Part 2: King XXII Efram

King 21

This novel include graphic sex scenes, some involving minors, rape and forced sex. It is purely a fantasy and is not depicting real people or events. It is intended as a satire and is meant to be both funny and stimulating. The stories have a political slant as you will see. I hope you enjoy them.  New chapters will be published as they are finished.

I was 15 when Mom told me the story of Cresendyas and the start of his adventures in Atlantis and the lands beyond.  She believed it to be true, but of course, she was a follower of the prognosticator Edgar Cayce and he was a firm believer in Atlantis and claimed to have seen visions of the ancient, legendary continent said to have disappeared beneath the sea.

She’d heard the story from her adoptive father Vlostock growing up as a girl at the Sausage Factory in Chicago.  She never was sure if  Vlostock was her real father. A girl from Mortuse’s west coast operations brought my mom to the Sausage Factory and Vlostock accepted the child as a gift from her.  Her name was Miriam, but Vlostock called her Miri.  Mom assumed Vlostock accepted her when no one else, including her real dad, would, but Vlostock never made her feel she was anything but a blood relative.  As far as he was concerned, mom was his daughter and he doted her on as his own.

Some will say it must have been psychologically damaging to grow up in a house of ill repute, but she found it an adventure.  She did not have just one mom.  She had dozens.  Every one took a hand in raising her and instilling great family values. She was never threatened sexually and it was never assumed she would join the family business.  That was her choice if she wanted. And she didn’t really want that life.  She was a romantic and felt that having sex with hundreds of men did not appeal to her.  She was looking for Mr. Right, or so she said.  Mr. Right turned out to be my Dad, a low-life loser if ever one existed. 

Mariam grew accustomed to the rhythms, smells and sounds of the Sausage Factory, the big Gothic mansion surrounded by a high brick wall and  grand old oaks on Chicago’s Gold Coast.  In the summer when school was not in session, the smell of coffee and breakfast being prepared in the downstairs kitchen usually awoke her and she was able to spend time with Vlostock, Saana and Candy in the dining for breakfast before heading outside for a day of adventure on the surrounding grounds.  She’d explore the old stables and the woods just behind the mansion, climbed trees and skipped rocks across the pond.   Just after lunch, the first customers began arriving to see their favorite courtesan for an afternoon quickie.  These were usually the extremely well to do members of Chicago’s social set not damaged irreparably by the Great Depression.  

The crazy, heady  days of the 1920s were long since over but the Sausage Factory had survived the economic downturn and a wave of do-gooder Puritanism that swept across the region after the excesses of the 1920s.  Partially, that was because the do-gooders enjoyed what the Sausage Factory had to offer as much as they pretended to be aghast.  Also, Vlostock’s marketing genius was very much helpful in the survival of the Sausage Factory.

For example, he recruited specialized talent no other house of ill repute could match.  Among the stars he recruited were Zena and Zana, the Siamese Twins who were billed as “two mouths, four breasts, three legs, two pussies, two buttholes and four feet with 16 niches.  Plenty of holes, no waiting.”  Zena and Zana were well known throughout the Midwest and customers came from all over to sample their various places to “plug” in.

Vlostock also started the practice of Friday Fish at the Sausage Factory.  Customers could sniff or lick the pussies of any courtesan on duty on Friday nights for a mere $10.  Vlostock was no dummy, however.  He knew that having sniff or lick was not going to satisfy anyone.  Once they’d gotten a “taste” of pussy, the hard-to-fight inclination of most men was to sample the whole fish stew.

There were also “sex slave” auctions that were so well attended it was difficult for any non-regular to get a seat.  Miriam stumbled accidently into one of these auctions one warm summer night while on vacation from school.  She watched as Candy auctioned herself as a teenage slave girl in the old south to a kinky old southern banker named Major Tom Scottland. 

“Isn’t it demeaning for you to pretend to be a slave?” Vlostock asked Candy one day.  “I mean I thought you came north to get away from the racism of the south?”

“Major Tom pays extremely well for his fantasies of raping a poor black plantation slave,” Candy said.  “Making him pay and enjoying the sex is my best revenge.”

