Peter wakes with sun streaming through his bedroom window.
His mother is knocking on the bedroom door. "Darling - there's cereal on the kitchen table and milk in the fridge. We won't be too long. We'll be back to run you back to school this evening. I've put your uniform in our room. No point wearing home clothes today, Peter. See you soon Darling."
He listens to them in the house below, then hears the front door slam. The car starting. Driving off. Silence.
Motes of dust drift through the sunlight.
He puts both hands behind his head, his legs open in a V. He tries to remember the nice things he did over the summer. He tries not to think about the coming term, but images of the school loom over him like prison walls.
Suddenly he sweeps the cover off the bed and stands, a small, thin, plain boy with tousled brown hair. He runs his fingers across the five precious pubes at the base of his cock that the summer has brought. He checks. Still none under his arms. He skins back his tight foreskin and turns side-on to see his pale cherry cock-head bounce.
Toy soldiers are everywhere, hurting his feet as he steps over them.
He pads into his parents room. On the bed are his jacket and black and yellow tie. His shirt. His school shorts. Grey long socks with green flashes at the top. White y-fronts that he knows are too big for him. His mother buys everything two sizes to big, for him to grow into. He doesn't bother with any of it except the shorts that he pulls on and fixes with a snake clasp belt around his slim waist.
In the kitchen he splashes water in his face by way of washing himself for the day ahead. It makes him feel less sleepy. He eats his cereal at the kitchen table with his bare feet on the lino and the big spoon knocking his teeth.
He returns to the carnage of his toy soldiers.
He carefully sets each soldier on their feet. Then, with a rough hewn catapult and folded paper for ammo, he shoots them down in a fantasy of power.
Until he is bored.
Outside a blazing hot summer day is in full glory.
He feels sweaty. He opens the window of his bedroom that looks down on the suburban street below. It is deserted. Standing in full view of the street he pulls at his shorts until they drop to his ankles. He stands with his erection growing, daring anyone to see him. Minutes pass.
He pulls up his shorts, sucking in his stomach as he re-fastens the clasp. He goes to then bed, reaching under it to retrieve a jumble of dressing gown cord, thin rope and an old tie of his father's. Sitting cross-legged on the floor by the bed, his spine arched under the soft brown skin of his back, he carefully knots separate cords around each of the bed legs. Checking to see that each is firmly tied. Then, he forms loops in each of the cords and places them on the four corners of the bed, stands and admires his handy- work. Remembering, he finds his swiss army knife, opens a blade, and puts it by the pillow.
Skipping downstairs he goes first to the kitchen where he finds an open pack of chocolate chip cookies. He walks around the house finishing the pack, pacing. Then down the hallway to the frosted glass of the front door. He carefully turns the yale lock and puts it on the latch. He opens the door and stands for a while on the doorstep in his bare feet, half naked in just his school shorts. Satisfied that the street is empty, he retreats inside and removes his shorts which he leaves on the floor where they drop. He opens the front door again and peers round it. Then steps outside.
Naked on his own doorstep he stands in the shadows and fondles himself, looking all around while he grows hard. He is startled by a bird and slips back inside.
He opens the door a crack. Wider. Too much. He corrects it. The doors stands open, but a passer by might miss the fact.
Leaving the door ajar he grabs his shorts and hurries back upstairs. He leaves his bedroom door wide open.
He sits in the middle of the bed and slips his right foot through the noose of the dressing gown cord tied to the bottom right bed- leg. Then, with a bit of difficulty, the left through the noose formed by his dad's old tie. His legs are now splayed wide.
He lies flat. His left hand finds the noose above and slips in. By pulling the noose tightens on his wrist.
With a final check that his penknife is in reach, he slips the remaining thin wrist through the rope noose and pulls to tighten it. Unusually, the knot tightens right at the back of his wrist, where bending his slender fingers, he cannot reach it. He tries to twist his wrist to move the knot, but it simply tightens more.
A little flush of fear ripples through him.
