601. The Reprobate
You may not recognise this image but for me it's one of Amalaric's best. It's not typical of his work, apart from the presence of an exceptionally beautiful, captive man experiencing a punishment. The mediaeval setting is unusual but it conjures up another era in which absolute power existed for some and punishments sometimes plumbed extremes that shock and repel us.
That goes some way to explaining The Reprobate's apprehensive look.
'Reprobate' tends to be a mild term these days, a synonym for a 'likeable rogue', but in this era it meant a person who was wicked and beyond salvation in a seriously religious sense. Described as a serf and rebel leader, this man looks too well-groomed and exercised to be a mere peasant, but a higher status is no protection from the ultimate punishment. The 'costumes' in the picture graduate towards a simpler, more basic style in the foreground as though reflecting this man's fall from grace and privilege. Those closest seem more modern and natural to us, without compromising the overall historical feel.
The Blacksmith could be simply making fetters for the captive prior to incarceration, but his totally naked state (on a cold winter's day) plus the bowed head of the clerical figure just in front of him, tells us something much more unpleasant is going on. It's quite normal for Amalaric's captives to experience rough treatment, quite often it's inflicted randomly but without malice by their Masters, but for those caught up in the judicial processes of the State, retribution is cold, calculated and unstoppable. You can read more at the link below.
Frame restraint in various forms is a recurring feature in Amalaric's work, but this is an unusual example, The crossed arms stance creates a surprisingly powerful impression of helpless vulnerability although the X-frame itself seems quite flimsy, a token restraint in a ritual which the captive seems to have accepted as inevitable. This and his physical beauty tugs at our emotions.
In this image Amalaric demonstrates that photo-manipulation can outdo rendering, retaining subtle human characteristics and details that are hard to create from scratch. The setting is more picturesque than his usual fare but provides a believable context. Unlike most of his collage-style works the principal characters are tightly integrated in this composition, convincingly connected by placement, perspective and eye-lines.
Another prominent photo-manip artist, Baron, is famed for producing photo-like images. He labours over minute details so that the 'joins' and sources of his material are completely disguised. Amalaric may swap heads or bodies but he doesn't usually pursue that level of refinement. Paradoxically our brains end up perceiving Baron's, mostly historical, images as movie stills rather than 'real' photographs. Amalaric's picture here looks more like a painting than a photograph and in a way that seems more authentic.
The face of the captive here may look familiar to you, we've met him before in a more modern predicament (if you want time to ponder where, I give the answer at the foot of this post). Swapping him into a historical scene doesn't have the same enriching effect I talked about in Part 5, here he's just an actor.
Read Reprobate at Aquadude Bunker
This image shows another rebel, one with the highest of aristocratic credentials in his homeland of Britannia. Now he's a captive and obliged to take part as 'booty' in the Triumphal Parade of his Roman conqueror. It's waiting for him just through the archway.
Stripped of his clothing like a common slave, he is mockingly adorned with the Royal Treasures which previously defined his elevated status. Now they and he are nothing but the spoils of war, the best specimens that could be extracted from a conquered people. They are all the property of a new owner. But this proud man's humiliation, subjugated and reduced to a display manikin, is merely temporary. It is only the ceremonial prelude to his formal punishment for leading the rebellion and for this crime, there is only one sentence.
From 'Fate of the Barbarian Kings' at Gay Bondage Fiction,
(this chapter can be read without taking out a subscription)
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Steve Delgado and the Sheriff's Daughter
You don't have to be an aristocrat to experience the grinding wheels of Justice but of all the hunky men who get caught up in the tendrils of Amalaric's black fantasies, Steve Delgado must be one of the most unfortunate. He's a modern day 'Miserable' who is relentlessly pursued by his Nemesis and all because of a crime that never even happened.
Steve is a drifter, earning a crust as a casual labourer in a small town in Arizona. As the title of the story suggests, he has a fling with the Sheriff's daughter. It's all perfectly legal, if morally objectionable to some, but their love nest is raided by the Sheriff's Deputies and Steve is flung into jail protesting his innocence.
The inspiration for Steve's visual characterisation i~s an image that I also picked up and published at this blog some years ago in a post entitled: Hang Around. The model is a man with a hairy body and a fresh-faced, boyish, innocent look. He seems woefully unsuited to coping with Amalaric-style torments and that mismatch gives an extra, evil twist to the black drama that follows.
