Tuesday:

That first day Colin woke slowly, the throbbing from his pouting, over-used anus the first thing to register, the stench of sweat and sex the second.  He wiped drool onto the padding beneath his face.  Its black vinyl surface was thick with the dried remains of bodily fluids, their harsh scent mingling in his nostrils, their stale flavors an afterthought on the middle of his tongue.  He tried to sit up but found he was still chained to the odd, little contraption that had supported him throughout the long night.

When he first saw it, it reminded him of a children’s picnic table, its top padded and just long enough for his head and torso.  Half of each seat was padded as well.  Odd indentations creased down the center of each pad which Colin soon learned came from knees pressed into the cushions for long hours at a time.

As the men tore the clothes from his body and chained him face down to its surface, Colin remembered thinking, I’m going to be eaten.  They’re going to eat me alive.  And though the men did take their pound of flesh, hours later as he lay raw and spent on the bench, the ache in his jaws told him he had been the one to eat his fill and not the other way around.

He buried his face in the cushion and moaned.  Had he really done it?  Had he really allowed himself to be used (or perhaps misused) in such a fashion?  And not just allowed it but asked for it.  Paid for it, even.

Colin had thought it a good idea at the time, four months earlier—just after Mitch had left him, turning their home into a hollow-sounding townhouse filled with nothing but the groans of an unsettled foundation and a creaking frame.  It was those first nights of solitude that had led him to make the choice.  His lover would never have been game for something like this.  Hell, Mitch bristled any time Colin suggested shaking things up even a little.  But this—submitting to a dozen men and every twisted desire their collective imagination could conspire to come up with—this would horrify Mitch.  Which was probably the reason Colin finally logged on to the website, pulled out his credit card, and without another thought paid the thousand dollar deposit.  Now, four thousand dollars later and only one night into his ordeal, he wondered if he’d made the right decision.

The chants of the men, their constant chorus of “oh, yeah” and “uh-huh” still filled his ears.  The names they had called him, like the demands they had made of him, still echoed through the musty-smelling basement, just the same as each and every word of gratitude he had finally offered up in return still clung to the thick and dank air.  His screams of shock and pain followed by whimpers of pleasure made his face flush as he remembered each one.  The men’s laughter at his pain along with their orders to “just breathe”, to “open wide, pig”, and to “take it; take it all, boy,” sent a shiver up his spine.

He’d fought at first, struggled to maintain control of the situation and his body, but soon enough he discovered giving in was easier.  Releasing his will, letting go of the taboos and his control and simply taking it—taking each order, each demand, each tweak, each twist, each brush of hairy flesh, each pounding, pulsing thrust of pain masking a hint of pleasure waiting just on the other side—it all led him deeper into a hidden part of his soul he’d never knew existed.

It was a place past revenge against Mitch and a tarnishing of their eight years together.  It was a place past concerns of what the firm’s partners might think if they knew how he had chosen to spend his vacation.  It was a deep cave that he could crawl in to, a den he was tempted never to climb out of again.

And the fact he had not simply endured it, not only “taken it”, but ultimately cried out for more, pleaded for it not to end, begged the men to force their will upon him just once more, it all filled him with a perverse sense of pride.

Ultimately, it was too much, the memories and the burgeoning realization of the dormant desires he had awakened.  He couldn’t stay still.  He felt the urge to move, to escape the chains binding him, and to be free.

“Hello,” he said, his voice still raw from a long night of screams.  “Is anyone there?”  And after a moment, a second time: “Hello!”

“Hi,” a small voice said in response.

Colin looked up.  A young boy sat on the basement steps across the dimly-lit room.

“Um . . . hi,” was all Colin could muster.

The light from the stairwell lit up the boy’s light brown hair in a halo on the crown of his head.  It reminded Colin of his own hair back when he was that age, back before the years and his father’s genes darkened him.  The rest of the boy’s face was cast in shadow.  He hugged his knees to his chest as he studied Colin from across the room.

