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Cascina del Benessere (Fat
Farm) by POW and Ferdinando
Neri
Prologue
Yes,
it is so, Pedro thinks. The evidence is there, glowing on
his screen. Now Pedro knows he is right. After a short
search, he found what he knew he would: Matteo Ridolfi, the Italian doctor he met at the camp,
"disappeared" and nobody knows where he is. It's in the online
edition of some Italian newspapers. Matteo arrived
at his home in Pedro is certain
that Matteo never went home. Someone else entered
his home, sent those messages and then disappeared, just to make people think
that Matteo was still alive on Monday evening. But
he wasn't - Matteo died three weeks ago, when he
was at the "Cascina del Benessere",
the camp where Pedro met him. They killed him. Pedro stares at
the screen and thinks. He thinks about Vincenzo,
the big, hairy, strong man who went away with Matteo
the last time Pedro saw the Italian doctor. He imagines Vincenzo
forcing Matteo to strip, fucking him, killing him.
How would Vincenzo do it? Would it be cold and
impersonal, a quick bullet to the back of the head? Probably not. A man like Vincenzo would be more likely to use a knife. Pedro can
see it vividly in his mind, Vincenzo opening Matteo's belly, spilling the hot blood onto the ground.
Pedro is hard, now. It often happens when he imagines a man being raped and
killed by another strong man... "Cascina del Benessere",
Well-Being Farm. A nice, pretty name for a place where you can go to lose
weight... at a cost, a cost not in money, but in pain. Danger and pain were
in store for all the guests who went there. Some found they lost not only
weight, but their lives, too, if they were too curious. Matteo
was a curious man, too curious for his own good. Pedro is not
curious, but when he came back from the camp, he began to search for news
about the Italian doctor whom he met at the camp and who disappeared before
the end of the training. He was sure that Matteo
was dead and lacked only proof. Now, with the proof staring back at him, he
was certain that he had narrowly escaped death himself: when Helmut, the
head, told him not to come back to the Cascina a
third time, it meant that the third time Pedro wouldn't be going back home. Pedro's first
trip to the Cascina came after he had to spend
three months lying around the house waiting for his broken foot to heal. The
forced inactivity was hard for Pedro, who would much rather have been out
running, hiking, trekking, playing volleyball. But he had no choice and spent
the three months at home relieving his boredom through food. He grew fat,
really fat, and when he was at last physically able to exercise again, he
found he lacked the willpower to get himself back into shape. And so he went
to this "Cascina del Benessere",
a nice place in southern Strange place, the
Cascina del Benessere... Why did he go
back to the camp a second time, a year later? He knows the answer very well:
he deliberately overate for another three months, just to have an excuse to
return and lose the weight again. To lose weight and explore the camp,
discovering how much pain he could endure, how dangerous the place was. Because Pedro
likes pain and danger, the idea of risking his own life arouses him, like
now, while he looks at pictures of the missing Matteo
on his monitor, thinking of how Helmut or Vincenzo
could have easily killed Pedro, too. Pedro remembers Vincenzo, a strong, hairy man around 45 years old; Pedro
admired Vincenzo's tattooed body, his large head,
his dark beard and his grey hair. And he remembers his strong hands, a killer's
hands. Vincenzo killed Matteo, Pedro is
sure of it. Vincenzo is a born killer. Pedro is
fascinated by Vincenzo. He reaches into
the box of doughnuts on his desk and extracts another one, taking a large,
deliberate bite. "Gavin?
Gavin, is that you?" "Good Lord,
man, you look... wow, you look... how did you do that?" "Cascina del Benessere, my friend!" Gavin struck a
pose, one that would have been ludicrous before he left, his left arm planted
on his hip, his right curled to highlight his bulging biceps. There was a
sizable dollop of self-mockery in his manner, as if he felt his new physique
were merely a costume he had donned, one that he wasn't quite comfortable
wearing. But "Kasheena who?" "La bella Cascina del
be-NEH-se-ray" Gavin drawled, overexaggerating
the lyrical Italian words. He dropped the pose, poured himself a mug of
coffee, then offered the pot to "A fat farm?
Like the sort of place where they have you do yoga and Pilates all morning
and then all they let you eat for lunch is a stalk of celery?" Gavin chuckled
half-heartedly, his eyes darting uncomfortably about. "Yeah. Kind of
like that." "Well,
whatever their method is, it sure worked. You look great, man. Really
great." "Yeah,
thanks." The slow season
also provided plenty of time for his co-workers to stop by to visit the new,
improved Gavin. All morning long he listened over the fabric-covered wall to
replays of almost the exact same conversation. And it wasn't just the handful
of people in Parking - soon enough, word had spread to Permits and to Finance
and to Water and Sewer... everyone wanted to know how Gavin had done it,
where he had found the willpower, what the secret of "Cascina del Benessere"
might be. Gavin seemed talkative enough on the topic, but after half a dozen
repetitions, Still, as the day
progressed, He looked down at
his belly, much thicker now than it had been 15 years ago. When had that
happened? It must have crept up on him over the years, a bit at a time,
hardly noticeable as it was happening but glaringly obvious now that he
stopped to think about it. Somehow, the tow-headed rugby player had been
transformed into a sturdy bureaucrat, not exactly fat, but not exactly trim
and fit, either. At midday, Gavin, mouth
full, gestured that it was no trouble at all. Gavin chewed
thoughtfully and took his time before swallowing his bite of sandwich.
"Are you considering a visit, then?" he finally asked. "Well, you
know, er... that is... I mean, I could certainly
stand to shed a pound or two, and maybe it's just a matter of diet and
exercise and such, but then, well, just look at you! If you could make that
kind of improvement in only six weeks..." Gavin jumped in
and kindly rescued him from the mortifying hole he was digging for himself.
"Yes, a change of diet and exercise habits might do the trick. I would
be happy to help you along, if you'd like. You know, moral support?" "Right.
Thank you, you're very kind," Gavin
interrupted, his face gone cloudy and dark. " Gavin again
seemed at a loss for words. "In a word, yes," he finally mumbled. At home later
that evening, it took Some
Mediterranean sunshine sounded like the perfect alternative to a grey
November in Helmut Lehrer
studied the list of this week's expected arrivals, trying to finish before
the sounds from the room next door became too distracting. It wasn't that
the sounds Antonio and whoever-he-was would soon be making were unpleasant -
Helmut himself had caused those sorts of sounds to occur on more than one
occasion. But a balance was required. It couldn't all be fun and games; some
effort had to be put into making the camp run smoothly. It was only when
everything was running smoothly that one could find the time to enjoy the
fruits of one's labours. Without that necessary organizational effort, things
had a tendency to fall apart, and when things fell apart, everyone's pleasure
was diminished. The sounds were
easy enough to ignore for now - just two voices. Antonio's routine almost
never varied. He always started out with talk; the rougher stuff would come
later. Helmut would take advantage of the relative quiet while it lasted. There were four
on the list for this week. One or two were almost guaranteed to be no-shows -
the last time everyone who was supposed to arrive at the Cascina
del Benessere actually did so was thirteen weeks
before. Helmut had tried to find a pattern to predict which men would be the
no-shows but if there was such a pattern, it was not one that showed up in
the information in the dossiers he possessed. This week's crop
included one Waclaw Dawidowski,
a man with a Polish name but who listed his hometown as Next was Devon
Newcomb of Leeds, England. Age 38, divorced for the last eight years, no
children, target weight loss 10 kilos. All in all quite typical of the men
who visited the Cascina. Five weeks should do. The noise level
from the next room had steadily increased while Helmut was perusing the
dossiers. The talking had become shouting and now the shouting was becoming
screaming. Helmut could hear the sharp cracks as Antonio swung his favourite
leather strap against the other man's bare skin. The man - what was his name
again? Gerard, perhaps? Or Gregoire? Something
French, anyway. The man, whoever he was, was outraged at being subjected to
this indignity. And Helmut knew he would be even more outraged at the next
indignity he would suffer at Antonio's ever-predictable hands. Next on the list
was Roberto Russo. A local boy, it seemed, from just up the road in Trebino. Age 28... younger than the typical client. But
grossly overweight. Helmut's programme, rigorous though it was, could not be
expected to produce miracles, even when a client stayed the maximum twelve
weeks. This young man - if he survived - would come out with less fat and
more muscle, but there was no chance he would ever be considered thin. Finally... oh,
now this was interesting. Pedro Sanchez, age 42, was returning for his third
visit. This despite Helmut's very clear warning of what might very well
happen should Pedro place himself once again into the hands of the three
managers of the Cascina del Benessere.
