alongside him. Churchill had been a follower of the Prophet when he had still been a televangelist and head preacher of the United Assembly of God. There had been those who had proclaimed the time of the religious man over, that there were no longer enough true Christians willing to fight the allies of Satan - the liberals, the liars, the intellectuals, the feminists, the drug addicts, the homosexuals, the Muslims - to chart the future of America. But the Prophet had proved them wrong. As the American economy, based on its idolatry and worship of money, declined and the problems of the Holy Land multiplied, more and more had been willing to receive the Word of God and His Blessing as provided by the Prophet - unadulterated by greed, or monetarism, or Papism, or modern perversions such as 'compassion' and 'tolerance.' He had used the radio, the television, the Internet - the vessels of sin and corruption and lies - against those very forces, and had astoundingly won the election to the Presidency. No true Christian could serve the American government for one second, of course - a government established by Freemasons, blind to the Word of the Lord, tolerant of diversity and homosexuality. The Prophet's followers had not waited until election day, but had seized power themselves the day of the election, in the name of the Lord. The lame-duck President had surrendered without a fight; Congress and the Supreme Court had objected, and the New Model Army destroyed both, as the Prophet proclaimed the creation of the Commonwealth of God: not a government at all, merely a conduit to enforce the will of the Lord Jehovah. The first Purification Drive had been run then and there, with the burning of the Library of Congress and Smithsonian buildings. Science, with its atheism and its disbelief, would no longer tolerated under a government who acknowledged no truth but the Truth.

A crowd was forming in front of the National Temple, the headquarters of the Prophet and the Elders who served as the Elect of the Commonwealth. It was time for the Prophet's daily afternoon prayer. The huge crowd outside, many of them waving Bibles or snakes in the air with many already speaking in tongues, would never fit inside the Temple; but all would recieve the Blessing of the Lord from the mouth of the Prophet himself. That was the right and requirement of every citizen of the Commonwealth. The Prophet had spread his message to the people using the power of the telecommunications age; that power now enabled him to ensure that all of his flock listened to him.

Sure enough, almost immediately, the speakers now standing at the corner of every street in New Jerusalem crackled to life. "It is hour thirteen, of Secondday, 15 Eleventhmonth, the Year of the Creation 6025," the warm, fatherly voice of the Prophet spoke out. The screams and yells of the mass outside the National Temple increased, and already, several of the brethren there were crying and fainting. "Brothers, it is time for us to reflect..."

After the Commonwealth had been established, a measure of stability had initially reigned over the land that had once been America. For years, the secular government had presided over rising prices, falling wages, fear, insecurity, riots, tensions. The knowledge that they were now all united under the protection of a single Heavenly Father had provided a degree of comfort and stability; the actions of the Zealots and Martyrs and Black Hundreds who had pledged themselves to God in rooting out the agents of sin, temptation, and the Devil did the rest. However, it was impossible for it to continue; to do so would be for the Prophet to accept the status quo, and do nothing other than create a Christian regime in name only. That would not do. The first sign of change had come from the decimation of New York City. Proclaiming it a hive of foreigners, Papists, Deicides, and Mammon-worshipers whose stewardship over the economy had resulted in the crass materialism that had destroyed the common man's morals. The widespread economic dislocation which had arisen from the Purification of the city of Mammon would go away, the Prophet promised, as soon as the conversion to a God-based economy was complete.

The universities had been next. They had spread their lies and corruption of the youth long enough. The worst offenders were shut down and burned to the ground; those who could still be salvaged had their offending faculty removed and replaced with those who had been Born Again. The thousands of professors and teachers who had been deemed unworthy had been given the chance to convert and repent; those who refused had been subjected to the first wide-scale mass stoning in the regime, but far from the last. Alcohol and drugs were outlawed, their producers similarly stoned for corruption of the youth; Hollywood was also burned by the purifying flame, which had spread to the surrounding slums of sin. Mass communication had already come under the strict control of the Gospel Elder. Segregation, under the guise of racial harmony and Biblical guidelines towards ethnic roles, had been endorsed. That had left only one major segment in the Prophet's initial plan for the re-Christianization of the country.

Churchill walked by a poster, plastered against the wall of what had once been some bureaucratic hive serving the Masonic regime and now was a Church of the Faith. It had a man on it, a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black mustache and ruggedly handsome features. It was the Prophet, and he had his arms paternally over the shoulders of several smiling girls in pastel pink, thick cotton dresses. The caption at the bottom of the poster stated simply:

Belt Them - It's For Their Own Good!​

The Good Word had established it as an incontrovertible fact that women carried the Original Sin. It had never left them; they remained the vessels of impiety and corruption until the present day. They were seducers, deceivers, vain, and weak; pliable, temptresses, petty, childish. To allow such vices to flourish had caused the followers of the True Faith to be cast into the Tribulation as sure as it had caused Adam to be evicted from Eden. "Feminism", "suffrage", "equality of the sexes", "women's rights" - all meant the same thing: moral decay, loss of sanctity, collapse of virtue and traditional rights. Feminism, homosexuality, secularism, and tolerance all were sides of the same coin, that which led away from the purity of the early Church and towards idolatry and perversion of the Laws of God. Did not the Good Book itself say that a woman should always follow her man, that woman was the property of man, and to trust not to a woman's judgment?

