In Flesh and Stone

by Hal Bodner

  “Is there forgiveness?” the creature asked in a low, even tone, not indicating in any way what answer he wanted.

  Beyond where they stood, Alex could see the rack awaiting. He had a clear view of the red-hot tools searing in the fireplace flames. He knew he could not stand any more torture. His body would fail, his mind would snap and he would not survive the experience. He longed to tell this unearthly beautiful inquisitor that he had absolved himself of the sin of selfishness, that he had changed his ways and his devotion to Tony would forevermore be selfless and giving with no thoughts to his own needs. He would put aside the paralysis of grief and take action – what it would be, he did not know, but he would do something. And his lascivious thoughts toward other men would be cast aside; he would not allow even Corey to tempt him. He searched within himself, desperate to give the response that would spare him more torment.

  But, face to face with this glorious man, this agent of repentance, Alex knew he could not lie. No matter what changes he might strive for, he was victim of who he was – of the person he was – as much as he had so recently been victim of the lash. It would take more than a leather whip, no matter how viciously wielded, to cleanse him of what he had done.

  Scorpio already knew the answer, without Alex having to speak it. From all outward signs, he affected sorrow, sad reluctance that he would be forced to renew the torture. But the specks of fire in his eyes flared and the artist thought he saw a depraved eagerness in them.

  He cried as his wrists and ankles were pinioned to the rack, sobbing and mumbling inarticulate pleas to be spared, his nose running and his breath coming in gasps. Through tear-flooded eyes he could see a full-length mirror, which he had not noticed before, hanging from chains above him. He would be unable to avoid witnessing the destruction about to be visited upon his naked body.

  Once he was secured, Scorpio paused to allow him a good, long look in the mirror. The reflection didn’t seem to be real somehow. It wasn’t Alex Restin bound to the fiendish device. No, it was some other man. His smooth, youthful skin glistened with perspiration and saliva. His toned muscles, not yet stretched to the bursting point, were fully displayed. His face was handsome, even though the sparkling blue of his eyes was muted by pain and fatigue. His hair, once golden and luxuriantly thick, was lank and dull, matted with sweat, the moisture clinging to his body and darkening the thatches of his armpits and groin to a nondescript brown.

  Alex waited, unable to do anything else, and gazed up at his own splayed form in terrified fascination. But his captor was not quite ready to begin inflicting pain.

  From the rolling cart which held the whips, he took a large earthenware bottle and unstopped it with his teeth, spitting the cork to the floor. He tilted it and a sludgy stream of clear oil oozed out onto his palm. It was warm when Scorpio plopped a dollop onto Alex’s chest, eerily soothing considering the atmosphere of the rest of the room. Slowly, with gentle tenderness like that of a lover, Scorpio spread the oil, massaging it into Alex’s torso, returning to get more from the bottle when it was absorbed. Soon, Alex’s skin could drink in no more and, after Scorpio finished with his arms and legs, his entire body glistened with a thick residue. Seeing himself in the mirror, Alex was surprised at what he beheld. He knew he kept in shape, but the oil coating seemed to add bulk to his slender frame, to accentuate the muscles. Alex had never before realized just how nice a body he had.

  His ruminations were interrupted by the creak of rope. Scorpio turned the wheel a single notch, then two, followed by two more. Alex could feel his arms and legs drawn away from the center of his body. There was no pain as yet, merely a mild discomfort and the slight beginning of an ache as he was pinioned to the Scorpion’s whim. He tried to move, to release some of the tension starting to build, but his tormentor was an expert and there was no slack at all. He could not imagine a worse torture than the one he was about to endure, but Scorpio quickly corrected that error.

  Shoulders bunched from the effort, he knelt between Alex’s spread legs and fiddled with something beneath the frame of the torture device. There was another creak – of wood against wood this time – and a click as a second frame swung out from beneath and locked into place at the foot of the rack. In the mirror, Alex could clearly see the contraption, but try as he might to figure out its purpose, he had no idea what Scorpio intended to do with it.

