shoreboy

Thanks guys. I’m working on another chapter, it just might take a while, but i appreciate the nudges.

6. Moons of Mars Reznor felt Tommy over-prepared for a simple overnight camping trip. He might reconsider this opinion since one of the many things Tommy brought, a pocket knife, has been in use ever since Reznor was dragged into Frank’s trailer. Tommy’s been prying a board off the back of the woodshed for twenty minutes. So far he’s managed to get off a nail at the top and one at the bottom. When he sees Reznor unconscious and dragged back out of the trailer by MAGA-hat man and wispy ponytail guy, he picks up the urgency of getting off the other bottom nail. His shaking hand makes him cut himself, which makes the pocket knife slippery, but after several failed attempts, he gets the second bottom nail wedged loose. The plank doesn’t come all the way off, but it’s enough to be able to push the plank to the side. It’s barely enough space for him to wiggle through, but because of his compact size he escapes. Back in the open air, he peers around the woodshed. Reznor’s naked strung up by his arms. He sees the big bear of a man, Frank, return. He’s in Reznor’s face threatening him with a chainsaw between his legs. He can’t hear what Frank’s saying because of all the noise from the chainsaw, but abruptly Frank’s screams at Reznor for him to answer him if he remembers his question. The chainsaw idles softly as Frank waits for an answer. “Yes, I remember … the question,” Reznor manages to get out. Each word muttered is painful, but Tommy recognizes a familiar, sarcastic glint in Reznor’s eye. “I’ll take ‘What is drawn and quartered’ … for a thousand, Alex.” Frank threatens Reznor with another rev of the chainsaw. “Mm-kay, Mm-kay.” Reznor spits a wad of bloody saliva on the ground. His head bobs forward and back, while Frank revs the chainsaw to encourage Reznor to continue. Reznor is one horrible, bloody mess. It’s not helping Reznor for Tommy to watch this scene from the shadows, so he scampers off to search for anything that might free his friend. Reznor raises his head looking into Frank’s dark eyes. “Drawn and quartered. A man gets each limb tied to four horses.” Reznor’s legs give out. He hangs only by his arms. “And the horses pull off his limbs in four directions.” Bloody drool strings from his mouth. “Right you are,” says Frank. “But since we don’t have no horses, I’m left with this quandary. What to do? And then it hits me. I’ll saw off each one of your limbs, tourniquet you, cauterize you, till you’re just one stumpy torso. Then I’m going to keep your torso permanently on my bed and fuck you till you—“ “Frank, that’s enough!” Dougie, pulling on his goatee, protests. “For fuck sake, you already scared the piss out of the kid.” One of the camo guys steps forward, goes, “Yeah, Frank. Fun’s fun, but you take it too far, man.” Frank’s eyebrows raise defensively. “You agree, Cosmo?” The other camo guy says, “Yeah, I agree with Vic, Frank. Look at him hangin’ there. You think he’s gonna talk?” “What about you, Lewis?” Grey ponytail guy steps forward. “I think he’ll turn on you, Frank. He’s got every reason to turn you in.” House jumps out of the bushes, fists ponytail guy’s head, sending him to the dirt. Reynold’s is right beside House filming Frank, the camo guys, Dougie, and Lewis on the ground. “Back off!” House shouts at Frank. He doesn’t have Frank’s girth (or chainsaw), but he out-matches the big bear in height and brawn. Now that he’s close enough to see what he’s done to Reznor, he’s fucking pissed as hell, too. “Now! Back. The fuck. Off!” Steve Reynolds holds up his phone. “You’ll all be wanted by morning. Just have to hit send. Best thing would be to let him go.” Frank revs the chainsaw again. “Or what, pretty boy?” He revs the blades, grounds his stance preparing to send the spinning teeth up through Reznor’s caged balls. “You gonna shoot me with your iPhone?” Reznor looks up a final time at his assailant. He prays his end is quick. He looks into Frank’s eyes. His last sight on Earth. “Nope.” Tommy aims a rifle. “Gonna shoot you with a gun.” Abruptly Frank’s face, in a split second, becomes a plume of blood and brains exploding out of his head. The head bursts like a watermelon covering Reznor’s face and body with the man’s detritus. The remnant body that once was Frank, no longer includes a head. Bits of skull, teeth, tongue, eyes—slap Reznor’s face; steaming gore drips to the ground. Reznor watches as it takes a surreal couple of seconds for Frank’s body to realize it has no brains before it tumbles in a heap to the ground. The chainsaw sputters in the dirt, then grinds to a halt. Everyone looks to the top step of Frank’s trailer where the shot rang out. Tommy eyes the remaining men around the camp not lowering the rifle but swinging the muzzle back and forth. The far trailer door bursts open and Micky-G steps out holding frantically barking pit bulls. “What the hell is all this hullabaloo?” Micky-G yanks back his dogs. Headlights flood the scene as a beat-up red pickup rolls up to the trailers. Waldo leaps out of the back and trots over, jumping playfully on top of the two pit bulls and excitedly sniffs their rear ends. Kyle and Jacob get out of the cab trying to make sense of what’s occurred. In the headlights, House and Reynolds are cutting Reznor down. “Fuckin’ hell!” Kyle says running over to Reznor. He takes off his jacket and wraps it over Reznor’s shoulders. Shamus steps out of the shadows adjusting his cap then gives Lewis a hand up. Lewis feebly tries to tell Reynolds that he didn’t he meant it about not letting his friend go. “Nah,” Lewis wheedles, “I was trying to buy some time for Frank to come to his senses.” “The fuck you were, asshole,” Reynolds fires back. “Yours is the only photo I didn’t delete. If I were you, I’d crawl back to whatever backwoods hole you came out of.” House takes the kerchief off his neck and wipes Reznor’s bloody face. “Cops I’m sure will know who you are.” “And where you live,” says Tommy, coming off trailer steps, slinging the gun strap over his shoulder. “Maybe you’ll get a day’s head start,” says Reynolds. Tommy adds, “If you’re lucky.” “But I wouldn’t count on it.” House comes up to the guy and shoves him into the shadows, with Shamus trailing after him out of camp. “Cosmo, Vic, Dougie,” Jacob says, crossing over to them. “You let him rape a kid? What’s your wife and kids gonna think about you?” “No!” The three men are panicked, trying to explain themselves all at once. Excuses fly: things got out of hand; it was just supposed to be to scare the kid; how were they to know Franks was tweaked; they saved the kid from being beaten to death, didn’t they? Jacob’s not buying any of it, and they argue all talking over each another, pleading with Jacob that they’ll take care of the body; that they never saw any of these boys in camp. Cosmo suggests, “Maybe Frank had a hunting accident.” “No one’s seen him for a while,” proposes Vic. “A bear might have got him,” Dougie adds. Vic advises Jacob to get the boys out of here. Everyone nods in agreement. “We’ll right this mess,” Vic says. “Kyle!” shouts Micky-G. “Get your damn dog off Trixie. She’s in heat.” Waldo’s humping the brown and white pit bull having the time of his life. “You’re responsible if there’s a litter, I’m telling you that right now, dammit.” *** Reznor sits silently between me and Jacob on the drive to my house. House, Tommy and Reynolds—and a very happy Waldo—ride in the bed of the truck. Jacob says tomorrow he’ll take the boys back to their Prius, but tonight everyone’s spending the night at my house. “That okay with you, buddy?” he says to Reznor. “Huh?” Reznor says, glassy-eyed, his head swaying with the bouncing of the truck over the rough road. We troop into the house, where mom, upset at first seeing one of the boy’s badly beaten, but then snaps into professional nurse mode, attends to Reznor—Band-Aids, iodine, Neosporin. Reznor’s injuries are extensive but are superficial, she says, nothing broken, some bruises but nothing worse. She sends him to the shower, where he steeps for a long time. Privately she tells me he’s pretty traumatized and wants to know why. I give her the PG-version leaving out some of the more gory secondhand details Tommy and Reynolds provided. Frank’s dead, I tell her. That little guy Tommy shot him. Good for him, she says. Frank always was an evil piece of shit. Mom! I say. Language. After his shower I see mom’s right about Reznor being traumatized; he barely speaks, which is totally un-Reznor. While she finishes patching up his face in the bathroom, me, Jacob and the other guys want to know how Tommy pulled off the shot. Tommy says he took the Ruger rifle out of Frank’s bedroom, one he was familiar with from hunting with his dad. He felt bad about how it splattered Reznor in the face, but he couldn’t see any way around it. He didn’t say anything about killing a man, and we didn’t ask. We all-too-quickly moved on to praising his smarts, bravery and marksmanship. We put the subject to bed when mom and Reznor come back in. Ultimately, mom is a mom, and isn’t satisfied until everyone’s had grilled cheese sandwiches and is sitting with hot cocoa in front of the wood stove. After midnight the guys get sleepy and crash in the living room. House has his sleeping bag laid out on the couch, Reynolds is scrunched up on the love seat, and Tommy’s happy curled up with Waldo on the shag carpet. In the darkness of my bedroom, I’m looking at the luminescent stars I’ve had forever on my ceiling. Reznor’s in the other twin bed in my room. He hasn’t spoken since Frank was shot, when House and Reynolds cut him down. Just let him be, is my mom’s advice, before she and Jacob went off to his trailer. I think he’s fallen asleep, and I’m just about to myself when I hear a very hoarse voice say, “I can’t believe you have glow-in-the-dark decals on you ceiling. What are you, Dupree? Nine?” I try not to get all defensive; this is Reznor after all, and I gotta be nice to him. “They’re educational. And they’re highly accurate,” I tell him. “Look. There’s Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, and the bright one in the little dipper’s tail is Polaris, the North Star.” He thinks about this for a second, takes in the vast array of stars on my ceiling. “Yawl are a fuckin’ freak.” At least a little of the ornery Raznor’s back. I lie shirtless with my arms behind my head. Unlike the dorm, my old trailer is warm. I can smell my pits and they’re pretty rank. We’re in the dark but Reznor’s outlined by the moon streaming in through the window. His blond hair appears blue in this light. After a long time laying on his back looking at my stars, he says, “I’ll bet you still have your teddy bear,” he says. I see his eyes are wide open staring up. “That’s what Waldo’s for.” Another span of time passes. An idea occurs to me. “I bet,” I say, breaking the silence, “that you never had a teddy bear. That’s what’s wrong with you, Reznor. Lack of stuffed animal bonding at an early age.” His response surprises me. “Yawl right ‘bout that. No teddy bear.” He grunts trying to put his arms above his head. He eventually manages to lace his fingers, and is mirroring me in his bed. “But I did have me a black Scotty dog. Use to drag it with me everywhere.” “Did it have a name?” “Yeah. Scotty.” We both chuckle. Reznor exhales, and then turns on his side. Groans. He lets an arm hang off his bed, trailing a finger over my linoleum floor. “It had red buttons for eyes. I pulled one of the button eyes off by accident one time. I would not be consoled until my sweet old nanny sewed it back on. I was worried I had permanently damaged Scotty’s eyesight but nanny assured me he could see just fine. My father took him away shortly after that. Said I was too old for it. I was seven. Second grade.” Of all people, I’m surprised I like sharing the room with Reznor tonight. Drake hasn’t talked to me much since that first night in back of the library. But this guy, who I think of mostly as a dick, there’s something I like about his Scotty dog story. Maybe it’s knowing what he went through tonight; or maybe—and I’m just spit-balling here—there’s an attraction we both don’t want to admit to, and it’s easier to just punch each other in the face then act on it. I don’t know, I’m not a psych major. “When I was seven,” I tell him, “my dad put up these decals on the ceiling. One of the last things he did. He loved looking at the stars. That’s his telescope in the corner. Story time with him was always about planets and constellation. All the stories that came from the sky.” Reznor props himself up on an elbow and looks at the telescope by the window. “What happened to him?” “Cancer.” I look at his work above me. “During hospice, whenever he had the energy, he’d get on a ladder and add on to it. Made the sky exactly as I’d see it every September first, he told me, my birthday.” “Stars don’t stay in one place,” Raznor says. “Sure they do. Once a year. It’s like Earth’s this merry-go-round, and if you choose a spot, choose one day, every year when you get back to it, all the stars will line up exactly as they were the year before. So those stars up there, they’re the same stars that appear every first day of September. Forever and always. Even long after we’re not here to look at them.” Reznor lays back down and looks up at the glowing dots. “Crazy.” “Word.” I point straight above us at a constellation. “Pegasus dominates the summer sky.” “I don’t see it.” “Sure. It’s upside down.” I throw off my blankets and flip my head to the end of the bed, so I see it right side up. “There, that bright star there is his nose. That square, those four stars, are his flank—where the wings come from. And those stars are his forward legs flying into the air.” Reznor flips off his bedding and struggles to get his head at the end of the bed, too. Once he settles, he contemplates it for a while. “Okay. I guess I see it. Where’s it back legs?” “No back legs.” “See, that’s what I hate about this shit. People just make up whatever they want to see. No logic in it.” “Yep. No logic to it.” I put my arms again behind my head. “People always make up what they want to see, what they want to believe.” “Did your dad put in planets too?” he wants to know. “I think I see Saturn. And that red one?” “Yep. That red dot right in the corner, that’s Mars—god of war.” I point above his bed where the ceiling hits the wall. “If you stare long enough, you can see two moons. Phobos and Deimos. Means fear and dread in Greek. They were Mars’ sons, fear and dread. Took ‘em to every battle, which makes sense for the god of war, right?.” “Dupree, yawl have too much stuff in your head.” I look over at him. “I would not disagree with you.” It’s nice having him in my room. “You a virgin.” He snorts. He’s propped up again on an elbow facing me. “Virgo, the virgin if you’re born September first.” I flip on my elbow to look back. In just his boxers the contours of his body are amazing. Such deep shadows define his pecs and his abs. I’m trying not to get too caught up in what a defined body he has, trying to ignore a little stirring down below. It’s funny cuz we’re in the pool in speedos all the time, and I’ve been able to tuck that little tidbit onto a back-burner brain cell—so I’m not sure why it’s now being put on the front-burner. Adjusting myself nonchalantly, I flip on my back and ask him when's his birthday? He says February third. “Aquarius. The water bearer,” I say, pointing to the constellation over my bed. “There you are, right above Pegasus.” “Stupid sign. Water bearer. What’s that even mean? What am I, a waiter? Would yawl like sparkling or tap this evening.” He cracks me up. I hear snoring coming through my bedroom door from the living room, so I keep my voice low. “No, he’s a great sign. He’s the famous Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, the largest moon actually in the entire solar system—there, see it next to Jupiter? And also Zeus’ young lover.” “Shut up.” “No, seriously. He was the most beautiful mortal Zeus had ever laid eyes on. Born royalty, the son of the king of Troy, Zeus falls in love with him and snatches him to Olympus for himself. Poured his wine, a most honored position on Mount Olympus. Pissed his wife off, but she got plenty on the side, so both of them were happy gods.” “You’re saying Zeus was gay?” “Well, bi, but he’s just a made up story. But it gave legitimacy to men loving men back in the day. These stories have been around as long as the Bible, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam—you name it. It’s all stories we tell ourselves to explain ourselves to ourselves.” “Except the Bible is true.” “If you say so.” I know not to get into it with Reznor about religion. We had this fight in the dining hall many times. “Anyway, worse thing than being the most beautiful boy that the king of the gods takes a shining to and immortalizes in the night sky.” I didn't see when it started, but Reznor’s silently shaking on the bed. He’s crying and trying not to cry at the same time, which makes his sob worse. He sits up with his face in his hands ashamed. “Hey, what is it?” I ask, sitting up myself. He looks at me in with an angry and anguished face. “Or a fat hillbilly snatches you off and fucks you silly in his trailer.” He looks at me defiantly and adds, “And maybe you like it.” I’m across from him, our knees are almost touching. I put a hand on his leg. “Knocked it off,” he says in a raspy voice, flicking my hand away. I can see his face is streaming tears now, no sobs, just tears trailing over his cheeks. I switch beds and sit next to him. “Leave me alone.” I put my arm around him regardless of his protests. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “Why are you sorry? Yawl didn’t fuck me or hit me or try to cut me in half with a chainsaw. Yawl weren’t the one that saw his face explode or told all these fucked up things he was going to do. It’s shit I can’t un-hear or un-see, Dupree.” “Tell me what you saw.” “What my life was going to turn into. Maybe it was the drugs they gave me, but as he was telling it to me I saw it like it was real, was already my life. Like, he was going to keep me fucked up on meth, and fuck me all the time, and give me a cunt. And you know the most fucked up part?” I shrug, rubbing his back, encouraging him to let it out. “Part of me wanted it—wanted to run away from my life and be his meth whore. Isn’t that fucked up?” “Nah, it isn’t.” “This big hairy man was going to keep me as his personal slave—be his, what’d you call him—his Ganymede. I’d be his sex toy. And I couldn’t do anything about it. He was going to fist me every day until I had a gaping pussy. He was going to beat me raw if I didn’t obey his every word. And it’s so fucked up but part of me liked it. Wanted it. To have a real life physically-abusive daddy, not the psychologically-abusive one I got right now. I’ve been to enough shrinks to know how fucked up I am, Dupree. Even now, my dick wants to get hard when I talk about it.” He takes my hand and makes me feel his metal cage. He’s leaking in his boxers. And for fuck sake, I can’t help it, but a bulge is rising in my gym shorts once he put my hand on his crotch. Reznor notices, too. His head snaps up, seeing my shorts rise. “What the fuck, man?” he says alarmed. “Where’s yawl’s cage.” He grabs my growing erection. I hold up a finger to my lips to bring his voice down. “I only wear it at school when I have to. It’s a crumby little lock. Easy enough to pick.” “Get mine off,” he says. I hesitate. “Please, or I’ll tell everyone and then you’ll be off the team.” “You’re blackmailing me?” “If I have to.” “Reznor, given what you’ve been through, you’re still a dick.” I frown. Quietly I slip into the bathroom and grab a bobby pin. When I get back he’s slipped off his boxers, and looking at his hard body, outlined by a full moon in my window, it only gets my dick tenting even more in my shorts. “Hurry,” he says, desperately clutching himself, like he urgently has to take a piss. “You’ve had this on for months. Chill,” I say. “Dupree,” he says, like the cage is burning him, “get it off.” I kneel between his legs. It takes ten second for me to fiddle with the lock before its open. Another two second for Reznor to pull off the top casing and the ring around his balls. And there it is. His beautify penis. I have to say, Reznor’s got one of the most phenomenal members I have ever seen. Once the chastity device is off, it’s immediately hard, like one of those self-inflating rafts. It’s thick, cut, with a perfectly formed large, mushroom head. There’s little in the way of veins except a thick ridge on top right down the middle. Since I’m kneeling in front of him like I’m worshiping it, there’s nothing to do but actually worship it. My mouth does down all the way in one go to the root. “Ah, shit,” he pants. I look up at him with my tongue hanging out—he’s gritting his teeth with a look of relief I’ve never seen him express—and go back down on his shaft. He’s shuddering with pleasure. I never thought this would happen, but there you go—life always throws the unexpected at you. Which is why I’m not too surprised when he pulls me up on his bed, and spreads his legs. Two choices present itself: fuck him or rim him. I spread his bruised cheeks and lick his asshole. His breath catches in his throat, and he looks at me astonished. I dig my tongue in his hole and he tries to suppress a moan as best he can. I pull his ass lips apart and penetrate deeper. He pushes up my head to look at me. “That’s where I shit, man,” he says, in excited disbelief. “Yeah, and I was just sucking where your piss comes out.” I tell him. “Body parts can multitask, or didn’t you know that?” He answers by pushing my head back between his legs. Aside from his tight body, he’s got a glorious, sweet puckered hole. It’s so tight but winking madly. I swear his lips are kissing mine, both of us intensely responding to each other. I swirl my tongue around and into his hole, and he’s rotating his hips because of it. I give his hole a variety of rimming techniques. I flatten my tongue and give him a long, wet lap—which I can tell his hole loves by flaring out—then drill inside him with a pointed tip and flicker it till he gasps some more. “Push out,” I encourage him. He does and his hole opens like a tiny, budding flower. I take advantage and pull those petals apart, and dive inside him much deeper where the pink petals turn to a deep red well. I’ve had many teachers, most of the older men from the lake, who have over the years shared their rimming knowledge with me, and I love sharing that now with Reznor. “It doesn’t have to hurt,” I tell him looking over his luscious balls. I lick them, too. Pop one testicle in my mouth, then the other. He gives me a rare Reznor smile, albeit one that’s extremely filthy. He pushes my head back down wanting me to eat his hole more. The boy knows what he wants. He’s relaxed and it’s easy to ply his ass lips farther apart with two fingers. My tongue run three-sixty clockwise around the inside of his hole, then in reverse. I drool and push the saliva inside him, twirl my middle finger in deep until I feel his prostate. I rub it till his excited as hell, in full heat. I love playing with his body; everything's new to him. He’s drawing in breaths excitedly and I know he’s primed for cock, specifically, my cock. I reach into the nightstand between the beds and pull out my lube. I slip out of my gym shorts springing my woody, grease my pole and tenderly slick up his hole. Slowly I plunge headlong into the warmest, softest hole you can imagine. He is so wet, wanting to be fucked. There’s nothing forced. His ass lips flare as my cock penetrates him, pushing back my foreskin feeling my cockhead burrow into his hole. His libido matches mine—I want to fuck him and he so wants to be fucked. His eyes are closed and I don’t mind just looking at his features as I slide inch by inch inside him. His full lips peel apart in astonishment, revealing his bright teeth reflected in the cool moonlight. The scruff of his chin for the first time I find attractive, feel it with my fingers, gather it in my mouth, as I’m stroke my cock with his velvety sphincter. Within his body he’s clutching me tightly, but his hips rock so that I know he wants more of me. I reply with three-quarters of my cock enjoying the last few inches of opening him up. His eyes flash, encouraging me to go on all the way. As I grind my hips, swirling my cock to stir his colon, he reaches up, grabs my hand. He flings my hand across his face, smacks himself with my palm. Hard. It startles me, this thunderclap across his face. Reznor looks at me to see my reaction. I guess I’m more puzzled than anything. I want to pleasure myself in his ass not cause him harm. But as I’m fucking him down to my balls, he takes my hands and places them around his neck. “Please,” is all he says. I’m not sure what to do. I put my hands on either side of his face, but he grabs my wrists and puts my hands back on his neck. As I fuck him, I gently squeeze his neck, my thumbs at his windpipe. “Harder,” he rasps. I keep fucking his hole and, I knows it’s perverse, but my hands at his throat gets me leaking inside him. His hole is extra wet now, more slippery than before. This increased lubrication intensifies the pleasure I feel in my cockhead. My shaft is slick. I fuck him harder. I tighten my grip. Reznor’s face begins to turn red. “Hurt me, Kyle,” he gasps. He’s starts stroking his erect cock. The harder I squeeze my hands around him the faster he strokes. He nods his head as he looks pleadingly in my eyes. I choke him in earnest, seeing his face turn purple, his eyes bulging. And as fucked up as that is, I can’t stop myself from fucking him harder, and feel him shooting hot ropes of cum onto my chest, which makes me cum, hard, inside him. I hold his neck in my hands, shaking, until his eyes go blank. I release my stranglehold and he heaves hoarsely for breath. His hands reach up and grab my shoulders as he stares up at the ceiling. He’s not with me. There’s a shell of a person my cock is inside of, but Raznor’s somewhere else. It takes a moment for his breathing to coming back to normal, his eye to glow alive again. He keeps hold of my shoulders, squints his eyes with intense concentration. He whispers, “I see it.” I look at his face, then over my shoulder to see what he’s looking at. My cock oozes out of him, and I feel a small flood of my sperm dribble out. His eyes are fixed in the corner of the room. “Fear and dread,” he says, dazed, staring at Mars. “Fear and dread,” I echo.

