Author’s Note:
This is an unedited, ongoing serial that will eventually be published in novel form. Plot/characters/elements are subject to change as it is being written. It’s currently in 1st person/present tense, but I may change it to past tense, excluding the first chapter which will act as an intro. Read at your own discretion and take note of story tags below.
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic sci-fi
Tags: prostitution, graphic sex, large age gap, violence, theft, drug/alcohol abuse, depression, rape, gang rape, cannibalism, murder, incest, child/infant death and abuse, general abuse, (more to be added as the story goes)
There’s no getting around the security cameras, so I don’t have much element of surprise to work with, but I’ve got a blaster shoved down the back of my pants that I’m hoping Turk can’t see on the old body-scanner pointed at me.
“Open up!” I pound on the thick metal door. Turk’s place is an ugly, squat building right next to the shuttle terminal. Windowless, it’s nearly a fortress—there’s a king’s ransom in real steel covering the walls, pitted in a few places but mostly scrubbed shiny from the sand and dust storms.
“Turk, you fucker… Open the goddamn door!” I shout, staring into the lens of one of the cameras. I’m probably going to die today, but I can’t let him get away with what he did—the image of Apple’s poor, torn up face is burned into my retinas.
There’s a loud clang on the other side of the door and I step back as it ratchets slowly open, my hand on the blaster’s grip. It’s Turk himself and he’s wearing a faded pink bathrobe.
Jesus, he’s hard to look at. He’s had work done on his eyes—built-in night vision and extra range… he loves to brag about it—but he went to a cut-rate surgeon and wound up with scarring that makes it look like he stared into the flames of Hell. His cheeks are cut open and fitted with flexible, transparent inserts, exposing his teeth on both sides, but the weirdest part of his face, by far, is his perfectly pert nose, upturned and dainty like it belongs on some doll, not sitting in the middle of his self-inflicted wreckage. I can’t believe Apple could stomach fucking him.
“Where’s my property?”
His words jolt me out of my daze. My reflexes are stupid-slow. I should have pulled the gun the second I laid eyes on him, but the whiskey is still going strong in my bloodstream and I’m sluggish from exhaustion.
“He’s mine,” I growl, leveling the blaster at him. He is—Apple’s mine in every way that there is, and if there is even the slightest possibility that I survive this suicide mission, I’m going to dedicate my life to keeping him safe and happy. No one will ever hurt him again.
I see movement in my peripheral and my instincts and training kick in—I swing the gun to my six, popping off two shots at Turk’s goon. The guy falls back hard, a smoking hole in the middle of his chest, and I turn around just in time to blast another hole straight through the head of the guy about to attack me. Even though he’s now missing most of his face—I can see the wall straight through his head—he doesn’t fall right away, just wobbles on his feet as he feels the edges of the wound. There’s no blood, the wound is cauterized, and the air is redolent of burnt flesh, piss, and shit… My heart starts to race and I’m getting tunnel vision. Helluva fucking time to have a panic attack.
Before I can react, a third guy tackles me to the ground. I feel my nose break as I hit the floor with my face, and the wind is knocked out of me. I blink through the pain, trying to draw breath, and focus on the slippered feet that stop in my line of vision. Finally, I cough, wheezing and struggling in the goon’s grasp as Turk squats down to stare at me. His robe’s wide open and his big, hideous dick is just dangling there in front of my face. It’s deformed and covered in broken veins and old surgery scars, the head of it bulbous and flared, a real nightmare.
What a last sight.
I laugh, spitting out a chip of tooth.
“Go on. Kill me,” I rasp. The boys would be safe at the hostel—Drenner assured me he’d hide them when he sold me the blaster—and tomorrow they’ll be long gone. Pytre will take care of Apple and in turn Apple will take care of Pytre… teach him how to survive with his wits.
“Kill you? No. You’re not going to die for a long while, my friend,” Turk says, patting my shoulder. He stands up, murmuring to someone I can’t see. I feel the pinch of a needle in my neck and everything fades to grey.
+++
I’m only half awake when I realize that someone is balls-deep inside me while I’m tied down to something. Wait, not tied… I’m paralyzed. I can’t even open my eyes, but I can feel everything. I’m on my stomach on something soft, a bed probably, with something shoved under my hips to elevate my ass—my legs are hanging off the side of the bed and the toes of my boots are scraping the floor in time to the pounding I’m getting. Boots? I’m still wearing my pants it seems. I’m guessing they ripped a hole in the seat to get access.
Damn, I liked these pants.
