MEMORY OF ALEX

BY OWENM
memoryofalex@hotmail.com

[ part 5 ]

The road was slick and wet, covered with muddy puddles that hid cratered potholes deep enough to soak the unwary halfway up the shin. Afternoon thunderstorms were nothing new around here, they happened every day at precisely four o’clock, so precisely that you could set a clock by when the first peal of thunder echoed over the trees. It was always over by four thirty, the sun coming back out from behind the clouds, the rain only adding to the stickiness in the air instead of washing it away.

Alex trudged on ahead of me, stepping carefully along the side of the road to avoid any puddles, as if it made any kind of difference at this point. I had been sure we would be safe, with the afternoon thunderstorm already come and gone, that we could make the hike into town only having to deal with the heat and the inevitable mosquitoes. Even if I had been worried about it, Alex was so dead set on making the walk that I probably wouldn’t have said no anyway.

After what he had been through two days ago, I wasn’t going to say no to anything he asked for.

We were already more than halfway down the three mile walk when the first large drops began to fall from the sky. Neither of us had seemed to notice that the sky had clouded up again, so it had caught us both by complete surprise. I noticed them landing on the road in front of me, then felt the first few land on my head and shoulders, mixing themselves with the layer of sweat that covered my entire body.

“Fuck,” Alex swore under his breath, just loud enough for me to hear. He stopped walking as the raindrops began to fall faster and harder almost immediately.

“What are we gonna do?” I asked nervously, already starting to feel the rain dripping everywhere.

He glanced around quickly. A loud peal of thunder sounded, shaking both of us. For a moment, neither of us moved, and then a flash of lightening not very far away signaled another even louder boom. “Can’t go into the forest, not safe in a thunderstorm,” he said rapidly, turning to face me, his eyes wide. “We gotta try and lay down in the grass, c’mon!” He took off from the side of the road, running down a short slope into the tall grasses beyond. The rain quickly began falling in sheets, soaking us both as we struggled to find a place to get at least a little shelter, but there was nothing. There was only a low fence and a farm beyond, the crops there offering just as little protection as the wavering grasses we stood in.

Even though I thought it impossible, the rain grew heavier and heavier until it was more like a waterfall from the sky. A huge crack of thunder made me cry out, so loud that I couldn’t even hear myself shout. Alex pulled me down into a low ditch, lying me down on my stomach as a huge flash of light nearly blinded me. The instantaneous crack of thunder that accompanied it was louder than any I had ever heard before, leaving a ringing in my ears. Muddy water was flowing freely through the ditch, but when I tried to get up, Alex yanked me back down.

The whole thing lasted for what felt like hours, even though it was probably over in fifteen minutes. Flashes of lightening and peals of thunder surrounded us, never ceasing, and the stream in the ditch had turned into a river as runoff from the farm and the road filled it up. We had to move halfway into it, the water having gotten so deep that it wasn’t safe to stay there anymore. Alex grabbed my arm and pulled me up, signaling through the deafening noise to make for the fence. We slipped and slid in the mud that seemed to be everywhere, both of us falling face down several times before we managed to scramble and lay down next to the fence. I folded my hands behind my head and forced my face into the grass, Alex’s arm over my back, trying to keep myself from crying.

He kept his arm over my back the whole time, protecting me like the big brother he always had been, but all I could think about was how things were so different yesterday morning when it came time for me to finally free him from his imprisonment. I had slept on the couch that night with the television turned on, waking up with the dawn when the snow changed to a test pattern with that annoying high pitched tone. At some point, Alex had given up shouting and kicking feebly at the door to try and get my attention, and the closet was completely silent as I got off the couch and opened the closet door. He was hunched over when I opened it, but as he realized I was there he straightened back up again, making soft plaintive noises into the gag. I carefully unbuckled it and gently took the ball from his mouth. He coughed.

“Take them off,” he had moaned. “Please take them off.” I did as he asked, reaching around and pinching one of the clamps to take them off of his chest. He shouted and twisted as I did. “Please just take them off!” he moaned.

“I took one off,” I said quietly.

