FALSELY ENSLAVED
By Pete Brown petebrownuk @ yahoo.com
Read all of Pete's stories at groups.yahoo.com/group/petebrownseroticstories
Part Three
Well Straughan seemed a bit surprised at the way we quietly did as we were told the next morning on the horse, even though our "experiments" the night before had left us very sore down there. I caught Sam's eye a couple of times and he half winked at me in that sexy way he has, and I knew he was telling me we'd won, at least a bit, by schooling ourselves in the fine art of taking a man's dick.
Brett, though, had spent most of the previous day with his tailor, only reappearing in the late afternoon to watch as Sam and I almost fell with exhaustion on the exercise machines. Today, though was to be the first day of our proper pony training, and he proudly showed Straughan the book he'd been reading, called "Train your pony in ten easy stages", by one Herman Wright. Frankly, I'd like to get my hands on Mr Wright - I don't think he can really understand the misery he smut have caused to so many guys by his ill-advised and, on occasions, plainly wrong advice to owners. But Master Brett was determined to do it "by the book", and so that morning we were "introduced" to the trap: his e-mails to Straughan had had a fairly standard one adapted so that there were now two sets of shafts in front, and Sam and I felt for the first time that feeling of powerlessness, almost as if we were part of a machine, as the manacles were snapped shut locking our wrists to them.
From the outset we were to be trained to run with a bit, not, as Brett unhelpfully explained, he intended to use reins, as one of the advantages of using a man, rather than a real pony, was that we could understand his commands. No, rather it was to "show" us off properly, to emphasise his control over us, and to "prevent you from speaking, even accidentally." The fucking double bit he'd bought in Atlanta was a long, steel pole with two sets of tongue plates and head fastenings on it - I expect you're mostly familiar with the standard pony harness, where the bit goes between the teeth and the tongue plate at right angles depresses the tongue and makes speech unintelligible, and then the "arms" at each end are pulled around behind the head and locked closed, so that the slave cannot expel the bit and tongue plate? Well, this was just the same principle, except that the tongue plate and "arms" assemblies could be slid along a much longer bit pole, and then locked in position when the ponies heads were the right distance apart.
Brett ordered us to kneel in the shafts as he pushed the things into our mouths and fiddled with the adjustments to lock things at the right distance apart, explaining to Straughan as he worked that the only disadvantage was that you had to wait until we were shackled in to the cart before fitting the bits "else they might move their heads apart or something, and the pressure from the long bit pole might break their teeth." Well he might think that was the only disadvantage, but I can tell you there's a lot of others (beside the obvious one, of not being able to move your tongue or speak!): Sam and I were locked together rigidly, and it actually hurt if one or other of us tried to move our heads quickly without the other doing the same: you try keeping your head absolutely fixed in relation to another guy as you both walk, or jog, or run! Even if you're stationery, you can't so even a simple thing like toss your head to get rid of a fly that's landed to feed on your sweat ( and remember, you can't swat it with your hands, as they're shackled to the shafts!).
I don't think we ever really got used to it, even though we wore it every day for such a long period of time. Brett never faltered in making us wear it, though, as he said that although it was so unusual to see a pair of ponies who were matched in every way except their colour anyway, this dual bit added that important additional interest.
Once we were between the shafts Brett started to "teach" is the standard pony words: "Whoa", and "Giddy'up" for stopping and starting; "easy, boy" for when we were going down hill and the pace became too rapid; and "walk on", "trot", "canter" and the dreaded "gallop" for speed control - we came to utterly loath the last one of these, as with the trap behind us even a short period at "gallop" left us totally exhausted. The hateful Herman Wright encouraged owners to "beat the meaning" into a pony, as he claimed that our bodies' response to our master's voice needed to be total and automatic, almost bypassing the conscious control of our brains. Brett seemed to take this advice to heart, and he had two instruments, the carriage whip and the goad, to make it happen.
