Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 23:41:21 -0600
From: Thomas Carver <thomascarveriii@gmail.com>
Subject: Criminal Intent

Preface

This novella explores some of my favorite things: the Stockholm syndrome,
the Lima syndrome, humiliation, nostalgie de la boue, socioeconomic class
and the erotic subtext behind class tensions, and so on.  There is sex in
here, but it takes a while to get going, but I like a slow build.  There's
also some extreme stuff, as well as what appears to be apologizing for and
eroticizing of rape.  Please don't write to me telling me that I'm a
psycho.  These characters aren't me, and none of this is autobiographical
(although Jason is based on someone I once knew, who actually said some of
the things Jason says in this story, and if I'd had the balls to pursue it
at the time, might have led to some very interesting scars).  I don't get
paid for writing these.  I do them for my own pleasure.  But when you write
to me and tell me you enjoyed the story, that's a kind of payment, and I
appreciate it more than you know.  I also appreciate constructive
criticism, but if you're going to be an internet asshole, don't bother.  An
internet troll can't do worse than has been done to me by real people, so I
am immune to such things.  Nifty.org has provided free erotica for so long,
I used to print out the stories in the computer lab and bring them back to
my dorm room, because all I had there was dialup and it took forever for
Lynx to load a whole story.  Seriously.  So you should totally give them
some money out of appreciation.  If you found this and paid for it
somewhere else, you were ripped off (as was I, I suppose, as the putative
copyright owner).  No one in this story uses protection, but they're all
idiots.  Wrap your dicks, boys.  That includes, sadly, oral sex now, since
there's a drug-resistant strain of the clap going about that sounds
absolutely horrible.  I find that using polyurethane condoms for oral works
surprisingly well, and doesn't taste like sucking on a balloon.  Why won't
someone make a dick-flavored condom?  Let's get to work on that.  Email me
with comments at thomas.carver.iii@gmail.com, if you're so inclined.


Criminal Intent


1


I was halfway through my third bottle of Two Buck Chuck when I got the urge
for dark chocolate.  I had been up way too late, drinking, watching
sentimental music videos on YouTube, and alternately crying and cursing.
Not my usual Friday night, but our fourth anniversary had been Tuesday, and
Wednesday Michael had sat me down, took me by the hand, and explained in
rational and measured tones that he was unhappy, had been unhappy for a
while, and had to leave.  So he did.  His stuff was still all over the
apartment: his Los Angeles Kings jersey, his self-help books, his stereo,
his TV, even the futon I was lying on was his.


I diagnosed myself: drunken self-pity.  Prescription: dark chocolate.  I
was a vet, not a human doctor, but chocolate was poison to dogs and I felt
like a kicked hound.  Truth be told, I wasn't even a vet anymore, since the
clinic let me go and I ended up "writing my book."  He had supported that.
Until he realized it meant that we were living on his salary alone, and I
hadn't written a word.


And now, I was living on no salary at all.  I was living on savings, which
were going to run out sooner rather than later.


Driving in LA is a risky endeavor when sober, so the all-night grocery
store was out of the question.  But there was a 7-11 about a mile away, and
I could do for a walk to clear my head.  So I threw on my sweatpants and
worked my feet into a pair of my running shoes.  It was hot as -- well, Los
Angeles in the summer -- so I grabbed a T-shirt to throw on when I got to
the store.


The walk did help clear my head a bit.  And what the clarity revealed was
this: I had nothing left.  He was gone, and he was -- yes, well, kind of
everything.  And I had no job.  No prospects for a job.  I could find
someone else, but I was 35 now and had gone a bit soft in the middle.  A
gay man at 35 in Los Angeles with a pale spare tire and no job -- not a
full social planner.


By the time I got to the 7-11, I had decided to pick up a box of sleeping
pills or two to go along with the wine and chocolate.  A dramatic gesture.
I doubt I'd take them.  I figured I'd change my mind, sober off, feel
better in the morning.  But -- if not -- then why not my quietus make?


I had also realized something else, nearly halfway there, and that was the
fact that I had a very tiny bladder.  So the first thing I did after
throwing on my shirt and hitting the little bell with the door on my way in
was ask the middle-aged screenwriter behind the counter for the key to the
john.  I wasn't in there long.  Just long enough to read the graffiti and
empty myself of recycled wine.


When I came out, though, everything had changed.


First, someone was shouting something at the poor clerk, something about
money.  He was wearing one of those white plastic masks, the featureless
ones you can buy at craft stores.  Another man, wearing the same, had just
turned to aim the barrel of a gun at me.


I was glad I had already pissed.


He, too, was yelling something, but I couldn't process language.  However,
my body seemed to understand him without the engagement of my brain, so I
ended up flat on the floor, face-down, my hands spread out above my head.


A yellow, ratty sneaker came down in front of my face.  Then a shadow, and
he yanked my wrist back behind my back, met it with the other wrist, and
secured them with a zip tie.  He pulled me to my feet.  He said something
else.  I'm sure it was English, but I still too empty-headed to hear it
properly.  I just moved automatically where he directed me, out the door
(the bell rang as we left, a cheerful farewell) and the backseat of a grey
four-door .  Someone was already in the driver's seat, and he took off
before the doors were firmly closed on me, the man with the gun, and the
other man with the bag.


"Tell me you also stole some money?" the driver said, in a dry tone.


The bag-man, sitting in the front seat, laughed.  "Trust Joe here to steal
a dude."


"Hostage.  In case they call the cops."


The bagman turned in his seat to regard me through the eyeholes in his
mask, then tore the mask off and tossed it in Joe's lap.  He was a young
man, maybe twenty if that, thin nose, full lips, probably mixed race but
what mix I couldn't guess.  He had long dark hair pulled back into a
ponytail, not a flattering look for a man.  His was not an attractive face.
He eyed me up and down.  "Sup?" he said, improbably.


"Uh, listen," I said, "I don't really have any money, but you can have
what's on me and -- uh, I won't talk if -- uh."


"They call me Don," he said.


"I'm Neil."


"That your name, or a verb?"


"Uh . . . "


"Not the ripest plum on the tree, are you?"


"I'm just -- scared."


"Yeah," Don said conversationally, "you probably should be.  We will kill
you if, you know, like, we want to.  If we feel like it.  So maybe you
should think really hard about how you can make us not feel like it."


Joe flung one arm around my shoulders, pulled me into a hug, and pressed
the gun up against the side of my head.


The driver, seeing this in the rearview, interrupted.  "Do not get fucking
brains on the inside of my fucking car, or I will skull fuck you."


"We're just fucking with him," Joe said, pulling the gun away a bit, but
still aiming at my head.


"Well, stop it.  You're going to make him piss himself, and then you'll be
cleaning it up, damn it.  Hey, Neil," the driver said, his eyes flicking up
to meet mine in the rearview.  "You gonna be cool?"


"I'll be cool."


"Gonna do what you're told?"


"Yes, sir."


The driver's eyes went back to the road.  "See?  Sir and everything.  Lay
off the poor stupid fuck for a while, and explain to me what the hell you
were thinking.  Hostages were not in the plan, we're not being chased by
the cops, and I am so not into the whole kidnapping for ransom shit."


"I don't know," Joe admitted.  "I sometimes just get this -- feeling."


"Great.  Great.  Feelings now.  Well, Mr. Feelings, explain the logic
behind this, cause I just don't get it.  We were in and out, no one saw our
faces, we had no witnesses.  Until you, being a goddamned genius, made a
witness.  He's seen our faces now.  We can't just drop him off somewhere.
Fuck, you two Einsteins just told him your names."


Joe's arm tightened around me, as if he was trying to hold on to me.  He
was thinner than Don, shaved head, dark skin, dark eyes: probably Hispanic,
although Joe wasn't exactly a Hispanic name.  He was gangly, full of angles
and corners, but his arm around me was strong.  His cologne was something
cheap and generous, on top of sweat, the sweet tang of pot, and maybe a bit
of fear.


A few minutes ago, I was contemplating suicide.  Now, I was desperately
hoping that I would live long enough to describe these young men to the
police, testify at their trial, live a long and happy life without a job or
a boyfriend.


I had to pee again.


The driver -- I still didn't know his name -- had pulled into a dark
parking lot.  Don got out with some stuff from below his seat that clanked,
knelt in front of the car, did something, and then did the same in the
back.  Before he got in, he wiped off two pieces of metal -- license plates
-- and tossed them in the dumpster.


Where we went then, I lost track.  At one point, a police car pulled up
next to us, but before I could try to signal the cop Joe pushed my head
down, hard, into his lap.  He held me there, the barrel of the gun pressed
up against my throat.  If he shot me, I knew, the bullet would go through
the seat into the driver, but Joe didn't seem to have the best impulse
control.  I kept my peace, and the cop car changed lanes, exited.  We
exited shortly after, but Joe kept my head in his lap the rest of the way.


The adrenaline had long since worn off, so I felt sick, groggy, and weak,
and still drunk.  I think I might have even slept or passed out, because
when Joe let me put my head back up, the car had stopped and the three were
already in conversation -- or argument.


"This wasn't part of the plan," Don was saying.  "I don't want to hunker
down here in buttfuckistan for the next however long."


"Talk to Joe.  Joe changed the plan, and so here we are.  Plan B."


"We didn't talk about a plan B."


"I don't talk about all my plans," the driver said.  "So, here we stay.
There's food, water, and no one around."


"Who even owns this place?"


"Let's not lay out every little detail where the hostage can hear us,
okay?"


"Fine," Don said, in a voice that didn't match the meaning.  "I guess we
stay here, then."


They pulled me out of the car.  "Here" was a mobile home, surrounded by
desert.  It was clearly abandoned.  There was no electricity, and when the
driver said "water," he must have meant bottled water, cause I couldn't
imagine that it had a municipal water meter.


"How long we staying here?" Joe asked.


"Long enough until we figure out what to do with Neil here.  Hey, Neil.
How you doing?"


"I -- I have to pee.  And my hands are sore."


The driver was stockier than the other two, and while Joe had short stubble
on his head, the driver had shaved his.  He had a thin chinbeard, a
neck-tattoo of a spider web, another tattoo of a teardrop under one eye,
and eyes that hit you in the face like buckshot.  He pulled a pocket knife
out of his pocket and flicked it open.  "Turn around."  I felt a tug on the
zip ties, and suddenly my hands were free.  For a moment, they tingled, and
then burned and ached as the blood came back.


"Thank you," I said.


"Hey, Jason," Don yelled from the door of the mobile home, "I think
someone's been cooking in here."


Ah, the driver's name was Jason.  Cooking what?  My stomach grumbled.  I
never did get my chocolate.


"Yeah, me.  It's clean, don't worry."


"You holding?"


"Yeah, I always stash in an abandoned trailer in the desert, you dumbass.
No, I'm not holding.  If you want meth, you can buy it from me with your
share."


Oh.  That kind of cooking.


Jason turned me to.  "Neil, if you wanna piss, you're going to want to do
it now.  The toilets don't work in there."


"I'm not sure I can, with you watching."


"Get used to it.  You either get babysat, or buried in the desert."


I pulled out my dick, which had shrunk to the head of a mushroom, and tried
to piss.  It didn't happen: I just clenched up.  I closed my eyes, tried to
think of anything else.  Jason was patient.  Eventually, I got a thin
stream, then a gush that filled me with such relief I nearly cried.


"Let's divvy," Joe said.  "I want to see what we got."