He wriggles on the bed, but his legs are firmly splayed apart. His left hand is tightly held. His right has some slack, but he cannot reach the knot.
He rotates his head to locate the pen-knife. It is dangerously close to the edge of the bed. If he stretches painfully his fingertip just touch it. As he does, it shifts a fraction closer to the edge.
He freezes. Breathing hard he tries to think.
He wriggles and squirms and pulls hard on every tie to try to break one. To no avail. He dare not rock the bed and keeps looking for the knife.
It is hot in the bedroom. Airless. He is trapped. His cock now flaccid. His bare knees. Heaving flat stomach. Brown nipples, sweaty neck. His brown eyes. His bare feet, toes curled. Red marks around his wrists and ankles. Splayed in an X. And the front door of the house ajar.
Eustace Worthing rubs his spectacles between finger and thumb in his soiled handkerchief before returning them to perch on his nose.
He is hot in his worn suit and weary from his futile knocking on doors. The housewives are against him. He is convinced that they phone ahead to warn each other that "The man from the Pru" is on his way. How else to explain the repetition of the very same phrases? "Not today thank you." "My husband deals with these things." Identical excuses on identical doorsteps.
And the heat. The intolerable heat.
Above him the sun beats on his neck like a hammer. His suit itches and a river of sweat slips down his spine. His shirt sticks.
He looks up and down the street and feels faintly nauseous at the suburban banality. The neat hedges. The watered gardens. The quiet. Someone is mowing their lawn.
He moves from house to house, refusing to be downbeat. Before knocking or ringing the bells he fixes a smile on his thin lips.
Another identical doorstep, looking for the buzzer.
The door is ajar. His hopes rise. Someone must be in.
"Sir..., Madam...? Could I take a few minutes of your time to..."
He pushes lightly on the door and it opens inward a few inches.
He looks back down the street.
He steps inside. Into the cool. He extracts his handkerchief to mop his neck and pushes the door behind him, without closing it.
"Hello?"
The house is silent.
"Anybody home? Hello?"
It is not often that Eustace Worthing feels adrenaline run through his body. But he feels like a thief. Inside someone's home without permission. His heart is racing.
"Hello?"
A noise above.
"Hello! So sorry to trouble you. Your door was open. Did you know? I thought I should warn you. Hello?"
Silence.
He puts his battered briefcase down and rubs his sweaty hands against his trouser legs.
"Are you okay up there? Do you need assistance?"
If he has to help the invalid, he is sure he will make a sale. His excitement starts to rise.
"I could help you. May I... may I come up? Are you alright up there?"
He strains to hear. He is convinced someone is up there. But the same servility that has undermined his ability to close a sale his whole professional career, now makes him hesitant to ascend the stairs.
His watery eyes flick over the hall furniture. A family home. A woman's touch, but a pair of boots obviously for a man and a man's raincoat on the rack. Another pair for a child.
Perhaps it is a child upstairs.
Eustace Worthing reaches out to steady himself.
What if it is a child? A boy? They look like a pair of boots for a boy. Black. Small. You wouldn't buy black boots for a girl. Or would you? The quirks of the middle-classes never cease to puzzle him. A class he has never belonged to despite years of service to the Pru. A middle class job, some might think. But not Eustace Worthing. He was now, and always had been, an outsider.
A boy?
Upstairs?
Alone?
Eustace dabs his reptilian lips with the handkerchief.
"Don't be alarmed. I only want to help. I am coming upstairs now just to see if you are okay."
As he slowly ascends the stairs, something hard drops to the floor in one of the rooms above him.
At the top of the stairs he stops. To his left the door is wide open. A boy's room from the look of it. Toy soldiers lie scattered all over the floor. The bed is hidden from view.
His heart is pounding in his ears.
To his right two more doors. Ahead, perhaps the bathroom.
He puts his head around the door to the boy's room.
An open penknife is on the floor by the bed. And on the bed; a half naked, spreadeagled, tied, blushing little boy - eyes scrunched shut.
Eustace Worthing, steps out of the room back onto the landing and sets down his briefcase. He steadies himself against the bannister.