  His suspense didn’t last long.

  With sadistic deliberation, Scorpio unwound a long thin cord from the roller atop the machine. On one side of the roller was a crank. A leather ring hung from the free end of the rope, knotted so it could be tightened. When Scorpio leaned over between Alex’s legs, his broad muscled back obscured the view in the mirror and Alex had to look down the length of his own body in order to see what was happening. He realized and began to scream and writhe within the restraints mindlessly, ignoring the extra stress his movements placed onto his stretched shoulders, even before his torturer finished looping the ring around his testicles and yanking it tight.

  Two turns of the crank and his balls were pulled out from his body, suspended in midair. Another turn and Alex felt a sharp agony in the pit of his stomach as his poor testicles were tugged harder. A fourth and he feared the sacs would be ripped free of his groin.

  He screamed and screamed. The pain was intense, but not yet unbearable. The idea of being emasculated this way was what filled him with terror. Scorpio was not yet finished.

  Nausea shot through his groin, into his belly and settled in his throat. His mind gibbered when Scorpio showed him two small square sheets of thick plastic held together like sandwich bread by four rusty screws, one affixed to each corner. Grinning, Scorpio loosened the screws, and once the clear plastic was separated wide enough, he positioned Alex’s balls between the transparent plates. His grin became a veritable leer while he tightened it. The pressure was unbearable and Alex continued to shriek while watching his balls being slowly flattened, able to see each throbbing thickening vein as the sacs were crushed, bulging out to the sides as they sought someplace to go.

  Three more cranks of the small winch, some more tightening of the screws and a mighty turn of the main wheel and Alex’s tormented body was suspended in the air, several inches above the rough wooden planking of the rack. He was left literally hanging by his balls, screaming in pain until his throat grew so raw he could only manage parched croaks.

  Scorpio stood, watching his agony for a long five minutes. Then, unaccountably, he positioned himself where Alex could see him clearly – and stripped. Peeling off the leather chaps was but the work of a few seconds and they slid to the floor. Then he stood, in his splendid nudity, each fantastic inch of his incredible body displayed for Alex to see, and he began to pose. First he flexed his arms above his head, his chest bulging and his shoulder muscles standing out. Then he clenched his chest even further, the pecs assuming even greater proportions, the nipples protruding as if being offered to his victim to bite, to take what little revenge he could by clamping his teeth down on the nubs. But the hedonist was too far away. Next, he brought his legs into play. The cords stood out like corduroy under the bronzed skin and, when he angled his body, Alex dimly saw for the first time that the glory of the Scorpion’s perfectly formed, muscled bubble butt exceeded his previously imagined expectations.

  By the time he was finished posing, Alex’s body was so infused with pain that he could no longer see clearly enough to watch. Somehow, knowing this, Scorpio moved on to the final torment.

  His oil-slicked hand closed gently around the shaft of Alex’s dick and, through the blur of agony, Alex realized he was somehow, in some inexplicable way given what the rest of his body was being put through, as rock hard as he had ever been in his young life.

  “Do you want this?” The Scorpion’s voice was so low, Alex had to strain to hear it. “Will it help?”

  Through the waves of pain, past his parched and ravaged throat, Alex managed to gasp a single word, “Yes!”

  Anything
, anything to take his mind of the searing waves of agony washing across every fiber of his body.

  “Even if it means I will then play with the toys warming in the fire?”

  He quirked one eyebrow quizzically as if he truly wanted to know and would be guided by the answer. Alex dreaded what use the hot pinchers and clamps would be put to. His flesh cringed at the thought of being seared by them. His stomach would contract from the heat of the irons, drawing in upon itself until he could exhale no more. Then, when his body contained not even enough breath to scream, Scorpio would press the tool down.

