The usual caveats. If you are under eighteen, please come back when you can legally read this sort of story. If you don't find ropes and gags enhancements to erotic encounters, you probably won't enjoy this; if you do, then you well may.
Please do not post this tale to any other site without permission, and please do not post it as your own work. These stories take work (enjoyable work, but work nonetheless), and I enjoy receiving the credit. Alan Katz, this means you!
THE SCARECROW
I suppose you might say it began with the crows. Or else with the wedding. Of course, if you wanted to trace the entire history of the whole affair, and the motives of every man involved it would all go back much further. But I don't think we want to do that, so let's say it began with the crows, and start there.
Or else with the wedding. Actually, the wedding itself has nothing to do with the story, but it was because of the wedding that I came back that Saturday afternoon, late for my usual on the back porch get-together with John and his brother James, and Rick. And it was also the reason I was all dressed up in a suit. I still kept some of my city friendships, and when Jan and Bill invited me to their wedding, I was happy to go. I had had a good time, too, considering, and since I don't drink, nothing of that was a factor in what happened. But when I parked the car in front of the house, and walked around to the back, I was almost an hour late, and the other fellows were sitting on my back porch, beers in their hands and smiles on their faces. It had been a beautiful Indian summer day, warm and clear and dry, with just that clean hint of coolness in the air that gets your blood going and makes you feel you must be right with the world for it to look the way it does, going out in a glory of bright color before the winter comes at last.
I was walking up the steps when John let out a soft wolf whistle and James said, "Gosh, isn't he pretty!"
I glared at John, said, "Yeah, right," to James, and headed on into the kitchen to get myself some iced tea. Nobody locked doors in our neck of the woods, and I knew the three had helped themselves to the beer I kept in the fridge for just such days and them.
"No, I mean it," James said as he got up and followed me in. "You do look, OK, not pretty, but handsome, Steve, you really do."
I gave him a look, one raised eyebrow and a rueful smile, and poured myself a tall glass of the tea. I wasn't sure what to make of his remark. I'm not so bad for a man pushing sixty, I suppose. I'm tall, over six feet, and I work out a bit to keep myself in shape. I've been lucky enough to keep my hair, though it's all Grey now, like my mustache, and I suppose I never was too hard on the eyes and am not so now. I looked at James over my glass. He and his brother were both medium tall, and dark-haired and fair-skinned, John with gray eyes and James with light brown. John was about forty, James a few years younger, and both were in fine shape from the work they did. The two of them owned a little organic vegetable farm they and John's college buddy, Rick, had run for the last fifteen years. John wore a walrus mustache, James had changed his beard for a goatee a year or so ago. I had always thought them both very good-looking men, John the more butch of the two, James masculine enough but with a rather touching boyishness about him that was hard to describe but hard to resist.
The screen door slammed, and I looked over to see Rick standing there, a smile on his bearded face. Rick was closer to my age--he had been a grad student when John was an undergrad--and there was plenty of gray in his light-colored hair and beard. He had only a few months ago cropped back the long pony-tail he had worn for years, and trimmed his mountain man beard into a closely barbered but still thick, almost military affair on his big jaw. He was a big man all over, taller than I was, considerably heavier, fleshy without being fat, with handsome features and friendly but very shrewd eyes. I liked John and James, a lot. I wasn't sure I trusted my feelings for Rick. He drew me too hard. I had known the three of them since soon after I had moved six months before to this house fifty miles north of town, but there were still things about all of them I was unsure about. I suspected that there was more to John's and James' relationship than you might suppose would be between brothers; I could never quite figure how Rick fit in there. But I liked them all, very well, and they seemed to like me.
Rick crossed the room to get himself another beer. As he opened the door, he looked me up and down and then said with his slow smile, "I agree with James. You look very handsome, Steve, or, no," he corrected himself, "you always look handsome, but you look very distinguished all dressed up like that." I registered with pleased surprise that Rick thought I was handsome, something he had never had occasion to mention before.
"Thanks," I said, rather ungraciously, I am afraid. I was feeling a bit shy about this attention, although I seemed to like it well enough not to run off and immediately change out of the clothes that had occasioned it. I wasn't all that duded up, or so I had thought when I dressed that morning for the wedding: my good, navy blue pin-stripe, a light blue shirt, a dark blue and white and black rep silk tie, and a silk handkerchief of a paisley in similar colors puffed in my chest pocket. The sort of thing, really, that I had worn almost every day before I retired early, got into the used book business out of my house and more recently on the net, and didn't need to dress up for work any more. Not that I disliked good clothes. I didn't. In fact, I liked them, and me in them, truth to tell, but there wasn't much call for them as my life was now. Which was partly what lead to the crows. And the scarecrow. And what happened that day.
I went out onto the porch, James and Rick following, and looked out over the field. I guess you could call it a field. The house, a turn-of-the-century, two-story farmhouse, sat on three acres of land, land long gone from being tilled to brush and woods. The only cleared area was near the farmhouse itself, a half-acre or so, some of which I had planted in corn and other vegetables in the hope of eating from my own produce. The plot of tilled land was maybe a hundred by a hundred feet, half of it planted in corn. The crows had shown an interest in the latter very soon after the ears began to ripen, and I had lost my patience with the crows not long after. So, city boy that I am, I had made a scarecrow, much to the amusement of my present friendly company. I hadn't had a great deal in the way of old clothes. Who does, nowadays, when you think of it? But I did have a closet full of suits that I had been meaning to give to the Good Will but had not, suits I certainly didn't need any more.