Speaking of Raznor, exactly to that end, @tampahole , here's chapter 6.

Got to imagine Coach has some secrets he wouldn’t want exposed. First, though, some loose ends to tie up.

Thank you @Pozitivly

5. The Boys Go Camping The four of them stand roughly in a diamond formation. Tommy’s in front since he’s the smallest; Reznor, in hiking shorts and sporting a black eye, is in back of him on the left; Steve Reynolds’ on the right (the one holding up his phone to take the picture); then House, being the biggest, stands in the back. Tommy’s the only one smiling from ear to ear because they included him on their camping trip. The others are serious, mostly because they’re out of breath from the hike’s last mile which was entirely uphill. Tommy has, Reznor is beginning to realize, infinite, annoying energy—or so it seems the way Reznor’s looking at him in the photo. You can see in background, behind the four of them, the Appalachian Trail is at its peak fall colors this Columbus Day weekend—or Indigenous Peoples Day as it’s billed at school. (FYI: Kyle Dupree had a knockdown, all out fist fight with Marlon Reznor in the locker room the previous Thursday over the name of the holiday. Dupree—Team Indigenous Peoples—ended up with a bloody lip; Reznor—Team Columbus—a black left eye.) The cloudless blue dome lights up the silver birch’s gold and yellow leaves, while the sugar maples are at their most intense oranges and reds. The evergreens—firs, blue spruces and hemlock pines—provide the dark green contrast that set off the dying forest’s leaves giving them such intense luminosity. The boys’ brightly colored down jackets also add a dazzling array of color to the photo, so say many of the commenters on Steve Reynolds’ Instagram account. At the summit that provides the group a full 360 degree panorama of autumn colors, Reznor stops, his palms on his knees, bent over, catching his breath. “Yawl go ahead. I gotta stop here for a second.” Tommy in the lead, followed by Reynolds and House, stop and wait against some boulders. They let their backpacks ease up on the rocks. In between breaths, Reznor adds, “Whose goldarn idea was this anyway?” Steve Reynold holds up his phone checking for signal bars. “Did you actually just use goldarn in a sentence?” he laughs, taking off his New England Patriots cap to wipe the sweat off his forehead. “Fuck off, Reynolds.” Reznor pulls off his backpack and sets it on the ground. “We should just set up camp here.” “Um, no,” Tommy informs him, with as little sarcasm as he dares against the group’s alpha, “because we’re still on the trail, and on the side of a mountain?” House unknots the red kerchief around his neck and wipe the sweat from his brow. “You wanna fall into that ravine in the middle of the night taking a piss?” Reznor looks over the edge of the hiking trail at the river below. “Well, how much farther?” “Maybe a mile?” Tommy guesses. He looks across at all the burnished leave covering the hillsides and sees the sun is quickly on its decent. “Not too far, but we should get going.” Reznor huffs pulling on his pack. “Well, let’s go then.” They hike down to a level glade where Tommy hops over rocks on a wet part of the trail. The rest of them follow, hopping rock to rock. True to his word, a mile down the trail there’s a camp with a lean-to. They all unload their packs in the structure. House immediately starts gathering firewood. Tommy takes out a cooking pot and their freeze dried dinner, while Reznor lies against his pack in the lean-to, arms crossed behind his head. Steve Reynolds takes a selfie and then snaps a few more of the camp and his teammates. Everyone’s smiling in these, even Reznor. It’s peacefully quiet. A few birds chirp in the branches of the colorful forest. House occasionally breaks the silence with a violent snap of wood across his knee. Tommy looks around contented, mixing water from his canteen into the chicken mac and cheese he brought for everyone. Reznor’s picking out M&Ms from his trail mix. Reynolds and House are being pyros seeing how big of a fire they can make. After it dies down, Tommy heats up their meal, then divides it into four bowls. Reznor doesn’t like it and goes back to his trail mix, but House loves it and scarfs down Reznor’s portion. After dinner, sitting around the fire, a young red fox runs through the camp startling everyone. Reynolds’ pissed he didn’t have his phone out, but it’s all the rest of them can talk about till the sun goes down. Reznor pulls out a bottle of Jack Daniels and passes it around. Tommy gets drunk quickly and passes out in the lean-to on top of his sleeping bag. “Lightweight,” says Reznor. “Give it a rest,” House tells him. “He did good getting us here today.” Reznor looks at him in the campfire light. “I think there could have been an easier climb, is what I’m sayin’. Seems to me we did a lot more uphills than was necessary.” Reynolds takes a swig and passes the bottle to House. “As happy as I am on this trip,” Reynolds says, “I still feel bad for St. Anthony’s. Terrible reason to cancel a game because some of the team ends up in the hospital.” House grunts in agreement, and passes Reznor the bottle. Reynolds goes on: “I knew one of the guys that O.D.’d. Barclay. We went to the same Jersey summer camp when we were kids.” “Gave us a free weekend, didn’t it?” reasons Reznor. “Anyway, what kind of dealer laces coke with fentanyl? You gotta know your dealer. I heard he was just some random dude that someone knew that someone knew.” A branch cracks in the dark beyond the campfire. “What was that?” House jumps up with a stick. “Don’t yawl worry, big guy,” says Reznor. He starts to stand but wavers, deciding it’s better to keep close to the ground. “If that mister fox comes back to attack yawl, I’ll get him with this here bottle.” Reynolds snorts and leans back on his elbows. Looking up, clouds obscure the stars. He lays all the way back, watching the campfire light up the trees above where leaves flutter like a million dark butterflies. It only takes a minutes before he’s snoring in the dirt. “Probably good idea to get to the sleeping bag,” says House. He stumbles into the lean-to and passes out before he finishes unlacing his boots. Reznor watches the fire die with his back up against the lean-to’s deck. He hugs his bare knees for warmth, strokes the sparse strands of hair on his chin. A dimple emerges. There’s a rare hint of contentment to his smile, a subtle slip of his smug mask behind which most people never see. It’s not too much longer before the campfire is just red embers illuminating his unlined face. The coals blur. His eyes close. Tommy’s the first one up, too energetic for Reznor to deal with. He opens only one eye, not remembering how he made it to his sleeping bag. He watches Tommy bouncing around camp, gathering wood, building a small fire, mixing freeze dried eggs (the very thought makes him ill), and waits for someone else to get up. Reznor closes his one eye and turns over. House and Reynolds stir, and Tommy’s has instant coffee ready for them. There’s sugar and powdered milk if they want, he tells them. Reynolds tousles his hair and House grunts his appreciation as they accepts their steaming cups. Neither wants to talk until they have some caffeine in their system. After they’ve downed some eggs, they rouse Reznor, who groans half-asleep. “If even one of you even mention eggs, I swear, I will projectile vomit in your general direction.” Reznor does take the coffee, though. “You have redeemed yourself in my eyes, sir.” Tommy’s smile is so big it looks like his head’s about to split in half. After they break camp, Reznor says he’ll guide them back to the car. He’s sure he knows a faster way, he says, which won’t have as much climbing. The three others exchange dubious looks, but follow him down a path to the river. It’s somewhere around noon they realize they have no idea where they are. The sky’s overcast so they can’t get a fix from the sun which direction would point them to the trailhead. Reznor refuses to backtrack the way they came all morning since that would mean they’d be going back uphill. Besides, Reznor tells them, he’s sure all they have to do is follow the river and it’ll come out by Reynold's Prius. Tommy keeps his mouth shut but he’s pretty sure it’s a different river than the one they hiked along yesterday. By four o’clock, the sun’s broken through the clouds very low on the horizon. No one will say it, but they’re a little panicked. Reynolds suggests they make a fire to sleep around, then tomorrow go back the way they came. Reznor swears they’re close to the trailhead and convinces them to soldier on for one more hour. After the sun sets behind the mountain, dusk arrives quickly. In the gloom of the forest, crickets chirp in every direction. As night engulfs the four boys, the trail abruptly ends on a backcountry road. They hear men talking and yucking it up about twenty yards down the road. Four trailers, roughly in a square, are on the road’s far side. The boys pass some mud-caked trucks and a few old jeeps, gun racks and rifles in every vehicle. They peek around a trailer where a party seems to be going on. In the middle of the trailers there’s a campfire with a group of men in lawn chairs, sitting back, drinking clear liquid out of glass canning jars. The four boys look at each other. Reznor breaks off and comes up to the group of men. “Yawl excuse me, gentlemen.” The group is spooked by the unexpected appearance of an outsider. They lean forward in the chair staring at Reznor. He forces a smile. “My boys and I seem to have gotten lost and we were wondering if you could kindly tell us where we might have ended up.” Reznor counts nine men and two pit bulls that are growling. The lawn chair guys look at him with raised eyebrows. The pit bulls continue to snarl. “You hush.” One of the men with a scraggly grey beard yanks the leash he holds on the dogs. “Lost you say? You sound like a southerner boy.” “Yes, sir. That ah am.” Reznor really leans into his accent hoping to break the ice. “Micky-G,” a guy with a bowl haircut says to the scraggly bearded man. He’s got a very bushy, dark goatee that he strokes as he speaks. “Ask him what a southern boy’s doing this far up north? Boy must be wicked lost.” Some lawn chair guys chuckle, clanging glass jars on their aluminum armrests. “Well, sir,” Reznor says to the goateed man, “Ah attend Glastonbury College—that’d be a drive, I reckon, two hours south of here—but ma’ roots are from the Appalachian Mountains in the glorious state of Tennessee.” (Never mind Reznor’s from the swanky town of Belle Meade outside Nashville, and whose father is part owner of the Percy Warner Country Club.) The bushy goateed man’s eyes widen, impressed. “Yes, sir-ree,” Reznor goes on, “ma’ little dirt-spit of a town had a one room schoolhouse and ma’ teacher from first grade through high school was one Mrs. Irene Duckworth, and she took a shine to me from ma’ very first day. Made sure I had a scholarship the day I got my diploma. Her only stipulation being that I hightail it up north to one of those New England colleges she used to dream about. Bless-ed lady.” “Hey, Shamus,” calls out a younger guy with overlapping triple chins. He leans forward and his aluminum chair painfully squeaks. “Didn’t your Betsy have a Mrs. Duckworth at Willard Hollow Elementary?” Shamus, in a red MAGA cap, nods, and says, “Indeed she did. You, Furball, have quite the memory.” Reznor gulps. Having lifted so much of his fictional story out of Kyle Dupree’s real life, he hopes the tale he spinning isn’t overly familiar to this crowd. “’Cept that Mrs. Duckworth,” says red cap Shamus, “was an Ar-lene not I-rene as I recall. Hey, you fellas,” MAGA cap says to the three boys hovering a ways away. “Come on over here by the fire so we can get a better look at cha.” House leads the way, with Reynolds and Tommy trailing in his shadow. The old scraggly bearded guy, Micky-G, looks from House to Tommy, goes, “Well, now, you have got to be as big as he is small. How big you say you was fella?” House looks around the lawn chair men. “Uh, six foot seven.” “Yes, sir,” interjects Reznor, feeling he’s won over this crowd. “It’s why we call him house.” “Now why’s that, boy?” asks Shamus, pushing up his MAGA cap. “Um,” says Reznor, forcing himself to not roll his eyes. “Because he’s as big as one.” Shamus looks at Reznor confused. “Big as one what?” “I’m called House,” explains House, simply, “because I’m as big as a house.” Shamus takes a beat, then explodes into phlegmatic laughter. The other men rock in their lawn chairs laughing, too. A couple of them slap their thighs. “Big as a house!” repeats Shamus, before he hocks a loogie in the dirt. Reynold unobtrusively raises his camera, snaps a pic of these characters and, seeing he’s got a signal, posts it to his account. Under his breath he quietly sings the beginning of the Deliverance banjo song to House and Tommy: “Dum-du-dah-duh-dah-duh-dah-duh-dum…” Reznor gives him a warning glare. “What’s that now?” a big bear of a man sporting a full black beard asks Reynolds. He’s at the far end of the circle, darkly outline beyond the campfire. “Was you singing the hillbilly song from that old movie?” “No, sir. I definitely was not singing the hillbilly song from that old movie,” Reynold says, pocketing his phone. “I question that, boy,” says the bear, leaning forward into the firelight. The top of his head is bald, but there’s a horseshoe of long black hair that hangs down to his shoulders. There’s an evil glint in his eye when he tells Reynolds, “You sure got a purty mouth.” Some of the lawn chair guys chuckle ominously. “That ring a bell? Tommy jumps in all friendly smiles. “We were just hoping you guys could just point us in the right direction. Like maybe where does that road go to?” He points to the road they came from. “Could we just follow it into some town? Hopefully one that’s close by?” A man with grey, wispy hair in a ponytail, set down his drink, and gets out of his chair. “Fellas,” he says to the circle. “I think these boys either come for our moonshine or our meth. Either way, I don’t think we outta let ‘em leave.” The lawn chair men rise and start humming darkly the dueling banjo song they seem to be all too familiar with: “Dum-du-dah-duh-dah-duh-dah-duh-dum…” The four boys look at one another, then tear off down the road as fast as their hiking boots let them. Reynolds tosses off his backpack and double-times it straight ahead shooting past the others. Three men in camo hunting vests grab House and throw him against a rusted truck. In his struggles his backpack falls off during the melee. Tommy and Reznor right away are picked off by their backpacks, and are struggling as they’re returned to the campfire. Reznor continues trying to banter his way out of this jam. Two guys, ushering him on either side, relieve him of his backpack, then toss him into one of the lawn chairs. Tommy’s thrown into the chair next to him. Both their packs are deposited at their feet. They peer down the road where House punches one of the camo guys, but the other two throw themselves on top of him. It looks from Reznor and Tommy’s vantage point that they’ve got House pinned to the ground. But suddenly the two guys fly straight in the air and House escapes into the woods with the one guy he punched before in hot pursuit. The big bear with the black beard emerges from the shadows and looms over Reznor. He turns to the wispy ponytailed man, whose hair falls every which way after the altercation, and the triple chin young guy who’s never left his chair. “Lewis, Furball—park the little one in the woodshed. I’d like to have a word with my Appalachian buddy.” Furball and Lewis, putting his ponytail back in a hair tie, pluck Tommy up. Tommy toes never touch the ground as they escort him to the woodshed and lock him inside. Reznor’s eyes dart back and forth at the men around his chair. Two of the camo guys stumble in from the road out of breath. Five men and two pit bulls surround Reznor. Not good odds for getting away. Lewis and Furball return making his odds even worse. MAGA capped Shamus steps out of the shadows. “What are we gonna do with him, Frank?” Frank, the large bearded bear, says, “Like I said, we’re gonna start with a few questions, and then we’ll go from there.” Reznor looks around at the gathered men, then at Frank defiantly. “That’s a nice shiner you got, boy. How’d you get it?” Reznor smiles, friendly-like. “Ran into a door.” Frank smacks him with back of his hand hard enough to send him and the chair sideways. Lewis and Shamus bend down and right him. “Let’s start over. Pretend I’m dark Santa,” he tells Reznor. “’I know when you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sakes.” Reznor rubs his face. “Dark Santa. Got it.” Frank gets down on his haunches, eyes level to Reznor. “You really from Appalachia?” “No. Suburb outside of Nashville.” Frank nods. Smiles. “Dirt poor?” Reznor takes a moment. Frank cocks his head, waiting, his hand rising a bit. “No. Filthy rich.” Frank whacks him again spilling him out of the chair. “Fuck!” Reznor shouts, picking himself up. Furball helps him back into the chair. “What’d’ya do that for? That was the truth!” “Don’t know.” Franks shrugs. “Just felt like it.” He motions to the bushy goatee guy to bring him a chair. Goatee brings one over and Frank plops down in it—knees against Reznor’s. “What’s your name? And you best tell the truth. Dark Santa can tell.” Reznor scowls. “Reznor. Marlon Reznor.” Franks says, “I should whack you just on account of your name.” “Hey, I didn’t name me.” Frank smiles at him, then leans forward and puts his palms on Reznor’s bare thighs. He sniffs. The boy has a pleasant, clean scent—not like anyone from around here. His hands go an uncomfortable distance up Reznor’s shorts. He squeezes the boy’s muscular quads, feels something stir in him. “Now, Marlon, honest injun. You come for Micky-G’s hooch or you come for my top-shelf tina?” “Honest injun, we’re lost. All we want to do is get home.” Reznor’s jaw nervously clenches. He’s praying his eyes aren’t misting in front of this asshole. He’s pissed and scared at the same time, and Frank’s thumb is a hair’s breadth away from his metal cage—the last thing he wants exposed under these circumstances. “You know, Marlon? I actually believe you,” Frank says. “Indeed I do.” He looks around the huddled men. “But you can see we can’t let you leave, now that you know what we got cooking up here.” Reznor’s about to speak, but Frank pulls his hands from Reznor’s shorts, puts a grimy finger to the boy’s lips. “Now don’t say that you’ll never tell, or that you won’t give away our little secret. We’ve heard that before. Some of us even fell for it, ended up doing time because of it. Ain’t that right, Shamus?” MAGA cap says, “Damn straight.” “Ain’t that right, Dougie?” Dougie strokes his dark goatee, says, “Two friggin years, pardon my French.” “Ain’t that right, Micky-G?” “In the eighties, I served eleven months and they destroyed my still anyway, fuckin’ storm troopers,” says Micky-G. He’s brought over a glass jar filled to the brim. He still holds the pit bulls in his other hand. He hands the canning jar to Frank, who politely offers it to Reznor. “What is that,” Reznor says. “A peace offering, Marlon.” “I’ll pass.” “Not a request,” Dougie replies, pulling his goatee. Reznor scans the men around him. Looks at the woodshed containing Tommy. Sees an eyeball looking at him through a knot in the woodshed door. “Give it.” Frank gives him the jar and Reznor sips it. He immediately sprays it on the ground. The men around him laugh. “Smooth, huh?” says Frank, with a sneer. “Good as any Grey Goose in your daddy’s liquor cabinet, I bet. Ten times as butt-kicking. Go on again, ‘less you prefer Santa gives you a piece of coal.” Reznor steels himself, and takes a large swig. It burns all the way down his gullet. He opens his mouth silently, sticks out his tongue then bears his teeth. “Second gulp always goes down better,” Shamus snickers. Frank taps the bottom of the jar. Reznor lifts it to his lips and downs several gulps in a row. After swallowing he wildly shakes his head with his tongue hanging out. The men slow-clap his effort. “You really go to that college?” Dougie asks, as Reznor composes himself. Reznor nods. “C’mon now. Only a little left,” Frank says, pointing to the moonshine. Reznor feels the moonshine starting to impact him. The men double in number as his eyes cross. Maybe he’ll pass out and be out of this nightmare. He lifts the jar and finishes it, but then Shamus is right there, taking a cork out of a jug with his teeth, and refills his glass. “No,” Reznor says, forcing the canning jar on Frank. “I can’t. Nuh-uh. Nope. Negative. Nose-spray-Jose.” The group laughs. “Okay,” Frank says, accepting the jar. He puts his thick finger under Reznor’s chin. “So, Marlon, let me ask you. You really go to that Glastonbury College?” Reznor nods slowly so his brain won’t fall out. Frank goes on, “Kyle Dupree goes there. Know him?” “Besst friends,” Reznor says trying to minimize his slurring. “Team-mate. Good buddy. Gave me this here black eye.” Reznor points to the wrong eye, corrects himself. “This black eye.” He snorts a laugh at his mistake. Lewis pulls on his ponytail, says, “That sounds like our boy.” “Guy’s a douche.” Reznor’s head bobs forward beginning to fade. “Lightweight,” Frank says. To a couple of the men around him, he instructs, “Get him inside and strip him. Once he’s tied to the bed, Lewis, give him a big ol’ booty bump from the last batch. I don’t want to fuck a passed out drunk.” Lewis and Shamus grab Reznor under his arms and take him up the steps into Frank’s trailer. Reynolds and House, having circled back, silently crouch down in the bushes. They watch Frank take sips of Reznor’s rejected moonshine. Macky-G yanks his dogs’ leashes and leads them up the steps of the farthest trailer. House nudges Reynolds as the camo guy he punched comes back into camp. He’s talking to the other two, as Furball waves good night. They hear a truck sputter off. Frank looks at his trailer and throws a piece of firewood into the flames. A cascade of sparks fly up into the black night. He tosses the remains of the moonshine into the fire, where it explodes into a small fireball that poofs back his hair. Slowly he gets out of his chair, and climbs the steps of his trailer. “Who got a point?” Franks calls up into the trailer. Wayne opens the door for him, flips his ponytail. He hands him an orange cap syringe before shutting the door. *** “You catch all that?” House asks Reynolds. Reynolds whispers back, “Afraid so.” House gives him the once over. “Didn’t take you for the heroic rescue type.” Reynold snorts. “I’m not. Came back because this is the only place I get any bars.” Reynolds shows him his phone screen. House considers this. “Well, I’m thinking if we get Tommy out, the three of us can take on the rest of these hicks. Most of them are old or fat, or both.” "Are you nuts, man? They’ve gotta be loaded up the ass with weapons. They gotta fuckin’ meth lab! And this is Vermont, for Christ sake. Live free or die, and all that.” Reynolds scurries away from the bushes deeper into the woods. House mumbles to himself, “That’s New Hampshire, doofus.” He follows the light of the phone. Once he catches up to Reynolds, he’s incredulously. “You’re texting someone, now?” “Hang on.” Reynolds punches in a few numbers. “No. Calling.” After a couple of rings a voice says hello. “Dupree?” “Yes. Who’s this?” A beat. “Steve Reynolds? That you?” “Yes,” he rasps. “Why are you whispering? You’re the last person I’d ever thought I’d hear from.” “Dupree, where are you?” “I came home after the cancelled game. I’m sitting in my bedroom with my dog. To what do I have the privilege of this call?” “We got lost camping and stumbled on this backwoods hillbilly meth lab. And they’re about to rape Reznor.” There’s a long silence. “Dupree, you there?” “Yeah. Waldo, no, we’re not playing ball. Lay down. Good boy. Yeah, well, why call me? Shouldn’t you call the police or something?” “One: we don’t know where we are. Two: they said they know you?” “Who? The hillbilly meth guys?” “Yeah, this big Frank guy, and a Dougie. Who else House?” House whispers into the phone: “Lewis, Shamus, a Micky-G.” “Micky-G? You dopes. You’re at Micky-G’s still? Hoo-wee!” Hysterical laughter erupts from the phone. “You in the deep end of the pool, my friends! Deep doo-doo.” More laughter. “It’s not funny, asshole. Reznor’s about to get raped and Tommy’s probably next. House and I are out near their trailers, but … listen, you gotta get here and talk these bumpkins into letting them go. Stop laughing!” Besides the laughter, there’s barking coming from the phone. Reynolds cover the speaker worried someone’s going to hear it. Finally Kyle returns in a normal voice. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I’ll ask my mom’s boyfriend to take me there. It’ll take a while though. There’s like four trailers together, right?” Reynolds confirms this. “Okay, whatever you do, do not try to stop them. They’ll string you up or shoot you. You do not want to mess with these guys. They might look like yokels, but they’ll drop you like a buck on the first day of deer season. You got it?” “Fuck Dupree. Get here as fast as you can!” Reynolds says. “Hurry,” House adds. There’s three beeps when Reynolds and House hang up. I reach across to the other twin bed in my room and scratch Waldo’s ears. I go in and ask Jacob to drive me to Micky-G and Frank’s camp. ASAP. I’ll explain on the way. He’s down with in, no questions, though my mom’s got plenty of them. I give her the short version saying my teammates got lost and we need to bail them out. So I might have exaggerated how dangerous those guys are. But I know those trailers house enough weapons to arm a small Latin American country. Strangers and guns are a bad mixed in these parts. And if Reznor takes one for the team, well, that’s karmic justice. I’m still kind of pissed at him for the sucker punch he threw. Honestly, those trailer guys are more formidable in a bowling alley than they are in a dark alley. Well, except Frank. Frank’s a special case, especially if he’s been partying. You wanna avoid Frank in that case. True story: One afternoon, Frank slams ‘bout half a gram of his product, and this gigantic brown bear, fresh out of six months hibernation, chooses to stroll into his camp. The bear’s ready to eat anything and everything, and can’t believe there’s this big fat meal standing in front of him. He roars, gets up on his two legs towering over Frank, gonna maul him to death and eat him—no doubt about it. And what does Frank do? Run away? Go get his shotgun? Nope. Frank, amped up as shit, picks up a nearby ax and with an even louder roar than the bear—swear on a stack of bibles—chops the animal right through his skull down to his nether regions, splits the fucker in one fell swoop right in two. Grisliest thing—pardon the pun—you ever did see. Yup, Frank is one bear you do not want to poke. My advice for Reznor: best let him do the poking. I mean, how bad could it be? *** To say Reznor wakes up naked, gagged, tied to a bed, would be incorrect. That’s because he never was exactly asleep, so technically he could never have woken up. Out of it, yes. He still is, but after something cold and wet squirts into his rectum, he’s been agitated ever since. Wired, drunk and now horny as fuck—it’s a weird combo. He pulls on the ropes that have him spread eagle on his stomach. The bare mattress he’s on is piss stained and strongly smells like it. He’s blurry-eyed looking around, straining to make sense of his surroundings. Staring at the wall ahead seems to ground him. Trying not to think about his dick straining against its cage doesn’t help. The faded blue walls at twelve o’clock gradual comes into focus. There’s a woman. It’s an old poster, torn, and tattered. It’s Sarah Palin in a red, white and blue bikini toting a rifle. Next to it is a black and white Dirty Harry movie poster. Clint Eastwood aims a 44 magnum at his head, with the words “Go ahead, make my day” surrounding the weapon. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise, then, that the wall to his right has racks and racks of guns: AK-47s, AR-15s, shotguns, rifles; wood grained, camouflaged, matte black metal. On his left, an open closet door with a chest of drawers inside, the top strewn with an assortment of handguns. He can only guess what fun stuff is inside those drawers. Behind him is the bedroom door, a light switch, and one more poster: a kitten dangling precariously from a rope under the words “Hang in there baby.” Spread eagle naked on a pee-stained mattress surrounded by an armory of firearms, and an inspirational kitten poster: Reznor thinks he must be in some absurdist’s idea of hell. This notion is confirmed when Frank enters the room. In the bright room his eyes are more menacing. He’s shirtless, two full sleeves of tattoos, both tits pierced with doorknockers, and a big belly hanging over his belt. His hair never ceases it seems. His black beard and long black hair meld into the fur that coats his shoulders and, as he closes the door behind him, Reznor sees fur that extends over every inch of his back. So why is Reznor’s dick still swelling painfully looking at this overly hirsute man, a sight that should revolt him? He’s not so deluded as to think his straight. C’mon, that would be crazy. it’s just a subject best put out of mind. In high school the Bible Club was, for lack of a better word, a God send. He enjoyed the girls in the club. They were perfect dating material, and in Tennessee, often the prettiest. Certainly demure, submissive, willing to “hold off” till marriage. The second God send came in the form of Coach Brandon’s required celibacy. It concentrated all those raging hormones on one thing, and one thing only: winning! So far he found he could have it all: he was rich, cool, hip, smart, very handsome, a drop-dead body, killer six-pack abs, a broad chest, chiseled jaw. He’d do him if he could. So why the straining inside his cage for the hairy ape? It’s the booze and drugs they pumped in him, he decides, that’s driving this perverse desire. Frank kneels in back of him on the bed. He slips a hand between Reznor’s legs and rumbles a deep belly laugh as he fondles Reznor’s chastity device. “The boys told me, but I had to see for myself,” Frank says, “you perverted little pig.” He flips Reznor over, which strains Reznor’s limbs as his arms and legs cross over. “And not a hair on you.” He bends over and sucks on one of Reznor’s tits. Reznor struggles, but this causes Frank to more fiercely suck and then to bite his nipple. He runs his tongue under each of Reznor’s smooth arm pits, then down his broad chest and tight abs. Frank grabs the metal cage, speaking to it. “How you doin’ in there, little guy?” He runs a finger along the metal strips, gliding a coarse finger over the area of skin he can touch. It stimulates Reznor and causes him immense discomfort as his prick desperately wants to enlarge but can’t. “Would you look at that? A whole bunch of drool coming out of your little guy. Hate to tell you, bud, but you sprung a bad leak.” He laughs as he runs his thumb over the tip of Reznor’s dick, making Reznor wag his head back and forth in agony. He moans loudly behind the cloth knotted around his head. He bites on the gag, saliva trailing over his cheeks. “Guess I don’t have to give you a reach-around, bud,” Frank says, flipping Reznor back on his stomach. “It’s all about daddy.” Reznor hears Frank’s belt being unbuckled, pants unzipped, boots being kicked in the corner. Naked, Frank’s large, hairy thighs plop next to Reznor’s head. Reznor watches Frank uncaps a needle and sticks it in his arm. There’s an instance of swirling blood in the vial, then Frank flushes a shitload of pure methamphetamine into his body. His head rocks back for a second before he’s suddenly back up on his feet. “Fuck, yeah,” he yells, then smacks Reznor’s ass. “Fuck, yeah. I’m gonna rip your ass till it’s wider than the Grand fucking Canyon.” Reznor feels a wet liquid running down his butt crack. “This works out, I just might keep you as my new pet.” Frank’s knees push Reznor’s legs apart. “Fuck, yeah. Fuck, yeah, make you my whore. That booty bump doing it for you, boy? I can give you more. I could make you good twenty-four seven. Keep you on a leash tied up here in this room. Keep you high and happy the rest of your days. Make you into a slammin’ meth whore. What’d’ya say?” Suddenly, Frank’s cock rams up his ass straight up to his balls. The pain makes Reznor scream, though it’s muffled by the gag. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’s good, that’s good, that’s very good,” says Frank as he’s humping him. He fully pulls out so he can fuck Reznor’s ass again and hear him scream. Reznor bites down on the cloth in his mouth, breathing so rapidly he on the verge of hyperventilating. His rag’s overflowing saliva. Frank pulls out leaving just the tip of his fat cockhead in his hole. He teases him, only giving him his cock’s first inch over and over. Franks rushing and caught in this hypnotic, pleasurable loop. It’s got to be the booty bump, because, unbelievably, Reznor’s slowly willing to open up for the man as he teases him. He even starts to crave more than an initial inch. Unable to stop himself, Reznor pushes up just a little of his hole up to Frank. It's too small to see but Frank senses it in his cock, like a cobra senses the smallest movement of a rodent. Reznor’s stops clenching his sphincter for a second, and Frank snaps out of his spell and strikes, his entire cock rams back in up to the hilt of the boy’s hole. Who’s to say the cobra doesn’t enjoy the mouse’s shriek. Again and again, Reznor’s in pain and screeching. Frank laughs, enjoying alternately teasing the boy’s hole then destroying it. “Boy, you’ve had got the sweetest butthole I have ever fucked.” Frank stops momentarily, with his cock fully up Reznor ass. In a conflicted haze, Reznor doesn’t know what to expect, or even what he wants, but he begins feeling heat deep inside his colon. Hot piss starts sputtering out his ass. As Franks relieves himself, he whispers his continual blathering in his ear: “Oh, yeah. Every morning this is how we’ll start. Relieving my morning piss in your sweet little hole. Love this hole. Poz you up. Love your sweet little boy hole. But I’m gonna see that it don’t stay that way. No. You hear me? Yeah,” he says, pumping away inside Reznor’s body. “I want my pussy boy to have a big sloppy man cunt. Big hanging lips. Pull out your innards. Give you a big prolapse. Fuck that prolapse. Eat that prolapse. I know you want that. Don’t you want that, boy?” Reznor’s confused. The meth and moonshine follow these babbling words. His constricted cock wants it, too. But there’s a part of him rejecting, fighting these ideas flowing in his ear. It’s his respectability, his sense of self that has him repeating no through his gag. Frank becomes aware of what Reznor’s saying quietly under his gag. He pulls out and smacks Reznor’s ass hard. “Don’t you contradict me, boy.” He rams his cock back in, pulling up Reznor’s hips so he can rapid-fire fuck him. “Tell me you want it, boy. Tell me you want me to cunt you, ram my foot all the way up your ass, all the way to your fuckin’ throat.” Talking to him like this, Frank is trying to get his cock back as hard as it was. He’s semi-flaccid but still inside Reznor. “Tell daddy what he wants to hear. Tell daddy.” “Fuck! You!” Reznor yells through his gag, his last attempt to cling to his ego. Frank abruptly pulls out. Gets off the bed. Reznor hears him pick up his pants and rip out his belt. Frank then wails on Reznor’s ass, striking him repeatedly. Reznor’s ass is on fire, flailing around the mattress trying to avoid being struck. “Don’t you disrespect me,” he says, repeatedly whipping Reznor. “Don’t. You. Ever. Disrespect. Me!” Each time letting the belt fly, taking chunks out of Reznor’s butt cheeks. In an uncontrollable rage, he screams, “I will fucking kill you if you ever speak to me that way again, you hear me?” He stops belting him. Hysterical crying comes from the mattress. He whips Reznor’s bleeding ass once more to get an answer. “I said, did you hear me?” “Yes, I hear you,” Reznor sobs, as articulate as he can through the wet cloth. The area below his face is drench in tears, drool, and snot. His tortured butt burns. He tries to suppress his sobs but loses the battle. “You going to be good?” Frank asks him, a little calmer now, out of breath. Reznor quickly nods his head, says, “Mm-hm, I’ll be good.” There’s a long silence. No movement, only heavy breathing. Somehow it’s more terror-producing than the beating. He’s not sure what the maniac will do next. But then he feels the rope around one of his ankles untie, then the other. He looks in front of the bed and sees naked Frank, one big coat of black fur, lowering himself until he’s eye to eye. He unties his gag. Reznor sniffs back mucus. “You understand why I beat you?” Frank’s face is all shamefully contrite. He wipes Reznor’s tears with a thumb. “Yes, sir. I understand.” It’s the first time he breathes freely in a while. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but you made me.” Reznor nods, even as silent tears keep flowing. Frank’s all calm reason. “I’m going to untie you, boy, and I want to see proper gratitude from you. You understand what I’m saying,” he says, stroking his hard on. Reznor sniffs again and nods. “Good. All right then.” Frank unbinds his arms. Reznor curls into a ball holding his knees and gently rocks. “Gratitude, I said, boy.” Frank’s on the bed, kneeling next to Reznor’s head, his erection an inch away from Reznor’s mouth. “Show daddy how grateful you are when he shows you mercy.” He brushes his cock against Reznor’s lips. Reznor opens his mouth and accepts Frank’s member. He runs his tongue over his drooling cockhead as Frank keeps pushing it further into his mouth. Lying on his side he sucks the man, as a palm in back of his head pushes him forward, the cock going deeper into his throat until he retches. Frank immediately pulls out and smack Reznor across the face. Reznor curls up again, while Frank verbally rages at him. The slap makes Reznor think faster now. He loudly pleads for forgiveness, realizes he needs to get on the floor, must kneel before Frank. He spreads Frank legs and starts sucking him in earnest, swirling his palm around the man’s fat member and tonguing him deeper and faster. Frank spits up pre-cum like a geyser the more submissive he gets. He licks his shaft and is pushed down to lick his hairy balls. Frank leans back, spreads his cheeks and tells him to get to work on his asshole. Reznor suppresses his desire to puke at the man’s acrid smell, and pulls his legs down so he can get back to dick sucking. On his elbows, Frank watches with pleasure having the pretty sandy-haired boy bob up and down on his cock, pushing his face into his black patch of pubes, grabbing his head, pushing it down. On the verge of gagging a second time, fearing what that will lead to, Reznor makes a decision. He clamps down his teeth as hard as he can. He’ll castrate this fucker if that what it takes. Frank jumps up roaring in pain, holding his bloody crotch. It takes a moment for the men outside to realize it’s Frank who yelling. Lewis and Shamus along with two of the camo men crash into the bedroom. They witness Frank, his dick bloody but still attached, beating the living shit out of Reznor. Frank’s in a frenzy, knocking Reznor’s head repeatedly against the Dirty Harry poster until he breaks through the trailer’s plaster wall. After Reznor's fallen, he starts kicking him. The four men restrain Frank on the bed to stop him from killing the kid. They keep him there until he regains some of his sanity. Frank assures them he’s okay, and runs into the bathroom to treat his more than injured pride. Reznor wakes up—this time actually awakens after Frank beats him unconscious. He’s cold. Aware enough to realize he’s still naked, outside, the wind blowing over him on a chilly October night. This time he’s upright, standing, or more accurately, hanging by his arms, spread eagle in the middle of a group of empty lawn chairs. The campfire’s last embers smolder, providing little warmth. What light there is comes from the surrounding trailers’ windows. A few remaining men from earlier in the evening mill about. No Frank in sight. His face heavily beaten, mouth swollen, caked blood under his nose, Reznor speaks slowly like a thousand year old man coming out of a thousand year sleep. “Might,” he says, feeling his jaw might be broken, “one of you gentlemen, please, be so kind, as to untie me?” They look fearfully in back of him. “My boys know better than that,” says a familiar deep voice coming up behind him. Frank comes around Reznor’s side, ducks under the rope. He’s in jeans, boots and a dark wool sweater now. “You are strung up,” he says pointing to the beam above him, “where we usually skin our deer.” Reznor’s struggling to come back to full consciousness, hindered by moonshine and meth, and now overlaid by pain. If he doesn’t move, the pain is bearable. He finds his legs are stuck apart, tied to stakes in the ground. But there’s something niggling at the edge of his consciously, something terrifying if he looks straight at it. He refuses to look at it. But as he’s beginning to take in his environment and his situation, he’s aware that while Frank points to the beam above his head, what he’s pointing with is a chainsaw. Frank pulls the cord and the chain saw whirs to life. Frank gives it a few good revs, until he sees comprehension and then, finally, what he’s after, absolute horror in Reznor’s face. Frank lets the chainsaw idle to a soft purr. “You know,” Frank says, walking up to him, “in olden times, when someone tried to kill the king and missed the mark, do you know what they’d do to that person?” Reznor’s piss flows through his chastity cage puddling in the dirt. “Do you know what drawn and quartered means?” Reznor sobs. Shaking. Frank puts his face inches from Reznor’s, both hands on the chainsaw’s handle that, for the moment, pointing to the ground. He gives a few revs, then tilts the spinning blade up between Reznor’s legs so he feels its breeze. Revs it loudly. “I asked you a question, boy,” he shouts over the machine. He opens the throttle to a full roar. “Do you even remember my fucking question anymore!?” To be continued…

4. Member of the Team I woke up naked covered in mud with a mouth that tasted like a sick raccoon had thrown up in it. My head felt kicked in by a moose. After the automated sprinklers went on way before dawn, I had been feverishly hot but the wetness and cold made me stir. I had no idea where I was. It was still dark. I heard hissing like snakes around me, then water gushed periodically over my skin. It took a couple of good drenches to motivate me get moving. It was a struggle, I got to tell you, just to get on my hands and knees. One palm on the ground, rest; one bent knee, rest; another palm on the ground—rising up was obviously going to take a while. By the time I got on all fours, I had pieced together enough flashes of the previous evening to realize there was a narrative, if I followed it, which led to me struggling to crawl out of the bushes, being soaked by a cold spray, and caked in mud. I had been fucked for the first time in my life. That part was now clear. I remembered it was by my hot roommate, who I subsequently fisted and jerked off in his ass. This was also a premiere event. I was in back of the library, but looking around, saw no sign of said hot roommate, good ol' fist and cock taker, Drake Chadwick. Pulling on clothes over a muddy body has got to be one of the most uncomfortable feelings in the world, but I’m not about to cross campus naked, so I suck it up and get back to the dorm uncomfortably but uneventfully. A Goth girl has done an all-nighter at the reception desk, and she wants to look at me as much as I want to be looked at. I slip up to my room, find it’s empty, and bring a towel to the group showers. I spend ten minutes just letting the warm spray wash over my head. When I get back to the room it’s still dark outside, and I lay on my bed, I swear, for two seconds, and instantly my alarm screams at me with the blinding sun shining through the open window. Still no beefcake Drake. Somehow I make it to the pool by seven a.m. For everyone but me this is first practice for the water polo team. Since I missed the tryouts, this is, by default, my tryout. I gotta admit to you, swimming’s my thing. I don’t know water polo from horsey polo. But it’s in a swimming pool, so how hard can it be. I’m wearing the Levi cutoffs from home, which is the only swimsuit I own. I stand out from the rest of the team like some Okie cousin. Everyone's in identical red speedos, and everyone’s trying to avoid eye contact, which makes me even more self-conscious. Of course it’s Reznor, with his scruffy chin beard, who’s the first one to shout out to me in his Foghorn Leghorn drawl, “Nice shorts, Daisy Mae,” which makes several of his blond boys snicker. The best I can do with my cobweb-for-a-brain is to flip him the bird. Great come back, yeah, I know. There’s an earsplitting whistle bouncing off all the white tiles. Coach Brandon descends stairs from his office on the floor above like a Greek god coming to earth from Mouth Olympus. He’s wearing white shorts, white sneakers and a clingy red tank top, which only accentuates his bronze body reflected in the glassy pool. I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks this way. Drake, in his red speedo, follows closely down the stairs. His cheeks are even more flushed than yesterday when I first met him jacking off in our dorm room. I recognize most everyone around the pool, but there are six older guys hanging out together. I figure they’re the ones that live in one of the townhouses. They’re older—only guys that are juniors and seniors get to live in the townhouses. I’ll leave out the commentary, but they’re six of the hottest bodies I’ve ever seen. All perfect V-shapes, six foot and up range, with lat spans like eagle's wings; a half dozen perfect specimens of the male form in every skin tone the good Creator blessed us with. “Break into groups of four,” coach says. “Townhouse, split three and three. Hannigan and Fernandez, you’ll relay first and again fourth. Freestyle up and back, and make sure your team touches the wall.” The townhouse guys form two groups in lane one and two. Paxton the stutterer, wee Tommy (who looks like he's been up all night and has a happy smile plastered on his face), Rafiki and I line up in lane three. Dick-face Reznor, Steve Reynold (who also looks a little out of it, but, man, what a Gluteus to the Maximus the boy has), the towering van den Haus, and beefcake Drake form a line in lane four. I glance over at my roommate, but he’s busy studying Haus’ acned back. Still won't make eye contact. Whatever. Coach gives out a shrill whistle again and Hannigan, Fernandez, Paxton, and Reznor dive in and crawl like madmen up the twenty-five yards to the end, submerge, twist and propel themselves off the far wall. They’re coming back, my boy Paxton’s ahead, with the two older guys in lanes one and two in hot pursuit, with Raznor’s bringing up the rear. Dip-shit is as slow as he is obnoxious. Paxton taps the wall and little Tommy does a giant leap over him and is in the lead for most of the first half, but two of the older boys from the townhouse catch up to him on the turnaround, and iron butt Steve Reynolds makes a huge effort and passes Tommy right before they touch the wall. The two swimmers from the townhouse were initially breaking away, but Raf’s large hands are making up some of the difference and shrinking their leads. House, by far the biggest guy on the team, is surprisingly fast. His shoulders roll powerfully; his traps bulge, flexing amazingly with each stroke. Both House and Raf tie with the older guys in the flip turn, and all four are neck-and-neck coming up to the wall. Hannigan and Fernandez are still catching their wind from their first effort, while Drake and I get ready for our teammates to tap the wall. They simultaneously tap, and the four of us dive roughly at the same time. I’m swimming like crazy, making a big splashy mess, and I see Drake is about even with me on my right. I give it my all and am gaining ahead of Drake but not the older guys. Then on the flip turn (which you have to realize this is another of my firsts in the past eight hours), I kick against the wall as hard as I can and feel, I know it’s nuts, a little of Drake cum squirt