The Year of the Rat
by Nico Grey
Chapter 13
I tried to act like nothing had happened. I kept my evening routine as normal as possible. But I was in a hurry. I needed to get down to the Pier. I hoped that Taryn would be there.
He was sitting on a bench in Gateway Park. I smiled apologetically at Jebby. I needed to see my support person.
He smiled back. He indicated a nearby bench. He promised to wait right where I could see him... and where he could see me.
I set right next to Taryn. I leaned into his shoulder. I opened my mind.
When he was through reading my story, he was sympathetic.
"You're hungry, Rat. That's what it feels like when your body starts to demand nourishment. It just happened at a really bad time. It could have ended really badly." He looked concerned.
"Dylan is around here somewhere. We've been here the past few nights. He thought it was about time that you would need to hunt."
That had escaped my mind for a few days. I had been busy buying supplies and remodeling our lair for Jebby. I hadn't even thought about visiting the Pier. It crossed my mind that I might need a keeper.
Taryn giggled.
I glanced at him curiously.
"That slipped out," he grinned. "Your control over that gift will continue to improve. But," his expression turned serious, "you do have a problem."
I thought he meant what to do about Jebby. How to keep him safe if I couldn't completely control myself.
He pointed to my stomach.
Oh.
Then he gestured toward the park entrance. I could see movement in the grass next to the path. Something was approaching.
Dylan waited until he passed behind a stand of small trees. He emerged from the other side with his typical shy grin on his face.
It had almost been two weeks. I really was delighted to see him!
The problem was Jebby. Dylan and I really couldn't bring him along while I hunted.
Taryn provided the solution. It was probably a bit of an ethical breach for him, but he introduced himself and Dylan to Jebby. Then he asked if Jebby would mind spending some time with him on the Pier while Dylan and I went to a meeting.
I could see that the Centennial Wheel was still open. That seemed like a great idea. I knew that Jebby and I didn't have to worry about trusting Taryn. He wasn't Trevor.
I handed Jebby some cash and asked if he would take Taryn on the ferris wheel while they were getting to know each other. I think maybe the thrill of the new experience helped soften his disappointment at being abandoned by me again. I was confident that Taryn would make sure Jebby forgot all about us until we returned. He had a special way with people.
I was very happy to see Dylan again. Our last time working together had ended quite spectacularly. But I had been worried that the reason I hadn't seen him since was because he had some regrets about that adventure.
Strolling toward Grant Park with him, I didn't sense any discomfort on his part. He seemed to be as delighted to be with me again as I was to be with him.
Dylan and I parted ways as we entered the park. He went to find a good vantage point out behind the park's restrooms. I went to join the work crew in front of those buildings.
The first thing I noticed was a familiar face. One that I hadn't seen for a long time. Marco had returned!
He didn't look like he had grown very much since I last saw him seven months earlier, but he looked a lot more world weary.
Social interactions in our line of work rarely went more than skin deep, but I wanted to let him know I was happy to see him. I offered him a fist bump and gave him a searching look with my eyes.
He seemed pleased to see me. He was smiling. But I sensed some reserve. It was almost like Marco had lost some of his faith in the good things in the world.
I slipped into the lineup next to him. We probably wouldn't chat much. Workers rarely did, at least not about anything personal. But I hoped to gather some impressions of how he was doing from the random thoughts and emotions that escaped his mind.
The first time business came our way, I could feel the fear radiating from Marco. He definitely wasn't the happy-go-lucky kid I had known the previous summer. He almost shrank behind me when that guy was scanning the work crew.
I had already been out in the bushes twice before Marco had his first customer. I guess the little guy had started to feel comfortable enough about being back in the saddle. But I noticed that his menu had changed. There weren't any cuts from the hindquarters being served that night.
The customer tried to cajole Marco. He had probably seen him before. But Marco refused to expand his offerings. The guy gave in. He made his selection. But I had a real strong feeling that the negotiation wasn't over. I sensed from Marco's body language that he was worried about that, too.
I acted on impulse.
"Hey, Mister! We got a spring special for you."
He was confused. But he seemed interested.
"Two for the price of one!" I gave him my best salesman's smile. "I'll join in and you don't even have to pay me!"
The guy was definitely conflicted. He wanted to get Marco alone out back, then work on expanding the menu. But two for the price of one? That sounded like a pretty good deal!
The guy was still trying to make up his mind. He was definitely looking me over, but he was really eyeing Marco's cute butt.
I made the decision for him. I grabbed his hand and led him out back. Marco followed behind us, looking perplexed.
