Timo was always on the lookout. This was both his personality and his business. This morning saw him walking toward the Los Angeles flower market, long before the sun was up. His walk took him along East 14th Street and then down Wall Street through Skid Row — a neighborhood long ago chewed up and spit out. The streets were littered with trash and here and there were puddles of uncertain fluids that gave off unpleasant smells.
At this hour, the homeless village was asleep in their tents on the sidewalk, here and there someone slept wedged between tents in a pile of cardboard. As Timo crossed to the other side of the street, a figure emerged from behind a parked truck. “Yo, can you help a bro?” he croaked out. Timo stopped two steps in front of the man and looked at him for a long moment.
“What do you need?,” he asked gently.
“A balloon, bra,” the man said, almost desperately. Again, Timo looked at him. The man pressed on, “Chiva. You know…, tar. I’m hurtin’ pretty bad.” That part was obviously true. So was a lot else, but Timo stuck to the moment.
“How long will it take you to find a balloon if you have money?” he asked directly.
The face in the dark under a hoodie was hard to read. He’d hesitated, maybe surprised by the question. “After first Mass.” He dug his hands into his pockets. “Our Lady of the Angels,” he added.
Timo handed the man some folding money and said, “Will you be OK by noon?”
Again, the man looked at the money and hesitated, considering. “Yeah… yeah, I’ll be good by noon. I’ll be fine. Thanks man. Thanks.”
“There’s a park across from the church,” said Timo. “Be there at noon. I’ll have something for you.” And with that, Timo walked off down Wall Street toward the flower markets where he found breakfast in a crowded coffee shop and spent an hour reading the news.
And then to business, precisely, from one stall to another like a bee selecting flowers, Timo quickly assembled wild bouquets in every color and carried them all away in a backpack and carryall to his place in the Arts District. His neighborhood had large modern apartment complexes mixed in with luxury lofts, parking lots and breweries, restaurants, small factories and tech firms. Timo stopped at a tall steel gate mid-block, punched in a code on a keypad and slipped in through a small inset door. This put him on a driveway that ran the length of the buildings on both sides and then hooked left into a small courtyard.
A steel rollup door, a steel fire door and security lamps with cameras were the only features on all the blank walls that lined the driveway and surrounded the empty courtyard. Timo keyed in a code on a pad next to the fire door and then disappeared inside.
Later that morning, Timo had a pleasant walk from his place to the park. He stopped along the way to get a couple fast food burgers, an order of fries and a soda. Timo considered that with the money he’d given him, the guy wasn’t going to be chasing a high. At best he’d quit being dope sick and maybe he’d be able to eat.
Even in the darkness of his first encounter, Timo had sized up and categorized the man’s frame, the length of his cervical vertebrae, the breadth of his shoulders, the ratio of the femur to the tibia, the width of the ilium. All these put together in the present circumstances looked to Timo like a possible bargain. He was always on the lookout for a bargain. As he walked up 2nd Street in the light of day, it was easy to spot the lump of dirty clothes lying on a bench at the edge of the park. Timo stopped at a little distance from him and took in what he could. The figure on the bench looked beaten.
He walked up to the bench, pushed the man’s feet aside and sat down. Timo opened the lunch bag and said, “Can you eat?” The man sat up slowly blinking his eyes. Timo handed him the soda with a straw in it. Now that he could see him in the sunlight, he could confirm, this wasn’t so much a man as an aged and beaten boy. He could easily see in his face the ravages of addiction and living rough. The fix he’d got this morning hadn’t put everything right. It hadn’t cured what was probably Hep-C. The eyes showed yellow and the skin looked bad. The leg muscles were partially atrophied, the knees stuck out sharply as he sat. The boy put down the drink and Timo handed him a burger. “How old are you?”
The question must have struck him as odd; he looked at Timo for a while and then with what seemed a certain intelligence emerging from the haze in his eyes he said, “What’s it to you?”
“I’m trying to assess the extent of the damage,” replied Timo. “It may be that you’re still worth something.”
“Oh for fuck sake, you’re some religious do-gooder?’
“No,” said Timo simply and waited two beats before repeating, “No. Not at all. How old are you?”
The pile of dirty clothes looked back at Timo for a long moment and then said, “Nineteen, almost two months ago.”
Timo looked off at passing foot traffic for a while, letting the boy eat. “That makes you an adult in California.”
“Not for long,” said the boy between chewing and swallowing. He turned to look at Timo and said, “You may be the last person I ever talk to. You’ve been very kind to me. Thank you.” He returned for a time to his burger, chewing slowly, looking inwardly, looking at his situation. He looked up at Timo after a while with a puzzled sort of look. “It’s like, you know how a pitcher can get into trouble all of a sudden?” the boy mused, looking for an analogy. “You know what I mean? A base hit on the first pitch. A hit batsman on the second pitch and then a sac bunt with an error and there you are, with the bases loaded, nobody out, and their best hitter in the cleanup spot. And you look around and you wonder, ‘How the fuck did I get here?’”
