by Reis Asher
"Oh, come on." Garth rolled his eyes. "You're telling me you play it safe? I don't believe you. You didn't stop your exhibitionism when you had something to lose, so why would you now?"
Conrad sighed and turned to Avery. "I might have neglected to mention that Garth here is a lawyer. As frustrating as he is, he's gotten me off of a few inconvenient charges when bribes didn't do the trick."
"Ah," Avery said. The food arrived just in time to avoid more awkward conversation, and Avery tucked in. He devoured his food, the gnawing in his stomach still there once he was done.
Conrad pushed a plate of bacon at him. "I'm full," he complained. "Please, eat it." Some toast followed, along with a large serving of home fries, and Avery slowly came to the realization that Conrad had ordered for both of them. He stuffed himself with gratitude, enjoying the sensation of fullness, like he'd just been to one of his father's business banquets. Though he'd take fried eggs and bacon over caviar any day of the week.
Conrad brushed the toast from his hands. "Down to business. What's the job, Garth? You're not usually this cagey. I hope you didn't call me up just to see me. I'm a very busy man."
"Busy my ass," Garth said. "You're barely paying your bills. I'm tapping a fine clerk down at the bank, and he told me you remortgaged your house."
"That's none of your—"
Avery swallowed. The world around him seemed to slow down. Garth's lips moved in slow-motion, the conversation between Garth and Conrad seeming to exist in another dimension where time flowed differently.
Conrad was out of money already. The fact hit Avery like a fifty-ton sucker punch to the stomach, and he suddenly felt nauseous. Circle dues were not cheap, though he'd never been privy to exact numbers. There was a reason most Masters owned more than one slave, and that was because the figure didn't go up depending on the amount of slaves owned. Few considered the large financial cost of owning one slave to be worthwhile. The Circle had probably designed it that way on purpose, to stop poor men like Conrad getting into a rich man's game.
The rest of the conversation seemed to blur by. Avery could barely follow the details. He'd retreated into some distant space, trying to process the fact that he'd known all along and been afraid to admit to himself: Conrad couldn't keep him. He was going back to the Circle. To another Master. To be fucked and used again until he was nothing once more, his soul broken, his name stolen, his self buried deep beneath the surface while he killed and fucked and raped for others.
He started to plan a way out.
Conrad
The silence stretched out between them in the car on the ride home, an impenetrable cloud that words couldn't cut through. There was nothing Conrad could say to fix what Garth had said, no platitudes he could offer that would make things okay again.
Garth's request had been exactly what he'd figured: the usual stalker gig. A guitar player he'd been dating was now in with what Garth termed 'the wrong people' and he wanted to 'make sure he was okay'. All Conrad had to do was stake out his new abode for twelve hours, let Garth know he'd moved along in his life and was happy, and he'd get a few hundred bucks. Sometimes he wondered if Garth invented these jobs out of pity, to keep a steady income coming in for Conrad. He could certainly afford it.
Conrad lit up, rolling down the window and exhaling the smoke. He threw the butt out of the moving car and fought the urge to light another in order to calm his nerves. There was a storm coming, both literally and figuratively. The black clouds rolling above them made a good metaphor for the hurt and pain they'd inflict on each other once they were inside the house and the doors were closed.
A low rumble boomed overhead as Conrad pulled in. He exited the car quickly, eager to get inside before the rain started. If they had to fight, he wanted it over with as soon as possible. Avery followed him, keeping his distance as he climbed the porch steps and unlocked the front door. The rain started in earnest, going from zero to torrent in half a second as lightning split the sky. Conrad was glad to get inside and shut the door behind Avery. He threw his keys down on a side table and perched himself on the edge of the recliner. He waited for the inevitable question: "Why didn't you tell me you'd re-mortgaged the house?" but it never came.
Avery simply sat down on a chair and crumpled, like an inflatable doll that had lost its air. He broke into sobs that he'd been holding back too long. He tore off the neck brace, letting it slip to the floor, revealing the ugly steel collar beneath.