The guy slams into me hard with a grunt, finishing off, then pulls out. Almost immediately, someone else takes his place, and I let out a muffled moan. My ass is sore—how long has this been going on? I try to lift my eyelids again but nothing happens. I think of the relief girl at the bar—at least she gets to sleep through the rough stuff. This guy’s going way too deep, but there’s fuck all I can do about it except ride out the pain and hope he cums soon.
The asshole finally does and I breathe out a sigh of relief, but my respite is short-lived—a third guy sticks his dick in me, thankfully smaller than the last two, and starts speed-fucking me. With all the squelching and splattering I hear—god knows how many fuckers pumped and dumped—it’s gotta be like churning butter back there.
So, this is what Turk has planned for me? Fuck my ass raw? Rape me to death?
Finally, I get my eyes a bit open and I see that Turk’s sitting on the bed, just watching his fellas run a train on me and jerking off slowly. His dick looks only half hard but it’s still bigger than anything that's ever stretched my hole… I’m sure he’s going to take his turn eventually and I will admit that the idea scares the living shit out of me. What if I can piss him off enough that he’ll just put me out of my misery instead?
“Listen, you fucking freak—” I try, but it comes out as a mess of hissing and garbled vowels. However, it gets his attention.
“Ah, you’re awake. Good. Enjoying yourself?” He smiles and the inserts in his cheeks sort of buckle, making him even more grotesque.
“Fuck you,” I reply. Of course, it sounds nothing like that, but Turk can probably figure out what I said by my tone.
He laughs and shakes his head. My dance partner changes again and this time I let out a strangled yell. Either the guy’s dick is covered in studs or he’s wearing some kind of sheath—either way, my ass is getting scooped out so hard I’ve got tears in my eyes.
“Fuck you,” I mumble again, my tongue only half obeying me. My nose is throbbing in time to my heartbeat and I can’t breathe through it—I’d almost forgotten it was broken—but the pain is nothing compared to what’s happening to my poor backside.
Turk smiles wide, then licks his finger and thumb before pinching one of his nipples. I just close my eyes.
What a way to go...
Suddenly, I hear something that makes my heart beat faster: a Petrov Ten shuttle taking off. The whole place is shaking with the force of it. Shit, how long was I unconscious? It's morning already? But, it really doesn’t matter. I’m just happy that Pytre and Apple are safe. I might not look like I’m smiling but I am.
Safe travels.
Turk speaks up after the roar of the shuttle fades. “See, if you hadn’t killed Stern and Bruce, we mighta reached some sort of agreement, like,” Turk says. “I was willing to let you buy the boy back, you know. Give you a good price for him.”
I let out a shuddering breath when the guy with the studded dick pulls out, but then I feel fingers enter my wrecked ass, pushing in, and I whimper.
“But no... you come into my house and kill my guys? That don’t sit well with me.”
I’m barely listening because the fucker behind me is twisting his hand, back and forth, trying to get it to fit and it feels like something’s going to tear.
“Messing up the kid’s face... now, I didn’t like doing it, pretty boy like that deserves better. But it’s your fault, you know.”
My fault?
The thought barely registers because a few things happen almost simultaneously, taking up all my attention.
The first, is my ass finally accepts the guy’s fist and instead of pain, I spontaneously start cumming so hard—I mean, full-body, toe-curling hard—that the wail coming from between my clenched teeth sounds like a steam whistle. That’s never happened before... I mean, my dick’s not even hard.
The guy fisting me is so surprised he yanks his hand out of me—or so I thought that’s what happened... but then I hear yelling and a loud bang, and the unmistakable whirring sound of a minigun powering up.
I still can’t turn or lift my head, so I can only guess at what’s happening around me, but I hear Turk begging for his life and damn does that make me happy.
When a tinny lifeless voice demands that Turk’s men put down their guns, I recognize it. An Enforcer? Back when ‘Boh-7 was a slightly more lawful place, the Enforcer droids made up the bulk of the police force. Days before the coup that turned the moon into its current anarchic state, someone managed to hack their systems, turning them into guns for hire for anyone who could afford them... which isn’t many, these days.
I hear the clattering of dropped weapons and a second later, a gentle hand on my shoulder.
“Are you all right?” Pytre asks. Why isn’t he on the shuttle? Not that I’m not happy to see him...
“Can’t move,” I mutter through sluggish lips. I feel like I just shat out a bowling ball—I’m afraid to ask for the damage report. Also, I’m still tingling from head to toe from climaxing, and I don’t know how to process what happened. I’m just glad it’s over.
