by J. A. Rock
Kamen was still singing:
“The forest grows darker—
“Black clouds rollin’ in.
“I can’t feel my fingers—”
“Shh!” I held out an arm, blocking him.
The brown-and-white puppy, crouched a few yards up ahead, sniffing some trees. She had little paw gloves on her hands, and she was every bit as precious as I remembered from the doughnut table. I was so caught up in how cute she was that I must have forgotten to be Katniss, because when she looked up and spotted me, I was just standing there staring like a dumbass.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
“It’s okay,” Kamen whispered back. “I know her.”
Yeah, so did I. She’d taken the last chocolate doughnut. I’d studied her freckles and the rings of gold in her hazel eyes and wished I could either walk her around on a leash made of diamonds or else get down on the ground and puppy-frot with her. But I didn’t know if that counted for anything now.
“Hey, Max,” Kamen called. “What’s up?”
Max cocked her head, like that little spitting dinosaur in Jurassic Park right before it blinds the dude from Seinfeld.
I took a step closer. “Hey there, pup.” She wagged her butt. With the goggles on she was teeth-grindingly cute. “Hey. Hey, Max. You’re gonna let us pass, right?” I kept the rifle at my side. Totally nonthreatening.
Kamen got in front of me, like he intended to shield me. I was always impressed by his ability to transition back and forth between behaving like a special-needs seven-year-old and my overprotective dad. “Good dog,” he said to Max. “Goooood dog. Stay. Staaaaay.”
We started inching to the left, keeping an eye on Max.
“Good dog,” I agreed. “We appreciate it.”
Max threw back her head and started barking.
“Go!” I yelled, shoving Kamen forward.
We took off, Max in pursuit. I heard a man shout, “She’s got something!”
Kamen tripped over a stump, but I grabbed his hand and hauled him onward before he could fall. I veered sharply left, pulling him with me.
Suddenly, another figure leaped into our path, and we skidded to a halt.
“Glazer!” Kamen shielded me again.
Glazer hunched before us, his giant paw-gloves stamping the ground as he growled low in his throat. He was like some steampunk nightmare, with his giant goggles over his black rottweiler hood and that fake pink tongue flapping between the thick leather jaws.
I could hear Max approaching, and Glazer’s owner, Kent, yelling for the dogs to: “Hold ’em! Hold ’em there!” I had to do something. Fast.
I turned around. Saw Max about fifty yards away, closing rapidly.
So I raised my gun and shot her.
Green paint exploded on her brown shirt, and she yelped and skittered sideways so violently I was afraid she’d knock her bad self out against a tree. Little preshie puppy baby. Such a shame to Old Yeller her.
But she’d left me no choice.
I raised my gun to shoot Glazer too, but Kamen grabbed me and yanked me past Glazer, who had found a rock he was trying to hump.
Small mercies, yo.
We hadn’t gone far when the paint bullets started whizzing by us. Kent was shouting at Glazer. “Glazer! Jesus Christ. You are humping a fucking rock. A rock can’t give you affection. It can’t give you warmth. It can’t possibly feel good. Go and catch the humans!”
From somewhere to our left, there was crashing and shouting. And a whoop. I could see the hunters now—flashes of black fabric and camo, and protective eyewear. Someone called to me, asking if I was a hunter. I didn’t answer. Someone else yelled that I didn’t have a pod belt, and that I was probably “the one who stole Trey’s gun.” More paint bullets, from multiple directions.
Kamen grabbed at me. “We’re in a shoot-out!”
“Come on!” I pulled him toward a cluster of thick trees, firing over my shoulder at our pursuers. Hit a couple of them too, by the sound of it.
We leaped into the shelter of the trees. I spied an embankment to our right. There was caution tape at the top, but I ignored it. I let go of Kamen’s hand, flung myself to the ground, and rolled under the tape and down the hill. It was hard to roll while holding the gun, so I threw it down ahead of me. Kamen followed a moment later, and we ended up in a heap of dead leaves at the bottom. I could hear him breathing hard beside me.