“My name’s Mark,” the little boy offered and then, “What’s yours?”

“ . . . Colin.  What are you doing here, Mark?”

“I live here,” the little boy said as he stood and walked down the steps toward Colin.  He crossed the room and circled the small bench Colin was shackled to.

Suddenly, Colin was frantically aware of his privates dangling down past the edge of the bench beneath him and his naked butt hanging up in the air for the little boy to see.  He tried to close his legs but found them chained too tightly to either side.  “Um, Mark, maybe you better—”

“Your tush is all red.”

“Mark, why don’t you come around front here where we can talk face-to-face?”

“Were you bad?”

“What?!” The innocent question stung like an accusation slapped across Colin’s face.  Shame turned his face crimson once more.

“When I was bad I got spanked.”  The little boy picked something up and walked around to face Colin.  In his hands he held a long paddle, the kind fraternities carve with Greek letters and hang on chapterhouse walls.  Thick holes had been drilled into its surface to improve performance.  After last night Colin could offer first-hand testimonials to its increased aerodynamics.

The child looked up from the paddle and repeated his question, “Were you bad?”

He couldn’t have been more than eight, his round, angelic face embarrassing Colin to no end. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t avoid looking into the child’s eyes.  There was a weariness there, a wisdom, an understanding that seemed at odds with his years.

 “Mark, do your folks know you’re down here?”

“I don’t have folks, not anymore.”

“Well, who looks after you, your grandmother?”

The little boy’s only response was to shake his head.

“Where are you supposed to be right now?”

“Upstairs, in the apartment.  Doing my homework.”

 “Well, I think that’s where you should be then,” Colin suggested.  He was trying to remain calm, but his nakedness in the current situation wasn’t helping.  The boy, on the other hand, didn’t seem at all bothered by the state in which he had found Colin.

“So, why are you chained up?” Mark asked studying the links of metal which on one end were connected to the leather cuffs around Colin’s wrists and on the other end bolted to the legs of the bench supporting him.

“I . . .” Colin shifted, vainly struggling to rise. “I . . . Well, I—”

“My dad used to chain the dogs up outside.  They didn’t like it.  They would howl and whine forever it seemed like, all night long sometimes.  And when he got sick of listening to it, he would go out and beat them till they shut up.  I would hear them yelp and whine through my bedroom window.”

“I didn’t think you had a dad.”

“This was before, back when I did,” Mark explained as he crossed the basement to a table against the cinderblock wall.  It was cluttered with the props and toys from the previous night’s escapades.  Some were still sticky from the dried lubricant the men had slathered on them.  Mark set the paddle down and picked up a particularly large piece of rubber and flapped it back and forth in the air.

“So, do you like being chained up?” he asked.

“Mark, you should put that down.  I really think you need to go back upstairs.  Now.  Someone’s bound to come looking for you.”

Mark set the dildo back on the table and leaned against its edge, slinging his hands in the back pockets of his jeans.  Colin couldn’t get over how mature the kid seemed.

 “He’s busy getting the bar stocked.  Inventory came in.”

“Wait, your dad runs the bar?”

“No, I told you, I don’t live with my dad anymore.”

“But the guy who owns the bar upstairs, he takes care of you?”

“Jon owns the bar.”

“And Jon’s the one that takes care of you, right?”

Before he could respond, the little boy’s attention was drawn by two words spray painted on the far wall beside the stairwell.  The work hadn’t been done with much care.  The paint ran as if the letters had been gouged into the wall causing it to bleed.  The little boy walked closer for a better view, his elbows bent, his hands still cupped in his back pockets.

“The Trou . . . the Troug . . . Troug—”

“The Trough,” Colin volunteered, struggling to make out the words in the dim light of the basement’s single bulb.

“The Trough!” Mark repeated excitedly.  Then he turned back to Colin, “What’s a trough?”

“It’s the place . . . the place that pigs go to eat their slop.”