I had found a decided amusement in making a scarecrow from my old gray suit. I kind of felt as if the scarecrow were really me, out in that plot of land, keeping away the marauding crows. And being the man I am, I didn't just stick the suit up on a couple of sticks and let it go at that. No, I did the real thing, or what I fondly thought was the real thing. I made a project of it. The stake I used was good and tall and heavy and well- pounded into the earth, and the cross beam for my alter image in the yard was stout as well. I stuffed straw with a will and gave the figure a full-formed body and arms and legs, and I used an old pillow case to make the head, though I stopped short of giving him any features. But I gave the silly fellow a complete outfit, not just the suit: a shirt, and a tie, and even, on a whimsical impulse, a silk handkerchief for his chest pocket, and an old fedora I had on his pillowcase head. When I was done, he was sturdy, he was well- dressed, and he stood in the field looking like the perfect gentleman scarecrow. The only trouble was, the crows didn't seem to mind his presence at all.
John and James and Rick had gotten a good chuckle over my handiwork. James had found it funniest, but Rick had simply smiled his slow smile.
"Looks like you've got a dandy for your farmhand, Steve," he'd said.
"Oh, no," I'd replied, "that fellow's me, me from another life before, doing some good now, working in the fields."
Rick had raised an eyebrow and chuckled while James and John laughed.
Oddly enough, though, the idea that the scarecrow was myself had taken hold in my mind. I mean, every once in a while, over the month he had stood out there, in the sun and wind but not, fortunately for his fancy dress, the rain, since it had been a very dry October, I had looked out at that tall, still figure and wondered what it would be like to be him for real. I had said he was me from a former life, and he was dressed in the clothes from that former life. I found myself ruminating on the idea more than once, but to no sure end. It was just a fancy, really, a queer idea, me as a dandy scarecrow in a cornfield. And yet, there was something to the idea, I couldn't help but feel. I was sort of like my scarecrow. I was still a city boy, out of place, enjoying the feel of the sun and the air, but not quite at home, not really. Rather like my scarecrow image out in the yard, doing his duty and enjoying it maybe, dressed in the wrong sort of clothes.
I was thinking something of the same thing now, as I stood on the porch in the long, thick light of the late afternoon, prompted, I suppose by the clothes I was wearing.
"What are you thinking, Steve?" Rick asked from behind me. This was a common question from him, to John and to James as well as to me. He seemed to gain great amusement, in a kindly way, at getting us to spout out our thoughts and then in examining them. Sometimes, as now, I answered him truthfully, or more or less so.
"I've kind of been thinking the last month that my scarecrow out there, my dandy farmhand, as you called him, is well, more me than meets the eye." I turned and grinned sheepishly at him and then glanced at the other two. John looked interested, James looked puzzled.
"That's an odd thought, isn't it?" Rick said.
I shrugged. "I don't know. Something about how he looks out of place in the yard in those clothes; it makes me think of me being out here, in the countryside, I mean." I smiled at him again, not sure how to say what I meant and not completely sure what I meant in the first place.
Rick was looking at me with a smile that had a tinge of sadness to it, and he seemed about to say something, when James suddenly burst out, "That's an idea," and laughed that oddly infectious laugh of his.
"What's an idea, little brother James?" John said.
"Steve all dressed up like the scarecrow in his own yard, and thinking he is the scarecrow in his yard. Maybe he should." He paused and then looked at his brother and then at Rick with a smile I can only call wicked. "Be the scarecrow. Really, I mean."
Rick looked half-puzzled, as if he thought he knew what James meant, but was hesitating to think he was right. John just grinned back.
"What do you think, Rick?" he asked. "It might be fun."
"For who?" Rick said quietly, but he was smiling broadly now.
"For us, anyway, you and me and James here, and maybe for Steve, too. You never know." And he raised an eyebrow mockingly.
I was watching them all, almost sure I knew what they meant, but not quite.
"Let's!" James said eagerly.
John looked at Rick, who shrugged. "Just so no one gets hurt."
James jumped up. "Of course not, Rick, I like him too much, you know that! And besides, I don't like hurting, you know that, too!" He grabbed me by the arm and started leading me down the steps. "Com'on, Steve, you're gonna be scarecrow for a day."
I chuckled and tried to shake him off, but John was at my side and took my other arm, and they both pulled me down the stairs. Rick was right behind us.
"What are youggulummmmmph!" I started to say, but my words were abruptly cut off when Rick reached from behind me and stuffed his handkerchief into my mouth.
"Oh good," James said, "you're gonna gag him." He dragged his handkerchief from his pocket and reached it back to Rick. We were standing at the foot of the steps, John and James holding me from either side and Rick behind me.
"Mummmph!" I mumbled a protest into Rick's handkerchief and tried to spit it out, but John had his handkerchief out and he stuffed it between my lips, forcing the double wads of soft cloth in deep. "Mmmmmph! Mmmmmmm!" Even as I grunted into the gag, Rick brought James's handkerchief, which he had rolled into a thick bandage, over my head and dragged it back between my jaws. He pulled the cinch tight and knotted it firmly at the base of my skull.
