The Bey’s Lover

Heat, shit, and the ripe stench of death. That’s the first greeting Jacopo gets as he lumbers up the dirt road cut through the acacia scrub, a dozen Turkish guards pushing the crowd back with their spears, faces swaddled in rags. The stink’s so bad, even the bastards who do the impaling are spitting in the sand and cursing every breath.

Jacopo doesn’t blink. He strides between two of the guards, ducking his shaven head as if a fly has landed on it, not even looking at the musket butt some greasy Janissary jabs at his ribs. He knows where to go. This is the fourth time he’s been called to witness a staking in Medinur, but the first time it’s personal. And he has to see the finish.

They’re up on the hilltop where the wind’s supposed to keep the smell off the town, but today the air is so dead it’s like the corpses are breathing. Two stakes, planted maybe ten feet apart, their shadows black as oil on the dirt. One supports a naked, bloated man—white skin turned greenish purple, covered in black sores, a cloud of bluebottles swirling around his belly. The other stake is even more gruesome: a man alive, barely, his hands tied behind his back, ankles spread wide, the sharp tip of the pole vanishing into the wreckage of his ass.

Jacopo stands and watches. He recognizes both men immediately: Daniele the living one, Bartolomeo the dead. Venice bred them hard, but the Turks finished the job.

Three days ago, the two had tried to kill the bey with a stiletto smuggled into the palace. They botched it, and the bey’s torturers had their fun for an hour before sentencing. But Bartolomeo never screamed. When the jailers opened the cell to haul him to the stake, they found Daniele kneeling by his side, a strip of linen twisted around Bartolomeo’s neck, face already purple and tongue sticking out like a dog’s. Mercy, maybe, or cowardice.

Doesn’t matter now. Bartolomeo’s corpse has been marinating on the stake for six days. The belly has swollen to the size of a wine cask, and the skin is stretched so tight across the ribs that it’s split in a dozen places, purple meat and pus oozing. The groin’s a shredded mess. Jacopo wonders how much of that is rot, how much is the executioner’s handiwork.

Daniele, though. That’s where the crowd’s eyes are. They say the stake is supposed to miss the heart and run between the shoulder blades, so the man dies slow, sometimes a week. Daniele is alive, but not for long.

Jacopo walks up close, ignoring the curses from the Turks, and stares at the two. Daniele’s face is unrecognizable, cheeks caked in black blood, lips peeled back to the teeth, eyes barely open. The hair is matted, full of sand and dried shit.

The Turks had a trick. They’d take a bucket of human shit and smear it over the man’s crotch, his thighs, his face. Supposed to draw the flies, make the dying more unpleasant. It works. There are flies everywhere—burrowing into Daniele’s asshole, eating out his eyelids, swarming his cock and balls, now swollen to double their size and purple with bruises. Bartolomeo’s genitals are black and shriveled, but they’re still attached. For now.

A young Janissary, barely old enough to grow a beard, makes a face and spits. “Filthy pig. You want to see his end?”

Jacopo grins, baring his teeth, and doesn’t answer. The soldier glares at him but doesn’t dare do more; Jacopo’s owned by the bey, and you don’t damage the bey’s property without permission.

Instead, he steps back and lets the chief executioner—an ancient Moor with no eyebrows and hands like wooden mallets—do his work.

A hush spreads through the crowd as the executioner approaches the stakes. He has a long knife, the blade dark with old blood, and he tests the edge on his palm. The man walks to Daniele, studies him, then grabs his cock in one hand and stretches it out, pulling the balls down so the sack is tight.

Daniele tries to scream, but nothing comes. His head is so far back on his neck, the chin digging into the chest, that his mouth is only a hole. The executioner saws at the base of the cock with the knife. The blade is sharp, but the skin is tough. Blood pours down Daniele’s thighs, but he barely moves.