Very interesting, indeed. One had to wonder about the mindset of such
returnees. Could it be that Señor Sanchez actually
desired the outcome that Helmut had expressed would happen? There certainly
were easier ways to accomplish that... so what was it about the Cascina programme that inspired him to come back? The noise had grown
too loud to concentrate on even such intriguing thoughts. Helmut tucked the
pages into their folder and replaced it neatly in its drawer. He headed
outside to check on the progress of the current crop of dieters. On the way
he passed by the open door of the room where Antonio was. The screaming had
ended, but Gerard - yes, it was definitely Gerard - was cursing a blue
streak. Glancing in as he passed, Helmut saw Gerard's head and fists
protruding from a pillory with Antonio standing behind him, fucking his ass
like a demon. Helmut could only make out a few words of Gerard's French, but
Antonio's speech was the same as it always was: "Lurido finocchio. È questo quello
che vuoi, eh? Vuoi sentire il mio grosso cazzo in culo! Ho visto come mi
guardavi, mezzasega. Pensi che sono un frocio come
te, eh? Ma io non sono come te, non sono un frocio di merda. Sono un uomo,
non un finocchio sempre a caccia di cazzi da succhiare o da prendersi in
culo. Tu sei un finocchio, un finocchio di merda!" Gerard's eyes
looked at Helmut beseechingly, but Helmut continued resolutely on his way. His
script never changes, Helmut mused as he walked. "You like my
thick cock up your ass, faggot?" I wonder if Antonio would be happier if
he would just accept the fact that he is attracted to men? Things are
different now than they were twenty, even ten years ago. He could find
himself a nice husband, settle down... Gerard let out a
particularly loud shout of disgust, one that was quickly muffled as though a
thick, fleshy object had been rammed into his mouth. Then
again, perhaps he is quite satisfied with the status quo. "Welcome,
gentlemen." He stole a quick
glance at his two compatriots, Waclaw and Pedro.
When During the long
ride through the Calabrian countryside, Waclaw had tried to engage the others in conversation and
camaraderie. His efforts met with little success. Devon would ordinarily have
been happy to talk, but he was feeling a bit out of his element, and when
that happened he tended to retreat into himself and so failed to hold up his
end of the conversation. The Spaniard's English was so heavily accented that
it was hard to understand a word he said. And the driver didn't speak at all.
Presumably the fellow was capable of oral communication, though he provided
no evidence of it during the course of the trip. In the face of such
resistance, Waclaw's friendly banter eventually
faded away and the four men spent the latter half of the ride in silence. Now, standing in
a draughty room with the others, Waclaw's
cheeriness was but a memory. "I am Mr.
Lehrer," the sharply-dressed man continued, "your host and the
director of this institution. With me are Vincenzo Virga and Antonio Macaluso,
co-directors here." The director was
still speaking. "... a
change in lifestyle. You will find the programme to be rigorous but fair. And
even though there will come a time - and I promise this time will come for
each of you - when you do not believe that you can endure it, I tell you now:
you can. "I know this
will happen because it has happened to every single man who has come to the Cascina del Benessere before
you. Without exception, every single one of them reached a point during their
stay when they felt they simply had to abandon the programme before seeing it
through to completion. And yet, every single one of them did, in fact, see
the programme through." "You are
here, gentlemen, because you lack the willpower to control your own diet and
exercise to the degree you wish you could." "There is no
shame in admitting this. It is not a defect in your character. Rather, it is
a challenge to be overcome. We are here to provide the willpower that you
lack and to help you create new habits for cleaner living. Once these habits
have been ingrained, you will find that you do not need much willpower to
sustain them. The initial breaking of your old habits is the hard part. Once
this is accomplished, new ones can be formed, and you will be able to return
to your homes and still maintain your new level of fitness. Unless, of
course, you slide back into your old ways." There was a long,
uncomfortable silence here, but although "For this
reason," Herr Lehrer continued, "there can be no backing out of the
programme once you have committed to it. It is a matter of psychology. If you
know you have the option to quit, then you will find it impossible not
to quit when you encounter difficulties. You lack willpower; that is why you
are here. Thus, you must surrender your will... to me." He clapped his
hands. "So. You will be shown to your rooms. In them you will find a
paper. You will either sign this paper and commit to stay at the Cascina del Benessere for the
number of weeks specified for your individual programme, or I will have the
driver return you to the train station tonight. Take your time while making
your decision, because once made, it is irrevocable." Pedro is sitting
in his room. He looks at the paper on the little table, then at the landscape
out of the window. His room is the one where Matteo
Ridolfi stayed. Coincidence? There are only six
rooms, so coincidence is certainly a possibility. But Pedro is certain it is
not. It is a warning. The last warning, probably... "There can be no
backing out of the programme once you have committed to it." Helmut Lehrer's
words linger in Pedro's brain. "There can be no backing out... no
backing out..." He knows very
well there is no way out once he has signed the paper. Once the programme begins,
there is no way he could physically get out even if he wanted to. This is the
last opportunity to change his mind. He could refuse
to sign, go back to the train station, back to his normal life, . Or could
he? Is it perhaps already too late? Now, immediately, before signing this
bloody paper which doesn't mean anything to Pedro: the real matter is not
backing out of the programme, it is backing out of death. Why did he come?
Why doesn't he go away, right now? Helmut Lehrer wouldn't stop him, now. But
by tomorrow morning, escape will become impossible. To go through the entire
programme without any "mistake"? Not so difficult, perhaps, but it
is not what Pedro wants. He knows it. He didn't come here just to follow the
programme. He is looking for something else. Pedro looks again
through the window. A beautiful landscape, the aura of a peaceful
countryside, the enchanting little villages nestled among the rolling hills
and the mountains far away. A peaceful land. Cascina
del Benessere is located in a little paradise. Somewhere in this
beautiful landscape, Matteo Ridolfi's
corpse is rotting under the ground. Pedro looks at
the paper, at the place where he is supposed to sign. Signing doesn't mean
anything. Staying here, in this bloody place, means danger, death. Pedro
shakes his head: he ate too much for three months just to have a plausible
pretext to come back. Why? He knows it, very well. He likes pain, violence
and danger. No, that's not it, or rather, that's not all of it. He is aroused
by pain, violence and danger, by the idea of risking his life. This is the
truth. Is it? Yes, but there is something more. He is fascinated by death.
His own death. How far does he want to go? Which choice will he have if he
remains here? Helmut Lehrer's
warning was very clear. This is the reason why Pedro is back. From the window
Pedro can see Vincenzo walking towards the woods.
Near an old oak, he turns and stares at Pedro's window. He can see Pedro.
Pedro can see Vincenzo, his strong body, his big
hands, his hard face. Pedro holds his
gaze. Vincenzo seems to smile or to grin, not in a
friendly way, more like the grin of a wolf. Then he turns and disappears into
the woods. Pedro takes the
pen and he signs. Only
one no-show, Helmut Lehrer thought to himself as he returned to
his room. About average. The evening air
was pleasant. A gentle autumn breeze swirled through the needles on the
fragrant pine trees, and he caught the faint scent of olives from the groves
that abutted the camp. The harvest was finished, but the aroma still
lingered, even now while the long twilight of the year gently settled over
this southern country. In his homeland, he knew, the season would be much
more advanced. The higher mountains may have even felt their first kiss of
snow. Here, though, the climate offered barely more than a token nod to
Winter, two or three months of greyer skies and cooler weather before the
next long, sun-drenched summer began. He walked at a
steady pace back to his cabin, neither rushing nor dawdling. It would take
him fourteen minutes to complete the journey. Sometimes the remoteness of his
dwelling place from the rest of the camp's bustle was a source of frustration
for him, but these occasions were rare. More often he appreciated the privacy
that the secluded location provided. He pondered the
three men he had met a few minutes ago, the men who were now settling in for
the night and trying to decide whether or not to sign the papers they had
found in their rooms. He was fairly certain they would; absolutely certain in
one case. The face-to-face meeting had confirmed his initial impressions of
each of them, and solidified his decision as to how to apportion them out
among the leadership triumvirate when the time came. Waclaw was a goof, cheerful and good-natured, but
fundamentally a goof. He would have no ability to appreciate the artistry
that Helmut took pride in. He would be best matched with Antonio, who would
be able to work with that type of personality. Antonio didn't much care who
he was paired with, and it didn't much matter, anyway. His act never changed. Pedro... now there
was the interesting one. Vincenzo was the logical
choice. He was the clean-up man, the one who handled problems and situations
as they came up. He and his... associates were adept at smoothing out bumps
in any road, though their methods could be somewhat heavy-handed. And yet...
it would probably be a good idea to find out exactly what Pedro was after
before committing to any specific course of action. Interesting, too,
that both His cabin
appeared out of the gathering gloom. He eased the door open and slipped into
the main room, lit by the warm glow of an electric lamp. A naked man stood
there, 5kg free weights taped in his clenched fists. Helmut took a moment to
admire the man's physique. The arms and shoulders had filled out quite nicely
in the six weeks since his arrival at the Cascina,
the legs likewise. The belly was much firmer, though not exactly flat -
building washboard abs was not just a matter of exercise, one had to be born
with the right genes, too. The chest and pecs were
showing good definition. All in all, quite a well-built specimen... just the
way Helmut liked them. Helmut had little
interest in the pudgy, flabby men who arrived at the Cascina's
gates each Saturday. But after they spent a few weeks in the programme he had
designed... what a difference! Then they started to become more worthy of his
scrutiny. The man's ankles
were chained to bolts in the floor, forcing him to stand with his legs spread
at about shoulder width. Despite the cool evening air, he was sweating
profusely. As Helmut entered the room, he jumped and lifted his wavering arms
above his head, touching the weights to two pads suspended from the ceiling.
