Out of Sight

Synopsis: Still not accepting the "new normal," Max looks for a way out of his Master's clutches...

Days became weeks, weeks became months, and what was once inconceivable was now something that had become Max's "new normal."

In some ways, things still appeared relatively unchanged for Max. Today, like every other weekday, his face was featured in his little Zoom box as it always was. Perhaps a little cleaner-looking than his colleagues (his hair was always well-groomed, his face was always clean-shaven, and his button-up shirts were always freshly ironed), Max's appearance in and of itself drew no more special attention now than he did before the pandemic had begun (which is to say, his good looks still had people directing their gazes towards him a little longer than most).

Yet, not everything appeared as it once did. When work-from-home first began, the co-workers spying Max's little Zoom box no doubt remarked on little more than the appearance of a young man who you knew was quite popular with the ladies. At that time, there was nothing to suggest otherwise.

Now, however, the virtual background Max used in every one of his Zoom calls told quite a different story. Where once there had been little more than a plain, off-white wall behind him, now instead were all the flamboyant colours of the rainbow. In other words, anyone looking at Max now would come to a rather different conclusion: surrounded by a giant gay pride flag as his virtual background every time anyone saw him, this appeared to be a strikingly handsome young man who you assumed was quite popular not "with the ladies," but rather with fellow members of his own sex.

Max, of course, bristled every single time he saw the obnoxiously gay background in his self-view on Zoom. It would be bad enough if people just thought he were into other men, but this was altogether much worse, with the pride flag's ever-present obtrusiveness and unmissably vibrant colours making him seem not to simply be a man who preferred the company of his own sex, but one of those in-your-face, shove-it-down-your-throat faggots whom he had -- in his previous life -- felt a special level of homophobic contempt for.

But this was not the only reason Max bristled every time he saw the virtual background. It was not simply the mere fact of its existence that got to him; rather, it was the fact that he CHOSE to use it each and every time he logged into Zoom.

Clark had given him the option of using this specific virtual background or no virtual background at all -- and the alternative, Max knew for certain, was much worse.

Max believed he could overcome the reputation his ever-present pride flag gave him for the time being when all of this was over and he got his life back. Sure, everyone right now assumed he was a raging homo, but no one ever outright asked. He could easily say that the flag had been to show solidarity or something -- he could even see himself cashing in on the "social justice" cred accrued through this show of support for the gay community as a way to further charm liberal-minded members of the opposite sex when he returned to his former philandering lifestyle.

He would not, however, ever be able to overcome the reputation he'd acquire if any of his coworkers ever saw what this virtual background kept out of sight.

His laptop was now set up at the workspace Clark had designated for him in the bedroom -- and the depraved scene Max knew his camera would show behind him sent him into a near panic attack every time he thought about anyone he knew actually catching sight of it.

Many of his colleagues, of course, were obviously set up in their own bedrooms -- he saw no shortage of beds, nightstands, other bedroom furniture in the backgrounds of others. Behind Max, too, there sat a bed and bedroom furniture -- things which were made deeply humiliating sights thanks to some additional details.

On Max's bed and nightstand, myriad dildos, vibrators, and dozens of other anally-insertable sex toys were casually strewn about. Not one of them was subtle: either their size or their loud colours (and, in most cases, both) made them unmissable if one were to see the bed and nightstand for even an instant.

Yet, even if he had been permitted to clear off the bed and nightstand, the space behind Max contained an equally reputation-shattering furnishing: taking up more room than the bed, nightstand, or any other piece of furniture was a full-size, attached-to-the-wall-and-ceiling fuck-swing.

So, Max swallowed his pride -- for lack of a better word -- every day and chose to have his face and torso entirely surrounded by the image of a giant gay pride each time he logged into Zoom rather than let anyone catch sight of the deeply perverted scene sitting just behind him.

Although Max sometimes wondered why he was trying so hard to maintain any facade -- to "keep up appearances" and have everyone he video-chatted with believing he was still the same cocky and confident man he was before the pandemic began, even if they were also starting to think he was a homo -- he still couldn't shake the belief that this would all be over soon.

He was, after all, slowly working on his escape from his Master's clutches.

"Just a few more months," Max kept telling himself. "Just a few more months and I'll be free..."

It was that hope -- the hope that he would still be able to return to something like the life he used to have -- that kept him going and had him trying every day to convince people on the outside that the old Max still existed.