Those who otherwise were one of the Elect, the few remaining True Believers during the Tribulation when the secular government of the Masons had reigned, had forgotten that. Some of the most successful of the preachers and televangelists of the so-called "Christian Right" (itself a perversion, as the absolute truth of Christianity meant that there was no need for politics; politics, along with the state and so-called "civil society", had been abolished underneath the comforting, all-encompassing guidance of the Commonwealth) had been women. Not even those had escaped the reach of the Prophet's edict that had restored traditional morality, gender relations, and sexual conduct.

It was widely known as the Reduction of Women: the removal of women from all facets of society to be nothing but housewives. To the few heretics, idolaters, and non-believers who still existed, hidden among the True Believers as wolves among the flock, it signified women being torn down from hard-earned positions of equality. To those who had accepted their salvation, it was merely the elimination of women from positions they had never been intended to occupy in the first place, and never would have yearned for if the teachings of feminists and secularists had not replaced the Word of Jehovah. All professional women had been removed from their occupations - in government, the military, businesses, schools, and not least of all, churches. In order to provide for them, the Commonwealth provided a living stipend - to their male guardians. Husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles, sons; the oldest, closest living male relative assumed the status of guardian.

Women could no longer drive, attend school, work, sign legal documents, exchange money; to do so would be to assume that they were on the same intellectual and spiritual level as men, a blasphemy which the Prophet no longer tolerated. Even leaving the home without male protection was increasingly a great danger. Those women with no male relatives to claim them were cared for in the new network of "Single Shelters", where Elders of the Commonwealth tended to them and educated them in the ways of prayer and knitting until a suitable marriage could be made for them - usually, to one of the New Model Army returning from combat in the West, as promised for those who volunteered to serve in the Great Commission. Under the Commonwealth, marriages as well could be abrogated and decided anew if the circumstances were not Christian.

Many of the women complained, naturally. As a result, the Single Shelters and the Guardians who ran them had to resort to somewhat draconian efforts to enforce compliance. However, within a generation, when all women who still remembered the Tribulation and the lies of feminism had died, the subsequent women should prove rather more docile and obedient.

Until then, other efforts were being made to ensure that.

Churchill turned the corner of a street, nearing his destination. As he did so, a Zealot - clad in his elite black combat armor - approached him, laying a hand on his upper arm.

"Where do you think you're going, Brother?" he asked. "This is a restricted area. And it's the Prophet's afternoon sermon. You seem to be walking a little fast to pay attention."

Churchill reached into his pocket, the Zealot tensing; but before the soldier could move his hand to his grip, Churchill finished pulling out what he had gone for. A small identification badge: black, with a sword before the burning bush. The symbol of the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Elimination of Sin.

"Yohannan Churchill, Elder Fourth Class. I believe I am allowed to enter my own place of work, Brother Zealot. It is not the Sabbath, after all, is it? No reason for us of the flock to rest when the Prophet's enemies do not do so."

"No, of course not, Brother Yohannan." Zealots were the elite of the New Model Army, above the Black Hundreds and the Martyrs. To be a Zealot was automatically to be counted among the Elect of the Commonwealth, and to be a Zealot stationed in New Jerusalem, guarding the Committee no less, was one of the highest honors a Zealot could aspire to. But even this one backed away, seeming to flinch behind the mirrored surface of his helmet's faceplate. "My apologies, Brother."

"Turn the other cheek," Churchill muttered in way of response, but he was already walking past the Zealot into the building that housed the Committee. It had once been known as the J. Edgar Hoover Building; the Prophet had immediately changed the name, not being willing to tolerate the name of a homosexual and sadist as the center of the organization responsible for enforcing the doctrine of a Christian society. The Committee's work was brutal, but it was not sadistic. One had to be brutal to combat those who would not qualm about such tactics in their hatred of Christianity. If there was one consolation in his work, it was that Churchill knew that he would be rewarded for his struggles in the afterlife, while his enemies - the enemies of the Prophet, and therefore God - would not.

