THE SPOILS OF WAR by Pete Brown. petebrownuk @ yahoo.com
Read all of Pete's stories in groups.yahoo.com/group/petebrownseroticstories
Part 25
The next few weeks weren't easy. I had to integrate myself into the "underclass" that inhabits the fringe of all great cities. I found a pedicab company that in addition to hiring out its cabs for the day to the pullers also had a small number of grubby, stained and well-worn ID cards for rent where the photo was almost indistinguishable: of course the "rent" they then charged for the day was absolutely exorbitant, and I had to work twelve hours to even end up with a "profit" from my fares. There's a popular belief that Manhattan is flat, but you try puling a pedicab up and down some of the avenues, and you'll soon see that that's far from true.
Once I was "in", though, recognised as an illegal worker at the pedicab company, some of my fellow pullers showed me the places where you could get a meal without an ID card - at high prices again - and the rooming houses where you could flop down for a night in a shared room, paying almost as much as you'd pay in a proper hotel. It didn't seem to matter how hard I worked, at the end of the day I never had any spare money, and sometimes the amount of energy I was using was so great that I had to go to sleep hungry, as I couldn't afford the food.
Mind you, the incredibly hard work was good for me. My leg muscles strengthened even more, and my heart and lung capacity was tested constantly as I toiled up and down the avenues. I'd wondered how I was going to retain my fighting fitness when I was no longer fighting, but this certainly solved the problem! I could see, though, that I was trapped in a hopeless spiral of deprivation: even when customers were inclined to be generous with their tips, for example when it was raining hard and a lot of the pedicabs vanished from the streets and those who, like me, struggled on were prized and valued, I hardly profited at all. The first time this happened and I had a big "surplus" on my day's work from my tips - albeit I was shivering from the cold, as the T and shorts I wore were soaked through, and my running shoes were squelching as I trudged back to the "garage" - the guy in charge demanded another fifty for the day's rent. When I at first refused to pay, saying I couldn't afford it, he just said callously "You illegals always have to work, even in the storms, and you'll have been creaming it from the tips. I want my share, so pay up or get out - and leave your ID card behind....." I'd already been stopped a couple of times in random police checks, and I knew I didn't dare be without ID, so I just had to hand over most of my money, gritting my teeth as I did so.
As I lay on my tiny bed one night, listening to the other guys in the room snoring away, I wondered how the fuck I was ever going to break out of this. It was almost as bad as being a slave anyway: I had to work so many hours, seven days a week, just to have food and shelter, and I had no relaxation, no fun. I didn't even have any buddies to at least shoot the breeze with, as there was a constant turnover of guys at the flop house, and at the pedicab garage. I reckoned that as a "premium" slave I'd always been treated better than that - although the work schedule at Gleeson's Gladiators had been hard, harder even than in the marines, I had at least had a warm bed, enough food (even if it was only slave chow), and guys to fuck when I wanted to. Sure, no one was caning me or threatening me with whipping, but I had to drive myself just as hard, if not harder, to keep going now.
I almost believe that I'd have turned myself in, and gone back to being a slave, had it not been for the certain knowledge that this meant the end of my manhood.
I'd made some attempts to contact my folks, too: I'd called our number in the small town in Maine where they lived - although long distance calls were again amazingly expensive - but had just got some fucking voice saying they were unable to connect my call. Listening to the odd snatches of conversation from passengers, I began to build up a picture about exactly how bad things had been when the war was on and the oil ran out (and such oil as there was was all taken by the military in order to carry on the war). The things I heard about the food riots in Chicago and other places, and the way that millions had died in the cold, unable to heat their homes or to travel away, made me feel that my folks were all dead - but I had no real way of finding out, as I had no time to go to the library or anywhere and try to research what had gone on in our town.
There was only one way I could break this cycle, I decided. Using the tiny hoard of spare cash I'd managed to laboriously collect after a week of toil, I paid the entrance fee to a sauna: man it was good to be able to get really clean again, as bathing facilities were sorely lacking in the places I was forced to stay in; and once I was just wearing a tiny towel draped around my hips, I was just like all the other guys - almost naked, without my worn, grubby T and shorts, you couldn't tell that I was not a banker or something, rather than an illegal worker! Actually, that's not correct, really: you could tell who was in "proper" work as they were flabby and out of shape, whereas I was lean and muscled, my belly taut, and with that "hungry" look that made me seem to be both dangerous and yet exciting.
