8. Lessons - The Work Camp Earth-boy

The Work Camp Earth-boy

By Earth-boy

Comments are welcome at earth-boy-2755@proton.me, and constructive criticism as well. As I’ve mentioned before, this story is complete (12 chapters in all.) But as of the date I’ve posted this, I can entertain suggestions as long as they don’t break the established plot or have a serious impact on the remaining chapters.

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Quick disclaimers:

• This story contains descriptions of sex between teen and pre-teen males. Do not read if you’re under 18 or it is illegal where you’re living.
• Copyright by the author. Do not upload to pay-to-view sites.
• This story is fiction; references to individuals are coincidental.
• No children or teenagers were harmed in the creation of this story.

Chapter 8. Lessons

This chapter contains an authoritarian scene some readers may find distressing.

Monday morning I was all back to normal. Savros and I enjoyed a round of sex in the morning, and so did Jared about an hour later. Of course I assisted with breakfast and lunch, and delivered hot water to Larry, Egan and Jared like I normally did.

Jared’s hut definitely smelled of yovissi.

After the weekly water delivery I was approached by Egan. “Can I get your help with something?” he asked.

At least this time he was phrasing it like a request and not an order, so I decided I’d listen. “I have time,” I said. “What is it?”

He answered, “The truck’s pretty dirty. There’s a million dead bugs all over the front grille I’d like to get cleaned off. It looks awful and doesn’t smell very good.”

“What do we need for that?”

“A couple pails of warm water, soap, two scrub brushes, and some clean rags. Can you get them? I’ll wait here.”

Savros and I had moved the koy berries from the pails into storage jars that morning, so I used them. I filled them about half way with hot water and Savros helped me find two scrub brushes in the storage shed. Egan carried one bucket of water and the brushes to the truck while I took the other bucket, the soap and the towels.

Egan was right about the state of the truck: its overlarge front end was covered with the squashed remains of hundreds of grasshoppers and other assorted insects. He was also right about the smell. After sitting in the sun for a day, it stank. Egan showed me how to scrub the grille, then let me at it while he turned his attention to the back of the driver’s side mirror.

An hour later I had the huge front grille clean and shining. But when I looked to see what progress Egan had made I saw no sign of him. I checked his bucket and saw it was still beside the driver’s side mirror. It still had most of its water, and the water was quite clean. The other mirror was still dirty. Miffed, I went to the main hut. Egan was there playing a game on his computer.

I sought out Savros. “When did Egan come back to the main hut?” I quietly asked him.

“About five minutes after you started cleaning the truck. Why?”

“He made it sound like we’d work on it together! Now it turns out he skipped out and left me to do it all!”

Savros gave me a consoling hug. “Yeah, that sounds like Egan. Sorry about that. If I’d known he’d do that to you I’d have helped you.”

“Thanks, but still … he treats that truck like it’s his own and not the camp’s. Maybe it is his own, even if he bought it with his uncle’s money. But he expects everyone else to look after it for him!”

“Well, just you, and just today,” Savros observed. “Hey, let’s find out what the registration says.”

“Registration?”

“All vehicles have to be registered with the government. There should be a paper in the truck saying who it belongs to.”

Savros found the registration in the truck’s glove box. It had Egan’s name on it. “Worse,” Savros noted, “it’s insured under the ‘pleasure’ class. That means we shouldn’t be driving it for work camp use. If we ever got into an accident when we’re going to or from town, any damage claim could be denied. That could end up costing him a lot of money!”

“Should he have used something different?” I asked.

“Yes. What we’re doing with this truck is called ‘commercial’ use. Except it’s more expensive. Egan’s trying to save money by lying about how we use the truck.”

“Sounds like Egan.”

“Yeah, very much so.” Then he asked, “Hey, do you think you can find another blueberry patch? I’d like to make a couple of fresh blueberry pies for dinner.”

“Sure!” In moments I had a pathfinding going, looking to the west like last time. It showed three promising food locations nearby. I caught his hand and said, “Let’s go!”

“We need pails first,” he said.

“Oh, right.”

With Savros carrying the pails and me leading the way, I found both a blueberry and a raspberry patch. We collected more than enough for his pies, and this time I didn’t get stung.