“It hurts even worse!” His voice cracked. I got a little nervous, and reached around to take the other one off. He jerked in the ropes really hard and shouted loudly.

“They’re off,” I told him, placing my hand on the back of his neck. He whimpered and then started to sob in a way that I scarcely could remember ever having seen him do, a full wracking cry that shook his whole body. I reached up to untie his right hand, and starting when I saw the condition of his wrist. He had obviously been twisting and pulling to try and free himself, and had managed to rub his wrist so raw that I could see it bleeding in a couple of places. The fear growing in me, I quickly pulled the knots loose and let his hand out. It fell to his side, his sobbing continuing unabated. I let out his other hand as well, untied his feet, and took of his blindfold.

He couldn’t walk on his own, so I helped him from the closet and laid him down in his bed. He sobbed the entire time, rolling over onto his side and pulling his knees up to his chest. I covered him with a sheet so that he didn’t have to be naked anymore and went to get him a glass of water and some Tylenol. It took some coaxing for him to sip it and swallow the pills. I stayed with him as his sobs finally began to die down, sitting on the bed and gently rubbing his neck and his back the way that Dad used to do whenever I had gotten hurt, because I knew how much better that used to make me feel. He fell asleep before Dad came home, and I laid down next to him and fell asleep as well. Dad didn’t even wake us up.

When the rain finally did end, it did so just as suddenly as it started. One moment, the rain was falling on my back so hard I was going numb, and the next moment there was nothing. A more distant crack of thunder seemed to indicate that the storm had already passed, kind of like an all clear sign I had seen in a movie about World War II following a bombing raid. We tentatively sat up, wondering if it was going to start up again. For a moment, we just stared at each other, and then we both burst into laughter at the same time. It was just too funny, how Alex was completely covered from head to toe with gobs of mud.

“Where’s your shoe?” I asked him, looking at his dirty left foot.

“Somewhere in that stupid ditch,” he said, shaking his head. “When we ran up the mud kinda swallowed it up.” I looked over toward the new river, which must have been several feet deep. “I don’t even know exactly where we were, it could be anywhere down there.”

“Dad’s gonna be mad if you don’t find it,” I warned him.

“What am I supposed to do, feel around under the water until I find it?” he said angrily. “It’s gone, we’ll never get it.”

“We’d better go home,” I said.

“No,” Alex answered after a pause. “I still wanna go into town.”

“But we’re covered in mud!”

“So?” He sighed. “I need to get a pair of shoes at the thrift store. Maybe Dad won’t notice.”

“But we were gonna get snacks with that money.”

“So we can’t get snacks anymore!” he said angrily. “Don’t be such a fucking baby.”

That had been the plan. Alex had emptied his bank onto his bed while I had watched, carefully counting the change he had accumulated over the last three years, amounting to a whole ten dollars and thirty-two cents. He had put it in a plastic bag and shoved it in his pocket. In a sudden panic, I looked for the huge bulge it made in his shorts, relieved to see that he still had it. We were going to buy a mound of doughnuts, chips, cookies, and candy with a bottle of soda to wash it all down and gorge ourselves until we got sick. I was hesitant, wanting to argue with Alex that he shouldn’t use all the money he had saved on junk food, but I didn’t want to argue with him. I wished we had taken the bus, but it only came once every couple of hours and he was right, it was faster to walk.

There was no choice but to wade back through the ditch to get up to the road. I felt the mud sucking at my feet, trying to pull my shoes off as well, but I managed to make it up to the road without losing them. Alex grimaced, and we plodded slowly along into town. There was only one advantage to the storm that I could see. The air was no longer choked with humidity, somehow replaced with a fresh coolness that seemed like it would never come to this part of the world. Our clothes clung to our bodies, my sneakers so soaked that they made a squishing noise with every step I took.

So there we were, trudging along the last half mile into the town of Wenahatchee. To call it a town was somewhat generous, at least as far as what I knew of as a town. I had seen plenty of small towns all around Massachusetts, even though we had lived in the suburbs of Boston. A small town by my definition was lined with hundred year old houses, the lawns neatly trimmed, a row of businesses framing a park in the middle. Wenahatchee was nothing like that. It was little more than a single street with a few ugly looking squat houses huddling around it. Half of the buildings were boarded up, probably for a long time from the looks of it.