After I'd luxuriated in the sauna and the plunge pool, I started to cruise around the booths, just standing there provocatively, allowing my dick to tent out the towel. It wasn't long before I started to get "offers" - the touch of a hand on my arm, the inclination of a head as a guy walked past, and all those other little signals that showed that a large number of the other patrons were very interested indeed in me - or, rather, were interested in my body, as like in so many of those places, almost no-one spoke.
I finally let a guy a few years older than me who was in reasonable shape and who had one of those class rings on that suggested he had been expensively educated, pick me up. We went into one of the tiny cubicles and he at once began to fondle me very strongly - he was clearly used to being in charge, and he started to jerk my dick without so much as a request of any kind - well, I mean, you don't expect guys to say "can I jerk you off", do you? But there are ways of doing these things, and just grabbing a guy roughly and starting to jerk them isn't one! He didn't seem to like it when I started to do the same thing to him, and he pushed me backwards, quite roughly, on to the padded floor. Of course I could have stopped him - although he was a big guy, I don't think he really appreciated the power in my body, and of course he didn't know that I was a trained fighter - but I wanted to see how far he'd go.
He grinned with satisfaction when my cum shot out, but carried on jerking at me, in spite of the fact that I moaned (as quietly as I could, as I didn't want to cause a scene at the place) and tried to pull my body away from him. Then, again quite roughly, he flipped me over on to my belly, and I felt his hands pulling at my butt cheeks, to be followed by a shaft of pain as he thrust a finger up into me with absolutely no finesse. I could feel his body shuffling around between my legs as he got ready to fuck me, and now I took action - I flipped over on to my back, grabbed his wrist in my hand and held it so that he could start to appreciate the power I had, and smiled at him. "No, not here...", I whispered. "I want you to fuck me - I like a powerful man taking control - but not here. I want to be able to shout as your big dick rams into me...."
"No - I only do it here..."
"Oh, please... Don't leave me like this..... I need to feel that dick of yours up inside me.... A big, powerful man like you, fucking me until my brain hurts. I want to feel you riding me, those thighs of yours crushing my legs, your body slamming in to my butt as you fuck me.... "
"I don't take guys home... Unless.... "
"Unless what?", I whispered.
"I only take guys home if they'll let me tie them down. Can I cuff you to the bed head, and then fuck you?"
"Hey, I'm not sure..... I'm not really into stuff like that..."
"Well that's it then...."
"No, please, fuck me.... I need to feel a powerful dick rammed up into me. You're the sort of guy I dream about, a real man, a man who takes charge...."
He looked down at me and I found it hard to read him. Was he wondering if I was bullshitting him? Or did I see the glitter of pure lust in his eyes, as he thought a big tough guy like me was pleading to be fucked by him? With surprising agility he leaped astride me as I lay there, and pinioned my shoulders to the floor with his knees. He rose up, and pushed his dick towards my mouth. "Show me how much you want my dick then, boy", he commanded.
I knew I had him then! He wanted my body more than I wanted him to take me back to his place. I was in control, even though to a casual observer he seemed to be making all the running. I raised my head to reach out for his dick, even before he could push it down towards my lips, and began to suck at it as if I was starving, making a lot of slobbering noises and giving deep moans of appreciation.
He pulled out, and in that way that a lot of guys do who want to show their domination and control, he started to slap my cheeks with his solid dick, and I wriggled and squirmed under him - deliberately toning down my power so that I couldn't "escape" - all the time giving little cries and moans.
"So, boy, you do want my dick, don't you...?"
"Oh yes, sir, please, sir...."
He knelt there, above me, his dick beginning to drip pre-cum, and I pushed my head up as far as I could again in an effort to lick it off his dick head.
"You are hungry for it, aren't you. Boy! But this dick is going up your ass, you know that, don't you? Can you take it, boy?" "Sir, please, sir, I want your dick, sir. I don't care where, sir, I need to feel it, sir, inside me, fucking me, sir.... Show me how you can use that dick, sir....."