And his work was, after all, perhaps the most vital work in the entire Committee. Churchill entered an elevator (due to its importance, the Committee building was one of only a few in New Jerusalem that had unlimited energy supplies, even during the worst of the frequent shortages) and took it down to the fifth sub-level: his floor. When the doors opened, the sign greeted him:

Sublevel 5:
Department for the Elimination of Feminism, Homosexuality, and Other Sexual Disorders​

A man was waiting for him. "Good afternoon, Brother Yohannan." Elias O'Brien, Elder Seventh Class, served as Churchill's deputy in command of the department, despite his Papist name. His parents had converted to the True Faith when he was young and he had been born again, and so O'Brien no longer needed to fear that he would serve the Antichrist of Rome in Hell.

"Good day to you as well, Brother Elias," Churchill nodded his head. "What have we got today?"

"A big roundup earlier, during the Purification Drive. The Martyrs hauled in the usual - a number of feminists, prostitutes, lesbians, intellectuals, those types." He shuffled through the folder in his hand, through the files of those who had been newly delivered to the Committee today. He selected one file, handing it over to Churchill. It was a young woman, looking to be in her mid-twenties. If Churchill had been a sinner, he would have found her attractive.

"A Jezebel named Ava. Feminist, university educated before the Reduction. Spreading propaganda, agitating against the Prophet, educating other women..." He gulped, then continued. "Unregistered single residence. No male Guardian. Due to her other transgressions, it was believed that it would be best to bring her here, rather than to a Single Shelter, lest she cause more disturbances there."

Churchill looked at the photograph and file for a moment, then handed it back to O'Brien. "Has she been processed yet?"

O'Brien shook his head, taking the file back. "No, Brother. I had an impulse that you might like to supervise this one's Saving from the start. She's in Room V."

Churchill nodded, crossing his arms in the salute of the Commonwealth. "Very well, Brother. The Lord prevails."

"The Lord prevails," O'Brien replied as per the formula, but Churchill was already walking down the hall towards the detention cells, to meet the Jezebel he would return to the flock - even if he needed to break her to do so.

 

[VelvetDarkness]

She sat there in a small, cramped cell. The room contained a narrow bunk, a sink and an exposed toilet, nothing more. Her shoelaces had been removed and her personal effects confiscated. She retained nothing, not even her name. ‘Ava’ had originally been christened Aoife, firstborn child to her Irish parents, Connor and Mary Kelly. Her father had never been particularly religious but her mother was a devout Catholic... was for she was Catholic no longer. Between compliance and imprisonment or death, her parents had chosen hypocrisy and here in this room, Aoife could hardly blame them. She had always known this day would come, that her carefully constructed public facade would not withstand close scrutiny. Still it smarted, to be hauled in like a criminal, when she had caused no harm of any description to another living soul. Aoife was a Gaelic name that had been her great-grandmother’s and also her mother’s middle name. It meant ‘radiant’ or ‘bright’ and her family had always commented on how much it suited her with her keen intelligence and generous spirit. It was a piece of her personal heritage that had made her feel loved. ‘Ava’ was hew new moniker. The ‘God Squad,’ as they were dubbed by her fellow dissenters, had dished out new ‘Christian’ names to everyone whose given name didn’t feature in the Bible or was not derived from Hebrew, Greek or in a few cases, Latin. ‘Ava’ meant ‘conquered’ or ‘overthrown’ and from the day she had received her new ‘birth certificate’ and stuck her new name into the state approved, strictly filtered Commonwealthnet search engine, somewhat optimistically called ‘Gospel,’ Aoife had loathed it and taken it as a personal affront.

Aoife had been the first person in her family to go to college. Her father, who ran a shoe repair shop, had despaired of forcing his intelligent daughter into work after high school but with a 6 strong brood, there had simply been no money. Aoife had risen to the challenge however and earned herself a scholarship to study biochemistry and pharmacology at the University in Washington. Her student years had been the most enjoyable of her young life and she had worked hard, both at her studies and as a part time dispensing assistant at a nearby pharmacy. Her grades and her grasp of the complexities of marrying pharmacology with the fluid and unpredictable responses of human physiology had stunned her lecturers and a research post had been recommended to her that she had eagerly applied for as her final year drew to a close. Drugs giant Glaxo was researching new treatments for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s Disease. They needed someone with both biological and pharmacological knowledge and Aoife was their dream candidate. She aced the interview and was offered the post that same day. Her last weeks of exams and study passed in a blur of delight as she enthusiastically planned out a bright future. Her parents were slightly overwhelmed but genuinely over the moon. If their academically brilliant daughter was moving into a field that they couldn’t even spell, then she really must be excelling herself.

That summer however, was when the God Squad had swept in, shamelessly ahead of the election and with a sizeable army to back up their assertion that America – and by extension the western world... for starters anyway - needed saving. In a terrifyingly brief timespan, very little of America’s popular culture and secular democratic establishment remained. At the same time, after a short and unsuccessful campaign by various protest groups, crime and vice had been almost totally obliterated and many were embracing the strict control of the new Christian government as a necessary evil. The Commonwealth quickly harnessed the USA’s massive media machine and started churning out positive, Bible based propaganda worthy of the infamous German Nazi Party of years ago. It appeared to be a brutal mix of twee fifties family values backed up by social, racial and gender stereotypes and inequalities worthy of the Muslim Sharia Laws adopted in parts of the middle east.