Of course, many elements of his transformation under Master Clark's control made him wonder if he could ever go back to acting like the man he once was. The most obvious two were ones that were presently visible below the waist.

Max was, just like in Phase 1 of his training, still sitting a massive dildo during his work meeting. Although the dildo had, of course, changed (the new one was well over a foot long, but equally as ribbed and gnarled as the old one), what was concerning to Max now was the ease with which he took the thing every time he sat down at his desk.

Last spring, the nine-incher had seemed impossibly large and it was only with a considerable and drawn-out struggle that he been able to insert it during those first couple weeks of lockdown. Now, much to his shame, the once fiercely-heterosexual Max had become a pro at taking mind-bogglingly massive toys up his back passage like they were nothing. Today, for example, he had actually been casually checking his email during the couple of minutes it took to fully insert the dildo affixed to the seat of his desk chair. He had realized with horror after the successful insertion that it was now such an easy and commonplace task that he taken the 13-inch rubber monstrosity up his rear so casually that it hadn't even really needed him to pay attention.

That said, there were other things that certainly did not require Max to pay attention, but which he found hard to keep out of his mind. Case in point: his dick.

Naturally, one could argue that Max's mind turned to his dick as often as it did because he needed to be cleaning up after it so often. After all, the steady stream of precum that dripped and squirted out of it had only increased over the months since the appendage's initial caging. But, of course, that in and of itself really did not require Max to think about his dick -- he could just as easily be licking up his messes off the floor on autopilot (as he had started to do with the insertion of his desk-chair dildo).

By all rights, Max's dick really should have been receiving less of his attention now than it did at the start of lockdown. After all, in those first couple weeks, Max's "manhood" had been trapped in a solid metal cage whose reflective surface often drew his focus simply from how it caught the light. Moreover, that first chastity device had been had been a loud and clunky thing, the lock clicking noisily against the rigid tube around his shaft when he moved swiftly.

His new cage should, by that logic, have made it much easier for Max to just forget about his dick for good.

The new device had been the "gift" with which Clark had welcomed Max into Phase 2 of his training -- and, certainly, it did an expert job of making it clear to Max how those first couple weeks had only been the very tip of the iceberg.

Indeed, when Max had regained consciousness following the sudden sleep Clark had forced him into that day he had revealed himself to be the one issuing the hypnotic orders through the Mastr app on his phone, what he came to was a very rude awakening.

Always having been a man who had thought with his dick in his old life, it would come as a surprise to no one that, when Max woke up, he did not immediately direct his attention to his surroundings or even try to determine if Clark was still there. He barely lifted himself up to a kneeling position on the floor before his attention was called elsewhere. Quickly becoming aware of the constricting sensation in his crotch, his eyes had darted right there.

If the old cage was like a police station jail cell, then the new one was a maximum security prison.

There were many things that marked it as different.

For starters, the stark change in colour: while the new device was still metallic, it now came with a reddish chrome finish.

The colour change, however, was the least of Max's concerns. The young man's eyes had bulged wide -- aghast in total shock -- at the nightmarishly minuscule size of the thing that his once-proud penis had somehow been crammed into while he was unconscious. The sheer physics seemed impossible, but there it was: his formerly large flaccid member had somehow been squished into cage that could not be more than a couple inches at very most.

But the real horror was one that Max's eyes (and then madly searching hands running over it) had not immediately perceived. Rather, it was a voice in the room that had informed Max of a detail he had missed.

"It's riveted shut."

Max's eyes had darted to where the voice had come from, taking in Clark sitting calmly on the couch that Max had pushed to the edge of his living room to accommodate his workout space. However, he barely rested his gaze there for more than a second before redirecting his vision to the cage he was madly pawing at.

"Wha... Riv... Wha... Riveted... Wh... How?" Max muttered incoherently, desperately trying to process the seriousness of the way in which his most prized possession had been locked up.

"I spared no expense," Clark began, rising to his feet and making his way over to Max. "I consulted with a few specialty designers and this, I assure you," he said, gesturing towards the dull reddish metal dome that was compressing Max's penis, "is the best device money can buy for permanent chastity."

Max's eyes darted to Clark's smirking face once more. "What do you mean, `permanent'?!"

"Oh, don't worry, Max," Clark replied in a patronizingly sympathetic tone. "There are ways to remove it if I want to treat you to an upgrade."

