The Flesh Cartel #2: Auction

by Rachel Haimowitz

  Well, Mat wouldn’t do it. They’d have to kill him. They could stick him with a cattle prod until his heart stopped, but he wouldn’t step into the ring and hurt someone weaker. Not Dougie, not Leslie, not that Asian twink in the green makeup. They may have made him look like some kind of ultraviolent thug, but he wasn’t. And he’d die knowing it.

  He just hoped he’d get to see Dougie again before that. Just once. It’d be enough.

  Dougie waited in the sitting room, kneeling right where Madame had left him, for a long time. He tried to focus on the taste of chocolate still coating his tongue, because everything else was too fucking horrible to contemplate. Other than how he’d gotten it, the chocolate was good. Safe.

  Unlike the two men who came to get him. Guards he recognized from long days of misery in his cell, who’d been waiting since day one to shove their cocks into something other than his throat. The way they looked at him now . . . He couldn’t help it, he edged away, hid behind the arm of the couch, ridiculous and ineffective as he knew it was.

  The guards, dressed all in black today, simply stalked around the couch and scooped him up. He went limp when they touched him; they’d put him where they wanted him with or without his cooperation anyway, and he’d just as soon avoid new bruises.

  He was bracing himself to be bent over the couch or thrown over the table, but instead they just walked him to the door opposite the one he’d come through.

  A backstage area, bustling with people in black. Moving props, going over cues. He recognized it for what it was: some kind of elaborate play or performance, dozens of people with dozens of interconnected responsibilities.

  And I’m the performer.

  No lines. No rehearsals. No understudy. Just him on the stage, alone, with nothing but Madame’s words to guide him.

  Do everything they ask or I’ll never see Mat again.

  He wanted to say he wasn’t ready, but maybe he was. They had prepared him, in their own way. From that very first night in the shower. Debasement. Humiliation. Pain. Wearing him down day after day. Teaching him. He already averted his eyes when they looked at him. Already knelt when they entered a room. Already gave them his body without struggle when they fucked him. And now, the last piece to ensure his compliance, the one thing they’d had on him since the very beginning, since he’d practically begged Mat to lick that filthy spunk from his ass: His love for his brother. His fear of ever facing the world without Mat. His fear of what might happen to Mat if he were gone.

  The guards had led him just offstage. One foot to the left, and he’d be in full view of whatever audience was waiting for him. He looked out across the stage, which was empty except for a fainting couch, a hanging set of chains, and a podium. A man stood behind the podium, fiddling with some kind of tablet computer. Madame was on the stage too, dressed in what had to be a couture black evening gown and a choker of pearls. Classically beautiful and put together as she was, he’d have died for her attention in his old life. But now . . . She was walking toward him. One of the busy stagehands in black rushed up with a dog leash made of polished leather and hooked one end to Dougie’s collar in perfect time to hand the other end to Madame on her arrival.

  “Do not look at me,” Madame whispered. “Do not look at the audience. Keep your head down like a well-beaten dog. I’ll bring you to a stage marker. Kneel on it in the form you’ve been taught, with your neck extended like you did when I gave you that fudge. Do not speak unless spoken to.”

  This close up, her makeup was a bit smudged. Sweaty. She was sweaty.

  He nodded, then stumbled when she jerked the leash.

  “Heel,” she said, obviously amused with herself.

  She yanked him out onto the stage, and suddenly he was blinking back blindingly bright spotlights. No wonder Madame was sweating. He would be too, soon enough.

  And the audience? Head down, he peeked out of the corner of his eye as she walked him across the stage. A sea of black clothes and horrible white faces. Masks. At least fifty, maybe a hundred. All the same. Plain white masks. Expressionless. Indistinct. He’d been steeling himself for leers and catcalls. Laughter. Applause. Groans.

  What he got was so alien and horrible he couldn’t process it. So he looked at his feet.

  Madame addressed the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed guests all.” She was wearing a mic somewhere, maybe one of those tiny flesh-colored ones pop stars wore. “May I present to you the jewel of the night’s collection.”