Conrad would have preferred a confrontation. Abby had never held back, punching him, clawing him, shoving him, trying to make him hit her, but he never had. He'd just let her lay into him, taken his due punishment, and gone on with his life. He'd almost welcomed the pain, because he knew he deserved it.
He felt like he'd earned it more than ever now, but Avery wasn't Abby. He'd been trained never to lay a hand on his Master, or face punishments worse than death. Conditioned to be a nobody, and Conrad had made him into somebody before ripping it all away again. He'd dangled a carrot in front of the man's face, but that carrot had never been his to offer in the first place. The intense cruelty of what he'd done dawned on him.
Avery composed himself, wiping his tears away with an angry swipe of his sleeve across his face. "How long do we have left?"
"Dues are paid for six months. I'm exploring other options. It's not over—"
"Stop it. Stop trying to give me false hope. You can't deliver on your promises. You don't have the means."
"I'm sorry." Conrad swallowed. Avery's words hurt more than any physical violence could have, cutting to the truth of the matter like a knife.
"I can't go back to that life, Conrad. I can't."
"I know." Conrad balled his hands into fists.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't want this. I didn't want you to live in fear."
"That's what being a slave means, Conrad. I used to like fear. I reveled in it. Dancing on a knife's edge made me feel alive. I used to do risky shit for fun. Sleep bareback with HIV-positive men. Cheat on possessive guys in hopes they'd hurt me. Drive fast cars in street races and evade the cops afterwards. I wanted to be dead by the time I was thirty. Live fast, die young—that was my motto. The Circle promised me a life full of danger and risk and I was sick of the safe world I was living in. I was bored. Look at me now. The only mantra I follow is 'be careful what you wish for'. I've gotten exactly what I deserved." Avery closed his eyes. "I wish I'd never met you. You had to charm me with your tender touches and edgy fetishes. You had to make me fall in love with you and now I'm completely fucked." Avery buried his head in his hands. "I never asked for this. I never wanted to be this intimate with someone else. I just wanted to fuck and be fucked. Stupid, clichéd love stories about finding 'real love' and being in an exclusive relationship—those were for other people, for sweet little heterosexual couples. I never wanted that. Until I met you. You got under my skin and you cared, you really fucking cared about me as a person like nobody else ever has."
"It wasn't supposed to be this way," Conrad said. "I saw those eight inches of cock and that pretty face and lost my mind. I wasn't thinking about continuing my dues when I bought you. Then I realized what I'd done, and I couldn't—I just couldn't." He ran his hands down over his face, suddenly feeling all the pits and lines that had come from aging and he felt twenty years older than he actually was. "Tell me what to do, Avery."
"Kill me before they can take me back. Put a gun to my head and pull the trigger. Free me from slavery. My request isn't so melodramatic now, is it?"
"I could never do it," Conrad confessed. "You're right, I am a killer. I've killed people in the line of duty, and I've killed people as a private investigator too. I killed some of the dealers who were chasing Abby down for debts. I even committed a murder-for-hire once—that's what bought me this house and a fair amount of heroin for Abby."
"You killed for money?" Avery asked.
"Poverty is its own kind of slavery, Ave. I did what I had to do for my wif
e. I'm not proud of it, but I already warned you that I'm not one of the good guys. I do what needs to be done in order to survive. Just like you. They made you kill too, didn't they? The Circle offers more than just pleasure slaves."
"Yeah." Avery fell silent.
Conrad waited patiently, wondering if they would leave it at that or if Avery would open one of his mental boxes and unleash a secret from his former life, one of the things he'd locked up tight.
Just when he thought Avery was going to leave it at an affirmative, he started to speak. "One of my Masters…was a rebel army in South America. I found myself fighting for a cause I neither believed in nor cared about. We were high all the time, plied with cocaine and amphetamines to make us fight harder and longer. We fought and we fucked." Avery squeezed his eyes shut. His voice wavered. "There was…there was a village. Our orders were to raze it to the ground. We killed whole families…I don't even remember a lot of it. The one thing I do remember…was this young boy, maybe fourteen or so. The other soldiers…they raped for fun. They raped this kid, over and over. They told me it was my turn and I felt sick to my stomach. The commander ordered me to do the deed, but I couldn't. I took my gun and shot the kid in the head, instead. He fell like a sack of potatoes to the ground. There was blood and brains and—" Avery knelt forward and threw up on the carpet.