Still woozy, the room spinning around him from the combination of his initial sudden loss of consciousness and now the world-altering news Clark was dumping on him, Max could do little more than mutter incoherently once more.

"Wha... How... What...." Max tried to say as his gaze wildly flitted from Clark to the impossibility between his legs.

"For instance," Clark started, "There's another model I thought you might like -- even smaller and tighter than this one -- but there's no way I could get that one on you myself. You see, it needs a Prince Albert ring and everything and, well, I'll have to wait until after lockdown has ended to get your nub pierced..."

"Wha... Why..." Max began, finally finding that he was able to spit out a question: "How the fuck would that be any better than this?!"

"Oh, well, the piercing would be golden!" Clark exclaimed, giddy like a kid on Christmas.

Max's stomach dropped when he clued in to what Clark was getting at, realizing what the reasoning behind the colours were: personalized humiliation.

Clark could have chosen any colour for the chastity device. Pink or purple would have been embarrassing for any man, connoting femininity as they do. But, Max realized, the point here was not to "feminize" him at all -- it was rather to emasculate him in a deeply personal way, to attack the centre of his manhood.

The cage was not "reddish." The colour, Max realized, was garnet.

And the piercing would be gold.

Garnet and gold. Their high school team colours.

Garnet and gold were the colours of the jersey and team jacket that Max had often worn through the halls of the high school where he had once terrorized the teenage Clark. Max's school colour garments had loudly proclaimed his position at the top of the food chain: a jock who everyone would admire, a stud who cheerleaders would want to fuck, and -- in Max's case particularly -- a bully who could target nerds and fags (and especially those who fell into both categories) with total impunity.

Now, those same colours proclaimed that his position in life had become something quite different.

The only saving grace was that only Clark and Max himself knew what the meaning of the colours was. Max's shame was, mercifully, still private in at least that respect.

Moreover, on today's work call -- as per usual -- none of his colleagues would catch sight of either the garnet or the gold attached to Max's body.

The device affixed to his genitals meant that the garnet never left him; yet, Clark had still seen to it that Max had plenty of opportunities to pair it with gold (even absent the Prince Albert he might someday end up with as a permanent "upgrade" to his purportedly permanent chastity) so that at least he was reminded of his personal descent every day.

As he sat there on his Zoom call, acting as though nothing was bothering him, Max was careful not to move his arms any more than necessary. The slightest adjustment in his torso called renewed attention to the biting pain of the golden clamps whose shark teeth were gnawing into his nipples beneath the dress shirt he had on.

Even moving to type on his keyboard brought a sharp sensation to the points of contact on Max's chest. However, as he moved his hands over the keys, he endured the pain and suppressed his instinctive grimace, believing it to be worth it.

His private Zoom message went to Mohammed, another participant in the meeting: "Still good to talk after this? ;-)"

Max noticed Mohammed's eyes flit to the side of his screen and he was pleased to see that Mohammed had a poorly-contained smile on his face upon reading Max's message.

"Sure thing!" Mohammed hastily typed back in another private message.

This kid was going to be his ticket out of here.

Max had barely noticed the guy before the lockdown. Lanky, dorky, and a quiet-type who kept his shoulders hunched and his head buried in his computer screen, Mohammed turned out to be much more of a lynchpin in Clark's company than Max had ever suspected.

It was one of the few advantages of Max's "new position at work." No one, of course, was aware of what had really transpired -- that Clark now resided in what was once Max's home and Max served him night and day. Rather, the public-facing change had been this: Max had been "promoted" to Clark's "personal assistant."

Naturally, the position was, for the most part, just a cover for the true servitude Max had with respect to Clark. Yet, parts of it were a real job: he managed Clark's schedule, set up his meetings, summarized important reports that were submitted to him, and so on.

Max was no genius -- but he was no idiot, either. Months of being immersed in the ins and outs of Clark's company had led him to a realization of something that should have been obvious all along: their teams for marketing, accounting, financial projections, advertising, and so on all led back to the products themselves. They were a tech company -- and Mohammed, it turned out, was the programmer breathing exciting new life into Clark's original inventions.

If anyone would know how Max could escape Mastr, it must be Mohammed.

"All right, I think that about wraps everything up for today," Clark said, drawing Max's attention to the little Zoom box his image occupied. His boss scanned the screen for a moment and added, "Take good care everyone," in the characteristically warm-hearted tone that, as usual, just made Max want to punch him in the face even more.