At the raspberry bush I thought I’d play a little prank on my friend. While standing very close to him, I pointed into the forest and said, “Look over there for a second.”

He did. “Am I supposed to see anything?” he asked.

“No,” I replied. “Nor should you when you look back to me.”

“Really?” Then, “Hey! Where’d you go?”

I reached out and grasped his arm. He blinked as I suddenly reappeared. “Surprise!” I said.

“Alright, wise guy! What did you just do?”

“We call it camouflage,” I replied with a grin. “It’s another of our gifts. If we’re in a tree or surrounded by bushes like this, the Earth gives us the ability to blend in almost perfectly with it.”

⟡ “That’s neat! Did you use it for hunting?”

“Partly. We can maintain the camouflage if we move slowly. So a group of us would use pathfinding to locate a deer or a moose in the woods, then slowly surround and move in on it. We had to be quiet, though. When we were close enough, three or four of us would reach out, touch it, and send it a calm. That stopped it from bolting away, and then we’d use knives to kill it.”

“Let me guess,” said Savros, “you’d then levitate it back to the grove.”

“No, we had to do that the hard way, with ropes and a few of us dragging it.”

“And the camouflage; is it only visual?”

“Yes. We can be heard if we make noise and dogs can smell us. An earth-boy hidden in a tree is vulnerable if a master’s dogs finds the tree. In the past humans fired arrows and guns up into the tree hoping to hit us. They succeeded a good chunk of the time, which made us visible again. Then they could threaten to kill us if we didn’t come down.”

“Yet I guess it would come in helpful if you wanted to escape from captivity.”

“It was, especially if the humans didn’t have tracking dogs. Between calm to make any guards less attentive, pathfinding to show us routes through the forest and help us find food, and camouflage to hide, it was actually difficult to hold earth-boy slaves if you let them work outside.”

“Couldn’t they just keep you inside?”

“A lot of them did. I heard they had the best success keeping ten or twenty of us inside a large wooden house and using us for cooking, cleaning, milking cows, churning butter, washing clothes, things like that. We weren’t cut off from the earth, so we didn’t get sick from lack of eren. We couldn’t climb our way out because of the roof. And with that many of us, we could keep each other company and not feel the need to run away.”

“Wait,” Savros said. “You get sick if you can’t get eren?“

“Oh, yes. It’s as essential for us as any other vitamin. If we run out of our internal store of eren, we get ill, irritable, and confused. Then we just keep getting weaker and weaker until we can’t do anything at all and die.”

“Oh! Do you know how long that would take?”

“If we don’t use our eren for things like calming, what we have inside us lasts for about a month. Symptoms start very soon after that, and I learned it takes about six weeks for the disease to run its course. So even if we have a good food and sunshine, we can die within three months if we’re kept inside a stone house or castle. Although if the captors gave us a rope staked to the ground outside, each night we could get enough eren to live on.”

Savros frowned. “I can see why you prefer living in groves. And why your more traditional groves don’t like interacting with us. We can be really cruel at times.”

On the way back I reminded Savros we had koy berries as well, and suggested we try a simple blueberry pie and a combined koy/blue/raspberry pie as well. He liked the idea.

The combination pie was a big hit that evening. I wondered if it would make a good wine. During that evening’s poker game I found my cell phone and made a note to ask one of the grove’s winemakers about it. I probably wasn’t the first of us to think of it.

✵   ✵   ✵

⟡ I produced another agor nut that afternoon and passed it around the table at supper. It led to the same discussion about how we reproduce that I’d had with Savros a week before.

Larry asked, “You’ve mentioned a couple of times you went to school with humans. I’m guessing that’s normal because I recall earth-boys in school when I was a boy.”

“Same here,” said Savros.

“Yes, it’s normal,” I replied. “All except the most traditional groves send their kids to human schools for primary education. It’s usually up to grade eight or nine. It teaches us a lot about your culture and frees up the adults to work in the grove during the day. But we don’t care much about our report cards. If we get a B in a subject we’re doing well. Very often we get Cs and Ds because we’re really sloppy with our homework and reports. It frustrates the teachers!”

“What do you wear in school?” asked Riley.

