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Strange Awakenings

Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2020 3:38 am
by gary
STRANGE AWAKENINGS

This developed from a one-page story meant at an attempt at humor. It morphed into an exploration of what I think is the background of what I call “Slave Grading World”. Claire makes a Cameo.


David woke up and entered the living room, I saw my wife there and asked how she slept.

“Awful, I’m sore from everything I did yesterday”

“Look maybe we should finally give in and buy a household slave”

“What are you talking about? There’re no slaves”

“Did I wake up in a different universe again, I hate that when that happens, Next thing you’ll be telling me is that Oprah Winfrey isn’t President”

“No she isn’t, its President Trump” my wife was starting to pay attention

“Trump? Last time I heard his brain had been transplanted into a cat” he exclaimed (1)

“A Cat?” her eyes widened, now becoming much more interested in my story

“Ya and there is no way a cat would get elected President, a dog yes but not a cat”

“How did Oprah become president?”

“Well when they discovered Obama had really been born in Canada to Scottish emigrants he had to step down, and as Vice President she stepped forward. So, she didn’t lose the election to Trump the Cat”

“No, she was never vice president, actually Hillary ran against Trump”

“Hillary who?

“Hillary Clinton, she was the wife of former President Bill Clinton”

“Hillary Clinton? she died in 97 in a Paris traffic accident with her lover Dodie Fayed”

“No that was Princess Diana”

“Queen Diana? She died?

“Yes, what do you think happened”

“Well Charles became King in 2005 after Queen Elizabeth died in a mysterious fall down the stairs. But King Charles III was removed when he appointed a Oak Tree as Prime Minister and Diana was made sole monarch. You know after all that fuss that Oak Tree was one of the better Prime Ministers an it even won re-election”

My wife was truly stunned at all this

“Just how crazy is this world? Do we not use Pieces of Eight as money? Did Firefly not last seven seasons? Is Mike Holmes not Prime Minister of Canada?”(2)

This was not a good start to the day


ONE MONTH EARLIER


The clock radio went off and woke David to classical music. After several minutes of waking up he sat up. A couple of minutes later he put the light on the night stand on and, as always, felt the shock of light bring his eyes out of darkness. His wife Christine was also awakening and they said good morning to each other.

“I heard you get up several times, How are you feeling?” He asked his wife

“Lousy, I had a restless sleep.”

“Sorry about that., Hope you have better sleep tonight.”

His wife got up to use the bathroom while he got dressed. He opened the curtains and went to the kitchen to fill the kettle up from the water filter jug, then filled that up. Opening up the kitchen curtains he could see it was going to be a nice hot summer day. But like most everyone else he would be at work and not enjoying it.

Our hero was a middle manager at the Saskatchewan Department of Administrative Affairs. (3) He was in his mid fifties, short, and somewhat overweight. He wasn’t good looking, but neither was he ugly. In fact, he really wasn’t average looking either, when he looked in the mirror, he saw a man who looked ‘dorky’, something that had been relieved somewhat by wearing close cropped beard.

He went to the door to bring in the paper (yes he still read a physical paper) and turned on the TV. As usual it was set to the weather channel to give him the what to expect, and he liked the female hostesses. He went to the news channel, which discussed Prime Minister Mark Garneau’s (4) push for improved science education. He went flipping through the channels and on CNN there was a panel discussing the American War in Syria and that more troops would be sent.

After a breakfast of eggs and toast, and a cup of tea after (He hated coffee), he used the computer to check the weather and other news sites. Checked his e-mail and Facebook (he refused to get a smartphone, a flip phone was good enough) and then a few amusing sites to lift his mood. Then went to work.

He had to admit it work was relative. Yes, there was plenty of paperwork moving back and forth, but no one read the reports. The wrote up proposals no body cared about, and studies nobody asked for. He had long ago realized it was just important that the department look busy and send out truckloads of paper to other departments.

His life was comfortable, he had known his wife in high school but had little contact with her. She was quiet, but good looking with large breasts, but she had a thing for ‘bad boys’ so he had no chance. They ran into each other almost ten years later, she was living in a small apartment with children by two different fathers, both of whom had abandoned her soon after. They found that they had similar tastes and she needed support and he liked having a wife that would have been otherwise beyond his reach. They had two more children, two were in university, one had a office job at a oil company, and one was studying to be an electrician. They had been fairly good kids, with the usual drama but nothing the police got involved in. His wife had a soft voice so even when she was complaining it didn’t annoy him at all. The had an OK sex life, once or twice a week, occasionally trying something new, and both enjoyed cuddling after. The house was a nice size but they were both fairly frugal and had a money socked away for a rainy day.