They took me into the trailer, which was decorated in post-apocalyptic
chic.  It had a faint chemical smell, as well as the smell of old sweat,
shoes, but not -- fortunately -- mold.  The living room, such as it was,
had a broken down faux leather couch, a few worktables with some lab glass
on them, and a TV.  They took the couch and pointed to the greasy, stained
carpet.  I sat and kept my mouth shut.  There was no electricity, so Jason
lit a couple of the alcohol lamps.  "I'll get the genny going tomorrow," he
said.  "I hate fucking with it in the dark."


Don opened the paper bag and started pulling out money.  They stacked it
and Jason counted it with practiced fingers.  He looked disgusted.


"How much?" Joe asked.


"Three hundred eighty."


"The fuck?  For all that?" Don said.


Jason leaned back on the couch and pressed his eyes.  "Not even a tenth of
what we need.  I could have made more cooking."


"I could have made more cooking burgers, never mind meth," Don said.


"Crime does not pay," Joe added.  "Who knew?"


"Fuck you, Joe."


"No, fuck you, Jason."


"Fuck me," Don said.  "Fuck all of us.  Okay, so, what's plan C?"


"I don't have a plan C," Jason said.  "We need a score, and we've got chump
change and this asshole.  That's our score."


"They must have cashed the drawer just before we got there."


"Yup."  Jason threw up his hands.  "I'm out of ideas."


"I've got an idea.  You said it before," Joe said.  "And I knew my feeling
was right.  We can hold this guy for ransom."


"You have any money, Neil?" Jason asked.


"There's a couple thousand in my savings," I said.  "But I've been
unemployed for a while.  My boyfriend was -- uh."  Probably not the best
thing to say to a skinhead-looking guy with a teardrop tattoo.


Jason waved it away.  "I don't give a shit if you're queer.  I asked if you
had money.  What about your boyfriend?  He likely to pay?"


"I doubt it," I said.  "He left me.  My parents don't care for me either."


"Jesus, Neil, don't you have any friends?" Joe asked.


I thought about it.  "No," I said finally, "I guess I don't."


"Well, guess we'll kill you and dump you in a hole, then," Jason said,
nonchalantly.


My balls crawled back into my abdomen.  "Please don't," I said, starting to
cry.  "I'll find some way to get you money, I'll give you everything I
have, just please don't kill me."


"Shut up, you crybaby.  I was just fucking with you.  Just don't make us
kill you, and you'll be okay."


I'd never been less suicidal in my life.  "I'll do anything you say."


"Yeah, you will.  Okay, well, we'll think about this in the morning.  Let's
get some sleep.  When we get up tomorrow, we'll figure out what to do."


"Fair enough," Don said.  "I'm tired as fuck."


"Joe, you get to sleep in the back room with the fag.  Neil, we can't have
you getting up and getting into kill-you-and-bury-you-in-a-hole trouble, so
we're going to tie you down.  There are some leather restraints in the back
by the big bed.  Don't fucking judge me.  Just tie him down with those.
Joe, you're sleeping in the same bed with him.  Don't let him try to gnaw
through the straps or something."


Don grinned.  "Leather, eh?  Didn't think you were into tying chicks down."


"Or maybe he likes being tied down," Joe said.


"Or maybe this isn't my first hostage situation, you assholes.  Strap him
down, sleep next to him, and don't let him fuck around.  If he tries to
escape, kill him."


"Why do I have to sleep with him?  I hate sleeping with other people in the
room."


"He followed you home, you take care of him."


So my arms were bound again, although this time the leather and buckle
restraints were a lot more comfortable.  They bound my legs together too,
and then hooked the arms above my head and the legs below.  It wasn't a
comfortable sleeping position, but it was better than sleeping forever in
the desert.


2


I woke up sore.  My arms and legs were stiff, my stomach felt like a sink
full of dirty dishes, and my mouth was so dry my tongue stuck to the roof
of it.  Someone had scoured the inside of my skull with a brillo pad, and
my eyes had been filled with fire ants.  I also realized how close I was to
puking, and had a moment of panic, before I heard voices raised in argument
outside the door.  There wasn't privacy in a mobile home, so I could make
out what they were saying:


"He said he's got a couple thousand.  That's something."


"So we get his card, go to an ATM, and then cut him loose."


"Great idea, but two things:" That was definitely Jason.  He had the voice
of authority.  "ATMS have cameras, and limits on how much you can take out
at one time."


"So we take him to the bank, and he closes his account."  Ah, that was Joe.
Innocent.  Young.


"Yeah.  And he slips the teller or note or something to press the silent
alarm."


"So we kill him."  Who was that?


"You ever murdered someone?" Jason said.  "You ready for that?  And you
ready to do that and get nothing out of it?"


"So what are you suggesting?  Do you have an idea, or are you just gonna
shoot down anything anyone says?"  Oh, that was Dan.  Don?  Don.  It was
Don.


"Nope.  I'm out of ideas.  For now."


"I have an idea," Joe said.  "Maybe we should ask him.  I mean, maybe he'll
do the bank thing and promise not to -- you know, turn us in."


Don's voice, in a falsetto: "Promise?  Oh, gee whiz, a promise!"


"No," Jason said.  "That's not entirely stupid.  Let's talk to him.  We
need information, so let's gather some information.  Time he woke up
anyway.  He's gonna feel like shit.  He was pretty drunk last night."


"Yeah, and it was hot as fuck in that bed.  I sweated through my clothes.
And the fucker snores like a goddamned -- I don't know what."


"Don, grab a couple -- no, three -- bottles of water.  I'll go wake him up
and unstrap him."


And Jason came in.  "Hey, how you doing?"  All solicitous concern for my
welfare.


"Feel like shit."


He unstrapped my hands and legs.  "Yeah.  Sorry about that.  Don's getting
you some water.  You need to piss?"


"I'm too dehydrated.  After the water, probably."  I tried to sit up, but
my arms and legs were weak and didn't want to bend.


He sat on the side of the bed, and Don brought the water.  Jason opened it
for me and I managed to get a grip on it and sit up well enough to chug it
down.  It almost came right back up, but I started to feel better
immediately.  I started sipping the second one more moderately.


"Neil, we've got a problem," Jason said.  "We need money pretty bad.  Like,
a lot of people a hell of a lot meaner than we are need to get paid.  So do
you think you can help us out?"


"I told you, I've got a couple thousand.  That's about it.  I've been
unemployed and living off savings.  But you can have it."


"See, that's a start, but it's just a start.  Isn't there anyone who would,
you know, contribute to ensure your safety?"  His voice was all rationality
and sweetness, a magazine salesman promising that my order of Country
Living Quarterly would improve my life.


"My parents are Mormon.  When I told them I was into guys, they said 'bye,'
and never looked back.  You could try them, but my guess is, they'd say no.
My ex-boyfriend?  Maybe.  I wouldn't count on it.  He'd probably just go to
the cops out of his goddamned moral duty or something.  And that wouldn't
be good for me, would it?"


"No, probably not.  I mean, we'd hate to -- "


"Yeah.  You'd hate to.  I'd hate to too.  I wish I was a fucking
millionaire.  I'd buy you a yacht if you let me go.  But I'm not.  You kind
of picked a piss poor kidnapping victim."


"So you're not a millionaire.  But you've got a couple thousand.  I guess
we could start there.  It'll keep those unpleasant guys off our backs for a
while, at least.  But this is a long way to go just to rob someone of a
couple grand."


"Yeah.  I'm sorry," I said.  I was.  Being poor meant that there were lots
of bad ways this could go for me, and very few good ones.  "I can just give
you the account number, or write you a check, or -- "


"All of those are pretty traceable.  I think I'd rather deal in cash, but
to get cash, we're going to have to get you to a bank."


"And if you take me to a bank, you're afraid I'll run or tip someone off or
something."


"'Afraid' is a strong word," Jason said.  His eyes, like green lasers,
fixed on mine.  Or maybe like something science fiction: like tractor
beams, like a forcefield.


"I could buy some bitcoins, give them to you."


"I have no idea how to deal with bitcoins and don't really have time to
figure it out.  Cash is king.  So -- we're going to stick around here for a
while, and I'm going to give this some thought.  When I figure out how to
do this without risking my freedom, we'll make a trade: you will empty your
account, give it to me, and we'll let you go.  Easy."


"Easy," I said.


It was pretty easy, in many ways.  I didn't have to make any decisions;
they did that for me.  And by "they" I mean "Jason."  This was obviously no
democracy.  I was keeping the fact that I could hear them in the bedroom a
secret, for now, although I'm not sure why.  When Joe complained in front
of me the next morning that my snoring had kept him awake, I told him that
if I slept on my side, it'd stop.  It was marginally more comfortable being
strapped down on my side, and they also gave me a little more give on the
straps.


About two days later, Joe stripped down before going to bed.  "It's too
damned hot to sleep in my clothes," he said.  "You want to take yours off?
They're getting ripe."  He had a point.  I had been wearing them for three
days, sweating more or less constantly.  I took off my sweatpants and
t-shirt and threw them on the floor.  There was nowhere else for them.


The mattress was stained, old, and gross, but you get used to things like
that over time.  It was almost a domestic routine.  Joe strapped me in, we
slept, and then in the middle of the night I woke up to feel something
tugging on the back of my boxers.


It was Joe.  He had pulled them down to just below my ass.


"Oh, God," I whispered -- I don't know why I whispered -- "please don't."


"Shh, I'm not going to hurt you," he breathed in my ear.  "Trust me."


Yeah.  Trust him.  Something long, hard, and warm pressed up against my
back.  His arm came over my front and held me tight.  We were spooning, but
he was a very active spoon, sliding his hard on up and down my lower back,
down between my ass cheeks.  "Shh," he breathed in my ear.


I waited for him to pierce me, and at that point, there'd be no shhing.
I'd be shouting.  I'd never much cared for anal sex, in either direction.
But he didn't enter me, just slid up and down between my ass cheeks and up
my lower back, the sweat between us lubricating him.  His arm around me
clutched me tightly to his body, but I couldn't get away anyway, since I
was strapped in by my feet and hands.  His lips rested against my ear, his
breath loud and hot as he softly grunted.


Finally, his hand came down, grabbed himself, and something wet and hot
covered my lower back.


Joe pulled me tight one last time against his slender chest and whispered
in my ear: "Don't tell," he said.  Then he rolled over, his back to mine.


I lay there a while, feeling his sperm liquify on my back and run down to
the mattress.  I didn't know what to think.  I had been violated, but then
again, what the hell did that mean for a kidnapping victim?  I was violated
just being here.  And the violation could have been worse.  In a way, it
had been almost -- tender?


I was apologizing for the guy who raped me after kidnapping me.  What the
hell was wrong with me?


I did, however, have a roaring hard on of my own, although there was
nothing I could do about that fact.


Morning came, and was routine.  I was guarded while we ate.  One of the
guys -- this time, it was Don -- took the car, probably to get a shower and
supplies.  The other two sat around, ran the generator and watched TV, not
that they could hear it over the noise.  We ate out of tin cans.  They
strapped me down at night, and Jason and the guys conferenced out in the
living room.  They were hammering out a plan, but with the generator
running I couldn't hear all of it.


And that night, Joe did it again, rubbing himself against me until he came,
like I was a masturbation sleeve.


He did it every night for the next couple days, until Jason called him on
it one morning.  I was eating generic spaghetti-like things out of a can,
sitting on the floor in the living room.  Jason and Don were on the couch,
Joe was on the floor crosslegged.  The genny was off, so it was quiet.


"So," Jason said, out of nowhere, "I think maybe it's time someone else
slept with Neil."


"What?  Why?  I don't mind," Joe said.  "It's not a big deal now that he
doesn't snore."


"Well, I don't know how much bigger the cum stain can get before you guys
drown in it," Jason said.


"W-what?"


"Could we maybe not fuck the hostage?" Jason said.


