by S A Reid
“Men like you make me want to vomit,” Dr. Royal had whispered. “Men like you should go directly to the gallows.”
Seizing Gabriel’s injured fingers, Dr. Royal had twisted them round, crushing the broken pinky and cracking the dislocated ring finger above the knuckle. Maddened by pain, Gabriel had launched himself at the doctor’s throat. Six guards were required to pull Gabriel off Dr. Royal, who’d pressed charges the very next day. But the testimony of those guards, including McCrory and Buckland, had tipped the scales in Gabriel’s favor. Dr. Royal had been censured for unprofessional conduct and Gabriel had received the lash – not for homosexuality, as he’d feared, but for grievous bodily injury of a fellow inmate. He’d lost his pinky finger, too – infection had settled in the crushed bone – but compared to the hell of thirty lashes, amputation of a minor digit went unnoticed.
Gabriel had borne up to the lash bravely. Not for nothing had he weathered his da’s beatings year after year, some deserved, some not. He hadn’t pissed himself, hadn’t wept, hadn’t begged. He still bore the scars across his back – he would until he died – but his silent endurance of the cat-o’-nine tails had made a lasting impression among his fellow convicts. During Gabriel’s recovery, Carl Werth had been transferred to Pentonville Men’s Prison. So nine-fingered Gabriel MacKenna had inherited Werth’s place inside Wentworth, and all had been right with the world.
Except now I’m a prison queer, just like Werth, Gabriel thought, flopping onto his left side in hopes it would prove more conducive to sleep than his right. Or as near as makes no difference. Why deny it? Why deny what I need?
Even after five long years of incarceration, Gabriel had never given himself over to the pleasures so many inmates took for granted. He’d entered Wentworth vowing not only to never be buggered but also to never stoop to buggery for his own relief. Yet five years with only rare glimpses of living women had taught him the meaning of blue balls. His ex-fiancée, Mattie, had married some other geezer after two years; the girl he’d seen on the side, Sheila, had marched down the aisle even quicker, but written to Gabriel anyway for a while. Then she, too, had found some better diversion, condemning Gabriel to endless, empty nights. Sometimes he got his hands on a bit of contraband, a French postcard or a dirty book, but mostly he was forced to rely on stale memories. Until finally, three months ago, Gabriel had turned to Lonnie Parker and made him his girl.
Lonnie had been sentenced to twenty years for running a grand larceny ring. A lovely young man with bright blond hair, green eyes, and only the faintest shadow of a beard, twenty-three-year-old Lonnie had protested his innocence from day one, swearing he’d fallen in with tricksters and been stitched up. He was too streetwise, too well versed in the lingo of the habitual thief, to be the literal innocent he claimed, but leader of a thieves’ network? Lonnie couldn’t have masterminded a child’s birthday party. Surely that had been obvious to both judge and jury, but His Majesty’s justice worked in mysterious ways.
Within days of his arrival, Lonnie had been buggered by his cellmate and raped by G-block’s gang of hypermasculine prison queers, the Lovelies. Hollow-eyed, off his food and widely expected to top himself, Lonnie had been too frightened to speak when Gabriel sat down beside him at supper one night. But he’d accepted the offered cigarette, a Pall Mall, and kept it between his lips as Gabriel lit it. After that, Lonnie had been under Gabriel’s protection. And Gabriel had been within his rights to ask any payment he wished.
It started with hand jobs. Gabriel, repulsed and aroused by Lonnie’s touch, had initially believed hand jobs would be enough. But Lonnie, brimming with gratitude and new life, soon offered to suck Gabriel off, and after the third time Gabriel agreed. Eventually, he’d started kissing Lonnie, surprised by how little the action stirred him. Trying to imagine Lonnie as a woman was impossible; Lonnie was low-voiced and narrow-hipped, with no tits and a point of entry Gabriel didn’t like to think about. Once while Gabriel was kissing Lonnie, eyes shut tight as he thought of Sheila, Lonnie pulled out his own cock and pressed it into Gabriel’s hand. Jerking away as if scalded, Gabriel had marshaled all his self-control not to slap Lonnie across the face. But Lonnie didn’t deserve such brutality. He was only trying to earn his protection by offering equipment Gabriel didn’t want.