He has to sit.
He crumples. Slides down the wall.
He feels cold. Clammy.
He sits on the floor, clasping his knees a man in a small life, lived poorly. The bullies he endured. The thousand small humiliations of the salesman. The compromises. The money he is owed. The relationships that came to nothing. He puts his head between his knees.
Someone is going to find him here.
They will be back any minute.
He tilts his jaw into his chest. The hidden fantasies that stalk him. The dark lusts. The circling images of young boys, fantasy boys, like buzzards in a blue sky. Blurred into the cruelty of boys who had bullied him all those many, many years ago. Middle class boys. Cruel, superior, haughty, snobbish pricks who had laughed at him and humiliated him and cut him with their words.
He should leave. Right now.
In an instant he is transported back to the swirling chaos of his childhood. He cringes at the onslaught. Hugs his knees tighter.
He tells himself to breathe. He calms himself. He has had these panic attacks before. He knows how to get through them. He gives himself time.
There is no time.
Slowly he gets to his feet. He has to take this part slowly. If he gets up quickly he knows he will collapse again.
He stands at last. Rests his forehead against the wall a while.
He moves down the wall hand over hand for support.
He opens one of the doors to the other bedrooms. He should leave. A double bed. A school uniform laid out. A blazer.
He picks up the school tie. The blazer. He runs his bony fingers over the embroidered crest.
He feels anger welling. Feels it pulse then flow through him. Feels it wrap around his heart.
Then feels it pierce, like ice, slowly and with hard pressure.
He stands straight. Combs his hair with his fingers.
He picks up the blazer and turns it around. Weighing it. Disgusted by it.
They wore this sort of blazer.
Those bullies.
And in the other room.
That sort of boy.
Exactly that sort of boy.
Eustace Worthing walks confidently downstairs. He shuts and locks the front door. He checks the kitchen and living room. The dining room and the rear garden. He checks the back door and finds it locked.
He almost sprints up stairs and into the boy's bedroom.
"Well, well. What have we here?"
The boy's eyes open. His mouth opens wider.
Eustace Worthing goes to the window, treading on toy soldiers, and pulls the cotton curtains shut. The room is bathed in light bue.
"Nothing to say?" He looks at the wide eyes.
He crosses to the bed. He kneels.
"Someone tie you up?"
No answer.
"Let's see what a job they made of it."
He notices the thin rope that secures the boy's right arm has a lot of slack in it. He pulls the whole bed away from the wall and moves around to get to it. He unties the clumsy knot around the bed leg, pulls the boy's arm tight and reties it. He decides the left arm needs no adjustment. He notices the wrists are red.
The dressing gown cord and the old tie holding the boy's feet are tightly knotted around the bed-legs. He patiently unpicks the knots to retie them so that the boy is splayed wide.
He sits beside the boy.
"That's better, isn't it."
"Please sir." The boy is whispering.
"I'm sorry, what was that?" He leans his ear to the boy's mouth.
"Please let me go.... My mum will be home any minute... I..."
He puts his hand on the boy's heaving chest.
Soft skin beneath hard fingers.
"Who tied you up?"
"This boy..."
"What's his name?"
Panic in the boy's face. "Er..."
"You tied yourself up didn't you?"
"No, no it was him. It was a joke. Please let me up."
"You tied yourself up, and left the door open. Did you want to be found like this?"
"I swear it was him."
"Who?"
"The boy... I..."
Peter gasps as fingers grasp his testicles. And pull.
"Stop! Stop, okay okay."
"Okay what? You are sweating."
Peter is damp with sweat.
The man is rubbing a thumb along his flaccid cock.
"Please, please, if I tell you, will you let me go?"
No reply, just the teasing thumb.
He strains but the knots all hold. "Please!"
The thumb rubs over his pubes. It rolls over his dick, rubs his cock head.
"You don't look old enough for these." The man gets up to kneel by the bed and inspect the boy's scrotum. He picks the hairs between thumb and forefinger and tweaks.
