Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:17:15 -0500
From: Thomas Carver <thomascarveriii@gmail.com>
Subject: The Reeducation of Thomas Carver -- Part 2 of 2

The Reeducation of Thomas Carver, Part 2 of 2

[Author's Note: Here's the -- I hope -- thrilling conclusion.  Thank you so
much for all the kind words.  It's great to know that this little thing,
which I wrote just 'cause it's cheaper than downloading porn, would please
people.  It makes me very happy to hear from you.  If you haven't read part
one of this, you'll be quite lost, so do.  Again, this contains a number of
kinks, including filth, humiliation, watersports, strange perversions of
Stoic and Epicurean philosophy, rape, mindfuck (my favorite!), torture and
a few wine-tasting notes.  Take care of yourself, do not hurt others, and
keep in mind that this is (as far as you know, at least) fiction.  Consider
donating to Nifty; it is tax deductible and your tax preparer will
disappointingly ask you no questions about it at all.  Thank you for
reading!]


VII
	"Do you like sherry?"
	"Not really."
	"Try this.  You might."
	I sipped it.  "Actually, not bad."
	"Most people drink stuff I wouldn't clean my toilet with and call
it sherry.  Speaking of -- you smell a bit pungent."
	"That's because one of your boys pissed all over me."
	"Yes, I saw that."
	"Right after he raped me."
	He put down his glass.  This time, Skull and Punk were the honor
guards, and Bull was -- mercifully -- nowhere to be seen.  Skull had his
shirt off for some reason, and I saw his tattoo in full.  A skeletal arm
reaching out of the ground at his Apollo's belt, all the way up to his
neck.  It actually enclosed one nipple.  That must have hurt when he was
getting it.
	Adam frowned slightly.  "No, he didn't."
	I saw no reason to insist.  "All right, no he didn't."
	He turned to Punk, who was idly picking at his nose-ring.  "Go get
him."
	Punk came back with Bull, dressed this time in cargo pants and the
same hooded sweatshirt.  My stomach -- and my asshole -- clenched at the
sight.
	"Did you rape the faggot?" Adam said.
	"Nope."
	"He says you did."
	I held up my hand.  "Wait, no, I agreed with you.  He didn't.  It
never happened."
	Bull's lips twisted in contempt.  "Oh, I fucked him.  But it wasn't
rape."
	"Explain why for the piece of shit?  He's slow today."
	Bull looked at me.  "Rape is sex without permission.  You don't
have any rights.  You can't grant permission."
	"More accurately," Adam said, "your permission is worthless.  It's
not that you cannot consent.  It's that your consent is irrelevant.  I
don't ask permission from a roach before I step on it, and there's no
reason any of us need to ever ask you for anything.  You've got nothing
that we can't just take, because everything you've got is ours.  So -- "
	Bull interrupted.  "So I just got horny.  When I get drunk, ain't
no woman around, I sometimes want to fuck a dude.  You're almost a guy.  I
fucked you."
	"Was he good?"
	"He was a tight little fuck."
	Adam quirked his lips in consideration.  "Any of you guys ever fuck
another man?"
	"I'll let a faggot suck my cock," Skull said.  "Shit, I'd let
anybody suck my cock if it means a blowjob."
	"I never have, but I'll try anything once," Punk said.  "Maybe
twice.  Or three times."
	Adam chuckled.  "You might find yourself busy soon," he said to me.
	"So that's what this is?  A sex cult?"
	He quirked his head in a way that he had, like a character on TV
meant to look clever or amused.  "Do you want it to be?"
	"I'd like to not be raped."
	"You're not listening."
	"Sorry.  I'd like to not be -- I guess it doesn't matter."
	"Right.  Doesn't matter what you'd like.  No one here gives the
slightest fuck what you like or don't like.  But no, we're not a sex cult.
You were in a sex cult; we're deprograming you."
	Screw it.  I drank the rest of the glass of sherry, and he poured
me another.  The glasses were tiny, but he was right: it was good stuff.
Sweet and cold and warming in my stomach.  "I'm pretty sure I wasn't in a
sex cult.  I'd remember that."
	"Oh, it was the world's dullest sex cult.  You were pulled in two
dull directions at once.  First, there was the puritan direction: don't
have sex.  It'll harm your soul, kill your body, make you go blind, get
hairy, it's filthy and disgusting and wrong -- so save it for someone you
love.  Then there's the libertine direction: have lots of sex.  If you're
not screwing a different woman every night, you're failing at life.  So on.
And of course both messages are coming at you from the same damn sources,
often at the same time.  No wonder you have no idea what your cock wants to
do."
	"So you're saying the culture -- I guess -- is sexually molesting
us then making us feel guilty for it?  Brainwashing us?"
	"Yes, that's right.  And worse.  They're making that brainwashing
part of you.  A name and a label.  Gay.  Straight.  Bi.  Tranny.  Queer.
Trans.  You're interpolated into the world.  And we're undoing that.  I
know it hurts, but it doesn't hurt all of you.  Some parts of you are
almost human.  Your cock knows better."
	"I'm not gay."
	"You keep coming back to that, and I have no idea why."
	Bull, who had joined the other two in the back, spoke up.  "Neither
am I.  I just fuck.  Whatever."
	Adam gestured backwards with a toss of his head.  "There you go.
Do you know how bonobo chimps settle all their disputes?"
	"Sexual aggression," I said.  Who didn't know that?
	"Right.  Do you know what animal humans share most of their DNA
with?"
	"I'm going to guess bonobo chimps."
	"Good guess."
	"I suppose it'd be stupid of me to care about disease, huh?"
	"Not stupid at all.  Disease, unlike culture, is real.  But I'm
going to be very kind to you, because I want you to open up.  I'm going to
tell you the truth.  You don't have any diseases.  None of us do.  You were
tested when you arrived.  We are all tested regularly, and since we have no
delusions with regards to sex, we have no reason to sneak around and keep
things secret.  If we fuck, we do another test.  Anyone who sticks their
cock in one of your holes is clean."
	"I don't know how you can be sure."
	"I can't.  Of course.  Not absolutely.  And it's not that we give a
shit about you.  But we care about each other, in a way you couldn't
possibly understand.  We wouldn't risk each other by fucking some piece of
shit who wasn't clean, and we wouldn't risk each other by passing on a
disease through some piece of shit.  Hey, there's something you're good
for: you could be a disease vector."
	"My guidance counselor wanted me to go into that, but I majored in
business."
	Adam actually took a moment then started laughing.  I hadn't seen
him surprised before.  "Did you guys hear that?"
	"He's got some fight in him," Punk said.  "Still."
	"Also," Adam continued, "I know we can be a bit rough on a bitch
like you.  So I'm going to take a look at your hole before we put you back
into storage today.  I want to make sure we didn't blow any o-rings.  Any
blood in your shit?"
	"Just a little."
	"Good.  I'll put a bottle of lube in your room.  If you're good and
cooperate when someone wants to fuck you, maybe they'll let you lube up
first."
	"Golly."  Who the fuck cared anymore.
	"More sherry?  Do you know why we're broken out the good stuff?"
	"No."
	"We're celebrating."
	"Oh?"
	"Yes.  First, we've got everything squared away.  House payments
scheduled, job quit, neighbors notified, and so on.  You're good until
April, when we'll have to deal with tax time.  Fortunately, I'm good at
math.  No one will be looking for you for a very long time."
	That didn't strike me as celebration material, but to them I guess
it was.
	"It'll help if you just give up hope," he said, not unkindly.
"Hope is the last evil in Pandora's box, you know.  That's the original
myth.  People get it wrong.  Anyway, there's another thing that you might
like better."  His voice took on a teasing tone.  "You're moving!"
	Now it was my turn to be surprised.  "Moving where?"
	"Two cells over, so -- no need to change your driver's license or
anything.  But it's a better cell.  Cot.  Sink."
	A sink?  No more thirst?  No more toilet water?  The ability to
wash myself?
	"And I think we'll get you some clean clothes.  Those are
ridiculous."
	"This is -- um -- kind of overwhelming.  Thank you."
	"I'll take it away as fast as I gave it, remember."
	"I know.  I'm grateful.  Seriously."  Feeling a sudden wave of
disgust, I realized that it was true: I was grateful.  I was casting around
for how to show it.
	"But -- " he said, holding up a finger.  "You did piss me off."
	I froze.
	"I know I told you you could talk freely with me, and you can.
That's my gift to you.  But you can't talk freely to the boys unless they
tell you otherwise.  And you were rude to my boy here."
	Bull stepped forward.  "Yeah."
	The pit of my stomach sank.  Of course they'd take away hope.  He
had just said as much, hadn't he.
	"I'm sorry," I said.  "Whatever I said or did, I'm sorry."
	"You didn't thank me for fucking you," he drawled out in his dull,
slow kid in the back of the class voice.  "You called it rape."
	I looked at his cold gray eyes, his unsmiling face, and the
fight-or-flight response kicked in.  I couldn't catch my breath, and it was
a good thing I was sitting, because my knees felt like jelly.  Everything
else they had done were just terrifying fratboy hijinks, the sort of shit
that might end up on Jackass.  But this violation -- it underlined that
they meant it.  They really meant that I was worthless to them.  For the
first time, I felt it, and what horrified me is that I found part of me
agreeing.
	I tried to say what was required of me, but my mouth wouldn't work.
	"Should we take away his new quarters already?  Up to you," Adam
said.
	"No.  Let him move.  But faggot -- hey, faggot, look at me.  You're
mine.  I own your ass.  Pissing me off is never a good idea.  I was nice to
you, gave you something nice.  Soon, I'm gonna give you something mean.
Get it?"
	I tried to swallow and speak, but could only nod.
	He spat in my face and stalked up the stairs.  The door at the top
opened, and once again I heard faint sounds -- voices, TV maybe.
	"Stupid fucker," Punk said, laughing.  "He picks the biggest guy in
the room to piss off."
	"As far as he's concerned," Adam said, "We're all the biggest guys
in the room."
	"Dick-size if nothing else," Skull said, shaking his greasy hair
out of his eyes.
	"I bet he'll find that out soon enough," Punk added.
	My new quarters were, in comparison to my old cell, Shangri-La.  A
sink -- one-piece metal with only cold water, but holy shit, water.  The
toilet -- same as before, probably also capable of being electrified.  I
gingerly tapped it with my fingertip.  Nope, cold.  A cot, disconcertingly
with the same sorts of leg and arm attachments with leather straps, but
hell, it wasn't a slowly leaking air-mattress I had to blow up every so
often.