Mark studied Colin a moment longer before turning back to the wall.  He could hear the young boy repeat the word a final time, only now it came out quietly, reverently as if it was a sacred word given voice only on the most hallowed of occasions.

“The Trough.”

The sound of the door opening from up above drew their attention.  Footsteps on the stairs were followed almost immediately by shoes coming into view.  Colin glanced to where Mark had been standing but the boy was gone.  He searched the dimly-lit room and found the child tucked away in the shadows beneath the steps.  Mark raised a delicate finger to his lips, cautioning Colin not to say a word.

A dark-haired, well-built man descended the stairs.  Colin vaguely remembered meeting him the night before when he first entered the bar.  Colin guessed this must be Jon.  The man set down a tray of food along with a dingy grey towel and washcloth before unlocking the chains binding his guest.

Colin slowly rose from the bench, his arms and legs unsteady after so many hours being bound.

The man set the tray of food on the bench next to Colin.

“Thank you,” he said.

Jon didn’t reply but went to the table holding the sullied toys.  He silently went to work washing them in the deep utility sink nearby before drying them and returning them to the cabinet above the table.

Colin twisted off the cap from a bottle of water sitting on the tray and began drinking as he glanced back to the shadows under the stairs.

Mark was nowhere to be seen.

Wednesday:

Colin’s neck was stiff.  The tendons were knotted, reaching up into his jaw with a dull clamp that tightened over the side of his face and his eardrum, making them throb.  He tried to shift to another position but the motion caused his shoulders to cramp and startled him awake.  He looked around the empty basement, momentarily at a loss for where he was, and then it all came back to him.

The night before the men had hung the sling from the rafters and handcuffed his wrists to the chains supporting it.  Once they’d finished with him, he’d spent fitful hours of sleep trying to keep his head from falling backward over the edge of the sling.  Finally, he’d wrapped a hand around the chain and rested his head against his knuckles, falling into an uncomfortable slumber.

His body felt as if it’d been split in two, a freeway cut and paved up the inside of him.  He imagined cars full of families sight-seeing up his rectum on inexpensive getaways.  He was amazed, though, that the night’s construction efforts hadn’t been the most intense part of the evening.  It was the waiting.  That had been the toughest part.

For hours he could hear the music bleeding through the floorboards from the bar upstairs.  He imagined the men gathering together, discussing the night’s itinerary before the door ever opened and they tromped down the flight of stairs into the basement named The Trough.  They appraised him silently, drinking their beers and smoking their cigars (their stench still hanging heavy in the air hours later).  Their wanton expressions made his heart thud as he stood timidly, uncertain of what was in store.

He had felt like a terrified little boy.  He wanted to hide, to escape into the shadows and vanish.  Their leers terrified him, but at the same time he wanted them.  He needed their eyes on him.  He deserved it.  Hell, he’d asked for it even.

And as they took him and used him and reminded him a second night just how simple it was to blur pleasure with pain, he escaped to that quiet center of his core—that cave—where over and over again he repeated the words until they were as much a part of him as his own name:  You asked for it, buddy.  You asked for it.

Colin rolled his head from side to side, working out the kink in his neck.  When he’d done the best he could, he arched his back, stretching.  Instantly, he yelped and contracted back into the sling, sure that skin was being torn from his body.

He looked down to find loops piercing his nipples.  A chain ran between them and out the sides to travel down and vanish somewhere beneath the elastic waistband of his jockstrap, forming a perfect triangle over his torso.  He stretched slightly and felt a gentler—not unpleasant—tug from the loops in his nipples and through a third ring he knew must be hidden beneath the fabric covering his groin.

“Dad used to say that earrings were for girls and queers.”

Colin looked up.  Mark was sitting on the stairs.

“Where did you come from?” Colin asked. He would have sworn he’d been alone.  He brought his legs together in an attempt to hide anything the jockstrap refused to cover. 

