Run, Boy

'Stand up straight,' said a voice in my head. It wasn't my thought. It was someone else speaking inside my brain. What it said was benign for now- after all, I had to look good for my new purpose- but I worried that it might try to make me do something wrong. I made a note to be on guard.

Then she arrived. It was definitely the same woman who had found us in the brothel, but now she was dressed like a true mistress. A shiny black dress flowed from her waist all the way down to her ankles, accented with bright, lime green stripes that followed her legs. The dress covered her all the way up to her collarbone, but it left her shoulders bare, and nothing could hide her sweet, toned figure.

"You two got here quickly," she said, in a voice one octave deeper than she had used at the brothel. "You're dedicated. I like that." We stayed still from the necks down, eyes locked on her as she marched up to us. Her high heels elevated her to at least a foot above us. She put a hand on each of our shoulders and pressed us together. "Now listen closely," she said.

Click! Something twitched just beneath my mouth.

"I love you," she said.

'I love you,' said the voice in my head. I wondered at it for a moment, but it must have been true. I did not know how, but it had to be.

"And you love me," she said.

That hardly seemed relevant. She loved me, so I had to be hers.

"And you will call me Mistress."

I was disappointed. Mistress only meant a woman who slept with married men, I thought. I could think of so many better titles for her. Or better yet, real names. Surely, Mistress had a name. I wondered if I could learn it someday.

"Now," she said, "give me the envelope."

I sucked in a quick breath. Terin wobbled on his feet, doing nothing, so I broke the news. "It's still in the brothel," I told her. "I forgot it there. I'm sorry, Mistress."

Mistress' jaw dropped, and she trembled for a moment, then instantly regained herself. It was a gesture I knew well from my father, and it made me feel horrible to see that I had inflicted it on my new owner too.

"Is this true?" she asked, pointing at Terin.

"Yes, Mistress," said Terin weakly.

Mistress looked down, keeping her composure, but I could see the desperation in those eyes. "Mr. Phillips!" she called.

"Yes, Mistress?" asked a thin, pale, lightly bearded young man in a business suit with no tie. Slick black gloves covered his hands.

"We're about to be found out. Get the moving in order. I'm going to call my contact in the police and try to buy us time. Mr. Mombau!"

A heavy-set man with a flat face and dark skin stepped up next, standing exactly where Mr. Phillips had been. His abundant black hair gave power to his gaze. "Yes, Mistress?"

She pointed to me. "Tie him to the office wall, facing me. He shouldn't give you any trouble. And I want the white one under my table. Also, get collars on them."

"Yes, Mistress." Mr. Mombau inspected the collar I was already wearing and nodded his approval, then I felt a pull as he yanked me and Terin after the Mistress.

We were led into a computer room with an impressive array of hardware framing a single, average-size computer screen. Mr. Mombau shoved Terin under the desk, locking him into a kneeling position with his arms shackled to the underside and his head thrust forward. Mr. Mombau drew a ring gag from his pocket and held it up to Terin, who opened his mouth obediently. Then the bigger man hesitated. "She didn't mention this," he mumbled. "Next time, maybe." He put it away.

He turned to me. I had hoped he would be pleasantly surprised that I had sat there obediently, but he registered no reaction at all. Instead, he wrested my arms up into a set of hand cuffs I had not even seen, then pushed me back until I went flat against the wall. I squealed against the cold surface, gritting my teeth to muffle the noise, then Mr. Mombau put a hand on my stomach, flattening me to it. My muscles strained uselessly as the cold punished my skin, then the sensation went away. Either the wall had warmed, or my back was numb. Maybe both.

With the same skill, Mr. Mombau pried my legs apart and hooked them into rope loops, making me twitch as the hard, braided cord pulled tight around my skin. A single pull of a braided rope, and my feet were a whole yard apart. He stood up and smiled down at me.

His fingers played on my cock, and I moaned.

"You like it?" he said. "That's good. Mistress always likes to see a hard cock. Even while you're being punished."

"Punished?"

"That's right. You've put her through a lot of trouble. But that's no reason to be soft." He bounced my balls on his fingers, and I got dizzy. "That's right, get good and hard. Don't worry. Mistress loves you too."