	Better light, too, and on the ceiling, just out of my reach, some
sort of glossy glass.  Cameras behind it?  Or -- no, it might be -- plasma
TVs?  Mounted on the ceiling?
	Okay.
	And, as promised, a big tube of grease by the side of the cot.
Partially used, with a curly pubic hair stuck to the outside.  I wondered
whose.
	Then I wondered if it -- the lube, not the pube -- could be a
weapon.
	I imagined slicking up the floor, so that when they came in to feed
me they fell, hit their head.  I could dart out over them, rush up the
stairs --
	And what?  Squirt KY all over them as they raped me to death?
	Nothing else in the room was remotely weapon-like, unless I could
maybe break the TVs and use something from them.  But of course, there were
cameras here, too.  As far as I could tell, a lot more of them.
	I hadn't even fantasized about escape since I arrived.  I didn't
know what that meant.
	I also had new clothes.  Orange prison-pants, with elastic
waistband and no pockets, and an orange prison shirt.  They were clean and
while the pants were way too big in the waist, they weren't too long.  The
sleeves on the shirt were, though.  I rolled them up and felt almost human.
Then I stripped naked again and started washing myself in the sink.
	After getting clean as I could without soap, I dressed again and
lay on the cot.  It was on the other side of the room, comparatively, from
where I kept my air-mattress, so that it was pressed up against the wall to
the adjoining cell.
	Why were there four cells, and they had moved me from the far one,
not to the next cell, but to the one next to that?  Well, easy answer: only
one or two cells was equipped with this stuff.
	So -- who was in the other cell?
	That was an interesting thought.
	The walls were soundproofed, but I knew that soundproofing wasn't
always perfect.  Sometimes, foam had bubbles or insulation had seams.  I
used the cap of the bottle of lube to tap along the wall all up and down
the side of the cot, trying to make it look like I was just curled up and
trying to sleep.
	Then I'd listen.  Then do it again.
	Nothing.
	Well, stupid notion.  Too many POW movies.
	I tried to sleep, but couldn't, for what had to be the most
ridiculous and embarrassing reason.  I had a roaring hard-on.  I wondered
if Adam had slipped me viagra in that sherry, but I doubt he'd adulterate
sherry, even sherry he wasn't drinking.
	No, I was just clean, well-fed, hydrated, and warm for the first
time in a thousand years.  My body had remembered that it had balls and
they were full.
	Did I dare to jerk off?  With the cameras watching and the horned
up guards pondering Adam's little question about their sexual experiences?
	They were going to do it.  I was going to suck some dick before
this was over, and probably take a few yards of cock up my ass.  Sucking
dick couldn't be as bad as sucking ass, at least, I thought, remembering
back to Grunge's dark, dank curled ass hair.  Hey, I had penetrated one of
them before they got to me, at least: my tongue had pushed past his
bunghole, right up into his shitter.  I had licked out the inside of his
anus, and not just a little bit.  Enthusiastically.  Con brio, as we used
to say when I played music and gave a shit.
	If given the option, I'd volunteer to suck cock.  My ass would only
take so much punishment.  And despite what Adam said, I'd rather take on
the somewhat lower risk, I supposed, of oral sex.  It felt less like
submitting to being -- whatever it was that took cock up the ass.
	It sounded like Skull would be the first to have his cock sucked.
He seemed pretty enthusiastic.  I would have to make it go fast as
possible.  He might let me touch his body while I did it.  I could maybe
pinch his nipples; that tattoo probably meant he got off on that little bit
of pain.  I know some women did.  He at least didn't smell that bad.
Grunge would be awful, but again, better than ass.  His sweaty nuts on my
face, his raunchy foreskin sliding back from the glans.  Disgusting.  And
Bull -- I'd rather suck his cock than take it up my ass again.  A hundred
times.
	But that wasn't going to be an option, probably.  If anyone was
going to hurt me bad, it was Bull.  He seemed genuinely pissed, like he'd
expected me to thank him for ramming his cock up my ass --
	Suddenly, I jumped as an air-raid siren, louder than anything I had
ever heard, suddenly blasted throughout the room.  I clutched my ringing
ears, and it stopped.  Then I noticed I had had my hard-on out and had been
stroking it while musing about which of them would be the next to rape me.
	So, yeah, no jerking off, apparently.  It wouldn't make me blind,
but it might make me deaf.

 VIII
	Okay, very weird.  All this talk of punishment, sexual abuse,
humiliation -- and then, suddenly, nothing.  Someone would come with my
food, usually Skull, every day.  I'd expect him to pull out his cock and
order me down on it.  But he'd just drop off the food and leave.  This
time, he'd leave me the thin plastic bowl and a spoon.  When done, I'd put
it by the door, and he -- or sometimes Punk or Grunge -- would come get it
and take it away.  They'd barely say a word.  Maybe a "fag" or something,
but not even a sexual suggestion.  Once Bull came with my food, clattered
it down on the ground, and left without saying a word.  I had a tense
moment when he came back for the bowl, stared at me with barely simmering
rage, and slammed the door between us.
	The weirdest thing is, I was kind of -- disappointed is the wrong
word.  Bored?  Like, I kind of wanted them to do it, shove my face in their
crotch or something, just so that it could get over with.  I had never
sucked a cock.  Had mine sucked by a guy once, didn't much care for it --
his idea of enthusiasm involved a hell of a lot more suction than I like.
Never even thought about sucking one, though, until a few days ago (weeks
again?  Years ago? when was my last interview?).
	Then, finally, about five feedings passed (maybe four?  I was a
crappy prisoner.  Should have been making tally marks on the wall for each
feeding or something, but shit, why bother.  It wasn't like I was counting
down to my release date.  I lived here now).  On the sixth, Punk dropped
off my food, but instead of leaving, sat on my bunk.  Normally I sat there
to eat, so instead I sat on the toilet and finished my oatmeal.  It was, as
usual, a bit bitter, but maybe it was ground up vitamins.  How kind of them
to prevent scurvy.
	He watched me eat, silent other than the occasional creaking of his
spiked leather jacket.  He had dyed his eyebrows red since the last time I
saw him, and with his green hair he looked a bit like a Christmas
decoration.  He'd be ridiculous if I wasn't absolutely terrified of him.
The way he looked at me, so cold and clinical, set a cold ball of iron in
the pit of my stomach.
	I moved to hand him the bowl, but he didn't take it, so I put it
near the door as usual.
	He pointed to the ground between his feet.  Oh.  Huh.  Didn't
expect to have to blow him, really.  At least he was on the clean side of
the spectrum of him, Skull, and Grunge.
	I knelt down between his grubby Vans, but he surprised me.  "I'm
not going to fuck you."
	"Okay."
	"I could."
	"I know."
	"But I'm not horny.  And don't really get into guys so much.  I
mean, I'll probably fuck you eventually.  Why not?  But not today."
	"Okay."
	He looked down at me, like he was staring at a bug.
	"I ain't like Adam," he said.
	I didn't know what to say to that.
	"I mean, I'm not stupid, but I'm no genius.  You know he's only
about nineteen, I think?  I mean, no one really knows."
	"That's young," I said, hoping it was sufficiently noncommittal.
	"Shit, I'm only twenty.  And don't get me wrong, I'm behind it all.
I get it.  I always got it.  I was born getting it, I think, like a few of
the other guys."
	I ventured a question, knowing it was dangerous.  But this was not
a typical situation.  This wasn't a grab-ass humiliate the faggot session.
He was talky, and that was a goddamned minefield, but one worth exploring.
"Like Adam?"
	"Adam figured it out.  You know he's trying to give you a gift,
right?"
	"Yes, and I'm grateful."
	He kicked me with one dirty shoe, really more of a nudge.  "Don't
be an idiot.  Memorizing shit isn't going to get you past this test,
dumbass.  This isn't college."
	"I just don't want to make you angry."
	"Why not?"
	That struck me as an odd question.  "You can take away this stuff,
and put me back in that cold cell, naked.  Or you can torture me."
	"Later," he said.  "Not today."
	I swallowed.  Great.  I had to bring that up.  "I'd rather that
doesn't happen, not that it matters what I'd rather."
	"Yup.  So why don't you want to piss me off?"
	"Because I'm afraid."
	"Yeah.  You know what?"  He reached behind his back, lifted up his
leather jacket, and pulled something out of the waistband of his black
bondage pants.  He held it loosely, pointing at the floor.  "I'm not."
	A pistol.
	I don't know my guns, but that looked real.  I couldn't tell you
the make or model.  I couldn't rattle off "A Kruger Ought Seven Flintlock
Reloading Spring-action Dual Clip" or bullshit like that.  It was a gun.
No, a fucking gun.
	My saliva suddenly tasted like dried fear.
	"This is loaded," he said.
	"Yes," I managed to croak out.  Should I beg for my life?  Or was
that the wrong thing to do?
	"Here."  He took my hand and put the gun in it.  "If you cock this
back then pull the trigger, it'll fire.  It's a .22, so it's not exactly
going to knock someone off their feet.  But it'll put a hole in them and
slow them down."
	What.  The.  Actual.  Fuck?
	"Will six shots get you out of the house?  Maybe.  The house is in
the middle of nowhere, though.  You probably won't get far."
	"Wh -- uh."
	"So really, your choice is this.  You can shoot me, or not.  If you
don't, I'll tell you this.  At some point in the near future I'll torture
you.  I'll hurt you bad, worse than you've ever been hurt.  I'll humiliate
you; I thought it was hilarious when you ate those shorts.  I might see if
I can make you eat a sock or my dirty shoe or something.  And I'll also
probably stick my cock in one of your holes if I'm ever in the mood for
such a thing.  But before I do that shit I'll make you taste real fucking
pain, like you've never felt before.  And I'll enjoy the hell out of it,
too."
	"And if I do shoot you?"
	He shrugged.  "You spin the wheel, you take your chances, try to
get the hell out of this house and out of the woods its in and to a highway
or something, when you don't even know where you're at or how many of us
there are.  You know we only let you see a few of us, right?"
	"I figured."  Actually, I figured that was a lie, but -- it maybe
wasn't.
	"And we've got other guns.  Better ones than this.  Ones with
stopping power.  But you can probably kill me with it.  That'd be one down.
That'd be revenge, at least.  Yeah, the guys will probably kill you as
slowly as they can.  They'll carve whole new holes to fuck.  But -- "
	I turned the gun around and gave him the handle.  The holder.  The
whatever the hell it's called.