"Whoah, you're fucking him?" Don asked.  "Weird.  That's like -- weird."
He was a little stoned, to judge by his eyes.


"It was just a wet dream.  I get those -- "


"Bullshit.  Neil, is he fucking you?  Be honest."


"I -- no, not fucking."


"But -- ?"


Jason caught my glance at Joe.  "If you talk," Jason said, "Joe might hurt
you.  If you don't talk, I will hurt you.  Who are you more afraid of?"


"He's rubbing up against me.  I really don't mind.  It's -- " Did I just
say I didn't mind?  Peace between them seemed safer than fighting, and
dealing with sexuality was dealing with the main power source in any
situation.  "He's probably just doing it in his sleep, not even knowing
what he's doing.  It's not a big deal."


Don laughed.  "Neil probably likes it.  He's probably getting off on it.
Probably wishes he could go back there right now and suck on that cum
stain."


Jason shook his head as if he were dealing with children.  "I don't give a
shit.  It doesn't matter anyway.  Today we're going to end this.  Neil,
listen to me.  If you cooperate, you get to go free.  You walk away, and
you'll be alive.  If you don't cooperate, you'll wish you had.  Killing you
will be the last thing we do before we're done, and that'll take a while.
Understand?"


"Yes, sir.  I'll get the money and get gone."  I wondered if that was true?
Could it be that easy?  I'd have no money left, but -- I didn't really care
much about that anymore.  Being free and alive seemed a lot more important
than being broke.  "Just tell me what to do."


What to do was simple.  I'd walk into the bank, close the account -- Jason
had already come up with a story about me moving to a place without a
branch -- and walk out the door.  I'd meet Don coming the other way, hand
off the money, then walk away.  I'd go left, and he'd go right.  That was
it.  Simple, fast, and not too complicated.  I didn't know why it took him
almost a week to come up with it, but maybe he had to develop some trust in
me, or just some courage to carry it out.  Not that I thought he lacked
much for courage.


And, despite my homeless appearance, it did go pretty smoothly, up until
the point that the young woman in the pink blazer handed me a very thin
envelope.  I opened it, and saw six one-hundred dollar bills and a few
smaller ones.  "Um," I said.  "I had more than this."  I was conscious of
the fact that Jason was pretending to fill out some paperwork very near me.


"Let me bring up your account," she said.  She typed.  "Oh, I see.  You had
an automatic debit last month, and that put you under the minimum.  That
meant that we assessed a fee, and then there was another debit -- " Shit.
I had my rent set up to automatically debit.  I had forgotten to change it
in all the emotional hullabaloo of Michael leaving.  " -- so we assessed
another fee this month, which brings your total to six hundred twenty-eight
and . . . "  I walked away.  Jason capped his pen and followed me.


My skin was cold, and I couldn't breathe very well.  When they got this
money, they wouldn't be happy.  Not at all.  Could I get far enough away
fast enough?  I doubted it.  I walked down the street, in the pre-planned
direction.  Don was coming directly for me.  Why hadn't I just alerted the
teller?  It was stupid of me not to.  What would Jason do?  Shoot me then
and there?  Doubtful.  But -- It fucks with your mind, being kidnapped.
Screws up your judgment.


I held out the envelope in my left hand, and Don took it.  Then he turned
right, and I went left down the alley.  I broke into a run, which wasn't
very fast, but I was running for my life.  Past a dumpster, past graffiti,
past a back door smelling of rotten food, almost out of the alley --


Joe was there, at the mouth of the alley.  He had a gun.  He was pointing
it right at me.


"I got him," he said, to no one.  Then he realized he had a bluetooth
earpiece.  "Stop, bitch."


I considered running, bowling him over, just going and going and if he shot
me so what but -- I stopped.  I couldn't help it.  The sight of the gun, as
they used to say, unmanned me.


Joe put his arm around my shoulder as if we were buddies and pressed the
gun up against my side through his hoodie.  He walked me back to the car,
and once again we drove off together, me in the back seat.  This time,
there was silence.  Angry, cold silence.  Again, he pushed my head down and
kept me there.  There wasn't anything gentle in it.


When we got to the mobile home -- it was a very long drive, so I had
obviously passed out the first time -- Jason said "Strip him.  Tie him up.
Leave him in the living room.  Then go a roll of gauze.  Rubbing alcohol.
Get a first-aid kit, too, if you can find one."


"Should one of us stay and -- ?" Joe started to ask.


"No.  Go now."  His voice was as sharp and cold as a scalpel.


They tied my hands and feet with zip ties and left me, kneeling and naked,
in the living room.


I heard the crunch of tires, the front door slam.


He was walking behind me.  Something scraped on linoleum, then he plopped
the metal folding chair in front of me and sat in it.  He had his pocket
knife in his hand.


"I'm not a fag, like you," he said, after a long silence.  "But I'm not
straight either.  Guys don't turn me, and neither do women.  You know what
turns me on?"


"No," I mouthed.  I didn't have enough moisture in me to speak.


He held the knife up where I could see it.  "Hurting people turns me on.  I
mean, it actually gives me a boner.  It's the only thing that does.  I
can't fuck a bitch unless she's crying.  I once creamed my pants kicking a
guy's ass in a bar fight.  Do you get what I'm telling you?"


"Please don't hurt me," I begged.


"I guess you don't."  He sighed.  He ran his hand up my side, gently, ran
his thumb over my nipple.  "This does nothing for me," he said.  Then he
pushed his thumb, hard, into my armpit, squeezing my lymph nodes.  I gasped
in pain.  "This does.  You can see I'm getting hard right now."  He
squeezed his crotch, and a wet spot spread at the tip of the tent.  "I'm so
horny to hurt you, I just want to cut you, burn you, and listen to you
scream all night."  He ran the tip of the knife down my side.  I was crying
openly now, sure I was going to die.  He was horny, but I wasn't.  I just
wanted to live.

He snapped the knife shut and shuddered a little.  "So I know this about
myself," he said, his voice changing.  It was less like he was putting on a
show, more like he was confiding in me.  He put the knife in his pocket.
"I know there's something fucking wrong with me.  I know that I'm a fucking
psychopath.  And I try to keep a hold on it.  I don't want to hurt you.  I
don't want to hurt anyone, but I really, really need to sometimes.  I want
to hurt you the way you want to -- I don't know, blow a hot guy.  Do you
understand?"


I nodded.


"Say it," he said.  "It's really important that you understand this."


"Yes," I said, although it was still hard to get the air to talk.  "I
understand."


"Good.  Because when you make me angry and fuck me over like you did today,
it's so hard to keep it in my pants.  Because now, I gotta punish you.  I
got to make sure you don't pull that shit again, and I'm just afraid that
I'm going to go too far.  I'm going to punish you right to death."


"Please don't kill me.  I'll do whatever you say from now on.  I'm sorry.
I just panicked -- "


"Shut up.  I'm not going to kill you.  It's weird, you know.  Hurting you
until you scream, that's hot.  The idea of killing someone, though?
Totally not.  It doesn't hurt to die.  And then it's a bunch of work
getting rid of the body.  So, if you can help me just keep a grip on
things, and not get out of hand, you don't have to die."


"Thank you, thank you."


"But I do have to punish you.  And I'm going to get off on it, like Joe
gets off on your back every night.  So help me out, what can I do to you
that'll get me off, but not kill you?  I could brand you.  Does that sound
good?  It's not much worse than getting a piercing or a tattoo, and it'd
remind you not to fuck with me."


I just shook my head.  I was crying now, thick ropes of snot hanging down
my face.


"Where's a good place?" he said.  "Your face?  Your back?  Your ass, so
every time you sit on it, I can watch you suffer?"  He touched each place
as he spoke, finishing my stroking my lower back and sliding a finger under
my crack.


I was weeping too intensely to say anything.


He got up, and I once again heard him in the back.  He came out, finally,
with a coat hanger, a butane torch, and a pair of needle nose pliers.  He
unbent the coat hanger and worked the end of it into a flat hook.  He
walked behind me and put his boot on my upper back, sending me face forward
to the grungy carpet.  I heard him ignite the torch with his lighter.


"Please don't," I begged.  "Please, please stop."  I thought he might shove
it right up my ass.


But he didn't.  He pushed the hot metal directly into the meat of my
shoulder.  I could hear it sizzle, and the pain was intense, and then gone:
it was cold, as the nerves died.  He pulled away the hanger.  He pulled me
up by the hair and stepped in front of me.  He tossed the twisted wire
away, extinguished the torch.  He was shaking.  He hooked the thin nylon,
wet with his precum, under his balls.  His cock bobbed in my face.  "Get me
off," he said.  "Get me off fast, or I'm picking that torch back up and
using it on you all night long until there's nothing left to burn."  I was
in too much pain, too much shock and terror, to do anything, and he slapped
me.


"I am serious," he said.  "Get me off before I do something I don't want to
do to you.  Please, get me off."


That please got to me.  He wasn't in control either.  Neither of us was in
control.  Whatever twisted thing lived in his mind was in control, and he
knew he had to cum now or escalate.  I took the head of his cock in my
mouth.  I didn't taste it.  I barely felt it.  It wasn't so much a blowjob
as just holding his dick in my mouth.  He didn't care about the friction
anyway.  He cared about the pain, the humiliation, the hot tears rolling
down my cheeks.


He came, filled my mouth with his cum, and then pulled out, almost like he
was afraid to stay in my mouth a moment longer.  He pulled his pants back
up and turned away.


"Fuck," he said.  "Fuck."  He picked up the torch and other tools and
walked into the back again.  When he returned, cut the zip ties at my feet
and hands again.  "You -- " He stopped, looked disgusted.  He ran his hand
over his bald head, slick and shiny with sweat.  "You shouldn't have tried
to -- "


I heard the car pull up.  So did he.  He glanced toward the door.  "None of
this was my idea," he said.  "I'm sorry."


The door opened.  Jason aimed a kick at my thigh, not very hard, turned to
his friends.  "He's burned.  Take care of it.  He gets to live today."


Don sniffed and made a face.  "Jesus, smells like burned hair and pork.
Oh, fuck, dude, you burned a fucking J into his shoulder.  That's sick."


"Has to learn his place.  I'm going to lie down.  Take care of the burn,
put some gauze on it when you're done.  I'll be back in twenty."




3


Joe was too squeamish to clean my wound, so Don did it.  I got the
impression Don wasn't squeamish at all.  Dealing with that many needles
seemed to do that to a man, get rid of their delicacy around wounds.  I
probably could have done it myself, but reaching my shoulder was awkward
and I was kind of in shock.


He taped the gauze down, doing a pretty good job as well as I could tell.
"You're going to be okay," he said.  "I've seen people get branded before.
I mean, they wanted to, so that's a little different.  But yeah, the scar
shouldn't even be that bad.  It was a clean burn."


"Thank you," I said.  "And I'm sorry I ran.  It's just, I thought when you
saw how little money there was . . . "


He looked pissed, his lips pale.  At first I thought he was about to strike
out at me, but then he said "That fucking psycho.  Listen, man.  This is
all bullshit.  We shouldn't even still be doing this.  But we really need
that money.  What he did to you is nothing compared to what those vatos
will do to us."


When Jason came out twenty minutes later, Joe actually had the balls to
stand up to him.


"Listen, man, we should let this guy go."


Jason looked down on Joe.  He was a bull looking down on a squirrel.
"Yeah?"


"Yeah.  He's got nothing else.  Keeping him around is just -- it's just
mean."


"I don't think your objectivity can be trusted."


"What the fuck does that mean?"


"It means," Don said, "that you're thinking with your dick.  But I agree
with Joe.  This guy's useless to us now.  Let him go or put him out of his
misery."