"Mmmmmmmmmmmmmph!" Astounded and indignant, I grunted into the gag, but I found that they knew their business and I was pretty well silenced.
From behind me, Rick said, "That should hold him for now. I'll get some of his own handkerchiefs and the clothesline while you two take him over to the scarecrow."
I heard him clomping back up the steps as John and James began to hustle me across the yard. I was mumbling protests into my gag the whole way, and struggling to get free, but John and James, though smaller, were stronger than I and it was, after all, two against one. I was still convinced that the whole thing was a joke, although being gagged for real like this had startled me, and so I did not struggle as hard as I might have. I did give them some trouble, however, and they had only just managed to bring me up to where the scarecrow stood when Rick rejoined us. He had the clothesline from my laundry room over one shoulder and a big handful of my own handkerchiefs in one hand. He was grinning broadly now. It seemed that if he had had any reservations about what I still regarded as a silly joke, they were gone now.
"Mmmmmmph! Mmmmmmph!" I jerked in the two men's arms.
"How're we going to do this?" Rick asked.
"You take the scarecrow down, and then we'll put Steve here in his place," James said.
Rick looked a bit doubtful, but, stuffing my handkerchiefs into the front pocket of his overalls and dropping the rope to the ground, he set to work on the scarecrow. The rest of us watched him, me grunting into my gag in protest a few times, and John and James glancing from him to me, grinning the while. Rick took off the figure's fedora, pulled off the pillowcase head, and then reached up and undid the tie, pulling it free and dropping it to join the hat. Then he dragged out, with a little difficulty, the sturdy stake I had used as the crossbar for the scarecrow's arms. When he did so, the arms drooped suddenly to the figure's sides, and I couldn't help but think that the poor straw man must be feeling some relief, after standing with his arms stretched out all that time. Piece by piece, Rick took the clothes apart, almost as if he were undressing a real man, pulling out the bundles of straw I had used to assemble my scarecrow as he did so. In a few moments, the clothes were lying on the ground, the bundles of straw, starting to unravel now, beside them. He stood up and turned to us.
"Mmmmmmmph!" I grunted at him, and he came to stand in front of me, a half- rueful, half wicked smile on his handsome face.
"Cat got your tongue, Steve?" he asked softly.
"Mmmmmmmph!"
Rick turned to James. "OK, now what?"
"Tie that stake across the other one, like a cross." Rick nodded. Taking up the rope, he used his knife to cut off a length, and then he tied the two pieces of wood as James had directed. He was thorough and neat in the work, lashing the cross stick firmly in place and knotting the rope tight. As soon as he was done, James and John forced me over to the wooden cross the stakes now formed and spread me on it with my back to the wooden beam.
"Now tie him to it," James commanded. Rick grinned at me, raised an eyebrow at my protesting mumble, muffled by my gag, and followed James' order. He first cut off a couple of lengths of the rope, and then, swinging the remaining clothesline over his shoulder, proceeded to lash first one hand, then the other, tightly to either end of the crossbeam. John and James held me in position as he worked. He pulled the rope snug, coiling it in several close turns around my wrists, and knotting the rope securely. I jerked and struggled, but John and James, with only a little difficulty, held me in place.
"Now ." James began, but Rick cut him off.
"I know what to do," he said. And he did. He cut off a length of clothesline, and used the cord to bind my ankles firmly to the base of the upright stake, again pulling the rope tight and knotting it firmly. Then, while John and James still held me, he used two more lengths to secure my upper arms, close up to shoulders, to the crossbeam. Now I was too bound up to free myself or struggle effectively, and John and James stood back. Rick continued to rope me up to the wooden cross. He bound my chest to the crossbeam and the upright, crisscrossing the cord tightly from over one shoulder, across my chest, and under my arm, and then back again, pulling the lashing tight and repeating it several times on either side before tying it off snugly. He passed a length of cord around my waist and pulled it tight, cinching me back close to the upright. He used more rope to bind my legs above and below my knees, lashing them tight to the upright as well. When he was done, I could barely squirm in my bindings. I was pulled up snug to the wooden cross and lashed against it very tightly, unable to do more than strain at the coils of rope.
John and James had watched Rick secure me so thoroughly with wide smiles. When he was done, James said, "That will hold him, won't it?" and John nodded his agreement.
"Mmmmmmph! Mugummmmmph!" Struggling with the ropes that held me helpless, I grunted at them into my gag.
Rick looked at me, a lazy smile on his handsome features.
"Now I'm going to improve that gag, Steve," he said to me.
He took out my handkerchiefs, separated three from the lot, and handed the rest to John. "Hold those," he said. I should say, perhaps, that I had rather a large collection of handkerchiefs, and that I was ridiculously choosy over them. I preferred them as large as possible, and with colored borders to them. The three Rick had in his hand were therefore very ample squares of soft cotton, white in the center and bordered variously with dull maroon or navy or forest green stripes. He proceeded to shake open the three big squares, layered them one on the other, and deftly rolled them in upon themselves to form a huge puffy wad. Tucking that into the bib of his overalls, he stepped close to me, and reached behind my head. As I said, Rick is taller than I am. The stake behind me prevented me from easily bending back my head to look into his face, and I was glowering at him under my brows. He grinned at me as he loosened the knot in Jack's white handkerchief that he had tied through my jaws and then let it fall to my chest. I started to try to work loose the gag in my mouth, but he was there before me, gently easing the sodden wads from between my teeth.
