Last Known Address

Last Known Address-ch11

Twelve chapters in all, so one more chapter to go after this one. But before the end I wanted to thank everyone who took the time to write. Your comments and feedback are greatly appreciated. If you have any further comments, I'm always available at shoreboy12321@gmail.com. You've given me an inkling of what Henry Fielding must have felt like, not wanting to end his story but owing it to his readers to end it but in a most satisfying way. Hope I can do that for you.

LAST KNOWN ADDRESS

=========================

by Stephen Shore

11. Manetti Unleashed

_Both under influence, we had divine sense,
To know what to say: mind is a razor blade.
_ —The Knife

Chris took the Polaroid of Mike and Ben off the refrigerator. He examined it while he ate the last of the soup. In the photo, Mike’s and Ben’s arms drape over each other, happily gazing out to sea. Staring at the image for quite a while, and having thought about them over the past several days, Mike and Ben’s love seemed so casual, almost sloppy. They were unafraid to put their love on public display—whether gentle love, arms entwined, peering out at the vast horizon in a photo like this; or howling insanely in a magazine spread taped to their bathroom door, fists flying up each other’s butts in crazed ecstasy. They remained unfazed if there were others in the picture, as long as, at the end of the day, they both came back to this dingy apartment. Hard to wrap his mind around. He was, of their pact, envious, but not jealous. Weighing their casual love in his hand, he ran a thumb across Mike’s face. He knew what he had to do, he just didn’t know how to do it. He needed Ben.

It’d been several days since he returned to the apartment with his new nipple rings and small Prince Albert. He’d been soaking the P.A. in a cup of salt water as Dr. Bichon had instructed. It was pretty much heeled. The doctor said salty urine would make him heal faster so he peed at every opportunity, even when it hurt at the beginning. His cock was tender but didn’t throb anymore. He even wacked off last night watching porn. It gave him this really massive orgasm, tickling him under the hood, as it were. He didn’t know that that came with the territory. He thought about what it’d be like when he got it in his first hole. He hoped Manetti would let it be his.

He remembered vividly the needles that pierced his tits, but the actual memory of receiving the P.A.? That was unclear, duller. He recalled the pain was nothing compared to the earlier torture the doctor had put him through. If the butterfly and the needles through his cockhead registered at ten—heck no, make that a twelve—then the P.A. was about a six. The actual memory remained, though, way back in his mind, the dildo machine foregrounded, a vague but intense searing pain in his dick sometime in the middle of the evening. It was like a gut punch in the blackness, but it quickly faded. Gauze and a numbing ointment wrapped his peter, but the dildo machine, which persisted unabated, was mostly what he felt for endless hours until the sweaty black hood came off in the morning.

The doctor released him to Drax at noon. Drax played with his new nipple adornments, causing Chris to flinch at each touch. The doctor reminded Drax that they needed to heel before he played rough with them. Drax acknowledged this, which was why Chris figured he’d been left alone in Mike and Ben’s apartment for the past couple of days.

After letting himself back into the apartment Monday afternoon, he found Ben deep asleep on the futon. He laid down next to his brother, breathed in his familiarity, fell quickly asleep, and didn’t wake up for an entire day. Tuesday Ben was still snoring away. Chris went to the refrigerator, looked inside and found the soup Mike had made days before. It smelled okay, so he heated it up and finished it at the kitchen table taking the Polaroid in hand. While studying the photo, he felt Drax’s presence across the airshaft observing him. He wished Ben and Mike had invested in curtains or something, but he figured that was part of the arrangement. He also wished Ben would wake up.

At nightfall, he again climbed into bed next to Ben. Bored, he put on one of their many videotapes. All they owned was porn, some with them in it, some of other guys. He put on one that he thought they weren’t in but, sure enough, three scenes in, Ben and Mike were at it in some cheap motel with a guy Mike was calling Dad, although the guy didn’t look like him. Then the cameraman got involved sticking his dick into the shot, but by that time he’d already jacked off, surprised by his first intense P.A.-induced orgasm, and wasn’t really paying attention anymore and fell asleep.

The next day he got up, put on jeans and his Ramones tee shirt and shuffled barefoot into the kitchen. He searched the cupboards looking for food, when he heard rustling coming from the bedroom. He peeked in and saw Ben sitting up. Immediately, he raced in and flung his arms around him.

Ben had no idea who this guy was strangling him. “Dude, what the fuck!” Ben shouted, roughly pushing Chris away. He squinted, and then recognized his baby brother, although hardly a baby anymore. Even though in his addled brain he barely knew who he was, he knew his brother no matter the size, and pulled him in close. Like he used to do at home, he wrestled the larger version of his little brother, throwing him on his side while Chris laughed into the futon. He crushed on top of him feeling pure ecstasy. He pushed up and drank in Chris’ face, saying, “Listen, mister, whoever you are, you are the absolute best and last thing I ever expected to see,” then fell all over him a second time, pinning him to the mattress, tickling him, with Chris giddily trying to push him off. “How the fuck did you get here?”

Chris struggled and Ben let him go. Chris was elated, eating up ten years of separation in their first minute of reunion. In his own rapturously excitement, he launched into a breathless monologue about how he’d written, how shitty home was, that Mike said he could stay with them, details about ma, Carl, living in the Impala, and, without pause, rambled about Mike in the tub, the Camaro ride to Sayville, the crooks in Queens, dogfights on the Upper East Side between old ladies, the Glass Compound in The Pines, doubling back on other random forgotten details, the coy pond, Stacks Lightning, blurring his days and nights in New York in no particular order, so elated was he at seeing Ben.

Ben, equally transported but fighting a four-day drug stupor, shook his head, unable to follow what Chris was saying. Finally he put a hand over Chris mouth to stop him. “Wait. Mike said you could stay here? Where is he?” Too quickly the immediate past caught him flatfooted. “Oh, fuck! The compound, Glass’. What the fuck were you doing in The Pines?” Ben’s eyes widened, dumbstruck. He sat up on the edge of the futon holding his head in his hands. “No, that…. Oh shit, shit, shit. Chris, buddy,” he said confused, attempting but unable to look at Chris. The morning-after memory ambushed him, caught him in the cross-hairs, gunned him down. “Fuck, man.” Ben trembled holding himself, feeling his skin wet and cold, trying to hold back a bursting dam of recollection. He got up, staggered to the bookcase looking for a morning fix, just a small .10 slam, not enough for a high, just something to stabilize him, take the edge off. Ben asked Chris if he’d seen a box up here or a pipe.

