The Flesh Cartel #3: Choices

strapped him down spread-eagle on his belly and removed the plug and fucked him six ways from Sunday. Had a break and a laugh and a game of cards, and then fucked him again. One guy came inside him and then replaced his cock with his fist, toying idly for what seemed like hours as Mat grunted and screamed. Didn’t beg, though, not this time. Wouldn’t have mattered anyway, and maybe it was the real food, or the change of scenery, or the strange sort-of ally (or at least not-quite enemy, maybe?) driving the RV, but whatever it was, he felt stronger today. Strong enough to endure what they did to him. Strong enough to endure it when they put the plug back and turned the key ten times. He heard it ratchet. He counted.
At least he was horizontal.
They drove for hours. If he turned his head the right way, he could see the passing scenery. Mostly electrical poles and trees, but oh God, sky too. He’d missed the sky.
Once, at a stoplight, he spotted a bird sitting on a wire, and stared and stared until it flew away, a strange unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach that had nothing to do with the cramping from the plug. He realized, perhaps eight or ten miles later, that it was envy.
Evening outside the window, and then night. Stars. So fucking beautiful he could’ve wept, and he’d never exactly been the poetic type. The RV pulled into some kind of campground or park or whatever, and they all ate sitting around the same table like friends, except for Mat, stark naked, in the middle of them, with the plug down to six cranks again but still filling him long past the point of pain. The guy on his left massaged his shoulder, surreptitiously pushing him down on the plug as he choked down salad and brown rice and a chicken breast. The guy on the right let his hand wander up and down Mat’s thigh, stroking him gently, with the confidence of a man who knew he wouldn’t be rebuffed. The hand wandered to his cock, tugged lightly, and then wandered away again, and Mat thought he’d be punished for not getting hard on cue. But when they put him to bed that night, he didn’t go alone; he went with his not-ally, who strapped his foot into one of the locking cuffs at the bottom of the bed, then climbed in beside him. It scared off the rest of the assholes in the RV, but it also squashed Mat’s only hope for escape, especially when his not-ally wrapped an arm around his body and pulled him close. And there was somebody else standing guard at the door. The grunts would probably guard him in shifts while their driver (their boss?) slept.
Sometime in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, he squirmed until he was facing his not-ally, catching the guy’s limp hand and sliding it down his back, down to cup his ass. The guy mumbled in his sleep and pressed closer against Mat’s hip.
“Hey,” he whispered softly. “Let me suck you off. Fuck me. Tell me where my brother is.”
No response.
The next night, after another entire day on the road, Mat slept alone.
Well, he didn’t sleep, and he wasn’t alone, but his definitely-not-ally made his bed elsewhere.

    Thirst.
Not even enough water left in his body to drool around his gag. He’d drink his own piss, if he could piss in the first place. If he could drink in the first place. The gag . . . God, it had long become its own form of torture, huge and unyielding, and his scalp was scabbed and tender where he’d dug into his own skin trying to remove it.
    And darkness.
    Not even a sliver of light. Maybe he was blind. Maybe they’d blinded him, and he’d never realized.
But if he was blind, why could he see Mat? Mat, standing less than three feet away, seeming to glow from the inside, like a beacon, like the darkness of this place couldn’t touch him at all. Dougie’s darkness couldn’t touch him. Because Dougie had given in to the darkness, hadn’t he? That’s why he could see Mat plain as day, but when he looked down at his own hands, saw only inky blackness. The darkness had consumed him. The things they’d done to him. The things he’d done. The thing he had become.
But Mat had fought it, and now he was free, the last light in the world.
And he was crying. Blood. On the insides of his thighs, running down his legs. He’d done this. Hurt Mat. With the plug. With more than the plug. God, he’d beaten him, hadn’t he? Beaten him with a whip, with a stick full of nails, with anything he could get his hands on, anything he could use to hurt .
So we could stay