Conrad rushed to his side, placing a hand on his back. "It's okay, I'm here, you're here, you're safe now. Come back to me."
"After that incident the commander was angry that I disobeyed an order. I was sold. I was so glad to come back home and go back to fucking. I never thought there could be fates worse than death. I was a stupid kid when I signed those papers."
"I know," Conrad soothed.
"That's why I can't go back, I can't live through that shit again. I'm begging you, please, promise me you won't let them take me back. Swear it to me." Avery's bloodshot eyes pleaded with Conrad. Avery clung to his shirt like a drowning man, ugly tear-stains and snot staining his face. "Please, Conrad, please."
Conrad swallowed the lump in his throat. "If I kill you, then I'm putting a gun in my mouth too."
"Now who's being melodramatic?" Avery asked, but his tone wasn't playful, his voice the rasp of a ghost.
"I mean it," Conrad said. "I thought over the years I'd seen the worst this world could offer, but things get more and more fucked up the longer I live. I've seen the wrong men go to jail. I've seen bribery and corruption—participated in it, even. I'd heard rumors of the Circle, but I had no idea what it meant. I guess I wanted to believe that people were selling themselves into domestic work to avoid poverty. It seemed easier that way. I kept myself distracted with my own problems—Abby, mostly. She came into my life as a pregnant, drug-addicted prostitute and I wanted to save her."
"Christina's not your daughter?"
"Not by blood, no. Abby and I had a shotgun wedding like we were saving face, but to whom, I'm not really sure. I liked to make big promises I couldn't keep even then—I was going to get her clean, we were gonna do right by our daughter. Instead, Christina practically raised herself while her mother was high and I was at work. I guess that's why I wanted to help her with this Circle investigation. It'll never go anywhere. She works for a gossip rag with about as much reliability as the shit you hear on the Internet. They could print the entire truth about the Circle and nobody would believe a word. But it matters to her. That's why I ended up at that auction. Trying to do right. Somehow I never seem to pull it off." Conrad stood up and walked to the kitchen. He came back with a roll of paper towels and cleaned the carpet. Disposing of the towels in the garbage, he washed his hands in the filthy sink and came back with a bottle of whiskey.
"I can't promise you a future, Avery, but I plan to make the most of the time we have left. We have an expiration date now, October tenth. That's when my next dues are payable. Either I come up with a plan before then, or we go down together." Conrad poured a glass for both of them and they somberly drank to it.
Conrad wondered, as he knocked his drink back and it burned in his throat, if he'd be able to keep even that one small promise.
Avery
Avery let the buzz of drunkenness carry him away as he rested in the passenger seat of Conrad's parked car. Conrad sat in the driver's seat, watching an apartment block through a set of binoculars. Conrad had already handed him the binoculars and he'd seen their mark sat strumming a guitar and smoking a joint on an upstairs balcony. He'd lost interest quickly and handed the binoculars back. He'd protested at coming on this little excursion but understood why Conrad wouldn't leave him at home alone. He'd stared too long into the abyss as it was, and it had stared back.
October tenth. It was as if Conrad had told him the date of the apocalypse. Of course, the Circle wouldn't come knocking quite on that date, but that was the last day they could pretend their house of cards wasn't going to blow over, the last day they could tell themselves that October was ages away, a veritable lifetime in which to indulge in all the pleasures that love had to offer.
Avery wondered if Conrad would be able to pull the trigger, when it came down to it. If he did, though, Avery had no doubts Conrad would follow him into death. There had been a resignation to his voice, a certainty to his tone that made it more of a promise than any words could. He hadn't wanted a suicide pact, and yet there it was anyway, looming overhead like the dark clouds of night. The storm had passed, but it offered no relief from the sticky summer heat, and the car was quickly heating up even with the windows open.
