All the characters and events in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people, either living or dead, is entirely unintentional.
The story is copyrighted and may not be reproduced in any way without the express permission of the author who can be contacted at:
pjalexander1753@gmail.com
PJ
D'n'M Part 5
From Chapter 3:
"Open your mouth and put out your tongue."
The fact that Nico followed neither instruction had nothing to do with defiance and everything to do with shock -- the shock of being in this situation at all, the shock of, as it seemed, Su Excelencia's total personality change, the shock of being all but naked and on his knees, the shock of being faced with a fully tumescent penis. But his failure to comply with the order had consequences that Nico was, literally, was not in a position to see. The man looked meaningfully at Santos who, reluctantly, delivered a sharp slap to the back of Nico's head. The shock of the blow forced the boy's mouth open. The man's blood-filled member was immediately rammed in.
Be aware, this chapter includes details of child abuse.
Chapter 4:
How quick, how easy is the slide down the greasy pole of pride and ambition, especially when it is slippery with all the worst examples of crap and slime known to man. He didn't know it then but that first time was the beginning of Nico's descent. It was months, in some case years, before anyone apart from the three people in the room that night got to hear any of the details of what had gone on. The following day Su Excelencia was happy to tell Miguel, and anyone else who cared to hear that, although `the boy Nico' had been shy and inexperienced at the beginning, by the time the sun had risen he had been taught a great many valuable lessons from which other visitors would very much benefit, although that, of course, would not be until after he had finished with the boy himself and he couldn't imagine that that would be any time soon. Santos, on the other hand, was so ashamed of his part in the night's events that no amount of questioning, neither direct nor subtle, could encourage him to do any more than mumble his agreement with Su Excelencia's sketchy account. For several days afterwards and out of sight of anyone else at La Casa, he repeatedly tried to offer the younger boy some comfort and to get him to talk about what had happened but he was repeatedly rebuffed in language that Santos had never heard Nico use before.
"Why?" Nico screamed at him. "Why the fuck would I want to talk about it? And to you, one of the fuckers who did it to me?"
The shame, the anger, the embarrassment Nico felt seemed to have no end. Thankfully he couldn't remember everything that had gone on, but those things he could remember, things such as the pain and the humiliation and the degradation (not that he knew that word at the time) were almost impossible to bear. He had woken from that never-ending night with so many reminders, both on his body and held deep inside. There was the split lip and sore mouth which still had the taste of men's cum -- something he'd been forced to experience several times before being allowed to sleep. There was the bloody and painfully pulsing butt hole that made it difficult for him to sit comfortably for days afterwards. There was the buzzing in his head from where he'd been struck at least twice, possibly three times. He'd lost count. But worst of all there was the overwhelming sense and more or less incomprehensible feeling of having been robbed of something that could never be found or returned. He might as well have died.
Of course, Miguel had been delighted that his scheme had so spectacularly paid out. Su Excelencia was a wealthy client who seemed ready to pay almost any price to have his particular preferences catered for, willing and very well-connected. Miguel began to realise that there was an unexpected and ready market for boys, young and pretty boys like Nico, a market that none of his rivals had either woken up to or exploited. He knew, of course, of such things going on in the Far East, in cities like Bangkok, but in Buenos Aires? On the streets, maybe, but in a respectable place like La Casa, never.
And for a while, Nico's pain became Miguel's and many other people's gain. Su Excelencia, obviously, was getting exactly what he was happy to pay handsomely for. After the first time he didn't return to La Casa for several days, almost a week, and Nico began to hope (he didn't dare to believe) that `the endless night' had been a one-off, that Su Excelencia had got what he wanted and had now moved on elsewhere. The truth was, as the man told Santos on the evening he did return, that he had kept away to give the boy time to recover, to heal and to get used to his new status. He wasn't, he assured Santos, a monster and he wanted the boy to be well enough to take at least some pleasure in their night-time fun. After all, he added, the night with Nico had set the bar very high and, having experienced perfection, he wasn't prepared to accept anything less so he needed the boy to be at his most appealing and his physical best. Santos, too, benefitted from his sudden rise up the La Casa pole as Su Excelencia's chosen companion on his frequent visits. Others, both fellow employees as well as many of the dozens of casual hangers-on, began to call him the Wing Man and to defer to him and even to ask him (with a small cash incentive, naturally) to intervene with Miguel on their behalf. Then, of course, many of the house girls found themselves more in demand from men who wanted to be seen to be favouring the same establishment as the rich and influential Su Excelencia Felipe.