Jason snorted.  "Put him out of his misery?"  He tossed his knife to Don,
who caught it.  "Do it.  Slit his throat, right now, if you've got any sack
at all."


Don just looked at his Vans.


"Stop talking big if you don't have the balls to live it, and give me back
my knife."


He did.  Jason went on: "He stays, for now.  I just marked him.  He's mine.
If you don't like it, you can leave."


"Fuck," Joe said.  "The real problem is the money we owe.  What are we
going to do about that?  Cook?"


"Can't get enough precursor to make it matter even if we do," Jason said.


I was only half listening.  The pain had ebbed to a dull ache, and the
endorphins had kicked in.  I could see why people got into body
modification, actually: I felt lightheaded.  Open.  Empty.  I had no will
of my own.  It felt good to put down my whole identity.  I didn't much like
the fact that a drug dealing criminal had just branded me with a wire
clothes hanger.  But I didn't mind the endorphins.  They were welcome,
after the stress.  They cleared the head.


"We've got some money.  Let's take it to them, tell them there's more.
Maybe that'll get them off our backs," Joe said.  Always the optimist.


"We'll talk about it later," Jason said.


That night, Joe climbed into bed after I was already dozing.  Jason had
strapped me down to my other side, avoiding the injured shoulder, which was
nice of him I guess.  When Joe climbed in, it woke me up.  He curled up
against me and put his arm around me, careful to avoid my bandage.  I
thought he'd start with the rubbing, but he didn't.  Just pressed against
me and fell asleep, smelling of alcohol and weed.  It was almost
comforting.


The clearing effect of pain endorphins didn't fade when the pain came back
-- and the pain did come back, with a grudge.  My mind started working, for
the first time since they kidnapped my drunk ass.  I started doing sums in
my head, thinking about possibilities.


Joe and Jason headed off to do something when they got up in the afternoon,
so I was left with Don overseeing me for the first time alone.


"You want some Spaghettios?" he asked.


"Yeah, sure."


He opened the can, handed me a spoon.  I practically lived on cold
Spaghettios, eaten out of cans with dirty spoons.


"How's the shoulder?"


"Hurts.  Bad."


He walked behind me.  "Let me see."  I flinched away from his touch, and he
thwacked me on the back of the head.  "Don't be an idiot."  He peeled back
the gauze.  "Doesn't look infected," he said.  "We'll clean it out after
you eat."


"You know first aid," I said.


"I know some stuff, yeah.  A little."  He sat back down and watched me eat.
"You want a vicodin?" he said.  "I have some."


"No," I said.  "I'm allergic."  That wasn't true, but I needed a clear
head.


After a few minutes he pulled a couple pills out of his pocket, popped
them.  I didn't see what they were, not that I'd recognize them anyway,
unless they were the sort of medicine you rolled in bologna so your dog
would eat it.  Which, considering the various things I'd seen Don do for a
high in the last couple weeks, seemed somewhat possible.  They could have
been the vicodin he was talking about, but they seemed bigger.


"So, do you like it when Joe fucks you?"


I was in no state to be taken aback anymore.  I scraped the spoon on the
bottom of the can.  "He doesn't really fuck me.  Just sort of masturbates
on me."


"Do you like that?"


"I probably wouldn't mind it," I admitted, "if, you know, I had any say in
the matter.  And if you guys hadn't kidnapped and mutilated me."


"Mutilated.  What a pussy.  Hey, look at this."  He peeled off his
wifebeater.  He had a symmetrical pattern of scars, in a tree shape,
between his nipples.  "I was rolling and I had this done by this guy with a
steak knife in his kitchen."  He looked down at it.  "It's the tree of
life, see?  The roots down here, and then up here, the branches.  Hurt like
a bitch.  He rubbed something in it so it'd scar.  I want to say it was
chalk, but I was so high I don't remember."


"And you volunteered for that?"


"Hell yeah.  He wanted to practice his scarification.  He was a tattoo
artist, thinking of branching out."  He snorted laughter.  "Heh.  Branching
out.  Shit, I'm funny."


"I didn't volunteer for this."


"Well, you kind of did," he said, leaning back, still shirtless.  He
trailed his fingertips over the raised skin of his scars.  He had a ring in
his left nipple.  "Yeah," he said, his eyes focusing on the middle
distance.  "You kind of did.  In a way, we all kind of do."


"None of you is stupid -- " I said.


"Joe is kind of stupid."


"Okay, but, I mean, why are you doing this?  Why not get a job, or
something?"


He just contemplated some invisible air castle for a while, and then smiled
slightly, running his fingertips over the raised dots of flesh.  "Do you
wanna touch my scars?" he said.  "Wanna see what they feel like?"


"No," I said.


"I think you do, but whatever.  We don't get a job because we don't want to
get a job."


"We can't always do what we want."


His eyes focused on me, the pupils large.  "Yes, we can.  For example,
right now, you want to touch my chest.  I can tell.  You keep looking at
it."


It was a nice chest, scarification notwithstanding.  Apparently, in
addition to doing a lot of drugs, Don also worked out.  His chest was
pretty much hairless, two flat mesas of muscle between which grew his tree
of life.


"You can do it," he said.  "I give you permission, but you won't, because
you think you have to do something else, live up to some other standard.
When else are you going to be alone in a room with a hot young guy rolling
on X and showing you his body art?"


I reminded myself that this was the guy who suggested they just kill me.
Although how much of that was real, and how much show . . .


"If I do, will you stop -- "


"Nope.  This isn't a deal.  You're not pretending that you're doing me a
favor.  You gotta admit you want to, and then, you can.  It's as easy as
that.  Admit that you like it, and you can have it."


"Fine," I said.  I walked over to him and put my hand on his chest.  The
scar tissue was smooth, shiny: small raised bumps and dashes, like a
braille morse code.


"I like it if you do it real light," he said.  "Feels awesome."  He closed
his eyes.


I stroked the tree shape with my fingertips.  I'd have a scar soon, too,
and I wondered if I'd ever lie awake in my bed and run my fingertips over
it like this.  And if I did, would I do it with horror and fear, or with
pleasure?  Or would those just become the same thing?


He twisted his nipple ring.  I could make a break for it right now,
probably.  He was so buried in sensual pleasure, between the drug and my
hand, I could just make a break for the door.  But when I did, what then?
I was in the middle of nowhere.  No idea what direction even to walk in,
for sure.  West, eventually, and I'd hit ocean -- you always did.  But what
way was west, and how far was the ocean?  My guess was, pretty far.


I saw his crotch stirring in his sweatpants.  Jesus, I thought, these guys
were all bigger perverts than I was.


But then, before I could tell my brain no, I was on my knees between his
legs.  He smelled of a gym locker room, unwashed sweaty clothes, raunchy
sneakers.  My fingertips brushed the elastic of his pants, then reached
inside.  He didn't stop me, only arched his back to pull down his pants and
boxer shorts, revealing his thick cock standing up from a black, dense bush
of dank pubic hair.  The cock was browner than the rest of his skin, the
purple head emerging wetly from the wrinkled puckering of his foreskin.  I
used my mouth to help him roll back, then sucked him in gently and took him
as deep as I could.


He hardened further in my mouth, moaning above me, working his nipple ring.
His hand came down to stroke my hair.


Then he gripped my head, pushed me down -- not hard, but to take him in
deeper, which I did.  The round, bulbous head of his cock stroked the back
of my throat.  Then the whole shaft widened in my mouth, and his balls drew
up.  He breathed one word:


"Fuck."


And he filled my mouth with his cum.  I swallowed.  He was too deep in me
for me to do anything else.


He kept me on his cock while he softened in me, shuddering and moaning with
every lick of my tongue.  Finally, he let me up, long after most men would
have lost interest.


He lay like a collapsed tent in the folding chair, his head back, his pony
tail swaying like a pendulum.


"Good work," he said.


"Yeah, you too."  I got up off my knees and took to my own chair.  "I don't
suppose you want to return the favor."


"No," he said.  "Not going to happen.  But you can do that again some
time."


"Gee."


"Don't be a bitch," he started to say, and then there was a honking horn
outside, followed by the sound of a car pulling in.


Don got his feet and went to the door.  "The fuck?"  Here would have been
another chance to run, but again, I didn't.  I waited, because what I could
see around Don was Joe helping Jason into the house, and a lot of blood.


Joe was going like someone had taped down his fast forward button.
". . . we started arguing, and they said it wasn't enough money, and they
had this knife, and so they cut him, and I took out my gun, and they ran,
but he's cut deep and . . . "  He just kept going.


Don took one look at the wound in Jason's arm and said "we have to go to
the emergency room."


"No," Jason said.  His lips were pale, his eyes losing focus.  "No
doctors."


"I don't know how to handle this, man.  It's fucking huge.  It needs
stitches."


I stepped up.  "Get the first aid kit you bought to patch me up."  They
didn't listen.  "Hey," I tried again, "get the first aid kit."  Again,
nothing, just arguing among themselves.


I raised my voice to the top of its volume and shouted so hard I had a sore
throat the next morning.  "YOU TWO BIT PERVY FUCKING THUGS get the
GODDAMNED first aid kit and get out of my FUCKING way."


They turned to me, their faces blank masks.  "Don," I said.  "You.  First
aid kit.  Joe.  You.  Get him on the couch.  No, dumbass, with his wound
facing me."


There was blood everywhere, but I tore open Jason's shirt.  Don handed me
the kit.  "Hey, I've got some vicodin, you want some man?" he said.


Jason looked met my eyes.  "No," he said.  "No, I don't think so," he said,
softly.  "It's only fair."


"I don't get off on this," I said.  I examined the wound, wiping away
excess blood with his shirt.  It was a long slice, deep but not
life-threatening if we got it sewn up.  "Water.  And the blow torch to heat
it up, hot as you can get it."  The other two stood over me.  "Joe, do it."
You had to delegate in a situation like this.  Don would have to be my
nurse; Joe was turning yellow and making urp noises.  There was a lot of
blood, but then, it doesn't take much blood to look like a lot of blood.


I washed my hands in the tepid water.  Good enough.  I poured alcohol over
them, and then over the needle and thread in the kit.  Infection was the
real danger here, not blood loss, not in the long term.  And who the hell
knows what got in the wound between the knife and the car ride and here.  I
drenched it in alcohol.  A thread of cotton from the shirt, a speck of dirt
from the knife -- anything, and I didn't want to think about it.


The cut was deep, right into the upper arm, through part of a tattoo of a
dolphin.  I didn't know if it nicked muscle or not, but it definitely cut
into the fat layer.  Human skin seemed a lot tighter than dog or cat skin.
Thinner, too, it seemed, but that could just be my own timid mind playing
tricks on me.


He kept his breath even and didn't do more than gasp when I poured alcohol
in the wound.  When I started sewing, though, his breath got shallow.  His
eyes rolled back and he fainted.  "Shit," I said.  "He's out.  Joe, get a
bucket or a pan or something.  He might puke when he wakes up and I don't
want it splashing all over the wound."  In truth, though, it was better
that he be unconscious.  This had to hurt.


I worked the thread through the lips of the wound, drew them together
stitch by stitch.  I'd never worked on a human before.  It took me longer
than it would otherwise, I think, just because it was a little unfamiliar.
But once I just thought of it as flesh -- dog, cat, man, all flesh -- I got
into the swing of it.  But I did a pretty tidy job, if I did say so myself.
I sat back on my heels.  "Fuck me," I said.  "Now, what happened?"


I turned to Joe, but Joe and Don both were standing behind me, looking at
me as if I'd shot lightning out of my ass.


At that point, Jason stirred, leaned over, and just as I expected, filled
the bucket with barely digested canned food.