As we entered the town, a group of kids maybe a little older than Alex were standing around at the lone gas station. I hoped that they wouldn’t pay any attention to us, but that wasn’t meant to be. At first, all they did was to stare, point, and giggle quietly. I turned red, and I could tell that Alex was as embarrassed as I was by the way he stared down at the road. They came down from their perch and assembled loosely in front of us, blocking our way.

“What the hell happened to you?” a tall, lanky boy said in a thick drawl, an unlit cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

“Got caught in the rain,” Alex muttered, never looking up.

“It looks more like you was wrestling with pigs,” he said pointedly, the other boys laughing at the joke. Alex was silent. I moved closer to him. “You sure you wasn’t wrestling with no pigs?”

Alex looked up angrily. “I don’t wrestle with pigs. That’s something people like you do.”

A chorus of ooh’s came from the boys, but the tall one motioned them to be quiet. “Now, now, don’t be takin no offense. You boys ain’t from around here, but down here we help each other out when there’s trouble.” He looked Alex over. “Looks like you lost a shoe there.” Alex nodded warily. “Tell ya what, you boys go meet us in back of the dime store in ten minutes and I’ll getcha a pair of shoes from my cousin that’ll probably work for you.”

“All right,” Alex muttered. The boys parted to let us continue down the road. I couldn’t help but glance over my shoulder as we moved far enough away, feeling as though we had just dodged a bullet.

“They were kinda nice, I guess,” I said tentatively.

“Yeah, let’s see if they actually show up,” Alex said back. “I dunno, maybe I should just go buy a pair of shoes instead and skip it.”

“But he’s gonna give you a free pair. Then we could still get the snacks.”

Alex shrugged, and we continued down the road. The sun was already retreating, twilight beginning to set in. A wind had started to blow, actually making me feel a little cold for the first time I could remember since we came here. We spent the fifteen minutes staring in the dime store window, staring at the small display of toys arrayed in a corner before we made our way to the lot behind the building. A high fence separated it from the houses behind, a lone car parked back there next to a large, smelly dumpster. The tall boy was already there, leaning against the building, holding a pair of shoes.

“See?” I whispered. “Now we can get the snacks.” We walked up to him.

“Size nine,” the boy said in a friendly way. “That work for you?”

“Yeah,” answered Alex. “Should be ok.”

The boy’s smile suddenly vanished. “Now how you gonna pay me for these?” From out of the shadows the rest of them suddenly materialized, forming two groups on either side of the store to cut off any avenue of retreat.

Alex answered hotly. “If I gotta pay for em, you can keep em.”

“Now let me tell you somethin, boy,” he said with menace. “Round these parts, someone does you a favor, it ain’t polite to refuse.” He spat on the ground. “Damn fuckin yankees never did learn themselves how to behave.”

Alex looked around. I moved closer to him, trying to hide my trembling. “Fine, how much you want?”

“Just two bucks, that’s all. That ain’t so bad, is it? You do got two bucks, right?”

“Yeah,” said Alex, not relaxing a bit. “I got two bucks.” Warily, he reached into his pocket and retrieved the plastic bag of change. The boy smiled thinly again as Alex started to open it up to retrieve some quarters, and then without warning punched him in the gut.

Alex doubled over, clutching at his stomach, the bag of change spilling out onto the pavement. I heard him gasping for breath as he fell to his knees. Hands suddenly grabbed me from behind, pinning my arms behind me. I struggled hard, but they held me tightly.

The boy casually pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit his cigarette as Alex fought to catch his breath, then turned his attention to me. “How much money you got?” he said quietly.

“I don’t have any!” I shouted. “Leave us alone!”

He came up to me, blowing a puff of smoke in my face. I coughed. “You ain’t gonna make me go into your pockets and check, are you boy?” I struggled again without success. He took another drag, and then reached out and actually put his hand into the pocket of my shorts. My eyes went wide as I felt him reaching in a direction that he had no business reaching in. My foot instinctively kicked out, striking him in the shin. He didn’t even flinch.