“The drug box? The fake cops took it,” Chris told him. “They took all the drugs.”

Ben stared at him, then fell back to the other side of the futon. He pulled up his legs and held himself in a fetal position for a long time silent. Chris inched over and ran a hand over his brother’s stubbly scalp. Ben was truly unrecognizable, even from the photo at the beach with Mike. So unnaturally big, muscles so engorged, his whole back and shoulder blades so scarred, bruised tracks inside his biceps and forearms, tattoos covering his body like a second skin, his head, his neck and the massive yoke of his shoulders. Still, it was Ben’s head he stroke while Ben lay quiet. This monstrously mutated version of Ben reached out and grabbed Chris’ hand as he rocked slightly on his side.

“You need to eat something,” Chris said. “Always helped ma come down.” Although Ben protested with a hand wave, his other hand tightly clawed the futon, and Chris got up and went to the kitchen. “I found some bread,” he hollered, “and I saw half a jar of peanut butter.”

Ben heard clattering and the toaster being loaded. He pivoted to sitting, tested to see if he could stand, then pushed himself up off the floor. He ambled to the bathroom and clutched the small sink. Splashing water on his face, he refused to meet his eyes in the mirror. He rinsed his mouth slurping sideways on the faucet. Inside the medicine cabinet he found aspirin, downed a handful with another gulp of water. All over the bedroom, everywhere he looked, he saw piles of his and Mike’s clothes. In one mound he found semi-clean underwear and pulled them on and wandered into the kitchen. The warm smell of toast greeted him.

“What can I say?” Ben muttered in the doorway. “I don’t know. The Pines, I was so…” He couldn’t finish the sentence as he loomed unsteady under the archway.

A long, uncomfortable silence wedged between them, while Chris pour out coffees. Neither of them knew how to get past the moment. The toast popped and Chris had a plate ready and began spreading peanut butter on two browned slices. Chris brought over the plate with a cup of coffee. Despite his size, Ben stood frozen under the doorway looking frail. He reminded Chris of their mother when he’d found her similarly dazed. “Park it, mister,” he ordered, pulling out an old phrase Ben as a young teenager always used on him, preparing some kind of breakfast for him the times their mother disappeared days, sometimes weeks on end.

Ben managed a bit of a smirk, pulling out a chair and flopped in it. Chris was always independent, he’d forgotten that, always such a resilient, self-sufficient little guy. Guess he had to be, Ben thought, as the warm toast wafted from the plate.

Chris encouraged him, “C’mon, boy scout bite, Benji.”

He glared for a second. No one was allowed to call him that ‘cept for Chris. Chris was beaming at him, which he couldn’t help but reflect back. He didn’t feel like eating, but just to please Chris he took a small bite. The warmth and salty-sweetness actually sat well in his stomach. There was something so familiar about the taste, the aroma, while having a grown-up Chris here in his sights. How could he have not have remembered this part of their early days? By eight Chris most of the time took care of him, not the other way around. He took another bite, then, to make a show of it, he devoured the entire first piece in three enormous, noisy chomps, going nyom nyom nyom. Chris laugh; exactly what he was after. He had to resist making short work of the second piece of toast—he really was hungry after all—picked up the coffee and loudly sipped the hot contents.

“You know what you can say?” Chris said, picking up their conversation, leaning next to him against the bathtub, his own coffee in his hand. He lowered his cup. “You can say you’ll help me get Mike out.”

“Mike? Oh, fuck!” Ben moaned loudly, grabbing his crotch in sudden pain. He rose, wobbling out of the room. “Sorry, bud,” he yelled. “Pissing after a four-day binge is a killer. Gotta piss like a race horse but stings like fuck. Keep going. Where’s Mike?” Throughout the apartment Ben’s liquid eruption in the toilet rang deep and thunderous.

“He’s at this Doctor Bichon’s clinic,” Chris called to him.

“Bichon? Nasty fucker,” Ben hollered back over his pissing.

“I know he’s in trouble, Ben,” Chris said. When Ben came back, Chris began filling him in on his misadventure since he’d come back from Fire Island. He described the fight with the orderlies, Mike getting knocked out, and his own experience with the doctor.

Ben’s chair made a high-pitched squeak on the linoleum when he sat. He lit a cigarette and, with a knitted brow, listened to Chris’ tale. Chris told him about his P.A. and pulled up his tee shirt to show Ben his nipple rings, as if it was proof he wasn’t lying about any of the events. There was a hidden pride mixed with confusion in his story. Ben kept running a hand over his scalp, still groggy, trying to piece together Chris tale. The lingering cloud of drugs in his brain caused him to lose the thread of Chris story more than once. At such moments he’d reach up to see if Chris were real or simply a phantom he wished into being. He ran his palm over his brother’s teenage face.

“I’m sure Mike’s in trouble,” Chris whined, brushing Ben’s hand away. “I’m serious,” he said scowling, getting impatient with Ben denseness. “He hasn’t come back for four days and Master Drax was majorly pissed for him taking me to The Pines.” Ben puffed his cigarette, with each draw able to focus a little bit more, each sip of coffee a little more attentive. “We have to get him out. Right now, Ben,” Chris finally wailed. “They’re going to skin him alive, I know it!”

Chris had been talking himself into a panic. Ben saw it like an on-coming storm. Fighting it off he scoffed, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” It came across as a feeble venture at best, a transparent attempt to reassure himself as much as it was to assuage Chris. Chris saw it too, and cocked a skeptical eye. Ben tossed his head at the airshaft, and added, “He’d have done it over there if that’s what he and Bichon were gonna do. And they’d make us watch. Trust me. That’s Master Drax’s M.O.”

Chris moved away from the tub with a huff, depositing his empty cup in the sink. “So how do you know that’s what he’d do?” he asked whipping around. “These guys in Queens, they said that’s what Master Drax does to guys he don’t like. Skins ‘em.”

Ben put up a hand, shaking his head. “Trust me. I know how Master Drax and Bichon operate. You don’t want to know more than that,” he pronounced with finality, banging his cup on the table and drawing deeply on his Marlboro.