Timo watched the boy methodically get through the french fries, one after another, without expression. “What’s your story?” asked Timo. “You must have got the bases loaded pretty fast.”
“Yeah,” the boy agreed, and slumped somewhat. “From high school, yeah. Me and Jason. We got hooked in high school. After a while Jason died and I had to run. I’ve stolen a lot of shit since then. And then I stole from a guy who’s going to kill me. With a hammer. He’s looking for me.” He shook his head as if to clear his thoughts and said with resignation, “I don’t think I have long.”
Timo studied the boy’s face for a long moment and then, as if having come to a decision, said simply, “I can fix that.”
The boy shook his head sadly, “No. No you cannot,” he said. “Some fuckups are so fucked up they can’t be fixed.”
Timo was quiet for a while. “Well, for the person who wants to kill you, I can’t fix his hurts. But I can make sure he will not harm or kill you. I’ll show you how if you’d like.”
After long consideration, the boy said, “What I’d like, is another fix and some quiet time before I die.”
Timo reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a glassine packet that he held in front of the boy’s face. “Pure China white,” he said. “And I have a clean place to shoot. You wanna go?”
The boy thought about this feverishly for some time. “How far away is it?”
Timo took out his phone and worked at it with his thumbs, then looked up at the boy and said, “Not far at all. If you like, we could go now. What do you say?”
For maybe the last 18 months or so, the guy had been living like a rat, scavenging, stealing, or begging enough daily to feed his addiction. Whatever red flags this offer must have thrown up, especially to someone street-wise, this did seem a large piece of cheese. But he did finish the second burger before he made ready to go. The journey was short. A few steps from the bench, a car waited at the curb. Timo opened the back door, ushered the boy in, then climbed in after him.
The drive was not long, but the boy nodded off twice and then came awake with a jerk. The steel gate across Timo’s driveway opened for the car and then closed as soon as it was inside. Timo and the boy walked from the car through an open steel rollup door, across a wide anteroom to an open elevator. The elevator went down two floors and opened on to a hallway. Timo walked the boy down the hallway and through a back door into a locker room in a gymnasium complex. Just inside the door, they encountered an imposing fellow in sweats standing at parade rest. Timo put his hand low down on the boy’s back and urged him toward the man to whom he said, “Get him cleaned up — hair, lice, everything, and then put in an IV line on his left hand. He wants China white.” He turned to the boy and said confidentially, “How about that, hmm?”
A few hours later the ragamuffin was shaved from below his ears to the tops of his toes, deloused, teeth cleaned, dressed in underwear, sweats top and bottom, and slippers, and then parked in a room with a long padded table in the middle and no chairs. Almost as soon as the boy lay down on the table, a man in a white coat wheeled in a cabinet with blinking red and green lights and lots of wires and got him hooked up while another person put a pillow under his head and a folded up blanket under his knees. The technician put a small remote control into the boy’s hand and explained that he had only to press the button and the machine would deliver a dose of China white through the IV line in his other hand.
The boy was leaning on one elbow at this point; he looked up at the tech for a moment, looked at the button, and then pushed it with his thumb. For a while, he watched the man’s face as he waited, unsure. And then, pretty quickly he was sure. This was something new and big and delicious. He lay back on his pillow as his eyes rolled up, rushing into an unfamiliar land now much more beautiful than any he’d experienced. The techs kept a close watch on him the whole time as he’d emerge from time to time into a semi-consciousness and press the button again until finally he’d exhausted the machine’s supply of smack — and then they raised the side rails on the bed and left him to sleep.
Late in the morning, Timo found the boy as he was waking. “A bit fuzzy are we?” he wondered as he put the side rail down and helped the boy on to his feet and into a bathroom. A couple of white coats came along and steadied him into the shower and then got him dried off and back into clean sweats and seated on the bed with his legs dangling over the side. “Are you hungry?” he asked. The boy shook his head. No, definitely not. “Can you get these down? Can you swallow these two pills?” he asked as he handed him the pills — ibogaine hydrochloride — and a paper cup with water.
“In an hour or so, you will begin to feel a little bit different,” Timo explained. “This feeling will increase for another hour or so until you will feel quite different, and this will last for six or eight hours. Above all, do not be afraid. You will have some moments that may be very intense. Walk through them. When you come out on the other side, you will have left your old master behind, your old life behind. And no one will kill you with a hammer.” And with that, Timo turned to leave the boy, now hooked up to a heart monitor, blood pressure cuff, and IV drip and surrounded by white coats. “I’ll see you in 24 hours. You will have a new name then and many things will be clear.”