	He took the gun, unloaded it, and showed me the bullets.  "You
could have killed me.  When you came in here, you were ready to rip us
apart with your teeth."
	"Things change."
	"No.  You've always been a little pussy.  You're just learning to
accept it."  He held up his foot to my face.  "Kiss my shoe."
	I pressed my lip to the top of the stained gray canvass.
	He let me hold it there a second, then stood up and gathered the
bowl off the ground.  He put his hand on the door.
	"One thing," he said.
	"Yes, sir."  I was still kneeling by the cot, but I had turned to
face him.
	"You had your chance.  It was real.  And I knew it was real.  Did
you see any fear in my face?"
	Honesty, I hadn't.  I had given him back the gun because I was half
convinced it was a stupid test.  If those had been real bullets, and I
didn't see any reason to think they weren't, then I had probably fucked up.
"No, sir."
	"That lack of fear starts by knowing who you are.  What you are.
You get that?"
	"Yes, si- -- Actually, no, not really."
	"You will.  When that bit of you that's human wakes up.  The only
reason you're alive is because you've got just a tiny bit of you that's
human."
	"I am trying to understand."
	"Try harder," he said, and opened the door and left.

Part IX
	That business with Punk and the gun had clearly been some sort of
test, but I had no idea if I passed or failed.  Was I supposed to kill him?
What would that have proven?  That I was dangerous enough to respect?  I
had no idea.
	No, I decided.  I had made the right choice.
	Very shortly after that, a day or two perhaps, Skull ordered me up
against the wall while Bull and another muscular man in military fatigues
who I'd never seen before wheeled in a treadmill and set it up in the
corner.  I didn't get a good look at the newcomer, other than to notice
that seemed closer to my age than any of the others -- about thirty -- and
clearly had a thing for the military.  Blond high and tight haircut,
bulging arms, a uniform with the name patch torn off -- the stereotypical
Marine, or Marine wannabe at least.
	I christened him Jarhead, but he and Bull both left, the latter
only after giving me a sneer and a glare.
	Skull waited until they were gone.  "You need more cardio than
running around a room."
	"Yes sir."
	"You'll earn your sleep by exercising."
	"I don't know what that means."
	"That's because you're stupid."
	"Yes, sir."
	Skull shoved his hand down the front of his tight black pants,
scratched at his balls, and then pulled it out.
	"Smell my finger."
	I did.  It smelled like ballsweat.  Like how our room in college
smelled when my jock roommate fucked his girlfriend before I got back from
class.
	"Lick it."
	I put his finger in my mouth, sucked it lightly, and ran my tongue
over it.  It tasted like finger, to my relief.  I don't now what I
expected.
	"Practice makes perfect," he said, and then laughed and left me
alone with my new piece of furniture.
	Like everything else in the room, it was all of a piece, carefully
built to make it hard to tear a part off and make a weapon out of it.
Sturdy black plastic and metal, no frills at all.  No display, a simple
knob for incline, another for resistance.  A toggle for on and off.
	No brand names.
	I played with it a while, just for something to do, then went to
sleep.
	And was awakened a few minutes later by loud music.  All of the TVs
in the ceiling were on, and they were showing different, clashing music
videos, all at high volume.
	It took me a few minutes of crouching with my hands over my ears to
remember what Skull said.  I got on the treadmill, and started to run.  As
I did, the volume declined, and twenty minutes later the videos switched
off.
	I went for a couple more minutes, absolutely exhausted and sore.  I
hadn't exercised in -- weeks, maybe.
	I went back to sleep, and this time stayed that way for a while.
	This became the new routine.  If I didn't exercise for too long --
however they defined it -- I'd be assaulted with clashing music videos and
when I exercised they'd fade and disappear.
	It also gave me a bit of hope.  They were trying to keep me from
atrophying away.  Why?  Because they intended me to live a while longer,
maybe.
	The exercise routine did give some structure to my days.  I figured
they were aiming for an average of twenty minutes a day, so if the music
blared it meant that a day had passed.  They were clever, though, and I
know they were staggering it, and sometimes there'd be a day with no
requirement to exercise, and sometimes I'd be running for -- I was sure --
an hour a day.  But in general, I could get a grasp on the flow of time,
better than before.
	And it was flowing.  I figured about five or six days passed before
they decided to torture me again for no clear reason.
	They stripped me bare, took me out and strapped me to the table.
Once down and bound, Skull and Grunge left me alone with Punk.  I was glad
it wasn't Bull, which was a foolish thought, because it easily could be any
time he wanted to.  Nothing held him back but his own will.  I knew that.
I had thought that Adam was the leader, but no -- they had no leader.
Worse.  They needed no leader.
	Punk was almost friendly, carefully snugging the straps into place
and once again shaving my genitals and asshole.  He also shaved my head,
but skipped the eyebrows this time.  Perhaps that was a good sign, or maybe
just his mistake.  He also strapped my head upright to the table.  My heart
pounded, and my vision seemed fragile, like I was seeing the world through
glass.
	"So," he said, conversationally.  "Here's the deal.  I want to try
something and see how it works.  You're the most convenient guinea pig.  It
might kill you, just so you know.  Now, if we were really doing some sort
of interrogation, you'd have something to say, something to give up.  But
you're such a pussy we don't need to torture you to get you to tell us
anything we want to know.  So we might as well skip the talking part, and
we'll just keep doing this until it's not fun anymore.
	"Now, open your mouth and say 'ah.'"
	I did, and he stretched a long piece of saran wrap from a roll
around my head and the part of the table it was strapped to, twice,
covering mouth and nose.  I tried to struggle, but couldn't move my head
because it was strapped down.  "Try to breathe out," he said.
	I blew with all my might, pushing the cellophane outward in a bulge
over my mouth.  He took the hunting knife that Adam had threatened me with
before, and cut a small hole, through which I breathed in thin, panicked
gasps.
	He reached under the table, and it swiveled up, tilting me
backwards at about a 45 degree angle.  Blood rushed to my head.
	"Crap," he said, "I forgot."
	And with that he bounded up the stairs, his leather jacket
creaking.
	A few minutes later he came back with a large green plastic storage
container and a rubber bucket.
	He put the container under my head.  "I've been collecting piss
from everyone all day.  I mean, you know, they just use water in the thing
I read, but I like to get creative.  Why not add a little bit of flavor to
the mix.  Plus, why would you think you'd rate real water, when the piss is
just as effective and will go to waste anyway?"
	He sounded almost gleeful.
	"Fuck," he said, sticking his little finger up his nose.  "I got
the biggest fucking booger up here.  Just can't . . . there it goes.  Wow,
look at that baby."  He held it up in front of my eyes, and it was indeed
as large as the end of his finger, a mottled slimy green and gray.
	"Here, clean this off for me," he said, sticking it through the
hole and into my mouth.  He pushed it against my tongue, and I recoiled,
but couldn't push back.  "Suck it off my finger," he said.  "Go on."  He
sounded like he was encouraging a dog to do a trick.
	I ate his fucking booger, and he pulled his finger out, then wiped
it on my shoulder.
	"You are one nasty little bitch.  I wouldn't have done that for
anything, especially since I'm going to torture you anyway."
	He lay a dirty rag over my face.
	I heard water sloshing, and then, luke-warm liquid soaked the rag
and ran over the hole in my mouth.  I tried to inhale, but when I did, I
got a mouthful of piss.  I couldn't breathe, and I knew my lungs were
filling up with water.  No, with urine.  It might as well have been battery
acid; it'll all kill me.  I struggled as hard as I could, but couldn't get
a breath of air.
	Then he paused the process and I sucked rank air through the cloth
and the piss.  There was a sloshing, and it began again.
	I was sobbing and sputtering and choking to death, on the verge, I
was convinced, of dying at any moment.  But it just kept happening, again
and again, recycled over and over.
	Drowning is the worst way to die.  That bullshit about it being
like a warm embrace -- bullshit.  Just bullshit.  It's like having a fire
in your lungs, in your brain.  And you would do anything to breathe,
anything to survive.  Suck all their cocks, eat all the crud that comes out
of their body, tear your own asshole open so they could march through it
one by one.  Anything at all, just for a gasp of air.  Holding your breath
just makes it worse.
	Finally, I was just hoping it'd end and death would come, and then
I was gasping in air, sweet air, and sputtering out piss and someone was
unstrapping me fast, fast, and I was puking over the side.
	I don't remember a lot after that.  I seem to remember a doctor,
but I must have dreamed it, who told me to breathe deep, and again, and
again, and then spoke sternly to Punk who sounded abashed.  Impossible.
	I remembered finally waking up, my mouth tasting of dry puke.  Adam
sat next to my cot, watching me, on a plastic folding chair.
	"Good morning."
	"Is it?"
	"Technically.  You probably want a drink.  Here."
	He gave me a paper cup of water, and I sat up enough to suck it
down, and he got up and filled it at the sink and gave me another, and then
a third.
	"I think I died," I said.
	"No, nothing like that.  You seem to have a vasovagal reaction to
pain, which is to say, you black out.  You were in no danger of dying."
	"Bullshit."
	"Well, yes, maybe 'no' danger is an exaggeration.  A very slim
danger.  But we've checked you out, and you're going to be okay.  No fluid
in the lungs at all, and you're breathing normally.  Your heart rate is
even back to normal."
	I lay back down.  "I don't feel normal."
	"That is, ironically, normal."
	"I really, really hate you all."
	"I know," he said, his voice quiet.  "But that doesn't matter."
	"Why are you doing this to me?  Really?"
	"Because the world is broken, and you're a piece that might be
salvaged."
	"Please, just kill me or let me go.  I swear, I won't tell anyone
about any of this."
	"Both of those actions would be a waste at this point."
	I closed my eyes, to keep the room from spinning.  "Just tell me
what you want me to do, and I'll do it."
	"I can't do that."
	"Why the hell not?  Not part of the game?"
	"No.  Because I don't know.  What do you want to do?"
	"I want to go home."
	"No, not the stupid animal you.  The you that almost died, the you
that struggled back and wants to live."
	"I don't have the -- whatever -- for this."
	He stood up, or at least, so it sounded.  He put his hand on my
forehead, almost gently.  "You will."
	And he left, and I slept.

 X
	A bit later, I woke up to Jarhead shaking my shoulder.  He had a
stethoscope around his neck, fatigue pants, and a ratty Ramones T-shirt.
	"Strip," he said.
	I got to me feet, then nearly went back down again.  I was still
lightheaded, and sick to my stomach.  If I puked on him, it'd serve him
right.  I didn't know him, but I knew it didn't matter: they were all the
same person, as far as I was concerned.