It wasn't unnecessarily cruel, I suppose, as a carriage whip is not like a bull whip that tears your flesh totally apart; no, it's more that the very thin, fine leather lash on the end of an extremely long, flexible handle is capable of really making you jump. It doesn't matter how often it happens to you, each time that stinging thing slashes at your shoulders, butt or thighs, you really know it. The pain isn't long lasting, but at the moment it strikes it is so concentrated and so intense that it does truly focus your mind. Some of you may be unfamiliar with the use of the goad as its use is somewhat out of fashion, and I should perhaps explain that it's mostly designed for slow speeds, or dressage work. Basically it's a thin steel pin on the end of a handle, and the trap driver stabs at your butt with it to both gain your attention and to punish you for minor infractions of behaviour. The pain is less intense than the carriage whip, but when the pin punctures your flesh there is a sharp sensation, and you know that prolonged use on a small part of you will inevitably lead to bleeding and much discomfort later. Some drivers, of course, slide the goad between the butt cheeks and prick at the most sensitive skin in your body - fortunately Brett only seemed to find this described in a later chapter of his "bible", when we were mostly trained, and so it wasn't too bad for us. Some of his buddies at college, though, read all through the well-thumbed copy of Herman Wright and enjoyed goading us if Brett loaned us to them for an afternoon spin: I remember one particular day when some oaf pricked a whole line of sores right down Sam's ass crack, enjoying seeing him stand there helpless to do anything about it (and even prevented from really bucking and throwing himself about by the need to avoid damaging himself, and me, because of our joined bit).
We soon mastered the art of pulling the carriage as we were so fit and had done so much exercise on the machines, but when Brett moved on to "dressage" work, it was different. It's just for show, really - there's no practical point to it as you don't move very far or very fast. But Brett was remorseless in making us do complex patterns of moving the carriage using small steps, then long stride, then backwards (surprisingly hard). And, of course, there's the goose step, and, worst of all, the so-called "prance".
Here you have to raise your knees right up to your chest for every step - quite apart from the sheer exhaustion of it, it makes your dick and balls really sore as they get so much knocked about with it. Later on, when really "at work", it amused Brett to make us "prance" when passing along the main street, and the sight of us two big men performing in such a ludicrous way always caused passers-by to stare: it pleased Brett, though, as it emphasised to the world how he was in total control of two such perfect specimens of manhood.
The signs started though that something new was on the horizon, as we heard Brett talking to Straughan about shipping arrangements to get our trap and us to his college. Sam and I talked about it at night, and we were quite looking forward to it as the college was near Raleigh, and we thought it would be cooler in the summer there. Brett had also ordered new collars for us, we heard, and that was fantastically good news - in amongst everything else, carrying around the three pounds of heavy iron around our necks was a real strain. We were actually excited when the farrier arrived one morning to do us, and he seemed to know what he was about: fine padding was inserted between our collars and our necks so that when the diamond cutting wheel tore into the metal we were not injured by the sparks.
We'd assumed, I suppose, that Brett would have us fitted with the light, stainless steel collars that some of the house slaves wore. But instead he'd decided to comply with the law that requires all slaves to wear an ownership collar by instead cinching our dicks and balls. The farrier told us to sit with our legs apart, and then put a sort of funnel thing around our sex organs so that he could pull them as far away from our bodies as he could. When we were fully stretched he used callipers to measure the distance between our bodies and our balls, and the circumference of our dicks and balls at that point, and set to work. It seemed to take a long time to craft the fittings properly and as he worked putting them on to us, Sam and I were terrified that he'd do something careless and really hurt us - I mean, you're really sensitive there, aren't you? But he did indeed know his job properly, and we ended up with a collar of steel just under an inch wide holding our dicks and balls away from our bodies, and this in turn was prevented from slipping by a second collar, at right angles to it, that went around the neck of our ball sacs. It was a precision sort of job, as the two rings had to be joined together, and the seams had to be absolutely smooth if there was to be no chafing and soreness.