I did not doubt it, but as he turned away, I still felt wretched. I could hear men giving orders and bare feet scattering across carpet. I, and I alone, had set the whole house into an uproar. I knew I would never live this down.

Thankfully, Mistress interrupted my thoughts by marching in, hurried but graceful. She looked down at Terin and sighed. "I can't do it," she said, peeling him out of his restraints. "On your back, boy. I need release." She unzipped her pants, revealing no clothes beneath them.

Terin let slip a little smile as he positioned himself obediently beneath her. He propped his back up on his arms and stared dreamily at her.

Mistress pushed him flat, making his arms collapse. "On your back, I said." Straddling him, she took hold of his nipples and rolled them between her fingertips. "Yes..." she said to herself, "Yes, I need this."

She found his cock and stroked it twice, then let herself go. She came down on him all the way, her rear slapping into his thighs, then went up again and almost dismounted his cock. Her next few pushes were shorter and faster, and I only caught glimpses of his firm, soaking-wet white cock underneath her.

Terin cringed, and I could have sworn I felt my own balls getting tight. He gritted his teeth and grunted, while Mistress pressed herself onto him, moaning as his first wave went into her, then his second.

She came away, squelching as her mixture of cum and juice tried to stick them together. She reached down, and her fingers played her pussy. Her moaning rose again, and she clutched Terin, grinding her femininity on his hot, wet skin. When she quieted down, her breathing was fast, and her fingers made painful depressions on him.

"That's good," she said, standing up. "That took the edge off."

She snapped her fingers twice, and a short blue-haired boy brought her a rough-looking purple towel. She snatched it and wiped herself aggressively, then zipped her pants shut, handed back the towel and snatched a phone from its stand on the desk. "Telephone," she said into it, with the clear diction of a voice command, "call speed-dial four." She walked out of the room. A few seconds later, I heard her voice saying something in a commanding tone.

I tested my handcuffs in case I had any freedom of movement. I didn't. I flexed my fingers, trying to keep them from going numb, but the sensation was already creeping into my fingertips. I started to struggle.

"What are you doing?" asked Terin. "What's wrong?"

"My arms," I grunted. "They're numb."

"I'm sorry."

"Can't you help me?" As soon as those words left my lips, I felt the familiar ping in the roof of my mouth, and I knew it was silly. Mistress wanted me on this wall, my body displayed for her, so that was where I would be. I looked sheepishly at Terin and saw in his eyes that he had the same thought.

We both went quiet.

Finally, Mistress came back. Without breaking her stride, she pulled Terin up to his feet as she walked past him. She put the phone back in its place, turned to leave, then saw me as if for the first time. "Mr. Mombau!" she called. "Put the new boys to bed. Mr. Phillips, tell me how the progress has gone." She marched out of the room.

Seconds later, Mr. Mombau appeared and set to work on my restraints. I could barely feel his warm skin brushing on mine as he freed me. "Thank you," I huffed, as I brought my hands down, feeling the blood flow back into my fingers.

"Stay sharp," said Mr. Mombau, his face mere inches away from mine. "The Mistress is frightened. She has not been this frightened in all my time here. No mistakes, understand?"

"I understand," I said resolutely. Whenever there was chaos, there was opportunity, and this was my chance to prove my dedication. "What do you want me to do?"

"Follow me."

Terin followed him even more closely than I did. We entered through a tall, thin doorway into a room lined with a few enormous mattresses. Boys sat up straight on the edge and a few of them stood by the doorway. All of them stared at us, looking curious and, to my horror, hostile.

"Get back in bed!" snapped Mr. Mombau. "You need sleep. As soon as we leave, we might not sleep for days."

I asked, "Are we-"

"Get in bed," said Mombau again, shoving us forward. "Sleep. And be ready to go when I call you."

Terin and I exchanged looks. The other boys formed a circle around us, eyeing us everywhere. I only saw four of them who had more clothes than I did.

"Now who's this?" said the biggest of them. "Two! Two new ones... what a day. So what are your names?"

I remembered Mistress' orders, and I stepped forward. "I need sleep," I said. "I need as much rest as I can get. And you need it too, Terin." As gently as I could, I muscled through the row of boys, relieved to see Terin following me. I tried to ignore all of the eyes on me as I climbed onto the bed, hands sinking into the mattress, and tried to sleep.