The next morning started the same, wake up, get dressed and settle in the living room to wake up more. He flipped through the channels, The Canadian news channel was going over the news, nothing unusual was going on. On CNN they were talking about border security. He continued flipping, but he quickly stopped when there was a naked woman appeared on the TV. “What the hell. Was this the Playboy channel. We don’t have that.” He looked at the channel number and realized it was a basic, non-digital channel. The naked woman was discussing cooking, and it took a few minutes before he realized she was wearing a steel collar. “What the frack is going on here?” He couldn’t help but get excited.

Tina (her nickname) come her a sec and see this?”

She came in and looked, there was no surprise in her reaction to what was on TV, “What, do you think this recipe looks good?”

It took him a few second to respond, but finally, “I thought so at first, but now not so much.” He could not believe that there was a naked woman on morning television, and his wife was completely nonplussed about it. He decided to check the channel listing on his computer and discovered the channel was called The Slave Channel. “What the fuck is going on here.” A quick Google search on ‘slave’ yielded a series of adds for slave sellers, slave accessories, and advice on owning slaves.

He drove to work, luckily there were no naked slaves to be seen as it was November and there was snow on the ground otherwise he probably would have had an accident. He was distracted the whole day he could barely remember that they were to discuss exploratory research points to millennial strategic concepts in the next meeting. He covered by simply saying phrases like “Whose baby is that.” “What’s your angle.” Or “I’ll bye that.”(5).

At lunch he used his laptop to explore a little history. In 1772 a English judge declared slavery legal. The opposite of what her remembered (he was a reader of history). The abolition movement never took off because the only major religious group to back it were the Quakers. Who then concentrated on the African Slave Trade and improvements in protections for slaves. The Civil War never happened, but like wasn’t the oneelsewhere in the industrial world, large scale use of slave as workers died out from a combination of economic changes, increased meccanization, organized worker opposition to perceived from competition from slaves, and a feeling that slavery had brought down the Roman Empire by making them ‘soft’.

The world wars (one of his areas of interest) went completely differently. The Kaiser William II wasn’t the one of history, but his brother Albert. The one known to history died after he was born. (6) As a much more level-headed ruler there was no naval race with Britain and thus much better relations all around. In 1912 the fact that British Generals and Senior Foreign Office Officials were conspiring to drag Britain into a European war on the French side was leaked to the papers. (7) The following scandal made any kind of alliance with France suicidal.

The following European War, without the backing of the British Empire went worse for France and a combined British-U.S. demand forced a negotiated end. Of course, that meant no end to the German Empire, no fall of the Czar and no rise of a communist state. And of course, there was no World War Two, but there was a Pacific War between America and Japan (Japan lost again, but no nukes).

As for the rise of female sexual slavery, it rather replaced the sexual revolution. Earlier, during the depression, poverty-stricken women sold themselves into slavery, and poor family did the same with some of their daughters. Now with Marxism kept out of the public and collage discourse, society stayed more conservative, and women’s lib made few inroads.

Back home again, and still not sure what to make of this world he has woken up in, he sat down to relax to an evening of television. He found every family on TV had some kind of slave, who were always obedient, and dim. In the middle of a scene a naked slave might show up, but it was what the slave did or said that was important, the fact that she was naked meant nothing. Of course, in real life he was sure teen boys talked big and snickered over them.

He was not sure what to make of race relation’s either, on television whites called blacks ‘Nigger” (Ya I said it, you wanna make something of it?), but blacks would return the insults using “cracker”, “honky”, “white trash” etc. He followed up on the internet, and found racist sites, but he did notice that Blacks were usually just depicted and stupid and lazy, but not violent or dangerous. An interesting development he thought, maybe because there was no Civil War but instead plantation slavery just died out slowly? Well the fact is I don’t know enough to make a lot of conclusions about anything.

A few day latter he decided to make a visit to a slave shop, he decided to visit a small one that was a bit more out of the way, rather than Sam The Slave Man in the downtown mall. Behind the counter was a vision of beauty, with a lithe body, long dark blond hair and lovely blond eyes. She was wearing a tight white halter top, which he loved on her as ha had a thing for women in halter tops, especially in white. She came up to him, and he could see she was wearing a tight black skirt the rose to mid thigh. Her name tag said “Claire, “May I help you?”

“I’m just looking around if that all right, I don’t want to waste your time.”

“Oh, its no trouble at all Sir may I show you around?”

“If its no trouble.”