When he was finished, he was incredibly proud of his handiwork and showed Brett how there was no possibility of us moving the cinching as it was so exactly sized to each of us. And he went on "And you'll appreciate the way they now show 'hard' much more frequently, as the cinch has the effect of preventing blood from the penis escaping quite so freely: if they get an erection, it will be very difficult for them to lose it, and in my experience quite a lot of ponies go around semi-erect all the time, once properly cinched." Brett then asked about the ring around our balls, and the man sounded surprised at such an obvious question. "Well quite apart from keeping the cinch band properly in place, it is just tight enough that blood flow to their testicles is not affected, but on the other hand a testicle cannot pass. In the cold weather in particular men's testicles can rise up into their body cavities, and this stops that completely: Your ponies balls will now always be at the bottom of their sacs, and, therefore always much more visible."
Brett had us jog up and down on the spot so he could observe our action, and I could tell Sam hated it as much as I did. Quite apart form the fact that my whole body now felt kind of out of balance (although this feeling did pass), the weight at the root of my dick and dragging my balls down felt totally disproportionate. And until my balls "learned" that they were now always "down", it was incredibly painful, too, as they tried to move as normal.
Brett hadn't finished yet, though, as the farrier was instructed to ring our tits! Look, I know a lot of gay guys have rings in their nipples, and it's no big deal for them. But these were totally different from the small gold things some fags flaunt: big, thick rings in heavy stainless steel. Brett declined the offered analgesic gel as he said we were tough enough to do without it, so we had to sit there and watch as the farrier got large steel needle from his kit, then play with our nips to get them erect, before plunging the needle through. The rings were so thick there was no way they could go through a nipple, and so they had much thinner ends which passed through before the ring was squeezed closed by the farrier - it looked OK, therefore, seeming to be "of a piece" as this little subterfuge was hidden from the general gaze. Straughan came up as this was going on and Brett started to tell him the theory behind these rings from Wright's book (that bastard again!). "You see, Straughan, these rings are so heavy that the pony is always aware of them. And in particular, when he's running, or even only walking , the motion of the rings up and down tugs at his nipples and sends a constant reminder to him that he's being used as a draft animal." Straughan shrugged, and muttered something about "work rate being lower because of the pain after prolonged use", and Brett reminded him that there was always the carriage whip and the goad in the unlikely event that we failed to work properly. And, he said, it was also a sign of what superb animals we were, as only men with exceptionally well developed pecs could wear such heavy rings - men in poor shape would have their tits pulled down and look really "droopy" .
The farrier had one more job to do on us after that, and Brett ordered us to be tied down to a "horse" for this as the farrier said that men could object violently to it. Curiously we were tied down on our backs, and it was only when the farrier brought out an instrument that looked a bit like a cross between a pair of pliers and one of those things for stoning olives that I began to realise what was going to happen. One of the farrier's hands held my chin firmly - he was a strong guy - and the other pushed this thing up my nose, one half up each nostril. He fiddled about a bit, and I could "taste" the metallic smell of it, then there was a sickening crunch that seemed to go right through me, coupled with a searing pain and the vile salty taste of fresh blood as it began to run down my throat. I spluttered and choked for a bit, but the farrier held my chin and said calmly "Easy, boy, it was only the septum - it's cartilage, not bone, and now I've punched a hole through it I can ring you....." The heavy steel ring he pushed up was more of an oval shape, so that a satisfactory length of it hung down below my nose, resting on my upper lip. I ran my tongue experimentally over it, and got a twinge of pain from the hole in my septum, but I supposed it would heal eventually.
I looked at Sam when we were eventually allowed to stand up, and saw that he'd been transformed even more into an "object" rather than a man than he had been before, and I knew I must look the same. His body was devoid of hair except for the strip from forehead to neck a couple of inches wide, and everywhere he glowed and shone from the slave oil that was massaged into us each morning. Now, though, his dick was even more prominent and as I watched he became erect, exposing the glint of metal around his sac, too. His nose and nipples seemed almost dragged down by their huge ornaments, and he shrugged helpless at me as he saw me looking at him.