	"Bend over.  Spread 'em."
	Of course.  My mind felt thin, pale, too weak to really register,
but not too weak to obey.  It was like my thoughts were watered whiskey.  I
figured he'd fuck me and go, because why not add some humiliation on top of
nearly dying.  I didn't care if he did, frankly.  Nothing they did to me
could be worse than being waterboarded, even rape.
	Instead, he stuck something cool and slender in my ass and kept it
there for a minute.  He pulled it out, wiped it, and looked at it.  "Good.
Your core temperature is back up.  That was what worried me.  You can
stand."
	"So you're a doctor."
	"Do I look like a fucking doctor to you?  Turn around."  He pressed
the cold stethoscope to my back, on the left side.  "Take a deep, deep
breath, all the way.  Hold it.  Good, now exhale as completely as you can.
Good.  Other side.  Again.  Hold.  Exhale."
	Next, he looked at my pupils, blew in my eyes so I blinked (what
the hell kind of medical test was that?) and then checked my tongue.
	"Okay, at some point you bit your tongue, and so you've got a
little cut there.  Nothing serious, and it'll heal in a couple days, but no
licking ass or sucking dick until it does.  No underwear for a few days, no
matter how shit-stained.  Not to disappoint you.  A regular fucking
connoisseur.  But you're on a diet."
	I sat back down on the cot, then curled up and turned away from
him.
	"If it's any consolation," he said, on his way out, "I haven't seen
a lot of guys last that long.  Seriously.  Not even in SERE training."
	"Hooray."
	"Smart mouth on you.  Once it heals up, we might find some use for
it, teach it not to be so smart."
	I slept again, and this time I woke up to a weight on the cot.
	It was Skull.  He had his shirt off again.
	"No blowjobs," I said.  "Doctor's orders."
	"I ain't here for that."
	I didn't know what to say to that.  No chance my watery mind could
figure it out.
	"How you feeling?"  There was no jokey, bully laughter that usually
lurked under everything he said.  He sounded almost concerned.
	"Half dead.  Literally."
	He put his hand on my shoulder.  I realized I was still naked.  I
hadn't bothered to put my clothes back on after doc Jarhead's
ministrations.  It was like I was asking for another rape.  Bull was
probably in their control room -- I imagined a big room filled with TVs,
like in the movies -- watching me and pounding back beers, just waiting for
his boner to get drunk enough to fuck a guy.
	But Skull didn't do anything other than rest his hand on my
shoulder.  After a while I sat up and put on my pants and shirt, such as
they were, and he didn't object.  I felt a little better with a barrier
between me and the world, but I still found it tricky to stand up and stay
conscious.
	Skull had scooted back to take up the bottom half of the cot, his
back on the wall, using it like a couch.  I sat back down next to him.
	"Come here," he said.  "Don't be afraid."  He put his arm around my
shoulder and drew me next to him.
	I shied away, but then gave up.  Fine.  Whatever.  Who cared.  So
he wanted to cuddle.  Why the fuck not?
	But he made no move, just held me there, pressed up lightly against
his bony, smooth shoulder.  He smelled a bit like sweat and old pot-smoke,
not unpleasant.  I was glad it wasn't the side with the skeletal tattoo;
that would have been creepy and symbolic.
	"I know what you're doing," I said.
	"Yeah?"
	"This is the part where you're nice to me, to win me over."
	"Yeah."
	"It's cynical and artificial."
	"Yeah."
	And that's when I started crying, great heaving sobs that left me
out of breath and panicking, my face buried in his slender chest.  I
desperately wanted it to be real, and I think I gasped out "just lie to me"
or something like it.  I don't remember clearly.
	He held me for a long time, let me cry so long there was a trickle
of saliva and snot running down his front to the waistband of his black
jeans.  Finally, my head sore from crying, but my stomach feeling a little
better, I think I might have dozed off a bit.  When I woke up, I pulled
away.
	"You're not going to feel better from this," he said, "Not soon."
	"I know."
	"Nothing's ever going to be the same for you."
	"That's been true for a while," I said.
	"They might be better, though," he said.  "Just not the same."
	"Better than this?  That's not hard."
	"No, better than your life before this.  You're a new person now,
or can be, if you want."
	"Yeah," I said, knowing it was part of the script.
	"What would you do if you went home?"
	"Go back to work?"
	"No, really," he said.  "Your job is gone.  Your life is gone.  You
nearly died.  What would you do with your life?"
	I thought of music again, playing guitar in the crappy garage band
we had in college, that only played a few gigs.  "Maybe music," I said,
knowing it's what he wanted to hear.
	He ran his index finger over his wet chest, then licked my tears
and snot off the tip of it.  "Nice," he said, with a sly sudden grin, and
for some reason -- some reason I'll never understand -- I got an instant,
painful, and stone-hard erection.
	In the coming days, I did start to feel better.  I still didn't
like to be out of breath, and I thought I might be developing a case of
claustrophobia, since I'd wake up in the dark sometimes afraid that I was
in a box and couldn't get out.  Another visit from Jarhead led to an
all-clear on the tongue -- unfortunately -- as well as a suggestion that I
do a few minutes of slow walking and work my way back up to a jog on the
treadmill.
	Some time later, I had just finished a slow jog on the treadmill
when Skull dropped off my food.  He was about to leave, but I said, "Hey,"
and he turned around.
	"I didn't say thanks."
	"You never say thanks for the food, you ungrateful shit."
	"Not the food.  Well, yeah, the food.  Thanks for that.  But thanks
for -- you know.  The other thing."
	"You know it was just part of the process, though.  Me, faking
compassion, so you'd feel connection.  Isn't that what you said?"
	"Not quite so coherently, I imagine.  Yeah, I figure that's what
you were doing.  I read things.  I'm not stupid.  But -- it did help.  To
imagine that someone in here gave a shit.  For me.  Even pretend.  So
thanks."
	"Well, I don't give a shit."
	"I know"
	"So stick your thanks up your ass."
	"Okay."  There was a long awkward silence when neither of us moved.
	"You're welcome," he snapped, and left.
	I took some pleasure in the thought that I had just successfully
fucked with his head for a change, until the notion that perhaps that, too,
was part of the mindfuck lodged in my mind and would not leave.

 XI
	I was getting pretty fit.  I had nothing much else to do but
exercise, so I walked and jogged several miles each day.  The food had
diversified -- somewhat.  Now I got bread, a slice of meat now and then,
and of course oatmeal with bitter shit ground up in it.  But it seemed to
serve, even if it wasn't terribly thrilling to eat.  So I had lost most of
my puffiness, gained a lot of muscle, and even started doing crunches one
day after my treadmill time.  After which, Jarhead had barged in, yelled at
me for having shitty form, and told me that if I threw my back out doing it
like that he'd personally kick my spine back together.  He showed me a few
core exercises that were -- he said -- easier on my back.  Then, he made me
lick his boots in gratitude.
	Oddly, I got more flavor from licking boots than I did the food I
ate.  What a life.
	And it was a life.  I had been in here for, I judged from the
number of times my head had been shaved, probably two months or more.  I
hadn't been raped, tortured, or even particularly badly abused since the
waterboarding incident.
	I told myself not to get used to it.  Not to get comfortable.  But
despite myself, I did, and that was a mistake.
	It started with the dropping of the other shoe, as I thought of it.
As I suspected, it was Grunge.  He came in right after my exercise routine.
He was wearing his own exercise gear: black tearaway pants damp with sweat
and no shirt.  He had his own set of tats, as it turned out: a middle
finger just above his navel, and a date -- 1994 -- across his chest in Old
English lettering.  And, of course, he stank like a YMCA lockerroom.  But
again, I found myself responding to the stink in a way that I didn't to
body odor in general, and I wondered if pheromones might be a real thing,
but only some people had them.
	Or maybe I was going nuts.
	I was hornier than usual; that's the truth.  I wasn't allowed to
masturbate ever, and every so often a pornographic movie would play on the
overhead TVs just before bed.  Subtle, stupid, juvenile torture, and it
didn't work at first because most of the porn was bisexual and I wasn't
really into that.  But after a while, even in difficult situations like
this, your dick takes on a life of its own, and so I got hard at the
smallest provocation and kept dreaming of sex -- with, of course, women,
but also the people around me, the only people left in the world as far as
I knew.
	I was surprised that, aside from Bull's rape, I hadn't had to do
anything sexual with any of them, other than some stuff that might qualify
as fetish in some crowds -- lick shoes, that sort of thing.
	I wasn't disappointed, and I wasn't going to bring it up.  But I
just -- kept -- thinking about it.
	And so when Grunge showed up, clearly from his own work out, right
after mine, I didn't think much of it.  Sometimes they'd come to give me
orders, sometimes to drop off food, sometimes to take me out for an
interview with Adam.  But he sat on my cot, and I knew what that meant:
brain fuck.  When they stuck around, they were going to mess with your
head.
	Shining with sweat, he leaned back with his hands laced behind his
head.  His armpits were small nests of thin, wiry hair, damp and ripe.  The
smell actually began to fill the room, and I responded physically to it.
	"Sit on the floor there and take off my shoes."
	His shoes were probably once white, but now they were gray with age
and dirt and sweat, where they weren't silver from strips of duct tape
holding them together and patching holes.  The soles of the socks beneath
were black with dirt.  This smell was definitely overpowering, and not in a
pleasant way.  "Socks too," he said.
	I pulled -- rather, peeled -- off the socks.  He had long toes,
surprisingly neat and clean toenails, and aside from some large callouses
on the heels and ball of the feet, the skin was smooth.
	"I want you to start at the heel, and work your way up to the
toes."
	I rubbed his foot.
	"No, stupid.  Tongue."
	Of course.  I licked the rough heel of his right foot gingerly, and
he kicked at my face lightly.  The smell wasn't just musty; it was almost
thick.  Yet, it wasn't entirely disgusting.  Or maybe it was, and my
tolerance for disgust had been blunted.  After all, I had licked his dirty
asshole already.  What's a foot?  Just skin.  "Stupid.  What the fuck is
wrong with you?  Open your fucking mouth, wrap your stupid fag lips around
my heel, and suck it until I say to move on."
	So I sucked on his sweaty, calloused heel until he said, "Okay,
faggot, now you feel that rough skin there?  You've got it nice and soft.
Start scrapping it -- careful! -- with your teeth.  Some protein for you.