I almost breathed a sign of relief when he got off me, and backed out of the tiny cubicle. Giving me a nod of the head , I meekly followed him down to the changing area, and watched as he pulled on his expensive silk shirt and dark suit. This was the one part of my plan where there was a potential problem - having snared him, would he become alarmed when he saw how I was dressed? I'd done everything I could to mitigate the problem, wearing my cleanest T, my most decent shorts, and cleaning up my running shoes as best I could. Nevertheless, I could see him looking at me, and I said, as calmly and as conversationally as I could, "Hey, I don't envy you that suit on a night like this - when I got home I just pulled this stuff on as it's fucking hot today.... Did you come straight from the office?"
That seemed to reassure him, as he looked at me, appraising my body again, which did look good as the T and shorts did, if anything, emphasise my lean hard muscles. "Yes. The idiots in Europe had fucked something up, and I had to stay on the phone for hours.... Now, let's get going..."
It was a change to be in a pedicab as a passenger, I can tell you! We sat there close together, watching the asses of the two pullers as they toiled away. He pressed his body close to mine, and rested his hand on the inside of my bare thigh, and I could almost feel him itching to let his fingers stray higher to rest on my crotch. But you are a bit exposed in a pedicab as you probably know, and I guess she wanted to remain looking "respectable" as far as the people on the sidewalks were concerned. He wasn't a particularly nice guy, though, as every time we slowed as we were on a hill, or had to wait at a cross street, he almost seethed with impatience and shouted at the guys who were pulling us to get a move on! And when we got to his expensive-looking building on the Upper East Side, he hardly gave the guys any tip at all - I hated passengers like that myself, and if I'd had any spare cash, would probably have given them some of my own to compensate. Still, as it was a warm evening, I suppose the pullers had been lucky to get any work at all - not so many people ate out any longer, the theatres were mostly closed, and if you were going out to a movie, you now went to a local one rather than downtown: there were often many more pedicabs than potential passengers, and most days you were glad to take what you could get.
He might have got away with just a good fucking from me, but once we were in his apartment he started to treat me like a piece of dirt, continuing to call me "boy", just ordering me to strip, and then commanding me to get down on my knees, get out his dick, and suck it. I played along with him so far, but once his dick was in my mouth he started to piss, at the same time as he started to tell me that I was just a cheap piece of shit who deserved to be used as a toilet for a real man.
I simply beat him up. Really badly. I left him lying there in a pool of blood, moaning, on the expensive white carpets in his apartment. I helped myself to the considerable pile of cash he had in his wallet, got an expensive watch and camera out of his cupboards, and found some nice designer clothes in his closets which I carried away in a real leather case. I was worried all the next day that the cops would come looking for me or something, but of course he had no idea where I lived, or even what my name was. I began to wonder if he had even reported the beating I gave him - he was "respectable" after all, and probably wouldn't want to tell anyone he'd been beaten up by a guy who he'd taken back to his place for sex.
That was to be the pattern of my life for the next year - I toiled away, almost like a slave, throughout the day, and then about once a week I trawled the gay clubs and bars looking for "victims". If they were reasonable guys who treated me like a proper man, we had great sex. But if they were arrogant rich bastards who thought they could just treat me like dirt because I seemed to be poorer than them, then they got an unpleasant surprise as they found out just how hard my fists could be.
It wasn't a bad life, I suppose - I had enough money now from these robberies for proper food, and I even found enough to take a trip out of the city to go up north to see what had happened to my folks. I knew there would be problems when I got off the bus and found the side road leading down to our community all potholed and mostly grown over. I trudged the four miles down towards the sea, and once the town came into view I saw it was devastated - most of the houses had holes in them, there were no people around at all, and there seem to have been several fires raging in some of the streets. I found our old house, and it was eerie: inside there was not a stick of furniture left, and a whole lot of stuff like doors had been torn off, although there was no trace of them.
There was only one inhabitant remaining - a solitary fisherman down on the beach who was still catching lobster from his pots that he managed from his row boat, and he shared a supper with me that night. I learned that after the oil went and the power failed, there were real problems in our town - the road blocked with snow, as it did most years, but it wasn't ploughed. The news was anyway that there were food riots in the cities, and so folk decided to stay put - but as the winter got worse and worse, the food gradually ran out and people started to burn furniture, old lumber, anything, in a desperate attempt to keep warm in the Maine winter. Finally, the flu struck, and with no access to hospitals or medicines, in their weakened, cold state, most people succumbed.