I had thought I would never be able to get any rest with all of this panic, but as soon as I felt a pillow beneath my head, my body reminded me how long it had been since my last real night's sleep. Terin snuggled in next to me, and we fell asleep back-to-back.

When I woke up, I had no idea what the time was. Back home, I had always told the time by the sun, the animals, and the noises in the kitchen. Here, I could only ask someone, and there was no one to ask. Everyone was in a frenzy. They gathered up fistfuls of clothes and tossed around scraps. They pushed and shoved, but nobody fought. It was not a brawl, but a stampede.

"Get moving!" said someone, probably Mr. Phillips. "Go! We've been made!"

I didn't know what it meant to made, but I gathered that we weren't safe here anymore. The door threw open, and I paused a moment to let the crowd trample through, then went after them.

"Mistress!" yelled a voice, "They're not ready! We can't go out like this!"

"Just leave them!" she cried.

'Oh, no,' I thought.

I looked around, trying to find the door, but I did not know the layout of the place. A door slammed shut, and Mistress' voice vanished. The rest of the boys kept running, but I stopped. I tried to find Terin. He was not near me.

"What do we do now?" whimpered someone.

There came a pounding at the door. A few people jumped, but my hopes were not raised. That could not be Mistress.

Just as we reached the lobby, the door caved in, its lock smashed open. More people came in, but something was wrong about them. They were covered in hard, crisp armor, and half of them were females. "Police!" they barked. "Hands up! This is the police!"

The ever-present buzzing in the roof of my mouth reached a crescendo, and a voice shouted in my head, too muffled for me to understand. I clutched my forehead, trying to stay conscious. I couldn't. The world drifted away, and I felt as though my brain had dropped through the floor.

When I woke up, I was on a crooked bed. A woman stood over me, but she wasn't Mistress. Her skin was not dark enough. I tried to remember who she was and where she had gone, but nothing came to me.

And why was I calling her 'Mistress?'

At that rebellious thought, I expected to feel buzzing erupt through the bottom of my mind, but nothing came. Even the lack of it felt normal somehow.

"There you go," said the woman, in a gentle but businesslike voice. "How are you feeling? Better?"

"Yes," I said, with a slight lisp. I palmed my jaw and stretched my mouth muscles, regaining my sense of my own body. "What happened to me? There was some woman... Terin and I both went to her. But I can't remember why."

The woman shook her head- not at me, I sensed, but at herself. "This is a textbook case," she said. "The one you've been calling 'Mistress' is actually Sasha Mengu. And she's been doing this for a long time."

"She brainwashed me..."

"That's right."

"And you saved me? Who are you?"

"We're Mars for Everyone. We're a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the conditions of the inner city. Our branch focuses on prostitution."

"Which is how you found me."

"Not exactly. Sasha had been one of us, until we realized that she was keeping the males for herself as thralls. And now we know how she kept them all in line: brain chips. By now it's been..." she counted on her fingers and mouthed a curse. "It's been two years since we lost track of her. And all that time, she's been snatching up helpless boys like you."

"Helpless?" I stood up. "Do you know where I came from?" She stared at me, unconvinced. I decided to drop it. "Well," I said, "what happens to me now?"

"Now you've hit the jackpot." She handed me a slick white slip. "Take this to the transporter's office, and she'll see about getting you clothes, a name and a degree."

"A degree?!"

"You heard me. Thanks to our donors, we can get higher education for everyone."

I stared at the white slip, unwilling to believe it was true. There had to be some kind of catch.

"Go now," she said. "What are you waiting for?"

A door in the side of the room opened, and I jogged through, out to meet whatever was ahead.

* * *

When the prostitute finished his story, he put a hand over his chest as if he was out of breath.

"So," said Keesha, "you got saved."

"Ya. After I'd saved myself enough times, I fell into the right hands. And the rest is history. My family knows I'm alive, I've never heard from the pirates since, and I'm rich. Middle-class, anyway."

"So middle-class, you'll sell your body for twenty-six fedcoins?"

He smirked. "I managed to save the slut clothes that they gave me at the brothel. So some nights, when I feel naughty and dangerous, I come out here and work the streets."

"You're made for this job, you know that, boy?"

His smirk got even more lopsided. "I don't know how to take that."

"How about this?" She shuffled onto her knees and opened his vest. "Time for round two."