Fugue

by Rick R. Reed

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  FUGUE

  by

  RICK R. REED

  Amber Quill Press, LLC

  http://www.amberquill.com

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  Fugue

  An Amber Quill Press Book

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author's imagination, or have been used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Amber Quill Press, LLC

  http://www.amberquill.com

  http://www.amberheat.com

  http://www.amber-allure.com

  All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  Copyright © 2008 by Rick R. Reed

  ISBN 978-1-60272-382-5

  Cover Art © 2008 Trace Edward Zaber

  Layout and Formatting

  Provided by: Elemental Alchemy

  Published in the United States of America

  Also by Rick R. Reed

  Dead End Street

  High Risk

  Orientation

  Riding The El At Midnight

  Dedication

  For my fantasy man (you know who you are)

  FUGUE

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  It's the kind of damp and filthy basement you read about in novels written by the Marquis de Sade or authors who sign their books with only the initial "O." It's the type of cellar you'd discover in a true crime book by Ann Rule or Gregg Olsen, a shocking chiller about twisted men who keep their victims shackled, naked, and desperate for long periods of time. Men who enjoy seeing their victims suffer, who enjoy playing long, drawn-out, and elaborate versions of cat and mouse.

  There's the whiff of decay and mildew in the air. You just know that beetles, roaches, and other creatures that scurry from the light make their homes here, hiding within chinks between bricks and black areas where the walls don't quite meet the floor. Somewhere, water drips endlessly. The only light is from a dim-watted bulb that hangs in the middle of this space, unadorned with even so much as a shade and which is turned off and on by a rusting, beaded cord. It hums. Some grayish natural light might seep in during the day through high horizontal windows, besotted with grime and covered with yellowing newspapers taped over their glass.

  The darkness skitters into corners, hiding in shadows where the walls disappear. Here, the cinder blocks are broken up by rough and dripping mortar. The floor is concrete, stained, cold; the feel of grime is palpable, gritty beneath my bare toes.

  These are my surroundings.

  Pipes run the length of the ceiling. It is to these pipes that I am chained, my arms raised above my head to accommodate leather cuffs and the links of steel that marry me to the pipes. For now, it is painless, but I am a seer of pain and know what the future holds: how the muscles in my arms will first ache, then scream for relief, and finally succumb to the numbness that I will curse. It is as if the muscles and tendons in my arms have a kind of sense memory. They know what's coming and their prescience fills me with a sense of delicious dread.

  You may wonder how one can both anticipate and dread pain at the same time. I do not. Some things about the dichotomy between pleasure and pain are not mysterious to me, although they might be difficult for me to put into words that you'd understand. To stoop to a cliché...it's just something you have to know on an instinctive level.

  It's a slave thing.

  Shackles embrace my ankles, keeping me anchored to the cool, damp floor. This sense of immobility ratchets up the tension and anticipation, and these feelings war within me, causing tingles throughout my body in much the same way as the restraints holding me in place do. I ache for something to happen, yet know I am powerless to bring anything about. Patience is a virtue I have learned, honed in its tutelage now for several years.

  Ever since I met my master. That man of mine. The one I love. The seer and deliverer of pain, of pleasure, of love...and discipline.

  Waiting. Anticipation pulses like a drug, pounding and surging through my body, binding me more thoroughly than these cuffs, chains, and shackles. The air against my naked body is especially cool, its dampness almost like a second presence, like an icy caress. Part of the chill comes from the fact that I am bereft of hair; earlier, he shaved me clean, right down to the hair that sprouts between the cheeks of my ass. He has clamped my nipples, and the bite of the steel hurts and, at the same time, keeps me in a constant state of arousal. My balls hurt as well; he has pulled them low with metal cuffs that twist around the top of the sac, gripping and tugging....a constant, dull ache.

  This is true love.

  Yet all this dull sensation of pain is but a prelude to the full symphony of hurt that's on its way. I keep my eyes shut tightly; a lazy smile moves across my lips, disappears.

  Waiting. Anticipating. Almost overriding the pedestrian ache of my constraints is the roaring of my blood in my ears, the pounding of my heart, the quickening of my breath, all of these racing with each little noise I hear. My mouth is dry with want, with need. I almost ache to shout out into the murky light: "Hurry! Hurry! I almost can't bear you making me wait like this. The anticipation is too much. It's torture even I don't want. Hurry!"

  But I don't dare. I keep my own counsel and stay mute. A good slave knows his place, knows when to groan, when to scream, when to whimper, and when to sigh. And now, in this waiting, is not the time.

  Behind me, my master busies himself, arranging lashes on a table: cat o' nine tails, bullwhip, riding crop, and even a wooden paddle with holes drilled in its smooth oak surface that transports me back to junior high school. I remember being in seventh grade detention, the paddle whistling through the air, singing through those holes as the gym teacher, Mr. Wright, brought it down hard on my adolescent ass, not knowing that the pain he was delivering was also filling me with the most delicious pleasure, or that my dick was hard and dripping in my jeans. Had he known, would he have continued?

  Would it have been a kind of pleasure for him, too? Thinking about such a prospect makes my dick hard even now.