So now I knew I was alone in the world. I'd kind of had some hope that my folks might still be alive, that somehow I could return to "normal" life at home - well, at least for a while, as I didn't think my mom or dad would take kindly to me vigorously fucking guys in my bedroom, next to theirs! It wasn't a total shock, I suppose, as I'd kind of guessed that this might be the case: I doubted that my dad would have left any stone unturned to get me free if he'd still been around. In fact, as I appeared on the gladiators shows on TV, I always held out the hope that they might see me (in spite of getting a bit of a shock when their son fucked another guy in public) and would then "do something". I had no idea exactly what, but in my dreams it hadn't been beyond the bounds of probability that my dad would get a visa, come to the South, and actually buy me!
I really ought to have done something positive about my life then. Knowing it was me, just me, for the rest of my life, I should have given up the life of a pedicab puller with the occasional robberies and tried to make something of myself. I'd heard that out west they were more relaxed about returning slaves, and that it was rumoured that there were whole groups in Northern California (the south of the state was firmly in the South) who fought legal battles, protested, and gave "safe houses" to escaped slaves. And there was always the possibility of smuggling myself, or of bribing the border guards, to get across into Canada .
But I thought to myself that I'd go back to New York, do two or three more robberies to build up a little store of cash, and then do it.
The blow fell when I was jogging up Sixth Avenue with a fare. Suddenly a whole lot of cops materialised around me and threw me into a police wagon, leaving my fare sitting there in the pedicab looking rather alarmed. At the precinct there were a lot of guys like me, and we were lined up and finger printed quickly. Some of the guys were just common criminals and were let go relatively quickly, but there were about twenty of us who were just thrown into a holding cell, all together. I heard the custody sergeant and another cop talking about the gross overcrowding in this area, which was designed for a maximum of eight, and the general consensus was that it didn't matter as we "were only slaves who were going to be shipped out the next day, and our treatment there would be far, far worse."
Overnight one of the cops seemed to be quite chatty, and told us that the orders had come down directly from the government to round up all the escaped slaves simultaneously. It seems that those fucking Southerners had somehow scraped up the fuel to put a new satellite into orbit, and that the footprint of the slave trackers now covered the whole of the continental USA. They had at once demanded that the North return all the escaped slaves, on pain of losing their oil, and had given details of where we were all located. The northern government had ordered the simultaneous roundup up over two hundred from the eastern seaboard, including me, and we were all being shipped back down South - they'd struck suddenly, without warning, so that word wouldn't spread and we might have tried some of the escape routes I'd been thinking of. I began to wonder if the government wasn't actually somehow glad to get rid of us.
"It's inhuman!", I'd told the cop. "You know what they do to us??"
"Yes - I've seen it on TV. It's pretty spectacular, the way they tie you down, then, as the camera zooms in, they pull your balls through the hole in that giant cigar cutter, and then the guy squeezes the handles closed..... I'm never sure whether you slaves scream loudest then, or when they bring that whit-hot cauterising thing down on where your balls were....."
I'd seen this on TV, too - the popularity of "real" fighting, that I'd done, had declined sharply as the audience found the sight of captured Arabs hacking away at each other more thrilling. But in turn this had got to be "normal", rather than "exciting", and so the Second Channel had started to show the slave geldings in real time. You couldn't help seeing it in bars and places, as the show was really popular, and every time I saw some poor guys losing their nuts, I had the unpleasant thought that this could be me, one day.
"Look", I went on, "It's not right, cutting a guy's balls off.... You don't want to be a part of it...."
"You're right", the cop replied. "You seem like a decent enough guy. And I guess you were in the forces, right? Trapped down there when the civil war broke out? We're not so very different, as I only joined the cops after I was discharged, and if my unit had been down there, I might have been where you are now. But there's nothing I can do, sorry, buddy... Orders are orders. And it is for the best, you know - if we don't go along with the South, they'll cut the oil, and then even more millions will die of the cold, or starvation, or both."