“Yeah? Well, I do wanna know how you’re so sure,” Chris pressed. “Maybe he’s getting skinned right now while we’re sitting here drinking coffee.”

Chris’ haranguing was starting to make him feel queasy. He’d forgotten how stubborn and obstinate Chris could be, especially once he fixated on an idea. “Okay. This is how I know.” He picked up the second piece of toast and started scarfing it down. “He’s done it only once before that I know of, and he did it mostly for his audience.” Ben washed back the remains of the toast with a swallow of coffee. “There was this kid once, see, guy named Jackson.” Ben saw Chris jump like he’d been poked. He brushed crumbs from his fingers and picked up his smoldering cigarette and drew on it. “Jackson was one of the prettiest boys you ever saw, black hair, big blue eyes, dimples so deep you almost thought they were scars, always smiling, probably ‘bout twenty but a real young twenty, you know? He so wasn’t cut out for hustling. Really just wanted a sugar daddy. So after about a month he wants out but Drax won’t let him. Sees too much potential. So Jackson thinks if he rats to the narcs about all the drugs Drax has around him, that’s his way out. But someone in the department gives Drax the heads up. Drax rounds up all us boys. When we get over to his lair, Drax makes us sit on the floor, then he drags Jackson in, who’s been slammed out of his head. He strings him up to the St. Andrews cross. Bichon comes in—we all know Bichon, spent time with him, makes all of us inch back a little. He gives Bichon this big, long tortoise shell straight razor—I’ll never forget that little gem.”

Ben exhaled a cloud of smoke and sucked back another gulp of coffee. “Bichon begins removing Jackson’s face.” Ben, agitated, got up from his chair and perched on the table’s edge, directly across from Chris who was gripping white knuckled the kitchen sink. “We’re on the floor in front of the St. Andrews cross watching this. Jackson’s strung up with his arms apart, and Drax lectures us with this bamboo cane slapping his hand, pointing out what Bichon was doing. He doesn’t go on about how we should never go against him, no, he’s instructing us in a much more persuasive way—he’s telling us how our anatomy works. The meaning’s not lost on us, that anyone one of us could be up there if we ever thought about turning against him. But he doesn’t ever have to explain that. Bichon’s calmly using the straight razor to carefully carve an oval around Jackson’s forehead and then around his jaw and then back up to his forehead. Slowly he’s tugging at the kid’s face, little bit at a time. If any of us boys turn our head away from the gore, Drax raps our shoulder hard with his cane. Drax explains our skin is the largest organ of our body. There’s three layers to it—the epidermis, the dermis and the subcutaneous, that’s the deepest one that’s attached to bone and muscle and shit. Don’t ask me how I remember that, but I bet if you asked any of the other guys sitting on the floor that day they’d recite back the exact same facts. We’re watching a real time demonstration of the thing he’s explaining, that the epidermis—which Bichon’s slowly, with little scrapes, has coming off of Jackson—contains no veins so can be removed without killing the victim. Pain receptors are in the dermis underneath, not the epidermis, so the pain receptors wouldn’t even make you black out, and Jackson’s living proof, his blue eyes flowing wet and scared. Jackson’s face is almost off as he hangs by his wrist, immobile ‘cause of the drugs but fully aware what’s happening to him. You can see it in his eyes, which Bichon is making the last incisions around. The sadistic fuck keeps tugging on the skin, pulls his face right off like you’d peel the skin off an orange.”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Chris protested, putting his hands up in surrender.

“You’re the one who wanted to know. I know because Drax would make us watch Bichon slice him up. If for no other reason than to teach you and me a lesson.” Ben glanced across the airshaft, taking a drag off his smoke and finishing his coffee. He cracked his jaw with smoke rings huffing to the ceiling, lost in thought. He shot a look at Chris. “He’s been gone since Sunday? And what’s today, Wednesday?” Chris nodded. “I promise you, killing isn’t what they want. But I agree, we gotta get him out.” Ben went into the bedroom and pulled on pants. His cigarette dangled precariously from his lip as he buttoned and zipped his fly. “I’ve been to Bichon’s clinic too many times to count and, let me tell you, you got off easy, little bro, only light CBT.” Chris shivered at what Ben thought was light. “I can’t imagine what Mike’s going through for four days,” Ben allowed, slipping on a belt. “He’s gotta be deranged.”

Chris strolled to the archway and looked out at the airshaft. He glanced at Ben worried, as Ben picked up socks off the floor, sniffed them, then put them on. Leaning toward Ben, Chris asked, “What happened to Jackson then? After his face came off?”

Ben rubbed his eye with the heel of his palm listlessly. “I don’t like to think about it.”

“C’mon,” Chris said impatiently. “Can’t be any worse, can it?”

Ben wiped sleep from the corner of his eye. “Depends on what you think of as worse.” When he looked at Chris, his little brother’s expression made him freeze. Chris stared at him with morbid curiosity, a sneering, jaded expression with flattened lips peering expectantly at him. It was a Chris he’d never seen. Cold, hardened. Had his little brother acquired the look from the story, or in the past few days from Mike and crew, or over the years since he’d left him in Long Beach to fend for himself? Didn’t matter. Either way he didn’t like it. “Okay, you asked,” he said in a warning tone, determined to wipe the sneer off his face. “You know Bichon’s good at what he does. He finished slicing and passes around Jackson’s face for us to see close up. Jackson’s up there blinking, a living cadaver with no brows or dimples or lips, just sockets and teeth. Drax stuck a rag in his mouth to stop him from drooling. Whatever Drax said about the dermis having all the blood vessels, his face is still a bloody mess. One giant scar really. This wiry tattooed dipshit sitting next to me and Mike, holds up Jackson’s face to his like it’s a Halloween mask. ‘Trick or treat,’ the jackass says. Mike, out of nowhere, decks him, then completely loses it on him, gets up on his chest and just pummels the fuck out of this guy Polanski.” Chris looked like he was gut punched himself and took a few steps back from the arch to support himself against the bathtub.

“What’d Drax do when Mike beat the guy Polanski?” Chris asked, his curiosity all but gone replaced by worry and not a small amount of revulsion.