At the auction, Vlostock lifted Candy’s skirt to reveal her exceptional derriere.  He knew most men, but especially Major Tom, could hardly resist.

“What am I bid for this prime young example of southern slavery,” Vlostock said, winking at Candy.  He had given her the opportunity to discontinue her night time work, but he’d come to realize that Candy and Saana both liked the random sex and money too much to give it up willingly.  They could pick and choose the customers they serviced and that suited them just fine.

“Two thousand,” a stranger in the back called out.

Vlockstock struggled in the bright lights to see the man’s face but could not make it out.

 “Nonsense,” Major Tom called out. “Five thousand.”

If he hoped to knock the competition out by more than doubling the first bid, Major Tom was badly mistaken.   The stranger went immediately to six thousand.  Tom countered with seven. Bidding did not conclude until Candy’s ass had been auctioned for an incredible for the time $11,000, by far a record.

“My God, my ass is worth $11,000 to somebody,” Candy gasped.  “If I was a field slave in the south, that was a sum of money I wouldn’t see in a lifetime.”

Vlostock was about to announce the next girl to be auctioned when he noticed tiny Miriam standing in the center of the ballroom with a puzzled look on her face.

“Miri,” he called out.  “What are you doing here? Somebody get my baby to bed.”

The crowd laughed and applauded as Miriam, my mom, was picked up by Rashan and carried from the room.  She was only seven at the time and had only a dim understanding of what was transpiring but the memory was sharply etched for reasons I will explain later.

“Cute kid,” the man with the shadow over his face called out.

“Thanks, too whom ever said that,” Vlostock said. “Night Miri.  I love you.”

“When she gets a little older, I am coming back to sample her holes,” the stranger said.

Vlostock’s well-known temper flared.  He literally jumped from the stage and ran toward the back of the ballroom where the stranger had been standing.  When he arrived, however, the man seemed to have disappeared.   The back door to the ballroom was just closing, indicating the path the man had fled.

Vlostock thought about running out into the corridor in pursuit, but thought better of it.  Too many family members had been gunned down running out a door with no knowledge of what was waiting on the other side.  Better to live to protect Miri than die and cast her to the wolves.

“Sorry folks,” Vlostock mumbled to the crowd. “My baby is only seven.”

“That guy was a bastard,” somebody in the crowd said.

“Yes,” Vlostock answered sheepishly. He was embarrassed that he’d been goaded so easily into losing control.

The auction went on without further incident, but Vlostock felt he hadn’t heard the last of the mysterious stranger.   He knew organized crime in Chicago now relied on his group to operate their most profitable brothels, and they were unlikely to threaten him.  The other branch of his own family was a greater threat than ever, however. The sadness that washed over him was palpable as he remembered the past five years of nearly constant mayhem, particularly out in California.

“Be vigilant,” he said to one of Rashan’s trusted guards as he retired for the night.

A few weeks later, two large, burly men showed up at the Sausage Factory and were escorted in with great reverence.  Their appearance frightened Miriam  tremendously.  The oldest was a man mountain who looked to have been chiseled from granite.  His face bore many scars. Miriam was told he was grandpa Mortuse. 

The man other was just as big but seemed carved from fine ivory.  His thick jaw was set in such a way as to make his handsomely rugged face look monstrous, he walked with a pronounced limp and he frightened Miriam even more.

Vlostock called her to his study one day.

“Miri, I want to introduce you to your grandfather, Mortuse, and to my younger brother, Efram,” he told her.

She stepped back to hide behind Vlostock. 

“Come, come, dear,” Mortuse said. “You have no reason to fear me or your father.”

Efram looked on with a kind but puzzled smile. He said nothing.

“Father, I thought we did not want to tell her about Efram yet,” Vlostock said to Mortuse.

“She looks to be ready to know who her real father is,” Mortuse said.  “Efram wanted to see her again.  And she owes him her life.”

Miriam stepped out to look at Efram.  A wave of recognition swept through her even though he seemed unsure of her identity.