The guy had a hundred bucks already in his hand. I guess he had assumed that the outcome of negotiations with Marco was certain. I decided to broker the agreement.
"Two fifties?" Time to change the terms. "So you want to blow Marco and have him blow you? Cool! I'll do the same with you. No charge."
The guy wasn't quite ready to give up. "I like the other guy's ass."
"Well, that's cool." I played up the cheerful vibe. Brainless and cheerful. "How about if I rim him while you watch? Then we can all trade blow jobs."
I wasn't sure how Marco would feel about being rimmed. It hadn't been on his menu. But he wasn't complaining. Now I just had to figure out how I'd feel about giving my first rim job.
The guy was still driving a hard bargain. "I bought it," he pointed at Marco's butt, "I get to play with it." He really was insistent in an annoying way.
I could feel the apprehension radiating off Marco.
"He doesn't want to do that, Mister. Look," I did my best to act humble, "I know mine isn't as nice as his, but you can rim me and watch me rim him. Then we all trade blow jobs?" I concluded on a hopeful note.
Guys buying illicit sexual services have a limited amount of patience. They don't want to spend any more time at the scene of the crime than is necessary. Either this guy would leave, try to force something on the two of us right out behind the restrooms, or he'd settle for my spring special.
Which is how that guy ended up getting about three hundred dollars worth of sex services for a hundred dollars, and I ended up butt naked in the bushes, my face buried in Marco's backside, while the guy got more than his money's worth from my behind.
To his credit, he didn't try to pull the old switcheroo. I was keeping a pretty close eye on his intentions, and he was a lot more interested in watching what I was doing to Marco's butt than he was in doing any more with mine than giving me a tongue bath. I guess he really had a thing for Marco.
Marco was grateful when we had finished blowing the guy and sent him on his way. He even offered to split the hundred with me.
Sex workers aren't really known for their sentiment. I just told Marco that I heard he had a tough time last summer and I wanted him to feel safe. I didn't want any money.
It surprised me a bit when he gave me a quick half-hug as we returned to the office.
And for what it was worth, I really didn't mind giving my first rim job. Marco did have a nice butt.
The rest of the evening was fairly uneventful. Despite the time I spent as Marco's wing man, I still made almost two hundred dollars. I saw Marco go out back three times. He appeared to be handling it well.
And the reason for my visit to Grant Park? The hunt? That was a bonus.
Sometime after eleven we were approached by this large guy in his forties. He had dark hair and a moustache, with deep-set menacing eyes. He gave off a real holier-than-thou vibe. I was afraid he was a street preacher who was going to try to shut down our operation.
He eyed me pretty closely. He seemed torn between me and Marco. But neither of us had what he wanted on the menu. He was frustrated. He wanted one of us, I guess because we were the two smallest guys there. He finally chose me over Marco. That was a win-win for both of us.
As we strolled out behind the buildings, the guy was radiating sexual need. It felt like he had been close to a month without getting any.
That can be a good thing for a worker like me, or it can be a bad thing. It depends on the underlying personality.
In this case, he had no personality. It was peculiar. He came to Grant Park for sex. With underage boys. But he was ranting on about how corrupt our values were in the city, compared to where he lived in Northlake. He seemed to have something against Sodom and Gomorrah, yet he had sodomy on his mind.
I didn't wait to fully insert myself into his head. And it was pretty clear from the way his eyes stayed focused on my butt that he was planning to go off menu. It was just a matter of getting me to let my guard down.
I did a little more digging in his mind and discovered that the guy was a man of the cloth. That may have explained his interest in Sodom... and his interest in sodomy, too, for that matter.
I was a little concerned about making a preacher disappear. They were likely to be missed and their absence commented on.
But while wandering around in his head, I learned that boy's butts weren't his only unholy interest. He appeared to be overly fond of money, too. As in donations from his fairly well-heeled flock. A worshiper at the altar of Mammon. A serious forensic investigation of church books was likely to uncover a discrepancy, or perhaps a million of them.
That would make a pretty convenient bow with which to tie the package of this guy's disappearance. Pastor missing. Money gone. The investigation, such as it was, would quickly shift well south of the border. It would end up in the dead case file in a matter of weeks.
I decided that I would offer my services to the good pastor in my own private chapel. I reached out to Dylan and asked him to wait for us in the arborvitae.
As we walked along the path, I could feel his anticipation building. Along with the feeling, I was starting to see some images from his thoughts. A couple involved boys right here in these bushes. But most seemed to come from a home. Maybe his.
Those images had a lot in common. I could see the lower half of a boy, maybe about my age. I prayed that this guy didn't have a son.