“He laughed his ass off is what Drax did. Jackson’s hanging there starting to convulse and Drax is laughing and beginning to unbutton Jackson’s shirt. The poor kid starts pissing his pants. While Drax runs a hand over his bare chest, he coughs a few times, then pukes so hard the rag shoots out of his mouth. His throw-up’s leaking through the floorboards. Piss running down too.” Ben sat on the futon edge lacing up his sneakers, saw Chris was ghostly white. “Drax is more disgusted than he is angry.” Ben got up and leaned into his story a bit harder. “Drax is up into what remains of Jackson’s face, tracing a finger over his heart, saying, ‘Now what shall we do with you, my boy?’ ‘Bust a cap in him,’ Mike says, climbing off Polanski. Doesn’t hesitate, even one second. Bounces straight up in front of Drax. Drax is surprised, but he’s also intrigued. Mike's another of the relatively new boys in his stable. ‘Are you volunteering to be the one to put him down, Mister Manetti?’ Drax asks, pulling a snub nose pistol out of his pocket expecting Mike’s gonna back down. He doesn’t know Mike that well, what he’s capable of. I don’t either, for that matter. We’d only been together a month. I know what he’s like sexually. He’s a fucking animal. But after Bichon and Drax’s little demo, he looks a bit crazed. Well, Mike snatches the gun from Drax, keeps walking up to Jackson, and step by step he fires shot after shot till the gun's clicking empty, and Jackson's dead, hanging completely wasted. There’s hardly anything left of the kid’s head let alone his face.”

“But why?” Chris bellowed as repulsed as he was confused.

“Why’d he shoot Jackson so many times? Later he says to me—out of earshot of Drax, of course—he didn’t want Jackson’s parents to ever know what happen to him. He could see the kid was a goner, knew Drax was only going to torture him more. He knew the body would someday be discovered. Better his folks thought he’d got his head blown off than to know his face’d been cut off, was all Mike said.” Ben observed Chris was on edge. Good. He should be, he told himself. “That why I say it’s what you think what’s worse.” He studied how his brother was processing the story. Maybe part of him was happy Chris had developed a hard edge even though he wanted to believe innocence was at his brother’s core. He tried to piece the puzzle of his brother together after so many years being away. His head now was relatively clear, but one piece didn’t fit in Chris’ story of his last few days. “Why’d Mike take you to Fire Island, in the first place?”

Chris paused for a moment, then somberly recounted the whole saga with the crooks, all the details, one of them was Polanski who held up Jackson’s face. He was sure it was the guy Chris poisoned. He told Ben about the horror of stumbling across the dead family in the basement, finding the two million in the air duct, handing over just two hundred of it to Master Drax out on Fire Island. What started as a sober, factual accounting, the longer Chris spoke the more Ben saw evidence of his younger brother emerging, the terror of that night he must have felt breaking through the hardening shell. Relief through confession brought Chris back, ending with his admission of killing, however much he deserved it, shooting this big convict through his face. Ben bit his lip in astonishment but held his brother gaze with complete compassion.

The confession unburdened Chris’ soul. Made room to breathe in empathy as he looked in his brother’s eyes. Ben’s love for him was a two way street. In confiding to Ben, he peered into Ben, too, caught a partial glimpse of how his stoner brother became this hulk leaning toward him, saw what brought about his need for his own protective armor, the bulk, the scars, to get through life. Chris had only a small sampling in his short week, but he viewed Ben in a new, fuller light, a light he could never have understood before he came to New York. He’d no real-life experience with so much that he’d experienced since he met Mike, what Mike and Jamal and Master Drax and so many others had shown and done to him, much of it pleasurable and some he wished to never experience again. Chris gazed up at the circular ceiling light, a blinding bright halo, struggling to put his feelings into words. It was all but impossible. Ultimately, he couldn’t, it was too fresh, raw, unprocessed, but he was determined to try.

“Am I just weird, Ben? I just…I don’t know…I don’t get it,” Chris began in his slow, confused way. “Maybe I’m a freak. When that doctor forced me to cum with his vibrator with all those needles in me, I’ve never had anyone made me hurt so bad—‘cept maybe dad, but he never did, you know, down there—but when the doctor made me shoot, I’ve never shot that hard before.” Chris looked at the floor, embarrassed, but then made his way up to his brother’s understanding face. “Is that why you do it, Ben? Like what you did to your back. Want to be hurt 'cause you already hurt? Because somehow you want to have a feeling again so strong, don’t matter how you get it, you just want that feeling again?”

“Hmm,” Ben grunted, slowly breaking into a jagged, snaggletooth grin. After a final drag off his Marlboro, he stubbed it out. He found a red and yellow rugby shirt stuffed in the bookcase and pulled it on, then grabbed a Yankees cap, and stood to his full height. For the first time Chris saw his big brother, the one he always looked up to, bearded even as he now was, had returned to him. The cocky surfer from Long Beach reemerged, the swaggering giant in the room down the hall, always assured, always on his side, towered in front of him. “Put your shoes on, kiddo,” Ben said. “That’s how we’re getting in.”

***

Lightly sedated but awake, he heard a series of three continuous cracks. He focused his eyes. If it was lightning in the sky there were no accompanying flashes. No, the cracks were too methodical, too evenly spaced, sharp and deliberate. He shook his head trying to get rid of cobwebs in his head. The last piercing snap! was unmistakably, it was an echoing report of a whip biting the flesh of someone down in the garden. There was some indistinguishable murmuring from below, then the murmuring became faint until it was quiet.

Eyewitness News was playing softly on the television console. Frank Fields at the weather desk pointed to a fast moving summer storm traveling across central New Jersey causing flash floods. It would hit the city within the next hour, he reported. Maybe the cracks he’d heard were approaching thunder. His brain had been fried long ago, so putting two and two together was a struggle. Big orderly Barkley was sitting on the blue velvet settee looking as if any second its delicate legs would fold under his mass. The orderly stared at the TV with his lower lip protruding. Manetti expected drool might fall any second.

Barkley looked over at him. “You’re awake,” he said.

“You got a keen eye there, pal,” Manetti replied. He flexed his hands bound to the rails. “Hey, wadda you say. These things are cutting off my circulation. How ‘bout you loosen the straps just a little.” Barkley ignored him. “Really. Feels like my hands are numb.”

“Doctor says not to. He says I can play with you however I want, but not to fuck your pussy. Not yet. He says you like to get fuck in the ass. I can fuck your asshole, he says. If I want. Strap your legs up to those hooks.”