“None at all.” And she showed him the various products for slave owners, everything from whips and shock collars, lube’s and vibrators, something called Slave Kibble and what almost looked like camping equipment. She took him to the back, there were two slaves there, on was a tall, curvy black girl with very dark skin and soft hair and a nice face. He wondered how she is able to keep it that way as back in his own world chemical hair straighteners requited a lot of care. The other woman was from somewhere in South East Asia, but he wasn’t sure, maybe Pilipino, or Thai. He did find himself going back to the black girl. He couldn’t stand it any longer and finally asked if he could look her over. She was brought out but he seemed to surprise both the slave and a sales clerk that he only held her hand as he asked her to turn around. He didn’t grab her breasts, or even her ass, though he did caress her arm for a few second. He got looks from both woman when he thanked the slave for letting him examine her while holding her hand in both of his. Later Claire would astound her boss with the fact that he had even wished the slave good luck and a good master. Leaving he was defiantly feeling horny, but also a little sad.

Over the next couple of days, he realized he was remembering his life here, or at least the version of him that had been here. His wife, Christina, had almost become a slave, her involvement with men of semi-criminal behavior left her with little to live on and two children by different men. She was told that she could easily have her children taken away and sold at auction. My arrival was a god send for her, and she did make a good wife realizing that with her record. (8) I could sell her into slavery with few questions asked. I even remembered that her daughter from another man, who I had raised as my own had followed in her mothers’ footsteps, and found herself a slave as a result. There was little her could do for her and as a result, he made sure to get anti-slavery insurance for everyone.

He had also realized other differences. Few men, and almost no women, had tattoos, Men still had much of the authority over the family that they had had in the Fifties, Rap never appeared, and Firefly (9) lasting five seasons were some of them.

Unfortunately, his explorations of “Slave-World” was cut short by waking up back in our regular world. He wondered if he would ever return. Or wake up someplace even stranger


1) A reference to a Bloom County comic strip story line
2) Mike Holmes is a popular Canadian television renovation show star.
3) A reference to the BBC comedy series “Yes Minister”
4) He’s a former astronaut
5) From an episode of the Flintstones.
6) This almost happened, He was believed to be dead but a maid discovered he was breathing
7) The conspiracy existed, and even the British Cabinet didn’t know until war had been declared and found itself trapped, but it wasn’t found out by the public till many years later.
8) Not a criminal record, but a record of a government social services organization. Essentially woman, and men, who become a social burden can end up as slaves.
9) Firefly was a Science Fiction TV series that ran on Fox in 2002-3

Re: Strange Awakenings

Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2020 9:39 am
by orflash64
Interesting story Gary. A story to explain the alternate history. But was he dreaming the slave and waking up in the real world or the other way around?
I knew the Flintstones reference even before the citing. You must be older than I thought, that was a my generation reference and I'm 55.
So you're sticking with Canada, I guess that's were you're from?
So are you going to write a new story of length or are you still stuck with what direction you want to go with your established Claire stories?

Re: Strange Awakenings

Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2020 9:40 am
by orflash64
The slave world or real world? Left out a word.

Re: Strange Awakenings

Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2020 5:08 pm
by gary
First, I did intend that he wasn't in a dream world, but an alternative universe.
Second I'm 54, and I know Flintstones from the fact that I would leave school for home to eat lunch, and watch Flintstones at noon. So I have ended up seeing every episode several times. Also bought the Complete Flintstones DVD, Whats interesting is that the opening credits in the first two seasons are completely different from the one I remember.
Third, I think I am done with Claire's story, though I have though of her gaining here freedom after ten years when her owner dies and frees her in his will.
I had started a story with a new character named Carol, but its a non-slave world story. I also have a basic outline in my head for another story with another character named Sally

Re: Strange Awakenings

Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2020 7:39 pm
by orflash64
Excellent, I was hoping you'd start something new. I agree, Claire does seem done.
There are many ways a girl can into trouble and still make an enticing story.

Re: Strange Awakenings

Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2020 2:40 pm
by jeepster
A good story! The interesting thing is which world is the real one!

Re: Strange Awakenings

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2020 9:15 am
by Hooked6
The saga of Claire is a most intriguing one and this addition was definitely "different." I LOVE long, evolving stories like this. One never knows just what is lying around the bend with your writings. Thanks for posting here.

Hooked6

Re: Strange Awakenings

Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2020 9:24 am
by TauriRed
jeepster wrote: Tue Mar 31, 2020 2:40 pm A good story! The interesting thing is which world is the real one!
Yes. I'm not sure if world can be real enough without at least 9 seasons of Firefly. :D