He was bent over in the living room, naked, the blood dry on his face, on the back of his thighs, his ankles shackled to his wrists, spit foaming around the ball gag. Wolfgang said something about a drink to Jamal, or was that a drug, hard to distinguish, but the thing about Wolfgang, Terry remembered the constant scowl, was that he disliked Kurt’s civilian friend, disliked the very idea of him, but that did not prevent him from dropping his pants, and grabbing Terry by the bruised hips, ploughing into him without so much as a word or hesitation. One thrust, slower than Jamal’s, but no less strong, and Terry almost fell forward. As for the pain, his ass had grown numb from Jamal’s penetration, he wasn’t feeling it, except the pressure of Wolfgang against his back as the soldier grabbed his neck and began choking. Unlike Jamal, Wolfgang said nothing; just squeezed the neck and Terry’s eyes bulged, his breath constricted. Was this some form of kinky play? Fucking asphyxiation? He had read about suffocation and choking and breath control in domination games, and if it were Kurt, he would have experienced no anxiety. Well, yes, he would have, but his trust risked even death. He tried to speak, the ball gag forbade it, but so did the constriction around the neck. Wolfgang rammed Terry’s ass back and forth as if simply hammering a long nail into a plank, and he held on by choking, seemingly unaware of the intensity of the grip. Terry could have fallen over except he was impaled on Wolfgang’s dick, and gripped by the throat, he could no longer breathe, his temples exploding with blood, his eyes bulging. Odd: he was feeling no pain. Perhaps strangling was a painless form of death, and he wondered why instinctively his body was not reacting the way it would if he were drowning: it would struggle, it would struggle towards breath and life.
If Jamal hadn’t fucked him to death, he might well have fucked him senseless. Then let Wolfgang fuck him until he died, for dulce decorum pro patria mori: it was sweet to die in combat for the fatherland. Except, no, it wasn’t. Not according to the poet, Terry remembered, bent double like a beggar under his sack, coughing like a hag. The poet wrote of soldiers trudging through mud. He wasn’t trudging, but bent over, shackled, trapped, and raped with no help, no help at all, no exit from the sludge. Inevitability stared up at him with bloody eyes like a separate corpse from the floor.
Before his mind began sinking into a black and calm sea, his breath following like a diver, Terry did not think it was such a terrible thing to die. The choking intensified and, shit, soldiers died all the time, that’s what they had been prepared for, so why not a soldier’s bitch? Soldiers were trained to kill, and they fucked like devils, the thrill of combat hardening their dicks. Both Jamal and Wolfgang would be shipped to Afghanistan, Kurt not, and nothing on the face of the earth could save them if they stepped on an IED or took a bullet through the skull from a sniper in the hills. That was the reality they slept with, ate with, marched with, took showers with, and fucked shack rats who crept into their tents, the wind flapping the canvas. So, let him die, let him die; if Kurt died also, let him die also in their private parallel life, his mind sinking, weighted down by the ceaseless rape, dropping to the silent sands at the bottom of the sea, his breath already curling like a limp seahorse.
“Fuck , man, let go. You’re strangling the bitch.”
Instantly, air rushed into Terry’s noise and around the ball gag and down his throat, his chest expanded, and pain roared in his lungs, but Wolfgang kept ramming, a steady rhythm now, back and forth, back and froth, Terry bent over, as if he had become a strange kind of living sculpture, paralyzed in position by the shackles and the soldiers. But he had been rescued after a fashion, risen but not quite like a bloated corpse from a black sea, for he spluttered and recaptured life, however fragmentary and benumbed at the moment.
“Now, he doesn’t need that ball gag anymore, does he?”
“Nah, the bitch doesn’t, Jamal, not when you’re around.”
Jamal unlocked the ball gag and pulled it out, spit coated. Terry gasped aloud, but had no time to prepare himself before gagging on Jamal’s dick forced against the back of his throat. God, he was going to puke. But Jamal pulled out and twisted a handful of Terry’s hair until tears spurted out and he emitted one long yell, which reminded him of an animal’s screech he had heard once on a television documentary.
“We can’t have the neighbours knocking on the door, bitch.”
So Jamal plugged Terry’s mouth again with his huge dick, this time taking it a bit easier so Terry had time to adjust, to control the gag reflex, knowing that the inevitable was going to happen anyway. Like Wolfgang pounding his ass, he had better get used to Jamal’s cock down his throat. Fortunately, he had practiced on Kurt, who never complained, and perhaps if he did a good job now, showed compliance, he would be released. Jamal grabbed the sides of his head and pulled his mouth smack against his hairy groin, the cock bending down his throat and he retched.
“Suck it, faggot.”