"What the heck are you ." I started to say indignantly, but Rick cut me off by bending close and kissing me on the lips. His lips were warm and surprisingly soft, his mustache and beard prickly but gently fuzzy, and his kiss was tender. And long. I felt his tongue tease at my lips and front teeth, but I was too astounded to respond. After a moment, he pulled back.
"You are such a handsome old fellow, Steve," he said quietly. Then he took the huge wad of my own handkerchiefs he had prepared moments ago and shoved it into my mouth. I was still too dazed from the kiss to resist, and I let him fill my mouth with the immense ball of soft cloth.
"Good man," he murmured, and he brought up the handkerchief from my throat and retied it through my jaws, pulling it mercilessly tight, so that I groaned into the enormous wad that blocked my mouth. He pulled the cinch hard, looking down into my eyes, an expression that strangely mingled tenderness and triumph in his own brown gaze, and then he pulled the handkerchief yet tighter, and tighter still, before knotting the ends off in a secure knot. Without looking away from me, he said, "Give me a couple of his handkerchiefs."
John reached him two more of my own big handkerchiefs, and Rick used them, as he had the others, to form a second great wad, smaller than the one that was now deep in my mouth, but still huge. With his gaze again on mine, he stuffed this second wad between my lips, in front of the tightly tied handkerchief. He was strangely gentle and at the same time insistent, slowly but surely forcing me to accept that second ball of soft cloth between my distended jaws.
"Another," he said, and John handed him another handkerchief. Rick rolled it swiftly into a thick bandage, and this he bound through my jaws and pulled tight, binding in the second wad of the gag he was securing into my mouth. He pulled the band of cloth with the same almost savage severity as he had pulled the first cinch, and knotted it hard behind my head.
"Mmmmm. Mmmmmm." I moaned softly, all that I could do with those huge wads of my own big handkerchiefs filling up my mouth from throat to lips.
Rick smiled at me, or was it at the helpless moans that were all I could make? "Two more," he said, and John gave him the last two of my handkerchiefs. Rick deftly folded one, a big affair with dark blue and pale blue stripe in its border, into a wide bandage. He pressed the other handkerchief, one with all pale blue borders, in a thick pad over my gag-filled mouth and used the wide bandage to bind it into place. He wrapped the wide, soft swath of cloth around my head and over my cheeks, bringing the ends behind my head and pulling them tight, very tight, into a knot at the base of my skull. I whimpered softly, unable to stop myself, as he pulled the knot home.
"Mmmmmmmphtpht! Mmmmmmmmmummmmm!" I struggled to cry out, drawing my breath deep into my bound chest and straining to force out the loudest noise I could. Smothered, completely inarticulate moans, senseless and thoroughly muffled, were all I could manage through that cruel gag. Rick took my head in his hands then, and stared down into my eyes.
"Cat got your tongue, Steve?" he whispered. "What are you thinking, Steve?"
I stared up at him. His big hands were gently rubbing the sides of my head, his fingers toying with the edges of my ears. He was smiling. He had never looked so handsome as he did now, close to me, so close I could feel his breath on my face, his eyes gazing intently into mine. I strained against the ropes that bound me, suddenly desperate to put my arms around this man.
"Why don't you answer me, Steve? Hmmmm?" He was smiling now, his expression gentle, tender.
I struggled with the gag desperately. "Mmmmmmm. Mmmmmmmmmph. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmph." My own big handkerchiefs bound around my head were unbelievably tight, the knots that held them digging hard into the base of my skull. The great wads of soft cloth that smothered my cries and made it so hard to take a deep breath pressed my tongue down and forced my jaws into an almost immobile gape. At the same time, the huge balls of cloth filled that distention to overflowing. I had never been so cruelly-nor so effectually-gagged before.
"Why don't you talk to me, Steve?" Rick whispered. "Hmmm?" He smiled, still caressing the side of my head gently. "Is it . because you're gagged, Steve? Hmmmm? Is that it? You can't answer me because you have that nice big gag of your own handkerchiefs in your mouth? Is that it, my handsome one, eh? You're gagged?"
Unable to help myself, feeling myself begin to succumb to the seductive sound of Rick's deep voice, I nodded in agreement. He was right. I was gagged. I was truly gagged, smotheringly, completely, thoroughly gagged, rendered utterly inarticulate and incommunicative by the huge wads and thick swaths of my own handkerchiefs.