A small click registered the contact. Then the man crouched down and touched
the weights to two matching pads on the floor. Another click. He stood up
again, his movements slow and shaking. Helmut stepped to
the side of the room and checked the small mechanical display on a table
there. It read "317". "Ach,
Reiner, es tut mir Leid," he said softly. "Nur drei
hundertsiebzehn? Nach drei Stunden?" The chained man
whimpered, also speaking German. "But sir, I have tried! I have pushed myself
as hard as I could! Please, just a bit more time!" "More time
is not what you need, Reiner," Helmut replied. "Three hours should
have been plenty of time for you to reach 500." Of course it wasn't. The
best anyone had ever done in Helmut's experience was 438 - dangerously close
to succeeding at a task designed to be impossible. 317 was actually above
average. No doubt somewhere on Earth men existed who could do it, but they
were not the sort who needed to sign themselves up for a weight-loss camp. "What you
lack is not time, but motivation," Helmut continued silkily. Reiner forced his
exhausted arms to keep working while he spoke, his voice ragged. "No!
No, please, no! I can do it, see?" His muscles quivered and strained.
The small display clicked its way up - 318, 319, 320. It was a simple
mechanical device with no fancy electronics, one whose workings Helmut had
modelled after a cuckoo clock: press both ceiling pads at once to set an
escapement, press the floor pads to release it, advancing the number on the
display. Reiner lifted and fell, and though he was able to make contact a few
more times with both ceiling and floor, he was clearly near the limit of his
endurance. Helmut waited
until one of the upward presses failed to make full contact, so that when the
weights came crashing to the floor, the number on the display did not change,
eliciting an explosive sob of frustration from Reiner. He reached over to the
small table and pulled out a wand, perhaps He touched the
metal end to Reiner's thigh. A small blue spark jumped the gap just before it
made contact. Helmut held it there for one eternally long second, then pulled
it back. Reiner's shout became a scream and his leg almost buckled beneath
him. With a surge of strength, he lifted the weights once more and lowered
them, his muscles spasming and a line of drool
forming at the corner of his mouth. The mechanical counter clicked to 327. He
fought to bring the weights up again. Helmut held the
wand nearby, ready to deploy it at the first sign of weakness. He would enjoy
watching Reiner drive himself past exhaustion, working his agonized muscles
in a vain attempt to stave off the punishment Helmut had threatened him with.
And when the end came, as it inevitably would, Helmut would enjoy every
second of the rape he had promised. But there was still a long way to go
before that time arrived. In the meanwhile, Helmut would enjoy the
anticipation almost as much as the event itself. Besides, who
could say? Perhaps Reiner would actually make it to 500. The first day
dawns. They begin their work early. The rock line is just the same as Pedro
remembered it - why would it be different? Pedro knows very well how things
are going to develop. He doesn't say a word to his companions. He doesn't say
anything. Antonio let slip
- deliberately? - in the presence of the other two newcomers that Pedro had
been here twice before. And so yesterday evening the Englishman began asking
him questions, trying to learn more. Pedro's English is not great, but he
understood the man well enough. Still, he preferred to pretend he didn't know
what the man was saying - "no comprende,
amigo". Much easier to avoid saying anything relevant that way. The
Englishman will discover it soon enough. In fact, the first part of his
education had already begun. Pedro looks at
his companions, who are discovering for the first time what is waiting for
them. What is waiting? There is more, much more than the line. The rock line
is the simplest device, the most innocent, the least painful, even if it can
appear hell. But for four weeks (no, Mr. Englishman, four weeks, not five as
you think) it will be their daily routine. They will be like prisoners in
Dante's Inferno, going on and on in an endless task. Pedro remembers
the first time he saw the line, the strange feeling which overpowered him.
Something like yielding to his own fate, accepting something he was craving
for, even if he didn't know he was craving it. He accepted it. In a strange
way he couldn't explain, he knew he was waiting for it and the line was
waiting for him. And now again, step after step, on and on, a senseless
walking whose hidden meaning has now been made clear to him. Briefly, he
wonders whether the other newcomers are having the same sorts of feelings he
did on his first arrival, then firmly pushes the thought from his mind. Pedro
is not interested in the other men who are going to follow the training
routine, he doesn't want to make friends. He doesn't need company or support.
He is here for a different purpose. He will follow
the instructions he is given. No whim, no improvisation, no deviation from
the rules. Pedro doesn't want to speed the end up. He wants to have the time
to make his choices. That is, if he has any choice left? When he went away
last time, Helmut's words didn't leave much room for doubt. Pedro is afraid,
but he is aroused, too. Every time he thinks about the last week of the
training - as he is now - his cock quickly stiffens. And with no clothes on,
there's no way to hide it. Best to think of something else. He focuses on the
rocks, on putting one foot in front of the other. The swelling at his groin
goes down. But his mind keeps coming back to the same topic, like a buzzard
circling a dying man in the desert. Pedro looks at Vincenzo. It will be him. Vincenzo
is the man who solves the problems and Pedro has turned himself into a
problem. He wants this, he craves this. But now Pedro has the feeling his
heart is beating so loudly the others can hear it. What does Vincenzo know? Vincenzo is not
very clever. No, that's not exactly right. Vincenzo
is not very bright in terms of book learning, but he has a keen mind in other
areas. Vincenzo is a wild animal, he can detect the
scent of blood on the wind, follow the tracks, jump on the prey, kill it with
a single bite. Or he can play with the prey, like a cat with a mouse. Vincenzo may not be book-smart, but Pedro senses that he
knows perfectly well what Pedro is after. When Vincenzo
is taking his turn supervising the rock line, Pedro looks up at him every few
laps, trying to catch his eye, to see if he can read anything in that dark
face. But Vincenzo never looks back at him. Perhaps he is
wrong. Perhaps Vincenzo doesn't know, doesn't
understand. No matter. There is no hurry. Pedro still has five weeks to
prepare, to be ready for the end. He sets one foot
in front of the other, over and over and over. "Up! Up! You
get up now! Up!" His body ached
all over. His muscles were stiff and sore and tired from his neck all the way
down to his toes. His belly gnawed at him with pangs of hunger. Yesterday's efforts
had left him completely exhausted; spending the night on a barely-padded
floor hadn't helped a bit. The idea that he was now expected to get up and
start the whole thing all over again was simply preposterous. "You get
up!" The insistent
voice was joined by an equally insistent booted foot prodding at his ribs. Slowly, like an
uncoordinated animal, the twenty-five naked dieters shucked off their thin
blankets and stood up to prepare for their day. It was a complicated process,
requiring a good amount of coordination. Joined at the neck as they were with
150cm of rope between each man, they had to stand up more or less as one or
risk yanking on their neighbours. The veterans - the ones who had already
been at the Cascina for a couple of weeks - were a
bit quicker at getting up and moving, and they prodded the slower-moving newbies along. Antonio and his helper, whose name "Errrrr," "The bloody
hurry is if you don't get your arse moving, Tony will do it for you. Now, I
don't much if care you get a few good whacks from that crop, but I'm right
next to you, and Tony doesn't really care how accurate his aim is. He just
likes to swing." Once the men were
all up, Antonio - "Tony" - and Eyebrow Guy formed them into two
lines. Each line took its turn at the piss-trough in the adjoining room, and
then they were led off to the main room of the barracks, where, one by one,
they retrieved their morning meal from the window to the kitchen area. The meals, All too soon,
however, meal time was over. Boots were handed out; each man put a pair on.
Tony got the men up, formed them into lines again, and marched them off
outside and up the hillside. The day had dawned grey and sullen. Mist and
clouds veiled the sun from view. They walked for
perhaps five minutes, and then the rock line came into view. Only day
three, The men were
taken one by one off from the connecting rope and led to their starting
positions, then split into two groups. The twenty men in the larger group
were fixed to the overhead cable by means of the steel collars around their
necks. Each collar was attached to a line dangling down from the cable. The five men in
the smaller group were taken to seats near one of the upright poles. They
were fixed in place along a long horizontal shaft studded with bicycle-like
pedals, some of them seated with their feet on the pedal arrangement while
others were positioned to grip them with their hands. Next, Antonio and
Eyebrow Guy went around the loop handing the men their harnesses. The harness
went over the chest and shoulders and held a pole whose ends stuck out to
either side. Hanging down from each end of the pole was a bucket. There was
padding, but the harness nevertheless chafed on "OK, you go
now!" Form-up was completed; Tony shouted out to get them all moving.