His pose here, somewhat in the manner of a martyr preparing himself for his fate, is most apt
(a classic Stage 4 undress with visible underwear waistband).
At first Steve is simply bemused since he hasn't committed any crime. But Debbie, it transpires, is the Sheriff's daughter and Daddy doesn't approve of their liaison at all. Sheriff Cummins is chillingly painted by Amalaric as the archetypal, small town, bullying cop. He runs his domain with an iron fist and basic values, aided and abetted by a set of fawning lackeys who share his liking for brutality and domination. A rootless drifter like Steve is an easy target for them.
Steve's protestations about his innocence and rights are brushed aside They make no secret of their intention to abuse him for as long as it takes to get 'the truth' and they find justification for further brutality in his every act of resistance. They already have him stripped naked and restrained in shackles (inverted Y-style) when Debbie arrives and alleges that he forced her to have sex with him.
The Sheriff immediately takes a bull whip to him.
That whipping is not to be the end of it.
More brutal interrogations follow as the Sheriff ensures that the law takes an inexorable course towards a rape prosecution. Steve realises to his horror that Debbie is enjoying his maltreatment as much as the cops do. Denied access to a lawyer it dawns on him that he has no way of stopping the assaults.
Steve's isolation and mental torment while in the Sheriff's custody is convincing conveyed through a series of very simple images in which his tormentors are absent or else have only a peripheral presence.
In the days that follow Steve is relentlessly tortured until he confesses to raping the Sheriff's daughter. His resistance is finally broken after being forced to kneel on an iron bar, alone in a cell for hours on end with agony mounting by the minute, while the Deputies sit just outside enjoying a game of cards and beer and watching him.
Amalaric's image illustrates that crucial scene of lonely suffering. Like Dave's Shibari experience in '24 Hours', (Image 315), it looks innocuous, but the passage of time wreaks havoc on unnaturally-pressured bones, joints and muscles.
Once having confessed, Steve is fair game for the Deputies 'medical exam' which naturally includes a milking, supposedly to prove he was capable of the crime. They also obtain other DNA samples by using invasive, humiliating techniques.
Steve's virile, hairy body has been a object of repeated, scornful comments throughout his ordeal and at this point the Deputies amuse themselves by shaving off his pubic hair. Shaving is a fetish procedure that is rarely as satisfying in imagery as it is in the flesh or the imagination, but Amalaric's illustration is one of the clearest and sexiest I have ever seen. His unusual 'reconstruction' captures well the sense of vulnerability and exposure and the humiliating posturing involved. The absence of lubricating foam gives this ritual an edge of rough crudeness and risk as emasculation is added to Steve's roster of humiliations.
608 Deputy Doyle Prepares To Fuck Steve
Steve probably wouldn't appreciate the muscular beauty of his final, (very hairy) assailant. Deputy Doyle is shown here stripping off in an 'inset' image that telescopes two viewpoints into one. So we sense Steve fearfully waiting, but unable to see what is happening. The cop stiffly standing guard over him (note baton angle and hand!) likens the scene to an execution. It's not quite that bad, but Steve's written confession guarantees him a long prison sentence and his ordeal continues even in there. A truly wicked twist in the story leads to an erotic climax of biblical dimensions.
Even by the usual standards of Amalaric's stories, this is a harrowing tale. Not simply because of the nature of the tortures meted out on an undeserving victim, but because of the unrelenting, cold-blooded vindictiveness of the Sheriff, who is determined to brutalise and eliminate a man he considers unsuitable for his daughter (who herself joins the list of evil, manipulative women). Amalaric paints Cummins with remarkable skill as the stereotypical Southern small town Sheriff, a repellent, self-satisfied, know-all tyrant, surrounded by toadies and full of casual contempt for those who fall into his clutches and thus become subject to his well nigh, unlimited power. Just reading his dialogue made my skin crawl. Unlike some of Amalaric's other central characters, Steve does not volunteer or assent to punishment, nor does he make any foolish mistakes to bring it down on his head. A doom-laden narrative charts how he is inexorably propelled into incarceration, caught up in a maelstrom of relentless taunting and cruelty. It's not an easy read, but it's hard to put it down.
In essence the story of 'Steve Delgado' is not so very different from the enslavement fantasies but there's an element of familiarity and reality in this scenario (possibly born of movie influences) that makes it seem much more possible. Amalaric's choice of a boyish-looking man to play Steve in the imagery makes his terrible treatment somehow seem all the more horrific, like punishing a defenceless child. Steve's appearance is very Anglo-Saxon but his surname is actually Hispanic (a detail which is perhaps more obvious to US readers than the rest of us). It tempts us to re-imagine this story with a Steve who is ethnically Latin, or even Black, that's an alteration that would make for a very challenging read indeed.