"Umm hmmmmmph." I groaned my acquiescence through the soft, mouth-filling gag. Rick nodded at me slowly as he let his hands fall and stepped back. Still looking at me, he said, "Now what, my friends?" Able now, for a moment, to take my eyes away from Rick, I saw that John had his brother pulled back up against him, one of his own strong arms wrapped around the younger man's chest, and a big hand clamped hard over his brother's mouth. Above that big hand, James' brown eyes were wide and bright, darting from me to Rick and back again. "Pity you used all those handkerchiefs on Steve there," John said with a grin. Rick turned around and I saw his smile broaden. "I could use a few to muffle up little brother James, here," Jack said. "There're a whole drawerful more up in Steve's room," Rick said. "How about if I run up and get some for you?" He didn't wait for an answer but, with a smiling glance and a wink at me, hurried off, ran off really, his big body looking oddly graceful as he swiftly gained the porch and disappeared into the house. John, James, and I were left looking at each other. "Mmmmmph. Mmmmmmmmmmm." I mumbled hopelessly into my gag. My emotions were a strange tangle of contradictions. My indignation at being manhandled this way by the three of them was long over. I felt a kind of embarrassment at being so helpless in front of the two brothers. But that stemmed from having them see, or so I suspected, that I had been enjoying all too much the whole affair, despite my indignation, enjoying it moreover in a way that I was almost ashamed to admit, even to myself. I wondered, no, I worried if the stiffness of my privates in my trousers was obvious to the other two, and most of all, if Rick knew-and what he thought. And what he intended. John and James, meanwhile, stood and waited. John's attention was clearly on his brother and on the far door of the house, I realized. James looked sidelong at me more than once, but he too watched that door. It was only a moment before Rick returned, appearing abruptly in the dark opening and clomping swiftly down the stairs and across the yard. "Let's tie his hands first," he said quietly. John snorted with a grin. "I did that while you were communing with your handsome captive," he said. I saw that indeed James' hands were roped behind his back. Rick grinned back. "Okey dokey, then, do I gag him or do you?" "You do it. I wanna watch." I watched, too, as Rick gagged the other man, using my handkerchiefs in the same way he had used them to gag me. Evidently, I thought, he had gagged men before, had had a great deal of practice in gagging men, and had perfected, as I knew very well, his technique. James, I saw, submitted docilely, even eagerly, to being silenced, and I seemed to sense a bond between the three men in the act that told me it was something with which they were all three intimately familiar. Rick unfolded and gathered into a wad, however, not just three but, to my amazement, four of my big handkerchiefs. When John lifted his hand from James' mouth, grasped his brother's chin, and yanked his jaws open, Rick thrust that enormous ball of soft cloth deep into James' mouth, forcing the younger man to take in the whole huge wad. James moaned, but not, I thought in pain. His moans, and the way he writhed in his older brother's arms, expressed not resistance to the brutal gag but his deep desire. Rick took a rolled handkerchief and bound it with unrelenting tightness between the other man's jaws, pulling it savagely tight and knotting it off with brutal severity behind his head. James twisted his head to look up at his brother while Rick prepared a second, this time three handkerchief, wad. John looked down at the man in his arms with a kind of amused tenderness that somehow shocked me and yet made me feel an obscure envy. Then Rick shoved the second wad into James' mouth, forcing it in without mercy and then binding it in with another rolled handkerchief. As James gazed up at him, he finished off the gag with a folded pad over the younger man's mouth and a wide-folded handkerchief tied so tightly and cruelly around his head I was surprised the fabric did not tear from the strain. With a wicked grin, Rick added a handkerchief blindfold to James' bonds, something the younger man seemed to genuinely resist, but, held by his brother and with his hands tied, he was helpless to do so successfully. John now pushed his brother to the ground and Rick, grabbing the man's feet, brought them up behind him. John used the long tail of rope hanging from the bindings on his brother's wrist to put James into a snug hog-tie. The two other man stood and looked down at their second captive. James struggled, rolling uselessly from side to side. "Mmmmmmmmph. Mmmmmmmmm." He twisted his handkerchief-swathed head and moaned into his gag. The sounds he made tightened my sex in my groin and I moaned softly in unconscious response. "Well," John said, grinning at Rick. "Now what?" Rick smiled slowly back. Pointing at James, he said, "I think this little boy needs to go home, don't you? It's his nap time." John chuckled, and looked sidelong at me. "And what about him?" "I'll see to the dandy scarecrow," Rick said. John nodded as he bent down over James. "Help me get this little boy into our truck." Rick leaned down and took James' feet while John took his shoulders and together they hefted up the bound, blindfolded, and gagged man and carried him across the yard and around the corner of the house. I waited, pulling at the ropes that secured me to my post, barely admitting to myself how aroused I was by my helplessness, by my huge soft gag, and by my wonder and hope at what Rick would now do. I heard the brothers' truck start and then drive away, and a moment later, Rick came back around the corner of the house. He paused there, looking across the yard at me, and I gazed back. I twisted my head and mumbled uselessly into my gag. "Mmmmmmummmph. Mummmmmmmph." Rick glanced up at the porch and then climbed onto it, grabbed a chair, and plunked it down at the top of the stairs. Seating himself, he took out his pipe and his tobacco and prepared to smoke. As he did so, he glanced up at me in a leisurely fashion, giving me a slow, satisfied smile. The stakes I was tied to held me facing sidewise to the house and porch. I could look over at Rick by turning my head to my left, or else look out across the fields in the valley by staring straight ahead, or to my right, through the trees that edged my little garden, see the railroad tracks on the edge of my property. The afternoon was easing off, and as Rick sat and smoked, and as I stood, gagged and bound, in my garden, the long light of dusk thickened around us. For some while, neither of us moved, Rick because he evidently chose not to, I because I was helpless to do otherwise. I tested and savored my bonds. The ropes that held me were very tight, and they pulled me upright into snug immobility against the sturdy wooden cross. I pulled hard at the lashings, but I found that they were firm, the repeated coils pressing in thick bands around my limbs and my torso, clasping me closely against the stakes. I managed little give in my bindings, and no real movement at all.