Maybe the first thing that would be clear to the boy would be the loss of his opiate addiction. Other things would become clear as well. Timo’s business was training and brokering slaves; he also collected slaves of his own and had a flawless reputation for providing high quality, high performance, exotic slaves to a select clientele.
This selection by Timo was a first for him. The boy was damaged goods, no question. But unlike more likely candidates, this one was already a slave. He would accept his place without a lot of psychological drama, without a lot of force. The whole breaking process had already happened. The boy was owned by his drug dealer and by his addiction. Well…, until today, that is. Timo had taken the dealer’s slave away from him with ibogaine and a bit of guile. Now Timo owned the slave. And anyway, he would make far better use of the slave than the drug dealer ever had.
Not everyone responds exactly the same way to ibogaine, and maybe this one was more shaken by the experience than most. A day after the boy had swallowed the pills, Timo sat at his bedside. The boy’s eyes were sharp, as though a film had been removed. He was all attention as he listened to Timo’s smooth and reassuring delivery. Timo offered the boy a place in the world that promised belonging and worth. His body felt tired in a comprehensive way, tired near to death, but in listening to Timo, the boy could see that there might be a life ahead for him with rest and proper food and medicine. The Hep-C would subside and eventually go away. And any compulsive or addictive urges that might linger in the shadows of the mind could be channeled into more desirable activities.
“You will live here,” Timo explained to the boy who sat on the edge of a cot with his feet on the floor. “You will begin your new life today. We will start slowly. In time you will grow stronger. You will see and feel the changes in your body and your mind. You will grow, day by day, into your name — you are and will become Hylas. You will be taught skills and you will learn how to behave so that at the end of a year, you will be qualified to serve as a certified yearling.” Timo watched the boy for some reaction, some response.
In the moment, the boy, now Hylas, felt strongly that he was somehow someone new, and unknown even to himself, someone at the beginning of a new life being shown an unexpected future by the man who’d saved him from death and who was working to make a place for him in a better world than the one he’d escaped. The boy looked up from his lap, looked for the first time at Timo’s eyes with awe and reverence in his own.
“And you will be rewarded for your achievements. There are so many lessons and so many rewards and I personally will celebrate each one of them.” Timo stroked the boy’s hair and patted his cheek and turned to leave. “I will watch closely each of your successes.”
And as watched on the screens in the security center, once Timo had left the small cell and closed the door, the boy seemed to express relief. The hard tension in his shoulders relaxed noticeably, his neck unlocked and bent slightly from side to side, finally the head bent back and a great sigh escaped him. And only now, the boy realized that he hadn’t uttered a single word since getting in the car two days ago. And for the first time in memory, he felt comfortable and secure and hopeful. And for the first time in memory, he felt his cock stir.
For the next two weeks, staff saw entirely to the boy’s food and water, light, medicine, hygiene, and sleep. No one spoke to him except for things like, “Sit here. Open wide. Say aaah.” For his part, the boy was happy to be in such comfort compared to his previous condition. He didn’t want to jinx anything by talking, by asking something awkward that would make everything go wrong. Just be quiet and watch and eat and lie back with a pillow under your head. The food was good and plentiful. They’d said to eat everything on the plate, to drink everything in the tumbler, and that had become easier every day.
And when Hylas had so far recovered his strength, that he was frustrated with the morning naps and felt restless and wanted to move about, just then his routine changed so that now he was walking on a treadmill every day after morning meal. And as the days passed, an easy calisthenics was added to the routine, and then working with resistance bands, then working with light weights and balance training and stretching and somewhat later, running.
After a while, this added up to a lot of sweat during the day. Work and rest, work and rest. The overall program required that every minute of the boy’s 24-hours be employed in activity or rest/sleep. And this made acceptance of the moment a matter of course. Each moment of the boy’s existence brought him that much farther away from addiction and decline. The medical attention, the exercise, the food made him feel better every day.
In his past life, he woke up every morning feeling bad and full of anxiety over how to find smack, how to find food, how to find shelter. And so many nights he went to sleep feeling bad, exhausted from hunger and withdrawal. That was bad. But that was then. Now it’s much, much better. Hylas could feel his body strengthen, could feel the sinews in his legs twitch and quiver as he lay at night sliding into a peaceful, deep and restful sleep.
And this went on day after day without Hylas reckoning how long. He was in the rhythm of his routine and he went with it, keeping up the pace set for him from the beginning. He was doing well and was regularly rewarded in small and strategic ways. He was corrected too, but gently. There was no resistance in him, only striving in the direction he was led.
And so it was to Hylas one day, as though Timo had descended from the clouds and into the training room. Without so much as looking at the boy, Timo directed that Hylas be secured to a low padded bench and gagged. Training staff immediately did so, stripping off his sweats and his jock and clapping on a neck collar and securing him to the bench; his hands were cuffed together under the bench and his ankle cuffs clipped to the floor.