The executioner peels away the cock and balls, drops them on the ground, then turns to Bartolomeo’s stake and does the same: grabs the dead man’s withered cock, cuts it off, and tosses it in the dust. For a moment, the air is full of the sweet, rank scent of hot meat.

The Moor isn’t done. He picks up both sets of genitals and carries them to the crowd, holding them high in his fists. Then he walks back to the stakes, jams Bartolomeo’s cock and balls into Daniele’s mouth, and Daniele’s into Bartolomeo’s. The crowd howls, the Turks spit on the ground, and even the women watching from behind the wall of guards laugh and point.

Jacopo feels his own cock swelling, thickening in his trousers. He doesn’t look away. Something about the sight—a man’s body destroyed, reduced to meat, the ultimate humiliation—makes him so hard he has to put a hand over it to hide the tent.

He remembers Daniele from the days on the galleys. The man was soft, sensitive. But here, now, on the stake, he takes it like a fucking saint. Jacopo feels something hot and shameful in his chest. Maybe it’s envy. Maybe it’s hunger.

Daniele is almost gone. His eyes roll up, his head lolls, and a line of drool slides out from the corners of his mouth, carrying with it a clot of blood and Bartolomeo’s shriveled cockhead. The executioner walks around the stake, taps Daniele’s ribs with the knife, and then steps back.

Jacopo lingers, watching the flies dig into the man’s wounds, listening to the crowd start to break up as the show ends. Someone throws a stone at the base of the stake. Someone else shouts that Daniele’s a dog, a coward, a eunuch. But Jacopo feels only a cold kind of awe.

That’s a death for a man. A real end. He wonders what it would be like, feeling the wood push up through your guts, knowing everyone is staring at your balls, your face, your suffering.

He thinks about the bey, and the nights in the palace, the endless fucking, the flattery, the gifts. He thinks about the years he’s been a slave, a fucktoy, a favorite. Suddenly it all seems hollow, a string of empty days.

He wants the stake. He wants that pain, that humiliation, that end. He wants to be more than a whore with a big cock; he wants to be meat on a stick, remembered for how he died.

Jacopo spits in the dirt, turns, and walks back down the hill, the taste of blood and shit and rot still thick in his nose.

Jacopo doesn’t go home. He stands by the stakes, long after the crowd has drifted back to the city gates. The guards don’t know what to do with him; he’s too big to shove, too important to ignore. They keep glancing at the lieutenant, waiting for an order, but the man shrugs and pretends not to see.

The sun moves. Shadows shorten. The air turns to molten glass, the smell of rot doubling and then tripling as Bartolomeo’s belly grows tight as a drum. The flies breed and breed. Daniele’s head sags on his shoulders, the wounds on his ass and thighs pooling blood that cakes in black streaks. The shit smeared on his chest has dried to a crust, but the heat brings out its stink again.

He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t look away. He’s waiting for something, but doesn’t know what.

When Daniele finally dies, it’s not an event, just a slow unwinding: a shudder, a thread of piss running down the wood, a last jaw-clenching and then the jaw lets go. His eyes, already blank, turn even whiter. The flies march in and out of his mouth, harvesting the blood and whatever else the executioner stuffed in there.

Jacopo stays. He stares. He doesn’t move even when the soldiers start to grumble and wish him gone. Eventually the lieutenant comes, standing a careful five feet off, and barks, “You see enough, pig?”

Jacopo grins. “Not nearly.” He walks up to Daniele’s corpse, close enough to touch it, and takes in the mess: the shriveled balls in the mouth, the cock gone, the shithouse stink.

He walks away then, through the town, ignoring the people who make the sign of the cross or spit at his feet. He goes back to the bey’s palace by the slowest possible route, letting the sweat soak his clothes and the sun bake his head. He is thinking of the stake and how it would feel inside him, the way it would start slow and then burn, the way he would last for days.

He steps through the palace gates, through the tiled halls that smell of lemon and rosewater. The guards at the door almost gag as he passes; he laughs in their faces, not even bothering to wave his hand.

