The Prison

by Stefano Pastor

  I lied. “He just took me home. I came to thank him.”

  That calmed him down just a bit.

  “He didn’t come back here. I have no idea where he might be.”

  Then he went back inside the bandwagon and I ran away.

  So, the search began. I could have walked away from it, pretend to have nothing to do with that, but, how could I? I was the one who put the poor guy in trouble, so now I couldn’t turn a blind eye to all of this.

  I went back to the place where we met Tony. I could’ve called him to ask what he did to him, but I didn’t want to give Tony that satisfaction. So, I started looking around the place. I couldn’t see any signs of violence, and there was no blood. I was sure that Tony hadn’t beat him up, it just couldn’t be… or could it?

  At some point I started calling him, and since I didn’t know his name, I had to make do. “Little man? Where are you, little man?”

  I scoured every inch of the area hoping that they hadn’t forced him to get in the car and brought him who knows where.

  Eventually I made my way down to the river. There was a big sewer tunnel which came out from the bank and entered the water stream. It was a cylinder – almost six feet tall – and I guessed someone like Tony could have found the idea of dumping him there quite funny.

  So, I steeled myself and entered the tunnel. It was a smelly place, and at its centre flowed a putrid water trickle. “Little man?” I shouted.

  I kept moving on until the visibility was so low I had to use a lighter to be able to see.

  “Little man?”

  Suddenly, I heard his voice: “Stop calling me that!”

  I almost yelled with joy. “Where are you?”

  “Down here.”

  Following the sound of his voice I found a vent. By the measly glow of the lighter, he was invisible.

  “They locked me in here, I can’t get out.”

  There weren’t any locks on the vent, but a stake blocked it in place. It was impossible to get to it from the inside. I easily removed the stake. “Come on, get out. It’s over.”

  The underground cubicle should have been very tiny, but on the other hand he didn’t take up a lot of space. He climbed up the steel ladder in the wall. He was smelly, dirty, and on top of that completely naked.

  “So, what?” he promptly attacked. “They took them from me! Your friends! Did you see my clothes anywhere around here?”

  I shook my head. They probably had tossed them in some bin. I couldn’t keep my eyes off his penis and the dark bush that surrounded it. Even if it was at rest, it certainly didn’t look like a kid’s.

  “Are you having a good time?” he asked, noticing my gaze.

  It was an odd feeling. He wasn’t a child, he was a miniaturised young man. Everything about him was proportioned, and in that moment, I thought that it was just and natural.

  He got up and tried to reach the exit. “I’ve had enough of this place! You could have shown up a little early, don’t you think? I was left rotting in here!”

  I chased him. “I had nothing to do with it!”

  But that wasn’t true, the fault was entirely mine. I ran away, I went back home and forgot about him. That night I slept peacefully in my bed and not in the sewers like him.

  We were a few feet from freedom when he stopped. He looked down his naked, soiled body and snarled. “I can’t leave like this!”

  That was certain. I thought about calling his dad, but there would have been too many explanations to be made.

  “Wait”, I said, and tried taking off my sweater. “This should do it.”

  It would have been big enough for him to cover him up to his knees. If someone were to see him like that it would still have been a funny sight, but it was still better than being completely naked.

  While removing my sweater, my shirt came up out of the skirt and almost uncovered my breasts. Underneath my shirt I wore nothing, for I didn’t have the need for support. I felt naked before his eyes.

  The situation was unbelievable. To me he looked like a child, but… I noticed a slight movement between his legs. Then, instead of giving him my sweater, I let it fall on the ground and started to unbutton my shirt.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he asked, and I could almost sense some fear in his voice.

  “You know what”, I answered while letting my shirt fall to uncover my breasts.

  “You want to do it in here? Are you crazy? I’m freezing!”

  “We can warm each other up.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t give a fuck about me. This is all a game to you.”

  I shrugged. “So, what? You don’t want to do it?”

  I wondered again if he were a virgin, if he ever had done it before, and these thoughts had the strangest effect on me.

  “You are laughing! I can see that!” he yelled.

  I lay down on the ground, trying to avoid the streamlet. “Come here.”

  “But it’s smelly! We can’t breathe!”

  “You smell too.”

  “You are crazy, totally crazy!”

  Still he bent over me and helped me as I started taking my skirt off.

  “Are you a perv? Do you like to do it with kids?”

  I wondered about that, but then he got an erection and I sighed. “Stop talking!”

  “This is nuts! Totally nuts.”

  Yet he lay down beside me and reached out, unsure whether to touch me or not.

  “So, have you ever done it? With someone like me? You didn’t answer.”

  “With a bitch? No, I never did it with a bitch.”

  I grabbed his hands and took them to my breasts. “Then shall we begin?”

  I felt his caresses and closed my eyes. He stopped abruptly.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I saw you, ok? You closed your eyes! You don’t want to look at me, you want this but you are thinking about someone else.”

  “That’s nonsense!”

  “You truly are a bitch!”

  “Look! I’ll keep my eyes wide open. I’m looking at you. Now, do you want to do it?”