“It really depends on the school. Some know that earth-boys find classrooms to be hot. Remember, we go naked at 18 degrees. So a 22 degree classroom for us is like over thirty for you!” [22°C is 72°F; 30°C is 86°F. —EB] “The better schools let us wear thin breech-cloths inside and even let us be naked in the playground and in gym class.”

“I remember that,” said Jared. “We always had a few earth-boys when I was in elementary school. And, yeah, they never wore very much. It was a real surprise the first time I saw them naked in PE.”

“I bet that goes over really well in Bible belt towns,” Martin commented.

“From what I’ve heard,” I said, “those schools let earth-boys wear really thin shirts and shorts. Or the groves organized transportation to better schools.”

Larry added, “The school districts like having earth-boys because they’re generally well behaved and the schools get income from the groves. Groves don’t pay much in taxes because earth-boys aren’t human and their groves are considered to be separate from towns and provinces. But because they send their children to human schools, the school division gets to bill them directly for each student. Sometimes they bill a lot, and the groves rarely dispute it.”

“And don’t you go to school like really young?” asked Jared. “I remember in grade three an earth-boy telling me he was only four years old, but I was eight.”

“He wasn’t lying. When we awaken we’re at about the same level as a human three year old. So we have a three year head start on a human kid and we grow up faster. We start puberty at seven and become adults at twelve.”

“Why only elementary school?” asked Riley.

“We don’t see a need to go any further. After eight or nine years at school we’ve probably learned more than we need to survive around humans. Earth-boy kids who can’t stomach school or don’t like being teased all the time are usually transferred to a traditional grove that doesn’t believe in us going to human schools.”

“Oh,” said Jared, “you go to school only up to grade eight or nine. That’s why all my earth-boy friends disappeared when I started high school. I missed having them around.”

“Earth-boy friends, or earth boyfriends?” Egan asked with a sneer.

“Egan!” said Riley sharply. “Jared’s sexual orientation should be of no concern to you or any of us.”

Jared added testily, “For sure! And for the record, I’m straight. I’ve got a girlfriend back home in Burnaby.”

“That remark was out of line,” Riley told Egan. “Apologize to Jared.”

Egan simply looked at Jared and said, “Sorry.” He certainly didn’t sound very sincere. I gave Jared a small hug about the waist to let him know I cared, and he returned it.

“How long do you live?” asked Martin.

“About fifty years. We grow up faster than humans and don’t live as long. An earth-boy making it to 55 isn’t unusual, but a sixty year old is really rare. I’ve never known one. The oldest earth-boy I ever met was 58.”

As always, Larry was well-informed on the topic. “The oldest earth-boy ever recorded was 63 when he died about fifteen years ago. He lived in France.”

“What do you do with the bodies?” Martin asked. “Bury them? Cremate them?”

“We return them to the Earth. By that I mean we dig a shallow grave outside the meadow and put him in it. No coffin or anything, just him. As a group we say farewell, then head to the meadow where we plant three agor nuts. Like I said earlier, we usually get only one earth-boy from them, and sometimes two. Eren takes care of the one we buried pretty fast; after a year there’s no trace of him left. Not even bones.”

Savros asked, “Do you use grave markers or anything like that?”

I shook my head. “No. Just like we don’t track who produced the agor nuts we planted, we don’t see a need to continually remember the dead. Very few earth-boys are remembered in your history or ours, just like the billions of humans who’ve lived and died over the past few thousand years.”

✵   ✵   ✵

Tonight I was going to be in Egan’s hut, after skipping it on Sunday because I was ill. I wasn’t dreading it, but wasn’t looking forward to it either. Egan was my first real experience with an unpleasant person.

I gave him a calm on the way to his hut, a stronger one than last time, and in his hut I lay prone on his bed while he removed his clothes. He got on his hands and knees above me and pushed in. I felt some relief; tonight it looked like we’d actually have some good sex.

That changed in an instant when he said, as if talking to a six year old, “Okay now, be a good little boy and give your daddy Egan a nice time.”

I sighed in frustration. If he was like this after a calm it meant he was probably more his true self than usual. That one comment was enough to tell me he didn’t respect earth-boys at all. Nor, by extension, me.