The bey is waiting. He’s sprawled on a silk divan in his audience chamber, a dwarf fanning him, a young boy kneeling at his feet. The bey looks up, sees Jacopo, and sneers.

“You stink like a carcass, animal. Go wash before I have you whipped.”

Jacopo walks up to him, close enough that the bey recoils. “No,” Jacopo says. “This is my scent. You don’t like it, plug your nose.”

The bey’s eyes bulge. “You insolent dog! You forget who owns you? I don’t want your shit and sweat, I want your cock. Clean it or I’ll fuck your throat with the cane instead.”

Jacopo shrugs. “I’m done with you.”

The bey is speechless for a second, then red with fury. He slaps the dwarf away, rises, and stands chest to chest with Jacopo. “You want to die? I can arrange that, fucker. I’ll have you impaled like your friends. You’ll shit blood for a week while the crows pick your eyes.”

Jacopo smiles, a real smile, teeth white and even. “Better the stake than your ass. At least it’s honest work.”

The bey sputters, waving for the guards. “Put this animal in the dungeons! Chain him up, let the rats chew his balls before I turn him over to the headsman!”

They drag Jacopo away, but he doesn’t fight. He laughs, the sound echoing in the marble halls, the taste of Daniele’s end hot and sweet on his tongue.

At dawn they haul Jacopo out of the cell, half-blind with thirst and dried shit caked on his thighs. Two guards frog-march him through the tunnels, past the kitchens where the smell of cooking mutton makes his stomach heave, out to the palace yard where the air already burns.

No time for ceremony. They rip the rags off his back, leaving him naked in front of the gathered soldiers, a few slaves, and the palace staff that have come to watch. Even in chains, Jacopo towers over them. The sergeant of the guard barks a command, and four men hoist a fresh stake off the ground. It’s longer than Jacopo is tall, the tip sanded to a splintered point.

The soldiers make a show of passing it hand to hand, pretending to struggle with the weight, grunting and swearing in Turkish. Then they shove it at Jacopo’s chest. “Carry it,” the sergeant spits. “You earned it.”

Jacopo wraps his arms around the wood. It’s rough and sticky with sap. He shoulders the burden and looks down the shaft to the tip, so sharp it could skewer a goat in one stroke. The thought of that entering his ass makes his balls clench, but also—Christ—he feels the blood stirring in his cock again, rising with every step.

They march him through the gates, into the streets of Medinur. Word spreads fast. Within minutes there’s a mob, all shouting, laughing, spitting at him. The women cover their mouths, but their eyes never leave his groin. Some of the kids run alongside, throwing stones, but most just point and howl at the sight of the naked Christian with his monster cock wagging, stake on his shoulder like a cross.

At one corner a fishwife throws the guts of a squid at his face, but Jacopo never flinches. He trudges on, sweat pouring down his chest, his own stink mixing with the fresh sawdust of the wood. The chain between his ankles makes every step a short, heavy shuffle.

Halfway up the hill, someone dumps a chamber pot from a second-story window. The shit splashes down his back, warm and viscous, smearing his shoulders and pooling in the crack of his ass. The mob goes wild, screaming with laughter. Jacopo just grins, showing them his teeth.

He feels alive. The humiliation, the pain, the certainty of what’s coming—it’s a fuckload better than the numbness of palace life. He sees the stakes up ahead, Bartolomeo and Daniele still rotting on their perches, and he knows he belongs there, part of that forest of agony.

His cock, hard as a club, bobs with every step. Even the guards notice, muttering in low voices, and one of them shoves Jacopo hard, trying to break his stride. He doesn’t stumble.

He walks straight up to the scaffold at the foot of the hill, drops the stake to the dirt, and stands waiting, eyes on the bodies above. He’s ready for whatever comes next.

They don’t let Jacopo stand. The guards seize him by the elbows and force him face-down in the dirt, hands twisted behind his back and bound at the wrists. His sweat is so thick that dust cakes to every part of him, turning his skin a dull gray.