“Damn, boy, is that the best you can do?” he said mockingly, pulling out of my pocket and going into the other one, but at least this time he didn’t try to grope around. “You really don’t have any money, do you? What kind of stupid kid is you, running around with no money like that? Don’tcha know you gotta have money in case of emergency?” He turned back around and looked at Alex, who was wheezing but had managed to get himself back up onto his knees. The boy grabbed Alex’s hair and yanked his head back, Alex shouting out in sudden pain.

“You gonna keep this to yourself, ain’tcha, boy?” Alex didn’t answer. The boy forced Alex to nod. “Yeah, that’s right, you gonna keep this just between us.” He let go of Alex’s head and bent down to gather up the plastic bag and the change that had spilled out of it. Alex suddenly lunged out, trying to grab at the bag.

“Run!” he shouted at me. I desperately tried to stomp on the foot of my captor, but I missed, sending a shooting pain up my leg. The tall boy casually reached into his pocket, pulling out a switchblade and popping it open. We both froze.

“You don’t wanna be causing no trouble, now, do ya?” He took the cigarette from his mouth, flicking the ashes at Alex’s face. My stomach leapt into my throat, terrified that this boy was crazy enough to do something really bad. For a moment, there was silence, broken by the sound of a man’s voice.

“What in the hell is goin’ on back here?”

The tall boy suddenly turned pale. “Paw, there ain’t nothing goin on back here.”

“Like hell there ain’t nothin goin on back here.” I felt my arms being suddenly released. The boy quietly moved the knife behind his back, turning to face the man. I turned as well. The man was heavyset, wearing a dirty pair of overalls and an undershirt, what little hair he had greasy looking. He walked over to where Alex was on the ground, and whistled. “Boy, what’s happened to you?”

Alex looked up at the older boy. “Nothing,” he said, reaching out and starting to gather up his money. I stared at him, wondering why he wasn’t spilling the story to the man, how the kid that was apparently his son had pulled a knife and was trying to rob us. All I could do was to keep silent as well.

“Nothin’?” the man said incredulously, looking over at me. “You boys done got yourselves covered in muck!”

“We got caught in the rain,” Alex muttered.

“I’d say you did,” he man commented, turning to his son and cuffing him on the ear. “Don’t think I didn’t see what’s goin’ on here, boy.” He reached behind the boy’s back and retrieved the knife, holding it accusingly in front of his face. “You in one heap of trouble, Jimmy boy.” The kid looked down at the ground. “Get your ass home, now!” The boy turned and walked sullenly away, while the rest of the gang still there fled as quickly as they could. The man turned his attention back to Alex, one had on the back of his neck, the other outstretched to help Alex get back to his feet. Alex shook his head.

“Your son didn’t do anything,” Alex said softly, putting the last of the scattered coins into the bag and shoving it back in his pocket. “It was just a misunderstanding.”

The man nodded. “You don’t fret none over it, ok? I wasn’t born yesterday, you won’t have nothin to worry about with Jimmy comin back after you for gettin him in trouble. I’ll see to it he knows you swore nothin happened.” I blinked as I understood the wisdom behind the words. Alex took the man’s hand and got up to his feet. “But you’ll accept my apologies for his behavior, I hope. I’m sure you’ll feel better with a hot meal, a fresh change of clothes, and a ride back home. Anyone you need to call to let know you boys is ok?”

Alex shook his head. “Dad’s still at work.” He looked over at me, making sure that I would play along with whatever he wanted to do. I silently acknowledged that I had never stopped doing that. “Thanks.”

“Ain’t nothing, boys. C’mon, let’s get you cleaned up.” We followed him back to one of the houses just off the main road. It was as small as the one we lived in, but it looked like it was a little better kept up. We followed the man up into the house warily, keeping our distance behind him to make sure things were safe, but I was convinced that there was nothing wrong here. The boy who had pulled the knife, Jimmy, was sitting sullenly on a couch in the living room. “Get you ass in the bedroom, boy,” the man growled at him, “and find these boys some fresh clothes that’ll fit ‘em.” We followed the man into another bedroom, where he pointed us to the bathroom. “There’s fresh towels and everything you need in there. Jimmy’ll leave you somethin to wear home as a gift out here.” He turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.