Manetti looked up and saw the leg straps on the headboard he was talking about. “Oh, he said you could do that, huh?” The big orderly nodded. “Well, how you gonna do that with my legs strapped down at the bottom of the bed? How you supposed to get to my hole if everything is pinned down? You gonna break the laws of physics, Einstein?”

“He says I can undo your legs and tie them above your head, but under no circumstances am I to loosen your arms. Not even a little bit. You’re a cagy one, he says.”

Manetti stared straight ahead out the open French Doors. It was humid and the air was still. At the top of the garden wall light was hitting at an obtuse angle, but fading slowly, he guessed, because of the approaching storm. “You might want to close those doors, Mongo,” Manetti said. “Maybe turn up the A.C. a little.”

“I don’t like to be cold. And my names Barkley, not Mongo,” he snapped, annoyed.

“I don’t give a fuck what your name is, pal. You’re nothing but shit to me.”

Barkley turned up the sound on the remote as the weatherman handed off coverage to sports. “You best watch your mouth. You ain’t in no position to mouth off, freak.”

The freak comment struck Manetti deeper than it ought to have, although he didn’t allow it to show, but it did keep him quiet for a few minutes. The sedative was definitely wearing off, and what had kept him calm was now emerging as anger mixed with good dollop of depression. Maybe he could get Barkley to just off him, a pillow over his face might do the trick, put him out of his misery.

“Hey, Mongo, so why don’t you fuck my ass. I haven’t had my ass diddled for a couple of days, and I could sure use a nice, one-inch prick up my butt. Wadda ya say?”

“Barkley! I’m Barkley!” he insisted. “I want to see sports first, and then I gotta see Spin the Wheel. Then maybe I’ll fuck ya. If you’re lucky.”

“Oh, I’d be lucky alright. I’d be the luckiest guy in the world, or am I the luckiest girl in the world now?”

“Hush,” Barkley warned, making a fist, turning up the sound once more. The sports announcer shouted off highlights from last night’s Mets game. The Mets coverage showed a melee breaking out in the bleachers over a foul ball. Fans were climbing over each other to get to it.

“I don’t know, Mongo,” Manetti yelled over the television. “I still feel like a guy. I still sound like a guy. I got a guy’s urges,” said Manetti. “Somehow, I still feel like I want to fuck your mama.”

Barkley shot up off the settee and stomped over to Manetti. A cloud of thought passed across his face. He looked at the door, then punched Manetti in the face. “You don’t talk about my mama.” Manetti picked his head off the bed. With his tongue he felt a thin red line where his lip split. That's what he needed; now he was mad. He snapped his teeth and growled at Barkley, trying to get a piece of him, but as big as Barkley was, he agilely jumped back. “Anyway, you ain’t got nothin’ to fuck with no more, freak,” he tittered.

Manetti flexed his hands wanting to get at the orderly. He eyed the man standing still beside him. The orderly had lost focus on him and was watching the television instead. “I don’t know, Barkley,” he confided. “I still got a couple of fists I could stick up your mama’s flabby old twat!” he snarled.

Barkley was back at his head again and this time smacked Manetti several times in the face. Manetti’s head bounced to the side against his pillow leaving a blood stain. He howled at the orderly, coughing out some red spittle, laughing. “Yeah,” he taunted, “I still got two good fists. One for her sloppy cunt and one for her shit-stained ass.”

The orderly was seething. “You’re a pig, freak,” he shouted, taking off one of Manetti leg straps. “I’ll show you who’s gonna take a fist. Even if I can’t touch your pussy, I can still punch your asshole. Doctor said I could.”

“Yeah, Mongo, punch my hole. Punch it, you fuckin’ dumb ass bitch.” Manetti was working the guy up in a froth. “Yeah, fist me Mongo. That’s what I’m talkin’ about. Bet you do this every night you get home, don’t cha? Hey, mama! Time for your sponge bath and fist fuck!” Barkley undid his other leg and pushed Manetti’s legs up in the air, leaning over Manetti, getting a strap ready at the headboard. “Mama likes baby’s big mitts in her smelly butthole, don’t she boy?” Barkley bent over Manetti’s torso, anger overcoming and frustrating him because Manetti’s feet were dodging and uncooperative, unwilling to go in the overhead straps. Then in one move, Manetti got both feet under the orderly’s flabby pecs, and with all the power of his muscular thighs and the rage at his core, he shoved the obese orderly high in the air. Barkley went flying backward, airborne for a moment, then hitting the ground on his heels, stumbling, arms flailing on both side like a crazy windmill. He passed through the French doors and had just about regained his balance, but took one step back too many, hit the low protruding balcony skirt, banging his hefty calves on the sculpted rail and flipped over backwards. He emitted a split second high-pitched scream, before it was cut short by a tremendous splat, like three hundred pounds of wet Jell-O slapping concrete. Manetti winced feeling the splat as much as hearing it.

Two dim flashes of light lit the garden wall, followed by a low, rolling thunder.

Manetti sat there breathing heavily, stunned at his accomplishment, then flexed his anchored hands uselessly. He looked frantically around the room. “Yeah, great move, genius,” he muttered. “Now what?”

From the TV, a very excited contestant squealed, “Pat, I’d like to buy a vowel.”

***

Chris pressed the intercom button below the video lens and waited.

Static. “Yes,” came Dr. Bichon’s voice through the speaker.

“Um, Dr. Bichon. I wonder if I could come up,” Chris said to the camera.

There was a slight pause. “For what purpose, boy?” replied the doctor.

Chris looked around him. A lady with her Toy Spaniel passed on the sidewalk in back of him. Both the lady and her pet wore bandages, the dog’s around its neck, the lady’s around her forehead. “Uh, I’d rather not say out here, if you know what I mean.”

The door buzzed and Chris slipped in. The plan was simple. He casually dropped a small tree branch at his foot and kicked the branch over to the door jamb and made sure the door remained ajar, then went inside looking back over his shoulder at Ben in his baseball cap waiting across the street. Once Ben got inside, he and Ben would force the doctor to tell them where Mike was.

He took the stairs to the second floor and called out for Doctor Bichon. Down the hallway, the orderly with the close-cropped haired, the one that had yanked him out of the Camaro, marched toward him. “He’s in the back, waiting for you,” he leered, passing Chris as he went down the staircase two steps at a time. At the entrance the orderly came across the tree branch wedged in the door, looked at it curiously, then kicked it out as he left.