"Ow!"
"Ow! Don't!"
"OW!"
"That's better."
The thumb, followed by two fingers rolls his cock, presses it, drags on his foreskin. "Is this what you wanted to happen when you were found?"
Peter's head rolls left and right. He is biting his lip.
The man does not stop. He is relentless. The thumb rolls and plays.
"Ah, there it goes. Now we'll see. That's it. Coming along nicely now."
Peter's head thrashes from side to side.
"What a hard little rod under that silky skin!"
The man puts his hands either side of Peter's head and holds him firmly. Peter smellsl sour skin as the man leans in. "Open your mouth." Dry lips are against his. "Open!" A tongue slips between his lips, against his teeth. The hands press against his cheeks. He opens his teeth a fraction and suddenly the man's tongue is in his mouth, around his tongue, sucking, invading.
Peter stares at the wall behind the bed. His Dr. Who poster. The black Dalek. The man's hand is masturbating him firmly now, the tongue still deep and alive inside his mouth. The man is leaning on his left arm. Pins and needles torture him but he cannot move an inch. His legs are wide open and his balls and cock defenceless.
The tongue withdraws.
Fingers peel back his foreskin.
The man's head is over his stomach.
"Do you masturbate with other boys?"
"No!"
His testicles are in the vice again. "Don't lie."
"I swear!"
The man's face is in his. "Are you a virgin?"
The boy's eyes are wide.
"Never been sucked?
A shake of the small head.
"Never been wanked?"
Another shake.
"Never been fucked?"
The boy looks puzzled. "That's for girls." he whispers.
"Oh really?"
He can see that the boy's mind is in overdrive.
"Boys can be fucked you know."
"No they can't."
"Yes they can."
Eustace Worthing sits up. He realises the boy has no idea. He lets go of the boy's penis and runs his hands up the boy's smooth thighs, over his downey arms, over his smooth stomach, tracing the nipples, kneading the armpits.
"Perhaps you didn't know that when you tied yourself up."
Confusion is all over Peter's face.
He slides his hand under the boy. "Here."
The boy bucks.
"Didn't think of that did you?"
They are staring at each other. He can see a terrible dawning on the boy's face.
"I'll tell you what..."
Eustace bends down and picks up six plastic soldiers. He stands them upright on the boy's chest and stomach. He bends and picks up a few more and balances them on the boy's thighs. "If you manage to have all these soldiers still standing upright when I return from downstairs, I won't fuck you. If just one of them falls over, I will." The boy jolts and three fall over immediately. Eustace stands them up again. "Careful now. This is it now, no second chance.... I'll be back."
He leaves the room.
Back in the hallway he pauses. His hand steadies him against the wall. He listens to the house. He can hear the mower outside somewhere distant. The tick of a clock.
He returns to the parent's bedroom. He unties the shoelaces on his worn black shoes. He stuffs his socks into the shoes. He folds his suit trousers and places them alongside his suit jacket. He notes how small the boy's blazer looks compared to his. He finds a coat-hanger for his shirt and drapes his tie around the neck.
He steps out of his Y-fronts and places them on the bed.
Naked and erect he descends the stairs. He finds some Extra Virgin Olive Oil.
With the bottle he climbs the stairs again.
Peter is trying not to breathe. The German officer on his left nipple is at a dangerous angle. The Desert Rat, bayonet fixed, rises and falls on his stomach. He cranes his head carefully to see. He is getting dizzy.
With his legs splayed he can feel his sphincter twitching as his mind races. He tries to calm himself. His cock is soft again.
He hears the man descend the stairs.
Suddenly, Peter thrashes on the bed. The soldiers go flying. He strains and pulls and tries to kick. He wriggles and twists.
He strains and pulls.
He sweats and turns.
Tugs.
Wriggles.
Thrashes his head.
Bucks.
Heaves.
Twists.
Rolls his head.
And lies still.
In the blue room, amidst fallen soldiers, sweating in the summer heat, he swells to a full, aching erection.
He curls his toes.
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