My gag was equally secure. The huge wads of my own handkerchiefs that Rick had stuffed into my mouth forced my jaws far apart and filled the gape between them with a solid mass of thick, soft cloth. My tongue was pressed to the floor of my mouth beneath the heavy rolls of the handkerchiefs, and I could gain no purchase in my bite, though I strained hard to do so. The thick swaths of the cinches that held the double wads of my handkerchiefs in place were knotted with ferocious severity, and I found I was unable to loosen them even slightly. The thick pad and final swath which Rick had bound over my mouth and around my face were pulled firmly into a snug seal, closing my lips and cheeks over the huge, tightly tied in gag, and muffling me up completely.
There is something that compels a man who is gagged to test his gag repeatedly, as if he cannot believe that he has been deprived of so fundamental an ability as speech. He gathers his breath time after time and tries to say something, to make some articulate noise, to shout for help, and he is foolishly surprised again and again to discover that he is gagged, and that to be gagged is to be silenced and muffled and inarticulate. I was no different. Over and over I struggled with the huge, soft wads of handkerchief that filled my mouth to overflowing, trying desperately to make some sensible sound, and over and over again my gag defeated me, reduced my attempts to muffled grunts and senseless whimpers.
"Mmmmmmmph. Mugulummmmmmmph." Again and again I mmmmmphed stupidly into my thick and smothering gag, while Rick watched me, pausing now and then to take the pipe from his mouth and to smile at the faint and hopelessly muffled sounds that were all I could make.
After a short while, the sound of a train came from long in the distance, the faint sound of its wheels rumbling on the tracks. I glanced over at Rick, to see what his response might be. Setting down his pipe, he clambered down from the porch and came to stand beside me for a moment. Then, with a grin, he reached down and scooped up the fedora from the ground and plunked it down onto my head. Then he took up the rest of the clothes he had discarded when he took down my original scarecrow and returned with them to the porch, laying them carefully on one of the chairs before again seating himself and taking up his pipe.
The train was louder now, and I knew that soon it would round a little rise a quarter mile or so off and then come intermittently into sight as it wound its way up the valley to pass at the rear of my land. I strained to see it and suddenly, there it was, the first engine, followed by two others, and behind them, one by one, the long line of freight cars of varying sorts. Slowly the engines dragged the train up the gradual incline toward us, and then the first of them moved with smooth, powerful ease behind the thin screen of trees at the edge of my land. The tracks were not far distant, only several hundred yards away, and I could see the engineer at his post as the great machine rolled by. He glanced idly our way, looked for a moment, and then raised a hand in friendly greeting. I turned toward Rick, and found he had lifted his own hand in reply. Whether the engineer saw the movement of my head, and if he did, what he thought of it-a scarecrow who moved?-I will never know. The same fellow had likely seen the oddly dandified scarecrow in my garden for days and weeks past, and surely he was used to it by now. Except for the movement of my head, from that distance, I had probably not looked enough different to catch his notice. My own scarecrow had been simply a man in a suit absurdly set up to scare the crows. Bound and gagged though I was, perhaps I looked no different. The three engines moved past, the man in the second ignoring both Rick and me, the third lifting a hand in slow greeting like the first, and then the train rumbled by, car after car, tank, flatbed, boxcar, a long trail of them clanking and trundling at the edge of the yard until at last, the caboose came into view, went past, and the whole line was beyond me. I strained to look over my shoulder at the dark red of the caboose disappearing into the trees. "Mmmmmmph! Mmmmmph." I called after it hopelessly into my thick and smothering gag. I am not sure why. No one could hear my muffled and gagged cries even a dozen yards off, and certainly the engineers could not have heard them, and if they had, what would they have done? And I did not, in truth, wish for any rescue. But a sudden melancholy, a sudden feeling of loneliness had swept through me as the caboose disappeared, and I strained in my bindings and struggled with my gag. Rick put out his pipe, pocketed it, and came down from the porch to stand beside me. The light was turning thick with early dusk, and it laid a sort of golden glow over the man, touching his hair and beard with bright gleams, and flushing his warm skin with a deeper ruddiness. He lit his pipe then, watching me, a gentle smile on his face. I stared back at him, tightly trussed up to the wooden cross, brutally gagged, completely at his mercy. And deeply aroused by my helplessness at the hands of this handsome man. Rick sighed and shook his head, a wry smile on his lips. "You really are a good- looking fellow, Steve. You know that?" He looked at me as if he expected an answer, despite the severe gag he had secured in my mouth. I shook my head. "Don't you now," he said softly. He put his pipe on the ground, stood up, and came to me, all in one quick motion. Resting his big arms on my shoulders on either side of my head, he bent close to me, looking into my eyes. "You're a very good-looking man, Steve," he said quietly. He reached up to run his hand lightly down the side of my face. "Big and tall, and