out my non-virgin butthole. My head’s pivoting both ways to see if I’m ahead of Drake and the townhouse boys—and I’m in the lead! My lungs burn, but my adrenaline is propelling me like a torpedo, and I see the pool’s wall in sight. As I make the tap, coach blows the whistle and I realize our team wins. Yay me! Yay lane three! But before I can celebrate with my fellow lane-mates, coach says, “Okay, again.” By the fourth time we’ve gone through these relays, most of the underclassmen, including me, are ready for the showers. Our lane has won three of the four trials and I’d like to end feeling good about my first day at practice, to be told how good I did and, yes, I’m on the team, but coach says to split into two-man groups. I look over at Drake and he finds his toes are more interesting than meeting my eye. Raf slaps my shoulder and he and I line up in lane six. (Now, if you’ve been doing the math, you’d know there are fourteen of us—for those on their phones in the back of the class: eight underclassmen, six upperclassmen—and yes, this will be on the final.) We break up in our pairs and take up seven of the eight lanes. Raf gets in front of me, and we go through backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, and then freestyle. I’m exhausted but Raf and I do a decent job, taking at least second or third and one time first in all four of the events. Pube-face Raznor swallows a bunch of pool water on his last crawl and hurls some of it back into the pool filter. “C-c-classy,” says Kenworth Paxton, his cheek scars folding into his smile. Coach’s whistle shrieks a final time. He makes a final note on his clipboard, and fans the clipboard toward the showers. I follow Raf into the locker room and he introduces me to the townhouse guys. Their six names I immediately forget mostly because I’m trying not to stare—there’s a lot of flesh packed into those speedos. It strikes me how the townhouse guy’s packages are fully stuffed while all the underclassmen I met at dinner last night (except Raf, our dorm’s Resident Assistant, who I remember is a junior) seem to have crotches as flat as Ken dolls. Now that I’m looking at them, more like Barbies. Hannigan and Fernandez—their names I do recall—flank me as we walk through the rows of lockers. Hannigan tells me they’re co-captains and boyfriends. I’m sure their names will now stick. “You’re fast,” Hannigan says, “but you can’t keep twisting your head back and forth like you do.” “Control that,” Fernandez adds, encouragingly, “you’ll get more speed. But you looked good out there.” He smacks my wet Levis, and I know I’m grinning like a goon. They strip off their suit and Hannigan's got a massive Irish sausage surrounded by fiery red pubes, and Fernandez slides off his speedo and sports, not just a beautiful, meaty burrito, but the thickest black bush I’ve ever seen. It’s amazingly how he’s cropped it right to the edge of his speedo. The four other townhouse guys pass by clapping my shoulders and one smacks my butt—this hottie with a G.I. Joe jaw—welcoming me on board. At their lockers they all reveal an assortment of fat cocks, long cocks, cut and uncut. You gotta remember, at the lake back home, all I ever seen are old guys’ fifty- and sixty-year-old wieners, so taking in these young studs, it’s all I can do to not pop a boner in my fraying cutoffs—but then I freeze. What stops me mid-unbuttoning is seeing all the underclassmen, all those guys at last night’s dinner—stuttering Paxton, little Tommy, giant House, dick-face Raznor, bowling ball butt Steve Reynolds, even beefcake Drake—slowly peel off their swim suits, and every single one of them displays a shriveled cock compressed tightly inside a metal chastity cage. Just as I’m pulling down my Levis, the coach appears and says, “Dupree, my office.” Just a second ago there was a solemn droopiness hanging over the underclassmen. Suddenly, with those three words from the coach, the whole damn team turns into hooting and hollering idiots. I feel my cheeks burn without knowing why. Drake is barking and howling the loudest of all, the first time he’s looked at me all morning. He’s got a vengeful look in his eye that I totally don’t get. “Dupree. Now,” goes the coach. The two additional words makes the locker room explode into a bench-stomping, locker-banging, towel-snapping madhouse. I ascend away from the racket, looking back at the team with growing unease. *** Apparently Coach Brandon shares his office with Coach Rocco. Anyway, that’s what the name plate on the desk kitty-corner to the coach’s desk reads. The guy’s sitting there, hairy legs up on his desk reading a magazine. He glances up when Coach Brandon and I come in. There’s all these photos of the soccer team in action on the wall behind him. Extra points if you guessed he’s the soccer coach. The guy’s more compact than Brandon, handsome in a smarmy, Mafioso kind of way. The legs of his blue gym shorts are loose and it’s very apparent, to me anyway, the guy’s forgotten to wear anything under them—yep, there’s his big Mafioso pecker—which is A-Okay with me. His dark eyes see what I’m looking at. The black brows scowl in disapproval but he also makes no adjustment to cover his wang—again, fine by me. His jet black hair is slicked straight back, and he’s got a heavy five-o’clock shadow even though it’s barely nine. I say hey. He says nothing. Nice guy. Remind me not to sign up for the soccer team. “How’d he do?” Coach Rocco goes. Seems like a real asshole if you want to know the truth. I’m mean, I’m right in the room for Christ sakes. Who does that? Coach perches on the edge of his desk, and motions for me to take the metal chair by the door. I guess I’m gonna be here for a while. I’m still wet and the chair’s cold, but I’m not going to wuss out, so I just sit and look around the room. Next to my chair is an examination table with back rest bent at a forty-five degree angle. Probably in case of sport injuries, I reckon. Behind the coach in his corner there’s a fish tank humming away; Rocco’s corner has a lit up terrarium. A brilliant red fish swims around the aquarium, and in the rocks at the bottom, peaking out, looks like there’s an eel. Rocco’s terrarium has some kind of frog sitting in a pan of water and a large striped snake draped over some fake tree branches. Couple of animal lovers, I’m thinking. “He did okay. He’s gonna need training, though,” coach says to Rocco. I just love being talked about in third person. I feel it’s my duty to give a short lecture on gender binary assumptions, but Rocco’s eyebrows tell me that this isn’t the audience for it. “A lot of training,” coach goes on to Rocco. “But the talent’s there. Wing man, I’m thinking, to start. We’ll see how he does. Might be a good hole, who knows.” Rocco hisses a laugh. Should I be aware of a double entendre in sport-speak? I’m sure I’m just being paranoid because Rocco’s eyes grow bored and they travel back to the Sports Illustrated he’s holding. “You’ll need a lot more discipline, too, son, but we’ll cover that soon enough.” Coach takes an uncomfortably long beat checking me out before he moves to his aquarium. He picks up a can of fish pellets from his desk and knocks some flakes into the water. The red fish jumps on them. “You’re a water mammal, comfortable in the water. Grew up beaver or otter country, all those Vermont rivers and ponds, eh?” “Yep.” Don’t know where he’s going with this but I’m inclined to believe he’s saying I made the team. Just have to make it through some team philosophical tenets, is my guess. “Yeah, I definitely see that in you.” Coach goes to a cabinet, unlocks it, and takes out a glass jar of what look like creepy, squirmy pink worms. He uncaps the lid, draws out a worm and drops it in the tank. The eel shoots straight by the startled fish, and gobbles the worm furiously in a couple of chomps. Ick. “But first I need you to decide something. You can stay with your warm-blooded mammal roots—and that’s perfectly okay if you do. Dolphins are warm blooded mammals after all. Very team oriented, and smart as heck. But the team can always use a cold-blooded shark. No need to decide here and now. Just think about it. Either way, though, first step is to make you a sea creature. We need to lose all this mammal hair. I’m sure you saw no one on the team has a follicle on their body. Up here,” he points to the sparse hair coating my chest, then lower. “And down there. You okay with that?” “You want I should shave it?” “I’m sure you’ve noticed all the swimmers at the Olympics are all smooth.” “His armpits too,” Rocco pipes up behind his magazine. “Armpits, too,” agrees Brandon. “Yeah,” I say. “I can do it tonight.” “No. We do it now. If that’s all right with you. Waxing is much better than a razor.” He tosses me a red speedo. “Slip those on. You’re a creature of the sea from now on. Got it?” “Creature of the sea. Got it, coach.” It’s probably a stupid question, but sometimes I’m slow to catch on to things. “So does that mean I’m on the team?” I like to clarify. Sometimes more than once. “Almost. Couple of indoctrinations that we can take care of right here, right now, and then you’ll be fully pledged.” Should I be nervous that he’s slipping on a blue latex glove? Maybe it’s for reasons of hygiene I tell myself. “You make it sound like I’m joining a fraternity, coach.” Rocco looks up as I slip off my cutoffs and pull up the team’s red speedo. I make sure I pull on my member to plump it up, for Rocco’s benefit, before tucking it in place. “I’d call it more like a brotherhood, son.” Coach Brandon lights a white candle and rotates it around watching the wax melts. “Same tradition that the soccer team has, right Coach Rocco?” “Same traditions, Coach Brandon.” “Now, up on the table on your back, Dupree.” I climb on the cold metal table and lie back. Rocco looks up, grabs his water bottle and watches what the coach and I are up to. Coach swirls the melting wax around and sets the candle on the exam table. Then he does the craziest thing: he sticks his hand into the terrarium and pulls out the frog—or toad—or whatever. I’m not a biology major. “So, this is Benjie, the team’s mascot. He’s a transfer toad from Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. This is Kyle Dupree, Benjie.” Coach holds the thing in his palm and—hand to God—the toad croaks in my face like he’s saying hello. “Tradition is all new players give Benjie a lick for good luck, isn’t that right Coach Rocco?” “It’s tradition, Coach Brandon,” he says behind his magazine. “Not one athlete’s ever decline.” “Yeah,” I say, climbing off the table, “well you just found your first one declining.” Coach Brandon puts a hand on my chest and goddamn if he doesn’t flick his tongue over the toad’s back. “See. Tastes like chicken,” he laughs. Rocco comes up in back of Brandon, puts a hand on coach’s shoulder, and also darts his tongue across the mascot. “Mm-mm. Tasty toady,” he jokes, displaying all his pearly teeth. “Every one of my boys have done it, same as all of Coach Brandon’s. C’mon, Dupree. You a pussy?” One thing about me is don’t dare me something. So I frown, then, ready to be disgusted, stick out my tongue. Coach Brandon flips Benjie over and smashes the toad’s back across my tongue while squeezing it. All its little warts pop juice into my mouth. It’s disgusting, worse that I imagined—so goddamn nasty! Like licking a chalkboard eraser that’s soaked in a urinal. A rancid, gritty slime coats my mouth. Rocco hands me his water bottle and I swig back a ton, which only washes the nauseating pustules into my stomach. The gross taste fills my stomach, and after about half a minute a feeling builds like I’m going to puke. Coach’s putting Benjie back in his terrarium, while Coach Rocco reads my face and quickly grabs the waste basket. Just in time he puts it under my chin and I hurl last night’s burgers and curly fries. I’m feel waves of nausea roiling inside my guts. I don’t thinking I’m done puking. I hope the coaches are prepared because I’m not a quiet puker. I’m dizzy and reach out a hand to Coach Rocco to steady myself. My second round ralphing is twice as violent and three times as loud as the first. I think I even hear some sympathetic groans from the team downstairs. Coach Rocco rubs my back. “It’ll pass, buddy,” he says. “Just hang in there.” When I look at him again, there’s something in his dark brown eyes that looks incredibly sympathetic. I don’t think I saw that before. When I retch a third time, a little less violently this time, into his metal trashcan, afterward I see a goddamn aura of goodness shimmering around him. My hero with a bronze bucket of puke! And when I look at Coach Brandon I see the same care and concern and—for Christ sakes!—honest to God, I see actual loving hearts pouring out the coach’s eyes, like little heart icons floating up the screen on an app. This vision feels so intense. Everywhere I look is the most wonderful sight. The whole office is the most loving, the most fantastic office in the world. If heaven was an office, this would be God’s office. I can’t get these thoughts out of my head: Jesus would be the receptionist outside; they’re would be a typing pool of angels in row after row. The pencils on the desk are the most perfect pencils God’s ever created. I gasp! That red fish is the most awesome red fish in the entire world, and I’m the one looking right at it and it’s looking back at me. It’s the red fish of perfection! “Lie back, son. Just enjoy what you’re feeling. And, while you’re enjoying it,” Coach Brandon says, running a hand up and down my body—God it feel good, “let’s relieve you of this animal hair. Set free the beautiful sea creature inside you.” Is he really saying corny stuff like this? Does it matter? All that matters is his hand running over my body. As I lie back feeling I feel all the love of the universe, all at the same time, in every inch of me. I watch the coach aim his beautiful white candle over my abdomen and lets the liquid flow out. It stings as it hits the skin above my bellybutton, and he smears it around with a flat wooden stick—but I don’t mind the pain. Pain is pleasure says the coach, and I believe whatever coach says. Either coach for that matter. Immediately, he applies a cloth swatch over the drying wax, waits a few seconds, then rips it off, pulling with it a rectangle of belly hair. “Yow!” I place a hand over the now-smooth skin. “Shit, coach. That hurts,” I say, stupidly grinning. “Exactly,” he says, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. Rocco coughs a laugh and pulls off my speedo. I’m loving it, every second. I take Rocco’s hairy paw and run it over my hardening cock. “So I don’t abuse you more than necessary, let’s use clippers to trim you,” says Coach Brandon. From his drawer he brings out barber clippers, snaps it on. He buzzes over the sparse hair on my chest, my arms, my legs, but he really goes to town on my crotch. Bunches of curly brown pubes he pulls out of the clipper blades. The vibration feels so good, I start trying to hump the clippers with my pelvis, which amuses manly Rocco. Rocco distracts me by twisting my very sensitive nipples. With Coach Brandon satisfied he’s buzzed away enough of my body hair, he’s back with the hot wax. He drips over my short crotch curlies and he pushes it around with the wooden stick. He applies the rectangle swath and zips it off. “Youch!” I feel half my pubic bone is smooth as a baby’s butt. He does this several more time, none of which hurts any less. In fact, the more he does it the more it hurts and the redder my skin gets. He feels his work running his hand over my bare crotch while avoiding my cock, but it doesn’t matter. It’s hard all by itself. Then coach drips wax over my balls. I let out a squelched yelp as Rocco bends down and plants his wet mouth on mine. Brandon rips off the wax from each ball, rubs each one with his thumb, and squeezes my entire sack to make sure all the hair is gone. I lose track of time as he rips off every follicle from my body. “I need you to flip around, son.” He lowers the back rest so the tables perfectly flat. I’ve got a stiffy, but lay on my belly anyway pressing it into the cold metal. “I need you to spread your legs. A little wider.” I comply, as he pulls down my balls so their exposed. I know this is going to hurt but Rocco’s massaging my shoulders so I don’t care. If it hurts all the better as long as Rocco’s there. “Rocco,” I say with my face smashed on the exam table. “I’m so fucking high, Rocco. Rocco? I think I love you. And Coach Brandon, too. And I love all my teammates. Even ol’ pube chin Reznor.” Rocco chuckles, still kneading my shoulder blades. “That’s Benjie, our magical bufo toad talking. Do you know what a bufo toad is?” I try shaking my head but am enjoying Rocco’s touch so much I can’t move. “A bufo toad has venom that’s an extremely potent psychedelic. Even the little taste I got gives me a buzz. Nothing like the amount you got though, buddy, but I’m with you, man. I love you, too. And I love the coach. And we love you.” “You do?” When the wax hits the taint between my balls and asshole, I don’t know if the hot wax hurts more or coach ripping off the wax hurts more. Let’s call it a tie. As a consolation prize, Rocco grabs my hand and puts it down his shorts. I eagerly grab his thick member and start stroking him. I’m tripping so hard on how good his cock feels. The more I stroke him the more he likes it. Sex is the most magically thing in the universe! Coach Brandon’s busy pulling open my butt cheeks, first one side, then the other, and waxing them. Each time the hot wax is getting closer to my hole. Ripping the wax off isn’t too bad here since I’m not that hairy around my hole. But the moment he drips the burning wax directly on my anus, I yowl while at the same time Roscoe groans as I crush his cock. Coach rips the last few hairs around my asshole off, and then he applies a cooling ointment and swirls it around my hole. I’m looking over at Coach Rocco’s body: beautifully hairy, swirling circles of fur that twirl like sand dunes in the wind. The pattern his body hair makes is mesmerizing. There symmetry and geometry at play. I’m convinced there’s fractal algorithms that could be written that explains his beauty. I see those equations float by as I admire him. Sines and cosines, quadratic equations float through my head. And there’s a finger in my hole. Coach Brandon flips me over talking to me about something or other, his finger twisting in my hole. He tells me he saw my work last night behind the library fisting Drake Chadwick. I look up into his ocean blue eyes. There’s waves crashing in them, and he’s going on and on. “I have to say I was impressed. Chadwick said he’d never been fisted before, but I had to see for myself this morning. The poor boy. You destroyed that hole, Dupree. It’s almost a complete wreck. Eighteen, nineteen-year-olds. So many hormones running rampant through your body. You have so much passion in you. We have to control that passion. Lock it up.” “Did he tell you he was the first one who ever fucked me, coach?” I feel I can tell him and Coach Rocco anything. He’s sticking an increasing number of digits in my hole. He’s got three fingers inside me. “You enjoying this, son?” “Mm-hm.” I wince, then exhale as coach’s slides four fingers inside. It hurts so much I can’t stand how much I like it. The feeling of a man’s palm inside my body. I float between the pain of it and the idea of it, then the realization that a man has his palm inside me, the skin of his hand rests along the wall of my rectum. It’s just unfathomable. He lets it sit there, then starts twisting it around. What’s more unimaginable: the idea or the sensation? We’ll call it a draw and I reach over and stroke Rocco’s cock. Rocco’s fully erect, pulling off his shirt and dropping his shorts. He climbs on the table and positions his butt over my face. “I think he’s ready for Leon, coach,” he says. I pull his hips down and start rimming his dark, hairy asshole. “Aw, fuck, boy!” he cries. “Yeah, eat that hole. Suck on it.” I do suck on it, as Coach Brandon pulls his palm out of me. I feel an intense emptiness, but hear Coach Brandon’s deep voice. “Dig in there, son.” I keep rimming in the darkness of Rocco’s butt. Even in the blackness, feeling his hair all over my face, more waves of the drug crash over me, unmoors me further from earth. Every hair in his crack glides across my face. My tongue’s gotten him so wet, when he rub his ass back and forth I feel at the bottom of the sea with long, soft strands of seaweed rolling with the ebb and flow of the tide, back and forth, across my tongue. I can’t tell what’s real anymore. Am I really tonguing this tasty, musky hole or am I seeing the surface of the ocean lying in a seaweed bed? Could it be both? I feel Rocco’s fingers go over my fingers. Both of us pull his butt cheeks open. More seaweed sails across my tongue. “Get in there,” I hear him growl, as I sense him jerking his meat and splashing my hairless body with his spunk. Someone, must be my coach, licks it up. I feel something at my own butthole—a sensual pop of some kind, which continues crawling deeper inside my body. I push Rocco’s butt up to see what it is. It’s a long striped dildo Coach Brandon’s feeding me, pushing in a couple of inches, pulling out a little, then pushing in more. “You like Leon, our coral snake?” I look over at the terrarium and see the fake branches are missing its snake. “No!” I say, alarmed that Coach Brandon is pushing an actual snake into me. I could almost believe they’d fuck me with a live reptile. “Careful so Leon does bite you,” teases the coach, letting the thing slide in really far. I feel, where its head is penetrating me deepest inside, there’s a sensation of pins and needles. “I think Leon bit me,” I exclaim, panicked. “You might start feeling paresthesia, a strange tingly, prickling feeling.” Rocco’s clinical, detached, like a doctor giving a prognosis. He flips around, pressing down his cock so I can suck it. “Yeah, I feel that in my guts,” I respond. “Did Leon bite me?” He stuffs his leaking calzone into my mouth so I can’t talk anymore. Coach Brandon appears by my head with the can of worms he’d fed the eel with. “Only one cure for Leon’s bite. And it needs to slither in through your dick.” “Whaaaaa—?” Hard to talk with a cock down your throat. “Sorry, can’t hear you, son,” Coach Brandon says, gripping my dick fiercely and slipping something inside the slit. I feel whatever it is squirming into me, inch by inch, down my piss shoot. Rocco pins down my shoulders down with his legs. I’m trying to spit him out. His cock clogs my windpipe. I’m spitting up massive amounts of mucus. I’m bucking on the table, trying to get the worm out of my cock, the serpent out of my ass, as the coaches laugh uproariously at my desperation. The slimy intruder I feel wiggling, drilling deeper and deeper into my cock. It’s so far down my shaft I’m convinced it’ll never be pulled out. The tingling in my colon crescendos until it feels like knives are plunging outward from my organs. The two men mock me with laughter that reverberates demonically in my ears. My head shakes back and forth denying the reality of snakes and worms and a cock that’s plunging so far down my through it’s being eaten by the serpent coming up through my entrails. I have a vision of Ouroboros, the snake that eats itself; the ancient gnostic symbol of unity with the divine. In that instant the laughter ceases, echoes away like a thunderstorm passing into the distance. All that remains is the soft hum of the aquarium. Bubbles float calmly to the surface. The coaches both have vanished. Well, no; no one’s vanished: Coach Rocco sits at his desk, hairy legs up, reading a Sports Illustrated; and Coach Brandon’s standing at his whiteboard, assigning van der Haus to goalkeeper, me as a right wing, and Fernandez as a left wing. He continues quietly writing in names for the other positions as I run my hands over my entirely smooth body—yes, dolphin or shark, I’ll have to get back to you on that. Even smooth armpits, I hear an echo of Rocco say. I squeeze my butt. No, nothing’s in my hole, no snake crawling up it, no worm in my cock. But, shit. Wait. What is that? I push down hard on metal that’s not budging, that’s trapped my cock inside a tiny cage. Huh. Officially, I guess, I’m a member of the team. Well, at least my member is.