“Holy shit. That was amazing.” He wheezed. “You really are Katniss.”
I grinned at the gray sky and swaying treetops. “Well. We’re not out of the woods yet.”
He tilted his head toward me, grinning. “Ahhh ha-ha.” He swatted my stomach with the back of his hand. “I see what you did there.”
I heard a noise above us and glanced up. Kent stood at the top of the slope, Max beside him.
“Let’s go!” I clambered up.
“Surrender!” Kent called from behind the caution tape. “Or I’ll shoot.”
Kamen surged to his feet and followed me. A few paint bullets splattered trees and rocks. “Wait!” He stopped. “The hot sauce!”
“Kamen, there’s no time!” But even as I said it, I knew what was going to happen. And sure enough, another glance over my shoulder confirmed that my precious noodle-eating poodle was running back to get the hot sauce. As though you couldn’t buy a fucking bottle at the store for two nineteen.
Another bullet flew past me, and then there was a barrage of barking as Max charged under the caution tape and skidded down the slope.
“Max!” Kent shouted. “Max, come back here!”
Kamen was still searching the leaves for the hot sauce.
I couldn’t hang around waiting to get captured. I also couldn’t go back up to the hunting ground and risk running into the dogs and hunters. So instead I raced onward, into the unknown.
Being so close to Bowser had a rather profound effect on my autonomic nervous system. It was not the intense, nuanced attraction I experienced toward Drix, but I did associate Bowser with pleasurable physical sensations, and I was failing so miserably at having fun that perhaps my body was a bit desperate for serotonin.
“Miles,” Bowser said as we walked. “It’s been a long time.” He wore black leather gloves and a lovely green sweater. Khakis, pressed and creased.
“Yes, well. I don’t go to dungeons much anymore.”
“You and Drix are . . .?”
“Doing fine. Yes. Thank you.” I always sounded snippy when I was anxious, and I wished I knew how to modulate my voice.
“I gotta admit, I was hoping I’d end up catchin’ you today.”
“Well. I don’t . . . I hardly think the whipping post will be my cup of tea. But if I had to be caught, I suppose I’m pleased it was you.”
He laughed his unnervingly deep laugh. “From you, that’s high praise.” We walked on. He stopped near a bush and took out a pocketknife. The sight of the knife stirred me into a nascent erection. Bowser had, in the past, used a scalpel on me to extremely gratifying effect. Had trained Drix in the art of cutting as well.
He carefully reached into the bush with his gloved hands and cut a fairly large section. I studied the soft, pointed green leaves and thick, hairy stem. Nettles.
He glanced at me. “What d’you think? I saw these earlier, and . . .”
My throat was dry. “Certainly. If you wish.” I kept walking, trying not to look at the mass of green in his arms. The nettles snagged at his sweater, pulling the emerald threads. I got harder.
It was startling, after spending time in the cool darkness of the woods, to emerge once more into the camp. The sun was appearing and disappearing behind clouds, and three of the six whipping posts were in use. I saw Girltoy on one, and two slaves I didn’t recognize on the others. The pen contained two dripping-wet slaves, and Regina was leaning on the gate, holding the hose and conversing with them while Bella monitored the posts.
“I do not wish to be placed in the paddock,” I informed Bowser tightly. “I
’ll spend my half hour on the post and be done.”
“All right.” Bowser selected a post and set the nettles beside it. He grabbed a pair of cuffs and attached them to the post. Bella brought over my cards and my gear bag. This was all happening very fast, and I felt strange and not quite myself. Or perhaps too much myself—highly strung and terribly officious.
The truth was, I wanted Drix. I felt guilty about failing to listen to him last night when he’d told me about the deposition. I was sorry that I sometimes took him for granted, forgot that we were both new at love, and learning.
“Strip,” he said cheerfully.
I removed my clothes and protective eye gear and approached the post. Halted suddenly. “I’m nervous,” I admitted, surprising myself.