The five men in the seats began to pump their legs or arms, pushing hard at
first to get the long shaft moving, but spinning it easily once it was going.
The power from the drive shaft was transmitted up the thick post, and slowly,
creakingly, the giant wheel on top began to turn and the line began to move.
Each man walked along the well-worn path under the cable. The pace was an
easy one, a slow, ambling walk. The walk wasn't
hard at all. The hard part was keeping it up all day. At either end of
the loop of cable, near the two support posts, were two enormous piles of
roughly fist-sized rocks, currently about the same size. Yesterday morning,
the pile at the eastern end had been slightly larger. When the endless walk
brought By the end of the
day, the western pile would be noticeably larger than the eastern pile.
Carrying the process to its logical conclusion, at some point all the rocks
would have been moved from east to west. The work was
mind- and soul-numbing. The first day, the newbies Every so often,
Tony or Eyebrow Guy would pull him off the line to take his turn on the drive
shaft, spinning his legs or arms to power the machine that pulled the rock
carriers relentlessly along. This was the cardiovascular portion of the
workout, and each man spent roughly 20% of his time doing it. The break from
the endless walking and carrying was certainly welcome, but Very quickly, This late-fill
strategy was employed by all the men, meaning the eastern pile was steadily
eroding from its farthest point backward, while the western pile, conversely,
was growing from the nearest possible dumping point forward. The strategy was
not without its risks, however - if one waited too long and didn't leave
enough time to completely fill one's buckets, or dumped the rocks out too
early on the west side, then one would make the slow walk to the other pile
with Antonio or Vincenzo or one of their unnamed
hired helpers shouting a polyglot mixture of obscenities in one's ear while
swatting at one's legs and back with their leather straps. Likewise, if the
staff felt that one was not putting forth a sufficiently enthusiastic effort
at the drive shaft, one was invited to improve one's attitude by means of
bright red stripes across one's shoulders. Truly, if there
was a hell, As it turned out,
remaining quiet was a smart move. Helmut Lehrer, the man in charge of the
line on the first day, had told Waclaw twice to
pipe down. Waclaw hadn't, and so Helmut had ordered
a gag to be fitted in place. It was a red rubber ball held in place with a
black leather strap around the back of his head. It didn't stop him from
making noises, but he couldn't say anything that anyone could understand. He
had worn the gag from the afternoon of the first day until they took it off
him at supper time. Waclaw, on the other hand, was not a quick learner - the
morning of the second day, it happened again. This time Vincenzo
was in charge. The gag he used was a monstrous device, with a larger ball
than the first one, covered in pointed knobs. Now, all the
fight was drained out of him. Twenty-four hours of starvation and a painfully
sore jaw had left him looking wiped. Hopefully, he'll manage to control
his tongue today, He reached the
western end, lifted his buckets up one by one, dumped their contents out, and
settled in for the slow walk east. This would go on all morning: reach the
eastern pile, bend, load the rocks in the buckets, pick them up, trudge to
the other end, dump the rocks out, repeat. Any rocks that fell into the
walkway during the dump portion of the cycle had to be picked up and replaced
on the pile, so there was incentive to not just tip the bucket but to
actually lift it and heave the rocks over the top of the pile. The better to
work one's arm and chest muscles, he supposed. After two hours,
the morning chill had burned off and the sun was peeking fitfully through the
clouds. Cups of water appeared along the eastward leg of the march; each man
was expected to drink a full one. A short time later, After half an
hour, they put him back on the line. Throughout, the line never stopped
moving. It was a machine in which the men were merely bit parts,
interchangeable cogs that could be plucked out from one slot and plunked into
another without slowing the monster's progress in the least. The sun climbed
higher in the sky. By the time
Antonio called a halt to break for lunch,. Antonio and
Eyebrow Guy repeated the morning's cable-hookup
procedure in reverse and the men, roped together at the neck again, were
brought back to the barracks for a bathroom break and their midday meal. The meal revived
him a bit - locally-caught fish and loads of vegetables, smothered in
delicious but low-fat sauces or coated in savoury spices. It was so
incongruous - they were worked like convicts in a gulag, but fed like
royalty. The only drawback to mealtime was the constant barrage of advice
from whoever was shepherding them for the day, pointing out the healthful
qualities of their diet and exhorting them to make smarter food choices when
their term at the Cascina had ended. From Mr.
Lehrer, the sermon was soft and implacably logical, not at all hard to listen
to and impossible to disagree with. Vincenzo, when
it was his turn, didn't say much, but he made the point all the same. Tony
was the hardest to take. He would get right in the men's faces, flailing his
hands in that Italian way and shouting in his heavily accented English.
"You see? You eat here the good food! What you eat at home, you eat the
Big Mac, eh? You lie all day on the couch? No more! Now you go home you eat
there the good food, you get the exercise! You no eat the Big Mac, you eat
the fish, si? You eat the broccoli!" At each meal,
they were given enough to feel full, but the menu was so low in calories that
they still managed to burn off more than they took in over the course of the
day, resulting in a steady improvement in the men's condition over time. It may
be hell, They finished
eating, then were led in to the sleeping room for the mid-day siesta: an
all-too-brief rest before the gruelling afternoon shift began. Devon had no trouble at all falling asleep. Of course, some
of them are complainers. It is always so. Each time Pedro has come here,
someone has remonstrated, kicked up a fuss, and been gagged for it. Or
someone has tried to escape and found himself wearing leg irons for the
remainder of his stay. Not for Pedro.
From the first, he accepted the line, and after it the tortures, the rape. He
went down every step, in his heart craving for more steps. This time there
will be more steps, the last ones. He'll reach the bottom, he feels it. The first time he
was here, his everyday life had suddenly become a senseless river running
only because it didn't know how to stop. Now, the rock line had brought him a
real meaning. It was life, real life. He sneaks a peek
in the gloom of the barracks at Waclaw, who is
finally able to close his mouth. He seems a nice enough fellow, but he is too
much of a hothead. He needs to learn discipline. And he is curious, too curious,
like Matteo Ridolfi. Pedro senses the
danger. Pedro cannot make up his mind: he craves for torture, agony, rape,
death, but all the same, he is afraid. It is fine for him to go down this
path, he is expecting it. But Waclaw is an innocent. His blundering and bellowing could
easily bring down on himself the same fate that Pedro is expecting. What if
Helmut and Vincenzo conclude that Waclaw is a danger: what would they do? Would they kill
him instead of Pedro? Occasional disappearances they can obviously cover up,
but two men disappearing at the same time after a period at the Cascina? That might raise suspicions that even Vincenzo's connections could not make go away... He must have
fallen asleep, because he is awakened by something: a noise? A furtive movement?
He cannot tell, and it is too dark to see clearly. There it is
again! A slithery, sliding noise. Pedro sees a shadow arise out of the
darkness, in the direction where he last saw Waclaw.
Has he somehow managed to slip out of the ropes or remove his collar? This
cannot be. It is suicide. He speaks before
even realizing he is going to, whispering in the darkness. "Stop, you
stupid asshole! Stop with this crap! It is dangerous! Stop! You are a
blockhead, a stupid shitbag. They could kill you, son
of bitch!" Pedro's English
is not so good, but the other man speaks no Spanish at all, so it is their
only common tongue. He wishes he knew a lot more words to tell Waclaw what he thinks of him and his stupid behaviour.
The words lack, but Waclaw can understand even so.
An answering whisper comes back to him. "No way.
Fuck this shit, man. I am out of here. Wish I could help you, too, but time
is short. You'll have to find your own way out." The shadow begins
to move over to the doorway. Pedro knows, as Waclaw
would if he would only think, that the door is, of course, locked and that
one of the hired men will be posted on the far side. When Waclaw
begins to rattle the latch or look for another exit, the guard will notice
and come in. He will then take Waclaw down, but if Waclaw makes too much trouble, he may have to call the
camp directors for backup. It will be chaos. "You can't.
There is no way out. The guard will stop you." The shadow continues
toward the door. Why does he not see reason? Others are waking
up. The older men, the ones who are nearing the end of their stay, join Pedro
in trying to call Waclaw back, but all they can use
are words. Waclaw is already beyond their reach.
Soon the guard will come in, the wave will break, anarchy... Pedro tries to
calm down. What does he care what happens to Waclaw?
He is here for himself. Only why is he here? For what bloody reason is he
here? Mierda! Mierda! He
overate for months, just to be here. For the pain, the danger. The danger.
Not only this, he knows very well. Even now, if he thinks that Helmut could
call Vincenzo and tell him Pedro has to be killed,
when he thinks about it, he is hard. And now, why is he afraid? Is he afraid Waclaw will take his place? That he will take the prize
Pedro has been aiming for? Is that what he is afraid of? Or is it the prize
itself he fears? Afraid, furious.
Pedro doesn't understand what is happening. He thought he could keep the
situation under control, to decide his own fate. He cannot manage anymore.
Helmut is not stupid. He'll understand and… Pedro realises he is hard, so
hard his cock is almost aching. He sees in his brain the scene. Vincenzo approaching, his knife… Pedro closes his eyes.