For @Pozitivly and @YEGfaggot you’ve inspired me to see if there’s more in this story. Looks like the swim team is set to get back together. Cumming soon!

Thanks everyone. It’s been fun! You’re the most awesome pervy guys to write for.

Coda: The Tradeoff The clock in the center of Grand Central Station reads five minutes to six. The station is packed. People rush to catch trains, disembark from all parts of the east coast and beyond, dash for taxis, line up at ticket windows, some linger taking selfies of themselves with their friends marking the beginning of their exciting adventure in New York City. Jesse is simply waiting. He scans the crowd looking for a military-type guy he studied in one of the photos in Mac’s office—an apparently very rich leader of the largest paramilitary company on the planet. Former Navy SEAL, he’s the mercenary leader the Abbot talked about, the buyer of the star ruby now hanging between his legs. Studying the photograph, Jesse couldn’t help notice how hot the man is—square jawed, a dimple in his chin like a baby’s butt, blond hair slicked down and parted on the side, broad-shouldered, massive biceps, and wide set, fear-inducing eyes. The guy probably won’t be wearing anything hinting at his military background, like wearing fatigues like he is in the photo. More likely he’ll be just dressed like a regular dad-type guy—although hard to miss being big as fuck—passing through New York on his way from here to some non-descript somewhere else. He’ll definitely have a large suitcase with him, one big enough to hold five million dollars. The thought of that gets Jesse’s heart pumping. * So intent on inflicting Jesse with heart-stabbing pain, Lucius isn’t aware of Eros rising in back of him. It’s Eros’ eyes that are first able to move again. He adjusts to the mist fogging his sight as he watches Tommy’s final breaths. Those eyes then dart to the villain hovering over the dying body. Hatred fills him allowing him to break free of the paralyzing drug. Stiffly he rises, slow but unstoppable. He looms behind the priest. Eros glances down at T’s empty blue eyes, then with a furious yowl, nabs the unsuspecting fiend around the waist and plunges both of them into the pool. Eros continues yelling under water filling his burning lungs. The remains of the drug leaves him too wooden to move other than to coil his arms around the transformed monk, squeezing him with an inescapable death grip until they both settle at the pool’s deep end. They wrestle on the pool’s floor in an epic struggle. Eros’ last breath floats to the surface as he collapses over the monk who wildly struggles to break free. The dead weight succeeds in pinning the monk in Eros’ final embrace. The immovable body on top of him holds him fast, each breath exchanged for another inhalation of water, until he, too, expels his last wretched breath. Jesse doesn’t wait to see how the struggle ends. His heart pumps running down the staircase taking two steps at a time. He dashes past Mac coming out of his office, and darts out the back door and dives straight into the pool. He grabs Eros’ gray tee-shirt, yanking him to the surface. The lifeless body he pulls to the side isn’t Eros any longer—just a shirt, a large body, wet skin, slick brown hair, slack face, soggy shorts, barefoot, sodden with water. It’s easy enough to prop up a slack doll of his size on the pool steps. He climbs out of the pool next to Tommy’s body. It rests as before on its back, motionless, white foam caked on his lips. The priest, no longer weighted by Eros at the bottom of the pool, rises to the surface, his dead glassy eyes open staring sightless at the sun. The chlorinated water stings Jesse’s eyes. It mixes with his tears. His shoulders sag looking at his tattooed-covered friend. The guy he was initially leery of but came to realize he had no reason to be—who always looked out for him like the older brother he never had. Except for the white residue and his purple skin, Tommy could be asleep. But who the fuck is he kidding, he curses to himself? T looks dead, like some fucker strangled him till his eyes bulged out and his skin turned this unnatural shade of purple. And Eros? His head lolls stupidly to the side, a rag doll whose eyes will never open. Ash and gored wash off his skin in a red-grey puddle of muck. Jesse’s eyes turn from Tommy to Virgil. The cracked open head stopped oozing; the two silver sounds still stand upright in his sockets. But then, without cause or warning, the rods fall out of the sockets, clanging metallically on the concrete. It’s then that Virgil’s body starts to become translucent, growing lighter and lighter until it fades away entirely—only a bloody stain and two silver wands remain behind. There is a screech and the side gate opens. The shadowy figure Jesse had seen at the lighthouse, a small, ancient man with a hooked nose, enters aided by his cane, and quietly closes the gate behind him. “It’s to be expected,” Mac says, appearing behind Jesse. Jesse turns quickly around, shielding his eyes from the sun, and sees Mac staring sadly down at him. In the water Jaxton, too, is beginning to transform. His body becomes indistinguishable from glass, and the glass becomes indistinguishable from water. He, too, then vanishes from the center of the pool. “Are they in …” Jesse looks up at Mac, and asks with a shudder, “in … under the lighthouse?” “Yes,” replies the old man at the gate. “They most definitely are.” He ambles on his cane over to join them. “You are the boy that ran out of my quarters the other day, are you not?” “Yes, sir.” The man’s presence seems to have brought a sudden chill to the air. Jesse trembles as a brisk morning breeze rustles the trees around the house. Grimy, wet and naked, he shakes as now the bodies of Tommy and Eros also start to fade. “No, please,” he begs Mac, his throat tight and distraught. “Not them. You know they’re not like the others.” Mac removes his shirt and drapes it over Jesse’s tremoring body. “That’s up to Dante. Dante,” Mac says to the old man, placing a hand on the old man’s bony shoulder. “What say you?” Jesse scrambles up and clasps Dante’s brittle hands. “I know they’re not saints. But they’re good. Down deep they’re good. They don’t deserve the same thing as those other guys.” “What would you have, then, be they’re fate? If not hell and certainly not heaven, purgatory can be many things.” “Here.” Jesse falls to his knees imploring the man. “Let them stay here. I know here they’re happy.” Dante scrutinized Jesse. A puzzled look comes over his face. The boy seems to be someone he can no longer read. He presses on with what he knows. “I hold men who are known to me to account. Mac procures them, but I don’t determine any man’s fate, simply keep records of their actions. They, then, determine their own fate. If they are not good enough for their spirits to rise, nor evil enough to descend below, then yes, they may stay here. But they can never leave, you understand? And you cannot stay with them. You are among the living, not they.” “Hmm,” says Mac, eyeing the old man and Jesse. “Which means, Dante, you and I need to abandon this place, too, correct?” “Most certainly. We are forbidden to commune with them once their spirits roam free over the island. We have many places where we can go to. They do not.” “I don’t understand, Mac. I don’t get any of this.” Mac pulls Jesse up and wipes some grey residue from his cheek. “Are you like Jaxton or Lucius—whoever—and like the other monks? Like you just jump from one body to the next whenever you feel like it?” “Nope. My job is to simply procure. I’m human, a sexually potent forty-two-year-old human who loves to fuck young tail. A human who will die … when is it, Dante?” “As far as I am concerned, in the blink of an eye, at the age of eighty-four. It’s in the books, my boy.” “Eighty-four. Already half over.” He mulls the number, then shrugs. “I’m a simple mortal with an unbridled taste for the finer things. I was lucky to latch onto my own methuselian early in life. Dante’s the true eternal. Well, he is as long as people still know him, know of him at least. The monks, they’re not eternals. The only power they have is that they have access to boundless stores of money. And I, being an astute businessman, am happy to relieve them of it, no matter how dirty it is or for what purpose. I’m sure one day I’ll wind up same as them, under some lighthouse, wandering down to find my proper place in hell, moaning about what a raw deal I got. It’s a tradeoff. I can live with that. As long as I’m happy in this life, that’s my only goal.” Mac takes a towel from one of the lounge chairs, gives it to Jesse to wrap himself in before he continues. “There’s plenty of people like me. Ghislaine and Jeffrey are my doppelgangers, on the straight side of the scale—well, I should say, Jeff was, past tense. I’m sure he’s moaning under some lighthouse, somewhere, about how unfair life has been for him. Not me. I’m on the queer end of that procurement spectrum, and couldn’t be happier. For now, anyway. There’s a never-ending supply, every generation, of others like us. All any of us needs to make our way through this cold, cruel world, is to hook up with a methuselian. They hold us mortals to account, and with that knowledge I find ways to monetize what they know by—scare quotes—helping others. With our assistance we perpetuate the surprisingly same cast of characters, good ones and bad ones, over and over—for a slight service fee of course. Popes, dictators, sultans, CEOs, oligarchs, senators, luminary world leaders, lately even the slimiest movie and recording executives—you’d be surprised how familiar the usual suspects are. Eternals have been overseeing this kind of human trafficking for thousands of years, but they need grunts like me who’re willing to get their hands dirty to pull it off. It’s the way the world keeps spinning, kiddo. Am I right, Dante, or am I right?” “You have the most tiresome habit of stretching out a monologue until the point is forgotten.” Dante takes Jesse chin. “Suffice it to say, I am the world’s engine; he, unfortunately, is rudder.” Mac thinks this over for a minute. “Fair enough.” * “You’re Santana?” An impressive, bald Black man with a trim grey beard, is in back of Jesse. He’s a little incredulous, holding a photograph, looking from it to Jesse. Jesse’s startled for a moment, but composes himself quickly. The man has on wraparound tactical sunglasses that mirrors Jesse back to himself. It’s unnerving. He’s in an olive green, tight-fitting tee-shirt that clings around his arms and over his chest. There’s no mistaking his military rigidity. He looks like, with one move, he could snap Jesse in half. “I am, yeah. But you’re not Major King.” “I’m Coronel Reynolds. Come with me.” The man doesn’t wait for Jesse, but moves swiftly and descends Grand Central’s staircase to the lower level. Jesse hurries after him, following him in and out of clumps of tourists, straight into the station’s men’s room. The coronel stops at the last stall and raps his knuckle on the door—three knocks, then two. The stall’s metal lock slides open. Reynolds holds the door open. Jesse’s wary, but realizes this is what he’s here for and walks inside. Major King, the blond man from Mac’s photograph, squats on the toilet next to a large suitcase. He’s in civilian: a tight fitting navy blue tank top printed with a Captain America shield of red, white and blue. His muscular arms have a prominent vein running over his biceps, and his powerful chest, even bigger than Coronel Reynolds’, is topped with light brown chestnut hair in thick swirls going up to his collar bone. His deep set eyes bore into Jesse. He clenches his jaw accentuating his deep chin’s dimple. Jesse guesses it’s got to take hours of shaving to get that baby-butt dimple so smooth. The man’s intense stare is so over-powering Jesse can’t hold it. He has to look elsewhere. Elsewhere turns out to be him looking down at his khaki shorts resting over the largest pair of black shit-kicker boots he’s ever seen. Elsewhere is also Jesse spying a dark blond bush between the man’s legs with a fat hog hanging down inside the toilet. “Let’s see it.” “Excuse me?” Jesse asks, very distracted. “The star ruby.” King leans in intimately close in order to close the stall door behind him. The metal lock snaps shut. “Let’s see the money first.” King glares at him but puts the suitcase on his lap. He clicks open the luggage locks. Jesse lifts the lid and finds hundreds of wrapped packages of hundred dollar bills. He fans through one of the stacks, then counts the rows and columns. After doing a quick calculation in his head, he nods his satisfaction to King. King closes the suitcase and sets it aside. He pulls out several sheets of toilet paper and reaches under himself and wipes his crack. He does this several times all while keeping an eye on Jesse. Jesse wonders why he couldn’t have taken care of that beforehand. “Ruby,” King says, holding out his large, callused palm. “You don’t talk much, do you?” The man’s dark blond brows furrow. Jesse drops his drawers and lifts up his dick to show King. The major takes his cock between sandpaper fingers and twists the ruby around to observe the five rare veins that run through it. As he’s examining it, Jesse can’t help feel his dick starting to swell. He tries not looking at King’s biceps that are as big as his own thighs. The thick, defined muscles flex as he twists the jewel. Jesse focuses instead on King’s forest of chest hair, but that also seems to add to his swelling dick. So he drops his eyes and realizes Kings uncut hog is rising from the depths of the toilet. His erection appears to get hung up under the rim of the toilet. Regardless, the trapped cock continues growing, now to the thickness of Jesse’s wrist. King takes his monster out of the toilet so it doesn’t get drenched, reaches behind him and pushes down the flush handle. The roar of the water is somewhat blocked by King’s butt. Both of them with raging hard on look at each other. It seems as though they’ve arrived at an unspoken understanding. * Eros’ cock is as hard as a California redwood tree. His fingers claw at the lip of the shack’s sink. Bent over, his hairy ass presents itself shamelessly to Tommy, and Tommy takes full advantage of plunging his cock deep into Eros’ asshole. As he’s fucking the big guy he’s smacking his ass like a bronco rider as hard as he can, pummeling his cock deep into Eros. Eros growls enjoying being fucked this ferociously. Tommy throws one leg up on Eros’ back, his foot pushing Eros’ face to the shack’s floor, which allows him to plunge even deeper into Eros’ hairy pussy. “So they can’t see us?” Jesse asks at the shack’s window, dressed with a backpack over his shoulder. “You are a mere disturbance to them, like a mosquito buzzing about the room. More annoyance than presence. You’re simply not a part of their story anymore,” Dante says. He then turns to Mac. “Nor are we, so we must make haste. The longer we stay, the stronger, too, our disturbance to them will be.” “So, like, are they going to be like that forever?” Jesse wants to know. Eros’ is panting heavily and Tommy is slapping his ass harder and harder as he getting close to shooting. Mac looks in, admiring the studs in action. “Well, their bodies won’t age, their souls will though. But as long as love and lust is in them, they’ll exist on this island.” “Then I believe they’ll be here forever,” Jesse pronounces. He turns to the old man wobbling on his cane. “What about me, Dante? What’s happens to me?” Dante stares at him for the second time that day. “I am amazed but I truly don’t know. You’re unclear to me. You’re no longer part of their story but you are also not part of ours. Before I read you clearly: a boy who’d lost his parents, who was infinitely curious, and equal parts brave and foolish. But something about you has changed. I’m unsure what that is.” “First time for everything, I guess,” Mac says. “I’ll drop you on the mainland when we leave. Get yourself to Grand Central, make your swap with King, and the world’s your oyster, kiddo.” “You don’t mind that I get to keep the ruby money?” Excited howling by Tommy and Eros blast from the shack causing the three of them to look again inside. Tommy’s flipped Eros’ on his back. Eros has his legs wrapped around Tommy’s waist, and Tommy’s whooping in the air, riding him like a show horse around a rodeo rink. Eros snorts, jacking his log while pulling Tommy’s head down to plant his mouth around his. “I’m sorry. What were we talking about?” Mac focuses back on Jesse; Dante keeps spying on the boys. “The money,” Jesse reminds him. “No, yeah. I think you deserve all of it. To me, it’s a rounding error. You have to figure my procurements are in the hundreds of millions, often more. You yourself cost the Abbot a hundred million, and fortunately there’s no one to ask for a refund.” Jesse can’t help suppress a smile imagining someone would pay that much for him. “Don’t get cocky, kid. That pair in there? Ten times that.” Jesse does the math and his jaw drops. Dante pulls himself from the window and nudges Mac. “Okay, we’ll go, we’ll go,” Mac says indulgently to the methuselian. “Since you get to keep all that dough,” Jesse bumps up against Mac, “can you spot me twenty bucks so I can get a train ticket to New York?” Mac puts a hand on Jesse’s head, pushing him down to his knees. “It’s cost you a blow job first.” Dante shakes his head, then peeks back inside the shack. * “Reynolds, the little guy’s coming with us. I don’t have the tools to relieve him of the ruby. But I do at headquarters.” “Understood, sir,” says Reynolds. He leads the way clearing a path for them through hordes of tourists swarming Grand Central. Jesse follows Reynolds pulling the suitcase, with King hanging on to Jesse's backpack and bringing up the rear. In the backseat of King’s limousine, on their way to an undisclosed location, King’s got his hand on the lump in Jesse’s pants. He gently squeezes it. King studies his reflection in Reynold’s sunglasses, gives the coronel a quick wink. Behind his shades and the trim grey beard, Reynold’s eyes crinkle and his mouth parts into a large, toothy smile. King looks back at Jesse. “I can fix us something in the mess hall when we arrive. If you’re hungry.” Jesse thinks for a moment looking at Reynolds and then at King. “Ya know, I’m suddenly famished,” Jesse says, running a long tongue along a razor-sharp canine tooth. “I don’t think I’ve been hungry like this ever in my life.” What follows, well, that’s a completely different story.