He stopped too, brow furrowing. “About being on the post?”
“No. No, not just that. I really . . . I’m concerned that I’ve not made clear to Drix how much I value his participation in my family,” I blurted, horrified that I was revealing this to Bowser of all people. And worse, I continued. “He essentially lives at my house, and yet I have not extended a formal invitation to him to move in.”
Bowser glanced at the cuffs. Sighed, then turned his attention back to me. “Would you rather not—”
“No. No.” I stepped forward and held out my wrists. “I apologize for what I’ve shared, and I wish to be at your mercy.”
He attached the cuffs to my wrists. There was something oddly poignant about the familiarity of the gesture. How many times had he strapped my wrists to his steel exam table, and then . . .
Goodness. How quickly my youth had vanished. I was happier at thirty—having a business and a child and a partner—than I had been as a questing twentysomething. But I supposed every now and again I thought how . . . permanent it all seemed, this life I had built. I’d settled into a version of myself that felt fairly safe but decidedly unextraordinary.
“So.” Bowser tightened the right wrist cuff. “Is there a reason you’ve been waiting to ask him?”
“I’m not sure.” I watched him pin my cards to the post. “My list of limits is quite extensive, I realize. But that was created with strangers in mind. You are welcome to perform an unlisted activity, since I trust you.”
“Ah. Thank you, Miles.” He grinned and crouched to open my gear bag.
“I suppose,” I said, as I watched him rummage, “that adopting my son was such a profound life event that I’m hesitant to make any other large-scale decisions for a while yet.”
“I heard you’d adopted.” Bowser nodded. “Had no idea you’d been plannin’ on it.”
Yes, well. I don’t exactly tell my play partners details of my private life. “It didn’t seem appropriate to discuss it.”
He took out a pack of black clothespins that had special holes drilled in them for zipper cords. “You do realize I’m willin’ to be your friend? You know?”
My balls tightened as he removed several pins from the package. “That’s very kind of you. But I believe being my friend requires a special level of endurance.”
He grinned, biting his lip. Pinched my left nipple and rolled it until it was hard, then attached a pin to it. “You’re not so bad.” He did the same with my right nipple.
The pain was just enough to heighten my senses. I exhaled.
He picked up the nettles and very casually swished them against my ass. The sting was immediate and invigorating. I tensed as my cock angled upward, the head slick. “I don’t even know for sure that he wants to move in with me. But it seems negligent of me not to even discuss it with him.”
Bowser shook the nettles between my legs, so the tiny needles snagged my balls. I hissed and threw my head back. He worked his way down my calves. “It couldn’t hurt to bring it up. Right? Tell him what your concerns are? Here, hold this between your legs.”
I moved my legs closer together, holding the mass of nettles between my inner thighs. The needles jabbed my scrotum and the base of my cock. I started to feel calmer as the pain grew. “The thing is, I’m not sure I really have concerns. Perhaps at this point I’m just so embarrassed about delaying that I don’t want to bring it up and discover he’s been hating me for months for not asking sooner.”
“He ain’t gonna hate you. You got some nice bumps back here.” Bowser ran a hand over my ass.
“Yes, I do swell a great deal in response to nettles.”
He began fastening clothespins in a line across the middle of my ass. These black pins had real bite to them—much more tension than the average wooden pin. I had to close my eyes to get a handle on the pain. “Oh, you’re good,” I whispered.
He quickly created a second line of pins a few inches below the first. I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth. My nipples were really starting to ache, and the chemicals from the nettles were making themselves felt in my thighs and balls.
He leaned down to search the bag again. “You got string?”
“Front compartment.” I faced the post. “There’s no doubt in my mind that I love him.”
“Well, then.”
“I know. I’m being an idiot.”
He found string and shears and cut two lengths of string. Removed his gloves and threaded each string through a line of pins. Then he returned to the pin package and made another row across the top of my ass. That area—the crest of my ass—was the most sensitive. The smart there was high-pitched, agitating. My cock seemed to pulse, and there was a heat between my legs that was due to more than the nettles.