Terry began sucking when Terry eased off a bit to allow the throat to adjust, the tongue room to manoeuvre. He’d try to do a good job. Hadn’t he imagined sucking black dick? If he examined closely enough, would he be forced to admit that his anxiety and fear in Jamal’s presence was the anxiety and fear aroused by black masculinity, black power, black dick? He felt inferior and weak in Jamal’s presence, just as he often felt inferior and weak with Kurt, except he craved Kurt’s domination. So he sucked as if driven by lust and need. Satisfaction may result in gratitude and they wouldn’t harm him. Wolfgang’s fucking pushed his mouth forward on Jamal’s veiny dick, its head greasy with pre-cum. He coughed and sputtered, but he was to able control the involuntary revulsion, or stem the tide of desire rising in his body. He sucked. He couldn’t say pleasure accompanied the actions, but he was doing as commanded, as he had no choice in the matter, and there was a kind of pleasure derived from obedience in extremis. He felt a rising in his own crotch. Pain had receded, becoming a low thrum like a distant engine on the horizon, always there, but not interfering, and aside from the intensifying discomfort of his shackled position, he gained a measure of comfort in feeling in control because both men needed him to be doing exactly what he was doing at the moment. They could call him what they wished. Doing exactly what they wanted him to do offered a modicum of protection. The obedient dog was rarely beaten, or it was beaten into obedience. It was indeed sweet and good not to be sinking down in the sea of death by fucking.
That knowledge did not, however, prevent him from retching almost to a vomit as soon as Jamal released a torrent of cum into his mouth and down his throat. He hadn’t been prepared to swallow, perhaps had resisted the idea, perhaps wanted to suck Jamal’s seed deep into his belly, and the conflict between the two led to coughing it up. It followed Jamal’s cock out of his mouth and dribbled down his chin onto the floor where the soldier spilled the rest of his ejaculate. At the same time, or almost, Wolfgang released his ass and spayed a shower of soldier’s spunk on Terry’s back, then also on the floor, yelling hot fucking damn, hot fucking dam, what a fucking fag slut, hot fucking damn, as he held his cock in one hand and the globules of cum spattered the floor. Terry’s relief, despite a resurgence of pain in his groin and the abrasive puking, became joy, unadulterated, relief, gratitude, yes, grateful to Jamal, for unshackling his body. He did not have sufficient time to get used to standing straight, accommodating his muscles, because Wolfgang pushed him forward. Only the instinctive reach of his arms broke the fall. He curled instantly like a baby and sobbed, calling Kurt’s name.
“Kurt aint’ here, bitch. You got work to do.”
Wolfgang landed a hard kick against Terry’s thigh, causing the prone body to shift. Terry howled.
“Shut the fuck up, faggot, you better lick the floor clean. Got that? Every last drop of our manjuice, clean it up with your fucking tongue. We don’t want Kurt coming home to a filthy floor, do we?’’ He kicked hard, twice, at the other thigh. He was wearing tan boots, the kind soldiers wore in Afghanistan. Jamal gathered a handful of his hair and dragged him forward to a dollop of semen.
“Clean it. Let’s get a drink, Wolf, and watch the bitch.”
And so they did as Terry stretched out his tongue and began lapping. The men sat on the couch and stretched out their legs, ordering Terry to crawl from one drop to another, and no other option presented itself to Terry except to lick and suck up all the dirt polluted semen off the floor until the soldiers ordered him to stop. He did, however, repress the urge to vomit, for he did not wish to lick his own puke up as well. Wasn’t there a perverse kind of delight in degradation, anyway? Wasn’t he acting the way he was supposed to act. If he pleased Jamal to the maximum, would he be saved and kept for further use. Would Jamal think better of his white pussyboy? His pussyboy? Terry could sense the blood flowing to his face in a hot blush of betrayal. Jamal’s pussyboy? Serve the black man? Was that a long buried dream surging to the front of his thoughts as he licked the floor? But he’d never betray Kurt. This wasn’t betrayal. He couldn’t be held responsible for the power of the black man. How long would this take before they let him go, let him clean himself, let him visit Kurt in the hospital? Kurt was waiting, Kurt needed his stuff. Jamal had promised to bring it. He wouldn’t tell Kurt about Jamal, he didn’t want to create a scene. No, not for a moment, did he believe that Kurt would have allowed his friends to rape him, that was Jamal talking, Jamal giving himself permission to violate Kurt’s friend. Why else would the soldier threaten him if he didn’t keep his mouth shut? Jamal had gotten it out of his system and Wolfgang had only come along for the ride. Lapping slowly, Terry believed everything had passed and in obedience lay safety.
Released, he still wore the cuffs around his wrists and ankles, which Jamal had found in Kurt’s closet. Following directions, he licked where Wolfgang ordered.
“Hey, while you’re at it, bitch, lick my boots clean.”
He could have refused, but his thighs pulsed with pain from the kicks and thought better of it. Slavering over Wolfgang’s boots, now directed at the soles his tongue prickling from the grit and dirt, he reached behind with one hand and felt something wet on his anus. Was it blood, semen? His knees hurt now. Kurt often let him use a pillow when kneeling. He was not as young as he used to be. Wasn’t he too old in any case for this shit? He wasn’t a beautiful young man, never had been. He could expect no compassion from either Wolfgang or Terry.