“Efram, this is your daughter, Miri,” Vlostock said.  “We have been raising her here away from the violence out west until you recovered enough to see her again.”

Efram grunted animal like.  He still possessed some of his former faculties, but he was easily confused. He smiled as if he understood but there was a tenderness in his face that softened Miriam’s heart despite her father’s monstrous visage.  She extended her hand to him in friendship.  He reached out to her  and pulled her close for a gentle hug.

Miriam was not old enough to be told yet but her father had used his body to shield her from an assassin when she was only two.  Her mother, Chelsie, lost her life in the attack.  Efram had been escorting his small family from a funeral for one of Rashan’s guards killed by the opposition, when one of their most feared enemies, a Mexican named Negrosso, opened fire with a machine gun from behind a cluster of bushes.  Efram threw his wife to the ground to protect her, but it was already too late.  She’d been nearly cut in half by the machine gun burst.  Efram had been carrying Miriam and was struck in the leg.  He lay on the ground, his body covering his daughter awaiting the next volley.  Fortunately, the machine gun jammed.  Summoning super-human strength, Efram struggled to his feet despite his leg wounds and hobbled toward Negrosso who was struggling to clear his weapon.  Efram leaped just as a sudden burst of fire caught him in the jaw.

Leaving Efram for dead, Negrosso started toward Miriam who was lying on the ground bawling several feet away.  He’d sworn to kill Efram and his entire family for an alleged insult and was determined to make Miriam his next victim.  At that moment, several of Rashan’s guards opened up with automatic weapons fire and Negrosso was forced to make a hasty retreat.

Efram made a slow, partial recovery from his wounds, though it looked for awhile like he might die.  Miriam was taken to Chicago by one of her mother’s friends after Chelsie’s funeral.  Mortuse felt that it was important to get her away from the violence in California, fearing with good reason the possibility that Negrosso would come gunning for her.  He was known to always follow up on his promises and he’d sworn to kill Efram’s entire family. 

“For five years poor Efram has suffered because of that devil Negrosso,” Mortuse said to Vlostock during a meeting to discuss the rising climate of violence the family was facing.  “Now our enemies are preparing to form an alliance with that bastard Hitler to search for the Quin and threaten all of the world.”

 “What makes you so sure?” Vlostock said.

“We have spies everywhere,” Rashan said.  “One of the nice things about running bordellos all over the world is that collecting intelligence is relatively easy.”

“I know that, Rashan, but this is something we must be sure about,” Vlostock said. “The stakes are too high for us to be wrong.”

“Soon the world will be engulfed in war,” Mortuse said.  “We must get the Quin before war begins. Later, the Nazis, aided by Salgalcando, will be difficult to stop when they have an advantage in Africa.”

“Roosevelt will never allow us to get drawn into a war,” Vlostock said. “I know him personally.”

“Even now Roosevelt moves to prepare us for war,” Rashan said.  “Even if the Germans do not give him a pretext, the Japanese will.”

“Yes, and the Nazis are known to be searching for artifacts from ancient Atlantis and the Quin is alleged to be the prize they covet most,” Mortuse said.

“I thought the Quin Shuan Shulat is a life force that existed in all of nature and could be perceived from anywhere,” Vlostock said. “Why do we need to go to Africa to find it?”

“The artifact the Nazis seek is that portion of the Quin that touches a singularity in our world,” Rashan explained. “It is this same portal through which Belial allegedly traveled through time, dooming Atlantis and very nearly the whole world.”

“It was brought to Africa after Atlantis exploded by Cresendyas,”  Mortuse added.

“I thought no one knew for sure where Cresendyas went after leaving Atlantis, as if Atlantis really existed” Vlostock said.

“Your Harvard education betrays you,” Rashan said.  “You insist on rational discourse about a subject to which reason and knowledge does not apply.”

“We have surmised that Africa must have been where Cresendyas ended his journeys because a large segment of our family hails from that location and we have evidence there is something in the heart of that continent which they hold sacred and continue to protect from discovery by outsiders,” said Mortuse. “Even if we are able to get to the Quin before Salgalcando, we will face a negotiation, maybe a war, with the descendants of Dnan.”