'Steve Delgado and the Sheriff's Daughter' has not been available on the web since the demise of the 'Chained Muscle' site. Amalaric plans to re-publish it at Gay Bondage Fiction in due course.
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Dungeons of the Emerald City
Steve Delgado's life is arbitrarily taken away from him and he is cast into a different world of imprisonment. This is also the essence of the story of 'Dungeons of the Emerald City'. Emerald City is the capital of the land of the Wizard of Oz and Amalaric's fantasy is built using the constructs of that tale, but it is a long way removed from Dorothy's experience of that domain. He channels the setting and zany characters into a dark, dark tale which has no red slippers escape option.
Like Dorothy, Joe Skelton finds himself inexplicably transported to a fantastic world formed from earthly ingredients but refashioned into a bizarre, cartoon-like form. Almost immediately he falls into the hands of a gang of munchkins, but these are not the cute, harmless creatures of old, but violent opportunists. It seems that men like Joe, regularly turn up out of the blue in these parts of Oz. The munchkins make a living from capturing and enslaving these confused and bewildered humans. Before long Joe finds himself up for sale on the Emerald City's Auction Block stripped to his underpants (of course) for the big occasion.
610 Slaves In The Fudge Factory
Joe is purchased and set to work in the Fudge Factory. It's a comic name (with ambiguously humorous, fetishistic overtones) and we're told that....
“...the floor of the cavernous factory presented a fine sight of straining muscular torsos,
gleaming with sweat in the filtered light....”
Nice as that may sound, it's essentially hard labour for the slaves in terrible conditions, which the overseers ensure is not without regular punishments and sexual bullying. Despite the ambience of a childlike fantasy, we get a not too pleasant glimpse of the reality of enslavement from the slave's point of view.
So far this seems like a weird variant of the familiar Amalaric tale of enslavement - until the cruelty of the munchkins drives the slaves to unite and revolt. They begin to wage a violent, organised, guerrilla campaign against their oppressors and as the illustration shows, widespread death and destruction follows. By showing their humanity, striking back at their oppressors instead of just escaping from them, these men change our perceptions of them.
Bobby Jacobs, like Joe, had somehow been transported to Oz. He too was 'harvested' by passing munchkin Slavers and sold to work on a sugar plantation. Liberated in an 'Oz Liberation Front' raid, he naturally joined the rebels, but was re-captured when an informer betrayed a planned raid to the Emerald City Authorities.
In Oz, runaway slaves are normally returned to their owners to return to work (after due punishment), but as rebels these captives were condemned to death by the State. Bobby was crucified on the plantation where he had worked, without nails so he would suffer a slow death, alone in the fields save for the curious stares of passers-by. Amalaric shows nature carrying on prettily around him, unmindful of his suffering.
The original Oz scarecrow was a man without a heart but not devoid of compassion. In modern story-telling we still draw on the idea of a man or a soul trapped within the scarecrow, but horror movies have shifted the emphasis to associations with mysterious death, isolation and exposure to evil. Jotto's take on the Scarecrow theme which I posted earlier this year suggests a mysterious, horror lurking within the scarecrow. Amalaric brings it out and makes it explicit and real.
613 In The Custody of the Mad Munchkin
Most of the rebels end up in the bowels of the enormous, underground 'Dungeons of the Emerald City'. It's a magical place in some ways, but populated by creatures who delight in inflicting suffering. Here simple death is often the least of the unpleasant fates available. Amalaric assigns a particularly grisly one to the captive shackled to the slanting post in the centre, but all these beautiful men face terrible torments. Two of them look anxiously towards us, as if wondering if their turn has finally come. We do not know what happens to Joe but can only fear the worst.
There is a variant of this image and a brief extract from the story describing the nature of the Emerald City Dungeons in the 13thof the 1001 Nights at Aquadude
"Dungeons of the Emerald City" is not really an entertaining enslavement fantasy, despite outward appearances, but a bleak tale where Amalaric shows us very clearly the implacable nature of institutional oppression, which as gay men we can (still) identify with only too well.
“Dungeons of the Emerald City” is not currently available on the web.
Amalaric plans to publish it at Gay Bondage Fiction.