Timo finished up what he’d been doing and then came over to the bench declaring, “Hylas! I am delighted to see you looking so well.” He circled the bench taking in the boy in detail. He turned to one of the trainers and said, “You’ve done a miracle with the skin! Unbelievable. This is beautiful.” He turned his gaze back to the boy and then upon every inch of smooth, razored skin. “It’s just so clear, everyone of you has given your professional best, your artistic best, your heart’s best. This is just beautiful. Thank you. Thank you so much.” Timo clapped his hands and turned to honor each of the staff assembled around the bench.
Somewhat behind the staff, and also applauding energetically were the company’s investors and executives. They understood already what Timo was now explaining to the staff. “…So, because of your work and focus on the project, here we are on Day One of Yearling Certification with our brand champion. As of today, Hylas is an official candidate for Harvest Festival yearling status — in this case, in the minimum time allowable, ten months.” He paused for a moment to read the room. “Yes, I know, that’s two months less training time, but we’re already ahead in many departments. In ten months’ time, we’ll have a certified yearling who was sourced, just two months ago from an opioid graveyard, and who will be in competition with entries from the likes of Octagon and Fletcher House. If we can even get into trials, if we can get even yellow ribbons, this brand will explode as will our marketing opportunities.”
Timo reached into his pocket and took out what he called a “skuffer,” just a simple handle with a postage stamp-sized paddle of rough surface. He crouched down at Hylas’ waist and applied glancing passes to his nipples, first left, then right. “Mmrrphpf,” came past the chewable ball gag along with full-range pelvic contractions and abdominal flex. “Uuuggh, ugh,” this time with his shoulders coming into play. Timo left off after a bit and turned directly to address the boy fastened down on the bench.
“I have a purpose here,” he said to Hylas, “that is, to show you clearly where you are, and to give you a distant glimpse of where you must go.” Timo put his hand on the boy’s lower abdominals and said to him, “Suppose I told you not to move a muscle, to relax, remain still…, now breathe in deeply and exhale slowly, slowly…” He brushed the boy’s nipples as before and that contracted the muscle under Timo’s hand. “Breathe, relax… breathe…” This time Timo dipped his fingertips in oil and then drew circles around the tips of the boy’s nipples; his abdominals rolled in a great wave from his navel to his breastbone.
The more Timo played with the boy’s nipples, the more prominent his cock became, standing pretty much straight up now. “Now suppose,” he went on, “you were told not to move a muscle, to lie still and be quiet, and… and you were told to make your cock go soft. Can you see how to do that? Lie here for a minute and try to do that.” Timo handed his job off to one of the trainers who took up a vigorous teasing of the boy’s nips.
Quickly the boy lost all thought of lying still or making his cock soft. His nips were very sensitive and he was doing what he could not to lose his mind. Nor was quiet any part of it. Lots of throat and diaphragm working here. Timo made note of that. This could be useful in the stretch — the quiet one with explosive potential. One more thing to admire. “Do you see?” he asked the boy. “Do you see what you cannot do? Do you think it’s hard? Well.., yeah, it’s hard. And everyone here believes you’ll find the way there. You’re in with us and that’s the job. At the end of ten months time, we will all be there in that number, and you will be our champion.
“Your training program begins today. Upon completion, you will be tested by the Harvest Festival Committee, you will pass the qualification exam, and then you will be allowed to compete in the Harvest Festival as a certified wild-caught yearling. This will make you not just the darling of the staff here, who already love you beyond measure, but to the world at large. If you will listen to my words and put them to good use, if you will work hard, focus tightly, and do what you are told, you will quickly succeed to a very elevated place in this world.
“Do think on this for the rest of today as we begin to reveal to you the breadth and depth of the program and the work that will be required of you. At the end of today, per the requirements of the Committee, there will be a brief ceremony to mark the official beginning of your training. You will be asked by the Committee Member to sign yea or nay with your head: Are you committed body and soul to the completion of the program.”
Timo made sure he had the boy’s full attention. “You must decide if you are brave enough and tough enough to take on this new life.” Timo moved to stand right next to where Hylas had his neck secured to the bench and looked right into his eyes. “You may choose ‘no.’ That is a choice you can make.”
Timo looked across the room to where a naked boy was standing with a collar around his neck and some serious hardware around his junk. He called the boy over. “Marco, piss on his face,” he said, and walked out of the captive’s line of sight. The naked boy did just that. He opened up a forceful stream that went right in the boy’s eyes and up his nose, causing him some momentary panic, rattling his ankle and wrist cuffs like he was dancing. Into his ears, his neck, his hair, the stream was hot and aromatic and lasted for what seemed like forever.