“I’m always here,” the boy replied. “One time he saw this guy—my dad did—the guy was wearing an earring.  Dad told me if I ever got one, he would tan my hide.”

Colin nodded.  His father had used that exact same phrase during a similar conversation.

Despite his audience he felt tempted to tease his new piercings, to test the bounds of pain, like teasing a sore in your mouth with your tongue.  He stretched slightly until the pain became too intense and he relaxed back into the sling.

“Do they hurt?”

“A little.”
 
“Why do something that makes you hurt?” the boy asked.

Colin looked at the boy.  Mark stared back at him.

“Avoiding your homework again?” Colin finally replied.  Holding his head up was only making his neck cramp worse.  He adjusted his hand on the chain and rested his head against it.  The handcuff clinked against the sling’s support and settled back into position.

“You’re chained up again.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Do you like being chained up?”

“You asked me that yesterday.”

“I know.  You never answered me.”

Mark crossed to the table.  A new assortment of toys littered its surface.  These were not quite as embarrassing nor as obvious as the previous night’s had been, still the men had found them just as effective as the first batch.  The little boy picked up one of several clothespins and tested the spring.  Out of curiosity he snapped it shut on his finger, gasped, and yanked it off.  It clattered to the floor.  He bent over and picked it up.

Twisting the pin in his fingers, he studied it carefully and said, “It takes a sick bastard to like pain.”

The voice was the boy’s, but it was obvious the words weren’t.

“Something else your dad told you?” Colin asked.

“Nope,” Mark said, setting the clothespin back on the table.  He looked back at Colin before continuing, “Jon.  Last night at dinner.  He didn’t think I was listening, but I was.”

Colin’s face flushed with embarrassment and anger.  Who was Jon to judge him when he was making five grand off this deal?  Plus the dumb bastard couldn’t even keep track of his foster-son or adopted-son or whatever-the-hell-the-kid-was-to-him-son.  He’d love to tell that asshole exactly what he thought of him, but the bar’s owner wasn’t there.  And the only target Colin had for his rage was the child.

“Don’t you have homework you should be doing?”

“I finished it.”

“No video game you haven’t beaten yet?”

“I want to be here.”

“Maybe I don’t want you here.”

“Maybe I don’t care.”

“Maybe I’ll tell your dad you’re hanging out down here.”

“He’s not my dad.”

“Well, whatever he is to you, maybe I’ll tell him.”

“He wouldn’t believe you.”

Colin’s anger boiled over.  He was sick of the boy, sick of the silent bar owner judging him while happily taking his money.  All he wanted now was to crawl back into his cave, his den, and rest there till the men came for him that night.  He’d paid good money for this week, and an annoying brat wasn’t part of the bargain.  He looked at the boy and decided on a new tactic.

“So, what did happen to your dad anyway?  Why don’t you live with him anymore?”

The boy turned back to the table and found a mop handle among the toys.  He began rolling it across the table’s surface.  Considering what it had been used for just hours before, Colin knew he should tell the boy to leave it alone.  He got a perverse satisfaction out of not doing so.

He pressed on, “I mean, there’s got to be a reason, right?  Kids don’t just stop living with their folks.”

Mark continued to play with the mop handle.  The sound of it grinding against the wooden table did nothing to help Colin’s mood.

“Well?”

“He went away,” Mark answered.

“Where did he go?”  He wasn’t coaxing now; he was demanding.  He saw the boy’s discomfort and it only pushed him further.

“A bad place.”

“Jail?”

The boy didn’t say a word, his eyes still on the mop handle.

“Why is he in jail, Mark?”  When the little boy didn’t respond, Colin pressed further:  “Mark?”

“For what he did.”

“What did he do, Mark?”

At first the child refused to say anything.  Colin was ready to repeat his question when the boy finally spoke.

“He said I asked for it.”

The basement went silent.  A cold rush flooded up Colin’s spine.  There was a tingle in his groin.  His stomach felt suddenly very queasy.  “He . . . what?”