I looked over at Alex, who looked back at me. He shrugged, and I followed him into the bathroom. We both started to undress, and Alex was about to turn on the water when we heard a door slam and the raised voice of the man in the next room.

“Whatcha think you’re doin, tryin to rob a couple a kids like that?” The boy apparently didn’t answer. “You only lucky that kid don’t wanna get you in trouble, or I’d be hauling you down to the Sheriff’s office and letting Billy lock you up for a while!” Both of us stood completely still, our clothes lying on the floor. “Get you trousers down, boy, you’re gettin a beating to end all beatings.” “Paw, no!” the boy protested. “I’m too old for that!”

“Like hell you too old to feel my belt. Get em down, bare that ass, boy.”

There was a pause, and the next thing we heard was a loud crack. Both of us jumped when it happened. The boy cried out immediately afterward. “You keep you’re damned mouth shut, boy, that weren’t nothin compared to what’s comin.” The cracks came fast and loud, every cry and moan the boy made audible to us through the thin walls. Alex looked pale, but didn’t move. I was terrified by the whole thing, about a kid not much older than us getting a real life beating just in the next room. The concept of getting something even as tame as a spanking was completely alien to me, our parents had never so much as touched us. Punishments involved things like getting grounded or losing a favorite possession, never getting hit like that, and even if it did, not getting hard enough to make a kid cry like that. The beating continued on and on, the boy’s cries reduced to a steady sobbing interspersed with the occasional shout that followed the loudest cracks of the belt.

But I stopped paying attention after a while, because I was too busy looking at Alex.

His nude form made it completely apparent how he was reacting to Jimmy getting beaten in the next room. His thing was hard, sticking out in front of him. His hand was wrapped around it, gently pulling back and forth. My eyes fixed in his crotch, watching him tug his dick like that, knowing despite my lack of knowledge that he was doing something related to the great mystery of sex. His face turned red and he turned away when he realized I was watching him, but I had seen enough to understand that much.

We took a quick shower together, helping to scrape the mud off each other’s bodies and out of our hair. True to the man’s word, fresh clothes, even if they were a little too big for Alex and definitely too big for me, were waiting neatly folded on the bed for us. Dressed and scrubbed clean, we cautiously came back out into the living room of the house. The smell of cooking food filled our nostrils. The other bedroom door remained closed and silent, presumably where Jimmy was recovering from his punishment. I couldn’t imagine what he had just gone through.

But I bet that Alex could.

In the entire time that we ate, a hearty meal of beef stew and fried potatoes with plenty of milk to wash it down followed by two generous pieces of pecan pie with ice cream, the boy never reappeared. I wasn’t sure if it was because he was still hurting, because I didn’t know how long it would keep hurting after you got beaten like that, or if it was because he was too embarrassed to come back out. We each ate two helpings, the man trying to put a third in front of us because he kept saying how we both looked half starved.

The man’s name was Billy Parsons, he told us, shaking hands with us warmly. He asked a few questions about where we lived, where we were from, nothing too nosy, just in a friendly way. He packed our dirty clothes into a garbage bag and was even generous enough to wait outside the grocery store while we went in and bought armloads of doughnuts, candy bars, and sodas. It was nice to ride back in his truck and not to have to trudge all the way back to the house in the dark, especially having to carry all that food. We clambered out of the truck, the man giving us a friendly wave as he drove back up the road.

We lugged our stash into the house, but neither of us really felt like eating anymore after having eaten enough to stuff ourselves at Mr. Parsons’ house, so we collapsed in front of the television and watched whatever happened to be showing. Alex was pretty much silent the whole time, having shed the clothes we had been given in favor of wearing one of Dad’s undershirts and his own underpants. I was still dressed in the big clothes, too lazy to get up and change them. At every commercial break, I thought about saying something to him, but it took me a couple of hours to work up the nerve.

“Alex?” He looked over at me. “What were you doing in the bathroom at Mr. Parsons’ house?”