The thing is we usually don’t mind. We know humans view us differently and often discriminate against us. But unlike other second class citizens in human society, we have our groves and don’t depend on humans for survival. And I was starting to understand our wealth made the more important humans much more willing to work with us.

But Egan? He reminded me of the schoolyard bullies we had to contend with in school. They simply didn’t care about what they did to us or how we felt about getting tripped, slapped, punched, or just yelled at in school. Fortunately that lasted for only a couple of years until they finally figured out picking on earth-boys came with unpleasant consequences. Such as insects stings in the spring and fall, unfortunate meetings with dogs and skunks, and nasty falls on ice in the winter. Between that and calm, bullies were rarely a problem beyond the second grade.

If Egan had ever learned that lesson, it looked like he’d forgotten it in the time since he entered high school. I’d been frustrated with his actions all weekend, so I decided to not be a good little boy and not give daddy Egan a nice time.

Not that I gave him a bad time. I just went into “sleep sex” mode and let my amoryn do what it wanted to do. It took a while, but Egan finally managed to cum.

He was clearly frustrated when we were done. When I felt him grab me I managed to catch an eye and send him another calm. His frustration dissipated, but still he wasn’t happy.

“What’s up with you, boy?” he asked. “I’ve heard earth-boys can be a real good fuck, but tonight I could just as well have been doing a blow-up doll.”

“Have you considered the possibility I don’t like you?”

He looked confused. “What does that have to do with sex? I thought you guys loved sex.”

“We do, sure. But here I can get lots of really good sex from others. So I don’t need you for that, and I don’t see any need to give you a good time.”

“Why not?”

I sighed. “Egan, I know we have a reputation for being sluts, and it’s usually well deserved. But something I’ve learned over the past two weeks is sex is a lot more fun when you’re doing it with someone you like. All my life I’ve been doing it with other earth-boys and the occasional one-time with a human. I liked all the earth-boys and the men I was with were okay. But you? You haven’t done anything to make me like you.”

“Okay, yeah, I kidnapped you. But you decided to stay. You’re still mad about that?”

I shook my head. “It’s more than that. You tried to rape me the first night I was here, right? Don’t you remember you got mad and threw a spoon at me on Saturday? Or tricked me into washing the truck while you ran off to play a game on your computer? It’s you treating me like your personal servant. And then there’s the remarks you make about earth-boys whenever you get a chance.”

“What,” said Egan, “can’t you take a bit of teasing?”

I stood up and addressed Egan directly. “You really are clueless, aren’t you? Vicious sex is not ‘teasing.’ Neither is throwing things at me—I think that’s called ‘assault.’ Until you wise up and start treating me like—well, not a fellow human being, because I’m not one—like a fellow member of this crew, you can expect me to give you really lame sex. Maybe the next time you go to town you can buy that blow-up doll.”

I marched out of his hut and went to sleep with Savros.

✵   ✵   ✵

At breakfast Egan informed Riley he’d be leaving the camp for the day, returning some time tomorrow. “I need to go into Chilliwack to take care of some business,” he said.

“Chilliwack?” Riley asked. “That’s nearly four hours away.”

“I know. But I’ve got other interests outside of this venture. I’ve neglected them for over a month and need to catch up.”

“Do you want our earth-boy to go with you and keep you company?”

I cringed. Fortunately Egan wasn’t enthusiastic about it either. “No need to. About the only useful thing he might be able to do is some of the driving, but I’m not letting him do that!”

“Every little bit helps.” Riley looked at me. “Do you have a driver’s licence?”

“Uh, no. Quite a few others in the grove have one so I never saw the need to get one. And I’ve never driven a car, let alone something as big as the truck.”

Riley nodded. “So much for that idea. Of course, Egan, I can’t stop you from going. Drive safely.”

With some relief I watched Egan get into the truck and drive off. It was nice to know he wouldn’t be around all day and tonight.

Savros said to Riley, “You did have to tell him to drive safely, didn’t you? He’s a bit of an asshole. It would be nice if he never made it back somehow.” His tone was decidedly sardonic.

“I certainly can sympathize,” Riley replied. “But we need him, if only for the truck.”

“If he doesn’t come back,” I said, “I can easily find a path through the forest down to the highway. At some point I’ll get a cell phone signal and can call for help. I might even be able to get the grove to buy us a new truck. Then we’d have a truck and not have Egan!”