Ben was forced to wait as the orderly went down the stoop two steps at a time, and then ambled toward Madison Avenue. Ben raced up the steps, but by the time he arrived at the entrance, the heavy glass and iron door clicked shut. Ben paced frantically, scanning the front of the building. Above the roof, clouds were forming, blocking out the sun. It was getting prematurely dark. There was no plan B.

To Chris, the hallway seemed darker than the first time he was here. He heard the familiar tic-toc of the grandfather clock and crept down the hallway to its end. The old-fashion examination room was open. Dr. Bichon wrapped the lab coat around his otherwise naked body as he entered. Chris went inside and Bichon closed and locked the door.

“What a pleasant surprise to see you so soon,” he said. He patted the metal tabletop. “Master Drax said we would have weekly session to acclimatize you to high levels of tolerance. He seems to think, and I would agree, you have strong masochistic tendencies. It appears that you are taking the initiative, which is always a good sign, but, to be honest with you, if you’re anything like your brother, I’m not truly surprised.” Chris climbed cautiously up on the table. “How are you little nipple rings? Sore or tolerable.”

“They’re okay, doctor.” Chris wondered where Ben was. He should have been here by now. The plan didn’t include Bichon locking him inside, and certainly didn’t include getting back in that hood and getting slammed with meth again.

The doctor raised Chris’ arms and slipped off his tee shirt. He gently pulled Chris’ rings, speaking to Chris low and seductively, “Does this feel erotic to you, mon cher? Does it cause a stir?” Chris nodded. “Your pupils appear normal. When was your last medication?”

“I guess Master Drax has been letting me alone so my P.A. heals.”

“Well that’s no good at all,” said the doctor, going to his cabinet to prepare an injection.

“Truth is, Doctor Bichon,” Chris blurted out spontaneously, “the medication makes me forget so much and I really think you’re probably the hottest man I ever met. You did things no one ever has. All night when the machine was fucking me?” Bichon eyed him warily. “Honest, doctor, that’s all I thought about, when that machine was inside me was what it would be like if it was you. It’s what I’ve been thinking about every night since. It’s what I got off thinking about last night, the first time I came with my P.A. No matter what you want to do to me now, no matter what I had to do to earn it, I swear I’d do it, just to have you fuck me once.” Jesus Christ, where was Ben? He didn’t know how much longer he could fake this. He masked his feeling and pleaded with his eyes as naturally as he could.

Bichon considered the offer. “Anything I want, just to fuck you once?” A sly smile curled his thin lips. “You know I don’t use safe words?” Chris nodded. “My strongest addiction is to the whip. Ask your brother.” He waited for Chris’ reaction. None was forthcoming. “I was the one to first lead him down that path. Perhaps, a gene runs in the family.” Bichon ran a hand inside Chris’ jean. Chris smiled as the doctor groped his cock, playing with the metal of his P.A. through the material. “You agree to the lash, accompany me to the garden where I can introduce you to the whip?”

Chris nodded, keeping his poker face. “Yes, Doctor Bichon. If that’s what I need to do. But then you’ll fuck me?”

“I warn you, I won’t be starting off gentle. Spare the rod, spoil the meat, is what I say. Leave your clothes up here and wear this collar and leather jock. I don’t want the whip to damage your genitals. That will be my desert.” Chris swiftly removed his pants and put on the leather gear. “Good boy. You look magnificent.” Bichon removed his lab coat, already in his leather harness and knee-high boots. He curved cock was fully erect. “Proceed,” he said unlocking the door.

They went down the stairs to the garden level, and stopped before an oak armoire. Bichon unlocked it. Inside were a series of whips, canes, floggers, and riding crops. He studied Chris for a while. Chris tried to look calm, even though his heart raced fearing Ben wasn’t coming. Bichon picked up some nylon rope, then ran his hands over several whips. He landed on one whose braided handle ended in an amber bead, a small preserved scorpion suspended inside. He traced the handle between Chris’ legs, which made Chris jump.

“I want you to be intimate with this instrument for it will be intimate with you, mon cher. It’s an Australian bullwhip given to me by a Saudi Prince fifteen years ago. It was made at the beginning of the century, nicely broken in by its many owners, all for the same purpose. It is the first whip I used on your brother. I would say it still is his favorite.” Bichon ran the long whip over his palm. “You see the handle connects to the lash, this braided part here? Fifteen feet in length. The lash connects to a single piece of leather called the fall, another fifteen feet long. It ends in these strings called a cracker, which produces the pop.” Bichon’s eyes widen, and he exploded his fingers apart like fireworks. “The cracker you should not fear, it only makes a loud noise. The fall, this middle piece between the lash and cracker, it is what strikes and makes the deep cuts. It does its damage long before you hear the snap.” The doctor paused examining his victim. Satisfied with the fear building in Chris’ eyes, he ordered, “Allons!” and pushed him through the garden doors.

The small bricked off area had a fountain on the right. Three trellises lined the back wall, each climbing with ivy. Bichon marched Chris to the left trellis and ran one of the ropes through an eye loop on one side of the trellis anchored to brick. He pulled Chris arm up and put it through a slipknot. “You see, you are not even locked in place.” He took Chris’ other hand and connected it on the other side of the trellis. Chris faced the ivy biting his lip for fear this was actually going to happen. “You are free at any time to disengage, but then that will be the end of the session, and you will go home and not return. Comprends-tu? No fuck. Shall we begin?”

Chris was frozen, not able to respond. “Uh…” he said hesitantly.

“Forgive me. That was not really a question. It was rhetorical.” Bichon pulled both of Chris’ arms down sharply and the slipknots tighten, trapping him to the wall. Bichon pulled each rope up a bit and re-knotted so Chris was on tiptoe, dangling. Now there was no escape. “No, no, mon cher, no chance to disengage now.” Bichon smiled watching Chris trying to balance on his toes with his arm stretched apart like wings.

Whether he wanted it or not, Chris was part of Bichon’s scene now. A moment later he heard a whirring in the air behind him, and then suddenly he felt something like a red hot poker fry his back, followed immediately by the whip’s crack. It echoed against the bricks and flew into the gathering clouds. The pain was like a knife of fire slicing his back, cutting deep down to his spine.