  My master comes up to stand behind me, firm touch of his hand on my chest, then moving away. His hands are warm and strong. I am his.

  I smell the leather: deep, musky, manscent.

  Leather aroma deepens as he pulls my head back and I close my eyes. Leather fills my senses until it's all that exists. My master slides the hood over my face, obliterating this dusky space where we will be together, making me his and his alone.

  Darkness.

  * * * *

  "BELMONT. BELMONT NEXT. Change there for Brown line trains. In the direction of travel, doors open on the right at Belmont." Garbled, the mechanical voice informs, cloaked in static. The passengers are bored and their expressions barely register a reaction to the announcement. Outside, the night is hot and humid. An almost oily darkness presses into the windows of the el car, almost as if the languid night is a monster, awakening and seeking to press into the brightly lit train where it will war with its fluorescent glare and perhaps win.

  As the el car rumbles along here on the north side of Chicago, two figures fill one end of the nearly empty car. It's late: past one A.M. A night in August. The only other person in the car, a woman, stands at the door, casting nervous glances to the rear of the car where two men sit, across the aisle from one another. In spite of the heat, she wears a purple nylon scarf, and the brown eyes peering out of her careworn face look afraid, bright even in the dull fluorescent light of the train car. She clutches a plastic shopping bag from A
ldi in one hand, a battered straw handbag in the other. Do these two men with whom she shares the car frighten her? Do they make her think about abandoning propriety and darting out to another car once the train stops?

  But the men ignore her--indeed, they may have never really even seen her--and both shift in their seats, more comfortable and relieved, as the woman exits the car and the train jerks once more into motion. At last, they are alone.

  The first man, dressed in leather chaps, engineer boots, a form-fitting white T-shirt and leather cap, spreads his legs farther apart. Flaunting the law, he leans back and lights a cigarette. The cigarette is like a beacon, its white contrasting with the dark, heavy stubble that surrounds his full lips. Black curly hair sprouts from the top of his T-shirt, and the man's hands--big, gnarled fingers--look as if they are no strangers to hard work as he takes the cigarette from his mouth, making a nimbus of bluish-gray smoke around his face.

  His body, too, hardened, lean and muscular, with just a hint of a bulging belly, seems as if it has done some rough labor. On one of his biceps, there's a greenish tattoo that says one word: fugue. His hair is coarse, close-cropped, and salt and pepper. His fine chiseled face, obscured by mirrored aviator sunglasses, is grizzled with more salt and pepper stubble. His lips are full; on a woman they might be referred to as "bee-stung" but on him they just look sexy, too full, too dirty for anything clean. He looks mean, surly...the kind of man who commands respect and inspires fear. And he looks comfortable in that knowledge, as he leans back even farther, making the cigarette's cherry glow orange as he drags on it.

  The boy across the aisle watches. Now that the car is empty, he doesn't attempt to conceal his fascination with the man seated across from him. The boy takes in the full measure of the man with mute appreciation. One might almost sense that, for this boy, his mundane surroundings have fallen away as his eyes drink in the sample of maleness sitting across from him, his legs spread defiantly, fouling the air with his smoke.

  The boy could not present a better contrast to the hardened man. Young, couldn't be more than eighteen or nineteen years old. Sandy hair falls across his forehead, but not enough to hide the pale blue eyes, so pale they appear almost translucent. Freckles cast carelessly across the bridge of his nose. A lean body, that of a swimmer or a runner, is complemented by tight Levi's, faded olive drab T-shirt. He wears a pair of pristine white leather Reeboks. He appears to be a boy who would more likely be found on one of the plusher Metra commuter trains, a boy who has a family in the ritzy suburbs of the north shore, someplace like Kenilworth or Winnetka. A boy with perfect teeth and rosy clear skin, no stranger to the ministrations of dentists and dermatologists. The kind of boy described by his elders as "golden."

  Yet here he is on this hot summer night, sitting alone and transfixed, across from a leatherman. One might wonder what the boy is out looking for, but that's only if one can't read the desire stamped plainly on his heavy-lidded eyes and his slightly parted lips. One would have to be fairly dull or naïve not to realize what is on the boy's mind this languid night.

  DePaul student? Leatherman wonders as he turns his head to take in the boy's youthful physique, the bulge in his crotch, which seems out of place and obscenely large on this wholesome, innocent-appearing lad.

  The bulge taunts the leatherman, inviting him, teasing him, frustrating him because suddenly he wants more than anything to touch it, to wrap his callused fingers around it, seeking out and defining the meat, feeling it harden, thicken, pulse and grow with his rough caress. He imagines holding the boy close to him, the clean fresh smell of his skin and hair in contrast to his own scents of tobacco, beer, and sweat. He imagines the feel of the boy's smooth cream skin beneath his calloused fingertips and the delicious sensation of the rough merging with the smooth. He thinks about the sweet taste of the boy's mouth as he invades it with his tongue, lifting the boy's tongue with his own and biting...

  The boy turns in his seat, a slow grin spreading across his features. He has noticed the leatherman staring. By way of invitation, his hand whispers across the faded denim that contains his dick. He squeezes the bulge for just an instant. It's so quick that if someone else were on the train, they might not have even noticed, or thought the boy had an unmentionable itch. But the simple gesture, quick and sure, speaks volumes between the two men. The movements and eye contact speak more eloquently than words.