"Take one of Joe's vicodins, Jason.  You're not going to want to feel
that."


He gingerly touched the gauze I had taped over it.


"No," I snapped, as if talking to a dog.  "Stay off it.  If you get an
infection, it's an emergency room no matter what.  But yeah, your tattoo is
fucked.  Your dolphin has a necklace now."


"How did you learn to do that?" Don said, his voice full of awe.


I stood up.  "I'm a vet.  That's what I did every damned day until I got
let go.  Not usually on a dog that big.  Or that ugly."


"Thanks, man," Jason said.  "I owe you one."


"Then let me go."


He looked up at me.  "I think we might be past that."


"What did happen?" Don asked.  Joe filled us in, with the occasional
comment from Jason, who finally relented and swallowed a vicodin.


Essentially, they had gone to negotiate with the "vatos," as they called
them.  And the negotiations hadn't gone well.  They'd offered a few
hundred, which was apparently a power of ten below what the vatos would
accept as a good faith payment.  There was pushing.  There was, I imagine,
spread arms and various "come at me, just come at me" sorts of things said.
One of the "vatos" pulled a knife and slashed Jason's arm.  Joe pulled out
a gun.  There was a disorderly retreat in all directions.


That was, apparently, the abridged version, but I had to piece it together
from the disjointed and temporally freeform version that Joe offered, with
occasional comments and clarifications from Jason, who lay on the couch on
his good side.  It was like reading some of Faulkner's more experimental
fiction, or Joyce's later work.


Their adrenaline crashed, eventually, and they just started spinning the
story over again, recapping as they processed it.


When we went to bed, no one thought to tie me down, and I didn't remind
them.  Joe climbed into bed with me, hesitated a moment, then lay down on
his back with his arms folded, rather than spooning me.  Maybe he didn't
know what to do with someone who wasn't tied down.


I lay there on my back for a while too, not feeling particularly sleepy.  I
put my hand on his smooth, slender thigh, and he moved away.


"What," I whispered, "I'm not good enough when I'm making the first move?"


"You called me a dumbass."


When did I do that?  Oh, right, when he lay Jason on the couch wrong.  "I'm
sorry," I said.  "I was running on adrenaline, not brains at that point."


"Everyone thinks I'm stupid, but I'm not."


"Okay."


"I'm not.  I'm just smart in a different way.  I can't do math or -- or
read real well.  But I know when things are right, and when they're not."


I doubt that he meant that in the moral sense.  Although maybe he did.
Maybe his idea of moral rightness was so different from the rest of the
world's, that I couldn't comprehend it.  Hell, for all I knew, he was right
and the rest of the world was wrong.


"Does this feel right?" I said, putting my hand on his soft dick.  I
stroked up and down the shaft.


He tensed up, then relaxed as his cock responded.  "I'm not queer."


"None of us here are anything," I said.  "All that shit is meaningless
here."


"Yeah."


"If you hadn't kidnapped me and we just passed each other on the street,
you wouldn't even look twice at me," I said.  "You wouldn't even think
about me."


"And what would you think of me?  You'd probably cross the street."


"Let me tell you a secret, Joe.  I've seen guys like you, and when I do,
just for a moment, all I can think about is how much I want to be their
bitch."


"You wanna be my bitch?"


"I don't care if you're dumb or smart.  I just want to be the hole you use
to get off."


"You wanna suck my cock?"  He barely spoke it, just breathed it.


I didn't answer in words.  Instead, I sank down on his dick, finding it in
the dark by feel, and swallowed it.  I couldn't really see it -- there were
no lights in the desert and there was no moon yet tonight.  But I tasted
it, felt it.  Long, longer than Don's, hard, smooth and hard as glass.  I
moved up and down, stroking his lightly fuzzed balls.


I gave him my "I love you" suck, the kind I used to give to Michael before
he left me.  When he came, he came hard, muffling his cries with his own
hand.  I licked him clean.


It didn't even occur to me to get myself off.  When his breath became even
again, he turned his back to me and went to sleep.  I turned away from him,
but didn't sleep.  That wasn't in the plan.


Once he was deep asleep, I got out of the bed.  My sweatpants were
absolutely disgusting from who knows how long of not washing them.  They
probably even had blood stains, now, but I drew them on anyway.  The shirt
I did without.


I had noticed something, when Joe brought Jason in bleeding, something I
don't think anyone else had noticed: he had fumbled and dropped the keys to
their car, and they had fallen, unnoticed, by the door.


Did anyone notice them before they went to bed?  I didn't think so.  I had
made a concerted effort not to look directly at them all night while still
keeping an eye on them.


Like I said, it was dark, but I moved slowly.  Don was in the second,
smaller bedroom.  Jason was snoring on the couch.  I got past both of them
without noise, running my hand on the side of the wall and moving slowly.


In the living room, I fell to my knees, felt along the door, sweeping my
hands slowly.  If I made any sudden noises, Jason might wake up, even
through the vicodin.  My hands brushed metal.  I wrapped my fingers around
the keys carefully, preventing any jingling.  I quietly opened the door.
It squeaked, and I froze, but the snores from the couch didn't change.


I couldn't have done this any other night.  Jason was sleeping deep,
drugged and worn out from shock and blood loss.  I hesitated, just a
moment, imagining what he might do to me if he caught me.  Weirdly, my cock
stirred at the thought, but I put it down to fear.  I slipped out the door,
closed it as quietly as I could.


The car was on an incline.  I popped it in neutral, didn't turn on the
lights, and let it roll for a bit before I started it.


I didn't know where I was, but the 101 was west and that was good enough.
I headed toward the brighter of the horizons, the one illuminated with some
distant pink light, hoping that was LA.  I drove for twenty minutes, the
first five or six of them in absolute darkness.  My heart had slowed, my
breathing had evened out.  I was free.


Free to return to my life.  No more torture.  No more sexual abuse.  No
more blood and threats and fear.  No more dumb thug rubbing his boner on me
in the night.  No more stroking Don's scars and tonguing back his foreskin.


I was free to return to my life.  The life where I was a respected and
respectable professional, with a good education, a nice apartment, good
taste.  I could take a shower, cook real food, read a book, watch TV.  I
could read and watch TV every night, forever, until I died.


I was free to return to my life.  The life where I was alone and lonely,
jobless, in such despair that I had contemplated ending that life the night
I was kidnapped.  Free to return to another kind of hostage situation,
where I was nothing and no one, my good education squandered, my good taste
unappreciated.


I had been faking with Joe.  Hadn't I?  I had seduced him to distract him
and put him to sleep.  I hadn't faked it with Don.  He hadn't made me blow
him.  I chose to.  And I'd do it again.  In fact, I'd do it again with Joe.
I'd even do it again with Jason.  He'd hurt me, scared me, but I thought I
might understand him.


It was Stockholm Syndrome, I told myself.  That's all.


I knew I was on the right road to LA.  I had passed other cars and was on
paved roads.


I had to think.  I pulled into the drive-through of an In-and-Out Burger,
had a moment of panic that I had forgotten my wallet, and then felt it in
the front pocket of my incredibly filthy sweatpants.  They had given it
back to me for the bank, and not thought to take it away.  No way I could
go in.  I had no shirt, was covered in dried blood -- as was the interior
of the car.  But I was hungry and needed to think.  I ordered a burger
animal style, and paid with a credit card (they hadn't stolen my credit
cards?  What kind of thugs were they?).  I scarfed it in the parking lot.
The guy who gave it to me barely looked at me.  Good thing, or he'd have
called the cops for sure.  I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview.  I
looked like a crazy person who had just slaughtered a cow.


Why was it a good thing he hadn't called the cops?


Fuck, I thought.  Fuck.  I knew this feeling, and it was a stupid, stupid
thing to feel.  They had kidnapped me, tortured me, even raped me.  What
Joe did was rape, sure, but I wasn't sure he was smart enough to know it.
But Jason had surely raped me, as surely as anything, when he stuck his
dick in my mouth after branding me.  He had branded me.  Fuck him, fuck all
of them.


Fuck.


I pulled out of the parking lot, turned left instead of right, and drove
another twenty minutes.  I killed the lights, pulled back into place.  The
door was still unlocked.  I lay the keys where I had found them.


Jason wasn't snoring.  The night had cleared and my eyes had adjusted, so a
very dim thin light illuminated the shapes of the room.  I saw his form on
the couch.  Were those his eyes looking at me?  I froze like an animal
facing the oncoming headlights of a truck.  No.  He was asleep.  I quietly
made my way back, the only sound my heart pounding in my chest.


I slid out of my pants, back into bed with Joe.


"Umph?" he said.


"Go back to sleep," I whispered.  And he did.


To my surprise, so did I, but not until I cried some quiet, bitter tears
for what a stupid, stupid fool I was.


4


The morning did not bring good news.  Jason was hot.  Not in the sexual
sense, but in the sense of running a fever.  The oral thermometer read 103.
That wasn't good.  The wound itself was hot, puffy.


What the hell did I expect?  I hadn't had gloves, soap, or any real
disinfectant.  I was lucky I didn't have an infection of my own, in these
conditions.


"He's going to the emergency room," I said.  "He needs antibiotics, and he
needs them now."


"They report knife and gun wounds to the police," Don said.  "No can do."


"Then he will die.  Infection is serious if it's not treated."


"Can't you do something else?" Joe asked.


I shrugged.  "Sometimes, the body fights off an infection.  So that could
happen, and we could keep his fever down and hope he doesn't suffer brain
damage from it.  Sometimes, the wound starts to rot.  Then, we take the arm
off.  With these conditions, I'd say death is pretty much inevitable if we
do an amputation.  If we wait, he'll end up in the hospital and they'll
take the arm anyway, but he'll live.  So, yeah, I could do something else,
if you're willing to gamble his arm, his brain, or his life."


"No doctors," Jason mumbled.


"The fact that the infection happened this fast is worrying," I said, in my
best doctor voice.  "It means it's a particularly virulent bacteria.  We
don't have much time.  We have to do something right now, and the only
thing we can do is get him to a doctor.  A human doctor, with actual
supplies."


"If you had actual supplies, like antibiotics and shit, you could do it,
right?" Don asked.


"I'm not a human doctor.  I'm a vet."


"But you know how to give someone a pill and shit.  That's not hard."


"Fine, I could do it, if I had penicillin.  But you need a prescription for
antibiotics, and -- "


"Vets write prescriptions, don't they?"


"I -- uh."  He had me there.  "For animals."


"Jason's an animal."

"That's the fucking truth," I said.  Shit, there went that stupid fucking
feeling again.  Stockholm Syndrome, that's all it was.  "I need a
prescription pad."


"Where do we get one of those?"


"I probably have one knocking about my apartment.  I wasn't as careful with
them as I should have been."


"Cool.  Let's go get it."


"But if the pharmacist calls, the clinic will say I don't work there.
That's prison time for me."


Joe spoke up.  "What if you fill the prescription yourself?  He calls, it
goes to your cell phone, you answer right there and say 'yeah, I'm me.'"
He was obviously amused by his little imaginary scene.


But he had a point.  Vets wrote and filled prescriptions for their own pets
all the time.  It wouldn't arouse suspicion.  If anything, it would be less
suspicious.


"You're going to have to trust me to have a phone, go to my apartment, talk
to people, the whole nine yards."


Don said, "I'll go with you.  Joe, you stay with Jason, get him lots of
water."


I grabbed the keys off the floor and handed them to Don.  I turned to Joe:
"Lay him off the vicodin while I'm gone.  He's going to be out of it
anyway.  Take his temperature every hour or so.  If it gets above 105,
throw him in the bath tub and pour water on him, and call Don.  We'll
figure it out."