Perhaps being up on the post wasn’t quite as ridiculous as I’d imagined it would be. In fact, I was feeling very captive, and it was quite wonderful. A few people had come over to watch, and I felt . . . hot. He cut more string and threaded it through the top row. I shifted, and the nettles bit harder into my thighs.
“Nice,” Bowser said, stepping back. He found a two-foot Delrin cane in my bag. That thing stung like nothing else in the world. This would be good. Excellent. Fun. The sort of pain that would take me out of my head.
I missed Drix even more terribly. This rush of emptiness and need and regret. It should be you. You hurting me. And it should be you, sharing my home.
“My house has just always been mine,” I said quietly.
“Aw.” He tapped the cane between the top and middle lines of pins. “It’ll still be yours. Yours and his.”
I flexed my wrists in the cuffs. “Perhaps I have been unwittingly leaving space for my feelings for him to change. But they’re not going to.” I paused. “I have a gift basket for you, by the way. My bounty. It’s some tea and fruit. Maybe some chocolates.”
“That’s sweet. Now hold still. This is gonna hurt.”
Bless the man.
He drew the cane back, and with a flick of his wrist, landed it hard between the first two rows of clothespins. An absolute fire rose in my body, and I clenched my legs hard around the nettles, letting the pain carry me off.
“I’m going to tell him,” I declared when I could speak again. “I’m going to tell him as soon as I see him.”
“That’s the spirit.” Bowser positioned the cane between the middle and bottom rows. Landed it with a crack that echoed across camp.
I couldn’t breathe for several long seconds. The sting pushed bile into my throat, ignited already-crackling nerves.
Finally, I inhaled with a croak. Punched the post with one cuffed hand. “Oh, Mary, mother of God. We are having fun now. Whoo!”
He drew the cane back to hit me again.
I FOUND THE OLD OAK TREE, AND I DECIDED TO WAIT THERE UNTIL KAMEN ARRIVED. SEACREST OUT.
I was completely alone now. Which was fine. And I didn’t know where I was. Also fine.
The sky was growing darker, which made the woods feel like a cage. I had seen eight wolves that turned out to be squirrels. I was cold and my pants had transformed my insides into those, like, knobby carrots that grow into one another in the ground to create a mutant veg. I leaned against the black trunk
of a giant tree for a moment and closed my eyes, losing myself in the silence.
Silence.
I opened my eyes. When the woodland creatures hushed, that meant rain was nigh. D had taught me that. And looking at the leaves on the deciduous trees, I could see that they’d flipped their dark sides up. I hated rain.
You can’t give up.
He hasn’t found you yet.
You’re winning.
But how did I know he wasn’t right behind me, biding his time? Laughing at my naïveté in thinking I’d outsmarted him?
I checked my watch. 10:10. I only needed to last another fifty minutes.
But it was going to rain.
Quit being a prissy little fuck-face. You can get wet.
I just . . . didn’t like getting wet.
All at once I heard a cawing. I looked up, through the trees, and saw a large black bird passing across the gray sky.
A corvid.
Obviously a sign. Slash the nineteenth most common bird in North America. It cawed again—a rallying cry.
You’re going to suck it up. Because you are a winner. You are stealth itself.
I straightened. “Here comes the sun, motherfuckers,” I whispered as I began searching for a hiding place. I felt bad about abandoning Kamen. But what else could I have done?
There was a second or two where I wished D would find me, if only so that I would have company.
No.
The greatest wilderness explorer you know has trained you.
Now use his own knowledge against him.
As I walked, I repeated the stories D had told me of famous evasionists.
Geronimo. Led a band of men, women, and children, evading thousands of Mexican and American troops for over a year.
Benjamin Peter Ashley. Hiked the Pacific Crest Trail for eighteen days to elude a manhunt.
I added some of my own.
Dr. Richard Kimble. Evaded Gerard by leaping down a waterfall.