Everyone laughed.

“Oh—speaking of my cell phone,” I added, “I want to get pictures of us here at the camp! They’ll be so much nicer without Egan’s smug face spoiling the shots. Everyone game for that?”

“Sure!” said Jared.

My phone’s battery still had a decent charge because I’d turned it off on Sunday. We headed outside into the morning light. It took me and Jared some work to find a place to set up my phone because there wasn’t a tripod of any description in the camp. Eventually we brought the collapsible table outside and put the phone on it, propped up on a bag of rice from the kitchen.

“Are you going to put anything on?” asked Martin, but this time with a glint in his eye. It wasn’t like my second day here when he’d told me to wear something when I’d come out of the kitchen naked with the dinner plates.

“Of course not!”

“An earth-boy without clothes is like a fish without playing cards,” said Larry. “Neither has any need for them.”

We took many pictures. Of course, Savros and Jared were right beside me. I felt it was a bit of a shame they were dressed for the work day. I figured I’d try to get pictures with me and them naked if I could.

Everyone else in camp now remembered they had cell phones as well and wanted copies of the pictures. Jared suggested I could spend the day recharging the phones from the solar array’s battery bank and we could have a big group picture taking session that evening. Everyone agreed it was a great idea. All had chargers for their phones and an appropriate cable. We discovered the battery bank came equipped with four USB outlets, likely for this very purpose.

That evening as a group we took pictures of the lot of us on everyone’s phone. They turned out very well. The sun had dipped below the treetops and was filtered, so no one was squinting by being in full sun. I was naked, of course. I asked Jared if he’d take off his shirt, but he just shook his head “No.”

Riley asked everyone to keep the pictures a secret until the camp’s work was done. He didn’t want them uploaded to any sort of social media.

Larry added that while most sites removed metadata from digital photographs, others didn’t. It might be possible for the GPS co-ordinates of the camp to be visible.

On hearing that, Riley said any picture of our work ending up on the internet would breach the confidentiality agreement they’d signed, and it didn’t expire for five years. And that applied even to me, even though he knew I hadn’t signed anything. I nodded agreement.

That night I spent with Riley, who as always was a welcome change from Egan. We had a good time together. Riley didn’t seem completely comfortable doing earth-boys, unlike Martin and Jared, but with no females around he certainly appreciated having me here.

Back in Savros’ hut I wondered if I shouldn’t just drop Egan completely. Larry had told me he preferred not to have sex with me, so that left only four men. It meant I could make them happy almost twice each week instead of only once.

✵   ✵   ✵

Egan returned late Wednesday morning and approached me just after the crew had left for the work field from lunch. Unlike the frown he typically wore when talking to me, he actually had a small smile on his face.

“Hey boy,” he said in a gentle tone. “Can I get you to come into town with me?”

My guard went up almost immediately. After the spoon and truck incidents, and his apparent cluelessness about me not liking him, I wondered if he wasn’t up to something yet again.

“Why?” I asked.

“I have a paper for you to sign formalizing your employment.”

It seemed Riley had asked Egan to make sure I was legal, at least as far as humans were concerned. It seemed like a reasonable request.

“I think I can, yes,” I replied. “But why today? Can’t it wait until Sunday?”

He paused briefly before answering. “I’m not sure you’ll be coming with us on Sunday. And, uh, employment law. We need to get this done quickly or risk being fined by the Ministry of Labour.”

“All right. Didn’t you pick it up yesterday?”

“No. My trip to Chilliwack was for other things. Our lawyer’s in Vancouver, so he mailed the contract to our P.O. box in town. But when I stopped there this morning there weren’t any staff available. I was told they’d have someone there this afternoon.

“Oh, okay. Should I put any clothes on?”

“No need to. You can stay in the truck while I get the contract from the post office. You can sign it in the truck, and I’ll just go back in and mail it off to our lawyer.”

That made me happy. I was going for a trip into town but didn’t have to wear anything!

After being unexpectedly nice, the second hint something was amiss was Egan drove the rough trail from the work camp only as far as the junction with the gravel road. Once on the road, he abruptly turned the truck around and started back up the trail again, going only about a hundred metres so we were out of sight of the road. He shut the engine off.