They didn't bother to feed us or anything, as they said it was "pointless" given that we were going to be gelded when we arrived, and if we hadn't been fed, we'd be less likely to vomit or anything, to spoil the TV show! So by the time the truck with all of us in it had made its way back across the border, I was pretty famished and feeling really down. Those lucky enough to be at the sides - we were really squashed in, as they said we were "only slaves" - managed to see out of cracks and holes in the truck and told us that we were heading towards Raleigh. And I was totally surprised when we were unloaded, stumbling around as we all tried to stretch our limbs, and blinking in the sunlight, to find that we were on the exercise ground at Gleeson's Gladiators - but a Gleeson's Gladiators that was sadly changed from when I was last there.
Gone were the good-looking fit slaves exercising and drilling; gone was the ordered, crisp neatness of the place that had been run like a military camp; gone were the guards in their fresh, smart uniforms. Now the whole place was overgrown and looked very run down, and we were the only slaves in sight. And the guards, instead of being basically firm, but fair, looked like the scum of the earth who just relished causing pain and suffering to us slaves.
The guards herded us into the old gymnasium building, and inside, where I'd once worked out under the watchful eyes of the instructors, they'd built a giant cage into which we were pushed. They did feed us then - throwing bars of compressed slave chow into us, and there was a water pipe in one corner for us to drink from, and a crap hole in the other. But that was all - they otherwise just left us, except that a couple of hours later a set of eight big burly guards came along and just pulled the four guys nearest the door out of the cage.
I'd been in there for three days, and each day they came and pulled four of us out, who we never saw again. We'd learned that there were so many escaped slaves returned under the current scheme that they were being "rationed" - they were just using up four of us each day for that evening's gelding show on the Second Channel, as they needed to continue to amuse the public and didn't want to run out of slaves! It seems they'd considered doing a mass gelding of the whole lot of us, but this would then have set unrealistic expectations in the minds of the audience, so it was deemed better to ration us out. I'd kind of got resigned to it, I suppose - there didn't seem to be any way of escape, and I think I might even have been feeling vaguely guilty about all the guys I'd beaten up in New York. But the lack of exercise was totally frustrating - I tried doing press-ups and stuff, but it just wasn't enough. And most of us were do dispirited that even though we were all together naked, there wasn't a whole lot of sex going on. It was terrible, though, waiting there in the cage, wondering if we would be amongst the next four taken for that day's show. At one level you felt sorry for the guys dragged out, and at another, you were just grateful that it wasn't you.
I'd estimated that I had about three or four days before they'd take me for the gelding, and cruelly, we all got to see it every night as there was a TV screen on the wall opposite the cage. We saw the guys who'd been with us only an hour or so before being tied down, and then the unbelievable cruelty of the actual gelding itself: why the fuck couldn't they at least give the guys a shot of anaesthetic? We noted though that there was one difference - when they were dragged out on to the floor of the arena to the screams and shouts of the audience, the guys were now all clean shaved: they'd not only shaved away the growth of beard we all now had, but had completely striped their pubes, too. One of the other slaves in the cage with me pointed out that this was all part of the show - it made the guys look more humiliated as their dicks and balls were surrounded by a patch of white skin , and it also meant that there weren't unfortunate "accidents": another slave recounted how he'd watched one show on TV where the white-hot cauterising iron had set the slave's pubes on fire, and it had quite ruined it!
I knew there was no hope for me, as it was only a matter of time before they took me. I'd been partially lucky to escape so far, and my strength had also helped as I'd pushed other guys to the front when the selection squad came (I hadn't liked doing this, as we were basically all in the same boat, but I'm not really the heroic type who sacrifices himself for others. And, anyway, what would be the point?). But I was standing at the bars of the cage the next day when the Colonel walked past! Like Gleeson's Gladiators, the Colonel himself no longer looked the crisp, sharp person he had when I was there: he seemed to have put on weight, his clothes were no longer smartly pressed, and there was even the hint of a food stain on his tie!
"Sir, Colonel, sir...", I called out.
He stopped and came over, and stared at me for a moment. "Spike.... Yes, it is you."
"Sir, help me, sir, please...." It was all I could think of to say.
"You were a good fighter, Spike. The best we ever produced here. And then you went and threw it in my face, by escaping like that. And from the White House!"
"Sir, it was only natural, sir. You trained us to be tough and resourceful...."
"Quite. But you were a slave, and slaves don't escape. And now you're paying the price... It's a pity, as you've still got an excellent body, and you always had a good personality that came over on TV - it wasn't just your handsome face the audience were reacting to, I think, or the way that you single-mindedly went about fucking: real passion there. No, it was a pity it all ended that way."