Mark’s eyes filled with tears, big thick tears that streaked down his face.  “He would come in to my room once my mom was asleep.  He would . . . he would do things to me.  He would say, ‘You asked for it, buddy.  You asked for it.”

Colin’s mouth was dry.  He closed his eyes and heard the words again, the same ones from the cave that kept him safe through the long hours of the night.  Only, this time it wasn’t his voice saying them.  It was another voice, one he hadn’t heard in years, one he had blocked from his thoughts.  The memories were free now and came tumbling down on top of him:   the voice coming for him in the dark of night, the smell of booze on his father’s breath tickling the skin of Colin’s young shoulder as he lay in his bed, his pillow clamped between his teeth, trying hard not to scream.  And the words, always the words:  You asked for it, buddy.  You asked for it.

He opened his eyes.  The boy was gone.  Vanished.  Colin hadn’t heard his foot on the stairs.  He supposed the memories raging through his brain had masked the sound.

  A new bodily fluid mingled with the others already coating the concrete slab beneath him as Colin wept for the boy retreating up the stairs, just as he wept for the other one still chained in The Trough.

Thursday:

Colin tried to relax but the pain in his shoulders wouldn’t allow it.  His arms were outstretched, the wrists cuffed to the wall behind him, his fingers and arms numb from a lack of circulation.  He would have drooped to the floor letting his body hang if he could, but the collar around his neck bolted to the wall refused him any relief, and so he had stood all night and most of the day.

He wanted to weep he was so exhausted.  Every time he would slip into a fitful twilight, his body would relax and his throat press against the collar, constricting his airflow.  He would jerk back up to a standing position.  Then the tender skin of his back and buttocks would cause him to spasm as it hit the cold cinderblock of the basement wall.  The cat o’ nine tales and other whips sat on the table across the room, coiled and ready to spring, hopeful for yet another night of use.  He swallowed past his raw throat, further proof of the pain he had suffered.  His thighs and back still stung from the lashes he’d endured, screaming into his gag, struggling against his bonds as the men grunted in their exertion.  His entire body throbbed from pain and exhaustion, a distant, dull ache that refused to relent.

Through the discomfort he noticed another pain—more intense, a stinging in fact.  It registered on his face, his left eye.  What was wrong with his eye?  Had he been punched?  He felt like he should remember, but he couldn’t.

His brain was filled with damp rags that needed rung out, but his arms were cuffed, and he couldn’t get to the rags, and so they sat there thick and wet and confusing, and why was his left eye stinging so?  Through the thick rags they’d dumped in his head he vaguely remembered some of the previous night.

Waiting for the men to arrive, he’d wept.  Standing naked in the middle of The Trough wondering what would come next he cried tears just as he had as a child curled in his bed, hoping and praying his father might pass out drunk on the couch downstairs or might forget he was there just this once.  But just like all those nights when his bedroom door would creak open and his father’s stumbling footsteps would cross the floor to his bed, the door at the top of the basement stairs opened and the men tromped down the hollow steps in their thick construction boots.

They stood in a clump—all leather and tattoos—eyeing him anxiously.  He wiped the tears from his face and stared back at them defiantly.

After a moment one of them—dressed only in a leather cap and briefs—asked, “Are you sure you’re up for this, buddy?”

Colin wanted to curse the man for his compassion.  He hadn’t come here for kindness.  He wanted something else entirely.

He’d asked for it.

“Fuck you,” Colin answered.  “Just get on with it.”

The men had glanced at one another dubiously but obeyed his command. 

“Hi.”

Colin opened his eyes and found Mark had reappeared, sitting on the stairs.

“Hi, Mark,” he said, not giving a second thought to the fact he stood shackled and naked before the little boy.  Colin was certain the boy had seen worse—much worse.  Hell, if he didn’t want to see it, he could always leave.