  I felt him on top of me and he was light, too light. Still, his hands were soft and the contact between our bodies was pleasant. I waited.

  “You don’t want to touch me, don’t you? It grosses you out. I’m too small.”

  “What nonsense are you talking about?”

  “Then why aren’t you touching me?”

  So, I did it. I hugged him, and the feeling was unimaginable. He was right. He was small, small, too small. I was under the impression of doing something obscene, something plain wrong.

  “See, I was right, you can’t do it.”

  I was fed up with earing him speak. I shut him up with a kiss and held him tight. He tried to break free, but I had no intention of letting him go. Yes, it felt strange, utterly so, but I was determined to see this through.

  When I felt him get inside me, the feeling of oddness increased even more.

  “You are a bitch”, he said as he began entering me.

  “Who is he?” asked my brother Davide.

  I wasn’t answering, so he added: “There’s a naked kid in our bathroom! Where did you find him?”

  I was in my brother’s room, raiding his closet.

  “Does mom know you are here? Shouldn’t you be at school?”

  My brother was also supposed to be at school. I brought the little man home because it was supposed to be empty.

  “What are you doing? Stop it. That’s my stuff!”

  “You haven’t worn these in years”, I said, puffing. “They don’t fit you anymore.”

  “You mean to give those to…him? Hasn’t he got his own clothes?” Then he came to his senses. “How did he get here naked like that?”

  In that moment, the little man made his entrance covered only by a towel wrapped around his waist. It reached down to his feet.

  “The water was freezing cold”, he complained.

  Davide looked at him wi
th suspicion and slowly started to notice that there was something wrong about him. “Who is he?”

  He wasn’t a kid. He wasn’t acting like one.

  I tossed the clothes at him. “Try these on.”

  The little man shamelessly got rid of the towel, so my brother could realize what was truly going on. He pointed at him. “But…but….”

  “You saw nothing”, I said to Davide. It was an order.

  “But who is he? What is he doing here?”

  “He’s my friend.”

  “I never saw him before. Where does he come from?”

  I did not answer. My brother couldn’t keep his eyes off the little man who was busy dressing up. Even though Davide hadn’t wear those clothes in years, they were still too big for him.

  Davide developed an absurd thought and bursted out laughing before speaking it out loud. “Is he your boyfriend?”

  We – the little man and I – answered in sync, almost disgusted. “No!”

  Davide kept on laughing like an idiot. “You look good together!”

  I bit my tongue to keep me from snapping back at him.

  “It wasn’t that good, wasn’t it? Is it too small?”

  I recoiled and looked at him in disbelief. I was taking him back to the amusement park. He looked funny dressed as a kid. He wore flip-flops on his naked feet, they were the only shoes we could find that would fit him.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “You didn’t like it.”

  “No…I….”

  “You didn’t like it.”

  Did I like doing it? To be fair, I had no idea. The situation had been too odd. The sewer tunnel was smelly, he was in that state, and me…

  “We should try again”, I muttered.

  “What?”

  “The first time doesn’t count. We should give it another go, I’m serious.”

  “You didn’t like it”, he sentenced.

  I didn’t really know what to do.

  “It’s too small, isn’t it?”

  He was insisting, and I had no reply. What would I know about it? I wasn’t an expert for sure. Of course, he wasn’t my first, but it wasn’t like I measured the size of every boy I slept with. Surely, I could say that Tony’s was even smaller than his, and he was also a sprinter. Nine seconds flat.

  “Stop talking nonsense.”

  “You’re ashamed of being seen hanging out with me.”

  “No!”

  “I can always say you’re my babysitter, if you want.”

  “Are you trying to fight with me?”

  “We’re no longer in a sewer.”

  I finally realised the meaning behind what he said. I understood his discontent. I felt the empty space between us. So, I held his hands and spoke no more.

  We looked funny, we just did. As a couple, at least. We truly looked like a babysitter who’s taking the kid to get ice-cream.

  So, I put my arm around his shoulders and he let me do it without saying a word.

  What was I doing? Why was I acting like that? Was I making fun of him? No, that wasn’t the case. He knew very well that there was nothing between us. It was just sex, nothing more.

  Arrived at the gates of the amusement park, I stopped.

  “You don’t want to come?” he asked.

  Why? To bring him back in that state, wearing those clothes? To explain to his family what happened to him? I felt like an idiot and shook my head.

  “Ok, I get it. Never mind.”

  No, he didn’t get it. I wasn’t angry at him, it wasn’t like that! It wasn’t because I didn’t like it… For fuck’s sake, I liked it! I liked it so much I was ready to do it again at a moment’s notice! I…

  I chased him.

  “Do you hate me?”

  He shrugged. “It’s just the way you are.”

  What way? What did he mean by that? That I was a bitch?

  His father saw us from afar, but instead of coming to us screaming he did the opposite. He went back inside the wagon and slammed the door. I followed the little man up to the wagon, and there he asked me: “You want to come in?”

  I wanted to, but I was certain that his father disliked me.