Most of those images involved the boy bent over a desk. Probably this preacher's desk. His pants came down. The preacher's belt came off. Then it began to fall on the boy's bottom.
After a while, the beating stopped. But the boy stayed bent over the desk. The vantage point in the preacher's head shifted closer to the boy. He smacked his bottom a few more times with his bare hand.
That was just the pre-game show. Once the boy's bottom was sufficiently chastised, he pulled those cheeks apart. It felt like an act of voyeurism, but I thought those cheeks looked pretty nice, even bright red and covered with welts.
It seemed like this might be a regular ritual. There was a bottle of baby oil on the desk that looked like it belonged there. The boy's upper body was pressed firmly into the desk with one hand, while the preacher spread the cheeks apart with the other. Then the boy was filled with the spirit of the lord.
As that spirit worked in and out of the kid, the preacher kept slapping his butt. He alternated hands. There was no sound with this odd little home movie, but the feeling I got was that the preacher intended that the combination of physical chastisement with the sexual act would give the kid an aversion to anal sex. Well, if that wasn't the most screwed up idea ever, I couldn't imagine what was!
The scene ended with the boy turned over, sprawled out on the desk, and more pain applied to his genitals. This preacher was one criminal excuse for a man of the cloth! That poor kid!
And when the preacher's hand reached up and grabbed the kid by the throat and started choking him...Jebby?!?
I almost threw up. This was the pastor that Jebby had lived with for four months!? The poor kid hadn't told me even half of what he had suffered!
Part of me wanted to take this guy out, this preacher, right there in the middle of the path. Another part of me had something much more devious, twisted, and dangerous in mind. That was the part of me that won the debate.
I led the preacher through the opening in my arborvitae and into the glade. He seemed to appreciate the privacy it offered. If you looked at it the right way, it really did resemble a nice little open-air chapel. It seemed a fitting venue for human sacrifice.
I was the sacrifice. The preacher paid for his sacrificial victim. Three hundred dollars for a lamb shorn and trussed before being laid down on the altar. He couldn't believe his fortune. I even let him gag me.
I could feel Dylan's anxiety penetrating every fiber of my body. I reassured him. 'Wait. Wait. I'll let you know when the time is right.'
He argued with me. But I was certain that I could break the preacher's bonds whenever I chose. And the energy that I could feel building inside him was astonishing.
He had his sacrifice planned out. I had reviewed it before I agreed to let him bind me. Aside from the open-air chapel, and the natural altar, it didn't vary from what Jebby had endured.
I felt a certain justice in that. Jebby had tormented me for two years. I had hated him for that. But much of what drove Jebby to treat me that way originated in this twisted preacher's church. What Jebby had endured, I would endure... up to a certain point. It would be absolution for my hatred. It might help balance the scale of justice.
Or maybe I was completely out of my mind.
I was hungry. And my meal, when it was served, was going to be a feast! The chemicals building in his blood from this deranged religious power trip promised to be revelatory.
I took my beating stoically. It started with the belt. Then the hands. And fists. Those fists triggered a memory in his mind. And a face. Mike's! That stoked my anger to fierce intensity.
Soon my face was bloody and my chest bruised. My bottom was so tender it would melt in his mouth. He caught me a few other places, too.
The service began to build to its climax. He separated me. He anointed me with holy oil. He rubbed himself into an outraged tumescence. He was almost slobbering at the mouth. And then he began to lean into me.
I felt him pushing at my entrance. I let him think he had me. Then I had him.
He was delicious!
Well, that wouldn't be entirely true. But he made a very satisfying meal. The sexually charged energy in his blood was off the charts! Perhaps he really was filled with the spirit of the lord.
Dylan was in shock when he finally appeared.
"Why did you let him go that far?" he demanded.
I couldn't explain with words. It had built a level of energy in my prey's blood that I might never experience again. I had wanted to experience at least a part of what Jebby had gone through. It had been justice.
Most important, I had never really felt in danger. I was sure that I could break the preacher's bonds any time I wanted to. If I had been wrong, I was sure that I could keep myself closed long enough for Dylan to rescue me.
There was probably an element of risk taking in it, as well. Almost like my late night laundry and bathing sessions in the restrooms. There was an added thrill associated with the risk. And while I didn't say it to Dylan, his anxiety notwithstanding, I was pretty sure that he had enjoyed the show. I thought I owed him that. The last time we had hunted together, he put on a pretty special show for me.
I had changed a lot in nine months. When I first arrived on the street, I had been almost as shy about my body and sexual acts as Dylan still was. In the time since then, I had come to see my body as a tool, as my home, as a connection to the material world. But it wasn't me. I just needed my body to survive. Anything else that happened to it was far less important that what happened to the "me" that inhabited it.