Hylas shook his head, as much as he could, and tried to blink his eyes clear. He could just make out a blurry figure with its cock over his face and Timo coming into view, quietly giving orders. “Put ‘im in an ‘X’. Pull to 70%.” And quickly a small crew extracted Hylas from his bench and brought him standing into a great steel frame where his limbs were stretched out so that he formed an ‘X’. He struggled to adjust his weight and to flick some piss from his hair that still dripped in his face and ran behind his ears.
The steel rings on the cuffs and the steel double bolt snaps rattled as Hylas whipped his arms in tiny circles, grunting, vainly trying to get his ankles closer together. His eyes darted everywhere, showing again a growing sense of panic. He was told to calm down and left there for a time, until Timo came up to him and teased his nipples. This made the boy’s head loll in a great circle and his hips to shove up as though fucking. Muffled sounds gurgled up from behind the gag.
Timo continued to tease the boy’s nipples for a minute, watching how he acted. He stopped after a while, then looked right in Hylas’ eyes and said, “Marco pissed in your face Boy, because I told him to. He didn’t ask why. He didn’t hesitate. That’s what a slave does. I wanted you to see that.” Timo motioned with his arm, beckoning someone from off stage. “I want you to see everything, but alas, there is so little time.” A trainer whipped a square leather cord tightly around the boy’s balls and then took the other end through an eye-bolt in the floor, just short enough to make his knees bend.
Any attempt to straighten his knees and give relief to his quads brought exquisite pain to his balls. Hylas contended with this for a minute or so and quickly saw that there was no solution to his problem. He was going to be in real pain real soon. What the fuck? He was already very uncomfortable. This was going to be horrible. He kept looking everywhere, looking for anything. And then one of the trainers started squeezing his balls, slowly at first, just little squeezes, testing… And then, like a car crash — flashes of light streaked across his vision, blinding him to all else. All his energy was concentrated now into the scream that was stifled in his gag.
Soon after, the boy’s balls were unwrapped and left free. Marco sat with his butt on his heels and leaning back, took the boy’s balls entirely into his mouth, slowly massaging them with his tongue. This made Hylas whip his head in every direction, spraying snot and saliva and grunting in ecstasy — or was it panic? His eyes were rolled back and the whites showed prominently. Timo gently stroked the boy’s arm pit with his fingernails while he spoke into his ear.
“You belong to me, Boy. Your balls belong to me.” Without moving from the boy’s ear, Timo said, “Marco, show him your teeth.” Immediately Hylas jerked his head straight up showing real horror in his eyes. Marco was very gentle with his teeth, just little bites up at the top of his ball sack. Short high-pitched muffled shouts emerged from his throat. “That’s enough Marco, now go stand at rest.”
Timo cradled the boy’s balls in one hand, appraising them, weighing them. “These are my balls, Hylas. I wanted you to see that. I also want you to see where your training will take you and give you a glimpse of the power it will give you over the men you will serve. See now what you will soon know how to do.” He motioned to Marco to get on his knees again and have the boy fuck his throat to climax. This started slowly with Marco’s tongue expertly teasing the glans out of his foreskin. The boy gasped and shook. All the muscles and organs under his rib cage sucked in, compressed against his spine, then reinflated with a moan.
Several times Hylas caught Marco’s eyes when his lips just kissed his pubis and his tongue reached down toward the balls that belonged to Timo. He was surprised and excited to see the want in Marco’s eyes. A man wanting his cock was so strange to him that a mist formed about his mind, his heart beat faster, his hips rocked with a new purpose, and he could no longer remember what he had been thinking about.
At some point the gag had been taken from his mouth, he didn’t recall when, but after a while he heard himself barking and his whole body was pumping its way into an ecstasy he’d never imagined. And it went on like this — for as long as Timo wanted it to. Timo, for his part, was delighted just to watch the boy’s face, to see played out by turn scenes of disbelief, rejection, fear, bliss, hunger, and finally, something that looked like devotion.
Marco watched Timo for his cue, and when he got the nod, methodically made Hylas shoot multiple times and each shot came with an ungoverned bark and a full on forward thrust that guaranteed Marco’s stomach was full of cum.
Timo left the boy to recover for a minute, to regain his breathing before he motioned to have him hosed off and taken down from the rack and put on a training table. A trainer began working on his shoulders, loosening and stretching muscles, rubbing in liniment and oil that smelled nice. After a while, Timo came over to the boy. “I haven’t seen that smile on your face since you were on China white.” He studied the boy’s face in silence for a while, then sighed. “The program is hard. You are strong and you will no doubt question your strength, but you cannot question your resolve. Once you commit, there is no turning back. You have a choice: it’s either this life or the shambles.”