See how much of that callous you can chew off.  But if you bite too hard I
swear I'll fuck you up."
	This was, I had to admit, gross.  Maybe at least as gross as his
underwear, maybe even worse.  I tried not to think of the fact that I was
eating his dead skin, and just made like a human pumice on both of his
feet, with only an occasional gag.  Satisfied at my efforts of exfoliation,
he let me massage the sole and then suck on the toes.
	I finished his right foot, moved on to his left.  That's when I
noticed he had his hand inside his tearaways and was rubbing at a
prodigious tent.
	"Take off your clothes," he said, his voice low and husky.
	I obeyed, sat back down naked, and put his damp foot back in my
mouth.
	"You've got a hard on.  I knew it.  You fucking love this."
	I didn't say anything, just worked at the smaller callous on the
ball of his foot, scrapping off salty bits of skin and dirt and swallowing
them.
	He extended his left foot, still wet from my spit, and started
rubbing it on the head of my cock, which responded.
	I gasped.  "Sir, I have to tell you.  If you keep doing that I'm
going to have an orgasm."
	"An orgasm!  Ain't you college.  If you cum without my say so,
you'll wish you hadn't."
	"But if you keep -- "
	"I'll do anything I like to any part of you, faggot.  But if you
cum without my permission, I'll fucking waterboard you, and I won't be as
nice about it as my friend was."
	That wilted my cock pretty fast, and pulled me back from the edge.
Once I got softer, he lost interest in my dick and put his foot back.
	"That's some good shit, there.  You're good at this.  You should
totally set up shop as a spa.  Faggot Mouth Spa."  He leaned back.  "Okay,
that's enough bitch.  Good job."
	"Thank you, sir."
	He scratched at his scruffy facial hair, ran his hand through his
greasy spiked hair.  "Man, that made me horny.  In fact, I think I'm up for
full service."  He hoisted up his ass and pulled the tearaways to his
knees.  His cock was long, thin, and curved slightly to the right.  His
balls were also long and thin, and hung low between his legs, in a short
nest of wiry hair.  The smell was powerful enough to reach me even before
he put his hand on the back of my head and started pulling me toward his
crotch.  It reminded me of fresh meat, dried cum, burned matches, and maybe
a bit of vinegar.  I had expected him to be uncircumcised, but I was
relieved to see that he had no foreskin.  Considering his hygiene that was
probably a good choice on his doctor's -- or his mohel's -- part.
	"Suck my balls," he said, but I already had them in my mouth.  They
were soft and warm on my tongue, heavy and slippery.  He didn't wait long
before he guided the head of his cock between my lips.
	Well, people had always said it, but now it was finally true.  I
was a cocksucker.
	I won't lie.  It was gross.  Gagging, choking -- especially since
he was an enthusiastic participant in his blowjob, and kept grabbing the
back of my head and thrusting into my throat.  The smell was strong, the
sensation demeaning.  But it wasn't an ass rape, at least, and it wasn't
painful.  I wasn't dying.  It wasn't even as gross as being his foot bath.
I told myself that women and many men did this sort of thing all the time,
eagerly and with pleasure.  Probably not to this guy, granted, but -- to
someone.
	Knowing how much I hated it when a woman dragged her teeth on my
shaft, I tried to keep them out of the way by curling my lips around them,
which lead quickly to soreness as my teeth cut into the soft skin of my
lips.  But he didn't seem to care too much how much my teeth were or were
not involved.  I got the impression he'd fuck a knothole in a tree with the
same disregard, and that's what I was to him: a convenient hole.
	Straight blowjob porn started playing on the screens above, not
that I could see it with my nose buried in his oily pubes.  But I could
hear the girlish porn-star gasps, and Grunge was watching it with evident
pleasure, if the hardness of his cock was any way to judge.  The sudden
appearance of porn reminded me that someone was watching this, and it was
their way of offering support to Grunge.  Word would spread quick, of
course, even before he came.
	Who was watching this?  Jarhead?  I didn't know him well, other
than when he was barking orders at me or taking my temperature, but he
didn't seem to be fond of -- anything.  This sudden pornographic applause
had a smirk in it.  Skull, then?  I found myself hardening again, but then
I thought maybe it was Punk, or Bull.  It might give them ideas, to see me
so vigorously blowing this filthy young man.
	Grunge was breathing heavily now, and he had the back of my head in
both hands and was pushing the head of his cock against the back of my
throat.  I kept trying to swallow to keep from gagging, but my mind was
elsewhere.
	Why did thinking of Skull watching this make my cock get hard?
	Christ, was I queer?  Was I, as we used to say, queer for Skull?
	"Oh, yeah, sweet.  Take my nut you faggot cocksucker," Grunge
gasped, his cock pulsing like it had grown its own heartbeat.  But this
heartbeat pumped cum, directly into the back of my mouth and down my
throat.  A lot of it too, to judge by the salty, slightly bitter taste that
filled my mouth and would linger for hours, along with his smell in my
nostrils.
	"Make sure you get it all," he said, milking the tip of his cock
into my lips.  "It's good for you."
	He slipped on his socks and shoes, and pulled up his pants.
"You're a good fuck," he said.  "I ain't a faggot, but you can suck cock."
	"Thank you."
	"For what?"
	"Thank you for letting me suck your cock," I said, knowing it was
expected of me.
	His cot would smell like my ass for days.  Twice I woke up to find
myself smelling the place where his ass had sweated through the thin
mattress, and rubbing my dick.
	I might not be gay, but that was pretty fucking queer.

 XII

	"Hey faggot, guess what?"
	I looked up and got to my feet.  It was Bull.  He had a bowl of
oatmeal -- my lunch, dinner, breakfast, or snack, whatever time of day it
might be.
	"Thank you for the food, sir."
	"Oh, ain't we polite?  Asshole."  He held the bowl to his waist,
hooked his black nylon sweatpants under his balls, and aimed a stream of
hot piss directly into my food.  He shivered a bit, then aimed the last of
the stream to soak my mattress.
	I took the bowl from it; it was warm.
	"Eat it," he said.
	"I'm not hungry."
	"I didn't ask if you were hungry, you stupid bitch.  Eat it."
	I scooped up a glob of now-soupy oatmeal, put it in my mouth.  It
was salty, disgusting, but I swallowed it.  At least the slimy oatmeal
didn't require chewing.  And the piss did add some flavor to the bland
oatmeal, granted.
	"Keep going."
	I did as I was told, choking down the salty, bitter porridge and
gave him back the bowl.  I burped hot piss, and that nearly made me puke.
For some reason, eating it out of a bowl was worse than drinking it out of
his cock.
	"Thank you for the food, sir," I said, knowing it was expected of
me.  He glared at me, hate in his eyes, mingled with disgust, as if I had
stolen his piss and drunk it without his permission or something.  Like I
had tricked him out of it.
	We hadn't had much interaction since the rape -- no matter what
they said, that was what it was.  But then I suppose sucking off Grunge was
also rape, but . . . shit, the thing was, I kind of liked Grunge.  He was
gross and an absolute genius at humiliating me, but -- well.  That's the
way that Stockholm syndrome starts, isn't it?  You start making excuses for
them, liking them.
	But I couldn't help it.  I liked Grunge a little bit.  He -- you're
going to think I'm an absolute weirdo, and I guess I am a little fucked up
now.  But he was fun.  I kind of liked seeing him, because no matter what,
I wouldn't be bored, and despite his threat, I wouldn't be tortured.  I'd
just have to do something gross.  Fratboy drunken dare stuff.
	Bull and Punk, though, were another matter.  If anyone was going to
kill me, it was them.
	Bull snatched my jaw roughly, almost choking me.  Man, he was fast,
like a wrestler.  Of course, with a neck like that, he probably had been a
wrestler.  Or still was.  Most of them were college aged.  He tilted my
head under his.  "Open your stupid fucking mouth, cunt."
	I did.  I opened it wide, waiting for him to spit in it.  That was
old hat now, almost a daily occurrence.  Some of them did it like they were
just spitting on the street.  Punk often just said "Open," and when I did,
he'd unload.  A convenience.
	But Bull didn't unload his spit in my mouth.  Instead, he used the
thumb on his other hand to plug one wide, hairy nostril, positioned the
other one over my nose, and launched a long, thick rope of salty snot
directly into my mouth.  A farmer blow, we'd call that as a kid.
	"Chew."
	I chewed his snot.  It had chunks in it.  Again, I nearly gagged it
up, but if he was trying to make me sick he had nothing on Grunge.
	"Swallow."
	I did.  "Thank you, sir," I said.  I was going to thank this
bastard for everything he did to me, partially because it seemed to piss
him off.
	He slapped me hard enough to send me to my knees.  Then he hauled
me back up, held my hands behind my back with one ham-hand, and walked me
out to sit in the chair, where Adam was already waiting for me.
	Bull took his place as honor guard -- as I thought of the two guys
who always attended these interviews with Adam -- along with Punk.  Great.
The two that terrified me.
	"Your face is red."
	"I was disciplined for my smart mouth," I said.
	He raised an eyebrow.  I wished I could do that.  He turned to
Bull.  "You hit him?"
	"Yeah.  Felt like it."
	"Good enough reason.  You felt like doing anything else to him?"
	"I might fuck him later."
	He turned back to me.  "You've been getting a lot of that, lately."
	"Not really.  Just a blowjob."
	"For a man who was just insisting on his sexuality, you're pretty
sanguine about that."
	Sanguine.  Who the hell used words like sanguine?  And hung out
with people who thought making someone eat their dirty foot callouses was
hilarious?  "I don't really get to decide what happens to me here.  I get
that."
	"Good.  That's a good thing to understand."  He looked thoughtful.
"If you did have the power to ask for it, would you?"
	"Ask for sex?  From someone here?"
	"Yes.  Just curious.  Sometimes, even straight people, when
surrounded only by members of their own sex, find themselves developing
attraction to them.  Are you attracted to anyone here?"
	"No," I lied.
	"Really?"
	"Really."
	"Are you aware that you talk in your sleep?"
	"I'm not surprised.  Sleep deprivation will do that."
	"You keep talking about skulls."
	I shrugged.  "Who knows what stupid things people dream?"
	"And bulls."
	"Maybe I'm dreaming of Spain.  You know.  Matadors.  Catacombs."
	"The catacombs are in Paris."
	"I'm bad at geography."
	He cracked a smile.  "You've figured something out," he said with a
sort of gleeful wonder.
	"Did I?"
	"Yes.  I wonder if you know what it is, yet.  Do you men know what
it is?"