He turned red. “Why do you have to ask me about that?”

“Were you, you know….” I trailed off.

“None of your business,” he said harshly.

“C’mon,” I said seriously. “I wanna know.”

“Why do you wanna know?” he muttered. “It’s nothing you need to worry about yet. You’re still too little.”

My voice was indignant, but still serious and low. “I’m big enough to tie you up and help you out.”

“That’s different.”

“Why is it different? It’s not fair that I do this stuff to help you out and you won’t tell me anything about it.”

Alex was silent for a moment. “What do you want to know?” he asked in a low voice.

“Were you…”

“Yeah,” he interrupted.

I tried to formulate the question that had been plaguing my mind for the last few days. “But how do you…you know…”

He turned over to me with an expression of contempt mixed with annoyance. “Geez, I don’t know! I just do it, that’s all. When you’re old enough you’ll know what you’re supposed to do. It’s a stupid question.”

I folded my arms and glared at the television. Fine, I thought to myself. Next time you ask me to tie you up, I won’t do it until you tell me how. But my face changed as a better idea crossed my mind. I turned over and looked at him.

“Go get the ropes,” I ordered.

His head whirled around to look at me, turning white. “Now?”

“Right now,” I barked. “Take them in the kitchen and take off your clothes.” He stared at me, frozen in place. “Do you want me to put you back in the closet instead?”

I thought that would get to him. I couldn’t imagine what he had gone through in that closet, but remembering what he was like afterward should have been enough to scare him into doing what I wanted him to do. Instead, he looked at me, his eyes glittering. “For how long?”

I was really angry now. “For as long as I want to! You’re going to get it really bad now, get the ropes and get naked!”

I sat there stewing on the couch as I heard him rummaging around in the other room, waiting until there was silence before I went looking for him. The ropes were on the table, his clothes were nowhere to be seen. “Tie them to the table legs,” I said harshly. “And if they come off while you’re tied up you’re going to be in really big trouble.” He did as I told him without a word, the ropes securely tied with heavy knots to each of the four legs of the wooden table.

We had only done this position once before, but it seemed exactly right for what I had in mind. He knew it too, and when he was done he put himself in position without me having to tell him to do it. Standing at the short end of the table, he spread his legs apart until they were right up against the table legs and then stood there, waiting for me. I didn’t waste any time, I tightly lashed his ankles in place. He didn’t move or say a word. When I was finished, I left him there to go get the gag and the clamps from Dad’s room. He was wordless when I came back, his eyes fixed on my hands. I put the clamps down on the table where he could see them, and holding the gag went behind him. I didn’t have to order him again, he opened his mouth wide, and I shoved the ball in as far as it would go, pulling it to the last belt notch. He made a noise when I pulled it that tight and tried to adjust himself, but I ignored him.

I went back around to the side of the table and picked up the clamps. His eyes went even wider, although his palms were still pressed flat on the table surface, white and trembling. I looked straight into his eyes, my anger boiling over at him, and he started to shake his head. “Shut up!” I shouted. “This isn’t the worst you’re getting tonight!” He grew even more pale and started to whimper into the gag. Viciously, I grabbed his nipples, one at a time, and snapped the clamps on them, holding them open and then suddenly releasing them instead of letting them go gradually. He shouted after each one, tears forming in the corner of his eyes, but his hands never left the table.

I grabbed a bunch of his hair in my hand, pulling on his head to cue him to bend over. He did so without resistance. The table was at just the right height for him in this position, his stomach resting on the smooth surface without him having to bend his knees or stretch himself upward. He hissed when his chest rested against the table from the clamps being shifted. I quickly yanked each arm out straight and tied his hands off to the opposite end of the table. He shifted around, moaning a little as I stood back, my lips tightly pursed together. It was just the right position for what I had in mind, his butt sticking out in the air.

I left him in there to wonder what was going to happen next as I went into our bedroom, rummaging through his drawers until I found what I was looking for. We had gotten it a few years ago, when we had gone to Texas for a vacation. It was a real cowboy belt, big and heavy and with a massive buckle shaped like the state. It didn’t fit him anymore, but I knew he still kept it as a souvenir. I swished it around in the air a couple of times and then hit the bed with it, hard enough to make the pillow the jump, the dull thud dying out quickly. It wouldn’t sound like that when I hit him. It would make a sound more like the one when that boy was getting hit. A loud crack.

