The Flesh Cartel #2: Auction

flat-out needed the rest. It was hard, though. The cell was freezing, and constant anxiety made any minutes he managed to slip under shallow and fretful, and it seemed like he’d earned a reputation among the guards as a favorite punching bag. Apparently, word about those two teeth had spread, and every fucking asshole with a nightstick in the place was looking to collect his pound of flesh.
18
    He got pretty familiar with the guards over those following days and nights.
    They worked in pairs, spread out over three shifts. The afternoon guard (or at least the shift he’d decided felt like afternoon), the one he’d knocked the teeth out of, was always the worst, in an unsophisticated brutal bully kind of way. At least he was fun to taunt, because he invariably got worked up, and if he managed to knock Mat out as a result, all the better. His partner must have been straight, because whenever he made the rounds, nobody got touched. All male wing, Mat figured, and filed that information away just
    in case. It was an assumption, the straight thing, but it made a hell of a lot more sense than thinking the guy had the morals not to rape his prisoners. Yeah, right.
    The morning shift preferred Dougie. So did the night shift. Actually, they all did, including the fucking janitor. His cell door was opening and closing all day long, though they all complained about not being able to fuck him. One of the morning shift guards could be called away if Mat taunted him long enough, but the other one never rose to the bait. Even advised his partner not to once, huffing and puffing and saying, “Don, you moron , don’t you get it? He’s trying to call you off this one. You fall for it every fucking time.” But Don was obese, with a dick that nearly disappeared under his gut, and blindingly insecure about it, so despite the warnings, he was easy to manipulate. His partner, not so much, but it was comforting to know that while Don kicked his ass, it was one less dick for Dougie.
    Dougie had long since stopped trying to protect Mat the same way. Good , Mat told himself. He could take the punishment. Was a fucking pro at it. But Dougie . . . Dougie was just a kid, an academic, soft and sensitive and sweet.
    19 Whether he’d still be when they got out of here . . . How many times could you rape a boy, beat and humiliate and taunt him, before you just . . . broke him?
Someone was heading over there now. A night-shift guard,
    he thought, someone whose name he’d never learned but whose face (and fists and cock) would likely haunt him for years.
    “Hey,” Mat called. He couldn’t really shout it, not anymore, after so many days of rough use and screaming, but he knew the guard could hear him. He shifted, winced, levered himself to his feet with the help of both hands and the wall. He hurt so bad he could barely think, but it wasn’t his mind they were after, now was it? “Hey,” he tried again as the sound of a key in a lock carried back to him. “I’ll make it good, yeah? I’m not all plugged up. You can fuck me. I’ll ride you. Whatever you want.” Just the thought of something (or worse, several somethings) going up his raw ass again made him want to cry, but fuck it, it was better than listening to Dougie cry.
    Or worse, not cry, which he’d started doing more and more the last however many days. Just mumbled acquiescence and the noises a person made when their mouth got fucked.
    Sometimes a little groan of pain when he moved around. It had to be the plug he was wearing. Mat had no idea how big it was, but it didn’t matter; even something the size of a baby carrot would make you miserable if you wore it long enough. Mat didn’t envy him, though his own situation probably wasn’t any better.
    They didn’t talk through the walls anymore. There was nothing to talk about. What would they do—compare notes on their individual suffering?
    20 The guard next door didn’t take Mat’s offer, so he switched
    tacks, launching himself into the usual string of abuse, the same blistering insults as always, shouting and shouting until his voice gave out.
    When it was over, when the guard had grunted, “Yeah, swallow it, pig” and gone again, Dougie’s voice sounded through the wall, so soft and scratchy that Mat had to strain to hear.
“Please stop,” he said. “Please . . . please just stop that.
    Trying to get them to hurt you. It doesn’t work. It just makes things worse. Not just what they do to me, but because I