“You need to go somewhere today, Jamal?”
“No, man, nothing going down.”
“Good, we got all the time in the world then.”
“What about the fag? He need to go somewhere?”
“No, Wolf, the fag ain’t going nowhere.”
Both men laughed, Wolf suddenly standing up, kicking Terry aside. Each man sniffed a line of coke neatly arranged on the table and lit a cigarette. What soldier didn’t smoke tobacco or harder shit, Terry wondered. If a bullet didn’t take their life, than cancer just might. But he had sensed how foolish it would have been to ask Kurt to quit. Now he smoked with his soldier, together, smoking and drinking together, Kurt more than he, but it was togetherness that mattered, not substance abuse or anxieties about disease. Like a lyric out of some stupid song. Well, he needed to get his act together. What the fuck did that phrase even mean? Had he fallen apart? Pieces of him lay scattered about the dirty floor like building blocks. Of course, some soldiers didn’t smoke, most soldiers would not have raped him, however filthy their jokes and innuendoes might have been in the barracks and tents, even when they fucked the shack rats, but they seemed not to be among Kurt’s mates. Not a tall man, shorter than both Terry and Kurt, hefty with muscle, his zipper undone, his semi-erect dick exposed, Wolfgang nonetheless loomed like a comic book superhero above Terry.
“You see an ashtray, Jamal?”
“Yeah, it’s crawling on the floor.”
Terry noticed the ashtray by the keys on the coffee table: four keys on that ring, one for the main lobby, one for Kurt’s apartment, one for Kurt’s house, and the forth remained in the realm of mystery. A silver embossed keyring tag in the form of a lion’s head, like Kurt’s belt buckle. He was about to nod in the direction of the ashtray when Wolfgang squeezed his nose, pinched the nostrils shut, and forced his mouth open.
“Stick out your tongue, bitch.”
Compliance being his only protection, Terry obeyed, not to mention having to open his mouth to breathe, and hot ash dropped on the moist surface of his tongue. It stung momentarily but did not burn, a relief to know, despite the vile taste and texture. Wolfgang sucked on another drag and once again flicked the ash on to Terry’s extended tongue. He then smacked the side of his head. Why the fuck were they always smacking him around? He feared for his intelligence: smacked senseless, a less happy circumstance than fucked to death. His IQ would diminish. He was getting tired, exhausted beyond endurance, and needed to sleep. Everyone needed a rest. Soldiers could often fall into a deep sleep quickly, Kurt had told him, and Terry allowed himself to relax as the two men confabulated about the army and Kurt’s forthcoming operation, the first Terry had heard the word. Kurt was undergoing an operation? Why hadn’t he known? His throat ached and he longed to soak in a hot tub. Would the soldiers release and let him take a bath? Please, would they let him sleep? He dared not ask. Wolfgang ordered the tongue out and Terry obeyed, rolling the ash back it, getting used to the disgusting taste. Second-hand smoke, of course, had deleterious effects on people who didn’t smoke. He didn’t know about swallowing ash. Look on the bright side: required as an ashtray, he couldn’t also lick Wolf’s boots.
“Okay, break time’s over. Gotta put the bitch to its proper use again.”
The men took their respective positions to engage, and, no rest for the weary apparently, started on him again. Terry could have cried but lacked the energy for tears: he had no tears for anything: he was dried up, tearless, arid, devoid of purpose except being fucked. He could not even howl as they tied him up again and the first cock plunged into his ass.
At a certain point during the fuckfest, he simply disappeared from himself, exited the fleshy premises, as if he had stepped out of his body and floated above the soldiers, looking down at them using his contorted naked body in shackles and chains on the living room floor, draped over the back of the stuffed chair, each soldier taking turns. The bucking and jolting of an empty shell of a body as Wolfgang fingered his butthole, then shoved in three, then four long fingers, before pushing his fist up the canal as far as the wrist bone: he saw it, from above, hovering above that puppet body with the ball gag, Jamal easing off for a moment, smoking and joking and encouraging that fist. He didn’t feel the huge hand, not the way he felt it earlier across his jaw, because after all, he had evacuated that boneless bag of shit and hovered like a curious spirit under the ceiling light. The soldiers did not see him because the fisting engaged their attention. Even the blood seeping around Wolfgang’s wrist made them laugh. Who would have thought blood was cause for mirth? Funny, only now did he notice the gold ring on the fourth finger of Wolfgang’s left hand. A family man. So many soldiers had families. Kurt also had a family. Blood spread over the body’s ass. Terry did not think the blood had rained from his heights, so upon closer inspection, he discovered that it exuded from the puppet’s hole and coated the invading fist with red.
“That’s enough, Wolf. Give the bitch a rest. Let’s go out for a beer.”
“Yeah, you’re right, man; even a cunt needs a rest.”
***
For all installments of “Shack Rat,” click here.
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Pieter Köhler writes about dark and often objectionable subjects, and finds the interface between pornography and literature liberating. He now resides in England.