The fire still burning in my eyes, I went back into the kitchen and stood on the far side of the table so that Alex could see me, the belt hanging from my hands. He looked up slowly, his eyes already red. His eyes grew wide as he saw the belt. After earlier tonight, he must have realized exactly what I was going to be doing with it, because he started to pull at the ropes, moaning into his gag and shaking his head back and forth.

I stared at him, his eyes meeting mine, not full of fury like mine were. I had thought he would be just as angry when he realized what was going to happen, what I was going to do to him, that he would shout at me for doing something so clearly out of bounds to him. It was one thing to leave him in the closet all night, even with the clamps on, but this was something of an entirely different level. This wasn’t just leaving him, this was me hurting him deliberately, with action instead of inaction. But instead of anger, his eyes were full of a strange combination of fear and something that almost seemed like longing. Like he was scared out of his mind that I was going to do it, and yet begging me to do it all at the same time.

My anger vaporized, replaced only with the realization of what I was doing. Alex wanted it to hurt, he wanted to be taken out of control and have things done to him like this, so it wasn’t as much the part that I was going to whip him that bothered me. I was more disturbed that I would handle him like I just did because I was mad at him, not because it was what he wanted. It felt like a violation, as though I had just severely mistreated him. I blinked, placing the belt down on the table and putting my hand comfortingly on his shoulder.

“Sorry,” I whispered. He tried to say something, so I reached behind his head and unbuckled the gag. His eyes were moist.

“Are you going to whip me?” he asked in a trembling voice.

I shook my head. “I don’t think I should.”

“I think you should.” I looked down at the floor, knowing he was going to say that. “I think you should whip me as hard as you can.”

I nodded. “I will, but only because you said so. I was gonna do it because I was mad at you for not showing me, but it…I’ll do it cause you said so.”

“I’ll show you later, ok? Tomorrow. I promise.” I nodded, and went to put the gag back in his mouth. “Jake?” he said tentatively.

“What?”

“I love you.”

My heart skipped a beat. In all the years we had been brothers, I had heard him say he loved me a handful of times, mostly when he was told he had to by a grownup. Never had he said it like that, with an incredible sincerity that reached out and seized my throat, choking me up. I smiled faintly, unable to answer him in kind even though the words echoed in my head. I pushed the gag back into his mouth, buckling it as tightly as I had it before, and stood behind him with the belt. He whimpered.

I pulled the belt back and struck with as much force as I dared. It connected with the bare flesh of his butt with a resounding crack that filled the kitchen. There was a moment of absolute silence as I held my breath, broken suddenly by Alex’s bloodcurdling scream. I watched in a terrified fascination as a wide red mark appeared as if by magic where the belt had struck him. Alex thrashed wildly in his bonds, shouting hysterically into his gag.

I pulled the belt back and struck him again. His scream was instantaneous this time, and even more intense. His thrashing continued as he tried to free himself, but I knew that there was no hope. My mouth set, I started to whip him over and over again, falling into a kind of rhythm almost like a song. Crack, scream, crack, scream. At first, I concentrated on his butt, which quickly turned from red to crimson. An accidental blow to his upper thighs that made him howl in agony made me realize that there were other places to hit him as well, and my blows soon wandered down his legs and up onto his back. His screams were gradually replaced by choked sobs, his thrashing reduced to a few gentle tugs as he sagged from his arms, his legs having collapsed under him. Still, I beat him, until my arm was sore from the effort and his butt had turned from crimson to purple with the bruises.

I left him tied to the table, sobbing, turning off the light as I headed to the bedroom. He would spend the night as he always spent the night these days, bound and helpless, but this time in far more pain than he had even endured in the closet. I laid down on my bed on my back, staring at the ceiling, trying to think about something else, anything else, than the single thought that dominated my mind.

It wasn’t that I had just beaten my brother senseless that bothered me.

It was that I had enjoyed it.