From the sidewalk, Ben immediately recognized that crack. He knew what it meant. Bichon had pulled out the Australian bullwhip and he feared who was on the receiving end. He desperately leapt onto the white stone pulling up with raw fingertips. With nothing to hold his finger slid down the wall leaving trails of red behind.  

In the garden the whirring began again. Chris counted three rotations in the air, and then felt his skin flay as a lightening crack reverberated in the garden. A knife ripping flesh from his back in an opposite diagonal. “What? No tears, Christian?” mocked Bichon. “Not even a small cry for doctor to stop?”

Chris stared straight ahead, focused on the leaves of ivy, extinguishing everything else in his mind and everything else in his field of vision. He gazed at the darkness between the leaves, the negative space where nothing existed, when the whirr took up again, and once again a blow streaked across his back and exploded skyward. All pain was internalized, screaming only inside his mind, externally silent.

Ben bounded higher on the front wall, began clawing the building, frantically trying to scale the sculpted cement. He scraped till he made it halfway to the second story windows finding some ridges to pull himself up, but before he made it further, another snap resounded from behind the building. It distracted him, made his hand slip, and his weight yanked him off the façade. He fell hard to the ground bouncing his head on the concrete.

“Here is a lash for your buttocks to join those of your brother’s so impressively produced.” The whip whooshed in the air. “I was told your brother’s caused those welts but never broke the skin. Not this time, my angel. Breaking skin is the point.” The whip slashed the air and cut across his ass cheeks, leaving a horizontal line that seeped a trail of red beads.

Chris bit his lip hard. Teeth marks drew blood from his lower lip.

“C’est très beau. Look at that. Two more on the ass to make a star.” Two quick slices through the air, two resounding cracks of the whip, and Chris’ butt became a crisscross of slashes.

Chris collapsed against his bindings. He didn’t weep or sob, but his face contorted in pain. His head fell into the trellis leaves. In the hot, humid air, the ivy felt cool against his forehead. He didn’t crying but salt water stained the leaves. His will was indomitable. Pain couldn’t conquer him. Not yet.

“I am impressed. Even your brother couldn’t take seven lashes. He begged after only five. The Prince himself could take only six. No other initiate has done as well. Christian, you arouse me. I am very hard. Here feel.” Chris slumped face forward into the ivy while Bichon pushed his erection between Chris’ bruised cheeks. “Let us break the record with one last strike, and then consummate your victory,” whispered Bichon in Chris’ ear, wedging the tip of his cockhead against a resisting sphincter.

Chris forced himself to stand again, to suffer and not surrender. Bichon took steps back. Chris heard the whip spin through the air for an eternity. It finally cracked over Bichon’s head before the doctor brought it down, ripping over Chris’ shoulder, slicing skin along a trail that cut down his breast bone. But not stopping, again the whip came down a second time, ripped down to his ribs, and then again it whirled in the air, until it fell on him for a third time. He looked down and saw the damage to his torn chest. The pain from his entire torso crippled him. He convulsed, thrashing wildly. Suddenly, Bichon was there, holding him in his arms, unstrapped his hands. “Ten lashes, mon petite Chrétien. You shall go down in my journal.” Bichon cradled him like the Pietà, sitting on the iron bench, kissing both his cheeks, feeling him shudder uncontrollably in his arms. He waited for Chris to come back from where he had sent him, and then carried him back to the clinic.

The doctor stood him up at the stairs to see if he could walk. Chris stumbled with his arm draped over the doctor’s bare shoulder. “You are in shock, cheri,” the doctor said as they climbed the stairs. “Don’t try to speak.” Chris collapsed on the third floor staircase and the doctor carried him the rest of the way. Within the antiquated examination room, Bichon propped Chris on the table ledge. Chris was coming out his fugue state when Bichon tried to make him lay back. The cold metal table against his torn skin made him jump up in pain. He was coming around. He sat on the edge, tasting blood on his lip, seeing lines of flayed skin across his chest. “You remain in shock,” repeated the doctor brushing his hair. Chris reached out and drew the doctor’s face to his, kissed him tenderly, climbed off the table, climbed onto the doctor, delirious, as if Bichon were a tree, a mountain, a tower to climb. “Ah, and now a deluge of emotion. It is natural. A cascade of gratitude caused by a flood of endorphins, unstoppable, insatiable.” He made no effort to quell the boy’s passion. “It makes for the best kind of fuck.” The doctor was hard and ready.

“I want to milk you, Sir,” Chris rasped, a manic look in his eyes. “Please let me milk you. I want your seed. I need it in me.”

The doctor smiled his joyless smile and climbed on the table as Chris worshipped him, licked his balls, ran his tongue from the bottom of his boots, up his thigh, and sucked on his dick down to his root, down to where the doctor’s trimmed pubes rubbed into his bleeding lip. He threw himself into a frenzy of lust, abandoned reason, enacted pure submission. He hovered over the doctor, running his tongue over the trim black hair of his armpit, so wet from his recent flagellation, so covered in musk. Chris found lube on the counter, lathered his mangled ass and the doctor’s cock. He climbed on the table startling Bichon with deranged intensity, found the center of his hole, aligned the erection and impaled himself punishingly. The swiftness of Chris decent was unexpected and Bichon curled his toes in pleasure. Frantic and insane Chris was, humping the doctor in a fervor of madness, again leaning over him, licking his pits, pushing the doctor’s arms to the table’s edge, flattening himself on him like a supplicant, running his tongue along the veins of his arms, gnawing, rutting against the man like a rabid animal, pleasuring the man with his undulating, bruised ass, finding pleasure in it at the same time. The doctor closed his eyes, immensely satisfied, his cock being worked on expertly, lulling him into a state of sexual bliss, completely stretched out on the table, his arms stretched overhead.

Chris fingered the edge of the table until he found the straps he was seeking, and wrapped them tightly around Bichon’s wrists and knotted them above his head. He jumped down and, before Bichon fully grasped what was happening, he grabbed Bichon’s right legs and pulled it over a stirrup with all his weight. He held onto the man’s legs in a wrestler’s grip, searching for a leg strap, found it and knotted it so the right leg was secure over the stirrup. Bichon, with one leg free, kicked wildly at the boy, who dodged and weaved to avoid being struck. Chris picked up the metal tray of instruments, and tossed the tools clanging to the ground. He raised the heavy tray above his head, and hurdled its metal edge aiming straight for the doctor’s knee. He hit his target exactly and the man let out an agonizing shrieked. Chris quickly took advantage to secure the injured, bleeding leg over the stirrup. In one movement the second leg was captured.