9. When There Are No Silver Bullets Early Sunday morning—the day after Jaxton poisoned Eddie, and Tommy and Eros buried Father Lucius—Jaxton straight out lied when he said Jesse is asleep. Jesse is not asleep. He’s playing possum in Mac’s bed where he’s been accosted in a drug-induced state throughout the night—some things he remembers, some things it’s best he doesn’t. He squints open an eyeball. The two old monks sit naked by the large picture window facing the ocean. Through the window the sun is just beginning to peek over the horizon. The monks speak in hushed voices, lounging in the same bird-upholstered armchairs he once sat in with Mac. Geez, that seems a lifetime ago. The monks murmur to each other in Italian assuming, when Jesse awakens, he won’t know what they’re saying. Jesse most definitely knows what they’re saying. He’s been following their conversation for quite some time. The Italian his grandfather taught him when he was small allows him to follow almost word for word. And word for word, it’s scaring the holy fuck out of him! “L-Lucius, dice che puoi prenderlo … L-Lucius, he says you can take the b-boy’s body at any time,” Virgil stammers. “I prefer to wait until the drug has run its course. I don’t wish to awake in a body that is still hallucinating with methamphetamine.” “So I should go fi-first with the pool man? Lucius says he is using the paralyzing drug on the pool man and killing the ta-tattooed gardener with rat poison at breakfast. He will prepare their drugs with their breakfast.” “I think it better you go first. I have business to attend to regarding the ruby.” Santana studies his companion. “Virgil, are you not excited to be inside such a magnificent young man? His cazzo is as big as my arm!” “No, no. I am. I am. It is hard for me to believe once I see him that I will be in that stupendous body. But, no, I am very, very excited. But maybe I am a little intimidated too.” “Don’t be foolish.” Santana slides his armchair over to him. “Listen. Tonight, I want you fucking me like a filthy, dirty batana, okay? You cum up my ass so hard I weep tears of sperm!” Virgil snickers as he looks the Abbot in the eye. “The pleasure will be mine.” “Listen, before I take the boy, I wish to confirm the meeting with the buyer of the ruby—not absolutely necessary but prudent, I think. Some place public, I have told him. This evening, at the stroke of six, he is to meet me in the middle of Grand Central Station.” Virgil nods excitedly, rubbing his palms together in agreement. “So it is the mercenary, that exquisite soldier of fortune, who is the buyer?” Santana affirms this. “You get all the money at once, in U.S. dollars, I suppose?” “Five million fits easily in a suitcase. A large suitcase in Grand Central Station will not bring attention. Once I see the money I give him the star ruby.” “It’s good thinking,” Virgil says admiringly. “Ah, my dear. First thing we’ll do is take a trip. Where should we go with these attractive father and son bodies?” Virgil gazes out the window. “You think we might visit Roma?” “Ah, Roma. Wonderful! It has been so long, has it not? We have not been since … when? Early fifteen hundreds, I think. You remember Dante introducing us to the young Michelangelo?” asks the Abbot squeezing Virgil’s hand. “Yes, yes. And his b-beautiful boyfriend, David,” sighs Virgil. “No bigger hands have ever been up my culo.” “And the smallest piccolo I have ever seen.” They snicker together like snakes, then grow quiet gazing out at the sunrise. Their prolonged silence causes Jesse to squint open an eye again to see if they’re still in the room. They are. The Abbot’s black curly head leans against Virgil’s bald scalp. “This body,” Virgil suddenly asks, pointing to himself, “it will enter the entrance to hell under the lighthouse?” Jesse has trouble understanding what Virgil means. He questions his translating abilities—entrance to hell under the lighthouse. The words themselves unnerve him but might explain the moaning he’d heard the day before. It’s absurd—he must have misinterpreted. He lays his head into the pillow and closes his eyes to listen more intensely. The Abbot admonishes the bald monk, “Virgil, you know it will! Like all hell’s entrances scattered across the world, yes, the sinner in your discarded body enters at the closest hell mouth. From there it wanders half-dead beginning its journey, wandering down into hell as deep as your cast-off sins demand. You are cleansed of sin in your new body, he is not.” Jesse cocks an eye observing the Abbot scolding Virgil with his finger. “Its burden—and after this you must nevermore speak of it—is to carry your lifetime of sins deep into the fiery pit. Mine, with the boy inside, will do the same. Years and years will they relive the evils that these present bodies of ours have inflicted on the world—the children we have corrupted, the money we have stolen from the pool, the food we have taken out of the mouths of the hungry. We need not remember these sins, but they surely will as their flesh burns in punishment. Lucius, I tell you true, he was a fool letting his boy off so easy by a mere hanging. He rashly allowed death without suffering. Our discarded body’s suffering is our tribute to the Master below for the gift He gives us above. I deeply fear for Lucius, what his impetuosity might cost him.” There’s a noise from pool deck: the familiar creaking of the side gate and the metal clang when it shuts. Eros and Tommy voices greet the tall young man that looks like Jaxton, but Jesse knows is the cretin Lucius. Possum time is over—it’s now or never. “Hey!! Guys!!!” Jesse’s blaring shout startles the two monks. He’s wiggling his flaccid penis, propped up on an elbow. Did you guys wake up just as horny as me? What you guys did to me last night was sick! Those metal rods you dick-fucked me with—you still got them? I’m up for that kind of heavy metal, if you are.” Virgil, his eyes wide and pleading, looks to Santana, who smiles his permission. “Ma, no,” Virgil corrects him, very amused. Using his arms he pushes himself out of his chair. “It is not metal. Is expensive medical instruments, made with the purest silver.” He helps Santana up and they amble toward the bed. On his way he stoops to picks up his case of sounds from his satchel. He rolls the set out next to Jesse. “Abbot,” says Jesse, acting all coy, patting the bed next to him. “Maybe both of you can play with my little cazzo. I think, last night, you stretched out my hole enough to fit in two silver rods. Can both of you play with my wiener?” “Such a vulgar child,” says the gleeful Abbot. With great effort, he climbs over Jesse so he can sit by his side. In passing, Jesse pinches a few of Santana’s plump teets, which causes the Abbot to chortles with pleasure. He begins stroking the boy’s cock with his furry fingers. Virgil parks his butt on Jesse’s other side. Both the Abbot and Virgil’s wrinkled cocks grow steadily. A sneer raises the right side of Abbot Santana’s lip. His canine tooth elongates along with his erection. The razor-sharp tooth glints blood red off the morning sun. * The Sunrise Motor Lodge has a gazebo that Tommy’s waiting in. He’s supposed to meet some guy named Frank. He guesses Frank’s not his real name. Whatever. The skateboard he rode on from his house lies on the gazebo’s wooden flooring. His worn out sneaker toes it forward and back. He’s bored and anxious at the same time. He just wants to get on with it. A big, nervous-looking man in a Scout Master uniform comes out of the unit next to the soda machine. He looks around. It’s got to be Frank. Tommy questions if he’s really going to do this, steels himself, then signals to the man. The guy shades his eyes, then makes small motions for Tommy to come over. Tommy grabs his board and passes the humming soda machine and follows him into his room. “So. You must be Oscar.” Tommy says mm-hmm. Frank’s the shape of a large egg, and seems ashamed to be taking up so much of the small room. “Mind putting this on?” Frank asks, holding out a brown grocery bag. Tommy takes the bag and looks inside. “A Boy Scout uniform?” “Yes, if you wouldn’t mind.” Tommy scowls, then drops his cutoffs on the floor, slips off his Motörhead tee-shirt and puts on green shorts, buttons the tan shirt laden with Boy Scout patches, and knots a yellow and red scarf around his neck. The guy fusses with the scarf for a long time. Tommy stares at his jowly, stubbly cheeks, smells the odor of cheap aftershave. To his disgust it’s the same one Conrad, his mom’s boyfriend, wears. Finally, Frank places a scouting cap on his head. “Oh, wait,” Frank says in alarm. Manically he searches his gym bag finding a merit badge sash and hands it over to Tommy. Tommy examines it and drapes it over his shoulder. Satisfied, the Scout Master gets on the bed and unzips his pants, pulls them along with his yellow-stained underwear down to his ankles. “Okay, Oscar. Scout Master’s ready.” Tommy goes and sits on the side of the bed and starts stroking him. Frank remains soft. It could take all afternoon, so Tommy leans over and combines sucking and stroking him with a slippery hand. This seems to do the trick. Most of the time the guy stares at the ceiling, but occasional glances over at Tommy. Frank asks, “Could you not using your hand, just suck?” Tommy wipes his palm on the bedspread and picks up the pace, bobbing up and down on the penis. Perry taught him to slobber plenty so the cock will go down his throat. Frank’s not large but big enough that he has to suppress his gag reflex when his nose gets buried in the man’s pale pubes. Scout Master Frank groans and starts rocking his pelvis in time with Tommy’s bouncing head. He rests a hand on Tommy’s shoulder, then runs his hand down the sash, and promptly cums in a series of quick, short bursts. Tommy swallows the discharge and perches back up on the side of the bed. Frank tells him how nice that was, then shifts his large body back up to sitting, and slides up his underwear and pants. As he’s leafing through his wallet he asks for the uniform back. Tommy changes, hands him back the grocery bag. In the bathroom Tommy washes his hands and rinses his mouth, spits. When he reemerges, Frank’s gone, but there’s two crisp twenties sitting on the dresser. Closing the motel door behind him, Tommy searches his pockets for change. He inserts quarters in the vending machine and pulls out a Mountain Dew, then glides serenely through the tree-lined streets of suburban Massapequa. * Thanks to Oscar’s initial outings, the next time Tommy shows up at the park to meet his crew, he’s sporting an expensive pair of Nikes. Nice kicks, one of his friends tell him. Where’d he score the money, asks another. He says his mom, and no one presses him, but no one believe him either. She’d never shell out the bucks for the high-end sneakers Tommy’s wearing—not on a receptionist’s salary. It isn’t even that hard, these early tricks. Perry arranges all the meetings: twenty for hand jobs (2), and forty for blow jobs (3). The cash is Perry department, but he gives Tommy whatever he wants. Sneakers out of the trunk of a guy he knows, say, or a bag of excellent weed to share with his crew. If nothing else, Perry has a surprisingly number of shady connections. After the next dozen tricks, the team of Perry and Oscar get new flip phones. Tommy exchanges numbers with a few of the guys in the park and gets texts during the week from a couple of them. Mostly, though, the messages come from Perry giving him various logistical instructions. Room numbers, times to show up, e.g. It’s also a way for Perry to keep an increasingly tighter leash on Tommy without him knowing it. what r u doing? who u with? that loser! ditch him! want 2 cum over - hehe? His solo hookups with Perry definitely pick up after the flip phones. Also it begins Perry weening Tommy off his skater friends. It’s not just for sex that Perry gets Tommy to come over. It’s also Tommy’s becoming his go-to party bud. Tommy thinks Perry’s a fun guy to be around, especially when they’re high—and they’re almost always high. Perry’s the worldliest guy Tommy knows. He’s been to places all over, like Europe and Asia, Hawaii, Brazil—he’s even been on an Africa safari. Perry promises to take him to these places someday. Tommy can even choose the country. Tommy even likes Perry controlling him in a weird kind of way. It’s sort of cool, he thinks, to have someone tell him he should have another beer right before he’s finish his first one. Or, like they should smoke another joint even though they’re already wasted. Perry in charge of what movie they watch, and the movies, man! It’s fucking amazing and sometimes revolting how sick men can be with one another. Tommy starts to notice when something really nasty is about to be on the screen, Perry starts sucking him off. Inevitably he’ll nut at the most disgusting parts in a movie—an amputee fisting a guy’s hole with his stub, or, not just fisting, but a guy pulling out another guy’s rectum. It’s completely sick! Contrasted with the good times at Perry’s with the fights escalating at home with his mom and Conrad. They get more frequent and increasing more nasty. Since Conrad struck him at Thanksgiving, Tommy despises him. Since the incident erupted from him being snotty to his mom, his relationship with her is for shit. Over the last few months he’s ceased to care about her. Perry reinforces this alienation. He always is on Tommy’s side—what a cunt she is to him, what a leech that fucker is. This, in turn, justifies Tommy spending more time at Perry’s, usually trashed, sometimes crashing on his couch, or increasingly waking up in Perry’s bed. Two month after they first met at Jones Beach, Tommy’s hanging out in the parking lot waiting for Perry to pick him up. He’s late as usual. Tommy, in ripped jeans, sleeveless Metallica tee-shirt, with his now broken in Nikes, practices a kickflip. He executes a couple of three-sixty back shuvs on his board as Perry coasts the Triumph into the lot. Perry revs the motorcycle as a kind of hello, but Tommy ignores him. Perry balances the Triumph between his legs and pushes up his face shield. He takes the camera hanging around his neck and clicks a few photos of Tommy in the air jumping off the curb. Perry shuts off the motor and saunters over. His white tee-shirt’s ridden up his chest on the way over. He pulls it down beneath his new leather jacket. Tommy slyly glances around to make sure no one he knows is around before acknowledging him. “S’up,” he says when Perry’s in range. “What’s up with you? Your trick thingy looked awesome.” He scowls at Perry. “I suck.” “Yeah, but you suck so much better now,” Perry tells him, pulling off his helmet. “Shut up.” “No, really. The skating, you’re like, what do you call it—like, some sort of skating Zen master. I never realized that.” “Nah.” Tommy feels his face flushing. “I’m average. Not even.” “Accept a compliment graciously, dip shit.” Tommy smirks, kicks his board up into his arms and pushes a knot of hair behind his ear. “Speaking of how hot you are … the last shoot.” Perry whistles. “The pictures, they’re awesome, especially a couple of you in that harness. You are one sexy fuck. And I bet these—,” he pats his camera, “—these are going to be doubly awesome. Every daddy on Long Island will want to suck my skater boy’s cock.” Perry shades the camera so Tommy can see the LCD display on the back. “Hard to see in the sun, I know. But look at these.” Perry flicks photos across the screen: Tommy lying back on the couch gripping his cock; another on his stomach showing his white bubble butt; a few portrait shots in a leather harness and a dog collar. “I got a big nose,” Tommy comments after the last close-ups. “Yeah, right. You’re talking to the king of schnozzes.” Perry holds his head in profile, which amuses Tommy who tries to hide it. “I bought a GoPro so we should do some point-of-view videos. That’d be hot on your profile. What’d’ya say, pupster? Hot skater boy fucking his sling daddy? Oh, and I have a little surprise a friend left behind.” Tommy shrugs, whatever. Perry puts his helmet back on and Tommy rides his board to the motorcycle. He pops a little Ollie in the air to show off. “Aw-rooo!” howls Perry behind him. Tommy bursts into a big smile that he knows Perry won’t see. Strapped to the back of the bike hangs the helmet Perry bought him. Perry revs up the bike, while Tommy stows his board in a side case and adjusts his helmet. He climbs on wrapping his arms around Perry as they roar out of the lot. Tommy holds on tight. His fingers travel inside the open jacket feeling the soft white tee-shirt and Perry’s prominent ribs beneath. He feels secure hanging onto him with such ferocity. The faster Perry races down the road, the stronger he clutches him. When Perry gets on the Southern State Parkway, he weaves the bike recklessly between passing cars. It feels like they’re practically at forty-five degrees to the asphalt, leaning one way then the other. Tommy coils his arms around Perry’s abs and chest, inclining his helmet against Perry’s shoulder, letting the world cruise by feeling it’s only him and Perry in it. He’s never allowed himself to trust someone as much as he trusts this man. No one’s ever made him feel special like this. There’s a mad symbiosis at play: the faster Perry speeds dangerously ahead, the harder Tommy holds him; the harder Tommy holds him, the more chances Perry takes regardless of risk to them both. After the parkway, Perry take a side street and they coast into a KFC drive-through. Perry decides what they’ll have, pays, and Tommy holds the plastic bag as they tear down the street. Inside the apartment, Perry takes the food to the kitchen, throws keys, smokes and wallet on the kitchen pass-through. The computer monitor’s on with Tommy’s face on the screen. He hasn’t seen this before so of course he’s drawn over. “Oscar,” Tommy reads,” PNP-yes. Unsafe sex-only. Poz, not on meds.” There’s other stuff he’s never heard of, and other stuff he’d never go near in a million years. “PNP is partying, like coke and meth?” Tommy asks Perry. Perry pops his head through the kitchen pass-through. “I put the chicken and mash potatoes in the fridge for later. Unless you want it now?” “Watersports. That’s playing in piss, right?” Tommy scrolls down his page reading about someone he doesn’t recognize. “Did you see what my friend left on the coffee table?” “Hey, why is there a picture of an asshole? That’s not even me. Look. Dark hair.” Perry dances into the room and plucks a small bag of white powder off the coffee table. He waltzes to the computer and plops down. “It’s all part of upping your game, pup. Guys like to see assholes. I didn’t have one of yours, so I plucked one from someone else. If you don’t like it I’ll take it down.” Perry opens the baggie and dips in a finger and rubs it on his gums. “This is just an update I’m working on. So chill. None of it’s posted.” “What’s that?” Tommy points at the baggie. “Something I got from Jerome, one of my top. It’s for us.” Perry scoots over on the desk blocking Tommy from seeing any more of his profile. He swings the white powder in from of him like a pendulum. “What do you mean, one of your tops?” “Just that. One of my tops. What?” He hadn’t meant it to sound so caviler but he sees his mistake immediately on Tommy’s face. It crumbles as Perry’s words land harder than Conrad’s Thanksgiving smack ever did. “Oh, baby,” he says, putting both hands on Tommy’s heated cheeks. Perry’s instinct is to feigns disbelief in his defense. “You didn’t think we were exclusively—” Tommy whips his face out of Perry’s hands, cringing at what he knows should have been obvious. “But I thought …” He can’t even finish. “Fuck this.” Tommy clamps down his face. Expressionless, he pushes away from the desk and storms to the door. Perry’s urgency gets him to the door first. He block it so Tommy can’t leave. “Knock it off. Don’t be like that!” he reprimands him. Then adds, more gently, “You know I see guys. I never made that a secret. Hell, you see guys now, too. I know, I book them. And, for god sakes, you get paid for it. You should be grateful. I wished I knew half of what you know at your age.” He puts his hands on Tommy’s shoulders. “It took me another ten years to have the balls enough to suck a dick.” “Let me go.” Tommy shrugs him off and makes for the door handle. “Then go. You’re being a child. I thought I was dealing with an adult, but you’re acting like an immature girl.” With his hand is on the doorknob, Tommy asks, “This Jerome guy, he’s like a … your—?” Tommy’s desperate not to put a name to what his mind’s racing toward. “What? Boyfriend? Lover? No. As much as Scout Master Frank is one of yours.” Tommy stares at the door. “This guy is just a guy. Personally, I don’t even like him—he’s dumb as that doorknob—but he’s got a great cock and knows how to use it.” Perry tries to get Tommy to turn around and look at him. “There’s lots of guys I play with, but you’re the only pupster in my life. The one who has my heart. What? You don’t know that?” He pulls Tommy’s chin around so he’s looking directly into his eyes. He sees Tommy’s eyes are misty and that makes him want to kiss him, but Tommy defiantly turns his head. Perry doesn’t relent, just wraps his arms around the boy and rocks him. Once his hand falls off the door handle and turns around, Perry toys with him, grinds his crotch into Tommy crotch so he knows he feels his bulge. A minute goes by till he feels the boy fully give in. He whispers in his ear, “I’m sorry it’s a guy like me that loves a guy like you. Tommy from Massapequa.” Tommy can’t hold back his fear, his insecurity, his youth, and lets tears silently stain the white tee-shirt. His fingers dig into the Perry’s jacket. “You are the center of my world.” Perry clutches him tight. “You’ll always be the center of my world, no matter how many men you’re with or I’m with. It’s just the two of us, understand?” The more Perry talks the more tears flow. Tommy pushes back and give him a hard punch on the pec. Perry grabs his fist and kisses it. “What about those things on my profile. They’re not true. I’ve never take it up the butt. And you wrote I’m poz. You fucking made all these things up. Guys are gonna expect things.” Perry leads him to the couch. On the way he pulls off his jacket and drapes it on the desk chair. He collapses back, pulling Tommy so he flops with his back on Perry’s chest. Blond hair spreads out on his tee-shirt. He rubs Tommy’s chest. “I put them there so they’ll get you more money.” Perry kisses the back of Tommy’s head. He brushes his hair behind an ear and speaks softly. “I didn’t know when I would tell you this, but I’m thinking of changing our game plan.” Tommy twists he head to look at Perry. “What if … you and I … left Long Island … and move to New York?” Tommy abruptly pushes off him and ends up at the kitchen pass-through. “You want me to live with you.” It’s not a question, but he's trying to take in all Perry is proposing. Tommy feels his heart racing, the drum in his ears of both fear and excitement. “Okay, listen. Hear me out.” He looks at the Perry sternly from across the room. “You’re fuckin’ with me.” Perry motions that he wants Tommy to come back to the couch, but Tommy hovers stubbornly out of reach. Perry’s head flops forward looking down at the coffee table. He begins, “Okay. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I’m thinking we should get into a bigger market. One where you could make a lot more money. The only place like that is the city.” He looks up and sees Tommy’s turned away. “But to do that—look at me.” Tommy lights a cigarette, listening, but won’t look at him. He leans against the pass-through, exhaling smoke through his nose. “First of all, most men who respond on the site you’re looking at, especially men that’ll spend for sketchy sex, they like danger but not risk. They’ll settle for a blow job from a poz boy—makes them think they’re playing with a young rattlesnake. But—would you fucking look at me?” Tommy paces over to the desk and perches on the back of the chair, smoking, arms crossed. He meets Perry’s eyes defiantly. “But in the this city, you’re going to run across some men that are just fine going all the way—could be poz, could not be, might not even know one way or the other. Fact is, they just want to fuck or be fucked. And, to play in this sandbox, if we take this leap together, move in together I mean, I want you to be prepared for that.” “What’d’ya mean prepared?” Perry laughs a little, reaches over the coffee table and grabs him with both hands. He drags him reluctantly back to the couch. Twisting him around so his back is once again on his chest, he takes the cigarette, inhales off it, the leans over and snuffs it out in the ashtray. He takes his palm, slips it under Tommy’s shirt and grazes his smooth belly. Slowly his hand makes its his way down his pants. “I mean, when we get an apartment together—and I’m not saying we’ll getting a palace on Fifth Avenue. More like a place in the Spanish Harlem or maybe, like, the Bronx—” Tommy traces his hand down Perry’s wrist into his pants. He laces his fingers across Perry’s fingers. Perry squeezes Tommy’s swelling cock. “By upping our game, I think you need to be willing to put out, to flip when it’s called for.” Perry traces his fingers under Tommy’s balls and lightly grazes his hole. “That means … sometimes … taking it up the butt.” Tommy’s quiet with Perry’s hand leaving his hole and finding its way up to his chest. His hearts still racing. He knows Perry can feel it pounding: how scared he is by the proposition, and the temptation. It’s not like he’s never thought about it. Perry brushes away his hair and kisses his neck, his ear. “But I’m like a virgin, like, that way.” “Yeah, you and Miss Madonna.” “It’s not funny.” “I know. I know that. And this,” Perry says, pointing to the bag of white powder, “is the way we remedy that.” Tommy wiggles to get up but Perry holds him so he stays put, planting another kiss on his neck. “Listen, I never want you to do anything you don’t want to do. But if you want us to move in together, I have to know we’ll have the means to afford it. It’s expensive, anywhere in the city. My disability checks and your twenty dollar hand jobs won’t cut it. We’re not playing in the minors, and that calls for hundred dollar fucks. So. What do you think? It’s completely up to you.” “Taking a cock. In my ass.” Again, not a question. Tommy ponders the idea, staring at the smoke cinder Perry failed to fully put out in the ashtray. “You’re poz, aren’t you?” Perry nods once, his chin poking Tommy’s shoulder. “On meds?” Tommy twists around to look at him. “No, I am not. Don’t believe in it. Never will. Listen. We can put in your profile you only play safe. That will always be your decision.” Tommy takes a long moment looking in Perry’s eyes. “Okay. Only safe.” “And that’s what we’ll put.” Perry clutches the baggie. “Now this, I’m telling you right now pupster, will put our past parties to shame. Guar-an-teed.” Perry kisses his forehead and runs a hand through his hair. He moves into the kitchen and for several minutes goes through drawers, turns on the tap, goes through other drawers, reemerges, an excited smile on his face, holding two syringes. Tommy shoots upright. “Uh-huh. You didn’t say that.” “Just to get you over the speed bump. I promise, it’ll open horizons you won’t believe. Faster than ten years of tepid little steps that I took.” Tommy backs up to the end of the couch away from Perry. He clutches a leopard print pillow to his chest. “Baby, I would ever let anything hurt you. You know that. This, I promise, is the opposite of that.” Tommy pulls his legs up on the couch sitting in a fetal position, knees pushing into the pillow. “Now just stop it! Your being a pussy.” He lets up a bit, seeing Tommy’s scared, exactly what he doesn’t want him to be. Tacks a complete one-eighty, asks playfully, “Where’s that daredevil that flies skateboards straight into the air? Who risks going into strange men’s motel rooms and does god-knows-what in a scout uniform?” Perry smirks, seeing this type of persuasion is more effective. “I swear, Tommy from Massapequa, you’ll thank me for this. I know you will. I bet you’ll do more than thank me once you get flying.” As Tommy takes the first few tentative steps to uncurl on the couch, Perry praises him. “Good boy.” Perry waits. Tommy looks nervously at him. Gently, Perry sidles up next to him. Perry sets the two needles on the coffee table. He lures him seductively. “You’re such a good boy.” Perry brushes back the hair hanging down in Tommy’s face. “I promise I’ll with you every step of the way. We’ll start looking for apartments this weekend. How’s that?” Tommy sets the pillow on his knees. “What do I do?” “Nothing. Put your arm on the pillow.” Tommy does, while Perry glides his fingers over Tommy’s forearm. He twists the arm over and back, finds a ridge and pushes the tip of the syringe into his vein. Pulls it back. The vial flashes dark red, and Perry give Tommy his first slam, the first among the incalculable number of slams he’ll keep administering over the next six years. * Perry’s GoPro video focuses first at his own cock. The cock’s hard and making its way between Tommy’s white cheeks. On the leopard print bed, Tommy’s holds open his legs. His balls and his dick are shriveled. He’s rushing hard, caught up in how sexually alive he feels. His rapid breathing causes his chest to rise and fall. Perry’s purple head leaks a drip of precum. It glistens out of his erection, teasing against Tommy’s virginal barrier. Background audio picks up Tommy’s wordless mutterings, cries that vacillate between frenzy and splendor. You don’t see Perry but you hear him. “What do you want?” He’s plucking Tommy’s small nipples. The GoPro tilts up to Tommy’s face. A blindfold is perched across his forehead. He wears a thick dog collar. His eyes are wild. He answers Perry not a robotically, but full of intense, desperate desire. “I want your raw cock inside me.” Perry’s tells him what he can’t see, won’t hurt him, as he pulls the blindfold over his eyes. Tilting down, you see Perry again toying the tip of his large head against the boy’s puckered hole. “What do you want from my cock?” Gently he rubs the head slightly in and out, tempting Tommy with more to come. “I want your cum.” Perry get off the bed and applies more lotion on Tommy’s hole. There’s a dark stain on the bedsheets where lotion is already oozing out, but this is Tommy’s first cock and he knows it’s already going to hurt. He squats down so the pink clenched sphincter winks at the camera. A single finger goes in and comes out. Goes in, comes out. That alone brings moans of desire off camera. We’re back to a bird’s eye view of a hard cock and a black triangle of pubes pushing into a virgin. There’s a gasp and you see Tommy’s mouth open in surprise. His head turns on the pillow, turns back with grimacing satisfaction. “What kind of cum is it?” Perry distracts him, seeing he’s in pain. He’s taken his first inch of cock. “Toxic. Cum.” Each word reflects the pain he feels. Looking down at Tommy’s shriveled cock and balls, legs spread, you see him pulling his cheeks apart desperately bucking his pelvis upward. His flaccid cock points up like a stubby pen, balls almost nonexistent. He continues pulling his cheeks apart, pushing his hips up to his unseen violator. “You want me to knock you up with my charged load?” Perry’s half way in, making his way quicker than he thought. Tommy’s hole is exceedingly wet and receptive. “Please. Yes. Knock me up.” There’s a subtext of doubt in what he’s saying. Then his mouth tightens. Perry pulls out slightly. Tommy’s next words contradict the tentativeness of his previous. With assurance, he says, “Yes, fuckin’ charge me.” He thrusts up his hips wanting back the inch Perry withdrew, and now wants more. The GoPro buffets wilding around the room as Perry flips Tommy on his side. The red chili lights dangle over the sling next to the bed. Above the headboard there’s a passing view of a large tapestry of a lion. Swinging back down, Perry pulls one of Tommy’s legs in the air. We track back focusing on Perry’s long cock going back inside the white butt cheeks. Perry leers over Tommy’s shoulder seeing him pulling on his soft cock. “Take it. Take what you want.” Tommy hips thrust back and you hear the cameraman’s moan as his cock is milked. Closer, he’s inching in so his entire cock’s inside Tommy. He fucking is increasingly more violently against Tommy ass. “You want me to knock you up, don’t you?” he says in his ear. Tommy’s stopped listening, submitting completely to the intense feeling he’s never felt before deep in his body. He has no reference for this. It’s not like he’s shitting with the turd fighting to get back inside. No, it’s Perry’s cock buried deeply in him. A man is fucking him, saying in his ear: “No turning back. My DNA is going to be your DNA.” Rather than verbally responding, Tommy pushes his hips repeatedly into Perry’s crotch. “You’re going to be New York’s finest cum-dump whore and put your ass out for every fucker in the city. I know you want that. Show me how bad you want it.” Tommy bucks wildly against Perry, and squirts white cream across the leopard sheets even with his flaccid prick. He keeps breathing rapidly in the same rhythm that Perry’s fucking him even after he’s nutted. It’s a sensation he loves as much as he loves Perry. His big cock pummeling inside him. How it makes his insides satisfied in a way he never could have imagine. He begs Perry to fuck him harder, for him to cum inside him, both hands gripping the side of the bed and frantically pushing into Perry. “I’m close,” Perry groans. Tommy’s grunting in Perry’s rhythm. “I’m not pulling out.” In post-production, Perry slows this final section. You see Tommy gnaw at his bottom lip so hard it starts to bleed. One of his hand launches slowly into the air, blindly searching for the fucker inside him. The camera tilts and the hand finds Perry’s hip—a wasted, wiry leg fucks hard into his ass. Tommy’s hand grabs Perry’s stringy ass not allowing him to pull far away. Perry’s climaxing, while Tommy begs to be pozzed, wants Perry to breed him. He begs Perry to shoot his poisonous cum up his hole so far it’ll never find its way out. Tommy’s voice slows mechanically, unnaturally deep, the audio slowing even as his rant picks up with unintelligible insistence. A series of measured, hard, violent fucks confirms Perry has unloaded in him. Perry grips Tommy’s hips, straining against his no-longer virgin hole, his emaciated hipbones locked into Tommy’s bubble butt. Off camera, ropes of sperm entangle in the boy’s entrails, absorb into his body, enough to alter his negative status. On camera, you see the aftermath: long stringy hair plastered onto Tommy’s face. One frame at a time, his heaving breath puffs a blond lock forward, back, forward, back, forward. And right there, with a strand of hair suspended, the last frame freezes—under the straw-colored hair, contours of a contented smile. Six years after that moment, Perry will be out of the picture—breaking his promise of being there forever—by way of a malignant brain tumor on the temporal lobe. Difficulty speaking; forgetting words; short-term memory loss; not knowing Tommy: it’s textbook stuff. Unmanaged and destitute, Tommy will be evicted from their Bronx apartment, living—if you can call it that—in an alley where there’s a mattress to crash. Strung out, high when he panhandles enough, until one night when he feels warm, salty piss hit his face, and his life, yet again, is transformed. * Jesse bites down so hard on his lip that it starts to bleed. Two small medical sounds are down his urethra and Brother Virgil has the bright idea, since it seems Jesse can tolerate two sounds, a third, even larger, is in order. Abbot Santana poppers the boy while Virgil slowly lowers a third sound between the other two. The dreadful sensation of his dick being ripped open from the inside is mitigated by the poppers, which finds pleasure amidst the pain. Stronger even than the popper’s odor is the unmistakable aroma of seared flesh. Grilled steaks Jesse hopes is what he’s smelling, but in this house you never know. Still the smell makes his mouth water as the wild sensation of having his prostate poked from inside sends mixed signals to his body. From the open sliding door poolside, sounds of dishes and silverware clatter. Jesse hears Eros and Tommy complimenting Jaxton for their breakfast. He can't wait any longer. Jesse takes a deep breath, then grabs Virgil and Santana’s hands and yanks the sounds out swiftly and painfully. This violent action confounds the monks. Jesse picks up the sounds, one in each fist, and jams them up into Virgil’s eyes. All the old man’s breath shrieks out of his lungs. Blindly he flies forward off the bed, stumbling, tripping over used dildos, plops sideways through the sliding door’s screen. He hit the balcony railing, fumbles, twists round, hands clawing at his face. He leans too far back, flips over going headfirst, straight down until his bald head cracks open on the concreate. Abbot Santana, momentarily stunned, his sexuality at its bestial peak, is transformed completely into a lupine form. Furious and yet cock stiffly engorged, it bares its fierce teeth, eyes bloodshot in lust and anger, its cock drips as it turns to rip Jesse to shreds. They roll together off the bed. On the floor, arms flailing in fury, Jesse kicks the feral thing in its soft underbelly right between its teets. It falls back under the sling while Jesse backs up to the upholstered chairs at the ocean window. The thing’s snout arches to the ceiling. It produces a wounded, ferocious bay that is at once heartbreaking as it is enraged. Its red eyes glare at Jesse with the hatred fitting a creature of hell. In one bound, it leaps across the room pinning Jesse down. It snarls and snaps at his throat. Several times the razor-sharp teeth snap a hair’s-breath from his neck. His youth, combined with pumping adrenaline and resuscitated by his own anger, he dodges the creature’s lurches, and rolls to the far side of the bedroom. He looks around frantically, but there’s no weapon he can see to protect himself. The beast growls low, paces in a semi-circle so there’s no escape. It manages to speak with an inhuman voice, barely discernable, and yet it makes Jesse tremble: “You are not long for this world, pitiful child. So young, your fate as one of the hollow discards will last for eons and be full of agony. I will personally see to it. Your eyes myself will take from you as you have taken from my beloved.” Enraged by its own speech, it shakes its head, then vaults across the floor, trapping Jesse against the sling. The beast arches its back to deliver a decisive blow to Jesse’s tender neck. Jesse reaches above to the sling and finds a horse dildo and shoves it as hard as he can into the creature mouth. The rubber dong stuns the beast, but only for a second. Jesse crab-walks back but is stopped against the bed. There’s nowhere now to escape. The creature flings away the rubber toy, and stalks slowly toward his prey, its eyes red and radiant, the fur on its back standing up. Under the bed Jesse’s palm feels something cold and hard. Watching the creature crawl up his naked legs, its front arms push his torso back against the bed. The unearthly fiend’s jaw opens poised at Jesse’s protruding veins. Its lips bare back, saliva dripping from its knife-edged teeth. Jesse grips the cold silver rod and drives the third large sound with both hands directly into the beast’s heart. It howls in torment. Blood gushes down Jesse’s arms. The beast roars at the effrontery of what a mere boy has done. Jesse pulls with all his might down the creature's body ripping open its chest, spilling the contents out in a heap over his bare torso. Its eyes momentarily meet his. It looks down at the carnage. In one instant, the millennia it has evaded the grave sweep over its body. Red eyes turn to white, dark fur and pale flesh crumble, then become ash. Dust combines with the gore coating Jesse. His mouth hangs open agape. He spits out the ashy residue, but the Abbot’s bitter rancidness lingers on his tongue. Not wasting a second, he sprints to the balcony to warn Tommy and Eros, but at the railing he’s struck by a new horror: Virgil lies dead by poolside, but it’s Tommy clutching his stomach, seizing next to him that pierces his heart. Eros looks on from the breakfast table, eyes fixed, body and face paralyzed, tears trail across his stubble as he watches helplessly Tommy convulses in death throes. White foam froths from his mouth, draining poison from his lips, spilling into the water. Lucius, in his stolen youthful form, oversees his work, flips Tommy onto his back. The tattooed gardener, Tommy, T, rented out as Oscar, worshipped by Eric, the love of Eros’ life, seizes less and less. The demon below looks up at Jesse above, and offends all decency with a glint of devilish pride.

8. Oscar Sunday, the day after Eddie’s death and Father Lucius’ suspicious disappearance, is a warm summer morning. High above the island, a few gauzy clouds caught in a light breeze stretch across the deep blue sky. Wave crash softly beyond the dunes on the empty beach. Out at sea, miles east of the lighthouse, a regatta of sailboats race each other blissfully unaware of the horrors that have fallen or are ready to fall on a few residents of this cursed island. Jaxton knocks on the shack door. Peeling flakes of pink paint fall from his rap onto his sandals. A few moments go by before Tommy answers. The door creeks open and Tommy stands naked, rubbing his eyes. The slightest suggestion of crinkles in the corner of his eyes show his thirty-five years on this earth. Over his shoulder, Jaxton zeros in on Eros’ hairy ass lying face down on the futon. “What’s up?” Tommy scratches his hanging balls. Jaxton looks down at all his tattoos focusing on the red demon above his plump cock. Points. “That one is definitely your finest.” “Oldest one I have. What’s up?” Tommy repeats. “Mac says he doesn’t want the steaks he had for Eddie and Father Lucius to go to waste.” “Uh-huh.” “I can grill them for you guys. If you like.” “Hey, Eros. You up for a steak breakfast?” “Course,” he says, stirring from bed. He sits up with an impressive morning wood. “When?” Jaxton calculates in his head, slightly distracted by Eros’ enormous erection. “Um, maybe twenty minutes? I can fix them with some eggs. Uh, steak and eggs?” Eros yawns. “Sounds good. How’s Jesse?” “Sleeping,” Jaxton lies with a smile. “See you in twenty.” Tommy nods and closes the door. “No way that’s the same dreadlock bro from yesterday.” “Nope.” Eros gets up, goes into the bathroom and lets out a powerful stream of piss. “So he get brainwashed or something?” “Dunno.” Eros emptying in the toilet bowl makes it sound like Niagara Falls. “We should check on Chewy.” “C’mere first. I need my dick sucked.” Tommy is nothing if not accommodating. He walks in the bathroom and kneels before Eros’ dripping cock. Looks up. “You gonna drink my piss after?” “Course.” * Dante swings opens the pink shack’s freshly painted door. “Lasciate ogne speranza,” he says with his ironic smile. “Say what?” a fresh faced, twenty-five-year-old Tommy asks, peering inside. It not a bad place. Small, maybe, with a boyfriend the size of Eric. But it’s better than hiding out in the Bronx apartment avoiding Eric’s brother like he has for the past six months. “It’s something I wrote long, long ago: Abandon all hope,” says Dante, sweeping his hand into the shack. He’s the same height as Tommy, has the nose of a falcon, sad, alert eyes, and a cruel, straight mouth. “Lascia—uh.” Eric tries to repeat Dante’s phrase. “Lasciate ogne speranza,” pronounces Dante slowly, fingers pinched together, gliding through the air like he’s threading a needle. “Hope—it means—forget about it,” he laughs. The two boys’ stare at him curiously then scrutinize their possible future living arrangements. The taller one is dressed in a blue shirt, grey slacks, and white Converse sneakers; the blond one with long stringy hair is in jeans and a black t-shirt that reads, “FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING FUCK.” Dante sometimes questions Mac’s hiring choices. Both are nice to look at, though. The taller one is strong, but afraid of looking unintelligent—no, Dante thinks, mulling the adjective “unintelligent.” No, his fear is looking crazy. (Dante, if nothing else, is specific in how he writes about people.) The tall one is very beautiful in a very masculine way. His father, Dante muses, is a good father, wrestles with his sons after a hard day riding on the back of a sanitation truck. The mother, however, would be an exquisite beauty, the youngest and prettiest of three sisters, but extremely neurotic. Dante imagines the taller one’s family is allowed only to patronize restaurants that have male waiters, no waitresses—the mother wants no competition. There are no mirrors hung anywhere in the house. This neurosis would grow worse over time as her looks fade. Eventually she cannot leave her home lest people think her not still beautiful. Even her family would be discouraged to lay eyes on her. “What, what are you looking at?” she would say to a violator of this unwritten rule, her fingers fluttering in front of her face. It would be ingrained in him, this fear of growing old, of being judged by others. Like a bit of sand stuck in an oyster: a quality that becomes, over time, either a beautiful pearl or a malignant cancer. Pearl or cancer—TBD. The smaller one, quite defensive, is even more damaged, with many sharp edges to his personality. An early loss of a father is written all through him. He imagines life, Dante observes, squinting his aged eyes to read him deeply, life to him is a poker game and he has to get through it with only four cards to play whereas everyone else has been dealt five. Why? When did the damage occur? What becomes of him? * A teenage Tommy holds his skateboard in one hand while washing beach sand off his foot with the other. A few feet away there’s a middle-aged guy in sunglasses, slim but not skinny, shirtless, alone at a picnic table eating a burger and fries. Tommy, nose burnt and freckled from the sun, sets his skateboard down; his bare toe pushes it back and forth. He’s staring at the burger when the guy suddenly says, “Want one?” Tommy realizes the guy’s speaking to him. He didn’t know he was staring so intently, but he didn’t have breakfast—rarely did. He’s taken to slipping out of the house before his mom and her boyfriend, Conrad, get up. Extremely wiry kid back then, looks at most fifteen even though he isn’t. He still gets carded buying cigarettes, but his I.D.’s legit. The middle-aged guy doesn’t know that—just sees a skinny kid staring at him. Tommy rides the short distance over to him on his skateboard. The rubber wheels crunch over the gritty concrete. “Alright,” he says, taking up the guy’s offer. Guy gets up and puts in an order to a pimply girl at the snack bar window. While he’s away, Tommy sits at the table and shoos off an aggressive seagull trying to steal the guy’s last remaining fries. After a few minutes he comes back with a burger and fries in a plastic basket. Tommy lodges his long, straight hair back over his ears, says thanks, and then gobbles the burger noisily. That amuses the guy, the noise Tommy makes. Tommy’s downing a couple fries at a time when the guys asks his name. He looks over the guy in sunglasses for a second. “Tommy,” he says between French fries. “Perry Rosen. Esquire. How come you’re not at school, Tommy?” “Cause it’s Wednesday and I don’t go to school on Wednesdays,” he ad libs. Really he hasn’t gone to school since winter break on account of all his D’s and F’s. When Conrad smacks you for being snide at Thanksgiving dinner, you kind of lose interest in the future. Besides, what fucking business is it of this guy? “What are you—a truant officers? Why aren’t you at work?” “Because I’m on disability.” Perry tosses his last fry to the pushy seagull who nabs it mid-air and flaps off. “You like video games?” Perry lights a cigarette from his pack and offers one to Tommy. Tommy accepts it and stashes it behind his ear. “Gee, mister, what kid doesn’t like video games?” he gushes sarcastically, finishes his burger. “You gonna offer me candy next?” Perry laughs and raises his sunglass onto his brown wavy hair to get a better take on the kid. Tommy sees his brown hair matches exactly the color of his eyes. He presents Tommy with an appreciative smirk behind those watchful eyes. Tommy doesn’t trust this clown one bit, even if he is grateful for the meal. “You’re a smart ass, huh?” Tommy dangles a fry over his mouth and lets it fall in, not answering. “Fact is, I bought the new Grand Theft Auto.” “Awesome.” Tommy says sarcastically, but that tidbit has his attention. “You like some [banned word] picking up young guys at the beach?” “Nope. Just bored playing GTA by myself.” He flicks his ash, which tumbles over the concrete. Tommy senses what he says might be true, but still eyes the guy suspiciously while he finishes his fries. “C’mon. Let’s go.” Perry gets up. “I’ll drive you home afterward.” He puts the empty baskets on top of the trash bins. “You live around here?” “Yeah. Massapequa.” Tommy skates trying to keep up with Perry. He’s not all that bad looking, Tommy thinks, as they wind through the parking lot. Making an effort to get beside him, he observes his strong jaw, pointed chin, and a sly cat-like expression whenever he glances at Tommy—and he glances at Tommy a lot. On the skateboard he’s almost as tall as the guy, otherwise he’d probably be up to his nose. “You skate all the way to the beach?” Tommy nods, says, “Yep.” He takes the cigarette from behind his ear, cups his hands to light it. “This is me,” Perry says, as Tommy looks up. They’re stopped at a silver Mazda Miata. An older model but still makes an impression. Tommy skates around to the passenger side and gets in holding his board. There’s a blue Mother Mary plastic statue glued to the dashboard. He raises a dirty blond eyebrow at Perry. “Not guilty. Well, I am Jewish so I’m always guilty. But Mare was there when I bought this off an old geezer. Bad juju I figure if I break her off. Besides she’s looking out for me at the road. So what harm could there be?” He releases the roof hook on his side then reaches over Tommy and unhooks the other hook. “’Scuse me,” he says, leaning very close to Tommy. Tommy catches a whiff of coconut-smelling suntan lotion mixed with the musk of sweat. When he pushes the roof back, Tommy spies a small tufts of wet dark curls in his armpits. Perry pulls his sunglasses down, starts the convertible, revs the engine, then squeals out of the lot. Tommy hastily buckles in and hugs his board like a security blanket. The Miata roars down Ocean Parkway, taking the roundabout faster than any of the other cars. Perry pushes in the lighter and pulls a cigarette from his pack with his full lips. The ashtrays he opens overflows with butts. “So how old are you, Tommy from Massapequa?” he hollers as he guns the engine passing one car after another. “How old you think I am?” Tommy yells back. “Thirteen.” Perry eyes wrinkle with a smile behind his aviator frames. “Fuck you. Eighteen.” “You don’t look it. No hair in your pits that I can see.” He looks over at Tommy. Tommy lifts an arm to show him. “Some. It’s just blond. Why you care?” “I don’t. Prove it.” “What, that I’m not thirteen?” He gets out his I.D. and pushes it in the guy’s face. The lighter pops out and Perry press the glowing coil to his cigarette, glances at Tommy’s I.D. “Looks fake.” “It’s not.” Tommy slides it back in his cutoffs. The wind does a number on his hair making it flick in his face. He tries to put it behind his ears without much luck. He takes a hit off his cigarette and blows smoke into the turbulence. Looks out as the beach houses, scrub brush and dunes as they zip by. They drive for a while not talking. The guy seems to like weaving in and out, overtaking cars, which scares and exhilarates Tommy. He gives Perry a couple of sideways glances. Doesn’t look like a predator. Figures he’s in his forties, seems to keep in shape, has a few random dark hairs on his sternum, but smooth and deeply tan otherwise. He could be a high school track coach, if a high school track coach chain smoked. They pass over the Great South Bay Bridge. At the top of the bridge they’re flying so fast Tommy feels like any second they’ll take off and soar into the sky. Construction on the other side of the bridge and a stalled truck cause Perry to hit the brakes. As they squeal to a stop, he puts up a hand over Tommy’s chest to