Don drove, and I directed him to my place.  So now they knew where I lived.
But who cared?  At this point, I didn't really live there anymore.


I hated to take the time, but I had to take a shower and get new clothes.
So did Don if he was going to go out in public.  We showered together to
save time, nothing sexual about it.  It felt almost unnatural to be clean
again.  I actually itched from the soap.  I put on clean clothes, threw
several changes of clothes into a garbage bag, and ransacked the house for
a prescription pad.  I found one, finally, in my briefcase.  I wrote out a
quick prescription for my imaginary, huge dog Jayjay.


"Hey, couldn't you do like ephedrine, too?"


"Yeah, I could buy you some meth precursors today. Or we could save Jason's
life and not arouse suspicions.  No one is going to call the cops on a
shady prescription for Amoxicillin.  But someone gets an industrial size
rex for ephedrine, and there will be phone calls."


"Fine."


"This is going to be suspicious enough.  I've got a dog the size of a
fucking horse here."


"Or the size of a person."


"Yeah.  Well.  Come on, let's get moving."  I grabbed my cell phone.  If I
had just taken the phone that night, when I went out for my stupid
self-pity chocolate, maybe things would be different right now.


Seeing my apartment did some stuff to my brain.  It was like throwing a
switch.  I felt like I was walking through one of those museums where they
had restored everything to how it was in 1865.  This was the past.  The
future was more dangerous, more terrifying, more painful, and much, much
more interesting.


"Try to pretend not to be high," I said.  "In fact, if you could just hang
back and not obviously be with me, that'd be great."


"How do I know you're not going to call the cops?"


"You don't," I said.  "I might.  Maybe I'm the kind of person who sees
someone like Jason suffering and says 'good, the fucking psycho burned me
with a coat hanger, let him fucking die.'  Or maybe I'm the kind of person
who says 'fuck what he did or didn't do, he deserves to live.'  What do you
think?"


"I think you're neither," he said, pulling into the parking lot of a CVS.
"I think you're the kind of guy who goes 'hey, these three no good useless
thugs kidnapped me and abused me, so I'm going to save them and love them
and fix them.'  Right?"


"Fuck," I said, "you."


And I walked back to the pharmacy.


Filling the script was about as fast and easy as it has ever been.  I got a
nice big economy sized bottle of horse-sized-dog pills.  The pharmacist
must have thought I had a goddamned mastiff, but he barely glanced at the
Rx.  I probably could have gotten a barrel of ephedrine thrown in, but I
wasn't going to tell Don that.


When we got back, Joe pulled a gun on us.  "Oh, shit," he said.  "I didn't
recognize you with your hair -- like -- um, clean."


A little bit of math and pill splitting, and the use of their nice shiny
drug scale, and I got a dosage figured out fit more for a man than a
canine.  His fever had held steady, which was a good thing.  We got the
pills in him, treated him to a vicodin, and I resisted the urge to stroke
Jason's throat to make him swallow.  It would have amused only me.


On the next day, the fever was down to 102, which didn't seem like a
victory.  Still, we kept him full of water, as much food as we could get
past his lips, and otherwise tried to keep him comfortable.  It wasn't
easy.  He wasn't always aware of what he was doing, and his thick arms and
flailing legs could do a lot of incidental damage.  That boy had some
muscle on him.


It was taking a toll on Joe and Don.  They kept putting on that pinched,
pained face that kids do when one of their own lies injured in the
playground.  I realized that they loved him, in a way.  But I didn't want
to think along those lines, when I had a job to do.


"We're running out of water," I said after lunch.  "And we could also use
some liquid meal replacements.  He might keep those down easier.  Why don't
you guys go get them?"


Joe and Don looked at each other.  "Um," Don said, "and just leave you here
with him?"


I shrugged and went back to trying to get Jason to drink some water.  "Take
my credit card.  It's probably still got a good two hundred bucks on it
before they cut me off.  Get some food.  Real food.  Meat, and some
charcoal.  We'll grill it, for Christ's sake."


They moved their heads back and forth, like ants that lost the pheromone
trail, and then Jason waved away my hand with the bottle.  "That reminds
me," I said, "get some straws.  I'm getting more water on the couch than in
him."


"I can drink it," Jason said, reaching for the bottle.  He sounded thin,
translucent.


"We can't just leave you here -- " Don started.


"Do what the doc says," Jason interrupted.  "He's not going to fuck us
over.  Are you, doc?"


He met my eyes, and I realized that he very well may have been awake when I
made my reconsidered break for it.  "I won't."


"Fine, but if he's gone and you're in cuffs when we come back, you'll know
who to blame."


I handed them my card and stuck my wallet back in my pocket.  Once they
were gone, Jason said "I think I want to try to sit up."


"I think you're going to puke all over the floor when you do, but that's
nothing new."  I helped him to be a little more vertical.  He didn't throw
up.


"I feel like I've been through a cement mixer."


"Yeah, well, my sympathy does have limits," I said.


"I know.  You've been better to me than I deserve."


"Here, have some more water."


"Why?"


"To get rehydrated, dumbass."


"No," he said, "why are you helping me?  Why are you still here?"


I turned it back on him.  "Why are you still here?  Seriously."


"We owe these guys -- "


"Oh, bullshit.  You guys could have tried another robbery, gotten the
money, and kissed me goodbye.  But you didn't.  Why not?"


"I don't know."  Maybe that was even true.  He rested his head on the back
of the couch, looking up, his legs spread wide, his clothes soaked through
with sweat and worse things.  "I'm so fucking tired of being stupid."


"You want to lie back down?"


"I've been lying down too long.  Hurts.  I'm sorry I hurt you.  I just
can't control it sometimes, and I know -- there's something really wrong
with me.  I'm a bad person.  Evil.  Sister said, and the museum lady.
Everyone.  Sociopath.  Psycho.  I think about making you scream when I jerk
off, and then I hate myself so bad, so bad -- " He punched at his crotch,
twice before I got ahold of his arm.


"Okay, let's lay you back down," I said.  "Seems like maybe you're off
somewhere else now."


"I'm not here?" he said, as I repositioned him.  "I thought I was here."


"Nope, you're not here.  Where do you want to be?  The beach?  We can be
there, if you want."


"I like the beach," he said.  "I surfed, you know.  I mean, for a while.
Wasn't good.  At it.  Or anything.  Got an A in chemistry.  Dad, look, I
got an A in chemistry."


"Good job," I said, while I cut up another pill and arranged his next dose.


"Yeah, but, I got an -- an A in chemistry.  Dad."


"Why not take your pills and then have a little nap?"  I washed the pills
down his throat, and he grabbed the bottle and sucked down half of it.
Eight or nine ounces at once, more than he had drunk since the fever
started, all at one time.  I hoped that was a good sign.  It would be, I
guessed, if he didn't throw it right back up.  I got a few spoon fulls of
noodles down as well.  I wish we had something with a little more
nutrition.  If the boys brought back some meat, I'd cook the hell out if
and make him a thick broth.


"I'm sorry," he said, closing his eyes.  "So sorry.  I wish I could -- be
better.  Sorry."


"I'm sorry too," I said.  "We're all pretty sorry right now, the world
over."  I pressed my lips to his wet, feverish forehead.  I kept them there
a long time, wishing I could siphon the heat out of him, and not just the
heat, but the badness, the self-hate, everything that kept him from being
what he could be.


And isn't that what abused spouses always say?  He could be such a good
man.


Well, goddamn it, he could.


"Feel better," I said, and I sat by his bed and waited for him to do as he
was told.


5


We ate steak, and by bedtime, Jason was sitting up again and drinking his
broth.  He was slamming back so much water it was almost concerning, and
while he was weak, his temperature was down to 100 and he was lucid.


The wound, too, was venting less pus, and the redness had subsided to some
degree.  It'd be a while before it was healing right, and there'd be a hell
of a scar, but he was out of the woods.


That night, we played some poker, grilled out, and felt almost like a
normal group of -- friends? -- rather than a hostage and three kidnappers.
Don was out of everything but pot, and he shared, and when the bowl came my
way I didn't let it pass by.  I figured it was payment for the shit they'd
put me through.  When it got to Jason I vetoed it.  "Nope, none for you.
Vicodin is enough."


"Yes, doctor," he said, passing it on back to Don.  We were all feeling
pleasantly buzzed, three of us high on some very mellow medical marijuana,
one of us high on vicodin and post-fever euphoria.


None of us wanted to talk about the problem with the vatos, or the money,
or what we'd have to do to get it.  But we all knew, and we also all knew
that I was included in that we now.  Somehow, I had gone from victim to --
something else.  There was still time to back out, but alea jacta est.
There's no backing out when you've backed this far in.  Plus, I didn't want
out.


I liked this.


My hand absently went to the bandage over my burn, but it I resisted the
urge to scratch.  The pot was helping with that too.


Did I like this?  The burn, the cruelty, the forced sexual abuse, the
squalor, the humiliation . . . all of that?  And if I did -- and I think
the answer was yes, yes I did -- then what did that say about me, and the
kind of person I was?


Fuck it, is what it said.  I was too stoned to care, had two kings and a
pair of threes, and no one else looked all that confident.  I was all in.


Of course, Joe laid down a full house and gathered up his winnings -- a
handful of pennies.


"Son of a bitch, you can bluff," I said.  "Don't spend it all in one place.
Save some for college."


"The only place I'm interested in right now is bed," he said.


"I'll join you," I said.  "It's late and I'm bushed."


The two of us went to bed.  A few minutes later, Joe pressed up against me.
"Could we maybe do that again?" he asked, his cock throbbing against my
lower back.


I turned around to face him, just as the door opened.  The room was in
darkness, except for the glowing ember of the cigarette floating in the
doorway.


"Need something?" I said.


He closed the door behind him.  "Can I watch?"  It was Don.


"I don't know, can you see?" I asked.


"Watch what?" Joe said.

"I want to see how he sucks you.  See if it's as good as he blew me."


"You blew Don?"


"Yeah."


Joe almost sounded offended.  "Who else?"


"You want the full lifetime achievement list, because it'll take a while.
Jesus, Don, if you're going to hover there, light a fucking lamp and pull
up a chair."


Don lit one of the cheap alcohol lamps they had lying around, and by its
dim light I could see that Joe was hurt.  He had drawn away and wasn't
making eye contact with me.


"Oh, shit," I said.  "Hey, what's this?"


Don stepped out of his tight jeans and pulled off his t-shirt.  He climbed
in on the other side, sandwiching me between the two of them.  "Hey, Joe,"
he said, "it's not a big deal, man."


"I know."  He didn't sound convinced.


Don reached over me.  His hand rested on Joe's shoulder.  "We're bros,
right?  And bros share.  It's just some fag.  Aren't you, Neil?"


"Yeah," I said.


"I thought you were my fag," he muttered, barely loud enough to hear.  I
bit back a laugh.  That would have been a disaster.


I put my hand on his cock instead.  "Then show me I'm your faggot.  Use me
like one.  Put me in my place."


"Yeah," Don said.  "show him who's the man."  He was rubbing my lower back,
his thumb getting closer and closer to the crack of my ass.


Joe got to his knees in the bed, then grabbed my wrists and turned me on my
back.  He held my hands up over my head and straddled my chest, almost
pinning Don's hand under me and hurting my sore shoulder bad enough that I
almost cried out.


He looked down at my face.  "New rule," he said.  "You don't suck anyone
ever again without coming to me first."


"Okay," I said.  "I'm sorry."


"Second new rule, I tell you to suck someone, you drop to your knees and
blow them.  I don't give a shit how you feel about it."


Well, that was another kettle of fish.  But my cock hardened at the
thought.  "Yeah, okay."


"That means you're my bitch, and I can pimp you out to whoever I want."