He nods, twice. Yes, this is what
he wants. He is mad, but this is what he wants. Waclaw's fumbling rouses the guard at last. The door opens.
The lights come on, harsh and glaring in the dark night. Voices, motion,
roped necks yanked this way and that, shouts, blows... chaos. Even the
Englishman, who had been sleeping like the dead, is roused. By the time it is
all over, half an hour later, Waclaw is wearing
chains that connect his ankles together and handcuffs on his wrists. The
cuffs will come off in the morning and go back on every night, but the ankle
chains will stay on until it is his time to leave. Pedro tries to feel
sympathetic for the man. It is hard enough to sleep on a bare floor with only
a thin blanket, harder yet if you can't even bring your arms out from behind
your back to pillow your head. But he brought his fate on himself. Pedro did
all he could to help. It was not his fault it wasn't enough. Gazing into the
restored darkness, he thinks that perhaps Waclaw
has at last been tamed. Not tamed, he is still wild in his heart. But he will
not be able to make more trouble. Pedro's plan, mad as it is, is still in
motion. But yes, an
entire week must have passed, because suddenly, Tony and Vincenzo
and their minions weren't hovering over ... and yet, he
suddenly realized, they weren't quite as exhausted as he expected them to be.
Usually, by the time of the mid-afternoon watering, he was trudging along
with no thought in his head but to keep moving to avoid being beaten. Now,
though, he was more bored than anything. His muscles were sore, sure, but it
was actually a good kind of sore, the kind he remembered feeling after an
intense rugby match. Could it be that his body was actually getting used to
this new level of activity? Evening came. The
line was broken down and sent off for supper and bed. The three new guys were
not treated well by the veteran members, who seemed to fear that their
inexperience would lead to punishment for the whole group. The newbies didn't do anything dramatically wrong that He went to sleep.
The floor was as unyielding as it always was, and just as uncomfortable, but
somehow it didn't bother him quite so much. Wednesday. Eleven
AM. A beautiful southern late-autumn day: sunny, dry, and warm. The weather
here was comfortingly predictable: sunshine always brought warmth; coolness
came with the clouds. Vanishingly rare were the days that were both cold and
sunny, or both warm and overcast. For the most part, the climate here was
readily predictable. Predictability
was a trait Helmut Lehrer approved of. He stood near the
line and watched the progress - the predictable progress - of the men in it.
He noted that the newcomers, right on schedule, were becoming accustomed to
the Cascina's routine, after having offered up
their customary protests, voicing their useless outrage at the assault on
their dignity. In time, they would be just like the old hands, resigned to
their days of seemingly-pointless drudgery. The brighter among them would
recognize that the drudgery was not pointless, but rather served its purpose
quite well. The rest... well, it didn't really matter what they thought, or
even whether they thought at all. Mental acuity was not a precondition for
acceptance into the Cascina's programme. Helmut basked in
the warm sunshine, enjoying the lovely day and the vision of sweaty, naked,
toiling man-flesh. Back at his cabin waiting for him was one of the men who
had until recently been a part of the great machine, and Helmut would be
heading back to visit with him soon, but not just yet. There was no
particular rush to get back. The man, a Frenchman who had arrived like all
the rest a flabby, fleshy blob and was now in much improved shape, would not
be going anywhere. The original plan
was for him to spend six weeks at the Cascina del Benessere and then return to his ordinary life. How surprised
Monsieur Jean-Marie had been when he was pulled away from his compatriots a
whole week earlier than he had expected! And how much more surprised he had
been to discover the reason for his premature extraction... The burdened men
on the line all looked very much alike. Differences in skin tone and hair
colour all tended to fade away under the coat of greyish-brown dust that
caked them all. Even the new arrivals of the last weekend had already
acquired their layer of grime. Only height and body shape were much help in
distinguishing one shuffling, shackled creature from another. Nevertheless,
Helmut was able to pick out his next prize - a tall fellow of Arab-African
descent, here for a five-week stay before returning home to Helmut allowed
the smallest fraction of a smile to cross his face. He was looking forward to
taking his turn with the gentleman from Perhaps
we shall need to explore mental hardship, then, Helmut mused. What's
the point of torturing a man if he can take it? He turned to go,
but as he did his eye was caught by the wild card who had arrived at the same
time as Mental
hardship it will be, yes. He would work out the details later. For now,
Jean-Marie was waiting. He made the
fourteen-minute walk back to his cabin, neither rushing nor dawdling. The sun
was warm, the sky bright and clear. Fallen pine needles rustled beneath his
feet as he walked along the path. A beautiful day, indeed. Jean-Marie was
indeed waiting, just where Helmut had left him - encased in a leather
sleep-sack. It covered him from head to toe; only a tube sticking out from
his mouth for breathing broke the smooth surface of the sack. He had been in
the sack since midnight or so of the previous night. Helmut was
constantly amazed at the variety of men he encountered in his line of work.
Not just the enormous variations in physical type, but the huge number of
different mentalities, too. There were men, for instance, who had practically
welcomed being strapped into the sleep-sack. For them, it was a rest, a
chance to take a break from the constant physical toil of their lives at the Cascina. Not so for
Jean-Marie. For him, being enclosed in a tight, dark space was the stuff of
nightmares, for he, Helmut had learned, suffered from claustrophobia. It had been quite
a chore getting him into the thing, requiring the assistance of Vincenzo to help hold him still enough to get his legs
into the suit and his arms into the sleeves that would prevent them from
moving around inside the sack. Jean-Marie had fought the whole time while
Helmut and Vincenzo were tightening the straps around
his body. But it was only when they started sealing up the leather around his
face that he had truly panicked, screaming and crying out. Helmut had jammed
the tube into his open mouth, then taped it to the hood so that the tube was
the only point on Jean-Marie's entire body that was not covered in tight
leather. Then he had gone to bed, spending a restful night, not bothered at
all to be occasionally awakened from his slumber by the sounds of despair
coming from the floor nearby. Now, nearly
twelve hours later, Helmut considered the leather lump by his feet. If its
occupant had heard him come in, the lump showed no sign of it. Perhaps he was
sleeping? Or in that twilight state that the mind sometimes retreats to when
confronted with unbearable stress? Helmut knelt down to listen. Air was
steadily moving in and out through the tube. He reached out his hand and
covered the opening of the tube with his palm, timing the movement just at
the end of an exhalation. It took a few
moments, but then Jean-Marie exploded. He thrashed and bucked, his trapped
body spasming uselessly in its form-fitted prison.
Helmut held his hand firm as Jean-Marie tried to shake it loose by rolling
his body from side to side. Helmut matched him move for move, not letting up
on the pressure. The Frenchman strove in vain to suck air in through the
blocked opening. Helmut waited about half a minute until the first hint that
the struggles were weakening, then pulled his hand away. Air whooshed through
the tube, in and out and in while Jean-Marie made shapeless moaning noises
deep in his throat. Helmut began
undoing the straps around the man's head. Bit by bit they loosened until he
was able to wiggle the tube out of Jean-Marie's mouth and slip the hood up to
expose the man's face. Jean-Marie's eyes were wild like a starving animal's,
unable to focus on anything. With the extraction of the tube, the incoherent
moans turned into words - "Si'u plait, m'seur... si'u plait... si'u plait..." - but the eyes kept rolling crazily
around the room and the words were punctuated with sobs. "Look at me,
Jean-Marie," Helmut commanded. He had to repeat himself several times
before finally, slowly, the bound man's eyes came into focus. Jean-Marie was
out of his mind - twelve hours of claustrophobic confinement had driven him
near to - if not over - the brink of insanity. Helmut tried a slap to the
face, hard enough to sting and, hopefully, get Jean-Marie's attention. After
a few more slaps and the constant repetition of the command in his most
soothing voice, Helmut could see the panicking man at last starting to come
back to himself. Another minute more and he looked, comprehending, into the
eyes of his tormentor. "Last night,
I asked you to provide a particular sexual service for me. You refused. Have
you changed your mind yet?" Helmut asked in that same soothing tone. Jean-Marie
replied with no hesitation. "Oui! Si! Yes,
yes, I will suck you the cock! Only let me out! Please!" Helmut released
him from the sack, carefully cuffing his hands behind him before removing the
leather completely. The Frenchman got up unsteadily to kneel on the floor. He
closed his eyes and opened his mouth. Helmut, already hard, slipped out of
his trousers and placed the tip of his dick on Jean-Marie's lips. "Now
remember, please," he said. "You are to do this well. If I am
dissatisfied with your performance... well, I don't think I need to spell out
what your punishment will be. We both know." He leaned down to
whisper in Jean-Marie's ear. "And, in case you were thinking any thoughts
along the lines of using those teeth of yours, let me assure you: if you
attempt to harm me in any way, I will see to it that you are buried two
metres under the ground. Alive." He stood up.