I grunt with surprise as I’m turned over, then lifted off the bed by two thick metal arms that hold me against the droid’s cold grey body. Pytre quickly pulls a blanket off the bed and drapes it over me. It’s not like I really care that my bare ass is hanging down for all the world to ogle but I appreciate the gesture.
“Wait,” I say as we start off. Turk and his goons are just standing around us. Why are they still breathing?
Pytre looks up. “What is it?”
“Tuhk...” I gurgle. “No... kill?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because, according to Drenner, he owes a lot of credits to a lot of scary people... and who do you think will come after us when they find out Turk’s no longer capable of paying them back?”
He’s right. That’s why I didn’t tell Drenner who the blaster was intended for—I knew he’d try to stop me. Damn it. I should have told Pytre to keep his mouth shut. While I don’t really care about my own hide, the thought of putting Pytre, and by extension Apple, in harm’s way makes me nauseous.
We can’t kill them. Even if we have the Enforcer shoot Turk's head off his shoulders and kill every last one of his henchmen, chances are the droid belongs to one of those scary people Pytre mentioned, and between its body cam and Turk’s security system, there would be no hiding who did it.
Something dawns on me.
“Sold... tick’ts?” It's the only explanation for how he can afford to hire out an Enforcer droid.
Pytre nods, leading us out of what I’m guessing is Turk’s bedroom. “For the Enforcer and for the doctor. I also gave Drenner most of the credits left over from the chartreuse for a month’s worth of rent.”
Shit. So we’re broke again. And neither Apple nor I will be making money the usual way any time soon.
“I want that boy back!” Turk shouts, following us.
Pytre surprises me by turning around, his expression one of sheer fury. “Enforcer, shoot him in the knee.”
“What? Fuck!” Turk sounds like he’s running away. The droid swivels 180 degrees, me still cradled in its arms like a baby, and blasts off a shot from one of its shoulder guns. It goes right over my head, so close I smell burning ozone, and Turk goes down like a sack of wet garbage with a neat hole through the back of his knee. Pytre stands above the wailing merc, his face serene. His measured words are icy cold: “If you ever go near Apple again, I’m going to cut your cock off and feed it to you a piece at a time.”
Jesus.
+++
Pytre winds through the streets, the Enforcer following behind at a steady pace. I’m half asleep by the time we get to the hostel, lulled into dozing by the vibrations coming up from the droid’s treads... and possibly, probably shock. My brain just wants to shut down.
At the hostel, we go all the way to the top floor to a room I’ve never seen before. It’s much bigger than where we’ve been staying and it has two large beds—a bit wider than doubles. This must be what Drenner calls the “Honeymoon Suite”. Like all the other rooms in the discount hostel there are no wall decorations and just the bare minimum of furnishings, but I notice with some hazy amusement that there’s a little blue vase with a fake yellow flower in it on the table. Classy.
A slender blonde woman with thick-framed glasses is leaning over Apple on the bed, nodding at whatever he’s saying. I’m assuming the woman is the doctor Pytre mentioned.
“Enforcer, put him down here,” Pytre says, pointing to the other bed. Gently, the droid settles me down on the bed. “Enforcer, you can go.” The droid beeps twice and swivels around, leaving us to go back to its master, whoever that is.
I look over at Apple. Most of his face is swathed in clean white bandages, so he can’t see me, but I say, “I’m here.” My voice still sounds weird and for a sec I wonder if he even knows it’s me, but then he nods.
“He was given some kind paralytic. Or tranquilizers. Maybe both,” Pytre explains to the woman as she stands to come take a look at me. Without a word, she grabs my nose and—crack—jerks it straight. I yell, my eyes streaming, and almost hyperventilate as I lay there twisting in agony. I’ve broken my nose half a dozen times and it hurts the same every goddamn time. On the plus side, the adrenaline seems to have given me some of my mobility back.
When I’ve gotten a hold of myself the woman leans over me again. I wonder what her story is. Doctors here generally fall into two categories. The first are doctors who never actually got a license or even studied medicine. Most of them are pure butchers and the only doctors most people can afford.
The second class of doctors are the ones who had licenses but lost them. I’m pegging this lady for the latter—maybe she lost her license because she made a bad call, but from the way her grey eyes stare at me without a shred of life or compassion in them, I’m going to assume she lost it because she likes cutting up orphans in her spare time.
“Where else?” she says, her accent marking her as a newcomer to this moon.
“He was... uh...” Pytre goes bright pink as he gestures to my pelvis. Gone is the tough guy who threatened a dangerous man with castration just ten minutes ago. He looks like he’s going to cry and it hurts me because I know why that is. Well, I guess we have something new in common now, don’t we? “He-he was—”
“Raped,” I say, sparing him the words. "A whole bunch." The doctor nods, looking almost bored.