  Through vision blurred by the sweat dripping into his eyes, he saw the mirror above his pinioned frame and imagined what his gym-toned body would look like when Scorpio was finished with his grisly work. His chest and belly would be blistered and scarred where hot irons were laid upon them, his nipples would be torn and shredded into bloody pulp by the jagged teeth of the pincers, his thighs would bear deep cauterized gashes from the hot knives. His plump, round testicles, even now feeling like they could bear no more of the Scorpion’s sting, would be roasted slowly until they were small, hard, blackened husks. As for his dick, still stiff in spite of the agony ripping through him, Alex could envision a gaping shredded hole of torn flesh where his treacherous penis, Tony’s betrayer, had so recently and proudly stood at attention. He lacked the words to describe or the thoughts to conceive what the process of destroying his body would feel like and knew only that he had brought this upon himself.

  Nevertheless, the hot irons lay in the future and he could not stand his present torment without some spate of release. Maybe, by some miracle, if he encouraged Scorpio to work his dick, the agony of the scalding metal would be delayed, and somehow he might buy himself enough time to wake up from this nightmare, to somehow be rescued, to be in some way spared.

  Scorpio stood, waiting patiently for Alex’s answer, his oiled hand sliding casually along the shaft of the artist’s pulsing dick.

  “Yes!” The word exploded from his throat in a graveled tone.

  Scorpio’s expression barely changed when he increased the motion of his hand, moving his palm up and down the underside of Alex’s dick, his fingers running in ever decreasing circles around the head, passing for an excruciating instant over the hole in the tip to tease, always returning to his stroking of the thickening length. As his arousal grew, Alex’s pain receded slightly, the endorphins inuring his nerves to a small measure of the torture.

  “Open your eyes,” the sadistic tormentor demanded, and Alex dared not resist the order.

  Scorpio loomed above him, looking fully into his face as if seeking to discover something there. The flickers of light Alex had noticed in his pupils had grown, eclipsing the dark brown irises as if the glowing embers of the creature’s soul had burst into scarlet flame while he worked on his kidnapped subject.

  Alex’s hips bucked involuntarily as he neared climax, each thrust sending splinters of agony through the overtaxed muscles of his shoulders and thighs, every motion causing stabbing pain where his ball sac met his groin, his suspended testicles tugged viciously by the tiniest movement. Sadly for his poor body, Scorpio seemed a master of cum control, bringing him to the brink of ejaculation time and time again while he twitched and writhed in midair, only to slow his tempo, to draw back upon his teasing until the urge to shoot faded and Alex’s misery began to reassert itself. Then he would slowly arouse his victim, bringing him to the very edge of the precipice again.

  Alex’s wrists and ankles where the rope was tightly wound were rubbed raw. He imagined he could feel blood seeping from his abraded flesh. His balls tingled like they were being stung by fire ants as he thrashed against the cords binding them. At times, he feared the frantic twisting of his body would tear them clear away. He felt a gathering in his testicles, one that could be halted no more. His sphincter widened and he gasped. He was about to cum and even Scorpio was powerless to stop him.

  Scorpio leaned in closer, so close that Alex could smell the heat of his breath like the suffocating scent of overheated bronze, even through the stench of his own body’s sweat and blood. He spoke as if imparting some great wisdom.

  “In pain, no matter if caused by ourselves or by someone else, there is often release.”

  Before the words had ceased echoing off the chamber’s stone walls, Alex found he could hold back no more. His dick spasmed with a mighty pulse and a veritable fountain of sperm shot forth. The first thick gob sailed through the air, splashing across Scorpio’s rippling chest muscles. The Scorpion shifted his stance slightly and the second ejaculation, amazingly as violent as the first, mounted higher and higher, so powerfully propelled that it splattered against the overhead mirror, drops sliding back down onto Scorpio’s back and Alex’s chest a moment later. The rest of the spew was less impressive; Alex’s body simply lacked the reserves of cum to maintain it. Still, it shot out in ever-decreasing volume, covering his thighs and belly with its thick, hot fluid, running down his sides and dripping onto the splintered wood of the rack’s bed until finally only a thick ooze flowed from the tip of his dick, over Scorpio’s hand and down along the shaft to pool in the matted blond hair of his crotch.