What if it’s not the equipment? Gabriel asked himself uncomfortably. What if Lonnie’s the problem? Gabriel had never liked stupid or passive women. Why should those qualities be any less off-putting in a man?
Gabriel let himself remember how Joseph Cooper’s uniform fit him, that snugness across the shoulders and rear. Not to mention the face. Cooper was beautiful, yet not feminine. As a free man, Gabriel’s appetite for sex had been prodigious. Now that he knew he couldn’t last another thirty, forty, or fifty years on the occasional hand job or suck off, perhaps it was time to accept masculine beauty? The cock, the balls and an asshole as the only route to satisfaction?
Up in the top bunk, Owens moaned in his sleep, releasing an especially pungent fart. Soon all of F-block would smell like Hell’s waiting room. Twenty-two more days, Gabriel told himself. He’d receive the lash for harming Owens or the noose for killing him, and just at the moment Gabriel wasn’t in the market for either. Best to bend his thoughts elsewhere, on something worthwhile. Like how to get Joseph Cooper alone.
* * *
Judging from Old Wentworth’s design, Victorians viewed bathing as something to be done rarely, or only in small doses. The Roundabout’s lavatory had just one tub. The inmates of A, B, C and D block used it just twice a year, queuing up naked for the privilege and dunking themselves in the same increasingly gray water. Otherwise, each man depended on his cell’s washbasin and flannel to keep clean. A new cake of hard yellow soap was issued every January whether the old one was melted to a sliver or not.
Toilet facilities in both Old Wentworth and the new building were even more primitive. Flushing toilets were reserved for administrators, not inmates. In the yard there was a privy; otherwise they made do in their cells with plain metal buckets, swapping a full bucket for an empty one each morning. Prisoners and guards alike despised “slopping out,” as the daily ritual was called. Gabriel had never thought much about it; he’d grown up in a house with nine younger siblings and no indoor plumbing, just an outhouse and a well. But most of the prisoners considered slopping out an institutionalized form of humiliation, and Governor Sanderson agreed. But retrofitting Wentworth with a toilet per cell would be an incalculable expense, something the Home Office would never approve, even if the toilets were installed with 100 percent convict labor. So Governor Sanderson had compromised by giving the new building a communal shower.
The shower’s design was simple. A small towel room with cupboards and wooden benches opened into a square, white-tiled room. Showerheads protruded from the walls; the floor was fitted with grated drains. When the brand new inmates, still serving their month of what used to be called “New Convict Isolation” and was now called “Acclimation Time,” filed into the towel room, Gabriel was waiting inside.
As Cooper proceeded into the showers, Gabriel spoke quietly to the others. Luckily, Smyth had already returned to the general population, or he surely would have refused to play along. But the new men, eager to fit in and intimidated by Gabriel, each agreed to piss off in exchange for an extra half-ounce of tobacco and a few cigarette papers. Bathing wasn’t compulsory at Wentworth – the very first thing Gabriel would have changed, had he been governor – so declining a shower would raise no eyebrows. Only the big man, Benjamin Stiles, refused Gabriel’s tobacco, shaking his head until a chocolate bar was offered. Of the seven men whom Gabriel bribed, Stiles was the only one with no idea why he was being asked to leave, or what he was abandoning Cooper to face.
Once the towel room was empty, Gabriel stripped, wrapping a white towel around his waist. His cock already poked through the gap, thick and purple with rising excitement. Women had always reacted to it with nervous laughter, giggling at how huge and ug
ly it was. Gabriel never felt insulted. Those same women were soon gasping and spreading themselves wider, riding him with frantic rocking jolts as if afraid they’d never be so perfectly filled again.
Cooper stood beneath one of the far wall’s showerheads. The water beat down on his head and shoulders at full blast, steam rising as he soaped himself with the gusto of someone who considered cleanliness next to godliness …
Gabriel watched. Cooper’s ass was firm and perfect. His thighs and calves were surprisingly well muscled, as if he’d done real work in his life. And when Cooper turned around, rubbing his face and scalp beneath the water, Gabriel’s belly clenched at the sight of the other man’s cock. It was just the right length, all the same width, all the same color. Gabriel, who’d only had one cock in his mouth – the one he’d bitten off – had a sudden impulse to hold Cooper down. To kiss that soft, perfect member ’til it swelled, a luminous white teardrop forming on the head …
Gabriel stopped, surprised at himself. That wasn’t just prison queer nonsense. That was poetic Irish nonsense. Gabriel’s own mum had adored poetry, treating herself to a daily orgy of words, and everyone knew how that turned out.