	"That he's a whiny little fuck?" Bull said.
	"I know what it is," Punk said, his face flat and thoughtful.
	I risked it.  Fuck it all.  Fuck it all to hell.  Maybe this time
he'd kill me and it'd be over.  "Care to share, sir?"  The sir slipped out;
I hadn't planned it.  My tongue had a life of its own.
	He just shook his head slightly, staring off into the distance.  A
thousand yard stare looks incongruous on a guy with green hair.
	Adam turned back to me.  "You've been here a while, now.  What have
you learned?"
	"Not much."
	"Disappointing.  Why would you waste this opportunity?"
	"I learned that you have some sort of philosophy about culture and
programing and you think that you're saving me, somehow.  I know that this
men follow you, but I don't know why.  I think maybe you kidnapped them
like me and you somehow brainwashed them."
	He laughed out loud, and so did Bull.  Punk just continued to look
thoughtful.
	"Go on."
	"I know that some of this is about sex, and a lot of it is about
humiliation."
	"Do you know how much of that you've chosen?"
	That took me aback.  "What?"
	"How much have you chosen to focus this experience on humiliation
-- of which, of course, the sexual use to which you've been put is just a
part?"
	I untangled his syntax.  "None of it.  I wouldn't choose to eat an
unwashed ass, let alone of a guy, I wouldn't choose to get ra- fucked by
another guy, and I wouldn't choose to drink his piss.  I sure as hell
wouldn't choose to be waterboarded."
	"How was life before this?"
	Sudden change of topic ahead, I guess.  Watch for pedestrians.
"Um, fine.  Better than this."
	"What did you do every night?"
	"Different things."
	"How many different things?"
	"Well, watch a movie, read a book, go out -- sometimes."
	"So, those movies, books, nights out: how well are they serving you
now?"
	"I admit it.  Outside of the crushing boredom, my life now is
certainly more exciting."
	He paused.  "Do you know what makes you a worthless piece of shit?"
	"What?"
	"Were you happy?"
	"Yeah, sometimes," I said.  "Are you?"
	"Ecstatic," he said.  "Always.  What did you do for work?"
	"You know that.  You called my boss.  I worked in accounts billable
in a multinational corporation."
	"Did you like it?"
	"No," I said.  "No secret there."
	"Why not?"
	"I hated my coworkers."
	"As much as you hate these two young men?"
	Bull glared at me, and Punk just smiled a little, but it never
reached his eyes.
	I was at a loss.  "I don't hate . . . "
	"Don't lie."
	"But -- they'll . . . "
	Bull interrupted.  "Faggot, when we finish this interview, we're
going to beat the fuck out of you and pull a fucking train on your faggot
ass.  No matter what you say next."
	"Then no, I didn't hate them as much as I hate these two men."
	He thought about that for a long while, and I took the opportunity
to sip the sweet white wine he had laid out for me.  It cut through the
taste of piss and snot and filled my mouth with warm, honey sweetness.
"Holy shit," I said, looking at the glass.
	"Royal Tokaji.  One of the single most delicious things ever made
by man."
	"It's . . . fucking . . . "
	"Exquisite.  See, the grapes are attacked by a kind of mold, that
punctures their skin, causes them to shrivel.  They rot on the vine, their
sugars condensing into the black, shriveled, moldy raisins.  Then they're
collected, pressed, and made into sweet nectar.  It used to be only the
kings of Hungary would be allowed to drink it.  The sweet perfect sunshine
of a rotten, diseased grape."
	"Oh," I said.
	"Oh what?"
	I turned to the two young men.  "I want to apologize," I said.
"Knowing that it won't do any good and you're still going to beat me for
this.  But I misspoke.  I don't hate you more than I hated them."
	"Explain," Adam said, like a school teacher placidly teaching a
theorem.
	"A metaphor, right?  They were fat, happy grapes.  You guys are
mold.  You're trying to condense me into something useful.  I get it."
	"Do you?"
	"I don't accept it.  You're all fucking nuts and this is wrong.
But I get it.  And I don't hate you more than them, because even though you
raped me and nearly killed me, you at least did something.  Something you
thought might do some good.  I guess I hate that less than -- than the way
they just sat there.  Ripening."
	"And on this scale of hate, how much do you hate yourself?"
	Fuck.  He was in my head.
	"For being like them, a hell of a lot.  But I don't want to be like
you."
	"Good."  He stood.  "You've learned a lot.  Now, I think these two
young men have some business with you."

XIII
	I made to head for my cell, but Bull slapped the back of my head.
"Wrong way, faggot.  This way."  He grabbed the back of my neck and
directed me toward my old cell.  Shit.
	"Strip," Punk said, once they had closed the door to the now
featureless black room.
	I took off my clothes, handed them to Punk, who threw them in a
pile near the door.
	"I want you to get this through your stupid skull, faggot," Bull
said.  "You're fucking nothing here.  Get it?  You're nothing, and you got
nothing.  No clothes but what we give you.  No bed.  Fuck, you will have to
earn back the right to piss in a toilet, cunt."
	"Yes, sir.  Can I ask why?"
	The back of Bull's meaty hand rocked my head back, sent hot pain
through my jaw and nose.  "No.  Kneel."
	The floor was hard, cold, painful on my bare knees.
	"Suck my cock," he said, pulling out his semi-soft dick and hooking
his sweatpants under his balls.
	I ran my tongue over the head of it, gingerly at first, but then he
pulled my head down on it, held it in my mouth while it hardened.  Soon, it
filled my mouth and invaded my throat.  He just held it there.  Compared to
Grunge, his cock had very little smell or flavor, and as soon as the
comparison entered my head my nipples hardened and my cock began to
stiffen.
	Yup.  I was a faggot.
	Bull bore me backwards, to lay me down and pin me to the ground
with his cock, like the needle through an insect.  He didn't thrust so much
as plunge, once, as deep as he could.  I choked and gagged, but he wouldn't
let me up, and fortunately I managed to keep the oatmeal I had just eaten
down, although it came up enough to taste the urine mixed with the
sweetness of the wine.  I was short on breath, and could feel the panic
from my waterboarding rising up in my gut.
	I couldn't see him, but Punk had pulled my legs up to bare my ass,
and was pushing a wet, greasy finger in and out.  I won't say it felt
great, but it had been so long since I came and I kept thinking about the
feel and smell of Skull's bare chest, of Grunge's stinking hairy asshole.
I had to think about those things, to keep the panic back, because my mind
was a country of only two regions: mountains of conflicted shameful desire,
and swamps of panic and despair.
	Then Punk sank his cock in my ass, and he and Bull set up a rhythm
of rocking in and out in tandem.  My body reacted, and I knew I should feel
shame, but I was beyond shame anymore.  It was just a thing that happened
to me: a hard-on, leaking precum, turned on by what was legally and morally
a rape, my rape.
	Punk pulled out, and a moment later so did Bull trailing a thick
string of elastic slime from my lips to his glistening cockhead.
	They switched places, and I expected to taste Punk's cock fresh
from my asshole -- not something I was looking forward to.  But although
Bull did plunge his cock in my ass, as hard and painful and aggressive as
the last time, Punk reached behind him and pulled something out of the
elastic of his plaid bondage pants.
	A gun.  Did he always carry a gun there?  He held it, black and
portentous, in front of my face.
	"Do you think this is loaded, bitch?" he asked.
	"Yes, sir," I said, my throat drying.  Bull was doing his level
best to hurt me, impaling me with his cock.  But I barely registered the
pain in my asshole.
	"Suck it," he said.  "This is my cock, bitch.  Suck it till it
comes your head off."
	And he put the barrel between my lips.  It tasted of grease and
metal.  His finger rested on the trigger.  A single twitch, and he'd kill
me.
	A single whim, and I was dead.  That's all I was: a toy, broken on
a whim.
	"Fucking cap him," Bull said, slamming his sweaty hips against my
ass cheeks.  "I've never fucked anyone to death before.  It'll be a fucking
story, man."
	Punk stared down at me with those cold, calculating eyes.  "Should
I?" he said to me.
	"Uhuh" I moaned around the barrel.  I knew that I was crying; I
could feel the tears burn my eyes.
	Punk's other hand reached back and stroked my still-hard -- how? --
cock.  "Here's the deal, fag.  If you cum, I pull the trigger."
	I tried to think of anything other than sex, but every thought was
about the hard metal in my mouth, the hard cock in my ass, and the smell of
their sweat.  I had been denied sexual release so long, there was a real
danger that even under all this stress, Punk's slowly stroking hand would
set me off.
	And then Bull found my prostate, and I knew I was a dead man.  I
had read about prostate gland stimulation before, how some men could come
from that alone.  I saw why.  Each time the head of his cock hit that part
of my ass, my cock spasmed.  The fear just increased the pleasure, until I
couldn't tell where fear and pleasure and pain and humiliation ended.  They
were all the same thing.
	I was a dirty faggot, a piece of shit, and they could do what they
wanted with me, with my life or my death.
	They owned me, and I saw that.
	And it felt right to me.  It felt -- amid all the fog of terror --
absolutely right.
	I sucked on the barrel of the gun, moaning every time Bull's
rhythmic thrust punched that part of my guts.  Enough precum had leaked out
that Punk's hand was slick with it, sliding now over my wet cock.  He
started squeezing and massaging upward to the head, and he leaned down to
put his face close to mine and the gun.
	"Cum," he said, his breath sour in my nose.  "Cum, and I'll pull
the trigger.  It'll be the best fucking nut of your life, faggot."
	I could only watch his finger, the tiny muscles tightening on the
trigger, the skin paling where it pressed against the metal, with greater
and greater force.
	Bull slammed my prostate one more time, and something hot filled my
ass.  He pulled out, squiring hot globs of cum all over my dick and Punk's
hand, which now well-lubricated slid freely up and down my tender shaft.
	My balls were pulled up so hard they ached, and then, despite my
best efforts, I remembered the smell of Grunge's ass, the taste of Bull's
piss, the feel of him in my asshole -- all of it, every humiliation, every
pain and minor pleasure.  And my nuts clenched painfully up against my
abdomen and I came, powerfully, in agony, throbbing against Punk's wet
hand.
	My nipples hardened so fast I thought they'd fall off.  The straps
of Punk's bondage pants stroked my sides, his hard smooth boots pressed
against my hips.  I seemed to cum forever, trying even then to hold it back
but knowing it was too late.  I could hear the spurts of cum hitting Punk's
back, smacking with force against the leather.  I would die.  I was dead.