Max didn't need to be told twice that the meeting was over, clicking "Leave Meeting" the second that Clark was done talking.

It was painful when his hands then immediately snapped away from the keyboard of their own accord and started wildly unbuttoning his own shirt, the swift upper-body movement generating a sharp and intense sensation in his pecs.

Gritting his teeth and concentrating, Max muttered "Work call, work clothes. Work call, work clothes. Work call, work clothes." as his hands gradually stopped their action.

What Max had learned in the months since his captivity had begun was that, although he could never disobey the orders sent to him through the Mastr app, there were still ways around them.

The command for him to be completely bare-ass applied almost universally, but Max had been allowed one exception. Since the beginning, he had been instructed to wear a dress shirt (and only a dress shirt -- he had, in fact, since been instructed to throw out every other item of clothing he had once owned) during his work calls.

The exception was narrow. Indeed, the compulsion to be totally naked outside that small window was so strong that his body usually reacted without one moment to think -- as soon as the Zoom call was over, that shirt absolutely must be thrown off and violently cast aside as if it had somehow caught on fire.

Today, Max had only been partially successful in convincing himself that his chats with Mohammed count as a "work call." That is to say, his hands -- while they had stopped unbuttoning his shirt -- nevertheless refused to rise again and button the top of half back up.

Nevertheless, Max was not too concerned. In fact, showing some skin would likely just help him to further ensnare Mohammed. Clark having apparently chosen a protégé not much different from himself, it was clear to Max that Mohammed was also someone who would eye his bare flesh hungrily.

While Max was slightly concerned that Mohammed might catch sight of the torture device on his chest, more than likely if he did see anything where his shirt came open, the programmer would just think it was a run-of-the-mill gold chain necklace and not the thing that tethered two shark-tooth clamps together.

Max's inbox dinged with the email he expected: "Mohammed is inviting you to a Zoom meeting."

Collecting himself, Max clicked the link and joined the Zoom room.

When he saw his camera had come on, he flashed his most endearing and flirtatious smile (one that gave his cheeks dimples that counterbalanced the smouldering sexiness of his otherwise masculine features) before exclaiming: "Hey, Mo, buddy! How's it going?"

Mohammed laughed nervously, looking a little bashful. It was obvious that he found Max's attention to be both warmly welcome and uncomfortably overwhelming.

"Gr -- great," Mohammed stuttered out. He cleared his throat. "How -- how about you?"

Concerning the clamps gnawing at his pecs, the giant dildo jabbing his guts, and the absurdly small metallic tube crushing manhood, Max put them out of his mind. In and Oscar-worthy performance, he was able to convincingly reply, "I'm awesome, man! But, you know, I always feel awesome when I get to talk to you."

Mohammed let out his nervous laugh again and looked away awkwardly, apparently unsure how to respond to Max's possible flirtation.

"So, uh, anyway, how's that project going?"

Looking back to his camera, Mohammed replied, "Umm, project...?"

"Yeah, you know, you just seemed really excited about that one you told me about the other day. Like, I liked seeing how excited you got when you were explaining the one that worked with, like, music that turns into math?" Max said, keeping his smile.

"Oh!" Mohammed exclaimed excitedly. "You mean the coding for the audio-neural pathway interactivity platform!"

"See, bruh, that's why I think you're so cool," Max said, nodding his head. "I can't even say half those words, and here you are designing whole new ways of running computers using that!"

"Oh, well, it's really quite simple when you break it down," Mohammed replied, blushing and suddenly talking a mile-a-minute in a manner typical of one who is both nervous and excited.

Max's smile struggled to stay in place, pain erupting from the nipple clamps as he reach out to grab a pen and paper (the only non-sex-toy items on his desk). Thankfully, Mohammed seemed to be too caught up in his techno-babbling to notice.

"Umm, could you, like, simplify that for me?" Max asked as nicely as he could, interrupting Mohammed as he was blathering on about something to do with the "pathways between the brain's prefrontal and temporal cortices."

"Oh! Right! Sorry!" Mohammed said, nervously laughing again. "Umm, okay, let me think... how can I say this more simply..." Mohammed looked up, clearly lost in thought all of a sudden.