The one, the only thing that prevented the whole, disgusting situation from becoming totally unbearable to Nico was the fact that his mum was now, not only completely relieved of any expectation to `entertain' La Casa's visitors, but she was also enjoying only the very best of Miguel's products, "Free, gratis and for nothing." Life, she repeatedly told her son in the weeks that followed, had never been better and it was all down to him. He was the best son a mother could ever ask for. The tsunami of affection with which she swamped him every day almost made worthwhile all the things he was nightly forced to do -- almost.
When Su Excelencia did eventually return, once there had been time to heal, and after Santos had reminded Nico that his survival depended on being exactly what the man wanted him to be, the boy disappeared inside himself on a nightly basis. He kissed, he sucked, he swallowed, he rode up and down on the man's drug-stiffened tool as instructed, without resistance or question. Yes, every night his body was in the now familiar room along with Su Excelencia and Santos (why he continued to be present Nico never worked out and he certainly never asked), but his mind was somewhere else completely, imagining a different life somewhere far away, somewhere where there were no sickly-sweet-smelling men pinning him down, shoving their sharp fingers and their stiff dicks into his holes; somewhere where his mouth wasn't filled and his body wasn't smeared with booze and spit and cum; somewhere where he was just an ordinary and unremarkable young kid doing ordinary and unremarkable things.
Ordinary things like playing soccer with the other street boys. Someone would come back from the dump with an old ball. Often it was punctured and flat, probably the result of being bitten into by an over-enthusiastic dog, or one that was simply old and scruffy and which had been replaced by something newer and shinier. The street boys didn't care. To them the ball, whatever state it was in, was an escape route away from the barely bearable reality of life. So the ball finder would hold it high, as if it was a prize or trophy, and head off to the nearest patch of waste ground or scrubland. As if by magic a crowd of other boys -- it was always boys -- would appear and fall in behind the ball finder. They were boys of all ages and sizes. Nico had probably been no more than six years old when he'd first joined in one of these pick-up games and no-one had said to him then that he was too young or too small. That was the rule. Seven, eleven or fifteen? Everyone was welcome. Skinny, muscled or fat? Just join in. Skilled, okay or useless? Do your best. And for an hour or two the old, punctured, abandoned ball would take those boys on a journey to the great soccer stadia of the world, sometimes the Cicero Pompeu de Toledo in Sao Paulo or Barcelona's Camp Nou or Old Trafford in Manchester. Or they'd be playing in the finals of the World Cup or the European Championship. For that brief moment in time those boys became their own heroes, even the over-weight and unskilled ones. It was their escape and their time of release, and Nico was there with them, in his head, while unspeakable things were being done to his body.
And so he survived.
In the weeks that followed, if he had allowed himself to look again into that mirror he would have seen his soft, smooth skin lose its bloom; he would have seen the dark circles form around his lifeless eyes; he would have seen the sagging of his once-upright shoulders; he would have seen the breaking of his young boy spirit. The fact that he failed to see these changes didn't mean that everyone else was equally blind. Others at La Casa definitely did see, and that was why, after several months of frequent visits, Su Excelencia told Miguel that the boy had, "lost his lustre", and that, as a result, his interest in him was done with and that he would no longer be a visitor to La Casa de los Suenos. For days Miguel's anger spared no-one and Santos couldn't believe how the boy survived the beating he was ordered to give Nico out in the concrete yard, with only the boss himself as witness, making sure that Santos was not soft on the inutil pedazo de mierda.
Maybe he was no longer one of the jewels in Miguel's crown but he still had to pay his, and his mother's, way and it seemed there were plenty of others willing to pay good money -- not as good as Su Excelencia but good enough -- even for soiled goods. So his body was sold, night after night, to anyone and everyone who had the ready money to pay his ever-decreasing price. These men didn't discriminate on the basis of age or sex. As far as they were concerned a mouth was a mouth and a hole was a hole and as long as they left the room spent and satisfied, what did they care about the piece of meat on the receiving end?