"Get to work." For a straight
man with no previous experience at giving a blow job Jean-Marie did
remarkably, astoundingly well. Start of week
four, Sunday afternoon. Another crop of
new arrivals came in, four of them. Three departures the night before. A
total of forty-two men working the line. The western pile, having become
completely filled some days before, was now the pickup pile, and the eastern
one the drop point. His body was
getting firmer, harder. He had no idea how much weight he might have lost,
but his belly had shrunk considerably since his arrival at the Cascina, and the muscles all over his body had grown
stronger - arms, legs, chest, shoulders, everywhere. The program, for all its
humiliations, abuse, and pain, certainly produced results. He walked and
lifted, walked and dumped, walked some more. The afternoon was cloudy and
cool, but the exertion kept him comfortable. Shortly after the watering,
there was some sort of disturbance at the far end of the line. One of the new
recruits was causing trouble, objecting to the treatment he was receiving.
Lehrer was in charge today - he always handled the newbies'
first day, it seemed - and, just like clockwork, in went the gag. It happened
every single time - there was always someone the first day who couldn't get a
handle on how things worked and had to be muzzled to stop him from disturbing
the others. Saturday, before
dawn, week four. In the middle of
the night, Vincenzo led him and two others, whose faces he could not
make out in the darkness, out of the barracks. The cold ground was hard on
his bare feet. They were led to the intake area, to the building that In the light of
the building, "In
there," Vincenzo growled, pointing at the
bedrooms with their individual bathrooms. "Go shower. Take as much time
you want. Then come back here." With that, he used a key to unlock the
collars on the men's necks, and for the first time in four weeks, Free. Should he
make a run for it? It had been all he had dreamt about for the last month,
how the moment he got a chance when he wouldn't be caught, he would seize it
and disappear from this hellhole. But now, apparently, the hellhole was
letting him go. There was no need to run. Besides, he was naked and filthy -
how far could he go? Neither of the others seemed inclined to make a break
for it. Pedro walked into the nearest room without a backward glance; Simon
picked the next one over, so The shower felt
absolutely glorious. He stayed in it for what felt like forever, scrubbing
the grit and grime out of his pores, his hair, his eyes and ears. The water
didn't have all that much pressure behind it, but nevertheless it was hot and
it cascaded like liquid sunshine over him. Truly, if that was hell, then
this is heaven, he thought. There was no need to ever move from this spot
again, he could spend the rest of his life standing under the streaming, steaming
water and feeling, finally, clean. Yes. He knew it
would be so. Pedro remembers perfectly well. The first time he was here it
was the same, and the second time too, on the Saturday night of the
next-to-last week: the call and, in the stillness of the night, the short
walk. The feeling of being a prisoner in an armed camp, in inexorable
captors' hands. The fear and the stirring of something deep, very deep,
inside him, an unknown craving revealing itself for the first time. His heart
racing and his cock stiffening... Now it is the
same. He knows what he is going to face. His first time
was with Antonio. Antonio had used him, humiliated him, tried to break him,
but for all the abuse, the effect was the opposite: the more abuse Antonio
gave, the more Pedro craved. Antonio's Italian was close enough to Pedro's
native tongue that he could understand the sense, if not the exact words, of
what Antonio was calling him: filthy faggot, cock-sucking pervert... Even
through the language barrier, by the end of the week Pedro knew that Antonio
was actually describing himself. And yet, how much truth was there in his
words? It had been so
fascinating, Pedro needed to go back again, and so he deliberately put on
weight. The second time was with Helmut. The session with Helmut was similar,
but different. There was pain, there was abuse, but it did not stir the same
fire in Pedro that the first time had. Helmut's style was too intellectual,
too mechanical. Pedro needed less of the sterile operating room, more of the
dirt and blood and passion. When that session ended, when Pedro left for the
second time, he had the feeling of having missed something, his real goal,
but he wouldn't be able to tell what it was. Now he knows. And
so he has overeaten yet again, and returned once more to the Cascina del Benessere, asking
himself only one question. Will it be Vincenzo this
time? He knows what that would mean. Eventually,
though, The moment he
did, Vincenzo caught him by surprise and clapped
the collar around his neck again. "You not
finish yet, strenzo," said Vincenzo.
"You still have one week left, si? Only now
you get the special treatment, for the special client." Antonio
sniggered. Heavy hands on Not
quite out of hell yet, after all. After a few
minutes, Helmut Lehrer stepped into the corridor. "All set, I see,"
he said. "Let's get started then. Antonio, you have Simon, yes? Vincenzo gets Pedro, and I'll take this one." He
reached out and picked up the end of the rope attached to Helmut's voice
came softly from in front of him. "You have successfully completed the
first part of the Cascina's fitness programme. Have
you noticed the improvement? Your labour has produced acceptable results, but
for your final week here, you will receive more personalized attention. From
me." They walked a bit
more, eventually coming to a cabin nestled among the pines. Helmut opened the
door and ushered "I beg your
pardon?" "Very well,
then." Helmut replied. He re-belted his pants, then selected a leather
strap from a drawer. "You may run in place, instead." "RUN, I
SAID," Helmut shouted. The sound of Helmut's raised voice, more than the
sting of the strap, set "Pick up
your knees," Helmut told him. "Higher. Up to your chest. Higher.
They should nearly touch your chin. Better. No, every step, not just once in
a while." It took several more strokes from the strap to get "I can't...
keep this up... for much longer." he panted. "You may
stop any time you wish. Simply get down on your knees and open your
mouth." "You
can't... be serious." "Oh, I'm
absolutely serious." "But that...
but that's just... sick." "Oh, is it?
Tell me, Mr. Newcomb, what is it you expected when you signed up for this
place? Surely you did some comparison shopping before you booked with us? You
must have noticed that the fee we charge is substantially less than the fees
charged by similar organizations. Did that not raise any warning flags in
your mind? No? Perhaps you should get in the habit of thinking things through
before you start wantonly signing papers of commitment. Bring your knees up
higher." "Remember,
you can stop at any time. While you enjoy your jog, let me explain the
economics of the Cascina del Benessere.
We charge participants a fee that pretty much exactly covers the cost of
feeding and housing the camp guests and staff, plus a small salary for
myself, my co-directors, and the hired help. In return, we not only feed you
- excellently, I might add - and house you, we also provide a service for
you: we improve your fitness, breaking you out of your old, destructive
habits and teaching you how to eat right and exercise. You see? We are
providing you with more than you pay for. "But we are
not philanthropists. In return for this extra service, we expect an extra
service in return. For one week of their term, selected guests are expected
to provide such services as my co-directors and I require. In my case, right
now, that selected guest is you. And the service I require is oral sex.
Fellatio. What's the American term? A 'blow job'." "No. You
can't... do this... the police...". Helmut snorted.
"Please. Again you are not thinking logically. You are not the first
guest to threaten me with law enforcement, you know. And yet, here I remain.
Can you think of why that might be? No? Let me give you a hint. Here we are
in southern Helmut shrugged.
"It is considered in poor taste to use that term. Besides, in this part
of the country, it is rather the 'Ndrangheta. Close
cousins to the organization you are familiar with, but not the same. Vincenzo, as it happens, is the nephew of a rather
highly-placed individual. It's quite a nice arrangement for the family: Vincenzo has found an acceptable outlet for his... shall
we say, darker desires, saving the family the trouble and embarrassment that
would result if he were to indulge his tastes in any other setting.
Homosexuality, you know, is not as accepted here as it is in more
cosmopolitan places like "But...
neighbours?" "The
neighbours are dull, backwoods peasant stock. They grow olives. They know how
dangerous it is to be too inquisitive about things that are not their
concern. Over the years, they have become quite accustomed to strange noises
echoing over the hills and the occasional unclothed escapee running through
their groves. They have even been so kind as to return one or two that managed
to elude us for a time." "I see the
strap has lost its power to motivate you," Helmut said conversationally.
"We have a choice, then. You can accede to my request, or I can bring
out stronger methods of persuasion." I
can't do this any more, He
survived. I can, too. He allowed his
legs to come to a halt, then slowly, grudgingly, sank to his knees, chest
heaving. Helmut's dick was
long and thin... at least in comparison to "Suck on
it," he told him. "Caress it with your tongue. Make a seal with
your lips and slide your head up and down along it." It was hard to do
- he kept having to open his mouth to breathe, and having his hands trapped
uselessly behind his back made balancing on his exhausted legs awkward. But
he managed. Eventually he recovered enough to be able to breathe through his
nose alone. He slid his lips wetly along the shaft, trying not to pay
attention to the smell, the taste. Every time it pressed against the back of
his throat, he had to fight down the urge to gag. He dreaded the thought of
the inevitable end result of his efforts - the wet, slimy splash of sperm on
his tongue and teeth, coating them, covering them with a taste that he would
never be able to wash away, no matter how many times he rinsed out his
mouth... Fortunately, it
never came to that. Helmut pulled out before the end came. "Enough for
now. You need to eat, and then we will plan your day's exercises. I must say,
The next few days
were a constant stream of increasingly-severe workouts for There was forced
weight lifting, where he was bound under some kind of counting contraption.