“Okay, boy,” he said. “The real reason we’re here is because I want to have sex with you outdoors. Obviously we can’t do that in the camp.”

I was puzzled. “Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?”

“Well, things haven’t gone so well to now, so I was afraid you wouldn’t want to get into the truck with me. But, well, yeah, I’m still hoping you can give me a good time.”

I considered my next words carefully. “On Monday night I said something like I’d prefer you treat me like a member of the crew instead of your servant. Lying to me about why you wanted me to come with you just now doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.”

“Okay,” said Egan, talking to the steering wheel instead of me. “I guess I should have been up front about it.” He turned to look at me. “But now that we’re here, can we at least give it a try? I—I’ll let you tell me what to do to make it better for you.”

I considered it. We’d be outside, which would be a nice change from having sex without being in contact with the Earth. And maybe, I thought, if I could give Egan a decent time he might even improve his attitude. It seemed to have worked with Martin.

“Alright,” I said. “But just sex, okay? Like, don’t say anything. Don’t call me your bitch or your little boy. Just, well, treat me like you would a girl you like and want to see again.”

He looked directly at me and nodded. “I can do that, sure.” With that, he got out of the truck.

I did too. Egan pulled a bag out of the back seat.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“A blanket. You might like feeling the earth beneath your feet, but I prefer not to get dirt and bugs on me.”

I actually smiled. “Oh, makes sense!”

He pulled a blanket out of the bag, the same type we used for the bedding, and laid it on the ground in front of the truck. He sat down on it and encouraged me to do the same.

He put his arms around my back and started by kissing me. It quickly turned into a full-on mouth open and tongue exchange. He moaned softly.

“I thought you’d go for that,” he said. “Wait a moment.”

He quickly removed his clothing. Now just as naked as I was, he resumed the foreplay, kissing me from my neck all the way down my front. When he got past where my navel would have been, he grasped my penis and started stroking it. But roughly; obviously he didn’t do this very much at all.

“Oh, slow down a little!” I admonished.

Egan said nothing, but eased up on my penis. In a clear case of the little head overriding the big head, whatever conflicts we’d had before faded away as he worked it over. I got very hard and could see he was, too.

Then he said, “Alright, pull your knees up. I’m going in.”

I lay down on my back and put my legs into the air, fully exposing my anus. He kept his mouth and fingers off it and instead immediately put his cock up against it. Then he pushed in firmly, as if to remind me he was having sex with me and not the other way around.

He was more assertive than the other men, but this time wasn’t being abusive. He kept up a steady pace with slight variations. I got into it, too, using my amoryn to work on his rod inside me.

This was the first time I’d had sex outside in over two weeks. It was so much nicer this way! Not only could I feel Egan’s cock inside me, I could feel the breeze as it flowed over my bare body and eren connecting me to the earth.

We carried on like this for fifteen or twenty minutes, with Egan occasionally changing positions. But through it all he never got rough like our first time, and aside from some moans and the occasional exclamation said very little. I was just good, solid, heavy sex. For the final run he put me on my hands and knees and did me from behind. As always, I used my amoryn to give him the orgasm I wanted him to have, a nice strong one that I kept going a bit longer than usual for him. I came, too, of course, shooting several times on to the blanket.

Calming down, Egan folded the blanket over my emissions, then turned over to lie on his back with me on top, still inside me. He held on to me while I used my amoryn to milk all his cum out, then carefully push him out of me.

“Now that was good!” he said at last, taking his arms off my back and carefully rolling me to one side. “More like it should have been.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “It was. And outside, too! We much prefer it that way.”

“I think I noticed.” He pulled me into an uncharacteristic hug, the first time he’d ever shown any sort of affection for me.

Suddenly he gave a start and stared intently into the forest around us.

“Do you hear that?” he asked urgently.

“Hear what?”

“Something in the woods over there. A deer maybe? Or a bear?”

I stared into the trees but didn’t see anything. To check further I started a pathfinding.

Then things went dark. A hood had been pulled over my head, a thick rubber one with nose and mouth openings but none for the eyes. I heard a click as something latched it into place. Then I felt a rope around one ankle being pulled tight and seconds later the other one was bound as well.