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Just Deserts
614 Doogie Gets Rowdy At The Board Walk
The story of Doogie Muir, the uncontrollable teenager, is another example of merciless punishment, but one much closer to home. Doogie and his friends have long been raising hell in their community, the nature of their misdeeds is not spelt out but 'the townsfolk' have decided to take action. At 19 years old, Doogie is too old to be taken over the knee, but the corollary of that in this world is that he's gonna get something much worse. This super image of one of his numerous arrests sets a promising scene for his comeuppance.
615 Doogie Strung Up In The Garage
Retribution comes in the form of an arrogant 'rent-a-cop' from the College which Doogie's supposed to be attending. A 'cop' whose demeanour and imagination bears a disturbing resemblance to that of Sheriff Cummins. He is aided and abetted but Doogie's own, weak Dad who despairs of controlling his wayward son.
Doogie is manhandled into the garage and stripped, initially to his underpants to receive the strap. His friends who arrive for a pre-arranged outing and some nosy neighbours are invited in to witness his humiliation and even to take part in it. Later Doogie is stripped fully naked (above) for a further series of punishments which continue late into the night, long after the 'witnesses' have left and eventually transition into arcane techniques which are definitely in the 'unusual' and adult category.
Afterwards, the averted eyes of his friends and by contrast the eager interest of certain neighbours are an ongoing reminder to Dougie of the full extent of his humiliation.
This seems harsh justice indeed for (mere?) Anti-Social Behaviour. So why don't Doogie (or the witnesses) simply report this terrible, non-judicial beating to the authorities? Amalaric gets round this by getting the City to legalise it. The City Council adopt the suggestion of short, sharp, shocks for troubled youth and set up a proper centre for it's implementation.
You'd think Doogie's friends and associates would have learned from witnessing the terrible treatment of their 'leader', but being of a certain age and afflicted by the youth disease of relativism -
“(so and so) got away with (something similar), Miss”
- they drift back to their old ways and in due course they get their own visit from a Cop. That a stomach churning moment is splendidly captured in this image. He has come to escort this young offender to the new centre set up to bring all these unruly youths into line.
617 Doogies Friend
Summoned to the same place, Jim Peterson discovers that the improvised restraint of Doogie in his father's garage has given way to a very formal X-Frame in the re-purposed barn and his correction session is not for just an evening but two days of what will be continuous chastisement in various forms.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, he, like Doogie, emerges a changed man.
Above, Jim warily looks round to catch a sense of what's coming next.
For some reason, I love his bare feet on the concrete and the pile of discarded clothing.
From'Just Deserts', published at Gay Bondage Fiction as 'Bad boys get what they deserve'
You can read the first chapter without membership
The semi-judicial nature of the punishments meted out to Doogie and their evolution into a more formal corrective system for his friends links into the story of Mike Walker.
Mike, a 26 yo, repeat offender became the first of his community to fall under similar, newly enacted, punishment laws. He experienced a fully legal flogging, not exactly public, but televised to a select, paying audience so as to augment the City revenues.
Amalaric helpfully explains all the provisions of the new law regarding age limits, permitted implements, target areas, number of hits, dress code and display arrangements – it's all so involved protecting these boy's health and safety!
As you can see, Mike is a truly exceptional specimen of a man and this has prompted the cameraman to get in very close. Mike's bowed head adds something special to this image. The Civic Punisher waits in the wings, poised to strike with crotch bulging and weighing his whip impatiently. His physique is no less impressive than Mike's and ideal for television, which may well have helped him land the job, out of what must have been a very long list of eager applicants.
Mike, we learn, was “soundly whipped while stripped completely naked in a brightly lit cell beneath city hall”. We can only speculate what effect it had on Mike to be whipped by a muscular Adonis, instead of the overweight oaf he might reasonably have expected.
from 210thof 1001 Nights at Aquadude Bunker
Amalaric's explorations of these fantasy scenarios, filling out the fine details of procedures and their implications make fascinating reading and are scattered throughout his works, notably in the '1001 Nights' series.
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For me, these examples of 'Cruel Justice' differ from the 'rough and tumble' of the various punishment and enslavement yarns I explored in previous Parts of this series, having a more serious edge that prompted me to question what draws us to this genre of fiction and I will offer a discussion on this in a separate post, next.
Meanwhile the fictional legalisation of the unthinkable touched on in the concluding images leads us in Part 7 into the subject of 'Institutional Slavery'
Read this series from Part 1