"I hate these bullshit jobs," Conrad complained. "As much as I appreciate the money, I hate living off Garth's pity."
"Money is money," Avery said. "We could use it. That doctor's visit you have tomorrow won't be cheap."
"It's worth it. I need to know I'm not going to endanger your health."
Avery laughed. "You act like our lives aren't already forfeit come October tenth. Or that I don't have a disease that will ravage my body the second my meds are withdrawn."
"I'm an optimist, Avery. Despite all the putrid, heinous shit I've seen in this life, I can't bring myself to believe things won't get better, and I'm not about to sabotage any chance at that."
Avery nodded. "It's okay. You need the PrEP anyway. We can't seem to hold ourselves back."
"Why, if our lives are forfeit come October?"
"Because—because I don't want to infect you, that's why. If we take our own way out on our terms, that's one thing. But—if you change your mind about killing yourself, you don't want to carry this curse around with you."
"Now who's the optimist?" Conrad smiled. It faded, and he sighed. "Let's not talk about that, Ave. As far as I'm concerned, October is a billion light-years away from where we are now."
"It's about five months down the line."
"One hundred and thirty-two days, to be precise."
"It does sound like a lot when you put it that way." Avery stretched out like a cat, grateful that in the darkness, he hadn't bothered with the neck brace. If any passers-by happened to stare at his collar, they'd probably be too drunk to care. Or think he and Conrad were into some kinky shit and leave it alone. The night had different rules, and Avery felt less afraid under the cover of darkness than he had beneath the penetrating daylight.
"You ever get your cock out on a stakeout?" Avery asked. "I can just imagine you sitting there, dick in your lap, startling passers-by."
"They'd think I was a peeping Tom," Conrad muttered.
"You sound so indignant about that." Avery snorted. "Like getting your dick out on public transport is a thousand times more refined."
"I'm an exhibitionist, not a pervert." Conrad laughed as he said it, realizing the stupidity of what he'd just said. "I know, it's a stupid line in the sand to draw, but the way I see it, I'm not violating anyone's privacy."
"I'm pretty sure the people on the bus would argue that."
"I've not exactly gotten a lot of complaints," Conrad said. "I've gotten good at detecting whic
h folks are cruising and who happened to pick the wrong seat. I only get in trouble when people change their minds afterwards."
They lapsed into silence. Avery dozed for a while, and when he woke up Conrad was staring intently into the binoculars.
"What's wrong?" Avery asked. Conrad shook his head and handed Avery the binoculars. Wiping away the crust around his eyes, Avery looked through the lenses until he focused on their target. He was entwined in the arms of another man, kissing him and fondling his crotch through his jeans.
The other man wore a collar. A Circle collar.
"Oh, shit," Avery muttered.
"Yeah," Conrad said. He closed his eyes. "How the fuck am I supposed to explain the Circle to Garth?"
"You can't talk about the Circle. Come up with an excuse. Tell Garth his ex is happy with another man. Play ignorant and pretend they're in a Dom/sub relationship if you need to."
"I can't lie to Garth. He's an old friend." Conrad sighed. "He deserves the truth, Ave. Garth falls hard for people, even if his love affairs are short lived. He should know that his ex is a Master. That he should stay as far away from this whole thing as possible."
"You're going to tell him about us." It wasn't a question. Avery knew Conrad, for all his faults, was a loyal man where his friends were concerned.
"If I can keep him out of trouble by doing so, then yes."
"You think Garth would sign a contract?" Avery asked.
"No. I don't know." Conrad rubbed his temples. "He's getting older. Lonely. The pretty young men pass him over more often than not, now. He's also gullible. Well-meaning. He's lost way too much money to pretty young boys who want him to be their Daddy, only to ditch him."
"You think he might become a Master," Avery realized.
"Yeah. I think he might consider it an attractive prospect. I don't want him to get sucked into this trap. The Circle is a con for all involved. Only the billionaires to whom money is no object benefit from the arrangement. Everyone else loses. Garth's not as rich as he wants his boys to believe. The Circle would bankrupt him."
