A Symbolic Message - The Conclusion

This was not how Mel had pictured himself.

He had come to this country with one mission and one mission only: he wanted to undermine the local slaving ring. That hideous organization kidnapped young men, transformed them into monster boys and then sold them to greedy female clients as slaves and playthings.

Mel should have been in the streets, gathering information. He should have been in the alleys and bars, making contacts. He should have been mapping out the slavers' den and formulating his intricate plan of infiltration. Instead, Mel was in the arms of the woman who was doing all this for him in exchange for his body. What was even more of a surprise, Mel loved it.

Nuan was not an attractive woman. She was built like a brute, stoop-shouldered and worn out from years of ten-hour workdays, and at that, she was nearly twice Mel's age. He had no right to enjoy it this much.

But enjoy it he did. Nuan sat in her chair, the only one in her apartment, while her hands pushed and pulled and fondled Mel. She squeezed his butt. She pinched his nipples. Her fingertips kissed his cheeks and shoulders and arms. She kept him guessing, and his spine turned to water. His sighs and moans probably sounded fake, but they weren't.

Nuan tightened her arms around him, clasped him with her greedy fingers, then released him. Mel had to catch himself on the table to keep from falling over. He looked back at Nuan, expecting more, but she only leaned back and sighed, finished.

His consent for her help—that had been the deal. But in their day-and-a-half together, she had never once made him cum. She had kissed him on the mouth and made him finger her stocky, powerful body. She had pegged him and once even used his mouth, but only after tying his hands so he couldn't touch his cock. Sometimes she didn't even take his clothes off.

Mel finally mustered the courage to ask. "Nuan?"

"Yeah?" Nuan sat back in her stiff wooden chair as if it were the softest recliner in the world. She smiled a a wide, lazy, closed-lipped smile, as she always did after playing with his body.

"Why is it that you never make me cum?"

Nuan straightened her posture a little. "Was wondering when you were going to ask that." She gave a little sigh, sinking deeper into that old wooden chair. "You see, the way I figure, our best bet for getting into the slavers' place is by going in disguise. I'll pretend I'm one of those boy-snatchers, and you'll be my catch." She stopped, as if that explained it.

"And...?"

"You don't know?" Her face got a little more serious. "When you turn a man into a monster boy, two things need to happen. First, you need to get him to breathe the gas that comes up out of the rocks in the caves under this city. Easy enough. But there's another thing too. He has to cum while he breathes it, or it'll take days. So I figure a smart boy-catcher would make sure he doesn't cum on her watch, so that way his cock will be plump and juicy when it's time to turn him in."

"Wouldn't it look more authentic if you fucked me more?" Before coming to this country, Mel hadn't used the word 'fuck' in half a year, but this was his second time today. "Women who traffic in men aren't above raping them."

"Maybe. I've never met a boy-catcher, and even if I do, I won't ask her about it because I'll be too busy wringing her neck."

Mel approved.

"You're not disappointed about that, are you?" asked Nuan. "When we met, I thought you didn't like sex at all."

"It's true, I don't..." Mel stopped himself. It was an exaggeration to say he disliked sex. He was a man, and all non-asexual men felt desire. "I'm just not a slut." He stopped again. "Er, not that promiscuous men are bad—that's just a matriarchal shaming label that's used to oppress men. What I mean is, it would be a disservice to male dignity to lie back and let a woman use me just because I enjoyed it."

"You just said promiscuous men aren't bad. How's it figure it's a disservice?"

"It's not, but... slutty boys are the reason women don't respect us."

"It sounds to me like you like sex, but you don't want to like it."

Mel was silent. He was right, he simply knew it, but somehow he could not put the words together convincingly.

* * *

Nuan didn't know what to think of this boy. This pale, cracker-fed college boy with muscles like cooked noodles. She wanted to like him. He was brave, coming from his fancy rich home in his fancy rich country to work with the likes of her. He had principles too. Nuan had met a lot of men who'd sell their own brothers to be with her, and it was disgusting. And he seemed to hate the monster-boy trade even more than she did.

