The Flesh Cartel #2: Auction

he has been in my care for less than a week.”
    Less than a week ? My God, it felt like he’d been stuck in this hell for months already.
    “If we are to consider these . . . unfortunates as clay to be molded by firm hands, then this one is soft and malleable and so very warm to squeeze between your fingers.”
    Absolute silence, but she preened and posed as if she’d received a standing ovation.
“Of course you’ve all seen the photos, and those exquisite videos—how beautifully does this one cry, ladies and 49 gentlemen?—but no finale is complete without a proper show. So for those of you who paid the nominal fee on top of the usual ticket price, I’d love to invite you to test his charms for yourself. If you did not pay in advance, we are happy to charge your accounts now—at a slight premium, of course—and hope that next time you’ll feel justified in buying in advance.”
    She’s renting me out like a whore. I’m a whore. That’s what this is. That’s all this has ever been.
That’s what she’d meant by selling him. Selling his body. Some had paid to fuck him, and others had just paid for the privilege of a live show. Out in the audience, he saw someone stand, that single white mask rising like a bubble, like a snowflake falling upside down. And then another. And another. Three masks rising. Ten. Twelve. Would you give twenty sample sucks to keep you and your brother together?
    Apparently, she hadn’t been exaggerating at all. Clipboard Guy approached Mat’s cage holding a long
    leather strip. Mat couldn’t quite make out what it was at first, and jumped to the natural conclusion: they were going to beat him with it. They’d certainly beaten him with everything else during his time here. But then Clipboard Guy squatted down beside Mat and said, “I’m going to put my hands in your cage. In my right hand is a leash”—so that’s what it was—“and in my left is a Taser. Be good with the one and I won’t have to use the other. Do you understand?”
    Mat glared at the guy. He wasn’t a fucking child. No need to treat him like one. “Yes,” he growled.
50
Lest he punch the guy in the face, he fisted the bars as Clipboard Guy wedged the Taser between two ribs, a clear threat, and clipped a leash to his collar.
    “On your feet, then,” Clipboard Guy said, and Mat saw a massive guard step up behind him.
    He stood, and Clipboard Guy stood with him, keeping the Taser pressed to his side. “Nice and slow, now,” Clipboard Guy said. The guard unlocked his door. Mat quashed the urge to rush them. Held perfectly still until the guard took his leash and gave it a tug, not quite hard enough to choke him just yet, and said, “Walk, hole.” Mat considered fighting again—they could be marching him off to his death, for all he knew—but somehow he didn’t think so. Why doll him up like this just to kill him? Something else was going on here. Something that might find him reunited with Dougie again.
    The guard opened a double door at the end of the cage room, and sound wafted in over a loudspeaker. “The first three have asked to go together,” Mat heard, in Madame’s crisp, unmistakable voice. “A performance neither they nor you will soon forget.”
    The first three what? What are they doing?

    He stood motionless, his leash seeming to vibrate with urgency.

    “Three minutes,” Clipboard Guy whispered, flashing three fingers for emphasis. He waited. Counted the seconds.
    No more announcements over the speaker system, but if he strained, he could just make out a sound he’d come to know all too well these past days. Flesh on flesh. Grunting.
    Moaning. Is that what this was—some kind of sex show? Putting them on display before a live crowd like they’d put them on video before?
51 Well, they’d certainly done worse to him here. “Thirty seconds.” Thirty seconds? He was losing time. He couldn’t afford to drift off like that.
The guard flanking him tugged on his leash and pulled him
    through an open door to . . . a backstage? He’d seen plenty enough of them on the local fight scene, littered with catwalks and wires and rope and red-gelled flashlights, just like this one. The moaning and crying got louder.
    Horrifyingly familiar. Dougie.
    He rounded a corner, and suddenly he was within view of the stage. What he saw made his heart stop. There was some kind of upholstered bench on wheels at the center of the stage. And Dougie was lying on it.
    All he could see of Dougie