Pytre swallows and looks away. “I’m going to get some food for us. I’ll be back.” He almost runs for the door.
Once he’s gone, the woman asks me if I can turn over on my stomach so she can take a look, and I manage to with a little help.
After some not-so-gentle prodding, she stands up. “You’ll be fine. There are some abrasions but nothing that won’t heal in a few days. You’ll probably want to stick a freeze pack on there.” I hear her pull her gloves off with a snap and I slowly roll to my side. “The little one said you’re a sex worker?” She lifts an eyebrow at me.
I nod. I guess I have to come out of retirement as soon as my ass is healed up, don’t I? Fucking hell. Maybe Pytre can get more liquor to sell?
“A little old for that kind of work, aren’t you?”
I just frown at her.
“I assume you’re up to date on your immunizations?”
“Yes.” Both Apple and I get regular shots of black market Termezine and Declorazam to keep our dicks from falling off and our assholes free of disease.
“Good. Bring this one to me in ten days to get the stitches out,” the doctor says, pointing to Apple. “And keep the dressings clean.”
“Ok.”
The doctor picks up her bag and leaves without another word or a backwards glance. I’m guessing Pytre already squared up with her.
“Asher?” Apple’s voice is muffled by the bandages.
“Hang on,” I say and struggle to a sitting position. My legs are like wet noodles so I hang onto the mattress as I lower myself to the floor to crawl the space between the beds. It takes a few minutes, but I manage to pull myself up so I’m lying next to Apple. I take his unbandaged hand.
“I’m here.”
“You ok, old man?”
I think about it for a minute. “I will be,” I answer. “You?”
“I will be.” I see the corner of his mouth curl up a tiny bit, but then I’m startled when he lets out a shuddering whimper. “I’m going to lose my eye.”
“That’s fine,” I say, squeezing his hand. “You’ve got a spare.”
This time he laughs, then groans in pain. The doctor’s taped up his chest, so I’m guessing he’s got some broken ribs, not to mention the tear in his cheek. I shake my head. “I’m sorry.”
“S’ok.” He squeezes my hand back. “How’s it look?”
I can’t see anything because of the bandages, but I reach over and lift up the corner of the gauze covering his cheek. The stitches are very neat and tidy—there’s probably about twenty of them repairing Apple’s torn face—but his flesh is so bruised it hurts to look at. I place the bandage back, my stomach in knots.
“It looks fine,” I lie.
“Bullturds.” The side of his lip turns up again in a small smile.
I lay there quietly, just watching him breathe. “My nose got broken too.”
“Oh yeah? Hurts like a bastard.”
“Yeah.”
I can’t tell if it’s because I’m exhausted, in pain, or actively trying not to think about what I just went through, but I feel just plain wrong. Mostly in my head. I feel like crying for a bit but I don’t want to worry Apple.
“Did he tell you why he did this to me?” Apple whispers.
I frown. “No. He didn’t say.” I’m sure I’d remember it if he did.
“It’s because I told him I was going to go back to you.”
It’s your fault. So that’s what he meant.
“Oh.”
“You were right about him. All of it. I was just... I thought... Maybe you didn’t need me anymore. With the priest around. You know?”
Ok, so I am crying now, but doing it as quietly as I can.
“Oh yeah?” I say, my voice hoarse. “That’s bullturds.”
Apple lets out a shaky sigh and I realize that behind the bandages he’s also crying. What a pair we are.
I clear my throat trying to think of something cheerful to say.
“You should have seen Pytre. He threatened to cut Turk’s cock off and make him eat it.”
Apple lets out a raspy chuckle, then a moan of pain, but his ribs and face don’t stop him from laughing again. “That’s fitting, coming from him.”
My forehead wrinkles up. “Is it?” I’d found it weirdly out of character, though I'd chalked it up to the shit he's been through.
“Yeah. He’s a Rimer.”
“So?”
“So, he’s a eunuch.”
I’m silent for a few seconds, digesting this information.
“Asher?”
“Uh. Yeah?”
“Oh...” Apple says softly. “You didn’t know, did you?”
I just grunt in reply. Then I sigh. Well, it explains a few things, I suppose.
I look at Apple's hand in mine.
"Can you make a fist?"
He closes his hand in a tight fist. "Yeah, why?"
"Just wanted to see how big it is."
I can tell Apple's confused, but I just bring his hand to my lips and give it a little kiss.