Above him, Bartolomeo’s belly has finally split. Maggots spill from the gash, sliding down the stake in ropes. Jacopo can’t look away from it, even as the guards use a pitchfork to pin his head to the ground. His nose fills with the smell of blood and offal and shit, his whole body trembling from the effort not to throw up.

They stretch his legs wide and use two thick ropes to hold his ankles to stakes pounded into the ground. He’s helpless, ass high, cock and balls mashed in the dirt. He hears laughter behind him—some Turkish joke about a pig at market—but the words blur in his ears.

The executioner steps up. Jacopo doesn’t see him, but he feels the man’s heavy boots, hears the clink of the knife being drawn from its sheath. He expects some speech, some ritual, but there’s nothing. Just a sudden, icy pressure against his asshole, then a stabbing pain as the blade slips inside, slicing deep and fast.

Jacopo screams. The pain is worse than any fucking he’s ever had, like someone shoved a burning stick up his guts. His cock, stiff a second ago, shrivels and retreats, balls pulling up tight. Blood pours out, hot and slick, soaking his thighs.

The executioner pulls the blade free, wipes it on Jacopo’s back, then grabs a handful of cotton and jams it into the wound. Jacopo shudders, almost passes out. His head is ringing, mouth open and drooling in the dirt. He tries to curse, but all that comes out is a wet animal grunt.

The guards laugh harder now. One spits on Jacopo’s back, another shoves his face deeper into the earth.

The stake is next. He feels it as a shadow first—a sudden absence of sun on his back—then the scrape of the wood as it’s placed between his thighs. The point is sticky with resin and blood. Jacopo tries to brace himself, but the ropes on his ankles and the pitchfork on his skull hold him fast.

The executioner lines up the stake and shoves. The point jams against the cut, then slides in with a sickening pop. Jacopo howls, muscles spasming so hard he almost tears his own arms free. The pain is everywhere, in his belly, his chest, his eyes.

The executioner takes a wooden mallet and begins to pound. Each blow drives the stake deeper, spreading Jacopo’s insides, smashing through tissue, bone, whatever’s in the way. He feels it rising through him, tearing a path up his spine, flooding him with new agony at every inch.

He tries to scream again, but all that comes out is blood and bile. He can taste the iron, can feel it dribbling down his chin.

The crowd is silent now, just the sound of the mallet and the wet squelch of the stake entering his body. Jacopo’s vision goes white. He thinks of Daniele and Bartolomeo, thinks of the bey and his cold, greedy hands, thinks of every fuck and every humiliation and how this, finally, is the end.

He groans, spits, and lets the pain take him. It’s better than anything he’s ever felt.

They hoist him up while he’s still conscious. The soldiers use ropes slung under his arms, pulling until the world tilts and the sky burns blue overhead. The stake sinks further, an inch at a time, through ruined flesh and up into his belly. He hears a tearing inside, like a sail ripping in a gale, and fresh blood gurgles out of his mouth.

The pain is all-consuming. Nothing else exists—no city, no guards, no sky—just the red-hot axis of wood inside him, the slow grinding stretch as his own body weight impales him deeper.

They wedge the base of the stake into a pit and pack it with stones. Someone checks the angle, makes a joke about Jacopo’s cock being a sundial, then walks off. They leave him there, upright and naked, dripping blood, chained to his own agony.

It takes hours for his mind to come back, piece by piece. At first, there is only pain and light, the hammering of his heart, and the taste of iron. Then the other senses return: the reek of rot, the endless swarm of flies on his face, his tongue, his cock, his bleeding ass.

Above and beside him, Bartolomeo and Daniele sag on their stakes, less men than ragged bags of meat. Bartolomeo’s belly is a stretched drum, so swollen that it wobbles in the breeze, the skin paper-thin and blotched with blue. Daniele is already picked clean by the birds, eyes gone, cheeks slashed open, genitals stuffed in his mouth.