"Right.  Uh -- "


"What?"


"Can I suck Jason's cock?"


"If any of us ask, at any time, you never say no, got it?"


"Yes, sir."  As if I could.


Don was watching this whole thing, a cigarette still in his mouth and his
hand moving slowly over his cock.


"Suck my cock," Joe said, and he slid up and into my waiting mouth.


I let myself get face-fucked -- in that position, there aren't many other
possibilities -- while Don stroked, pinched, and poked at my body.  It
wasn't erotic so much as curious.  Although in a way, that was erotic.  I
liked his stoned curiosity and his long, cool fingers running between my
ass cheeks, squeezing my balls.


"Sit on his face," Don said.  "Make him lick out your asshole."


That was not a notion that appealed to me, considering that while Don and I
had had recent showers, I didn't know the last time Joe had more than a
lukewarm sponge bath.  But what could I do?  Say no?  And then Don licked
his finger and slid it up my ass, and I didn't want to say no to anything
anymore.  Joe's ass was slender, muscular, cleaner than I expected but not
as clean as I might have hoped.  It didn't matter.  I licked at the
salty-bitter hairs, and pushed my tongue into the soft hole.  Don,
meanwhile, had added another spit-slicked finger to the first.


Then he pulled out.  I clutched at his retreating fingers with my asshole,
but he left me empty.  Then, without warning, and without enough lube, he
slid his cock in me.  I relaxed as best I could, and took him in, filled
with pain and lust and humiliation -- all of which my brain, by whatever
weird chemistry governed me now, converted to arousal and surrender.  I
didn't want anything but this pain and humiliation, didn't want to taste
anything but this dirty asshole, didn't want any music in my ears but their
grunts, or any sensation on my body other than their sweat.


Joe got off my face, stroking his cock, and I looked up to see Don fucking
me.  He held my legs up, and his bare body was slicked with sweat that
shown with a demonic glare in the light of the lamp, each raised scar on
his chest a flame of yellow fire in the lamplight.  He still held a
cigarette in his lips, the ash hanging over it, ready to fall on my body.
I was an ashtray, toiletpaper, a cumrag.  Joe, kneeling over my face,
stroked himself off and covered my face in three hot ropes of cum.  I
caught one on my lip and licked it into my still-bitter mouth.


Don came soon after, just as he was about to scorch the filter of his
cigarette.  He rolled out of me and onto his back next to me.  Joe did the
same, on the other side.  And we lay like that for a long time, the toy
boys bracketing me in sleep, and me burning with pain and pleasure and
desire, until finally the slow grazing of my hand pushed me over the edge
myself, and I came myself to sleep.


5


"We can't live like this forever," I said, even though I wanted to.  I had
found a pad of yellow legal pad and a pencil lying around in the junk.  The
three boys were sitting around the table with me.


"So?  We?"  Jason said.  He looked almost a hundred percent today.  It's
amazing how fast antibiotics could knock down an infection.


"You're not getting rid of me now," I said.  "So, the way I see it, we need
two things."  I wrote them out on the pad.  "First, immediate money.
Several grand to pay off los vatos and get them off our backs."


"We should just kill the fuckers," Don said, but no one rose to that bait.
We'd probably have to kill half of Baja California to get these guys off
our backs.


"Second, a way to make money long term.  Ideally, legit money, or at least
legit seeming."


"You're not telling us anything new," Don said.  He looked a little rough.
I gathered that he was sober, for a change, having used up his remaining
stash last night.


I started drawing on the pad.  "Well, how about this -- so there are
cameras here and here, but the drug safe is here, and the combination used
to be on a card taped under the . . . "


These boys had kidnapped, abused and tortured me, but only my body.  The
clinic had taken my work, my time, and my expertise, and thrown it away.
They had used me as surely as these young criminals, but with the sanction
of a society I no longer felt any allegiance to.  And the criminals had
given me something back.  Their bodies, in return.  Their lust.  Even, with
Jason, his secret desires.


When I finished laying out the plan, Jason looked them over.  "This could
work.  But they can't keep much cash on site."


"They don't," I said.  "But lots of drugs.  The street value -- I have no
idea, but I imagine you could make yourself a profit on horse tranqs.  Or
whatever."


"You'd be the first suspect, wouldn't you?" Don said.  "I mean, you worked
there."


"Then I need an alibi.  They still might suspect me, but if I'm elsewhere
when you do the job, then it'll be hard to pin it on me.  There's no
connection of me to you guys, I mean, legally."


"I don't know," Don said.  "What if you go to the cops?  This could just be
a way to trap us."


"Yeah," I said.  "It could be.  Do you trust me?"


"No way."


I laughed.  "I can arrange an alibi.  You do the job, and then we meet up
later, and I tell you the second part of my plan.  'Cause the second part
is the best part."


"I say we let him do it," Jason said.  "If he fucks us over, it's what we
deserve anyway."


I was taken aback.  "Hey, guys, could I talk to Jason for a sec?"


Jason made eye contact with both of them and nodded, and the two other boys
went outside.


"Sup?"


"When I get back from this, I want you to do something for me."


"What?"


"I want you to do it right this time.  No anger.  Just pain.  Controlled.
Hot."


"What are you talking about?"


I touched my shoulder.  "So I have a J back here, for Jason.  But there
needs to be another J, and a D, it seems to me.  Maybe like this."  I
sketched out a monogram.  "Think you can that?  Maybe in stages?  You know,
so it takes longer."


"Are you fucking serious?"


I stepped over to where he was sitting and dropped to my knees.  I put my
hand on his hardening bulge.  "The thought gets you off.  Keep thinking
about it.  I want to make you feel good.  We'll have to find other things
to do, other than branding, at some point, but that's okay.  I know things
you can do that won't damage me but will hurt like hell.  Make me scream,
even.  You like that?"  I stroked his hard-no through the cloth, then
reached inside the elastic and took the whole hard length of it in my hand.


"You shouldn't -- " he started.


"You're a sadist.  That's the name for what you are.  And it turns out I'm
a fucking masochist.  You're not a psycho.  It's okay to hurt me when I
want to be hurt."


I took his cock out and slipped it into my mouth.  I sucked it down and up
a few times.  "Just think about how it'll feel to have me there, waiting
for the hot metal, wanting you to mark me."  And I sucked him back down,
then pulled away before he could cum.


"Stay horny," I said.  I cracked the front door, while Jason put his wet
cock away.  "Okay," I said, "I think we're good."


6


I went home, then, and took a shower, and got dressed, and called Michael.
It felt weird to be in my old apartment, but I also felt in control, for
the first time in my entire life.  It took three feckless thugs to kidnap
and abuse me for me to figure out how to live.


"Neil," Michael picked up.  "Where in heaven's name have you been?"


He sounded so -- effete.  "I just needed some time.  I should have let you
know.  Didn't realize you'd be worried about me."


"I was starting to think maybe you had done something rash."


Rash.  Yeah, I'd done something rash.  I could still taste the something
rash I'd been sucking out an hour ago.  A good-luck blow for Joe.


"Listen," I said.  "I'd like to talk to you about an idea I had.  It's
nothing to do with us.  It's business."


"Sure.  You know my door is always open to you.  When?"


"No time like the fucking present," I said, then bit my tongue.  He didn't
really use profanity.


"Well.  Uh.  Sure.  How's -- "


"Carlyle's" I said.  It was a bar all the way on the other side of town,
close to where Michael worked doing inconceivable things with numbers and
acronyms.


"And wh -- "


"Tonight.  Late dinner, say midnight.  My treat."


"Oh, I can pay -- "

"My treat," I said, insistently.  In truth, I wanted a financial record of
my location, but I also was going to be asking him for money, and you
didn't ask someone for money and then expect them to pay for dinner.  It
was -- as Michael would say -- gauche.


I got there early, staked out a glass table in the patio.  Visible in all
directions.  I made sure to tell the waiter that I was waiting for someone,
so if someone asked for Neil, I'd be here.  As soon as I saw Michael -- his
suit, his blue tie, his perfect black hair spiked with "product," as he
called it -- as soon as I saw him come in the door, I sent a text to
Jason's phone.  "It's on."  The clinic would be closed, but I'd be here,
seen by all and sundry on the arm of a handsome man of impeccable
character.


And that was Michael.  He was a good man, a man that should be loved.  He
was wealthy, handsome, but still honest and honorable.  I knew that I
wasn't.  I had flaws: poor, plain, and not honest, not honorable.  Broken.
But with him, I'd always counted on him to patch my broken pieces.  Now, I
had found out that I liked being broken.  I liked my cracks and
imperfections, because they were holes for dirt to get in.  I liked being
dirty.


Michael deserved better than me.  And I deserved better than him.


We hugged, muttered formulaic pleasantries that sounded like exercises in a
foreign language textbook to me now.


We sat and got drinks.  I realized I hadn't had alcohol since my
kidnapping.  Weird.  I was living a cleaner life with the drug dealers than
I ever had on my own.


"So how have you been?  You've lost weight."


I had no good answer.  "Fine," I said, smiling brightly.  So fake, he had
to see through it.  But Michael was a nice boy, and all nice boys were
willing to see no deeper than the surface if the surface was pleasant.
"I've been dieting and exercising.  Want to take better care of myself."


"Good, good."


"So," I said, "I had this idea.  I wanted to run it past you, because I
know you have a good head for numbers.  Don't worry, this isn't some 'let's
get back together' thing.  I understand completely why it's over and agree
with you.  It couldn't work, and we should both be free to find our own
happiness.  Which I have."


"You met someone?"


"Yes, I have," I said.


"Oh, that's great!"  He meant it, too.  That's how good he was.  I did love
him, in a way, but every so often I'd think about Don fucking me, his
cigarette hanging from his lips; or Joe pressing his asshole to my lips; or
the anticipation of letting Jason brand me again -- and that one made my
breath catch in my throat and my cock harden.  I could not wait for the hot
metal on my skin, and his cock in my mouth right after.  I wanted to smell
my own flesh burning, knowing that it made Jason hard.


Michael went on: "What does he do?  Do I know him?"


"He's a chemist," I said.  "I don't think you know him.  But that's beside
the point.  I'm really excited by this idea I had."


"What's that?"  Michael had relaxed.  The rum and Coke had helped, but
letting him know I was taken -- taken, kept, and marked -- was a relief.


"I want to open my own veterinary practice," I said.


"That's a great idea.  I've been saying that for ages.  Forget that
clinic."


"Oh, they did right by me.  I don't blame them," I lied.  "But here's my
thought.  You've got lots of people in LA who have pets, but can't afford
good care.  So what about a sliding scale vet, maybe even on that makes
house calls to areas like East LA, you know."


"And does what?  Gives gangsters' dogs their shots?"


"Essentially, yeah.  I mean, it's not the dogs' fault that their masters
are in gangs, is it?  And think of the good I could do for humans.
Education.  Encouragement."


I could tell he hated the idea.  But it also appealed to him.  Michael
liked the idea of poverty, as long as it was something that was far away
and fixable.  He liked the idea of feeding the hungry in Somalia for a
quarter a day.  "Dangerous," he said.  He puffed air out his cheeks: his
thinking gesture.


"Yeah, it would be," I said.  "But not everyone who lives in bad areas is
in a gang.  A lot of families scraping by.  Or, God, immigrants who just
don't know how to even ask for veterinary help.  I speak enough Spanish to
get by."


"How would you make money at this?"


"Well," I said, "I probably wouldn't."  That was true, but I wasn't telling
the whole story.  "I'd probably break even, or a little better.  Maybe
enough to live.  But Jesus, Michael.  I feel like I've been doing nothing
with my life but bitching.  Here's a chance to do some good, you know?  So
what if I'm not rich.  That's not the most important thing."