“What’s wrong with your eye?” Mark asked, stepping off the stairs and walking toward him.  The boy was tentative, not nearly as bold as he’d been on their previous encounters.  He stepped close enough to study Colin’s face but kept his distance.  “Is that . . . did you get a tattoo?”

Colin remembered then the bite of the needle a hundred-million times as the men grunted their approval.  They’d shown him the final product in a mirror.  The blood smeared the work, but it was still easy to see the celtic knot starting between his eyebrows and circling around to his temple then down below his left eye.

As he looked at the blood oozing from the permanent stain marring his face he’d heard his father’s voice again, “You asked for it, buddy.  You asked for it.”

“You’re changing.” Those were Mark’s words stated as he studied Colin intently, his small head cocked to the side.

Colin didn’t respond but stared back at the boy.

“You’re becoming something different,” Mark observed.

Colin stood silent for a moment longer before climbing from his den long enough to answer the child.

“I know.”

Friday:

He’d thought he would sleep better, able to lie down for the first time in four nights.  They had dragged the cage from another room in the basement, scraping it across the concrete floor until they centered it over a rusted drain.  It reminded Colin of the small, dark place in his soul he went to hide and he’d obeyed them willingly.  The door clanged shut behind him as he crawled in, the lock snapping in place confining him to the cage for the night.

It hadn’t been nearly as comfortable as he’d imagined, however.  The cage’s bars bit hungrily into his hips and spine while he tried to sleep.  The naked light bulb directly overhead kept staring at him, judging him as he lay caged and reeking of other men’s waste.

As he woke, he stretched as much as the cramped space would allow.  He felt his flesh crackle with the movement.  He opened his eyes and saw that his skin had turned a rainbow of colors during the night—blues and reds, purples and greens and oranges.  His brightly-colored skin splintered with each movement.  He touched it.  It had grown hard overnight—a tough shell that was now flaking even as he rubbed it.

Colin glanced at the table.  The remains of the candles sat there, smug and fat, pleased with their night’s efforts.

It’s like a chrysalis.”

Mark was back, sitting in his favorite spot on the stairs.  The t-shirt he wore had a cartoon pig printed on it.  The pig was smiling and winking at Colin as if they shared some great big secret.  A ring pierced the center of the pig’s upturned snout.

“We studied about them in school.  It’s what insects use to turn from one thing into another.”

Colin wanted to ignore the child.  He wanted to forget the pain he felt from dredging up their mutual past.  He wanted to shut the boy out and go back to sleep and wait for the men to come for the final time.  He thought of turning his back on Mark but it didn’t seem worth the effort, so he simply closed his eyes instead.

“I wonder what you’re turning into.”

“Go away, Mark.”

“Where should I go?”

“Just . . . away.”

“Tell me:  where do you want me to go?”

“You can go to hell for all I care!”

It wasn’t like him to be so cruel.  The little boy had done nothing to him, nothing more than reawaken memories of a past Colin had spent years suppressing, nothing more than hover around and annoy him when all he wanted was to be left alone.  Why wouldn’t he just leave him alone?

He looked back at the little boy sitting on the steps.  Mark stared back at him silently, hurt.

Finally, Colin said, “Look, I didn’t mean that . . . It’s just . . . Would you please go away?”

“People don’t say things they don’t mean.”

Colin remembered hearing that same phrase before.  Only then it had been his father’s voice teaching his son an important lesson:  “People don’t say things they don’t mean, boy.  People don’t do things they don’t mean, neither.”

“You’re right,” Colin said. “I did mean it.  It was cruel and I meant it.”

“Why?”

Colin pondered the question for a moment.  Eventually he answered, “I thought I’d share the wealth.”

“You’re weird,” Mark commented.

“Yeah?  Well, you’re the one hanging out down here with me.”

“I like it here,” the little boy said glancing around the room and then back at Colin.  “With you.”

“Well, I don’t like it here with you, and I want you to go.”

Mark didn’t budge.  He sat on the stairs and continued watching Colin.