Brett insisted on taking us for a spin then, and as usual we had to kneel for the long bit to be fitted to us, and then we were off. I could indeed feel the jogging of the rings on my nips, and on my nose, and, as I said, I was curiously unbalanced by the cinch. By the time we got back everywhere was aching, and even Brett saw he'd probably made us do too much too soon as he allowed us to be led back to be chained into our stall. We huddled close together, a picture of misery as we lay there willing the ache to go from us; but when Sam reached out and began to gently stroke my semi-hard dick, one effect of what had been done to us was very apparent - I don't think I've ever had an erection before that was so firm and strong! My fingers reached for Sam, and he too was harder than I'd ever known him to be before - and you have to bear in mind we were both young, fit guys who never had any problems with getting hard anyway.
Shortly after that it was time to go off to college, and our trap and we were shipped by UPS. It took them three days to get us delivered to Raleigh, and it's odd to think that it used to be possible to get stuff delivered anywhere the next day, but I suppose that was before the oil thing that caused most air travel to become so very, very expensive and made parcels and mail and stuff go back to the railroads - it was a good thing there were all those slaves to lay new tracks! It was quite interesting, I suppose - we were picked up by the local UPS guy as he'd been shipped before, and caged in one of the tiny cubicle-like things. We weren't in it long, though, as we were unloaded at the local train station and kept in a kind of communal waiting room for slaves - a "waiting room" surrounded by bars, of course. They'd wanted to put a UPS routing tag on our collars as all the other slaves had, and the UPS guy tut-tutted when it was realised we were collarless - well, I think they didn't like the idea of going down and attaching their tag to our cinch rings! Instead they put temporary plastic collars on us with the routing tags, and whenever a train came through, a UPS guy came past with a little reader device and if it bleeped, the slave was bundled out onto the train.
We had to wait about five hours before it was our turn, and it was nice to be able to speak to some other slaves as we normally only got to talk to the other guys in the stables. Most of them were decently clad in slave smocks, or slave shorts and Ts, and at first we had quite a problem to get anyone to want to shoot the breeze with us - because we were totally naked, it was assumed we were slaves who worked in a pleasure palace or similar place, and were thus generally considered to be not "nice to know". Most of the slaves travelling were of course specialists - "professionals" who had fallen foul of the law and enslaved, and then bought up by big companies to do much of the same type of work as they did before, minus the enormous salaries: we met a lawyer, and a few accountants going off to do a big audit, and even some guy in "IT" who said he was a trouble shooter and was going to sort out some idiots in the Memphis office. I suppose it wasn't worth while shipping labourers and people like that around, as it was costly and there was no shortage of their skills: it would be much easier to sell the ones you had, and buy some more at the new location.
When our turn came the UPS guy led us out to the special slave compartment in the rear carriage, generally hassled some of the existing passengers to make room for us on one of the hard benches, and then shackled our ankles to the floor. I'd travelled by train many times, of course, to and from college by myself, and on vacations with mom and dad and my brother, but we always went in the "standard class" carriages with nice seats, air conditioning, a place to plug in your laptop, and a buffet car. The slave coach was just bare wooden benches, though, and no airconditioning to save the energy. We couldn't go to the buffet car of course, but at the end of each row of benches there was a hose with a spigot on the end, and this could be passed along so you could drink water. There were holes in the floor, too, so we could piss if we needed to, and some of the "professional" slaves were really complaining about this - one guy told me he used to earn hundreds of thousands of new dollars a year doing exactly the same work as he now did as a slave, and it was disgusting to treat a man like him like this. I asked him if he thought it was OK to treat men like me and Sam like this, who never earned much at all in our lives, and he stared at me as if I was some sort of madman. "Different strokes for different folks", he told me. "You went standard class on the trains before, did you? Well, you should try first class - your dinner is specially prepared for you, and they have the finest champagne as an aperitif...."
It all seemed to be very slickly run, though - we had to change trains at one point, and a UPS man came aboard, read the routing tags, and took some of us off to a holding cage, where we waited for the next train to come to take us further on. Sam and I were really hungry by now, and the UPS man in charge seemed like a reasonable guy and when we asked, dished out individual serving packs of slave chow, which we could sit there and eat as we waited. We got into the habit of asking after that, and I have to say that most of the UPS staff were helpful and considerate to us, even though we were slaves. One of them told us though that they'd "Lost" a slave somewhere in the system a few months before and when he was found in the corner of a warehouse, chained in the wrong bay so that the inventory system couldn't locate him, he'd starved to death - there was a directive from head office therefore saying that slaves were to be kept fed.