  There was an X on the floor, marked out in electrical tape. That was where he needed to kneel. Three feet away. Two feet. One foot. He knelt.

  “I’m sure you’re all well familiar with his particulars from this month’s catalog. If not, they will be on your personal screens now. As you can see, he isn’t yet perfect”—she toed his knees apart another three or four inches—“but keep in mind he has been in my care for less than a week.”

  Less than a week? My God, it felt like he’d been stuck in this hell for months already.

  “If we are to consider these . . . unfortunates as clay to be molded by firm hands, then this one is soft and malleable and so very warm to squeeze between your fingers.”

  Absolute silence, but she preened and posed as if she’d received a standing ovation.

  “Of course you’ve all seen the photos, and those exquisite videos—how beautifully does this one cry, ladies and gentlemen?—but no finale is complete without a proper show. So for those of you who paid the nominal fee on top of the usual ticket price, I’d love to invite you to test his charms for yourself. If you did not pay in advance, we are happy to charge your accounts now—at a slight premium, of course—and hope that next time you’ll feel justified in buying in advance.”

  She’s renting me out like a whore. I’m a whore. That’s what this is. That’s all this has ever been.

  That’s what she’d meant by selling him. Selling his body. Some had paid to fuck him, and others had just paid for the privilege of a live show. Out in the audience, he saw someone stand, that single white mask rising like a bubble, like a snowflake falling upside down. And then another. And another. Three masks rising. Ten. Twelve.

  Would you give twenty sample sucks to keep you and your brother together?

  Apparently, she hadn’t been exaggerating at all.

  Clipboard Guy approached Mat’s cage holding a long leather strip. Mat couldn’t quite make out what it was at first, and jumped to the natural conclusion: they were going to beat him with it. They’d certainly beaten him with everything else during his time here. But then Clipboard Guy squatted down beside Mat and said, “I’m going to put my hands in your cage. In my right hand is a leash”—so that’s what it was—“and in my left is a Taser. Be good with the one and I won’t have to use the other. Do you understand?”

  Mat glared at the guy. He wasn’t a fucking child. No need to treat him like one. “Yes,” he growled.

  Lest he punch the guy in the face, he fisted the bars as Clipboard Guy wedged the Taser between two ribs, a clear threat, and clipped a leash to his collar.

  “On your feet, then,” Clipboard Guy said, and Mat saw a massive guard step up behind him.

  He stood, and Clipboard Guy stood with him, keeping the Taser pressed to his side. “Nice and slow, now,” Clipboard Guy said. The guard unlocked his door. Mat quashed the urge to rush them. Held perfectly still until the guard took his leash and gave it a tug, not quite hard enough to choke him just yet, and said, “Walk, hole.” Mat considered fighting again—they could be marching him off to his death, for all he knew—but somehow he didn’t think so. Why doll him up like this just to kill him? Something else was going on here. Something that might find him reunited with Dougie again.

  The guard opened a double door at the end of the cage room, and sound wafted in over a loudspeaker. “The first three have asked to go together,” Mat heard, in Madame’s crisp, unmistakable voice. “A performance neither they nor you will soon forget.”

  The first
three what? What are they doing?

  He stood motionless, his leash seeming to vibrate with urgency.

  “Three minutes,” Clipboard Guy whispered, flashing three fingers for emphasis. He waited. Counted the seconds. No more announcements over the speaker system, but if he strained, he could just make out a sound he’d come to know all too well these past days. Flesh on flesh. Grunting. Moaning. Is that what this was—some kind of sex show? Putting them on display before a live crowd like they’d put them on video before?

  Well, they’d certainly done worse to him here.

  “Thirty seconds.”

  Thirty seconds? He was losing time. He couldn’t afford to drift off like that.

  The guard flanking him tugged on his leash and pulled him through an open door to . . . a backstage? He’d seen plenty enough of them on the local fight scene, littered with catwalks and wires and rope and red-gelled flashlights, just like this one. The moaning and crying got louder. Horrifyingly familiar.

  Dougie.

  He rounded a corner, and suddenly he was within view of the stage. What he saw made his heart stop. There was some kind of upholstered bench on wheels at the center of the stage. And Dougie was lying on it.