“What?!” I cried out. “Egan, what are you doing?”

“Time to teach you a much needed lesson, boy!”

With a sinking heart I realized I’d been tricked, big time. This was the old Egan, the one who had kidnapped me off the street, tried to rape me, and had thrown me out of his hut last week.

“Lesson? What lesson? What are you talking about?”

He pulled me bodily to my feet. The rope around my ankles had enough slack in it that I could stand with my feet a short distance apart.

“Respect, boy!” he growled. “Respect for me. You don’t call me clueless and get away with it! You never listen to me and you’re always running to Riley to worm your way out of anything I ask you to do!”

“Tell me to do, more like it!”

I felt a slap on the side of my face, somewhat muted by the hood.

“I’m talking here! Those sick performances you’ve given me since we got here have been pathetic! At least you made up for them just now. But you’re going to have to learn that you don’t disrespect me! Put your hands out. The truck’s right in front of you. Stand there with your hands on it!”

“And why should I—OWWW!”

A sharp pain went across my shoulder..

“That’s for Monday night! You’d better hold on to the truck—you’ve got a few more coming!”

“But what for—OWWW!” That strike was lower on my back. I couldn’t see what he was hitting me with, but it sounded like it might have been a whip. I took his advice and put my hands on the truck to steady myself.

“That’s for calling me clueless on Monday night!”

Now I knew why Egan had driven us so far out of the camp. And had put the blackout hood over my face. I couldn’t look into his eyes, so I couldn’t use eren to calm him down.

Whap!

“Owww!” Another stinging pain, this time just above my bum.

“And that’s for refusing to make me a sandwich on Saturday!”

The humiliation was getting to me. I’d heard many stories in my youth of how humans would occasionally enslave and beat earth-boys. But they were from two centuries earlier and before. I’d never met an earth-boy who’d actually experienced it. And now it was happening to me.

Whap!

“Ow!” Although the initial pain was pretty intense, at least I had my feet on the ground and could call eren to dull it almost immediately.

“That’s for forcing Larry and Jared to stay in camp on Sunday so you could go into town instead of them!”

Whap!

“Oww!” With each strike he went lower: on my tender bum, my upper legs, my lower legs …

“That’s for going whining to Riley about cleaning the huts!”

WHAP! An especially strong one, again on my bum.

This time I screamed.

“And that’s for snitching to Riley about how I kidnapped you! And by the way, boy, you scream really good. Maybe I should give you another one so I can hear it again.”

By now I was in tears. “No! Egan, no! Please! Don’t hit me any more!”

“Alright, but from now on when I tell you to do something, you’ll do it. Right?”

“But Riley—Ow!”

“Fuck Riley! I’m giving you the orders from now on! You’ll either do what I say or run away from camp. But you’re not going to do that!”

“What? Why not? Why should I stay?”

This time he didn’t strike me. “Well, of course I can’t force you to stay. But think about Savros and Jared.”

“Savros? Jared? What about them?”

“I’ve watched you. Savros’s fallen in love with you and it looks like you’ve fallen for Jared, although what you see in that Jap kid is beyond me! It would be a shame if they happened to get mugged in the streets after we’re finished our work here.”

“Mugged? Why would they be—Ow!”

“Are you really that stupid, boy? Do I have to spell it out for you? Do you what it means when a well dressed man visits a store owner and says ‘Nice place you got here; would be a shame if it burned down’?”

“Uh … “

“Answer me! Do you know what it means?”

“Yes,” I admitted weakly. “It means if the owner doesn’t pay money to the guy they’ll burn his store down.”

“You got it, shit-for-brains. You breathe a word of this to Riley, or run away before we’re done here, and a few months later Savros or Jared just might get viciously mugged one day and end up in hospital for weeks!”

“Why them?” I asked through my tears. “They’ve got nothing to do with this.”

“Yeah, but you like them. You don’t have to worry about yourself; just move to a different province and my friends would never find you. But Savros and Jared? You like them and we have ways of finding out where they live. I’m pretty sure you don’t want to see them coming to harm. And here’s a little reminder!”

Whap! A sharp hit.

“Owww!”