When we finally did arrive at the college we could hear a lot of discussion gong on between the driver and the security guard at the gates of the huge compound it seemed to be in, and it was finally determined we were not for the college, but for a frat house which was just off campus. It was quite late in the evening when we arrived, and as we were unloaded, we aroused some interest from the young men lounging around on its broad veranda: they were wondering which two new men had brought ponies as only one was expected, and when the head slave checked the documentation and told them, very respectfully, that we were a pair, there seemed to be general astonishment: evidently Brett's plan to "make a splash" was working.
The stables, around the back of the house itself, were actually pretty nice. Instead of individual stalls as we had at Walker Plantation, all of us ponies were housed in one big area. When you were put in at night a chain that came from the centre of the ceiling was manacled to your wrist, and that was that - you were relatively free (except, of course, that as you and the other ponies moved around you have to keep an eye on the chains and weave either under or over, as appropriate, to prevent getting hopelessly tangled up). It meant that you could move around and chat to whoever you wanted, you could go through the opening in the low wall that screened off the shower area and shower whenever you wanted, and take a piss or crap as it suited you: to those of us used to the rigours of life at Walker Plantation, this was like slave heaven!
Mind you, there were some disadvantages: you were expected to go into the carriage room next door and keep your own trap clean, as there were no "grooms" here, and, as we were to discover, when you've been running hard all day, the additional burden of washing and polishing the trap was something you really didn't want. But we were advised never to leave it dirty and wait until the next day, as our owner might wish to go out late in the evening and then "there would be trouble" if the trap wasn't clean and bright.
You would think that having the ability to move around like that would be good for our sex lives, as we could choose to go and fuck whoever we wanted, but there was a downside to this: one of the ponies was a huge, overly-muscled guy, more a "carthorse" than a pony, I'd say! He belonged to a student who liked to go around in a very heavy landau with deep leather upholstery and a rain cover, and so needed the power of a slave like that even though that meant that his speed was restricted. Over time he'd come to think of himself as "top dog" in the stables, and would fuck whoever he chose whenever he wanted to, even if the other guy didn't want his huge sweaty body anywhere near him. He had the strength and the sheer bullying physical presence to make all the others do as he said.
On the first night this hulk came over and told me to get on my hands and knees as he liked to take the new boys that way, and when I told him to fuck off, he threw a punch at me! Well, I'm not used to fighting, and although I'm very strong, as you know, I was so surprised that I went down as the blow struck, and this creature threw himself on top of me and started to force me down so he could rape me. Sam came to me rescue, of course, and told the bully to leave me alone. When the hulk told Sam to keep his nose out of it as he didn't take shit from niggas, Sam went for him and a real fight ensued - it seems the owners always let us ponies sort things out for ourselves, so no one came to intervene even though all the others were cheering and screaming as the fight went on. Sam's marine training ensured we won, and he left the hulk in quite a bad way, and we began to worry about what would happen the following morning. One of the others told us that it wasn't all that unusual for a pony to appear bruised and a bit battered, and most owners considered it "normal" for stallions like us to play a bit rough.
It was a really slim young guy who told us this, and he actually huddled up to Sam and put his arms around him. He said he was only seventeen, and was a "sprinter" used by his owner for short runs to and from the campus only, and he was so grateful to Sam for beating the bully that he'd gladly let Sam fuck him any time he wanted to; he'd become almost the fuck toy of the hulk for the past few months and hated it. "Hear that, Steve?", Sam called out. "You've got a rival for my cock now, so you'd better behave properly and do a few tricks to keep my interest!" All the other guys laughed, as they realised that Sam and I must be "an item", but, unaccountably, I found myself blushing: I really liked having sex with Sam, but somehow it was kind of private, and I didn't want the world to know.