But his heart wasn't in it. He had told her, in no uncertain terms, that after they brought down Guan-Yin and her slaver gang, he was quitting and going home. Nuan had tried to talk him into taking up slaver-hunting full-time. Busting one slaver gang would be as useless as crushing one cockroach. But he didn't seem to care. 'It will send a symbolic message,' he had said, 'that treating men as property has consequences.' The truth was that as soon as people realized the slave-hunter was gone, they'd forget he'd ever existed.

If Nuan was a good judge of character, and she liked to think she was, then Mel didn't want the streets to be clean, not really. He wanted to feel like a hero so he could go back home and brag about how he fought against privilege and systemic bias and marginalization and whatever other fancy claptrap they taught him in school.

It was too bad.

Still, he was fun in bed. He was awkward and uptight, but that just made it more satisfying when she got him to cut loose and act like the whore he clearly wanted to be.

"Nuan?" said Mel. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Hm?" Nuan sat up straight. "Oh. Sorry, get lost in my head sometimes." She looked out at the twilight sky. The stars were just starting to glimmer. "I think I'll go see if our map is ready."

She took to the streets, away from her apartment that was shabby but safe—a good trade—and into the depths of the old city.

The map was ready, as promised. It was a nice map, really. It was good paper hand-drawn on both sides, and with good ink too. That was rare ever since the factories had pushed the ink-mixers out of business. The mass-produced stuff just didn't stick the same way.

One side of the map pinpointed the hideout on the city map, with some instructions written in scrawly male handwriting. The other showed the hideout in detail. The tunnels formed a maze, a web. Some of the tunnels were labeled with their purpose, others with vague things like 'Lots of boxes here,' or 'secret room.'

Nuan came back with a spring in her step. Mel saw the map, and for the first time she had seen, he smiled. When she informed him that they could do their caper tonight, he smiled wider.

Already, it was dark. At this time of year, it was always dark after Nuan's shift at the sawmill. For extra measure, they waited a few more hours to let the dusk turn all the way into blackness. Then they set out.

"You know," Nuan told him, "as soon as we go in, if we foul this up, you get killed. Not just, gassed, I mean shot."

"Of course I know that. But it's my moral duty to help my brothers in the world, because no one else will."

"You really mean it, don't you? See, that's what confuses me. If you care this much, why won't you stay and keep up the fight?"

"I told you before. It's a symbol. I'm striking a blow for all men in the world, not just in this country. And when I strike it, other men will rise and do the same thing. They'll overthrow matriarchy and demand equal rights." He grew a toothy smile. "And I'm going to read about all of it on the news."

"You really think one good deed is going to change everything?"

"You think it won't, but how would you know? No one has ever done this before. Women's issues are what receive all the coverage. Women's health, single motherhood, daughter abuse, polyandry, low male-to-female ratios... we hear about them constantly."

Nuan snorted. "I sure don't."

"Women are prioritized, and no one ever considers the social problems men face. Honor killings, castration, and tribal warfare are just the tip of the iceberg, but they are ignored."

"So as soon as you'll do this, people will just start caring about castration, just like that?"

"The world is ready," he insisted.

"Boy, no one ever flipped the table because of something they weren't there to see."

"They will this time."

Silently, Nuan gave up on him.

They left the less grubby parts of the city behind. They snaked deeper into the tangle of old wooden hovels that every generation added to, one at a time, until the heart of the city looked like a giant hornet's nest. The sun was already below the horizon, and the shadows had grown and swallowed everything. Only the fading the haze in the sky and the occasional candle lit up anything. People were scarce and silent.

Nuan felt a pang of doubt. As a girl, she had had four rules: obey her mother, never be dishonest, never fight over boys and never go out at night. She was breaking the last one, and if her mother were still alive, she probably would have been breaking the first one too. She kept the map hidden under her vest, glancing at only a tiny scrap of it at a time. She tried not to make it obvious that she was reading from it. She wasn't sure why. Even if there was anyone watching, how could they know where she was going? But she kept the map hidden anyway. It made her feel better.

The map led them into the rotten center of the city. Then, to Nuan's surprise, it led them most of the way back out. On the far edge of the inner city, just when it started to get halfway decent again, the map pointed to a pock between two walls. Two huts had been built next to each other, but didn't quite touch. The seam between them was comfortably big enough for a small woman. But Nuan was not a small woman. It was a tight fit.