There were, of course, other consequences of Nico's slide down the pole. Santos was no longer there to keep a careful eye, making sure that things didn't get out of hand, keeping a lid on the more extreme demands of some of the clients. Bruises, scratches, cuts and welts became normal, sometimes putting Nico out of earning action for days at a time with the inevitable effect on his mum's supply of `medicine'. No hugs and kisses then, only shouted abuse and rejection and resentment on both sides.
How long did this last, this descent from most favoured' to lowest of the low'? Weeks? Months? Nico had no idea. He paid no attention to the passing of time. For him the nights of pain and degradation were followed by days of exhausted half sleep and yet more pain. It was an inevitable and inexorable cycle that both his mind and his body surrendered to. He had learnt very quickly that it was easier that way.
Then came the night, as it was bound to come, when even the least and lowest of La Casa's visitors couldn't be persuaded to part with a single peso to have the boy's wasted body, wouldn't waste their spit or spare the time of day for this useless piece of unsatisfying meat. On the morning after this worst of nights it was Santos who came to tell them, Santos who, out of guilt and shame and self-disgust, had quietly kept a watchful eye out for Nico and his mum for all the weeks and months since Su Excelensia had dumped him, fending off the worst of the worst and ensuring there was at least a basic supply of what she needed every day. He came to tell them that their time at La Casa was done and that they needed to be out and gone before Miguel unleashed los matones, and that, he assured them, was a prospect that they really didn't want to have to face.
But where were they to go? asked an incredulous Nico.
Back where they'd come from, Santos supposed, back to the backstreets, the railway arches, the waste ground, the sewers if they had to, anywhere that would provide shelter and the scrapings of life. Back to a life of begging for even the smallest of amounts; a life of stealing anything that could be snatched and hidden and either eaten or sold; a life of selling their last remaining assets -- Nico's mouth and butt. But it wasn't a life. It was barely an existence. Those months that Nico and his mum - his exasperating and desperate, his irreplaceable mum -- spent once more living rough alongside the other rejects and discards of society were months of such gut-aching hunger, of heart-thumping fear and blood-dripping pain that the barely-habitable room in the house in Villa 31, found for them by the girl Tori (who knew she cared?) felt like a safe haven, a place they could hide.
But it couldn't last. Of course it couldn't, anyone could have told them that. For all his thieving and cheating and selling his body, the day came when Nico could no longer hold back the tide of destitution that flooded in and swamped both him and his mum. They'd argued about it for weeks, at least, on the days she'd had enough strength to argue. And it was always the same song sheet: He was only a kid. He couldn't go on trying to be the parent any more. She wasn't worth it. She'd screwed up her own life and she couldn't watch him screw up his. She didn't want to go on. She couldn't go on. He had to look out for himself. He had to find the family she'd walked out on nearly fifteen years before. And this last one had come as a shock. Always before, whenever he'd risked asking her about her life before him or why her first language wasn't Spanish, she'd angrily brushed him off saying nothing more than she'd escaped from a worthless family that had hated her, made her life unbearable and that she wanted nothing more to do with them -- ever. And, what's more, it was a family that knew nothing about him and that was the best way because they'd only screw him up just like they had her if they ever found out that he existed. It was just the two of them against the world and that was the way it had to stay. That had always been how the argument had gone in the past. But suddenly, confusingly, she was telling him that the time had come when he'd be better off without her and that the best place for him to be was with that long-despised and derided family in that unknown country thousands of miles away.
It was when he returned from that last night of whoring out his body that things reached the point of no going back. She was out of it when he walked in, slamming the door closed behind him. That was no surprise but he couldn't get her to wake up, even with the promise of the coke he'd managed to score off the guy down by the back entrance to the railway station. (She didn't need to know what he'd had to do to get it.) It took a lot of shaking and gentle slapping (and not-so-gentle slapping) to finally rouse her, but even then she was 90% unreachable. Yes, she'd been like this before but somehow this time it seemed really, really bad, as if the squalor and the hunger and the desperation had finally beaten down the last of her resilience. He reached down and began to search around in the old fabric shoulder bag she carried with her everywhere, almost as if it contained the crown jewels of England, and eventually located her battered Nokia phone -- a pay-as-you-go stolen months before. Reluctantly he pressed the buttons to call the only person he felt he could even remotely trust to help him. Tori's limpet-like attachment to him and his mum had been a constant puzzlement ever since they'd left La Casa. Somehow she'd managed to keep track of them, fuck alone knew why, and nothing Nico could ever say or do seemed able to shake her off. But at a time like this - like when she'd found them the room - she was the only person Nico knew of to turn to. He was desperate.