The semester hadn't officially started yet, and Brett used the next two days to drive us around the campus and the town to get to know the places he'd want to be taken. We were ordered to pay particular attention, as in future he'd just expect to say "the tennis courts" or "Dick's Dive" (a popular bar), or wherever, as he didn't want to have to spend his time giving stupid ponies every little direction. He wore a blazer on these voyages of exploration in a particularly horrible pattern of salmon pink and lime green stripes - we found out these were the frat colours, and marked him out as one of the most privileged of all the privileged students. Later we got to hate those colours with a vengeance, as once he'd settled in, Brett gave us ribbons in them and every morning we had to tie bows in our nipple rings, tie another around our cinch rings, and a final one around our necks: we felt utterly ridiculous having to go around the streets like this, and it just added to our general sense of humiliation.
I was amazed, actually, at how hard we had to work: Brett never seemed to go to any lectures, or the library, or anything like that, but never the less Sam and I were almost constantly in motion taking him to a breakfast, a tennis lesson, a lunch, his tailor's for a fitting, the florist to buy a posy for a friend, a tea party, an outing to the local swimming lake, cocktails, dinner, or a late-night poker game. It was all right for him, but it meant we were on our feet from seven in the morning until nearly midnight, or after, day after day: it wasn't just the running, as Brett often seemed to be late for all these things so we had to at least trot, if not gallop sometimes: no, it was the constant standing around waiting, once we'd got there. Brett of course required us to stand with our feet a little apart and our heads bowed, and when once we had dared to move out of the sun and sit on a bench (not easy anyway, when you're manacled to the trap), he was incandescent with rage and thrashed us repeatedly with a tawse on our shoulders, something he rarely did. After that we managed to "sleep on our feet", dozing as best we could as we stood there waiting patiently.
Talking to some of the other ponies I found that Brett's behaviour was not at all unusual - all the guys in the frat were rich, their parents made huge contributions to the college, and they were not expected to do more work than they were interested in, and there was an "understanding" that they would nevertheless graduate well. I remembered the hours of sweat I'd expended in getting my degree, and it really made me pissed off to see the system subverted in this way. I was going on and on about it one night, and Sam pulled me close to him and stroked my dick, laughing as he did so. "You are an idiot, Steve, not to realise that's the way the rich folk do things", he told me. "I was a grunt marine, and I could never be an officer as I didn't go to officer training school, which you could only do if you applied, which you could only do if your folks had enough money to get you across the country to the selection board..... The rich have always had it made, Steve, and the rest of us have to go through the motions."
Brett left us at the frat house for Thanksgiving and Christmas and the Fourth Of July and short holidays like that as he said the expense of shipping us backwards and forwards wasn't worth it. That was the case for most of the other ponies, too (although some went with their owners, who lived in the surrounding states where the expense was not so great). We had a great time then - the slaves who worked in the frat house itself doing the cleaning and laundry and stuff like that came over and we partied! Some of them were women, of course, as the frat boys liked to have them around should they require casual sexual relief, and the first time I saw some of my fellow ponies falling on them and fucking away as if no one else was there, I was frankly shocked (Sam and me, and the other ponies who fucked each other, tended to do it discretely, moving off to corner, or waiting until it was dark). Sam wanted to fuck cunt, as he called it in his rough marine way, and was one of those who unashamedly went for it whenever the women were around; afterwards, when we were lying together and I could smell them on him, I kind of remonstrated with him, and he responded. "You should get stuck in too, Steve! I thought you told me you were shacked up with some girl before you were enslaved, and I believed you. I can't understand why you're not going to take it, when there's cunt here laid on like running water!
You are straight, aren't you? I don't like to think I'm fucking a gay guy....."
"Sam, of course I was living with my girlfriend, and I like fucking women.... But it's not right, Sam, taking advantage of these women - they're slaves, like us...."
"Taking advantage? They're offering! And they like it - I mean, who wouldn't rather have my dick fucking her rather than one of those weak young college guys?"
"But Sam... We're kind of together.... You and me.... "
"Of course we are! But when there's women on offer, Steve..... Come on....." As he said this, he grabbed one of the women, actually a really attractive nigga with firm, high breasts who I'd rather fancied when I'd seen her come in. He pulled her down between us, and kissed her and played with her, then I heard him say "My friend Steve here really likes you, but he's shy..... Can you do anything to help him?"