  Their eyes finally meet and the connection is electric, like the rail outside the el car that sparks periodically, lighting up the darkness with impossible blue-white light. There is a mating dance of gazes meeting, cast away and then returning...secret smiles and nothing as crude as a wink or a lick of the lips. Surreptitious looks about the car, to see if anyone has magically appeared to witness one man's discovery of the other. Finally, one longing glance connects and is held for longer than a beat. It is the length of the connection that speaks volumes, it is the lock of their gazes that eloquently telegraphs desire, hope, and lust.

  In that one glance, they commune without words, and it becomes obvious not only that mutual lust exists, but it's lust that cannot wait. Again, gazes take in the emptiness of the deserted el car, signaling that something dangerous and irresistible could occur right here...right now.

  Sometimes, both of them think, the clearest communication between two people can be that shared without the mundane tool known as language. Sometimes eyes speak much better than mouths. Mouths have their places and often excel at functions other than talking.

  The boy gestures with his eyes and a jerk of the head to the front of the car, where there is an enclosed space, across from what would be the conductor's booth, were this the first car. The space is slightly darkened and is private; it's walled off and a grimy window gives view into the little cabin. Its emptiness beckons to both men, urging them to leave common sense and propriety behind and act on their impulses. Thoughts of seizing the day (or in this case, the night) occupy both their thoughts, as their desire hums and vibrates within each of them. Sometimes desire's imperative is too strong to ignore. Sometimes it's just no fun to use the brain God gave you.

  The privacy would be enough, Leatherman thinks, his own dick hardening, straining against rough denim. He feels the press of the metal cock ring around the base of his dick, growing tighter as his dick uncoils like a snake, hardening so that he has to shift his legs. The little walled off enclosure would offer enough privacy, wouldn't it? After all, it would be several minutes before they get to the next stop and they'd have time enough to put themselves back together before another person boarded the train. They would be able to see out the window before the train came to a halt and the doors opened. Leatherman knows he is rationalizing, shaping reality to assuage his own desires...and he doesn't care. He doesn't let his thoughts linger on whether this is a good idea, but grips the back of the seat in front of him and hoists himself up, heading straight up. What the fuck? It's late and they'll be careful. If this was a weekend night, there would be more to worry about, what with the Addison stop coming up and people from the bars surrounding Wrigley Field waiting for the el to take them home. But, hell, it's a Tuesday night...

  The boy watches the leatherman walk before him. He likes the way the taut ass is defined by the leather chaps, the way his cheeks bounce up and down with every purposeful stride. The guy must stand well over six feet; his presence almost fills the car.

  The boy's mouth waters. Heat rises to his cheeks, reddening them and his chest, too. He can feel his nipples hardening and his whole face feels inflamed...but it's a delicious heat. For only the briefest of moments, he considers the danger he is putting himself in: for one, the man, smoking hot as he is, is older and a stranger. Two, what he's thinking of doing could get him in a lot of trouble, arrested even. How would an arrest for indecent exposure or lewd and lascivious conduct look on his record? How would it affect his future, still set out so promisingly before him in his tender years? All of this, he thinks is very reasonable, yet he stands to follow the m
an in leather and has to pause to adjust his downward pointing dick, painfully hard. He realizes which head he's thinking with...and doesn't care. His common sense flew out the door when the old hag with the Aldi bag exited at Belmont.

  * * * *

  The first touch of the bullwhip is like a bite. It's hot and it stings. The first lash is always the most delicious, the most painful. The body is not yet prepared for the shock and the trauma, the delightful sting, like a razor cutting into the soft flesh of my back. This first lash feels like heaven. It is always the most profound. The other lashes make me squirm as well, but not the way this first one does. After the first one, the body involuntarily tenses, setting up natural defenses against the assault, even though this is an assault I want with every fiber of my being.

  I close my eyes tightly, feel the slight upward jerk of my cock as the leather bites into the satin skin of my back. My mouth is muffled, but I know he hears my cry as the whip connects with flesh, knows he hears my fevered whisper, "Thank you, sir."

  He brings down the whip once more. I tightly shut my eyes as I hear it whistle through the air, feeling like I could come in anticipation of the screaming flame of the lash as it lands on my bare flesh.

  * * * *

  Inside the booth, Leatherman waits. He is rubbing his hands over his chest, the muscles beneath this masturbatory caress hard and well-defined. The boy imagines how that chest feels, the muscles rippling beneath the taut skin, slightly wet from sweat, and crowned with coarse hair. Leatherman meets his gaze, and the boy finds supplication there, in the pools of those deep brown eyes. He finds hunger and a willingness to surrender. When the boy finally enters the close little compartment, he is all confidence and does not let something as small as even a cock-eyed grin betray his delight at what is about to happen. He keeps his face somber, mean, almost sullen, sending out signals of dominance. He doesn't need to ask who's in charge here because he's sending out his alpha role with the fierceness of his gaze and the certainty of his movement. He nods quickly at the floor.