I had few boundaries left over the use of my body. I had just been stripped, bound and beaten under the stars. I had come millimeters from having my butt penetrated. And I really wasn't feeling particularly stressed out over the experience. I didn't think I would have been horrified had he penetrated me, only upset that he had been the one to do it.
I hadn't taken time to contemplate the changes in myself very deeply, but I was feeling less for the "me" as a physical being and was much more concerned about the way that I related to and connected with the people around me and the portion of the universe that we inhabited.
The changes in my attitude had taken place both gradually and in sudden leaps. I couldn't pinpoint why I had changed. But I wasn't much of a rat anymore. I was becoming something different.
Dylan gave me a hand with the preacher's remains and the tools of his perversion. We left them in a pile for the slag hunters.
Then he helped clean me up. I had a number of scrapes and cuts, and a lot of nasty bruises. He handled my injuries tenderly. Then I got dressed. We went home.
I didn't plan it out. In fact, it was really an impulsive offer on my part. But after my recent experiences opening my mind to Taryn, and after satisfying my hunger, I was feeling expansive.
Dylan was solicitous of my injuries, and of me, as we walked home. He was still trying to understand the risk I had taken and my need to allow myself to be abused that way.
I couldn't explain it. That required too many words. And I really wasn't sure they would make sense anyway, even if I managed to string them all together in the right order.
I stopped at a bench along the sidewalk. I pulled him down next to me. Then I leaned against his shoulder and opened my mind to him.
Dylan was far less sure of himself than Taryn had been. I had to guide him for a while. But once he understood how it worked, and he saw the pathways through my mind completely open for him, he started his own tentative exploration.
I couldn't say how long we sat there together. I don't suppose it was too long. Sunrise was still many hours away when Dylan gently exited my mind.
He had a look of wonder on his face.
"Dion and I never did anything like that," he breathed. "I didn't even know it was possible."
His mind was drawn to one part of the experience. "You pray for me? Every night?" He started to choke up.
There was only one possible answer. "You're my friend. I love you." He probably already knew that. He had just been inside my mind. But my answer still brought that shy Dylan smile to his face.
"Can I open my mind like that for you?" he wondered.
His sincerity was palpable. But I could also discern fear. I wouldn't let Dylan offer more than he was comfortable sharing.
"Maybe someday. We can do this again. I'll show you how I do it."
I think he was relieved. Dylan had been let down by so many people in his life before he crossed over. He was learning to trust. But there was no need to rush him.
We sat for a while in companionable silence, watching the stars and listening to the traffic that still cruised along Columbus Drive. I think it occurred to both of us at the same time that there were people waiting for us.
Immediately, I felt terrible for leaving Taryn to care for Jebby for so long. I felt even worse about abandoning Jebby. It had been in a good cause, but I couldn't even tell him about that.
We didn't know where we would find Taryn and Jebby, but I had a sense that I should return to the church. We found them there. In the chancel. I don't know how much Taryn shared Jebby's interest in the god there, but he had been patient. He watched while Jebby prayed.
I think they had enjoyed their time together on Navy Pier. Taryn's smile was indulgent, but sincere.
Jebby felt like he was completely comfortable with the time they had spent together. I had been certain that Taryn would be kind and patient.
I thanked Taryn for his time and for his friendship. I opened my mind to him at least long enough for him to get a sense of our evening. I do believe I managed to shock him.
I said my good nights to Dylan. More than a hug was in order. I had four friends in the world. And now two of them had shared my mind. I had given, but I felt more complete for having done so.
I felt terrible for abandoning Jebby again, almost as soon as we were in our lair. I needed to check on Mike.
I was careful that he was sound asleep before I entered his lair. I didn't linger long. I stayed just long enough to check his supplies, then to make sure his health wasn't worse.
His breathing seemed fairly even. There was still evidence of some chest congestion, a lingering infection that he just hadn't thrown off. But I didn't find any cause for great concern.
My love for Mike wanted me to stay. But there was another waiting that needed me more.
I kissed Mike, neck, cheek and lips. It was becoming a ritual. I let my lips linger on his.
I whispered, "I love you, Mike."
And he responded. He kissed me back. His arms wrapped loosely around my neck. "I love you, too, Rad."
He slept on.
I couldn't help thinking about the moment that Mike's arms had wrapped around me. It was another panic moment. But it was also such a feel-good moment.
My lair was less than two hundred feet from where Mike lived. I saw him almost every night. I was getting awfully homesick for him.
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