protect him. His hand falls back on the gear shift after he makes a detour to feel Tommy’s thigh. “Didn’t scare you, did it?” “Fuck no.” Tommy picks up the pack off the dashboard and takes another cigarette and light his old one with this new one. Perry looks at him and tries not to laugh. They ride the streets of Islip for several minutes, until they pull into the driveway of a two story apartment building: open garage parking on the first floor, apartments on the second. Tommy tosses his cigarette as they pull into a parking spot. Perry crush out his butt in the ashtray. “Be it ever so humbles,” Perry says, getting out. Tommy climbs out of the convertible, notices a Triumph motorcycle parked next to the Miata, wants to know if that’s Perry’s. It is, Perry confirms, as Tommy follows him up the back stairs. With the sunlight fading, Perry hold his set of keys close to his sunglasses, finds the right one, and unlocks the door. He usher Tommy and his clutched skateboard inside. It’s stuffy and smells like stale beer and cigarettes. Not surprisingly, on the coffee table there’s an ashtray brimming with butts. There’s an old, green couch with leopard print throw pillows and a La-Z-Boy over in the corner; a big screen TV sits on a stand opposite, with a DVD and VCR players underneath; unmarked DVD cases and video boxes are stacked on the sides. A swivel chair sits in front of a monitor on a desk, with game controls, and a PC tower adjacent on the floor. A framed Lion King poster adorns the hallway leading to the bedroom. It’s one of the only movies he love, a movie his mom—pre-Conrad—took him to when he was eight. “You like the Lion King?” Perry doesn’t answer. He’s quickly trying to clean up. Above the monitor there’s a huge framed photograph of the Savanna with a lion, lioness, and their cubs lying on a vivid green plain. He gets up close to it. In the corner there’s a small signature. Perry Rosen, 1999. “This really Africa?” Perry says it is as he’s closing a draw. He sets down his sunglasses and pack of cigarettes on the kitchen pass through. Tommy’s uneasy with what he sees in the dining area. A camera on a tripod, and in back of it are two stand holding up a dark grey backdrop. The backdrop spools to the floor behind a stool. A light on a stand aims at the backdrop, unlit. “What’s that?” Tommy wants to know. “What’s it look like?” Perry answers. “Like something a [banned word] would have in his apartment.” “Guilty as charged. But just a hobby.” Perry takes a cigarette from his pack and lights up. He turns on his monitor, boots up the game, and sits in the swivel chair and starts racing around the screen being chased by police cars. Tommy stands in back of him, still holding his skateboard. He’s familiar with the old 2D version of the video game—he’s played it often at friends’ houses—but this version is the new 3D one, and is so much cooler. For an old guy, Perry’s a pretty impressive gamer. He’s on it for a long time, screeching, shooting, before his avatar gets killed. He makes a big deal as he ceremoniously hands over the controls and the chair to Tommy. “Show me how it’s done, champ.” Tommy climbs in the chair and Perry watches him play. He cheers him on as he goes through various levels racking up wanted stars, money and guns. When Tommy fucks an in-game prostitute—racking up his health score—he turns around and shoots the whore to get his money back. Perry roars in astonishment and claps him on the shoulder. “You are one sick little fuck.” Tommy smiles in spite of himself. “I didn’t know you could do that,” Perry says. “I didn’t know I could do it either. Until I did it.” Tommy’s got a line of cop cars and helicopters chasing him. He gets distracted by the sound of a click, wipes out and his game character dies. He tosses the gaming controls on the desk and hears another click. Perry has his camera taking photos of Tommy. “My bubbee would have said something just like that.” He continues taking pictures of an increasingly annoyed Tommy. In a Yiddish grandma voice, he says, “’You never gonna know what you can do…unless you do it.’ She was all about taking changes, my bubbee.” “What are you doing, man?” “Taking a chance. Look how serious you are. Like a cross teddy bear.” Perry clicks several more times. Tommy holds up his hand to block Perry. “Ten bucks,” says Perry. “Aw, come on. Let me take a couple more.” He flips on the light on the stand. The brightness highlights the dinginess of the room: pale blue walls; a yellow water stain on the ceiling; burn marks on the checkered blue and grey linoleum floor, with a few more burn scars on the coffee table. “You serious? Ten. Just for some pictures?” Tommy asks distrustfully. Perry opens his wallet and takes out a ten dollar bill. “I said it was my hobby. Look.” He hands Tommy a photo album, dangling the ten out of Tommy’s reach. Tommy opens the album and flips through it. Page after page is of boys. None of them particularly good looking, just pretty average Joe’s; a few chubby ones, some even skinnier than him, like boys he goes to school with. Toward the back of the album he comes across a red flag—shirtless men, some with tattoos, some showing their hairy butts and, on the last page, some full frontals of pretty rough looking guys that look like they’re about to pounce on the photographer, fists clenched. “I knew you were a [banned word].” He gives back the album. “No. The boys are all legal. I have learned my lesson, your honor. Like I said, it’s just a hobby.” “Yeah, well, I gotta go.” “Five minutes and you get a ten spot.” “Not interested.” “You don’t have to, like, take anything off. You’re cute just in your trunks with your angry teddy bear face.” Tommy frowns and snatches the bill from Perry’s hand. He clutches his skateboard as he climbs on the stool. As Perry positions the camera framing Tommy tight, he says, “Would a smile kill you?” “Yes.” He grips his skateboard tighter to his chest. Perry takes a couple of photos then pleads with him to lower the skateboard, an inch, two inches. Tommy reluctantly does, looking stern and a little embarrassed. “Mind if I put on some music?” Perry asks. Tommy shrugs. He pops in Green Day, holds the camera close and moves with the music. Tommy thinks he’s such a doofus, the way he dances with his camera. It makes him sneer. “That’s it.” Perry starts clicking rapidly and sings with the song, “Don’t know where it goes. Yeah, curl that lip.” Tommy can’t help let escape a small smile at how dorky Perry is. “Gorgeous.” Perry’s really getting into the music and teasing Tommy with the camera. “I walk alone,” he sings getting the camera up in Tommy’s face. Tommy pushes the camera away and Perry swings it right back, taunting him. Perry falls to his knees looking up at him. “That’s it. Show me that distain. How fucked up is Tommy’s world?” Scorn is easy for Tommy to fall into. “That’s it. More. I walk alone.” Tommy leers at the man. “Go ahead, spit on me.” That takes him by surprise. “Say what?” “Yeah, or like you want to." Tommy considers what he asks. He feels the guy’s completely serious, so he spits on him a little just to see what he’ll do. It pushes Perry to a new passionate level. He starts clicking away like mad. “That’s it, that’s it. You think I’m some kind a loser, don’t you? Disbarred lawyer living in a shit hole like this. Come on, spit on me, motherfucker! Take it out on me—your fucked up little cunt!” Tommy sees he really gets off on this—and he doesn’t like what he’s saying—so he builds a big wad of saliva and hocks it at him. It lands on the guy’s forehead and runs down his face. “Wonderful!” Perry looks up from his camera. “That’s going to be a great one.” Perry puts the camera back on the tripod, shaking his head, more than a little embarrassed. He gets out a tissue and wipes his forehead and cheek. Tommy honestly doesn’t know what to make of this guy. Something reminds him how he drives his car, the fast-shifting moods. Something exhilarating being around him. “You’re a freak, dude,” he tells him. “Yes, I well aware of that.” He lights a cigarette. “I think you got a little freaky-deaky in you, too, Tommy from Massapequa.” He throws him the pack. Tommy pulls out one and lights it. He tosses the pack back to Perry. “What you said about being a disbarred—” “Yes, yes. I plead the fifth, your honor,” he says. Going into the fridge, he pulls out a couple of beers, offers one to Tommy who takes it. “What’d you, like, do?” Tommy pops his beer while exhaling smoke through his nose. Perry turns red face. He pulls the corners of his lips down in a mock sad face. “Uh, moral turpitude,” he says. Tommy doesn’t know what that means, but seeing Perry’s expression after he releases his lips—it’s a complex face he doesn’t know what to make of: angry, embarrassed, defiant, challenging—he knows he should drop it, but he persists giving Perry a quizzical look. “What’d ya do?” “Okay-okay-okay. Let’s just say, it’s why I wanted to see some I.D. from you. I’m not going up the river on a second offense.” There’s something shady, almost criminal, in way the guy’s eyes dart back and forth looking at him. It looks like he’s weighing what he’s going to do next. That same fear and thrill Tommy felt in the car. Tommy’s trying to decide if he should be wary of this guy or if he’s attracted to this side of him—he definitely feels danger coming off him. He’s never been presented with a choice like this before. Sure, he could walk out, but he decides he’s not going to. The guy could be a little deranged and he might like him more because of it. Perry smashes out his cigarette. “So,” he says, frighteningly normal-looking again like none of the past few second ever happened. “May I have my last two and a half minutes, please?” he asks, holding up his camera. Tommy shrugs his shoulders, puts out his cigarette. Perry pivots and puts on an old, scratchy Supremes record. As the music takes a hold of him, it seems to make him more stable, more average Joe, thinks Tommy. As Perry adjusts him on the stool, he sings to him: “Baby, baby…baby don’t leave me.” Tommy can’t help grin, if for no other reason than he’s relieved the guy’s like he was before. Perry is ready to shoot, but with his hands on his hips, the camera hanging on a strap around his neck, he says patiently, “Ya know, as much I love the street urchin look, can I get you to just brush your hair? Just a little?” “No,” says Tommy. He’s back to comfortably frowning at Perry. “Okay, wear this then.” Perry hands him a green knit hat. Tommy pulls it on. “Ah, you look like a cute little elf.” Tommy pulls it off. Now his hair is mussed at all angles. “Perfect,” says Perry, and starts shooting. Tommy gives him a disapproving glare, which Perry eats up. “Yeah, yeah. Right. You are so fuckin’ beautiful, Tommy. Has anyone ever told you that?” He stops, expecting an answer. Tommy’s not about to respond. Deeply scowls instead. “Well, you are ab-so-lutely stunning.” Perry grinds his hips to the music. “I’ve got this burning, burning, yearning feelin’ inside me.” He grabs his crotch and tease Tommy. “Ooh, deep inside me.” He pumps his hips at Tommy. “And it hurts so bad.” He steals a kiss. “Hey!” Tommy hops off the chair and pushes Perry backwards. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry,” Perry shakes his head in shame. “I know. Bad Perry. Perry very, very bad. Never do it again.” Tommy’s more in shock than mad. He can’t tell if Perry is acting or really is just a complete mess—he’s on his knees begging for forgiveness. “Here,” he says, pulling out his wallet and handing over a ten. “I promise you. Won’t happen again. You can hit me if I do.” “I don’t want to hit you, dude. I need to go.” “No, don’t go. I’ll put away the camera. I got some dynamite pot. We’ll watch a movie. I’ll order Chinese.” Tommy purses his lips. Perry turns off the music and the light on the stand. “Really. Any movie you want.” He pats the couch. “Come on. Sit.” Tommy sits at one end and Perry flops down at the other. He digs in his cigarette pack and produces a rumpled joint. He lights it, takes a big hit and hands it to Tommy. He pushes off the couch and goes through the DVDs under the big TV. “So, what do you feel like? Girl on girl, boy on girl?” He gives Tommy his sly-puss sideways glance. “Boy on boy?” “Straight,” say Tommy, as nonplused as he can. Perry pops in a disc and sits back on the couch. Tommy tokes and leans in to give him back the joint. The movie comes on. Cheesy graphics spin in the title: Anal Angels. Tommy throws him a disparaging look. “What? It’s Charlie’s Angels except they like it up the butt. Where’s the harm?” They watch for a while, passing the joint back and forth, while busty babes get rammed by a tattooed biker and an immensely endowed Black guy. Five minutes into it, one of the “angels” take both guys up her ass. It’s in extreme close-up, right between their pumping dicks. Perry starts rubbing his trunks where a rising lump is building. “I don’t’ know about you, but this is making me really horny. It won’t bother you if I rub one out, will it? I promise, line in the sand.” Perry draws an imaginary line between the couch cushions, between himself and Tommy. Tommy acts nonchalant and makes like he’s cool with it, even though he’s getting horny too. The double-dicked angel seem to be really enjoying how much it’s ripping her ass apart, and, with the pot loosening him up, and Perry beating away, he thinks he should lighten up, too—maybe pull out his dick. Never mind he’d be jacking next to a guy. Honestly, he’s done it a few times before at a few different buddy’s sleepovers, after they’ve been drinking, looking at Penthouses, and getting trashed on weed. Doesn’t happen often, but it has happened. So why not? Tommy guzzles his beer, then pulls down his pants and starts whacking along with Perry. He focuses strictly on the screen getting himself hard. He knows Perry’s looking over at him but he stares straight ahead. Then Perry stops jerking, leans over, and slips his mouth over Tommy’s cock. This first time a warm, wet mouth takes in his dick makes him almost cum instantly. With his palms pressing into the couch, he looks up at the water stain on the ceiling and then down at dark wavy hair, feeling the man’s soft tongue swirling around his cock. How good it feels, how stoned he is—Perry’s spittle sliding down his shaft, wrapping around his balls. As Perry bobs, Tommy places his hands gingerly on the man’s hair. His dick’s really wet and Perry amazingly manages to slide his cock deep down his throat, all the way down till he’s swallowed his cock down to Tommy’s sparse blond pubes. Perry wraps his hand under his balls and plays with them, then strokes Tommy’s cock with a clench fist. He looks at Tommy. “Feels good, yeah?” Tommy moans lightly as Perry swirls his palm around the head of Tommy’s cock, gripping him harder. “Like it, son?” Something about calling him son triggers him. “I’m cumming,” Tommy breathes a second before he releases. Perry increase the pressure of his palm and takes in Tommy’s dick head and swallows all the cum Tommy’s gushes out. Tommy claws the edge of the couch and buck wildly with Perry continuing to swirl and suck as he continues to spew. He thinks Perry will stop after he finishes cumming but he’s still slurping away way long after he’s climax. “Stop. Dude!” He pushes Perry’s head off him. Perry picks up his beer and lies back. “Time was,” Perry says, swigging some beer, “back in the Jurassic age, I’d have charged you twenty for that.” Tommy sucks back some of his beer, too, and looks at the screen avoiding Perry’s eye contact. The man’s evaluating him, he feels it. Doesn’t know what more he could want. Perry finally turns away and watches a new “angel” in a sling, legs spread wide, pussy lips hanging and red gaping butthole pushing open. The Black guy is greasing up his hand and slides grease in her butt. Slowly he slides this entire hand into her red gape. Perry starts beating off again. Tommy sits there stunned that the girl can take a hand as big as the Black guy’s. Tommy sits with his mouth open and his trunks still at his ankles, his dick hard as metal. The angel writhes and shrieks, encourages the Black guy to fist her harder. Tommy’s mesmerized, eyes glued to the screen with Perry’s spanking his cock beside him. Perry reaches a hand over and fondles Tommy’s cock while he beats his own. “Payback time,” Perry sings. He turns to Tommy. “Twenty bucks, you do that to me.” “Huh?” Tommy looks at him confused. “No seriously. I want you to stick your hand up my butt. Fist me just like that.” “That’s not possibly.” “Well.” Perry pauses masturbating, and begins to cross-exam Tommy: “First of all, your initial response is you didn’t say no. Secondly, see, she’s doing it, so you can clearly see it's possible. And finally, I like it. More than like it. I love taking a guy’s fist. But if you don’t feel like it, I can always get online after I take you home, and find someone who will. But I’d really like it if it was you. Easy twenty.” “I doubt if I can.” Perry claps excitedly. “Sure you can. I’ll lead you through it.” Perry steps out of his swimsuit, very erect. “Leave you trunks on the floor. God you’re hot!” He takes Tommy into his bedroom where a sling’s set up, one very much like the one in the movie. A can of Crisco is clipped to one of the poles. Perry plugs in red chili lights strung around the sling, and climbs in placing a leg in each of the hanging straps. The room is all reds and shadows. The sling’s chains sparkle. Perry skin shines, his pits and crotch are dark as midnight. “You’re going to be great. Okay, put Crisco all over your hand. Now take a wad and push it into my hole.” Tommy follows his instruction, can’t believe he’s about to do this, but completely intrigued by the idea of fisting someone. Pushing the wad of Crisco into Perry, it’s the first time he’s ever touched a man’s asshole. He can’t say he’s repulse—actually the opposite—it’s the softest thing he’s ever felt. He hears the actress in the other room continue to screech in what sounds like pleasure and agony. “You sure about this? It’s gonna hurt you.” “Yes, and?” Perry says. “Now make your hand like this,” he instructs, pointing all his fingers together. “Slowly push on my hole. No, don’t let up. That’s it. Keep going in.” Tommy loves how silky Perry’s hole is, like velvet. He takes two greased fingers and traces the asslips in a full circle, much to Perry’s satisfaction. The guy’s gushing him with praise. “Like a duck to water,” he’s says, as Tommy penetrates his entrance. The hole relaxes open as he pushes in. He penetrates him without a bit of grimace from Perry at all. “Aw, fuck baby, you make my hole sing!” Perry reaches up to a hanging sack dangling from a support bar. It clanks from a number of bottles inside. He pulls out a brown bottle and takes a hit from it. He offers it to Tommy, who doesn’t know what it is, but follows Perry’s lead. Perry holds one of his nostrils as he sniffs, then the other. There’s a cloud that forms in his head that overwhelms him, a desire to push his whole hand inside Perry hole, a relishing at how nasty this is, amplified by how much he loves the filthiness of this. Perry’s lying back looking at the ceiling coaxing Tommy to continue going in. Tommy doesn’t need any encouragement. He loves the way Perry’s sphincter opens for him, creamy as rose petals the touch of his skin. He’s up to his third knuckle before Perry says to wait a second, let him get used to his hand, but Tommy ignores him and keeps pushing in. Perry’s breathing rapidly through tight lips, murmuring obscenities, when Tommy breaks through. He glides his palm in, diving straight into a cavern up to his wrist. Perry’s sphincter clamps around him like a handcuff—he’s captive in a way he’s never been. Perry’s breath slows, his face melts in total bliss. “Fuck,” Tommy says, surprised at the accomplishment. His hidden hand feels all wet and warm, slimier than anything he’s ever felt. When he wiggles his fingers, Perry’s eyes roll up in his head in painful pleasure. Perry uncaps the bottle again and Tommy leans forward wanting another hit. Perry gives it to him, as he instructs Tommy to fold his hand into a ball. Tommy does and Perry tells him how good he’s doing, what a natural he is. “A star is born, baby!” Perry heaves in ecstasy, sniffing his bottle. “Streisand’s got nothing on you!” Tommy tries variations he witnessed in the movie. He pulses in and out of Perry’s hole. There’s so many cross-currents of tissue rubbing across Tommy’s fist, like he’s guiding his hand through a spongy cave, ramming his hand through a winding tunnel of flesh. He withdraws his fist almost out then pumps back in. “Aw, fuck me, you own this hole. Anything you do, just remember I feel it times a hundred.” Tommy pulls his hand out, slides more grease into Perry loose asslips, and follows through with his fingertips re-entering the hole. “Yeah. Go deep. Yeah, deeper.” Tommy does and finds Perry’s rectum is an amazing, pliable object that has its own set of rules. It’s like he’s suddenly handed the game console that controls another man’s body. With his fingertips, he twists them one way and then the other, which makes Perry twitch and cry. He lets the palm of his hand glide against the walls in a one-eighty, then reverses. He feels a bump at the top of this man cave. He lets his fingers dance against it. Perry is twerks on his hand like crazy. “You found my prostate. No! Don’t squeeze it,” which of course makes Tommy squeeze it. Perry jerks in the sling. Tommy feels powerful, in command for possibly the first time in his life. It starts to get a rise out of him. His dick’s straight out, aimed at Perry sloppy hole. As he pulls his hand out, he replaces it with his erection. It slides in like he’s fucking warm butter. It’s like his cock is in warm, viscous mud. Like he’s fucking mucous. All the imagery bombarding him makes him harder. “Slide your hand inside with your cock, if you can,” Perry suggests, looking up in Tommy’s direction. He’s cross-eyed in exaltation, unable to see the boy in the red shadows, but feels every inch of him. “Aw, fuck,” he exclaims, as Tommy slips his hand inside, surrounding his penis with his hand. “Jack off in me, baby.” Tommy does. The act is sick and feels so good, and brings such pleasure to Perry who hitting the poppers like a maniac, offering Tommy some on occasion. When he does get a hit, he goes crazy deep into Perry, whose loving every second of it. Perry starts jacking again, hard as a rock. He gives Tommy the three-second warning and points his dick straight up. Tommy, straight off a hit of poppers, eagerly bends down and takes the man’s cockhead in his mouth. Perry explodes his semen immediately, which Tommy swallows. The clenching rectum spasms as Perry orgasms. Tommy’s first swallow of cum and how good his cock feels whacking inside a sloppy hole, makes him gush again—a second time within an hour. Tommy pinches off every last drop, then slowly pulls out a slick hand and wraps his fist around Perry withering cock. “No, please don’t.” But Perry’s begging makes Tommy smirk and stroke his cock harder. Perry bounces like a marionette in the sling, jingling all the chains, pleading to Tommy to stop. He takes pity and reluctantly lets him off the hook. Tommy jumps up hanging from the top bar of the sling with his non-greasy hand, swinging back and forth making monkey sounds. “I knew you were a freak, baby. Saw it in your eyes the minute you skated over to me.” Tommy drops to the ground, scratching his armpit, still making monkey sounds. “No really, you could make some serious coin doing what you do.” Tommy still feels the saltiness of cum in his mouth, the buzz of the poppers, the lingering euphoria of the pot. Looking at Perry resting in the sling, he wonders what it would be like to switch positions. He smiles, beaming contented for the first time in a really long time. Perry’s focusing now, finally coming back to earth. “Baby, you got a knack. And I’m not just yanking your chain.” He awkwardly reaches Tommy’s cock and pulls on it. He flops back, looking at Tommy admiringly. He needs work, he realizes, but the raw talent is there with a little dash of crazy. “Listen, I get fisted all the time. Sometime I’ll pay for it, sure—and I definitely will pay for that. But you must think bigger. You have got the right amount of nasty and recklessness that some men like, that some men seek out.” He leans forward as much as he can with his legs still suspended. He grabs Tommy’s ribs. “Come here.” Perry reels him in. Tommy flops like a ragdoll over Perry sweaty, slick torso. He allows himself to be kissed repeatedly by Perry all over his face—doesn’t kiss him back. He grins smugly, regarding him like he’s full of it. Perry notes his reticence. “Alright. I can work with that.” He releases Tommy who stands there, even now, with his half-hard eighteen-year-old constant erection. “We need a name on your profile. Tommy's too boy next door. We need to get you geared up in leather, introduce you to a little S&M, get pics of you on a few nasty sites. I bet there’s a ton of men to hook you up with. They’d gladly line up to be disciplined by a hot skater boy like you, grovel at your feet. You put them through their paces, all right, and they’ll be happy to pay for the privilege.” Tommy scowls at him, thinks this is all bullshit. “Yeah, just like that. That cross teddy bear face.” He inhales suddenly. As if his name appeared to him on a movie marque, Perry sweeps his hand across the ceiling for Tommy to read: “Oscar. You’re garbage to him.” Perry lies back dreamily grasping the chains above his head. Tommy spies the wet dark tufts in his armpits. He slips his semi-rigid dick back in Perry’s dripping hole, and leans over to lick his pits like he’s wanted to since the car ride. “That's right.. Get piggy, boy.” Perry takes control of Tommy’s head, holding it tightly in his pit while Tommy sucks on his sweat-drenched curls. “Clean it up. Lick all of it. Oscar, we are going to make one hell of a fortune, you and me.” He guides Tommy's head over to suck out his other pit. “We need just one tweak.”

I hear you @bottomboyam Trust me, we'll get there. But first you have to know about Oscar.

Love it @Yultidelog2009 @YEGfaggot @pozpopperpig @pigwest ! I'd jerk off now AND later. I’m in the middle of a slight detour, but I won’t Abandon Jesse. Thanks for your encouragement! Oink!