Weights were taped to his hands. He had to lift them up to the ceiling, then
lower them to the floor, each repetition triggering a click of the attached
counter. Helmut told him he expected to see the number 500 on the counter
when he returned, and then left. That happened at
422, well short of the target. When it became clear that he would never be
able to reach the goal, Helmut raped him: bent him over a table, spread his
ankles wide, cuffed his hands behind him, then stuffed his unprotected virgin
asshole with dick. When it was over,
He spent the
night with his hands still cuffed behind his back, chained by the neck like a
dog to the foot of Helmut's bed. He was able to snatch a few fragments of
sleep on the cold, draughty floor, but not much. When morning
came, the horror began again. This time it was aerobic exercise. There was a
pole outside Helmut's cabin. Throughout,
Helmut had sat, idly paging through a book. Occasionally, when When he came to,
he was propped up in a chair inside. "Ah, you are awake," Helmut
said. He then proceeded to instruct This time, when
the end came, Helmut did not pull out. "Swallow
it," he commanded, but "Oh, that
was an unfortunate mistake," Helmut crooned. For punishment, Devon was
hog-tied in a severely uncomfortable position: his hands were tied together
behind him, and a pair of ropes led from them down under his crotch, up along
the front of his body, over his shoulders on either side of his neck, and
down to his ankles, which were yanked up tight behind him. Helmut placed him
on one end of the cabin's main room. The stain was over on the other side,
shining liquidly on the wooden floor. "I will
untie you after you have crawled your way over to that spot and licked up and
swallowed every last drop," Helmut informed him. He covered the spot
with an inverted bowl to keep it from drying out, then went back to his book. At last he began
to squirm his way over to the other end of the room, but this was much harder
to do than he had anticipated. He had waited so long that the ropes around
his wrists and ankles had begun to bite into his skin, so the slightest
movement chafed and burned. He could only move with glacial slowness,
lurching from one side to the other, making a tiny bit of forward motion in
the process. By the time he
was halfway across the room, his hands had gone numb, possibly his feet too,
although it was hard to tell. He tried pleading to Helmut for mercy, that if
this kept up he could lose the use of his hands, but Helmut's response was to
drag him a metre backward, negating all the painfully-won progress he had
recently made. The remaining trip
across the room was lost in a haze of pain. He focused all his attention on
making his awkward, lurching way across the floor. After an eternity, he
reached his goal. He tried to flip the bowl over using his lips, but could
only slide it, making a smeary mess. The slimy glop
was cold on his lips and tongue. After so much time, the semen had begun to
de-coagulate into a thin, clear liquid and a lump of settled-out solids. He
sobbed a few times as he tried to slurp the foul substance into his mouth.
When he had finished, he called out to Helmut, who had made him lick the spot
on the floor over and over until every possible molecule had been removed.
Only then did he loosen the ropes. "This is going to hurt," he
cautioned. It did. Blood
rushing into dormant tissue and nerves awakening after long confinement were
painful beyond anything In the days that
followed, He soon lost
track of how many more days he had to endure. The only thought that kept him
going was Gavin survived. I
can, too. Pedro waits in
the blackness, feeling the aches all over his body. He is in a small
space below the floor of Vincenzo's room. It is
dark and cramped. There is not enough room for him to stretch out his legs,
he must remain curled up. Whenever it is Vincenzo's turn to supervise the rock line, Pedro gets to
take a break from the rapes, the beatings, the cuttings, and wait in this
impossibly small space. When evening comes, Vincenzo
will return and the pain will begin again. He has no idea
what day it is. All time blends together. The only distinction is between
pain-now and memory-of-pain. Vincenzo has turned
out to be inventive. Imaginative. Imaginative and vicious. Exactly as Pedro
hoped he would be. He shifts his
position in the darkness by another few millimetres and waits for his master
to return. Helmut was
enjoying a tour of the countryside around the Cascina.
After two days of gloomy drizzle, the morning had dawned crisp and clear,
perfect weather to go for a ride. He was using the
carriage today, a two-wheeled device like a rickshaw. The seat was not the
most comfortable, and the springs were not quite adequate for the bumpy
ground, but nevertheless the journey was most enjoyable. The still-wet pines
were fragrant in the bright Mediterranean sunshine, the gulls wheeled off in
the distance, and a handful of clouds drifted like puffy cotton balls across
the achingly blue sky. He gave the left
rein a gentle tug, and his steed obediently responded by pulling the chariot
to the left. They reached the
edge of the woods. Beyond, olive trees marched in long lines up and down the
slopes of the hills. Two workers were in the grove nearby. They looked up at
Helmut's arrival, then quickly averted their eyes, feigning fascination with
some root or insect near their feet. Best not to impose too much on the
neighbours, Helmut thought. He yanked the reins back to the right. The
pull of the straps was transmitted to the bridle that enwrapped He was naked, as
always, though Helmut had granted him boots to wear while running through the
stiff-branched, sometimes thorny scrub brush. His hands were cuffed to the
poles of the rickshaw. The metal bit in his mouth was attached to the harness
that fitted his head, complete with blinders to block his peripheral vision
and keep his eyes focused straight ahead. Helmut held the reins loosely in
his hands - It would have
been nice, Helmut mused as they loped through the trees, if he were able to
use this mode of transportation all through the camp. There was something
immensely satisfying about using a human being as a beast of burden, reducing
an intelligent, speaking entity to nothing more than a means of motive power.
In a sense, it was no different from what the rock line did, and yet Helmut
knew that his chariot had to remain a secret from the men working the line.
If they ever got the notion that this was what their future held, there would
no doubt be open rebellion. His steed was
breathing heavily but steadily, his body now quite accustomed to the work
demanded of it. The weeks he had spent at the Cascina
had hardened him, firmed him, toned him, until now he was as fit as it was
possible for him to be. Another mission accomplished, Helmut thought
with satisfaction, fondly remembering a montage of scenes from the past week:
the feel of He guided He released At this point, Such
progress after only one week! It took a long
time. Helmut typically used his victims hard, having them bring him to climax
at least once a day, but with Helmut waited a
bit, but when When all the pegs
were off, Helmut retied At last, when the
sun was nearing its zenith, Vincenzo arrived. He
was lugging a wagon behind him that must have contained something fairly
heavy, judging by how it bounced over the ground. Whatever it was was wrapped in bundles of cloth, making it impossible to
tell what shape the object might be. "Ah, Vincenzo, here you are." "Helmut,"
Vincenzo replied. Helmut gestured
toward the tree where "Yes. A fine
one." Not a word from "Well, I
will leave you to him, then. You are a master at what you do, but you
understand that I have a more squeamish stomach. Watching you work would
be... distressing." "Of course.
I understand." Helmut turned to
go. Vincenzo reached behind himself and pulled a
knife from his belt. With no fanfare, he lifted it to "Wait! Stop!
What's going on? Mr. Lehrer! Come back!" Helmut turned
back, but did not approach. "Yes?" "What is
this? What's going on?" He lurched his body from side to side, trying to
avoid the knife, which Vincenzo was waving
menacingly, perilously close to his face. "What's
going on? It is the end of the road, Mr. Newcomb. I did mention to you, did I
not, that Vincenzo had some darker desires that he
could only satisfy here at the Cascina? I am afraid
that you have been selected for him today." The knife made
contact with "No! No, you
can't! Oh, God, no, please don't do this!" Helmut continued
to speak in a conversational tone. "It is unfortunate and, as I said, I
won't be staying to watch. The sight of Vincenzo at
work is most upsetting to me. To be sure, as you've learned, I like causing
men pain, but the kind of pain I cause seldom leads to lasting injury. And
blood is not really my thing." Another flick of
the knife, and "Stop! Oh,
please..." His voice was becoming shrill, frantic. "He tends to
take a long time, a very long time" Helmut said. "What is the term,
'death by a thousand cuts'? Although the actual number on a few of the
corpses he has produced must have exceeded that count. I can only imagine
what those men went through, feeling their life's force ebb away as their
blood seeped out of their bodies, not in one fast jet, but in hundreds of
tiny trickles. What do you suppose they felt toward the end? Do you think
they reached some sort of peace, some kind of acceptance of their fate?" Vincenzo made another red line on "No, please,
no, I'm begging you, don't!" "I suppose
you'll find the answer to that question in due time. Now, I really must be
going." He turned to leave. "Stop! I'll
do anything, just stop this!" Helmut turned
round once again and stepped up to stand next to Vincenzo.
"Anything, did you say?" "Yes,
anything, I'll do anything," "Because 'anything'
is a very broad category, you know. What, exactly, would you be willing to do
to save your life?" He nodded to Vincenzo, who
lowered the knife. With one hand, he gripped "Would you,
for instance, be willing to offer your manhood in exchange for your
life?" "Not an easy
decision, is it? How fortunate for you that it was only a rhetorical
question. But this next one is for real. There is exactly one way for you to
avoid becoming Vincenzo's next victim. Would you
like to know what that is?" "I will tell
you, then. One moment, please." Helmut walked over to the wagon that Vincenzo had brought. He tossed the hunks of cloth out.