  “And now.” It was clear he was not going to give his subject even a few seconds’ respite before resuming. “We continue. That is what you want, isn’t it? What you need?”

  In the aftermath of cumming, Alex’s body was even more sensitive. His heightened nerves would render the tortures to come even more excruciating. He could do nothing but moan.

  Scorpio withdrew and Alex feared to turn his head to see what the clatter of metal by the fireplace could mean. Sadly, he was not spared the knowledge of what tool had been chosen to be used on him next. Scorpio returned to his side and held the toy above his face where, though he desperately wanted to close his eyes to avoid seeing it, he simply had to look in horrified fascination.

  The tips of the pinchers were as sharp as nails and glowing with the red heat of their immersion in the flames. Small, serrated teeth lined the jaws and, when Alex screamed out against the sight, his torturer opened and closed them a few times, enjoying Alex’s terrified expression when the captive realized just how much damage they were capable of inflicting. When he was satisfied the artist could not possibly be any more frightened than he was, Scorpio moved the vile implement down, closer to Alex’s splayed chest, pausing only an inch or two above it, and opened the jaws. Alex could feel his skin flinch at the intensity of the thing’s heat.

  Just when Alex had given up any hope of being spared, when he knew he would never survive what was to come, when he had resigned himself to being reduced to nothing but a scorched and savaged quivering wreck of flesh, Scorpio started at the sound of a door slamming against the stone walls. He turned to look and, mercifully, the pinchers retreated several inches. Bleary-eyed and not knowing whether he dared hope for rescue or feared Scorpio was about to be joined by an even more fiendish companion, Alex managed to turn his head toward the new arrival.

  CHAPTER 8

  He was tall, much taller than Scorpio and his physique, though impressive, was not as obviously muscled. His thighs were thick trunks, encased in elaborately tooled metal greaves; his torso was largely bare though one shoulder was half-covered by some kind of defensive plating held together with leather straps. His groin was uncovered, his dick emerging like a spear pointed at some sexual enemy, long and smooth and thick, the head with a vaguely triangular cant to it, furthering the impression that it was a weapon of flesh. His arms were corded with muscle, the biceps bulging against the steel decorative bands bound around them, the thick wrists straining against the spiked cuffs that encased each forearm to a point just below the elbow.

  From the cuffs, a weird decoration emerged, similar to the tattooed claws emblazoned across Scorpio’s chest but broader and more substantial-looking than the scorpion’s slender, sharp barbs. The sound they made when they clicked together – Alex feared the movement was in anticipation o
f getting at the tender flesh of his exposed body – was sharp, the clang of metal scraping against metal.

  The man’s complexion was extraordinarily pale. It would have been downright pasty but for the flush of violent red suffusing every inch of his exposed flesh. It was as if, being naturally light-skinned, he had spent too many hours on the beach or under a sun lamp and had the first flush of a bad burn. He was completely hairless – even his groin showed not a wisp, and his entire body gleamed with a coating of viscous oil which reflected the firelight, shining and bringing the rounded muscles of his chest into greater prominence.

  Dazedly, Alex wondered what his face looked like but it was concealed from the bridge of the nose upward, encased by a helmet of tarnished brass or bronze with flaps extending down along the cheeks and pierced by only small slits around the eyes so the warrior’s vision would remain unobstructed. The lower part of his face revealed a small beard, cut closely to follow the line of the heavy jaw, and lush, full lips.

  One hand rested upon a short sword hanging from his hip. In the other, he casually held a small round shield with the figure of a crab emblazoned on it in bas relief. He scuttled forward with an odd sideways gait and, between the way he moved and the nature of the shield emblem, Alex knew immediately who he was.

  Scorpio inclined his head with what seemed to be an indication of respect for an equal at Cancer’s approach and moved a few paces back from where Alex hung by the five ropes. A silent exchange passed between the two Zodiac men, and with another nod, the Scorpion relinquished his prisoner to the Crab.