The guy was definitely some kind of genius. A quick Google search had told Max that Mohammed had advanced degrees in both neuroscience and computer programming, yet he barely looked like he was out of his teens.

Yet, as tended to be the case when it came to someone with such a towering intellect, Mohammed was so smart that he barely ever thought about how to dumb things down.

"Oh! Okay! I think I know how to explain it," Mohammed suddenly said.

Max crossed his fingers, hoping that this would be the time Mohammed would be able to say it in a way that made sense to him. Max had been lucky so far that, since Mohammed was something of an absent-minded intellectual, the programmer had yet to notice that almost every time they spoke, Max had been directing the conversation towards the same thing -- and always trying to get Mohammed to "break it down" for him. Still, Max was not sure how much longer he could go on with this before Mohammed would catch on.

"It's like... You know when you hear a song that has a really catchy beat? And, like, your foot might start tapping to the beat?"

Max nodded and wrote down "music... foot... beat" as he listened to Mohammed go on.

"You might not even like the song. In fact, maybe you hate the song! But, like, something in your brain recognizes a pattern in it, regardless of what your conscious mind is saying. And, even if you don't want to, you realize your foot is tapping along to the beat."

Something clicked in Max's mind. That was it. That was exactly it. Mohammed was finally saying something that made sense -- something that explained the kind of things he had been experiencing.

"Well, what I'm doing is trying to crack that code," Mohammed continued. "If we could, like, hack it -- if we could find a rhythm or a sound that cuts through the conscious mind's defences, well, we could start programming brains like we program computers. Just imagine the possibilities! We could cure all sorts of mental disorders -- depression, anxiety, schizophrenia --"

"Could you hypnotize people?" Max asked, cutting in suddenly and with great intensity, startling Mohammed.

"Umm..." Mohammed hesitated, clearly having been lost in his rant and completely blindsided by Max's interruption.

Realizing his mistake, Max plastered his flirtatious smile back on his face. "Sorry, buddy! I'm just making a joke!"

Mohammed laughed nervously once more. "Oh, heh, no worries. I guess I was getting kind of carried away..."

Max decided not to say anything else, hoping Mohammed would continue if he let the awkward silence rest in the air.

The gamble paid off.

"Anyway, it's all just in the early stages..." Mohammed said, squirming a little uncomfortably. "But, yeah, you could totally call it `hypnosis.'"

"And the `audio' for this, what does it sound like?" Max eagerly asked.

Mohammed laughed loudly, catching Max off-guard.

"Oh, shit!" Mohammed said, stopping himself suddenly and looking a little embarrassed at the uproarious laughter he'd just let out. "Sorry, I forgot you don't deal with these things all day like I do."

Inwardly, Max was raging. He hated how smart Mohammed was -- how, even unintentionally, he constantly made Max feel like a moron. Already feeling every day like a slut and a slave, having his intelligence also called into question was almost more than he could take.

"Oh, umm, did I say something funny?" Max asked, suppressing his desire to tell Mohammed to fuck off and end the call.

"Ah, it's just that, what I'm talking about is ridiculously complicated -- like, as complicated as brains themselves." Mohammed paused for a second, thinking of how to explain. "It's keys and locks. They all sort of generally look the same, but when it comes to fitting them together, everything has to match up perfectly. It's the same with what I'm talking about. There are billions of brains and trillions of sounds. What I'm saying is that you have to figure out which ones match up perfectly. Every single lock has a unique key -- there's not just `one sound' for what I'm talking about."

"And what would --" Max started, eager to get more details.

As if on cue, the very thing about which Max was about to ask made itself loudly known: R2D2's beeps and boops and a dial-up modem's scratches and screeches played from the speakers of his phone as a new order came in for Max via the Mastr app.

Mohammed's eyes narrowed and he tilted his head, a hint of recognition creeping onto his face as he heard the sound.

"Wait, is that --" Mohammed began to ask.

Thankfully for Max, he still had enough wherewithal about him to close his laptop as he turned his attention to his phone screen. Yes, it was immensely rude to do that to Mohammed, but it was better than the alternative of the programmer catching sight of what was about to come into full view as Max lifted himself off his desk-chair dildo.

Max gulped nervously as he processed the words on his screen: "My office. Now."

Thank you for reading. Wherever you are, I hope you are staying healthy and safe -- or, at very least, that your time in lockdown is going better than Max's...

corey_grant@gmx.com