Underneath the cloth was the figure of a man, naked as Helmut led the
figure over to join the others. "Here is your one way out," he said
to ... Pedro. Pedro had a gag
in his mouth to prevent him from speaking, and Helmut lowered the hood again
the instant he saw recognition appear on "So. Choose.
You... or him. And choose quickly, lest I let him take the both of you." Vincenzo, still gripping Devon's balls and pulling down
hard, lifted the knife to "Him!"
he squeaked. "Take him instead! Oh, God help me, take Pedro!" "You are
absolutely sure?" "Yes! Let me
go," Vincenzo lowered the knife and released his grip. "Very well,
then," Helmut said. "Vincenzo, it seems Pedro
is all yours."
Pedro's heart is
jumping. No escape. No way out. He knew it from the beginning, he knows it
now. Vincenzo frees Pedro's mouth and uses his knife to cut
Pedro's bonds: when the blade touches his skin, Pedro shivers. That blade,
gently tickling his skin, will soon open his flesh, entering it, slicing
deep. There is a
ferocious delight in Vincenzo's voice: "You can
run. Five minute." The last run.
Pointless, but it must be. Running for his life, running for his death. Pedro
nods. Pedro begins to
run towards the woods. A senseless run, a necessary run. His body aches
from the various ways Vincenzo used him. They both
knew it was only a preparation. The real thing was going to happen during the
day, is happening now. Right now. His body aches but Pedro is running,
running for his life. Or simply running for Vincenzo's
enjoyment, because his murderer likes a good hunt. A thrill kill. Pedro is
running, sweat is pouring in rivulets down his neck and chest, his heart is
beating furiously, but his cock is stiffening. He knows Vincenzo
is going to run after him, death itself is going to run after him, death will
reach him soon, very soon. Pedro's heart is
pounding in his chest, he cannot breathe, the long night has left him
exhausted. He turns to look behind him. Vincenzo is
running down the slope of the hill, he is very near, his knife in his hand,
the same grim smile on his lips. Pedro starts again to run. He can hear his
murderer's running after him, near, nearer, Vincenzo
is grabbing him. Pedro yields to this embrace, but his hands are trying to
stop Vincenzo. Now, it will be now. His body is
struggling, but its struggling is only a way of yielding completely to the
impending death. Vincenzo is stronger, Pedro cannot stop him, they both know
it, but Pedro continues to resist because it is his role in this play they
are performing. Vincenzo doesn't want a willing
sacrifice, a life freely handed to him. He wants to take a life by force. As
Pedro wants his life to be seized from him, not to surrender it. They want
the same thing. Pedro looks at the knife, pointing towards his belly. He
screams. "No,
no!" Then Pedro feels
the sting of Vincenzo's blade in his belly, slowly
entering it through his navel. So strange, to have no pain at first, only a
coldness, a wetness. Then the pain comes, and when it comes it quickly
spreads from his gut to every part of his body. He mutters "Mierda!" His mouth drops
open, he closes his eyes, while the blade slowly, very slowly, finds its way
into his gut, punching his breath from his body. He feels his flesh parting
under the blade, the muscles sliding away from the cut, his intestines
bulging out through the new opening Vincenzo has
made. He can feel Vincenzo's body against his back, Vincenzo's
hard cock pressing against his ass, Vincenzo's heavy
breath in his ears. Then Vincenzo rips the knife out of Pedro's belly. Pedro
grunts. "Mierda," he says again. But he
knows this is what he was craving. The second time Vincenzo rams the knife into Pedro's belly, it is with a
violent thrust, much fiercer than the first gentle brush. Pedro yells, pain
overwhelming him. He catches a glimpse of his life's blood spilling to the
ground in front of him... so much red! His head begins to swim. Only Vincenzo's arms keep him from falling over. A third time Vincenzo drives his knife through Pedro's belly. This
thrust is even more powerful than the last two and the knife sinks deeper yet
into his gut. Pedro can feel the scrape of the steel against his spine. Pedro
moans, he says again "Mier…da....". Vincenzo's arms let him down. Pedro's body collapses. He lies
on the ground on his belly, bleeding slowly, trying to catch his breath,
waiting for the end. Suddenly Vincenzo is on him. He can feel his murderer's cock
entering his ass, ravaging him furiously. He moans. Vincenzo
grunts. It feels like only seconds later that Vincenzo
is shooting into Pedro's ass. Then Pedro feels the cock pulling out and he is
left empty. Vincenzo turns the dying body over, forcing Pedro to face
him. Vincenzo lies down on Pedro, his eyes staring
into Pedro's eyes, the slick wet blood pooling between their bodies. Pedro
looks at his murderer's face. He can feel Vincenzo's
stale breath. He feels like he
is drowning. Taking a breath becomes more and more difficult. He is cold all
over, except in his belly, where he burns with fire. He coughs. Red flecks
fly into the air. Death comes
slowly, but in his agony, Pedro knows this is the way he wanted it. Vincenzo gets up. He put his knife under Pedro's cock and
balls. "Cazzo e coglioni non ti servono." Vincenzo is right: Pedro doesn't need his cock and balls
anymore. He can die without them. But when Vincenzo
does it, Pedro screams anyway. He says, for the last time, or maybe only
thinks it, "Mierda..." Then he turns his
head and life slowly fades from his eyes. Vincenzo looks at Pedro's lifeless carcass and smiles. It
was good, really good. He liked it. No better place to stick a cock than
the ass of a dying faggot. He looks at his
own body, full of the blood of his latest kill. "Bellissimo..."
he murmurs. He rubs his hands through the slick liquid, feels the stickiness. The first fly
lands on the meat on the ground. He leaves it to its explorations. I'll
dispose of the carcass later, he thinks, after one last humiliation
for the English prick… Helmut watched
Pedro run off - well, hobble would be a better term - into the trees. The
five minutes before Vincenzo left to follow him
felt like an eternity, an awkward silence that would not end. Vincenzo moved off at last, a vicious leer on his face,
lumbering up the slope, not bothering to be stealthy. More minutes passed,
and then shouts, screams echoed over the hills. One particularly loud scream
caused The scream
dissolved into a ghastly, liquid gurgle, and then there was silence. Helmut
watched It was evident
all over his body. He sagged in his bonds, too drained to make a sound,
stinking of the after-wash of fear, of narrowly-escaped peril. His eyes shone
with relief at having survived, but they were haunted with the guilt of
having thrown another man to the wolves in his place. And make no mistake: Vincenzo was a wolf, however human he might appear to be. Devon would never
know that Pedro was already a dead man no matter what Vincenzo returned, blood covering his bare chest, his hands,
his arms. He stood in front of "Puliscimi il cazzo, stronzo." Vincenzo didn't try for a second climax. When he had
sufficiently humiliated the Englishman, he pulled back, hiked up his
trousers, and, with a nod to Helmut, began towing the wagon over the ground in
the direction where Pedro's body presumably lay. After he was
gone, Helmut stared at It was a
magnificent sight, but even so, Helmut could feel himself gradually losing
interest. It always happened this way - for him, the joy was in the process,
not the end result. Taking a man down, ripping him apart, shattering him into
a million pieces, whether through physical or sexual or mental abuse... THAT
was erotic. The wasted shell that was left behind after he was finished? Not
so much. Now that That hollowness
was not a pleasant feeling, but fortunately, Helmut knew how to deal with it. Next
up is that Danish fellow, he thought as he untied " Devon had taken a
few extra days of holiday after his return from He turned from
the coffee pot to face Helen from Finance. "Wow, you
look... you've been working out, haven't you?" From another
woman, the words might have been flirtatious, but Helen was in her sixties
and happily married. He could take the compliment at face value. "Ah, er, yes, a bit," he murmured in reply, hoping to
hand her the coffee pot and get back to his desk, but it was not to be.
Miriam heard the commotion and came by, and then they descended on him like a
pack of hounds. He tried to fend
them off with generic platitudes, but they pried the details out of him one
by one. He, of course, did not tell them the truth, but rather half-truths
and plausible-sounding stories based on a kernel of truth. But the actual
truth? Never. It was well over
an hour before the hubbub finally died down and he could make his way back to
his desk. He tried to focus on catching up on weeks' worth of e-mails and
piled-up papers. It felt wholly, utterly surreal, this return to his mundane
existence. There was a dream-like quality to everything, as though if he
punched the wall hard enough, it would ripple and shudder and break and the
whole world would dissolve into formlessness. Some time later,
he became aware of a presence behind him. He turned to see Gavin standing
there. They stared at each other for a long while. Finally, Gavin
spoke. "So," he said. "Now you know." Neither of them
ever mentioned the subject again. *** More stories are available at http://powauthor.blogspot.com |