“Oi. Doctor.” Gabriel stepped onto the white-tiled floor.
Cooper stepped away from the blast as Gabriel yanked off his towel, tossing it away.
“No women and children here. Only me.”
Cooper stared at Gabriel. Then his mouth hardened. When he spoke, his voice was unexpectedly threatening. “Piss off or I’ll knock your teeth out.”
“Will you now?” Gabriel felt himself grin. “You and what army?”
Rushing at Cooper, Gabriel collided with the younger man’s midsection, knocking him against the wet tiled wall. Cooper struck it with a whuff, yet still managed to punch Gabriel so hard he saw stars. With a low grunt Gabriel hit back, slamming Cooper in the gut. The young man made a choking noise as if he might vomit. Then he slid down the wall, head back, both hands clutched to his belly.
Cooper must have been dazed. His thighs were spread wide, pretty cock exposed. The curve of each buttock was plain, a trickle of shower water flowing between them to circle a steel-grated drain.
“Think I’ll fuck you like this.” Gabriel started to throw a leg over.
“No!” Cooper cried, as much animal denial as human speech. His pupils were dilated, eyes red and desperate. He threw another wild punch at Gabriel, barely grazing his jaw, then two more at Gabriel’s chest, clumsy, frantic. Gabriel, ever calculating, waited until he saw an opening, planting his fist exactly where he’d hit Cooper before. This time Cooper fell forward, retching helplessly.
“My third conviction,” Gabriel said in Cooper’s ear as the young man struggled to control himself, “was grievous bodily harm for biting a man’s cock clean off. Werth didn’t die, but it was a very near thing. You know how men are. Attached to their parts.”
“Leave me alone,” Cooper gasped, trying to scramble up. Gabriel dug hard fingers into the other man’s shoulders, holding him in place.
“Look at you. On your knees, ass in the wind, telling me what to do.” On one level, Cooper’s audacity amused Gabriel; on another, it stoked a terrifying anger. “I’ll have you, boy, conscious or no. Brace yourself, let me do my worst, and you’ll walk out intact. Keep fighting and they’ll carry you to the morgue. With my seed trickling out your dead ass all the same.”
“No!” Wrenching free of Gabriel’s grip, Cooper struck out blindly. His left hand smacked Gabriel harmlessly in the face. But his right fist slammed against Gabriel’s inner thigh, jolting his balls in the bargain.
Gabriel gasped. The pain was nauseating. To be so in need and suffer a blow there almost made his breakfast come up. Only his iron control, all the countless other pains he’d suffered, kept Gabriel from vomiting. And his brush with humiliation made him erupt.
“You fucking cunt!” Grabbing Cooper by the hair, Gabriel slammed his temple against the slick floor. “I’ll fuck your ass ’til you’re dead!”
Balls still throbbing, Gabriel forced Cooper’s legs apart. He wanted to believe the wildness possessing him was righteous anger – a need to punish the bad doctors of the world, to make them pay for their sins. But deep down he simply ached to fuck another human being, to be inside someone again. And not just anyone. Joseph Cooper. Gabriel wanted Cooper because he was beautiful, wanted him and hated him – hated that sublime male beauty that could make him deviate, could inspire such frenzy.
“Oh, God,” Gabriel choked, pushing himself between Cooper’s cheeks.
The young man groaned, face against the floor, semiconscious. “Please … no …”
“Shut it. Shut it or I’ll kill you first and fuck you after, I swear it.” Gabriel forced himself in deeper, groaning as an orifice tighter than any virgin pussy squeezed him like iron. Sweet Mary and all the Saints, no wonder men gave in to this. No wonder it was mortal sin, punishable by an eternity of hellfire. This made everyday fucking feel about as rare and special as fish and chips.
“Please, God,” Cooper sobbed, barely able to get the words out.