“Did you hear me?” Colin asked.

Mark didn’t answer.

“Go!” Colin shouted, slapping a hand against the cage’s bars.  “Get the fuck out of here!”

“You cut your hair.” Mark stepped down the stairs and crossed to the cage.

“What?”

“Your hair—you cut it.”

Colin ran a hand across his scalp, recalling the growl of the electric razor the men had taken to his head.  The buzz they’d left him with was no longer than the scruff on his unshaven face.

Mark squinted as if trying to bring his image into focus.  “You don’t even look like you anymore.”

“Look, Mark, just go back upstairs and leave me alone.  Please.  You shouldn’t be down here.”

“I told you.  I like it down here.”

“Why?!” Colin demanded.  “It stinks down here.  It smells like piss and sweat and stale beer.  What could possibly make you want to be down here?”

The little boy shrugged and said simply, “You’re here.”

“I’m locked in a cage; you’re not.  You could leave any time you wanted to.  So go.  Leave.  Get out of here.”

“I don’t want to leave.  I want to stay here with you.”

“Why?!”

“Why do you like being chained up?”

“What does that have to do with anything?!”  This kid was making no sense.  If Colin was free of his cage, he would throttle the little bastard.

“You never answered me.  Why do you like being chained up?”

“Because I do—that’ all.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know why!  I just like it!”

“Why?”

“It feels good!”

“But why?”

“It just does!”

“Why?”

“Because I fucking deserve it, that’s why!” Colin screamed, his voice cracking from the strain.  “I fucking deserve to be chained up and beaten and burned and whipped!   It’s what I asked for!  It’s what I paid for!  It’s what I deserve!”  His words sounded hollow as they rebounded against the thick walls and tumbled to the ground like so much trash.  The boy slipped in and out sight as tears blurred his vision.  “Now, would you please just go away?!”

Mark found the paddle from their first meeting discarded on the floor.  The men had used it again the previous night to swat at Colin’s fingers any time he tried to grip the bars of the cage.  The clang of wood on metal still rang in Colin’s ears.  The boy picked it up and studied it for a moment.  He tested it across his palm.  A satisfying little slap echoed in the room.

“You asked me why I didn’t live with my dad anymore.”

Colin’s sobs died instantly.  His breath caught in his throat.

“I want to tell you.”

Terror drove Colin’s heart into double time.  It thudded madly against his chest.  Down beneath his new outer shell, his first skin crawled.  “That’s . . . that’s ok.  You don’t have to tell me anything.”

“I want to,” Mark said, slapping the paddle against his miniature palm. It was perverse how the gesture reminded Colin of one of the big burly men taunting him in a similar fashion.  “You answered my question; now I’ll answer yours.”

“No.  You don’t have to,” Colin said, pushing away from the boy, back against the cage’s far wall. “It’s none of my business.”

The little boy looked up at him.  That round face, those big eyes focused directly on Colin.  “But I want to.”

“Tell Jon.  Maybe he’s the one you should tell.”

“Jon wouldn’t want to hear.  It would only make him upset.  He wouldn’t understand.  I think you’ll understand, though.”

“Please,” Colin begged, squirming further back in the cage. “Please don’t.”

Mark ignored his pleading and went on.  “I would lay there at night, in the dark, alone.  I liked being alone.  It was better than being with him.  The dark didn’t scare me.  The kids at school—they tried to scare me by talking about monsters under the bed and in the closet, but they never scared me.  I knew those monsters weren’t anything—not compared to . . .”

Colin closed his eyes.  He couldn’t see anything, not even if he wanted to.  The tears were back, blinding him.

“So, I’d pray he wouldn’t come.  I’d pray he’d fall asleep down on the couch or might just forget I was there.”

“Don’t,” Colin said, covering his ears with his hands.  Try as he might, though, he couldn’t keep the little boys words out of his head.