Through the cranny, an ancient-looking carved stone stairway led down. A glow appeared in the distance, a lamp's glow. Two mean-looking women stood in the glow, slouching in baggy coats that probably hid guns. But they weren't the only ones there. Two visitors faced them. One was a young woman with a black braid running down to the small of her back. It twitched as she spoke. Beside her, a young man stood with his hands clasped neatly behind his butt—tied at the wrists, actually—and a short leash drooped from his collar. The woman held the other end loosely in her fingers.

A thick black cloth wrapped over the boy's eyes. For a moment, it looked like tufts of cotton were growing from his ears, but really they were stuffed. The woman had stopped up his ears with cotton and pitch, taking away his sense of hearing. He stood there, none the wiser, while his mistress talked with the guards.

"...but I'm not part of a gang." she said delicately. "This is my boyfriend. He doesn't know where we are, so be gentle with him, please."

"You tricked him?" One of the guards laughed cruelly. "Not bad."

"I started walking him on a leash four months ago, then when he got used to it, I asked if I could blindfold him, and he said yes!" She bounced on the balls of her feet. "It's so much kinkier when he doesn't know where we're going."

"Why do you want him a monster boy?" asked the guard. "You've already got him wrapped around your finger."

The girlfriend looked at her man and gave a high-pitched sigh. "I don't really have any complaints about him. He's a great guy, really. He never drinks, he's really thoughtful and he works hard. It's only..." She looked abashed.

The guard put up her hands. "Hey, it's okay. Just pay us and we'll monster him for you. I was just curious."

"No, no, there's a real reason. He's not as flexible as I want him to be. He's so inflexible whenever I want something to change in our lives, and I don't want to force him like other girls do. I just... I want him to want it."

"I heard that, sister. Come on, bring him in before he figures it out."

The door swung open. Its hinges creaked as if the doors hadn't seen oil in a century, and the cavern's echo turned the creak into a boom. The young woman tugged gently on the leash, and her boyfriend followed her in.

"We'll save you," Mel whispered to the blindfolded boy. "I promise."

Nuan and Mel waited a minute, then stepped up to the guards. Nuan in her rough-and-tumble street-girl getup, Mel in a collar and leash, wearing a tight shirt and pants that were not quite whorish and not quite normal.

"Well that was fast," said the shorter one, who had spoken before. "It's a big haul today." She eyed Nuan up and down. "And a big day for nobodies. But hey, we all start somewhere."

Nuan scowled, and it wasn't fake. A few hypnotized slut boys was one thing, but this place was worse. It was a factory that churned out mindless sex toys as efficiently as the lumber mill spat out beams. It just wasn't right.

"Hey, sister, relax," said the chatty guard. "I was just teasing you." She pulled open the door. "Go on in."

Nuan went in without a word. As Mel passed through the doorway, the guard wrapped her hands quickly around Mel's chin, kissed him on the cheek, then pushed him through the door and shut it. Mel stood shocked, staring murderously at the back of the shabby wooden planks.

"Come on," said Nuan. "Let it go."

* * *

Mel did not let it go. What burned him was not that he had been sexually harassed—that was to be expected, after all—but that the next boy would be harassed the same way. As long as bound young men walked through those doors, they would have their humanity and their self-respect stripped away by those greedy, possessive hands. It was a bitter injustice.

He didn't have time to voice it. Another thug met them just inside the door and escorted them down the stone stairs, into a pale wooden room where a single suspended paper lamp battled against the darkness and the toxic-smelling pipe smoke. It was a room that belonged more in a coal mine than a hideout—perhaps that was what it had been once.

"Pretty good catch," said the thug halfheartedly. "And no handcuffs. Where'd you get a tame guy like that?"

"My friend owed me some money," Nuan lied. "I decided it was time to collect." She patted his groin, and Mel blanched as he felt his erection growing. "I told her, 'just give me your son and the debt's off.' Now he's here for a little... rearranging."

The thug nodded, bored. "Tie him up here," she said, fingering a pile of rope. "Then come with me and we'll talk pricing."

Nuan took up the rope, grabbed Mel and pushed him against the wall. Mell pursed his lips. He'd been hard already, and now being pushed and pulled by Nuan was not helping. She stretched out his arms and tied them together behind him, then tied his leash a bracing grid on the wall where he could easily reach it and undo it. She looked down at his groin, probably considering how she could bind his cock to keep the slavers from using it. With a private, guilty look at Mel, she gave up on it and left him there. "Don't move from that spot," she said. "I'll be back soon." And Mel knew that last command was more than part of the act.