Gabriel dealt Cooper another blow. Then while the other man lay dazed, Gabriel pushed himself completely inside. The runoff water turned pink. Cooper’s moans changed to little hitching breaths of fear and pain. He was even more beautiful in extremis, like a martyr going back to God. Maybe Cooper was a good man. Maybe he’d simply lost his way. But he’d killed a mother and child, stolen a husband’s happiness, and he had to pay. Besides, Gabriel was too far gone to stop.
“God forgive me,” Gabriel said. His hips rocked faster, finding the rhythm, his manhood locked in that exquisite unyielding grip. Release came too fast, too violently, threatening to shake his flesh off the bones. Gabriel couldn’t remember ever coming so hard. For what seemed like a long time, he remained inside Cooper, hating to pull free, hating to let it end.
But practical concerns intruded on Gabriel, as they so often did. Even his favorite guards were only so biddable, and the G-block men would soon arrive, howling for hot water. Time to go.
Gabriel paused to wash his cock. He’d be sore from head to root. Cooper looked worse, curled up on his side like a babe cast too early from the womb. The runoff water had turned more red than pink. Probably he needed stitches. If so, Gabriel hoped Dr. Harper, not Dr. Royal, attended him.
He started toward the towel room. Cooper must have heard Gabriel’s footfalls and believed himself alone, because he began to weep. He did so almost silently, chest heaving, tears squeezed from behind closed eyes, hands pressed against his mouth to muffle the sound.
Gabriel watched Cooper sob, unable to pull his gaze away. But he must have decided to turn away because he found himself fully dressed and outside the showers. Hanging about was lunacy; Gabriel had to disappear before a hue and cry went up.
His hands were shaking. Clenching them into fists, Gabriel squared his shoulders and strode unhurriedly back to F-block.
* * *
It was three weeks before Joseph Cooper returned from his stay in Wentworth’s infirmary. He appeared in the cafeteria around noon just as dinner was served – one of those bland combinations the administrators thought the inmates should be so grateful for, tomato soup and chips.
Gabriel had already known of Cooper’s impending return, tipped off by Lonnie, who brought the news with transparent misery. Everyone knew Gabriel had a particular interest in Cooper. As Cooper joined the queue for soup, Gabriel studied him, that new hunger reigniting. Sighing, Lonnie pushed his tray aside.
“Something amiss?”
Lonnie shrugged, looking at the floor as Gabriel studied him. Gabriel was thirty-two. Lonnie, just ten years younger, often seemed as feckless and changeable as a child, so Gabriel frequently addressed him as such. “’Tis a sin to waste food.”
Taking a chip off his tray, Lonnie broke it in two and stared at the halves.
“Oi. Lonnie.”
Lonnie’s gaze came up, blinking away what looked like t
ears.
“Take note. I still have all my limbs,” Gabriel said. “Ten toes and all the fingers worth keeping. I can protect more than one man at a time if I put my mind to it. See if I can’t.”
Lonnie brightened, sitting up straighter.
“The light dawns, does it? Good. Now eat.” Gabriel pushed the tray back at Lonnie, who attacked his chips with fresh vigor. Gabriel watched for a while, amused, before turning to study Cooper again.
He looked good. He wore his prison uniform like a suit, filling it out perfectly. Every ginger-brown hair was in place. His cheeks were close-shaven, no nicks, just a neat sideburn beside each ear. As he moved down the serving line, accepting not only tomato soup and chips but also a helping of rhubarb pie, Cooper kept his chin up, a smile curving those lovely lips. Only the scab on his forehead, the fading bruise at his temple, hinted he hadn’t spent the last three weeks on holiday.
For all his quiet confidence, Cooper didn’t try to join this faction or that. Instead he carried his metal tray to a deserted table near the guard’s post, sitting down and beginning to eat with the single-mindedness of one who wishes to be left alone.
“Hallo.” Gabriel settled himself on the opposite bench.
Cooper glared at him, gray eyes hard. “You shouldn’t be here. I’ve given evidence against you.”
“Have you now. Poor me. ’Tis a wonder they haven’t clapped me in irons. Do you even know my name?”
Cooper’s gaze shifted to the top left breast of Gabriel’s uniform. “MacKenna.”
Gabriel struck a match. Lighting a Pall Mall, he pushed the pack across the table. “I’m Gabriel. And I know for a fact you said you never saw the man who had you. Whatever you are, Cooper, you’re no grass. Take a smoke.”