But at least he let me finish coming.  I felt a calm terrified gratitude
began to unfold at the last weak pumps ripped through my body.
	I could breathe again.  The fear returned, in a wave, like salty
water lapping over my head.
	"Sorry," Punk said.  "We had a deal."
	He looked in my eyes -- and pulled the trigger.
	Click.
	He got off me and, after wiping the spit off his gun, put it back
in the elastic of his pants.
	I was covered in cum.  Bull's, yes, but my own load had put his to
shame.
	And I was alive.
	Wasn't I?  Was I?  The realization of what had just happened --
that I had resigned myself to my own death -- came over me.
	Bull pulled me up, but my legs wouldn't hold.  He held me, then, by
the armpits in front of Punk's sneering, pierced face.
	"Do you get it yet?"
	I was crying too hard to answer.  Twice he had done this to me,
nearly killed me.
	"Do you?"
	"No," I said, "I'm sorry, please, I don't."
	"What's the worst thing we can do to you?"
	"You can kill me, I get that, please don't."
	"But what if we do?  What then?"
	"I don't want to die."
	"Really?"
	"Yes!"
	He slapped me, leaving cum on my face.  "Really?"
	"I want to live."
	"Then why the fuck haven't you, jackass?"
	I saw him, through my tears, for the first time.  Saw them both,
for the first time.
	"Oh."
	Bull dropped me, and I crumpled.  Then they left, taking my -- no,
their clothes, because I didn't own anything.
	Well.  I owned one thing.
	Punk had shown it to me.
	It was the only thing I had, and the only thing I had ever really
had.  The only thing accident or sociopath or bad luck couldn't ever take
away from me.
	And I had wasted it my whole life.


XIV

	I slept on the cum-smear but in the morning (I suppose) Skull
opened the door.  Shirtless, again.  He loved that tattoo.  So did I; it as
growing on me.
	"Come on," he said.  "Can you stand?"
	"Yeah.  My ass is sore, but I can stand."
	"You're going back to the other room," he said.  "And if you want
to wash off I've got some clothes for you to wear."
	"I'd like that," I said.  "Thank you."
	"Yeah, we all saw the video.  I thought you did good."
	There was a time that knowing someone saw me cry, let alone get
raped and fucked with to the point of breaking down, would have made me
ashamed.
	I had been an idiot.  A real piece of shit.
	I washed in cold water, gasping and shivering but taking my time.
Then Skull gave me a sweatshirt and a pair of cotton sweatpants to wear.
They felt good after the cold water, and I took a moment to enjoy the
sensation of them on my skin.
	"I'll bring you some food," he said, taking me to the cell.
	A few minutes later, he came with a bowl of oatmeal.  No one seemed
to have pissed in it; I ate it quickly, a few gulps.  Then I gave him the
bowl.
	"Wait," I said, as he turned to go.
	"Yeah?"
	"My lips are kind of sore, but I was thinking maybe -- "
	His eyebrows rose.  "Maybe what?"
	Instead of answering, I stepped close to him, put my face up next
to his dirty blond hair, and inhaled the scent of unwashed hair and sweaty
young man.  I dared to run my head down his side, stroking the tattoo of
the skeletal hand from his neck to where it rose up from his waistband.
	"I thought you weren't a faggot," he said.
	My hand cupped his balls through the black pants.  "Fuck me," I
said, watching myself do it from without.
	"You're probably not supposed to give us commands, you know."
	"Then punish me.  Just do it with your cock."
	"Wow.  You turned whore fast."
	I dropped to my knees and pressed my face to his growing bulge.  He
unzipped it and pulled out a long, slender cock wrapped in a smooth
foreskin.  I tongued the foreskin back.
	Was I a faggot?  I supposed so.
	Or maybe I wasn't anything anymore.  But I knew I needed to do
this.
	I licked the cheese from his head then swallowed him down.  He
moaned, thrusting gently against my tortured throat.  He hardened, and his
balls rose as I stroked them.  He stroked my head, gently pushing me down
on his cock.
	I didn't tease him, hold back, or do anything fancy.  I just
rhythmically, steadily sucked his cock, moving my lips and tongue up and
down the silky-smooth shaft.
	Soon, his voice grew husky and he rasped, "I'm going to cum."
	I held his cock in my mouth and as it started jumping licked the
cum directly from his pisshole.  I swallowed it, rolling it first against
the back of my tongue to taste it.
	He put his wet cock back, zipped back up, and regarded me with a
curious expression.  Then he left.
	I exercised, ate, slept.  They played images of me sucking dick and
getting raped, and I lay on my cot and watched them with a certain detached
interest.  When bored, I just went into my mind.  I spent a lot of time
sorting through my thoughts over the next days.  I imagined I was cleaning
out an attic, throwing away anything that no longer served.
	Eventually, days later, Jarhead showed up.
	"Checkup?" I said, starting to disrobe.
	"No.  Keep your clothes on, you cocksucker.  Adam wants to talk to
you."
	He sat me down across from Adam, took his position next to someone
else: a man wearing one of those featureless white masks with a creepy
neutral expression.  He was wearing a black t-shirt; his left arm had a
bandage on it.  At first, I assumed he was injured, and then thought it
might be a tattoo.  Whoever this was, they didn't want him identified.
	So there were more of them than just this group.  And that they
didn't want me able to identify them all was a heartening thought.
	Adam poured thick black fluid into little cups.  "Espresso?"
	"Please," I said.  "Sugar, too, if you have it."
	"It's not espresso without it.  A bit of rosewater in yours?"
	"Weird.  Sounds interesting.  Let's try it."
	"So -- tell me what you've learned."
	"You own me."
	"Yes."
	"You all, that is, not just you, because you're not in charge.  No
one here is in charge."
	"Yes.  Go on.  What exactly do we own?"
	"My body.  You can do anything you want to it, whether I think it
is disgusting or great.  Feed me expensive wine, rape me with a gun, kill
me, fuck me.  Doesn't matter.  I don't get a say in that."
	"You placed emphasis on the word 'that,' implying, of course, that
you do get a say in something.  But if we own your body, what do you have
control over?"
	"My mind."
	"Really?"
	"Oh, you've fucked with it, but only because I've let you.  Or
rather, because I already let other people.  Everyone has been fucking with
my mind since I was born.  Telling me this and that, do this, think this,
don't think that.  A whole ton of 'should' and 'should not.'"
	"And you -- ?"
	"I let them.  Take drinking piss, for instance."
	"Go on."
	"Drinking piss is disgusting because I say it is.  But piss is just
water, salt, a few organic compounds.  Licking ass is disgusting, but ass
is just skin, sweat, dirt, hair.  This espresso is delicious, but really
it's just water, organic compounds, and oils.  Everything is just -- "
	"What it is."
	"Exactly."
	"So you volunteered to suck a cock.  Insisted, practically."
	"Yes.  I liked it, too."
	"Why did you like it?"
	"Because I chose to.  I chose to give him pleasure with my mouth.
He chose to take it."
	"But what if he hadn't let you choose?  What if he had held you
down and choked you with it?"
	I fell silent.  I balked at the logical conclusion, but he said it
for me:
	"Are you suggesting," he said, "that you should lay back and just
enjoy it?"
	"Not quite," I said.  "I'm saying that the worst you can do is kill
me."
	"We can do worse than that."
	"No, sorry to contradict you, but you can't.  And you can
waterboard me or shock me or whatever, but it won't change the truth.  You
can kill me, and that'll end sensation and mind, and that's bad -- but it's
ultimately trivial.  You can't change my mind, only cut it off.  And
anything you do short of that is beyond trivial."
	"You have a view of the world that will not be popular outside
these walls."
	"Yeah."
	"You're trivializing the pain of those who are abused, aren't you?"
	"No.  Pain is in the mind.  It's real.  But our reaction to that
pain is our choice.  I'm not going to shrink from pain anymore, and I'm
going to grab pleasure whenever I can.  If that means just lying back and
enjoying my rape, so be it."
	"So are you gay?  A faggot?"
	"I'm whatever you want to say I am.  Ultimately, though, I'm not
anything.  I sometimes suck cock, with pleasure; maybe sometime I'll fuck a
pussy again.  But I'm not gay, not straight.  I'm water, salt, organic
compounds."
	"Piss."
	"Yeah, well, you are what you eat."
	"You know," Adam said, smiling into his demitasse.  "We're going to
have to test your newfound zen."
	"I suspected as much."
	"What do you think will happen after that?"
	"I don't know," I said.  "You might let me go.  You might shoot me
in the head.  You might offer me a job.  You might nominate me for an
Academy Award.  Who the hell knows what you might do to my body?  That's
not really my business."
	"You know that the only reason you wanted to suck his cock is that
we manipulated you into it, right?  We set him up as the good guy.  He's
not.  We sit around, watch videos of you, and laugh at your faggot ass.  He
laughs as loud as the rest of them."
	That actually would have probably hurt my feelings a few days ago,
although I wouldn't have been able to recognize or admit it even to myself.
But now?
	"I don't mind being laughed at.  He might loathe me, but he let me
suck his cock and I gave him some pleasure.  That's what I wanted to do.
His view of me is not my business."
	"Break it down.  What is your business?"
	"Only things I can control."
	"Which are?"
	"My mind's reaction to events."
	"And?"
	"That's it.  I don't even own my body, and that's the thing: I
never really did."
	"You talk the philosophy.  Let's see if you can live it."
	"What's this test?"
	"Apprehensive?  Nervous?"
	"Not even remotely."
	"These two fine young men are going to blind-fold you and bring you
upstairs.  There, you will provide an evening of entertainment and
amusement for a group of men, some of whom you know, and some of whom will
be incognito.  They will degrade you, humiliate you, hurt you, use you, and
mark you."
	"And what's the test?"
	"You'll figure that out.  Or you won't.  That's the test."  XV

	They took the blindfold off, and I looked around the room.
	It was a living room.  A big plasma TV showing clips of me doing
various things, most of them degrading.  Right now on the screen I was
picking apart filthy underwear and sucking down the threads.  A long
leather couch with three people on it -- Bull; another guy in a military
balaclava with bandages on his torso covering, I was sure now, tattoos; and
a third guy wearing a bandana around his lower face and a leather jacket.
Several chairs.  Grunge was there, grinning and saying "sweet" at nearly
everything anyone said to him.  Jarhead and Mask came up with me, of
course, and they took places in metal folding chairs.  A coffee table was
pressed against one wall, and on it were various devices of torture,
including the wand and the stungun, as well as a stack of towels.  Punk
stared at me from near the table, where he leaned against the wall, his
eyes cold and hard.  I looked for Skull, but didn't see him at first.  I
was strangely disappointed, but then he and Adam came in.