It wasn't long after he'd made the call -- 15, 20 minutes max -- that there was the sound of a car engine revving outside in the alley, quickly followed by a banging on the flimsy door. When he opened it Nico wasn't surprised to see the girl but seeing Santos standing there too was a genuine shock. Before he could open his mouth to demand to know what the fuck he was doing there, Santos pushed past him into the room, took one look at the unconscious figure on the floor, before wrapping her in the filthy blanket and scooping her up (it was as if she weighed nothing at all, a bag of feathers at most) and walking straight out again. Not a word had been spoken.
Nico stood as if rooted to the bare floorboards as Tori went to follow Santos out of the room, at the last minute grabbing the boy by the wrist.
"You coming or not?" she demanded to know. "By the looks of her, if we don't get her to the hospital now it'll be too late."
This unvarnished statement of fact had the effect of a bucket of iced water. The roots were suddenly gone and Nico was pushing past Tori to get as close to Santos and his mum as possible. Out in the alley he immediately recognised Miguel's prized and spotless limo standing incongruously in the filthy street but he could hardly believe it. Miguel had sent Santos to rescue them? They hadn't been abandoned and totally forgotten? Fuuck! Miguel was still the man. Maybe this was a sign that he'd finally been forgiven for pissing off Su Excelencia. Maybe it meant that he and his mum would be able to go back to La Casa, when she was better, of course. Maybe he'd better go back to saying his prayers every night in gratitude for this totally unexpected generosity.
Thinking all this, Nico had come to a standstill again, and again Tori got him moving, this time into the back of the immaculate car along with his moaning, barely-breathing, leaking mum where Santos had, more or less carefully, laid her before getting into the driver's seat.
Nico remembered little of the journey that night to El Hospital Fernandez. He knew it wasn't nearly quick enough. His mum's breathing seemed shallow and irregular and mostly he held her hand to stop her from waving it around as if she was trying to fend off some unknown attacker or biting insect. At best she was semi-conscious except once, as they waited for far too long at a red traffic light, she seemed to come round a little and begin to mutter about someone called Mario or Milo -- he couldn't tell which -- but then she passed out again before he could ask her who she was talking about and why now.
Life in the city didn't offer much to the likes of Nico and his mum but at least the emergency room in the hospital was free. The boy stood helpless in the middle of the waiting area, watching as his mum was wheeled away to some out of sight and distant NO VISITORS treatment area. Despite the noise and non-stop activity Nico had rarely felt so alone. He turned to look for Tori and Santos, if nothing else, at least familiar faces, and caught sight of the girl as she made her way out of the building. Nico ran after her, calling out her name. She didn't respond but he caught up with her just as she was about to get back into the car.
"Can't you stay?" he asked. "I'd really like you to." That was not an easy admission to make.
Tori could see the moisture forming in Nico's eyes and was just about to say something gentle to soften the impact of their leaving when Santos broke in.
"No, we can't stay," he said, much more roughly than he needed to thought Tori. "We've been away from La Casa for too long already and we need to get the car back there and clean before the boss notices it's gone."
"You mean Miguel doesn't know you're here?" The penny began to drop. "He doesn't know you've come to help us? He won't take us back?"
"Take you back?" The disbelief and astonishment in Santos's voice was obvious. "If we'd asked for his permission to bring his precious limo into Villa 31 to pick up you and your druggie mother and then drive her to hospital, do you know what he would have done?"
Nico shook his head, tears of realisation beginning to roll down his face. Tori tried to take his hand but he shook her off.
"Then I'll tell you what he would have done. First he'd have laughed loudly enough to be heard on the other side of the city." Santos paused. "Then he'd have had me whipped and kicked my sorry ass into the middle of next week. I'll let you imagine what he would have done to her," he added, nodding towards Tori.
Nico was silently sobbing now, his last, desperate hope of being able to return to the nearest thing to home he'd ever known rapidly disappearing out of sight with every unwelcome word Santos said.
"Your name is still toxic shit at La Casa, and if we don't get back there now ..." He didn't need to finish the sentence. Nico understood well enough without it having to be spelt out. He knew exactly what they'd risked to help him and that he'd never be able to repay that debt. He gave a forlorn nod of his head, mouthed a silent, "Thank you" and turned back to the ER.