well-built, and with that nice gray hair, and that bushy mustache, and that nice chin, and those blue, blue eyes, and your nice smile." He was looking me over as he spoke, still gently stroking my face. "Oh yes, Steve, you're a real handsome old man." He grinned at me. "I've wanted to fill your mouth with a big gag like that one since I first saw you down at Limbeck's grocery store. Bet you didn't know that, did you?" Again, he seemed to pause for my answer, and I shook my head. "Um ummph," I mumbled, with difficulty, into my enormous gag. Rick took a deep breath. "Oh Steve, you don't know how it turns me on to hear you make those little gagged sounds." He rubbed a big thumb over the thick binding of cloth that sealed up my mouth. "I love gagging you, Steve, and I love seeing you like this, all tied and helpless and gagged." I stared back at him. Then I began to jerk at my ropes and grunt into my gag. "Mmmmmph! Mugummmmmmph! Mummmmmmmmph. Mmmmmmmmmph! Mummmmmmmmmmph!" Rick watched me intently, his brown eyes locked on mine. I sagged, tired for a moment by my struggles. Rick caressed the side of my face again. "You're all right with this, aren't you." It was just not a question. I looked up at him and then nodded. And then, to my shame, I felt tears welling up and filling my eyes. Rick clasped me in his arms, holding himself up close to me despite the stakes I was so awkwardly and securely bound to. He cupped my head in his big hand and cradled it against his shoulder. "Hey, hey, hey, hey," he said softly. "Hey, hey, Steve, don't cry, please don't cry, I won't hurt you, my handsome one, no, no, don't get all scared on me." He pulled back and looked anxiously into my eyes. I gazed back at him. I struggled, mastering my tears, and straining to swallow over the massive gag. Rick continued watching me, his face inches from mine. "You OK, Steve?" I nodded and struggled with my gag. "Umm hmmmph." I nodded again. "Um hmph." He stared into my eyes, his brown eyes intent under their heavy brows, for a long moment. Then he smiled. "It's getting cold, my handsome old man." It was, the damp air creeping close and chilling me under my suit. I had not noticed, until he mentioned it, but now I shivered in my ropes. "I'm gonna take you inside." Rick moved to my right arm and loosened the rope that bound my hand to the crossbeam. I struggled half-heartedly, but he had no trouble forcing my arm down and binding my wrist to the upright stake behind my back. He repeated this with my left arm, but this time he also lashed my wrists to each other. Then he reached down and freed my legs, removing the tight lashings that held my ankles and knees to the upright stake. Finally he untied and pulled away the ropes that bound my upper arms and torso. Now I was standing, a little unsteadily, with just my hands bound behind my back and to the stake. I tugged at the rope and mumbled into my gag. "Mmmmmmmph! Muguluuummmmmmph!" Watching me with an amused smile on his handsome face, Rick coiled several lengths of the rope and slipped them up over his shoulder. Then he went behind me and untied the knots that held my bound hands to the stake. Taking me by the shoulders, he turned me around and marched me across the yard to the porch. I struggled and mumbled into my gag, but he was easily the stronger, and, tied and gagged as I was, I gave him no real trouble. In a moment, he had me inside the house, and then he pushed me ahead of him, up the back stairs to the second floor. We were soon in my bedroom, where he flicked on the overhead light, and then he half tossed, half shoved me onto my bed. Using the ropes he had brought, he rebound my legs at the ankles and the knees, and then stood for a moment, looking down at me. He bent over and turned on the bedside lamp, then crossed the room and turned off the glaring ceiling light. Then he went to my bureau. The top drawer, the one where I kept my handkerchiefs, was half open, and with a sly glance and smile at me, Rick took out a big handful of my handkerchiefs and stood for a moment, hefting them in his hand and looking over at me. Then he came back to the bed and mounted it, straddling my thighs and dropping all but one of my handkerchiefs onto the coverlet beside me.
"I guess I'm gonna have to tie and gag your little soldier, too, Steve."
I stared up at him, puzzled by his meaning, but I was in no position to ask or protest. He reached down and unzipped the fly of my trousers and then, reaching inside, pushed my briefs out of the way and curled his big fingers around my hard, sore cock and my aching balls.
"Mmmmmmph! Mummmm!" I moaned into my huge gag.
Rick grinned as he carefully drew my dick and balls through my fly. "There," he said softly, "your little soldier is sure on parade, isn't he?"
I began to realize what he meant by tying and gagging my little soldier. Opening the handkerchief in his hand, he deftly rolled it on the diagonal into a thin, soft band. With quick fingers, he tied the handkerchief around the base of my privates, pulling the band snug, almost but not quite painfully so, and then he wrapped the ends around the base of my balls and pulled it tight and knotted it off. My balls were stretched out from my cock and held by the tight handkerchief in a shiny globe.
"Your little soldier is all tied up, Steve, isn't he?" As he spoke, Rick gently massaged my strained dick with his fingers, caressing the shaft and paddling the tender tip.
"Mmmmmmmmmmm! Mmmmmmmmmmm!" I moaned helplessly into the huge gag of my own handkerchiefs and bucked beneath him, pushing my dick into his firm hand. "Mmmmmmmmmph! Mmmmmph!"
Rick bent close, his eyes looking into mine. "Not yet, fella," he murmured, "not just yet." He pulled back and took up another of my big colored-border handkerchiefs.