“This seems crazy, father,” Volostock insisted.  “I cannot leave Chicago now.  There is too much going on that needs my attention.”

“Son, you have built a great team here, people you can trust to run things while you are gone,” Mortuse said.  “On the other hand, there is no one but you and Rashan I can trust to go to the village of Valdignya to locate the Quin before Salgalcando and his Nazi mercenaries do. And who can tell what finding the Quin portal might mean for Efram here?”

Vlostock looked at Efram and knew that there was no way he could refuse his father’s request now.  If it could make Efram better or improve his life, then…

“Saana and Candy will want to come,” Vlostock said.

“Of course,” Mortuse said.  “I will stay here with Efram until I am sure everything is working well in your absence. “

“And Miri?” Vlostock said.

“There may come a time when she is no longer safe here at the Sausage Factory, as you call it,” Mortuse said.  “I have made plans for if and when that time comes, she and Efram will be taken secretly to stay with trusted relatives in the northwest.  There they will remain until you return.  That will only happen if we feel we cannot protect them from Negrosso here in Chicago.”

Miriam, my mother, spent her adolescence growing up in Seattle, Wash.  She lived with her aunt Fortensa and Uncle Surmise. When she was 26, she married Charles DeGrasso, a ship yard worker who promptly moved her to the scrub country of the high desert in eastern  Oregon near where his family lived.  She never saw Vlostock or Mortuse again.   She never, in fact, knew their fate. But she did see Efram again, briefly.

She was 13 and on her way to school in Plimpton, Oregon, the same middle school my sisters and I would one day attend.  She had just turned a corner when a man with a shadow over his face stepped from behind a bush and blocked her path.  She could see that the “shadow” was some time of dark tattoo that obscured the man’s features.

“Well, my sweet senorita,” the man said.  “I have traced you here to this wild country in eastern Oregon. I will soon put you out of your misery, but first, you can start by telling me how I can locate that simpleton father of yours.”

“They told me you might come,” mom said. “You are Negrosso?”

“Yes, I am called that by some, mostly those who fear me,” the man said.  “Do you fear me?”

“You killed my mother and injured my father,” she said.

“Only because your grandfather and father gave great insult to me and members of my immediate family,”  Negrosso said.  “Because of that, I swore vengeance.”

“And you are here today to claim it,” Miriam said.

“Yes, on you and if I can, your father, Efram,” Negrosso laughed.  “Where is he?  Tell me and I will assure you a quick death. Otherwise, it will be slow and painful.”

“He is here,” Miriam said.

“This is no joking matter, young chica,” the man said moving closer. “I assure you, I am not given to humor.  Where is your father?  Does he still drool and mumble like an idiot?”

“No, he is much better since the Quin,” Miriam said.

“The Quin?” Negrosso said.  For the first time, Miriam noticed the shadow over his face lighten into cloud of fear.

“Yes, my father is standing behind you,” Miriam said.  “We have been waiting for this day for a long time.”

Negrosso turned to see a hulking figure he not previously noticed.  The man looked like an older version of her father, Efram, but wiser and more gentle than she remembered.  His monstrous visage had been softened somewhat by time.

“Daughter, it is good to see you again,” Efram said.  “I cannot stay, but I watch you and love you always.  I could not allow this creature do you harm.”

Negrosso backed away but knew every escape route was blocked. 

“I had heard rumors,” Negrosso said.  “I did not believe.”

“You believe in nothing, Martino,” Efram said, using Negrosso’s given name.  “It is why you believe you can kill with impunity. Now you must come with me.  I will not harm you in front of my daughter even though you killed her mother in front of her.”

“So the Quin…” Negrosso said.

“It exists,” Efram said.  “Let us walk together.  I will tell you all about it.”

Miriam watched her father and the killer of her mother walk away from her down the street as if they were friends.   Efram seemed to be explaining something to his enemy, who was not in the slightest amused.

Mom told me years later, “I have never seen a man more terrified.”