For hours he waited, surrounded by the weeping wives, the bawling babies and the mothers. People came and went. At one point -- he had no idea what time it was or how long he'd sat there - someone, possibly an orderly or porter, came up and asked him if he needed anything. He shook his head and carried on staring in the direction that they'd taken his mum. He was bone-numbingly tired and desperately needed to sleep but he didn't dare let himself give in. He had to stay awake, had to be there for his mum who, he knew, would need him by her side once the doctors had done their job and she was ready to go home. Eventually someone in a nurse's uniform appeared at the end of the room and called a name.
"Domenico?" There was no response. "Domenico de Beer? Is there anyone here called Domenico de Beer?"
It was only as she turned to go that Nico realised that she had been calling his name. No-one ever called him Domenico, not even his mum, not even when she was really cross with him. And he hadn't heard his surname in years. Who needed one? Certainly not someone who lived like he did, that was certain. Despite his exhaustion he sprang to his feet and shouted out that, yes, he was Domenico de Beer and that he was waiting to see his mum who had been taken away hours ago. The nurse beckoned to him to follow her as she turned and went back the way she had come. It was the way his mum had gone when she was wheeled away.
Nico followed the nurse down an endless-seeming series of corridors. She was walking ahead of him so it was difficult to ask where they were going and when could he see his mum. There were doors on either side, mostly shut, but through the open ones all he could see were desks, computers and wall charts. They all seemed to be offices, there was no sign of patients or doctors. No sign, in fact of anything to do with sick people at all. Nico began to get an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach. Someone had made a mistake, got the wrong name, had him confused with someone else. He was about to reach out to stop the nurse so he could ask her what was going on when she came to a halt outside one of the closed doors. On it was a sign which read Trabajador Social Hospitalario. Now Nico was really confused. Why had the nurse brought him to the office of the hospital social worker?
The nurse knocked and then opened the door. She stood aside to let Nico go through first, but he hesitated, even more convinced that there had been some sort of mix up and it was someone else, perhaps even another Domenico -- it was a pretty common name -- that should have been brought here instead of him. What a fucking waste of time. And all the while his mum was somewhere in the building worried and wondering where he was, waiting for him to take her home.
From inside the room there came the sound of a chair being pushed backwards, then a woman appeared at the door. She spoke quietly to the nurse who nodded, turned and began to walk back the way she and Nico had come. Then the woman took a step towards Nico and held him gently by the arm as she led him into the office.
For fourteen years Nico had lived a hard life, often an unspeakable life. He had seen and done things that no-one, and certainly not a child, should ever see or do. He had survived, just, by building an iron-clad wall around the grain of humanity that, somehow, had managed to defy all the odds and was still clinging to life somewhere deep, deep inside him. He had thought that he was like one of those super heroes he read about in the comics he sometimes picked up from the trash. After all he has experienced he had thought he was pretty much untouchable. Well it turned out that he wasn't.
When Senora Mendez -- that was the name of the social worker woman, he knew because it was written on a sign at the front of her desk -- began to tell him what had happened to his mum and why he hadn't been taken to see her, why he wouldn't be taking her home, Nico felt a pain such as he didn't believe was possible. Living like a rat on the streets of the city? Not painful at all. Whoring out his body for anyone willing to pay a few pesos? Not painful at all. Watching his mother be consumed by the drugs that he brought her? Not painful at all. Being told that his mum, his sad, inadequate, drugged-up junkie mum was dead? Pain like it was the end of the world; pain like his heart was being dragged from his body; pain like an eternity of torture.
Everything that happened over the next few days passed in a fog of numbness. It was as if Nico had completely shut down. He felt nothing as he was driven to a big house on the outskirts of the city. He heard nothing when he was told it was a home for orphaned children run by the Our Lady of Flowers Church -- yes the same church that had provided that T-shirt back in the day -- and that he would be staying there until longer-term arrangements could be made. He registered nothing when he was given his mum's fabric shoulder bag and told about the letters that had been found inside, one of which was already on its way to the city's Children's Services department. No, Nico felt nothing, not even as he stood beside his mum's grave at the pauper's funeral paid for by the church. And who knew how long it would be before that nothingness became a new somethingness or if, indeed, it ever would?
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