	"This isn't all of us," Adam said, "but it's a quorum.  So let's
call this to order."
	People quieted down and turned their eyes to Adam, who walked over
to stand next to me.
	"This piece of shit thinks he has become human.  It's our job to
figure out if that's true and dispose of him appropriately."
	"Seems like the little bitch should take his clothes off," Jacket
said behind his black bandana.
	I did as he suggested and stood there, waiting naked for whatever
came next, my shoulders heaving with each breath in anticipation.  There
was fear, too, but I took hold of it, put it in its place, just as they
were about to put me in my place.  But with the fear, I had real control,
and they had no real control of anything but my body.
	Bandage's long foot snaked out, hooked my ankle out from under me.
"Faggots on the floor," he growled.
	I stumbled, fell to my knees, then deliberately sank prone, face
down.  This put me inches from Balaclava's dirty Nike's.  He pushed it into
my face, and without being told, I licked the mud off the shiny black
plastic of the shoe.
	After making me lick his shoe, then Bull's boots for a while, they
rolled me over.  Bandage dropped his jeans to the floor, stepped out of
them.  He had long, almost hairless legs, and no underwear.  It was hot in
this room, hot enough that everyone was sweating a little bit, so when he
straddled my face I wasn't surprised to see sweat matting the thin hair
between his legs.  He squatted, slowly, spreading his ass cheeks with his
hands, and I met his descending asshole with my tongue, eagerly burying it
into this stranger's bitter raunchy asshole.  His ass blocked out my sight,
and my only breath came from between his legs, smelling of his sweaty nuts,
his shitty hole, and sweat.  A chorus of shoes kicked at me, some hard
enough to bruise and make me grunt, others stomping or pressing on parts of
my body.  The bones in my hand were ground under someone's heavy boot;
another shoe flicked my balls rhythmically.
	Someone pinched my nipples and twisted, hard enough to make me cry
out into Bandage's ass.  He just laughed and pressed it down more firmly
over my lips and nose, until I couldn't breathe at all.
	Two strong, rough hands grabbed my legs firmly and pulled them up
to bare my asshole, which received its own round of kicking and grinding of
shoes.
	A cursory attempt to lube my hole was followed immediately by an
invasion, accompanied with cheers and encouragement from the crowd.
Bandage pulled off my face and turned around, sticking his long, slender
cock between my lips.  I caught a glimpse of my fucker: Mask.  I was filled
with strange cock, and Punk was doing his level best to twist my nipples
off.  At that point, Bull powered up the wand and pressed it firmly against
my balls, where its alternating heating and cooling elements gave the
impression of my skin burning.  It felt like my balls were on fire, burning
off.  But I couldn't scream or even whimper.  My throat was too full of
Bandage's aggressive fucking.
	It was too much sensation: pain in every orifice.  I sank into the
agony, let myself rock on its throbbing ebb and flow.  Mask had a different
rhythm, slower and more sure, than Bandage's unpredictable choking thrusts.
And the rhythm of my searing nuts was my own heartbeat, driving blood
through the confused nerves.  Other, secondary rhythms intruded: someone
stomping on my hand, Punk twisting my nipples.
	It was pain because I said it was pain.  I tried to hold it,
embrace it rather than block it out, and it faded.  It felt good to be
filled up, even when it stretched me to the breaking point.  It felt good
to be touched and twisted and kicked.  It even tasted good to suck down the
spurts of cum that Bandage was just then pouring down my throat and then,
as he pulled out, on my face.
	His cock was replaced, instantly, by Bull's, just as Mask grunted
behind his expressionless mask and slammed his iron cock home into my guts.
I pulled my hands out from under the soles of shoes and pulled Bull's hips
closer to my face, burying him to the balls in my mouth.  Then I pulled
away, gasped out a command "Fuck me harder, you pussies," and swallowed him
again.
	They laughed, and someone -- I no longer cared who, and didn't look
up from Bull's pubes to see -- filled my asshole with hard cock again.
	The night continued, wave after wave of cock and pain, cum and
bruises.  Before long, Bandage and Mask were ready to go again, and this
time I sucked Mask and Bandage fucked me.  My asshole was numb, my mouth
and jaw were sore, but still they fucked me and still I eagerly took them
in.  I refused to be degraded.  I made becoming a bitch, my bitch.
	Only Adam stayed aloof.  Grunge joined in once, ready to fuck me,
but I spat out the cock currently in my mouth and said "No, you wait.  I
want you in my mouth."
	"He fucking likes it dirty, huh?" Jacket said, taking Grunge's
place between my legs.
	Skull, too, let me suck him once, but didn't come, and didn't stay
long before being replaced with more aggressive cock.
	I didn't read anything into any of this: didn't care, frankly.  It
didn't matter.  It was other people's business, not mine.
	Finally, as fucking me became more painful for them than me, they
began to retire their sweaty, fluid-slicked bodies to the couch or floor or
chairs.  A few of them made me drink their piss, but even that was largely
pro-forma.
	I could feel cum -- I hoped it was just cum -- leaking from my ass,
and my stomach gurgled with their loads.
	Only Punk and Mask -- who seemed to have infinite cum -- remained
engaged in tormenting me.  Mask was fucking me once again, slow and steady
now, and had been for a while.  He had already cum twice, so I knew that he
might go for a while.  I admired his ability to get hard again so soon.
Ah, youth.
	Punk was spitting in my mouth and teasing it with his slimy cock.
I licked his spit off my lips, and reached out with my tongue for his
cockhead.  Finally, he slid it between my lips.
	"You're one nasty little faggot," he said, "Doing all this shit."
	"Yeah, he's a real faggot bitch," Mask said, his voice odd behind
the plastic.
	"Fuck that cunt face," someone said from the couch.  It might have
been Grunge; I heard his giggle afterwards.  "Sweet!"
	My hands again ran up the side of Punk's legs, over the tight
fabric of his bondage pants, around his waistband, to his back --
	We both realized what was happening at the same time.  My tongue
froze on his cock.  His cock froze in my mouth.
	My hand froze on the gun he kept in the waistband against his lower
back.
	My feet broke free of Mask's slippery grip, kicked him out of my
asshole and onto his back.  I tried to kip up, but I was stiff and weak.  A
gang rape does tend to wear one down.  Plus I had a scrawny, tatted punk
with several additional ounces of metal sitting on my chest with his cock
very close to my mouth.
	So I broke the first and only rule of the cocksucker.
	I bit him.
	He roared and pulled back, leaving the gun in my hand and his
weight off my chest for the moment it took me to roll out from under him.
The lube, cum, and piss helped me escape his frantic grip.
	At this point, others had realized what was happening, and also
came for me.  I evaded their grasp as best I could, tried to get to my feet
but could only manage my knees at first.  But a man on his knees with a gun
is stronger than a man on his feet with a damp flaccid cock.  Words of
wisdom.
	"Back, fuckers!" I said, stabbing forward with the gun.
	"It's not loaded," Punk said to me, but I looked at Grunge whose
face revealed his emotions most readily.
	"Bullshit," I barked.  "Back, or I'll fucking kill you, don't think
I won't."  I could feel the cum leaking from my asshole, and laughed at the
absurdity.
	"You won't," Adam said, stepping toward me.
	I managed to get to my feet, now that hands weren't pawing at me.
The wand, its pain nearly trivial now, fell off me to my feet.
	"Adam, I was trained by the nastiest fucking sociopaths on the
planet."
	He stopped.  "Oh."  A smile flirted with his face.  "Yes."
	"Everyone, back against that wall, the one with the TV."  Which was
showing a clip of Bull pissing in my mouth.  "Now, assholes."
	They moved against the wall, then Jarhead lurched toward me.  He'd
have easily disarmed me, I suspect, but he slipped on the puddle of cum and
lube.  He also might have died trying to disarm me, because when he
slipped, the bullet I fired went over his head and into the TV, which
sputtered and sparked and died.
	"Fuck!" Grunge said.
	"I will fucking kill you," I said again.  "Wall.  Now.  Crawl, you
piece of shit."
	Jarhead crawled up against the wall, sat against it.
	"Down on the ground."
	Everyone sank down.  It felt pretty damned good to have them do
what I said, actually, and my poor maligned cock was rock-hard.
	"So what now?" Adam asked.
	"I walk out that door.  You stay here.  Oh, and probably a towel
somewhere in that list of events, too."  A thought occurred to me.  "You
can't do this again."
	"We don't need to do this again," Adam said.  "We won."
	"I know," I said.
	"So what will you do?  Turn us in?"
	"I won't need to.  Besides, I have some stuff to do and cops would
get in the way."  Holding the gun in my right hand, I pointed with my left
at Grunge, then Skull.  "You two.  You can come with me, or you can stay
here."
	"Why us?" Skull asked.
	"Because I like you."
	"You know that shit about being nice to you was just a -- a trick,
right?" Skull asked.
	"Yes.  I also know that you're full of shit.  It was part of the
script, that's true, but you're a method actor.  So come with me and help
me or stay."
	"Help you do what?" Grunge said.
	"Adam has something here.  He's a kid, though, and he's doing it
wrong.  Help me figure out how to do it right."
	"You just want to suck my grungy balls," Grunge said.
	I had to laugh that he had guessed my secret name for him.  "You
fucking know it, you filthy asshole."
	"I'm going with him," Grunge said.  "Who can say no to that?"
	Adam said to Skull, "You should go too."
	"I'm not going to be your secret agent or anything if that's what
you're thinking."
	"Furthest thought from my mind.  He's right.  This is the way I
figured it out, but there has to be a better way to teach people how to be
free."
	Skull looked at my face.  A slow grin spread over his.  "Yeah.
Okay."
	"Good boy.  Let's go."
	"Good luck," Adam said, as I backed out of the room.  I grabbed a
towel from the table, wrapped it around my naked waist.
	"Yeah.  And Adam?" I said, "Thanks."
	"You're welcome.  And I'm sorry."
	"Don't be stupid," I said.
	And I closed the door between us and the rest of them.
	"What's your name?" I asked, walking down a gravel path to a dirt
road flanked by the two young men.
	"Kyle," Grunge said.
	Skull said, "I'm Connor."
	"Good to meet you," I said, opening the front door of the house.
"I'm Tom."
	Skull wrapped his arm lightly around my shoulder.  "Good to meet
you, Tom."