"Now I'm gonna gag your little soldier, Steve." I wasn't quite sure what he meant by gagging my dick, but in a moment, I understood. He folded the handkerchief diagonally once and slipped it, folded edge down, point up, behind my hard cock. He folded the point down over my dick, and then brought the two ends around, enclosing my dick in the soft cloth. He wrapped the ends fully around the base of my cock and knotted them tightly, so that my dick was completely enclosed in a soft sheath of cloth-gagged, so to speak. The friction of the soft, clean cloth around my cock and especially on its sore and tender tip brought me close to the edge yet kept me hovering there, straining and aching but unable to quite lift myself into cumming.
Rick smiled own at me. "There you are, Steve, my boy," he said quietly. "There's your little soldier, all tied up and gagged, just like you." He reached for another handkerchief, and then undid his own fly. With a grin, he pulled out his own rigid dick and his heavy balls. "Guess I'll tie and gag my little soldier, too." And using the handkerchief in his hand and yet one more, he "tied and gagged" his cock and balls, just as he had tied and gagged my little soldier.
I watched, fascinated, as he used my handkerchiefs to bind up and muffle up his privates, strangely stirred by his idea of tying and gagging our little soldiers. There was something perversely tender about the image his words conjured up, and about the reality of our cocks all bound up in the handkerchiefs. When he was done binding his own privates, he took up another handkerchief from the stack beside me. He rolled it narrowly, and then, lowering his groin close to mine, he first knotted the handkerchief around the base of my privates, and then, pressing yet closer to me, so our groins touched, he knotted the handkerchief around the base of his own. Now we were bound to each other literally. Slowly the big man lay down on top of me, taking me into his arms and pressing close, our handkerchief-bound groins rubbing against each other.
"Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmph! Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!" I struggled against the ropes that bound me, against the enormous gag that silenced me, against the strong arms that held me. My dick was hot, trembling, almost ready to give way. Rick smiled down at me.
"That's my man," he murmured against my cheek, his breath warm and sweet, his mustache thick and brushy. "That's my man, Steve. Struggle, struggle and try to yell. I love to hear the sounds you make with that big gag in your mouth."
At his urging, beneath his avid gaze, I obeyed him, straining again at my ropes and moaning into the smothering gag.
"You're gagged, aren't you, my man, my Steve, my handsome one, aren't you? All tied and gagged, and your little soldier's all tied and gagged, too, isn't he?" He picked up another handkerchief as he spoke, and began to fold it diagonally into a wide thick bandage of soft, maroon-bordered cloth. "But a man can't be too gagged, ever, can he, Steve, my boy?" And he pressed the thick swath over my already trebly gagged mouth and pulled it tight, tight, his eyes staring down at me. Suddenly, still holding that handkerchief pressed over my mouth, around my head, pulling hard on it to add that final thick seal of a gag over my already thickly gagged lips, he pumped hard against me, our groins grinding into each other, the soft cloth of our dicks' handkerchief gags, as he called them, easing the friction. He pumped harder, and harder, and I arched up into him, whimpering and mewling into my huge gag, and suddenly he gasped, and cried out, and jerked, and I felt my own gism shoot out with a delicious pain from my dick into my dick's gag, and I cried out into my own huge gag.
"Mmmmmmmmmph!! Mumummmmmmmmmmmmmmmph!!" Several hours later, I was standing in front of the bedroom window, looking out into the back yard. There was an early moon, almost full, and its light shone silvery blue over the corn and the trees and the stakes to which I had been bound. Rick embraced me from behind, and I brought my hands up to clasp them over his where they rested on my chest.
"What're you thinking, Steve, my boy?" he whispered into my ear.
I smiled, but said nothing.
"Hmmmm?" he coaxed. We had had a shower together and a good dinner, once he had released me, slowly and teasingly, from the tight ropes and the brutal gag he had put on me. Now he was gentle and comforting, and I leant back against his furry body.
"I don't know," I said. "I was looking out there and remembering my scarecrow, and my thinking that he was me in some odd way."
Rick gazed into the back yard, rubbing his bearded cheek against mine.
"I felt like I didn't quite fit in, like I said earlier," I went on, "like that scarecrow in his dandy clothes." I shivered a little in the cool air coming from the half-opened window.
Rick nodded beside my head and tightened his embrace. "But I brought that scarecrow in from the cold, and now he's mine, isn't he?"
I pulled away a little and looked at him sidelong, with a half smile. "Yeah, I guess he is."
Rick grinned. Then, to my surprise, since I had not realized he had it in one hand, he brought up one of my big handkerchiefs, folded into a wide roll. The middle was especially thick, and I realized as he pushed it into my mouth that he must have another of my handkerchiefs inside. He drew the bandage of soft cloth firmly between my teeth and knotted the ends tightly behind my head.
"Mmmmph," I mumbled into the gag.
Rick cupped my cheek in one hand and smiled. "You were wrong about that scarecrow, Steve, my boy," he said softly. "He was doing just what he should have been, standing in his field, doing his job the best he could, making the most of what he had, until the right farmer came along." He grinned at me. "And now he has. Come to bed, scarecrow."
He used another of my handkerchiefs to bind my hands together in front of me. Then he pushed me gently down onto the bed and threw the covers over me. Turning off the light, he crawled in beside me, and pulled me close. I laid my head against his chest, and drifted toward sleep, contented, tied, and gagged.
Copyright 1999 David W. Brown Compliments, complaints, brickbats, kudos: tugger049@yahoo.com