SWNOVELS Chapter 11
Meanwhile back at the Circle K…
Graves and Joseph Bouchard are putting Judge Dredd and all the other comic books and pornography in cardboard boxes.
“The sales of certain magazines, books, and home videos have been prohibited…” Khaled reads… “Section such and such of the mandate of King Bush for Kingdom America…Book burnings at the library.” He says holding one of the flyers that came with the official notice to stop selling certain written material, music, and videos. “Bring your Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, and religious scriptures…to show your fealty to your King.”
Graves continued placing the comic books and pornography that Circle K sold in a box. Judge Dredd was on the top…
By this time Tamara had decided to join the ROTC…and then the Marine Corps and then join the Rainbow Corps. Some people figure that by joining a group they could change the group for the better. Like a girl who dates a guy and begins to change him…what often ends up happening is that the group changes the individual and the individual’s desire to clean up the group has no effect. The individual is formed, and changed into what the group wants…like peer pressure…if you don’t act the way the circle of friends acts then you won’t have any friends…If you don’t go to the same church or have the same faith as your friends then you are excluded…the same with Racism…and now it’s the same way with worshipping the King…
Regardless if the changes are for good or bad, the individual is changed by the group rarely is the group changed by the individual.
Tamara had ideals…by the time she was to join and go to Basic Training, it would have been the summer of 2006. One day Khaled taught them to say the Holy Rosary using the digits of the fingers of their hands.
The thumb is used, to begin with, the Apostle’s Creed. The next three fingers are for the Hail Marys for the increase of Faith, Hope, and Charity, and the last two fingers are the Fatima Prayer and the Glory Be…then back to the Thumb for the first Lord’s Prayer…and then each finger has three digits, so twelve digits, ten for the Hail Marys, one for the Fatima Prayer, and the last for the Glory Be. The thumb is for the Lord’s Prayer and the other digits of the fingers for the other prayers until you pray the five decades of the Holy Rosary…then the Hail Holy Queen and the Prayer to St Michael the Archangel…
Tam-Pam had this memorized because, by the time she joined the Royal American Marine Corps, religious paraphernalia had been outlawed through Kingdom America. The more she and Graves spoke about certain things the more they saw shades of a Ray Bradbury book in their current world.
Khaled gave Graves several posters rolled up in a poster tube. Graves took them home and showed them to Tam-Pam…the missing boy who was her date to Junior Prom…
“This was the design of David’s protest graffiti…” She spoke. Although it wasn’t illegal to pray or have religious artifacts in one’s home if one was found to have such things in public they could be arrested for treason. “He disappeared and the rumor is that he was executed for treason by one of the Rainbow Corps…”
“Leave these in the closet…don’t go hanging these posters up.” Graves preemptively admonished her. “Hang it on your wall, don’t share these. Khaled doesn’t know where they came from any more than I do.”