I knew I was playing him like a kazoo.  I knew all his favorite ideas, all
his prejudices and hopes and fears.  I felt guilty, but then, I would do
some good.  I did care about animals, and I would help them.  But I'd help
other animals too, the two legged animals with tear-drop tattoos.


"What do you need?"


"Not much," I said.  I pulled out a piece of yellow legal pad paper,
realized too late that it looked and smelled quite a bit like it had been
taken from a meth lab filled with four sweaty men, and spread it out on the
table.  "Here's what I figure my expenses would be.  This is really
conservative.  I went whole hog.  I could probably do it for three quarters
of this."


"That's chicken feed," he said, looking at my five-figure bottom line.  "So
do you want a loan, a partnership, what?"


"There's no money in this," I said.


"I can write it off, if I buy a share.  But what would you prefer?"


I didn't want him involved in the paperwork long term.  "A loan."  I said.
"I'd go to a bank, but you know what happened to my credit after I lost my
job."


He smiled ruefully.  "I'd have helped you if you'd let me."


"That's the past," I said.  "Let's look at the future."


"You're really excited about this?"


I really was.  More than he could know.  "Yeah."


He took out his checkbook.  "Let's make it happen."


In retrospect, talking about opening a vet's office while setting up an
alibi for the one that was being robbed was probably a little too
transparent.  But coincidences weren't crimes, and we had kicked around the
idea of opening my own practice for a long time.  Michael -- to a bit of my
shame -- believed in me, and no one would ever suspect his character of any
wrong-doing.  I admired him, actually.  He was good without trying, and
whatever dark temptations may tug at him when he lay alone at night didn't
sway him, never for a moment, from the path he knew was right.  There are
such people in the world, and God bless them, but I was not one.  In a
black and white world I -- and I think the three boys who had kidnapped me
-- were shades of gray.  And I liked gray over black or white, any day.
With Michael I felt safe.  With them, I felt like I was lying on the edge
of a knife, and that knife cut into my back, and every laceration was a
kind of dangerous ecstasy.


And so, the next morning, I returned to the trailer with my check safely
cashed and in the bank, in a brand new account.  I wouldn't tell the boys
about it yet, because it was going to be a surprise for them.  So we four
sat in that kitchen staring at the orderly ranked and sorted bottles and
boxes of drugs.


Jason tallied it up, and I helped identify drugs that he didn't know.
Street value, several thousand, at least.


"So we sell this, deliver the money to the vatos, and -- "


"No," I said.


The three looked at me.  Only Jason had a small smirk.  "No?" he said.


"I have an idea.  Let's take them the drugs.  Clean wash.  They sell them,
use them, whatever.  And they forgive the debt."


"They'll never go for that," Jason said.


"I think they will.  If I talk to them."

Joe and Don exchanged looks.  "I don't know," Jason said.  "You don't know
-- "


I tapped the boxes of Ketamine with my palm.  "I know this."


"They cut Jason bad," Joe said, as if I hadn't seen that result close up.


"Yeah.  Well.  All the more reason for me to do it."


There was a long and thoughtful silence.  "Why in the hell would you do
this after everything we did to you?" Don said.


"You couldn't have done anything worse than what I was going to do to
myself.  You guys are thugs, who kidnapped, abused and -- yeah, well --
raped me.  But you're the only people who have ever thought I was more than
a pale, soft-bellied fool.  You're the only people who ever treated me like
someone worth having around, even when you knew I was worth nothing.  I --
" I swallowed.  "You're not going to like this, but I hope you can
understand it -- I love you guys.  You saved my life."


Joe blushed, at the accusation of rape or the declaration of love, I don't
know.  Don just laughed, not cruelly I think.  But Jason looked serious.


"There's this thing," he said.  "It's called -- fuck, some city or
something -- "


"Stockholm Syndrome.  Yeah.  And maybe I have that.  There's also Lima
Syndrome, and that goes the other way.  The kidnappers start caring about
the victim.  And maybe you have that.  I hope so.  But it doesn't matter if
it has a name or not, or they call it a syndrome or not.  I want to help
you.  And you're going to want to help me.  Because we're going to do
something really awesome together, and fuck the rest of the world."


"I can get behind that," Don said.  "The fucking the world part."


Jason just shook his head.  But he made the arrangements.  They wouldn't
let me go alone, but when got to the meet-up point -- an alley that smelled
of piss and puke and something dead -- they stayed in the car, and I walked
into the dim, brick-lined cave myself, carrying my old briefcase filled
with stolen drugs.


Two young hispanic men were smoking cigarettes by a dumpster.  Both were
skinny and wiry, but the taller one had a face that looked like it could
have used some hormone treatment during puberty: it was pocked and scarred.
The shorter one looked stronger and healthier.  What I knew of gangs was
from TV and a few sensational articles in the New Yorker, but -- yeah,
these were gangsters.


Suddenly, I really wished they'd fuck me behind that dumpster, but I sat on
that thought for the time being.  Maybe Joe could pimp me out later.


I laid the briefcase on the ground at my feet, and crossed my arms.


"Yo, that better be full of money," the tall one said.


"It's not," I said, and he lifted up his shirt-tail to reveal a gun in the
waist of his baggy black jeans.  I shrugged.  It's hard to feel fear when
you keep thinking about Jason heating a metal wire in a blowtorch for you.


"Or rather, not liquid money.  It's filled with drugs."


They spoke rapidly back and forth in Spanish.  My Spanish was very formal:
doctor and newscaster Spanish, and they spoke so quickly and with so much
slang I didn't get much of it.  Apparently, they were wondering why I was
here and not the others.


So I answered in Spanish, hoping my guess was right: "I'm the doctor," I
said.  "And I have a proposal for you, along with this case of drugs."


"We don't want drugs.  We want money."


"Oh," I said, "I could sell the drugs.  Compete with your people, waste the
overhead, and so on.  Or you could take the drugs, cut out the middleman,
and forget the debt you owe to my friends.  They're worth more than
anything they owe you.  The ketamine alone probably squares your debt."


"They owe us money, not drugs."


I sighed.  "Money and drugs are the same thing," I said.  "I have a
proposal to you.  It's a really simple one.  I'm opening a clinic.  It's
going to look like a vet's office, but after hours, you call me with a
gun-shot or a stab-wound or an OD, and you don't want to see some narc at
the emergency room, you call me."


"And you do what?"


"I try to save you.  And you pay for drugs, and that's it.  My time is
free.  Anyone else, anyone not in your gang, and they pay for my time.  But
everyone is welcome.  No one turned away.  And no gang shit in my office.
You sit next to a rival gang member in the waiting room and that's all you
do: you sit, and you keep your mouth shut."


Skinny pulled his gun.  "Or you do what, gringo?"


"Or I say no."


"What?"


"I say, 'shit, man, that's a nasty infection you got there.  I could clear
that up with a pill or two.  But no, you guys disrespected the rules.  Go
let your dick rot off.'  Or, you listen to me and you and I come to this
agreement, and I say 'Yes, sir, that's easy to fix, let me just give you a
couple pills and send you on your way.  No charge.  And your girlfriend
never has to know.'"


"Or we just kill you now for talking to us like this?"


"Yeah, you could do that.  I'm a doctor.  I've seen death before."  I
didn't tell them it was usually of a schnauzer or a cat.  "Oh, one thing.
There are two different bottles in that case that are used to put animals
to sleep.  I've taken all the labels off.  I'd be happy to explain what is
what over the phone, after we come to an agreement and I'm sitting in a
Denny's somewhere eating some Moons Over My Hammy.  Or you could kill me,
and hope that you can figure out what's what before you take the wrong
thing and it kills you."  Somulose and Tributane are actually dyed a bright
purple, to prevent accidental dosage, but they didn't know that.


The tall one smirked.  "You've got balls, talking to us like this."


"I told you.  I'm a doctor.  I'm above this shit.  You come to me hurt, and
I help you.  Anyone comes to me, hurt, and I help them.  End of story.  But
that's only if you take the deal: you get the drugs, and you forget this
debt.  And that's it.  Otherwise, someone else might get this deal."


"And you start selling drugs out of your little underground clinic, right?"


"Oh," I said, "no.  I'm a doctor.  I sell drugs to people who need them,
and that's it.  Someone comes to me wanting to kick, and I'll see if I can
score some Apomorphine.  That's it.  I'm not going to be a 7-11 for
junkies."  That made me smile.  All of this started because I was a junkie
for booze and dark chocolate and self pity in a 7-11.  That smile might
have tipped the weight of this debate.  There's something unnerving about a
gringo who smiles when you threaten to kill him.


"And what's going to stop us from just taking your shit?"


"Long term fucking thinking, man.  You're not an idiot.  If you are, hook
me up with someone who isn't a dumbass footsoldier.  I'm serious about
this.  Play along, and you live longer and survive more shit.  Fuck me, and
I fuck you right back.  What do you say?"


The tall one looked a bit uncertain, casting his eyes to the shorter one,
and then to the mouth of the alley.


"Call someone," I said.  "Someone who can make this deal."


And he took out his phone and dialed.  He talked in that horridly fast and
slangy Spanish for a while.  Then he handed me the phone.


The voice on the other hand was calm, had an American accent, and sounded
business-like.  "The doctor, I assume?"


"I am."


"Any other name?"


"Not yet."


"They tell me you're a gringo fag who looks like he's been starving to
death, and now you say you're a doctor.  Or a vet."


"Closest thing you've got," I said.


"You belong to us."


"Nope.  You get some perks.  But I belong to everyone.  That's the deal I'm
offering."


"Or?"

"Or I walk away.  LA isn't the only city in the world that needs
underground doctors."


The voice paused for a moment.  "I got this German Shepherd."


"Good breed."


"He won't eat, and he keeps rubbing his culo on the ground."


"Impacted gland, possibly infected.  Bring him in.  No charge, I clean it
out and get him on antibiotics.  He'll be all better in two or three days,
and you can feed your enemies to him or whatever."


Another pause.  "My daughter calls him Pookie."


I closed my eyes.  Of course she does.  "Do we have a deal?"


"Discount for my guys, everyone else full price, but neutral territory
wherever it ends up, and those three pendejos written off?"


"Yes."


"And the case full of drugs."


"Yes."


"More where that came from?"


"Absolutely not.  Anyone tries to extort drugs from me, and I close shop
and move to Chicago or something.  Anyone robs me, same thing.  But if you
treat me with respect and treat everyone in and around my clinic with
respect whether you like their gang or not, then you have a place to go
when someone stabs your friend, or when it burns when you piss, or when
your dog rubs his culo on the ground."


"You got another name?"


"Just the doctor for now."


"Fine, El Médico.  That's the deal."


I handed the phone back to the skinny guy, who talked for a few moments in
somewhat more formal and chastised Spanish.  It consisted mostly of sí
and claro.  I turned around, and without another word, walked back to the
car.  I climbed inside.


At that point, just as I sat down, my knees gave way.  I thought my bladder
might.  "For the love of God," I said, "drive.  Calm and collected, but get
us out of this place."


"Did it go okay?" Joe asked.


I smiled and lay my head back.  I closed my eyes.  In a few hours, Joe and
Don would hold me down while Jason burned new initials onto my arm.  Then,
they would take turns fucking me, filling me with endorphins and cum.  And
in the morning, I would get up and scout locations in shitty parts of LA
for my new clinic.  And --


-- and what?  I didn't know.  But for the first time ever in my life, I
gave a shit about tomorrow.  I'd help people.  Bad people, but we're all
bad people.


I put my arm around Joe's shoulder and pulled him close.  "This," I said,
"is going to be awesome."