Jacopo watches them, and for the first time in his life feels he understands what it means to die. Not a quick death, not a flash of knives and then darkness. This is a death with a memory, a performance, a lesson for every fucker in Medinur who stares at his corpse and remembers how he screamed.

He wants to scream more, but his voice is gone. He manages a whisper, a curse, then loses it. His body slumps, and the stake drives up another finger’s width, jamming hard behind his ribs. The agony sharpens, then dulls, then sharpens again. He learns to ride the waves, how to breathe shallow, how to close his eyes and let the flies clean his face.

Night comes. The air cools, the pain lessens, replaced by a new misery: thirst, cold, the buzz of mosquitoes. Insects crawl into every wound, lay eggs in his flesh. He can feel the maggots squirming under his skin by morning.

He thinks of the bey, and the palace, and the endless procession of days that all seemed the same. He thinks of his cock and what he once was, and how this, the slow destruction of himself, is the only thing that’s ever made sense.

He watches the city as it wakes. People come to see him: old women who shake their heads, boys who throw pebbles at his balls, men who just stare and laugh. By midday the pain is less and less, replaced by a numbing cold. He knows the end is coming, and he welcomes it.

That afternoon, Bartolomeo’s belly bursts. It happens with a wet, ripping sound and a spray of black liquid, followed by a waterfall of maggots and rotted guts. The crowd howls in disgust and delight, and some of it lands on Jacopo, splattering his legs and chest with the stinking, crawling mess.

He laughs, or tries to, but only blood comes out. The last thing he feels is the swarm of flies burying themselves in his eyes, his nose, every hole and cut. He wonders if this is what he was born for.

He lets go, and the city turns red and gold in the sunset.

Third day. Jacopo is barely awake at all, mind drifting in a sour stew of heat and thirst and pain. Sometimes he opens his eyes and the world swims with light, the sky melting into Bartolomeo’s dripping corpse and the flies that never leave his mouth. Sometimes he dreams, but the dreams are worse than the pain.

Each time he wakes, the stake is deeper. The world is smaller. The laughter of the crowd is gone, replaced by the buzz of flies. His skin is crawling, not just with bugs but with fever, sweat dried to salt crusts and every cut packed with wriggling life.

He knows what’s coming. When the executioner walks up the hill in the afternoon, knife gleaming in the sun, Jacopo can barely lift his head. He sees the gloved hand, the blade, the smear of shit on the sleeve. He understands.

The hand grabs his cock and balls. Even half-dead, they’re big enough to fill a fist. The knife bites down, fast and deep. The pain is sharp, not like the slow murder of the stake, but pure and white-hot, and for a second Jacopo finds his voice and shrieks.

The executioner slices, then rips the rest off, blood fountaining down Jacopo’s thighs. Before he can even gasp, a mounted soldier leans in, grabs the severed cock and balls, and stuffs them into Jacopo’s mouth. He gags, spits, but the hand is relentless. The meat wedges behind his teeth, filling his mouth with a taste worse than death.

He convulses, jerking against the stake, legs kicking, head flopping from side to side. The crowd is gone, but the guards watch from a distance, too sickened by the smell to come close. Jacopo’s last hour is a series of blackouts and blinding shocks of agony. He can’t even curse them anymore.

He dies with his own genitals jammed in his mouth, eyes bulging and lips peeled back in a wet, broken snarl.

The stake stays up for a week. Jacopo’s body rots alongside Daniele and Bartolomeo, a trio of meat flags in the Medinur wind. The insects feast. His belly swells, splits, and floods the ground with more maggots. The crows come, the dogs, the rats.

Nobody takes the bodies down. The bey likes the lesson: what happens to traitors, what happens to those who refuse his love. For months afterward, the stink of Jacopo’s corpse lingers in the town, and the people who walk past the hill remember his face, and his cock, and the way he looked at the end like a man finally free.

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