Timo sat down in a rolling chair and scooted it right up to the table so the two were face to face. “In three hundred and, I think four days or so, I intend you’ll have your yearling slave certification. With that, you will be so qualified that you may beg to enter service. Until that day, you may not speak unless, with witnesses, I tell you to. That is a requirement of the program. A violation of the rule will bring punishment. You will be turned over to an anonymous punisher who will treat you like he was RoboCop. You will not like it.”
The trainer had moved down the table on the other side from Timo, working on the inside of the boy’s thighs. Hylas stifled a groan. “It’s alright, you can make noises,” the trainer instructed him. “Keep it to a minimum. No, you can’t be ‘O God, O God!’ or any such like ‘Wailo, wailo, let me go!’ nonsense. That’s reportable, and like the master says, you won’t like what follows.”
Timo continued. “Our goal,” he said, including with a sweep of his arm, “I mean everyone on staff, is to get you a blue ribbon at the next Harvest Festival without you ever having been punished by anyone. You are after all, our own darling, our own dark horse. And punishments will set us back.” Timo pushed his chair back and stood. “I tell you all this because I want to prepare you for what’s to come tonight just around midnight. You will hear, among many other unrelated things, a phrase, simply ‘…and he shall speak no more.’”
“Waall…,” drawled the trainer, “that’s good enough if you’re pay’n attention. There’ll be a lot of movement and fuss and you’ll be asked a question. Don’t speak, only nod your head. Others might answer the question and say ‘Yes,’ and just like tha’,” he said, snapping his fingers, “they’ll start their training off with a brutal punishment. Ya see, it’s no’ just a competition among frightened boys taken from their mother’s milk, it’s the masters playing too.”
Timo patted Hylas gently on his shoulder. “Niall will take you to the waiting room. You’ve done very well today. I want you to rest and think. Well, at least until your stomach overwhelms your best effort to do that. And then we’ll get you fed.” Timo disappeared and the view from the training table was of hallway ceilings and fluorescent lights speeding by as he was rolled along to an elevator, down another hallway and into what Timo had called the waiting room. He was lifted off the table and put on his feet, then pressed against a wall where his neck collar and each of his four cuffs were attached to a ring by a single link. His hands were away from his hips by a few inches, his legs comfortable.
The door closed and Hylas was alone. Chained to a wall, hands, throat and feet, he closed his eyes and took slow, deep breaths. He closed his mind for as long as he could concentrate on nothing. The steady controlled breathing had its effect, the present slipped away and for a moment without time, he floated in a dream that whispered truth to him like wind on a pond or the gleam of sunlight on a dew drop. Here, above the wind, above his life, he could see his upward trajectory, as though thrown by a trebuchet high into the sky. He couldn’t see exactly where his course would take him, but he could see that he had no control over its direction. This was his fate. The only question now is: yea or nay. Live or die.
The image came to Hylas’ mind of Marco’s eyes, and he was again filled with surprise, that this smoothly beautiful man wanted his cock, wanted to feel it jerk and shoot down his throat. Could he also do that? Could he get on his knees and want Marco’s cock with the same yawning need? Did he want to return to Skid Row instead? The thought of Marco’s tongue forcing its way into his foreskin and probing his glans now drove away all other thoughts. He hovered there for a long time keeping only that one thought in mind.
And the more he thought of Marco, the more he saw himself in that role. What would the tip of Marco’s cock taste like? He imagined what it smelled like, breathing it in, savoring in his imagination the acrid scent of unwashed cock being rubbed over his face, his tongue reaching out to taste dripping precum.
Hylas had been floating in this fugue state for an hour or more when he slowly, reluctantly emerged into the present. The first thing to float up to his conscience mind was how he felt like he was waking slowly with morning wood. His cock was hard and felt very nice and the thought that came with it was an image of Marco, and what he’d done with his tongue.
As he thought on it, Marco was naked and had a neck collar and cuffs. Timo had used the word slave. He rattled his wrist cuffs against the hardware on the wall and sighed. So that’s what he was? Or was going to become?
Stealing is hard work if you weren’t brought up to it, and either way it wasn’t sustainable. It wasn’t a suitable occupation for someone who’s desperate and fucked up all the time because he’s a junkie. Because he knew in his bones, if he was back on the street, even if he wasn’t shooting again, one day he’d be captured and killed with a hammer and bone saw.
That really simplified his thinking. But what was he into now? And O My God would he ever cum like that again in his life? He could see that Timo had surely stopped him from a fatal fall by taking him through a secret door into a magic world where he could become, simply by nodding yes, a champion of slavers, competing against a host of others to be the best slave of the year — in one or more categories.
He considered the last two months of his life and the changes he’d undergone and the life Timo had given him. He was healthy now. He was becoming stronger than he’d ever been in high school or ever thought possible. And he would get much stronger yet. What had Timo said? “… you will quickly succeed to a very elevated place in the world.” The boy didn’t think he deserved that exactly, but he knew he owed his life to Timo whatever life that was. A chance encounter. And he even had a new name. He liked the sound of it. Hylas. It sounded like slavery, like life in thrall to Timo. Running that thought around his head brought up so many possibilities, it made his dick hard again.