Ben, wild-eyed, came flying into the room drawn to sound of the doctor's scream. Chris heaved with labored breath, taking in his accomplishment. Only then did he realize his brother was in the room. “Where the fuck were you?” Chris demanded, panting, bent over with his hands on his knees.

“Fuck! Dude,” cried Ben. “Your back!” At that moment there was a splat, like three hundred pounds of wet Jell-O hitting the back patio.

“Forget my back. Find Mike. Upstairs,” Chris urged his confused brother.

“Bichon can’t get up?” Ben asked suspiciously. Chris shook his head as he pulled each of the straps. “This guy,” Ben stuttered, “his orderly came out after you went in and kicked out the branch. I got in through the second floor and broke through the window.” Ben displayed his palms and fingers and scraped cheek, sliced and bloody, but nothing compared to the rivulets running down Chris’ torso.

“Ben. Find Mike,” Chris repeated. “Go!” Ben gave him and Bichon a last wary glance, then shot out of the room bounding heavily up the stairs.

Chris stood near, but not too near, Doctor Bichon. “My old man,” Chris began, judging his abuser. “He’s dead. Cancer. Ate his brain from the inside out. Didn’t know me or my ma at the end. And you know what, doctor? I never told anyone this. I couldn’t have given a shit.” Chris paced around him in an arc, examining him from different angles like he was a specimen. “He was about as mean as a fuck as you. But sadistically, compared to him, you’re a featherweight, Doctor Bichon.” Chris ripped off his collar and jock strap and threw it at him. “Costume,” he spat. He stood naked in front of Bichon displaying his bloody body, then climbed onto the metal exam table, stood unright between the doctor’s legs.

“You should let me go now. Master Drax will find out about this. If you don’t release me I cannot help you. You, your brother, and your friend Manetti will pay. Truly, you will be flayed alive. I promise this will happen and I tell you it does not happen quickly,” Bichon threatened.

Chris looked thoughtful for a moment, only then began urinating over Bichon. As his stream of piss grew in strength, he aimed for the doctor’s face. Bichon laughed and swallow some of the piss at first, then as the stream was steady and strong, unrelenting, its force made him choke. “My old man,” continued Chris, pissing hard, now running his stream of piss over the man’s whole body, “he used to give me the belt almost every Saturday night, whether I’d done anything to deserve it or not.” He finished pissing and climbed off the table. He put on his pants and shoes. His torso stung as he gingerly pulled on his tee shirt. Blood stains seeped through the white cloth from his chest. “Ah, my favorite Ramones shirt,” he observed emotionless. “He wouldn’t, my old man, just give me the belt. No. After a while he used to like to whip me just with the buckle. Your whip hurt like fuck. It sure did.” He slapped his chest causing red handprints to appear suddenly on the shirt. The pain of his torn chest warped his face but brought no tears. “Do you have any idea what a metal buckle feels like on a skinny body, on a body of bones like mine? It rings, doctor!” Chris hit his head with his hands. “It rings through your bones like a bell. You hear it in your brain. I still hear it,” he said, holding his hands to his head as if it quelled the sound. He snarled, “Your lashes? Feathers.”

Ben stormed into the room. “You should’ve seen it,” he told Chris. “Mike threw this big orderly over the balcony—disgusting—and was just calmly watching Wheel of Fortune.” Ben’s hysterical eyes betrayed his words trying to make light, not just of the repulsive scene of the splattered orderly, but the impact of seeing Manetti’s ripped open gown displaying his mutilated body. But coming back into the room, looking at Bichon and Chris, knew he’d stepped into something just as foreboding. Chris’ mood was as dark as he’d ever could have imagined. Then Manetti walked into the room. His mood was darker. The promised storm broke over New York, and with it, monumental thunder and lightning, but nothing compared to wrath of Manetti.

Bichon, splayed helpless on the metal table, tried to remain composed. “As I promised, Christian, it would be better for you, all of you, to release me. Drax will never stop until he has destroyed you in the darkest of ways. After flaying you of skin, death will be a relief. You two know this and there will be no Michael to put a quick end to it. Your fate will be lingering and much, much worse.”

Rain poured into the garden loudly with thunder rumbling through the city canyons as if bombs were approaching nearer and nearer. Mike was barely audible. “I told you,” he rasped to Bichon close to his ear, “I would raze you.” He looked around the room, and spied a bottle of alcohol. “You have matches?” he asked Ben. Ben produced them. “You skinning Jackson? Who could forget that. But I have in mind something different for you, faster, although I’ve heard more excruciating. You won’t have the chance to skin me alive because I am going to fry the flesh off your bones,” he said, pouring rubbing alcohol over the doctor’s head, chest, groin, feet, and down the table, out the door. As he walked backward he splashed the flammable liquid everywhere, showering the hallway walls, tossed some on the curtains, soaked the rug. Ben backed Chris out of the room. Manetti looked at the doctor. “You took an invaluable thing from me. Now I’m taking everything from you.”

Manetti flicked a match and dropped it on the alcohol-soaked carpet. Bichon howled mad laugher from his inner sanctum. The flames crawled the hallway walls, igniting chiffon curtains and oriental rugs. The flame followed the combustible trail back to the exam table. It crawled up and ignited the man completely. Howls of laughter turned to screams of torment. Black smoke billowed and gathered at the ceiling. Manetti, Ben and Chris hunched low, making their way through the billowing soot-filled corridor. At the stair banister, a torched wraith came screaming at them. The doctor’s bindings burnt away, wailing in torment as he blindly stumbled forward, one high pitch yowl shrieked out of the dying carcass. The fiery specter collapsed in a heap of charred flesh and glistening bones at the top of the stairs, inches from where they stood. They descended to the entrance, as the building around them engulfed into an inferno.

They stood in the torrential rain, mesmerized, their faces aglow from the clinic’s blaze. Far across the street they still felt the heat. The townhouse acted like a chimney sucking in air from the base, rising up through the stony structure, erupting flames like a volcano, shooting fires from hell into heaven itself.