  All he could see of Dougie was his legs, spread wide and pointing to the sky, ankles swallowed up by huge, grasping hands. Blocking him off was a man in all black, grunting and thrusting. Another stood farther away from Mat, and though Mat couldn’t see him, there was only one explanation for that angle: he was standing by Dougie’s turned head, fucking his face with deep, punishing strokes. The guard was still walking Mat forward, slowly, leash pulled taut. Mat was still playing along, at least for now. But as they got closer to the scene at the center of the stage, Mat realized that although Dougie was horizontal, he wasn’t lying on the couch. He was lying on top of a third man, Dougie’s back to the man’s chest. The man’s hands were wandering up and down Dougie’s chest, pinching his nipples, rubbing and tugging his balls and cock. Two cocks inside his ass. No wonder he was crying.

  “Tell the nice people how it feels, hole,” one of the men growled.

  The reply was a muffled howl. Sucking sounds.

  Mat stared, horrified and frozen, as the cock popped out of Dougie’s mouth.

  “Say it.”

  “It hurts, sir!” Dougie wailed.

  The man laughed—laughed—and squeezed Dougie’s balls until he screamed.

  Next Mat knew, he was across the stage, a knee in someone’s gut, a fist to someone’s throat, the heel of his palm driving right through the creepy porcelain mask to someone’s nose. He blinked, breathed hard, stared blankly at the carnage around him. All three of Dougie’s rapists writhing on the floor, broken and bleeding, and poor Dougie huddled up beside them, crying into his knees and shielding his head.

  Sound came back into Mat’s world, and he realized the audience—God, what a freak show, everyone in weird white masks and black suits—was applauding.

  Fuck them. He’d kill them all. Starting with Madame, perched in a chair like some fucking throne on a dais in one corner of the stage, flanked by a man with an honest-to-God fucking cattle prod. Fuck that, didn’t matter. Mat could take the guy down before he ever managed to hit him with it.

  Mat roared, raced toward her. Let them kill him—he didn’t care, he was a dead man anyway—as long as he took her with him.

  “Mat, please!”

  Dougie. Oh God. He’d just left Dougie on the floor. Hadn’t even—had been so—

  He turned. Dougie was still sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest, the beginnings of a bruise welting across his jaw. Had Mat accidentally—

  Nobody had tried to stop him yet. No shocks from Tasers. The leash dangled impotently from his collar. Madame sat patiently. And Dougie. Crying. Mascara on his cheeks.

  “Stop this,” Dougie pleaded. “Please, please.”

  Mat snorted at Madame, who was fucking smiling down on him, obviously pleased.

  Fuck her. She’s not fucking worth it.

  He went to Dougie, crouched beside him. Wrapped his arms around Dougie’s small, shaking shoulders. Gathered Dougie’s head to his own shoulder. Kissed his hair. “Shhh,” he murmured. “Shhh. I’m here now.” And in that moment, the crowd and the guards and Madame and this whole fucking nightmare fell away, and they were together, and it was okay.

  And then there were two sharp stabs in his left shoulder blade, and his world filled with convulsive fire, and he screamed and fell away as two men pulled Dougie from his unresponsive arms.

  He barely heard Dougie shouting his name over his own screams, the roaring in his ears. Dougie begging them to please stop, I’ll be good, I’ll do anything!

  Shut up, he wanted to say, and Stop, please, and I’ll do anything too if you just stop. But his lips and tongue worked no better than the rest of him under the force of the electric charge, and then his mind shut down, and the world went silent and dark.

  They tased Mat over and over again, until he doubled over, until he was facedown on the floor convulsing. Dougie couldn’t go to him. They wouldn’t let him. Somebody had him by the collar, holding him back so firmly he choked himself.

  They were going to separate them. Dougie had been given a chance, and he’d failed. He’d failed miserably. But more than failing Madame’s test, he’d failed Mat.

  I’m so sorry.

  Mat had been depending on him. He hadn’t known it, but he’d been depending on Dougie, and Dougie had failed him. Failed them both.