The two women disappeared through the door and shut it with an ancient clatter, and Mel was alone.

Nuan failed to return promptly. Mel's sense of time was far from perfect, but eventually he decided that it must have been at least thirty minutes since Nuan left him tied like an animal to that brace.

"Twenty more," he murmured to himself. Then he would take action.

Ten minutes passed without a sound. Then ten more, and Mel got to work. The knot that bound his wrists was tight, but if he got the correct angle and opposed his right index finger with his left thumb...

The door opened, and a girl stepped in. She was skinny and dirty, not like the guards out front, and she carried herself with a lazy slouch in her back. She leaned against the far wall, her face lit by the muffled, shadowy glow of the lamp. She brought a smoking pipe up to her mouth, then looked at Mel and paused. She smirked.

Mel glared back at her, but she only seemed charmed.

She took a few long drags from her pipe and breathed them out, filling the room with foul-smelling haze that swirled in the bright light, spiraling lazily to the ceiling. Her glazy eyes stayed on Mel. They followed the lines of his sweaty chest, which his shirt did very little to conceal, and wandered down his pants—'did she notice the bulge?' he wondered—to his trembling knees.

"Wonder what kind of monster boy you'll be," she said. "A singer? Maybe a foxtail."

Mel gathered a glob of saliva under his tongue and spat at her. He missed.

"Hey, I'm just asking." She contemplated another drag, but didn't take one. "You know you stay you when you go monster, right?"

"That is not true."

"No, yeah, it is. I grew up with a boy who hated it when you corrected him, even if he was wrong. Isn't that funny? Just couldn't stand it. Guess he wanted to be smart so badly, it just hit a nerve. Anyway, once we were all grown up, my gang and I grabbed him and brought him here, and when we finally got him to cum, he turned into a wisp, and you know what? He still hates it when you correct him."

Mel stared coldly at her, unsure what to say.

"You know what?" she said. "You're boring. I wonder if Fei wants a game of boards."

Finally, Mel was alone again. He barely waited for that verbose woman to close the door behind her before he attacked the ropes. He freed himself from the brace in minutes, but his efforts failed against rope holding his wrists together. It would have to do.

Mel stretched his stiff muscles. Without any female eyes on him, he could stretch his legs, flex his rear and bend over without fear of catcalls.

There were, as good luck would have it, three exits to the room: one that led to the surface, one through which Nuan and that awful smoker had both disappeared and one which had not been opened. Mel took the latter.

Through the door, he stopped. Racks, baskets, barrels, utensils, dirty plates and bowls and even some old pottery lay scattered around the room. And women draped over everything. Mel would have been less frightened to stumble on a pack of sleeping wolves.

They did not take it so seriously. Some of them, he noticed, were sleeping, and the ones who weren't raised their heads listlessly or else stayed focused on their meager, sour-smelling food.

One of them almost broke the spell: "Hey, pretty boy, where are you headed?"

Mel ducked his head and spent a frantic moment thinking of something to say. Finally, he tried, "Mistress says I need to hurry."

He picked his way to the door, awkwardly pulled it open and slipped through, and fortuitously the girls gave him no further trouble.

The next room should have been easier. Only a lone male sitting at a desk, laying out papers. Each sheet went into one of three stacks, and he straightened each one obsessively as he added to it.

The man looked up, and as Mel should have guessed, it wasn't a man. Two lines down his cheeks framed his mouth like mandibles, and he had a hungry look in his monstrous eyes.

"Meat," he hissed. He braced his hands on the desk and got to his feet. "A little bite of meat has come strolling home."

Mel tried not to let his heart race. "Whoever you are, I am not your enemy."

"You are here because you want to know," He crept out from behind his desk. "And you want Mistress not to know."

"I don't know what you're talking about." In truth, Mel would very much have liked to read those papers.

The monster boy moved impossibly quietly. Mel took his eyes off him for half a second, and then the two were face-to-face. Mel should have reasserted his personal boundaries, but something in the monster boy's gravity—something between that spindly frame, that silent step and those lethal eyes—stopped him.