  He went up the stairs and swung the door open without waiting for my reply. “Come on, come in.”

  No one greeted us. The room looked like a living room and was clean and tidy, as well as empty. He pointed to a door. “Wait for me there.”

  I was thankful for that. I didn’t want to be caught up in family fights, even if I was the cause of them.

  The room I entered needed to be the little man’s. I was left in awe. It was a… normal room. The typical room of any boy our age. Adventure books and albums. Posters on the walls, a computer, videogames. Chaos and clothes thrown here and there. Except everything, starting from the bad, was to scale. I sat on a chair and felt like Snow White in the house of the Seven Dwarfs.

  I began to feel bad. Not that I could hear any screaming or whatever. If they were fighting, they were keeping it very low. It was the room that made me feel uncomfortable, because I understood that I had made a real error of judgement.

  The little man arrived after a few minutes. He opened his closet and pulled out some clothes. “I’ll change, so you can get these clothes back.”

  He turned his back to me to undress. I began to do the same, taking my sweater and shirt off.

  He turned around sharply. “What are you doing?”

  Even I wasn’t sure of what I was about to do. His father was in the room next door and could have entered at any moment. I paused, looking at the door.

  “No one’s here”, said the little one. “He left.”

  “Why?”

  He smiled bitterly. “Perhaps he wanted to give us some privacy.”

  “He thinks…”

  He shrugged. “He sees it that way. He believes I deserve some fun too.”

  I couldn’t understand. Why did he stop me then? I opened my skirt.

  “Stop it!”

  He stood in front of me almost naked.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re not done with your experiment yet?”

  I was struck by his rage. “There is no experiment!”, I rebutted.

  “Of course, there is! You wished to find out what it’s like to have sex with a dwarf. Wasn’t that enough for you?”

  “It’s not like that!” I lied. Yet, it started just that way. I wouldn’t have called it an experiment, but in truth that word did it justice.

  “Aren’t you tired of making fun of me?”

  “I wasn’t making fun of you.”

  Maybe I was only making fun of myself. At that point, I couldn’t understand my feelings any more.

  “You think you’re the first? You think you’re the first one to try this experiment? To see what it’s like to be fucked by a dwarf?”

  He was mean, but maybe I deserved that. “There have been other girls?”

  “Lots.”

  He was lying, I was sure of that. He was messing with me. “I don’t believe you.”

  “You should. You’re not the first, I assure you. My mother was one of them, she was just like you.”

  It sounded like an insult. “What do you mean?”

  “She was normal. A normal woman. But she was curious to know how it felt to fuck one of us. She was drunk, you see. And so was dad. Neither used precautions.”

  I froze and my heart started pounding like mad. Precautions? What precautions? I never took the pill; my mother would never allow it. She would have been horrified. She still thought I was playing with dolls. The guys always took care of the precautions. Surely though there wasn’t any condom in that sewer. So, we had done it. Without precautions. I could be pregnant. Pregnant of… Bearing a child just like…

  “Leave! And don’t come back!”, he yelled. Then he added: “Don’t be like her!”

  I found the strength to ask him about it: “What did she do?”

  He sneered. “She tried, but
when she was sure I would have become like him she took me back here. I was two years old, I can’t remember it, but my father told me everything. She couldn’t do it, she wasn’t able to raise someone like me. Now she’s married, she’s got a nice family and normal children.”

  He didn’t give me time to reply.

  “You think I hate her? Well, you’re wrong. I’m glad she did it! I’m happy here! I have a nice life! I’ve got lots of friends! It’s the outside that’s bad, with the likes of you!”

  I continued to shake my head.

  “Leave, I have to change.”

  I let my skirt fall to the floor and I was left naked.

  “What does this mean? You don’t have enough?”

  I shook my head.

  “What do you want from me? What do you expect from me?”

  I wasn’t expecting anything from him, I just didn’t want this to end like that. I didn’t want to leave, I didn’t want to be without him.

  “Are you a pervert?”

  If wanting him, wanting his body, wanting him whole, was perversion then yes, I was a pervert and I couldn’t help it. I didn’t care that he was so little: in that moment, in that place, I found him perfect. I was the oversized one, I felt like a monster.

  “This is crazy”, he repeated, but he was already defeated.

  I got closer and kneeled in front of him so I could look him in the eyes. This time I was feeling embarrassed and I was behaving so differently from how I did in that tunnel.

  “How it’s done?” I asked him. “How do you do it?”

  I wanted him to teach me, to show me what it meant to make love. Not to a dwarf, just to make love. I was certain that with him, here, it would’ve been different.

  He lost some of his confidence. “I have to be the one to tell you?”

  We found out together. We made love. We truly made love. It was something complete, something total. None of us hid from the other or denied themselves. It was perfect.

  Once we finished we did it again, this time slower and more softly. Then, lying close in that tiny bed, we started talking. “Now what?” he asked.

  To me there wasn’t any trouble. What was the point of always making plans for the future? Wasn’t it better to be satisfied with living in the present?