I went to say "no", and tried to push her away, but when your best buddy's almost holding you down, and there's a really feisty young woman intend on squatting astride you so your dick goes in her, there's not much you can do about it, is there? And afterwards Sam went straight in to her too, saying he didn't normally like sloppy seconds, but as it was my cum it was OK as he was used to it. And then all three of us rolled around and laughed a lot, and it was fun, especially as, later in the night, she taught me some things that my girlfriend had never even thought of!
We went back to Walker Plantation for the long vacation, though, and nothing much had changed: Straughan was still there, and Brett told him to "put us through it" as we were a bit out of condition and needed a spell of really hard exercise. It was tough, but I suppose I was getting used to it, and it was good to have my body really stretched again.
If you think about it, you really only know a little bit about even your best buddy as however much time you spend with him at the gym, or at a bar, or wherever, it's only a tiny fraction of the time.. And although I thought I knew my girlfriend well, I realised I didn't, when she upped and left me after two years - what had she really been thinking all that time? But Sam and I were more than just best buddies, more than sex partners: we were twenty four hours a day together, either working, or sleeping. The double bit kept us close, closer than two men usually are to each other, and we shared responsibility for everything: if one of us got out of step with the other, we'd both be whipped or goaded by Brett. We were more than friends , more than work mates, more than lovers: always together, never apart, I thought I knew Sam as well as I knew myself. Lying next to him a few nights later, utterly tired out but somehow happy as I teased one of his nipple rings, causing him to moan with pleasure, a moan half stifled by my tongue that was half way down his throat, I suddenly stopped. Sam seemed surprised, and thought that I wanted him to take over making the running, and pushed me gently down into the straw, flipped my nose ring so he could get at my mouth, and went to kiss me.
I stopped him, and now he was very surprised. "What's the matter, Steve? Tired of me, after only a year?"
"Sam, it's not that. I'll never get tired of you. But it's not right, is it? The way we're treated.... We've got to escape, or something...."
Sam sat up and put his arms around his knees a s he does when he's thoughtful. "Look, it's different for you, obviously, but for me, this is a pretty good kind of life.... I was in the marines, remember? And I had to take orders and shit all day long anyway. And I had to work my body into the ground with training and everything. And for what? The few new bucks left over at the end of the month when I'd paid for my accommodation and keep, beers with the other guys, the occasional whore.... Look at what I've got now: I know slave chow isn't the most exciting stuff, but we're well fed; sure I have to work hard, but I did anyway, and I don't have any new bucks at all, ever. But on the other hand I've got as much free sex as I want - not just with you, Steve, but do you remember that young nigga last Christmas.... and all the others. What I don't have is all the worry - will an officer ball me out and put me on a charge, will I get one of my buddies injured if we're on an exercise, or if I did the wrong thing when we cleared out some nest of terrorists and got him killed. No: I know that if I do wrong I get caned or whipped, and that's that, its over - nothing to hang over for the future. Life is just so simple, so easy - it's true what Straughan told us: just obey orders. That's what we do, and someone else has to do all the worrying and everything...."
"But we're not free, Sam!"
"What's 'free', then? Free to work my ass off and never get promoted, free to have to be polite to officer shit fresh out from training who know less about things than I do, free to never have any money, free to have to buy sex, free....?"
"It's not as bad as that!"
"And what were you going to do, Steve? Why were you biking around the country?"
"Well dad wanted me to work in an office, and I didn't fancy it, I wanted something different...."
"So you were facing a life of endless work, stuck in an office.... With that girlfriend, or one like her, whining on about how you never made enough money, and then you'd have a kid, and the money would be even tighter and she'd go off sex, and.... You weren't 'free', any more than I was. No, I reckon we have a pretty good time, all things considered."
So how well did I really know Sam, after all. I wanted to argue with him, but we were tired, and there didn't seem any point. So we fucked then, which kind of took my mind off things, but, all the same, were we really so close, or were we really very different?
End Of Part Three