The door opened and two familiar crew members came into the waiting room. One crouched down and snapped on a medium weight, steel ball stretcher with leather leash attached. The other unclipped the boy’s ankle and wrist cuffs and the neck collar from the wall and then fastened the wrists together behind. “Hold the leash in your teeth Boy. It’ll remind you not to talk, eh. And…,” he winked, “only good boys get to carry their leash. Come along now. It’s dinner time.”
The smell of food was strong as they entered a small room, empty of any furniture except a short shelf on one wall, about chest high. Hylas was told to stand against the wall. Marco came in shortly after and stood against the opposite wall in the same posture, eyes down. The trainer Niall stood near the door and explained to Hylas that what he would see in a moment was a demonstration of exactly how dinner should be served and eaten by slaves. Hylas would learn how in time; this evening he would observe.
A man in a black T-shirt and black pants brought in a round metal dog dish with food and laid it on the floor. Marco straightened and looked up at the man in black who made a hand gesture indicating ‘drop it.’ The slave let go the leash from his teeth, crouched down to pick it up behind him, pulled his balls tight and quickly wound the long part of the leash around his wrists; then stood up straight. The man in black made another hand sign that meant ‘eat.’
Marco made an almost liquid movement, first one knee to the floor, then the other, butt on heels, back straight, eyes to the ceiling, then a slow descent until his lips touched the food and he began to eat, slowly and deliberately but without pause. When he had finished the food, he licked the bowl clean and rose until his back was straight up and down, bent his head back to look to the ceiling, then climbed to his feet and stood at ease. Niall unwrapped Marco’s hands and put the leash between the slave’s teeth and said, “Back to quarters.”
“It will all be part of your training,” continued Niall, looking at Hylas. “The pose requires strength, flexibility, and balance — and a good deal of practice. You’ll get there, but for now, you’ll eat standing.” The man in black brought in a bowl that he placed on the shelf. He made the same ‘drop it’ sign with his hand. Niall explained, “Drop the leash when you see that. Stand straight and wait for the sign to eat.” Hylas watched the man in black, who after a time gave the sign. “Now, bring your head back, look to the ceiling for two beats and bend to your food. When you finish, look to the ceiling for two beats, then stand straight, look down, and wait.”
Hylas had watched Marco and thought he knew what to do. But this was new and like everything today, unexpected and harder than it looked. Food got in his nose and on his face and when he finally stood up straight, there was food in his hair as well and food dripped from his chin. It was an awkward first try.
Everything was going to be different now. He saw that. And saw how that was probably a good thing. The old same-old-thing is what nearly got him killed. Could he even go back to the same old thing? It would be the death of him. Timo had come from out of nowhere and snapped his fingers and now he wasn’t addicted to heroin anymore. That boggled the mind. Really, a whole lot boggled the mind since he’d stepped into that car two months ago.
In the other life, he was homeless and sick a lot of the time, mentally and physically. Now he was strong. Before, his chief goals in life were finding an easy mark to steal from and feeding his addiction. Now, he’d have an actual job. And someone who cared whether he made a good job of it. And there were others too, people whose own job it was to see that he did a good job. People who would care for him, teach him, coach him, feed him… Niall came into the room with a trainer who buckled thick leather belts around Hylas’ thighs and then released his wrist cuffs from behind and snapped them to the thigh belts. Niall put the leash in the boy’s teeth and motioned him forward.
Let us go then you and I When the evening is spread out against the sky…
Niall led the boy to a rooftop where he clipped his neck collar to a ring on a post leaving his feet free so he could stand and wonder for an hour under a warm southern California sky.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair…
Niall winked at the boy and left him alone.
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
The boy calmed his mind, calmed his breathing, spit out the leash in his teeth and opened his eyes to the first L.A. sunset he’d ever just stood and watched; and he didn’t really think of anything at all.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep… tired… or it malingers
After a while, one of the trainers came to take him back inside and to evening workout. This was usual and comforting and for two hours, he put his all into every set and rep.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
When he’d done with his shower and toweled off he was surrounded by staff and taken to a barber chair and set upon — shaving, hair, skin, nails, teeth. There would be photos: ‘Boy Captured in the Wild. Ready this day to begin its proper training — L’Enfant sauvage.’ It was mostly nonsense, but marketing was already winding up its pitch. One of the investors wanted his picture taken with his foot on the boy’s back, hauling on the leash and bending its head back. There would be other pictures.