“But he wouldn’t forget.  He never forgot.  The door would creak open.  It had this squeal.  It would start when the door was halfway open and wouldn’t stop until you’d push it all the way.  I hated that squeal.”

“Please.  Stop this.” Colin grabbed the bars and shook the cage.  If only he could get free, he could stop the boy from talking.  Why did he have to keep talking?

“I could hear him walk across the floor.  I curled up under the covers.  I wanted it to be safe under the covers.  I wanted to crawl away someplace safe, someplace he couldn’t get me, someplace only I knew about.  My safe place.  My—”

“Shut up!” Colin clutched his head between his hands and rocked back and forth against the cage’s bars.  “This isn’t real.  This isn’t real.  This isn’t real.” Over and over again, he promised himself, but still the little boy kept talking.

“He’d crawl under the covers with me.  He’d curl up next to me, holding me.  I’d cry.  I’d ask him not to, but he’d only shush me and tell—”

“NO!  NO!  NO!” Colin pounded his fists against his head.  He knew what was coming, but there was no way to stop it.

“He’d tell me, ‘You asked for it, buddy.  You asked for it.”

“NOOOO!” Colin screamed, kicking and pounding against the cage.  His foot slammed against its end and met with no resistance.  The door swung open and clanged against the side of the cage.  It had been unlocked all night long, only Colin was too crazed now to see the irony of that fact.

“He’d say it to me over and over again,” Mark continued.

Colin pulled himself from the cage, a savage beast on the loose.  “This isn’t real . . . this can’t be real . . .”

“He said it so many times I started to think he was right.  It was my fault.  I’d asked for it.  I brought it on myself.”

“Shut up,” Colin said rising to his feet and standing over the boy.  His breath came in gulps that barely squeezed through his throat into his lungs, the rings on his nipples danced with the rise and fall of his chest.  Tears swept past the tattoo on his cheek and down into the scruff of his jaw.

The little boy looked up from the paddle in his hands and said, “I deserved it.”

Colin ripped the paddle from Mark’s hands and swung with all his might, connecting the board with the side of the little boy’s face.  The force of the blow propelled the child’s body backward into the table.  His forehead smacked against its edge before he tumbled to the floor beneath.

The sound of the slap of wood against flesh startled Colin.  It wasn’t the volume that surprised him.  It was the fact the sound wasn’t followed by pain.  After days in The Trough, Colin had been conditioned:  pain always followed the sound of the slap.  But this time the sensation of the blow traveling up his arm into his shoulder wasn’t concussive but more . . . percussive.

So this was what it was like, Colin realized, to be on the delivering end, the intimacy of suffering without the pain.  He’d never imagined it would feel so good.  So right.

He looked at the heap of flesh lying on the floor.  It groaned and stirred slightly.

Colin walked over to it, standing with his legs spread, staring down at the boy.  The cartoon pig stared up at him from the boy’s shirt, smiling.  Colin finally knew the secret.

He brought the paddle down again, this time on its edge like a sword, cracking it against the boy’s head.  The pig was laughing now and Colin laughed too.

He landed blow after blow until he felt the crunch of bone and then the soft squish beneath.  And still he pounded, his laughter turning to screams of exertion as he continued to beat the paddle against the unmoving mass beneath him.

Another’s scream from behind him and an arm on his shoulder tore him away from his task and finally broke his momentum.   He tumbled to the floor as the bar’s owner knelt beside the child and weeping lifted the body in his arms and cradled the blood-drenched form to his chest.

“Why?!” the man wailed, his head laid back, his mouth spread wide in a howl of agony.

Colin giggled.  It was so obvious now.  He knew the answer to Jon’s question—just as the pig had all along.

He’d asked for it.

 

© 2009 Nathan Sims

Nathan Sims currently lives across the street from Washington, D.C. with his partner of ten years.  He is the property manager for several commercial projects in the district.  His short fiction can also be found in QueeredFiction’s upcoming anthology Blood Fruit.