  He watched, absolutely helpless, as they shackled Mat into the chains that had lurked, ominous, in the background since Dougie had come onstage. Arms above his head and still unconscious, he dangled, all his weight yanking down on his battered wrists.

  Madame signaled to one of the stagehands waiting in the wings, and the man nodded and disappeared and came back a moment later with a wheeled cart draped in a sheet. Dougie stared at it, helpless, horrified, mind spinning wilder and wilder pictures of what might be under there, what they would do with it, do to Mat . . .

  He squeezed his eyes closed and choked back a sob.

  Upstage, the men Mat had beaten were picking themselves up off the floor. Madame had passed them off as audience members for some reason, but Dougie knew better, had recognized them as guards from the day shift despite the masks. He knew full well what they were capable of.

  Madame ignored them in favor of Dougie. She draped a hand on his shoulder, nodded to the guard clutching Dougie’s collar. The man let go. It burned him how confident she was that he wouldn’t try to run, try to hurt her, try . . . fuck, who knew. Be more like his brother, maybe. But no, all that’d gotten Mat—rousing now, for better or worse—was tased and hung from shackles. It hadn’t gotten him any closer to free.

  It had gotten those men off Dougie, though. And a hug—it’d gotten them that precious, stolen moment together. Maybe, to Mat, that was worth it. But Dougie would’ve rather not seen him at all than seen him suffering like that on Dougie’s behalf.

  Besides, what if it was their last moment together ever again?

  Madame, hand curled around the back of Dougie’s neck, led him over to the covered cart, now parked just a foot from the chains where Mat hung. Mat lifted his head, caught Dougie’s gaze. Tried to stand, couldn’t. Tried again. His hands were fisted, fresh blood trickling down his forearms from under the shackles. He finally found his feet at the same moment Madame pulled the sheet from the cart with a flourish.

  A flogger. A cane. A heavy leather strap. A studded paddle. A metal . . . plug, maybe, that looked like a fucking pear of anguish, right out of a medieval torture chamber. A battery hooked up to alligator clamps.

  Madame massaged his shoulder as he took it all in. “Do you understand why I’m showing you this, boy?” she asked at full volume, obviously for the crowd’s enjoyment. “Can you tell our guests in the back what you’re looking at?”

  Dougie gulped. “They’re . . . they’re th-things . . . things you use to h
urt people.”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Mat’s head turn sluggishly toward the cart, jaw set, eyes shuttered.

  Madame’s hand squeezed Dougie’s shoulder. “Very good, dear. Who are they for?”

  “Him.” Dougie swallowed hard and gestured to Mat with his chin. He wasn’t sure if he should say Mat’s name. Wasn’t sure if he could stand to. He didn’t deserve to.

  “Yes, him. Why?”

  “Because . . .” He knew what she wanted to hear. Knew what he was supposed to say. Be a good pet. Let them all know what a well-behaved little hole you are. Maybe he could still redeem them both. Fulfill his promise. “Because he deserves to be punished, Madame.”

  “Very good. Now choose one to punish him with.”

  Murmurs from the crowd, so strange behind those unmoving masks. Dougie practically sagged with relief—choose one, she’d said; they wouldn’t use them all.

  Except . . . which one? Surely this was another test.

  In the dead quiet of his indecision, Madame leaned in, whispered low, private, just for him. “Remember your promise, little hole. Do you want to see him ever again?” Dougie quaked beneath her hand, her breath caressing his ear. “Choose wisely, boy.”

  The battery, then. It looked like the worst of them by far. Dougie lifted a shaking hand, started to point to it—

  Pulled his hand back. He couldn’t do that to Mat. Couldn’t. And what if he didn’t need to? What if the cane was enough? Or the strap? Or . . . fuck, he had no idea how to rate these on a scale of bad to worse. The battery seemed like the only obvious standout. The expanding plug, maybe? It might not hurt as much as the other things, but surely the humiliation factor had to count for something. And from the looks of it, it’d expand out easily as wide as a fist, probably two. Dougie had enough experience in that department by now to know exactly how much just two cocks could hurt, and a fist was so much bigger.