As the midnight hour approached, the boy was dressed as he would be for the next ten months, five restraints: neck, wrists, and ankles. Others, from time to time, would be added ad hoc, but these five would be constant. Hylas took a moment to examine his right wrist cuff. Two D-rings and beautiful hand tooling. It looked like the cuff simply snapped shut into a keyed spring lock. On the locking mechanism itself was a small inlaid figure of a crow in onyx. The thought flitted past that were there a crow on each of his restraints, he wore a murder of crows.
Shortly after this thought, his hands were clipped behind, he was blindfolded and led on a leash over smooth tile floors, and then put on his knees and told to pay attention and do what he was told. The murmuring in the room stopped and all was quiet until, “The Panel of Assessors from the Third District of the Consolidated Networks are assembled here tonight to certify our candidate for yearling status at the next Harvest Games. Please give them a warm welcome.”
The applause was perfunctory and short. The three panel members sat at a table on a low dais and shuffled through stacks of papers. “Alright then,” said the man in the middle, “let’s start with range of motion.” A trainer moved the boy to an exercise mat and talked him through a series of warm up exercises and then a demonstration of his range of motion. The boy finished the set and was left to rest for a moment. “Strength, please,” said the assessor to the left. As before, the trainer took Hylas through a practiced routine showing shoulder, arm, core, and leg strength. This took some time and the boy was still sweating even after a short rest. The third panelist moved the examination along saying, “Endurance, please.”
For this, the boy was taken to a post; his right leg was roped to the post in four places, from his crotch to his ankle. His left leg was tightly folded with the ankle roped to his thigh, the leg suspended from the rafters. The wrists were clipped together behind and then pulled strappado straight up. With this last, the boy grunted in pain and raised his head up, showing bulging veins in his neck. The trainer grabbed his hair forcing the boy’s ear up to his mouth. “Silence!” he growled. “Not a sound.”
The panelist started a clock that counted down one hour. With that, the formality in the room seemed to evaporate. The assessors left the dais and mingled with the attendees, engaging in small talk and after a while, went to examine the boy more closely. One praised the quality of the boy’s skin, another, the copious amount of sweat. He ran his finger from the boy’s tail bone, down the crack, across his asshole and along his balls — the same course the rivulet of sweat took, now dripping off his balls onto the floor.
Refreshments were served during the hour of endurance. The boy could hear the ice cubes clinking in glasses as his own thirst was raging. He could smell the canapés as they were served around. The sound of a dozen conversations took on a meaningless buzz punctuated here and there with laughter. The burn in his shoulders, the burn in his right glute, the pain in his neck, the pain in his left ham. The more he thought on his plight, the more he concentrated on the hurt… the more it hurt. Maybe this was a lesson, he thought. Think of something else, be somewhere else.
And after a while, he realized this would take more practice and skill than he had. The hurt just got worse by the minute. Panic loomed. His breathing was coming in quiet gasps, snot dripped from his nose and his right leg was shaking uncontrollably, sweat poured off his face. A trainer came over and patted him on the head. “You’re doing great, boy. Just a bit longer.” The bit longer seemed to the boy to be very long indeed, but the clock did finally run out and the boy was taken down and allowed to lie flat on the floor.
Slowly his breathing returned to normal and his shaking had subsided. A gong sounded, bringing the audience back to their seats and the assessors to the dais. Hylas was put on his knees and addressed by an assessor. “You have passed the three tests of concern to this committee and are hereby recommended as a candidate for training. You have reached a fork in the road. Do you commit to this training or will you be sold in the shambles as an untrained slave?”
The boy hung on every word of this question. The shambles? That didn’t mean ‘going back to the streets.’ It hadn’t occurred to him that Timo wouldn’t just let him return to his former condition if he refused the commitment to training. He remembered in a flash, Timo had said he would fix the threat of a claw hammer murder. So, it wouldn’t be fixed anymore if he returned to the streets. So, there was no way back to the streets. That door was closed with Timo’s promise. And ‘sold in the shambles’ sounded now more like ‘sold in a fly-infested meat market.’ He’d been inclined toward yes. But his choice as he saw it now, did not include agency, not even a really stupid choice like living on the street and being found and killed. His life belonged entirely to Timo or someone who bought him in the shambles.
This came to the boy in flashes and images and inclinations that tried to align his feelings with the choice he knew now he had to make. Hylas straightened his back, turned his head toward the questioner and bowed from the waist, almost touching his forehead on the floor, hoping this was enough to signify ‘yes.’
The assessors began to gather up their papers and prepared to leave. The lead assessor turned to Timo and offered him congratulations. “You are now in competition. I wish you the best of luck.” All three shook hands with Timo on their way out.
Hylas was standing in a corner with his trainer, blindfold off, hands clipped behind. Timo came over to them and said to the boy. “Sleep ‘til noon. You’ve done well. Tomorrow after lunch, we’ll start your training in earnest.”
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