Aoife had been largely oblivious to the news reports until she received an important looking letter in the mail, demanding that she register herself with a ‘male guardian’ as soon as possible, on pain of imprisonment. The day after that, the research institute sent her a curt note revoking her offer of employment. A tearful conversation with her father ensued, who had received a letter requiring him to register unmarried daughters and any other single females under his care. He seemed to think it was all for the best and Aoife felt utterly betrayed. Unbeknown to her though, Connor had also been informed that his newly granted licence to work and provide for his family was dependent on obeying the new Christian laws to the letter. He was terrified that his livelihood might be taken from him and his family split by the department for employment. The new facilities for the unemployed were little better than Victorian workhouses and people were being forced into employment according to governmental whim rather than their existing skills and interests. Relocation and the temporary division of family groups was not uncommon and served as keen motivation for those still umwilling to conform to the new laws.

That had been the last time she spoke to her family. The path she had chosen required that she protect them by keeping them in the dark about her movements. Aoife had been living in a tiny studio apartment that comprised just three rooms. It had been intended as just for the summer but she elected to stay there and registered the place in the previous occupant’s name, one Terrence Stone (since renamed Timothy) who she also registered as her husband and guardian. There was enough personal information in the old mail she had received to complete the forms and the fact they were both connected to the address meant that the powers that be had not delved into their records for proof of the marriage. Aoife had assumed that they would be trying to process a nation sized landfill of information and that applications that appeared plausible would be summarily approved. She was right. So she became Ava Stone, purchased wedding and engagement rings and set about deciding what to do with her life.

Some women had taken the modest dress code a stage further and wore headscarves (though veils were not permitted as the God Squad couldn’t see the whites of your eyes) and Aoife had adopted this practise. She bought a few floor length, baggy pastel dresses and attempted to fit in while casually letting it be known that her husband was an invalid and required that she serve him in tasks that women generally no longer performed. She opened an account in his name and used it to claim invalidity benefits in her ‘husband’s’ name. This covered her rent and bills by direct debit. Everything else she managed by barter and through the thriving black market that rapidly sprang up in all manner of both innocuous and illicit items such as cosmetics, booze and drugs. She carried her ‘husband’s’ bank card and used it to make the occasional purchase. This did not technically constitute using her own currency so there was little danger so long as she was careful. When a few of her friends had questioned her sudden marital status, Aoife had lied at first but eventually the truth had come out. Her tiny apartment had swiftly become a well needed place of respite for oppressed female graduates and it wasn’t long before they broached the idea of educating other women. All saw the new regime as something that couldn’t last. If it disenfranchised every woman in the country for long enough, they’d be back in the dark ages by the time a more secular, tolerant regime took over. Aoife still had her textbooks and while they were hopelessly complex as a teaching aid, plans were hatched.

Aoife and her friends attended book burnings, waving the required placards and chanting the right things but snatching the odd volume and concealing it beneath the vast folds of their stupid dresses. Old lecturers who had survived the stonings gave them books, pleased to be able to make even a small act of defiance. School populations had halved overnight and many sites lay derelict, Aoife and her friends had raided these places for more basic textbooks and by the time they were done, her apartment was furnished almost entirely by piles of reading matter. Technology in all its networked forms was too risky, they dealt only in books.

Over the following months they had quietly chatted with women who could be trusted with their idea, who were worried about their daughters’ prospects should they miss their schooling only for a new government to grant them equal rights again. Books were circulated in shopping bags, concealed with the covers of the volumes that the Prophet kicked out, left in mailboxes, tucked underneath sleeping babies in prams. A quiet female mutiny was taking place and Aoife had never felt so alive. Their network widened and new books were surreptitiously acquired.

Aoife had known that the more people they included in their scheme, the greater the chance of somebody reporting her. It was inevitable really. Still, she had managed almost a year of educating other women, correcting their essays, answering their questions and giving them hope. Whatever they did to her now, that achievement had been hers and it couldn’t be taken from her or tarnished by whatever fancy brainbleaching her captors chose to attempt. Rumours were rife about these holding facilities and the ways in which wayward women were forcibly brought to heel. There were stories of hardened, drug addicted prostitutes emerging clean and bursting with Christian zeal after only brief stays.

Aoife decided that it was best not to think about all that now. She knew her Bible well enough to know that 90% of what the God Squad peddled was unmitigated bullshit. They’d have a hard time exorcising that fervent belief from her mind.