“Alright, I think maybe you’ve learned. Oh, and the next time you’re in my hut, you had better give me as good a time as you did today! Because if you don’t keep me happy, either Savros or Jared are going be very unhappy!”

I heard him put the whip back into the bag. Next the hood came off. I had to shield my eyes for several seconds from the glare of the sun. I saw that at some point Egan had put on his clothes. He put the hood into the bag.

“Take the rope off your feet and put it and the blanket into the bag, boy!”

Without looking at him and without saying a word I did as he ordered. Egan opened the back door of the truck and I put the bag onto the seat. I went to get in too, but he pulled me away.

“I think you need some time to think things over,” he told me. “It’s less than three kilometres to the camp so you’re walking. Remember, Savros and Jared will be okay so long as nobody knows what happened here.”

He got into the truck and drove off.

I sat down on the trail for several minutes, calling on eren to ease the dull pain in my back and calm down. Was he serious about harming my friends? Did he have the connections to hire men to search them out and beat them, or was it just an empty threat?

Egan was right about one thing: I cared for them. I decided I couldn’t risk writing off Egan’s threat as a bluff, at least until I had more information.

The little adventure I’d started on two weeks ago was getting darker. I figured I’d have to draw on everyone else in the camp for solace, and keep a calm ready any time I was around Egan. Then I started walking back to the camp.

✵   ✵   ✵

It proved impossible to hide my distress from the rest of the crew. Savros noticed it immediately when I showed up to help with dinner. What made things worse was he was one of the people I couldn’t confide in; not after Egan had made a direct threat against him. The best I could do was try not to make mistakes.

I tried to act normally throughout supper, but it was obvious to both Jared and Savros something was wrong because I didn’t respond as I normally did when they started playing with me. After a while they stopped, which didn’t improve my mood much.

Savros tried to get me to talk again while cleaning up after supper, but to shut down the conversation I said as little as possible. I sat out the board game as well, having no energy for it at all. Instead I went outside and sat on the ground, tying to get what solace I could from the earth.

Larry came outside when the poker game started.

“Hi there. Is something wrong?”

I nodded my head.

“What’s happened?”

“I—I can’t talk about it.”

“I’m sure you can. I’m not an earth-boy, but I have a pair of ears and I’ve raised three kids. I might be able to help.”

“Not right now,” I said.

“I don’t get it,” said Larry. “At lunch-time you were your normal happy earth-boy self, laughing and joking around like you always do. Tonight you look like my daughter after her first boyfriend dumped her. Did you have an argument with Savros?”

I shook my head. “No, nothing like that. He’s just as concerned for me as you are. Like I said, I really can’t talk about it.”

“Okay,” Larry conceded. “But if you do want to talk, I’m here.” He gave me a hug and headed back inside.

I was still outside thinking things over and drawing some eren when the evening’s activities wound down and the crew left the main hut. I’d stayed within view of the door, and Martin easily found me.

“You’re looking pretty upset!” he commented. “Are you up for fooling around tonight?”

“Do you want to?” I asked.

“I admit was looking forward to it. You still game?”

I considered it. When I was first brought here I thought Martin was Egan’s henchman since he’d taken an active role in my abduction. But over the past two weeks I’d come to know he was a decent man, even if we weren’t really friends. And the urge to have sex is very strong in earth-boys. I figured it would be a distraction.

“Yes, I can be with you for a while. I might not be the best company, but I should be able to make you feel good.”

Which I did. I sort of went into automatic mode, like when we have sex in our sleep, but still I tried to give him a good time. I succeeded, making him come in enough time that he could enjoy it. When it was over he gave me a hug and said, “Get better soon, okay?”

As usual I went to sleep with Savros. Like the last few of nights he was naked when I got into his bed. He pulled me into a tight hug.

“It’s sad to see you so down,” he said. “I haven’t known you very long, but I feel something’s gone really bad for you. I’m here if you need me.”

“Thanks. Just hold me tonight like you always do. Back home I’d have a dozen earth-boys taking turns comforting me all night. You’ll do just was well.”

I may have been feeling out of sorts, but Savros was his usual self. Although I’m sure he didn’t really intend to, he had some sex with me overnight but didn’t cum. Still I found it comforting.