"Still", he went on, "As I turns out there wasn't much of a career left for you..."
"What happened, sir?"
"Oh, the cheap imports! All those Arab fighters they captured who were just stripped and thrown into the arena. The public liked seeing their shame and their embarrassment, as much as the fighting, I think. It just got too expensive to keep all this place on, all the guards, the trainers... And all you gladiators, eating their heads off. And the capital tied up in you... Once the TV contract was dropped ,we couldn't just keep going on the public shows for the locals so I sold off the slaves and generally closed the operation down. I'm lucky to have picked up this one-off thing: they're filling the arena every night with the crowds who want to see the gelding, and with the TV here, it's quite like old times..."
"Sir, please help me, sir... Don't you need a slave, sir, a personal slave? I swear I'll never try to escape again...."
He reached out his hand, palm upwards, in a gesture I've seen so many times before that men who are used to handling slaves use. I stood closer to the bar, and made it easy for him to cup my balls.
His "inspection" of me was clinical and thorough - I felt him separating my balls and rolling each one around in turn to make sure it was still there: I tried my best not to flinch as he did this, but it's hard, isn't it, when another man has you in his grip like that? And then he moved on to hold my dick in his sweaty hand, and rubbed his thumb back and forward over it to make me erect.
"You've still got your balls, at least for the time being, anyway, he commented. "Some of the slaves we've been getting through here recently have had them replaced with prosthetics! And that dick of ours is still as exciting as ever. But there's nothing I can do for you, Spike, I'm sorry to say - as an escaped slave you're forfeit to the state and you now belong to the government, and my insurers paid out long ago on your loss."
"Colonel, please, sir..."
"Sorry, Spike! You should have thought through your actions before you escaped, and then you might now be living in a good home, like all your fellow gladiators are... They all fetched very high prices, and when a man had paid a lot for a slave, he takes care of him."
He marched off then, and I sank to the floor in despair.
It was Lewis who saved me! That night, when those of us who remained were trying to sleep after we'd lost four more guys earlier and seen and heard their agonies on TV, he came up to the bars. None of us was sleeping well, and in addition to the normal snorts and whiffles that a group of guys always makes in a barracks room or dorm, there were lots of isolated cries as the nightmares that most of were having played themselves out. I was prodded awake by a stick poked through the bars, and there was Lewis! It was almost as if I was dreaming, as I'd never expected to see him again.
He pushed his finger to his lis to caution me against making any noise, then came to the gate of the cage and unlocked it and helped me out. He led me outside, and there, his body cramped into a small travelling cage, was another naked slave - an Arab, I guessed, as he was jabbering away and looking really angry.
"OK, Spike - this is your only chance", Lewis whispered. "He's one of the new prisoners being processed on the other side of this place. I can't get you out of here, as they'll simply track you down again and drag you back. But we can throw this guy into the gelding holding cage in place of you, and you can join the new prisoners. There's a slave in records who owes me a few favours, and I can get him to switch the IDs of your tracking chips...."
"But he'll be gelded..."
"Spike, I'm taking a real risk here for you. The Colonel told me he'd seen you, and because of what we were in the old days, I'm risking everything: now, don't be the same headstrong young fucker you always were - think, man! What's it to be - your balls, or his?"
"Why are you still here, Lewis?"
"The Colonel kept me on as his personal slave when he sold the rest... I'm his personal servant, his only slave now...."
"No, I can't let another guy take my place... He may be a captured Arab, but he's got a s much right to his balls as any other slave has...."
"Spike, you are a fucking idiot, you know that, don't you? But I've still got some regard for you... You were one of the gladiators who I liked the most, there was always something about you, from the very first moment..... I'm sorry....."
I woke up with a splitting headache. Tentatively, I felt my head, and there was a huge bump on it. As my eyes gradually focussed, I found myself in a cage with a whole lot of other guys who, like me, were all wearing what I guess you might describe as "Arab" dress. I felt all over myself, and there was a note in the pocket of the robe I was wearing. In small, precise letters it said "Sorry, Spike. It's in your own best interests. Hope I didn't crack our skull when I hit you. Good luck. Lewis."
End Of Part 25