UNDER THE HOUSE

He was a small man, 5'8" at most and 120 pounds with the boots. His baggy jeans and loose shirt only underlined his thinness, making him look like a twelve-year-old boy dressed in his elder brother's clothes. However, I could see the minute web of wrinkles around his baby-blue eyes screwed up against the sun. He didn't have any sun-glasses or didn't want to put them on - and it made his face strangely open and vulnerable. He stood with his hand resting on the brink of the raised lid of his gorgeous car and he was absolutely lost.

I would hardly stop for him - and judging upon the feeble wave of his fingers when I was approaching he didn't hope I would. The thing was that fifteen minutes ago he had overtaken me on the road - the beautiful golden-sandy Chrysler-Vision - and as I peered following it with my eyes he suddenly turned to me - and there was a happy, easy, self-sufficient smile he sent - not a usual inconvenient smile of an unfamiliar man but something so warm and accepting that I'd barely seen before.

And now he was standing at his car, in the broiling sun, and his look was both unobtrusive and unexpecting. I parked my shabby Ford a little in front of him and walked out. It was not that I knew a lot about the cars - but at least I could try. I don't know; somehow I hated the idea of him being left here, waiting for another car - and I was well aware it could take another hour until it. I would give him a lift, I decided - if he wanted.

"Hi," he made one more reluctant motion with his hand and the corners of his lips raised in a miserable attempt of smile. "Thank you, really. I was afraid I would have to wait here for quite a while."

His voice was melodic and intelligent, with a kind of funny blend in it - as if he was shy speaking. He was rather young, I noticed again. In his twenties, maybe?

"What happened?" I came up to the car and looked at the engine.

"I have no notion," at my side I felt his shrug. "It just balked."

"Well..." I mused. The insides of the engine seemed absolutely new and - to my humble knowledge - not tampered. I set my hand upon the slightly dusty wing of the car and looked thoughtfully.

When I felt the pain - it was so sharp and unexpected that at the first moment I couldn't understand if it was hot or cold. The pang shot into my hand like a great stinger and I glanced there - and it made me gape with what I had to see. There was a syringe stuck into the back of my hand - and the man was pushing the last drops out of it into me.

For a blink the utter shock of pain and surprise made me dumb. I did started speaking - but it was only:

"What the hell..." and then this flabbergasting hot-cold sensation in my hand suddenly exploded - and the wave flooded my body, leaving it stiff and helpless.

I still felt how I flopped on my knees and then on my side - but the last thing I remembered before my head hit the asphalt was the soft fingers trying in vain to catch me.

I was sure it took some time until I started realizing something again. I was in the darkness - but I couldn't say if it was a dark place or if I was blindfolded. I couldn't understand either if I was tied or fastened in any other way - or the numbness was the after-effect of the drug that had been injected to me. I was not able to move any of my limbs. The only thing I felt was my tongue. And it was pressed to something having distinct rubber taste; I couldn't expel it out of my mouth. I was gagged. The place where I was rocked slightly. The boot of the car, I thought. It well might be. There never was anything wrong with this Chrysler.

After a long while the rocking quitted. I lay still - well, it was the only thing I could do, even if my thoughts were in a frantic state. And then, very swiftly, the darkness in front of my eyes retracted - and I blinked painfully at the yellow electric light I had to face. The black shadow splitting the light in the middle was the fragile form of my captor.

As soon as I could see I noticed the changes in him. He still was dressed the same way - and his brown sleek hair was dusty and disheveled with the wind - but any shade of reluctance left his features. Now he looked at me with the sharp coldness of an explorer. It made me strain.

"Get up," he spoke and his voice was bleak. I tried to move. After some ridiculous attempts I succeeded. I tumbled out of the boot and landed on my knees in front of him. Not only I had a gag in my mouth. My hands were tied behind my back and my ankles were tied together, too. I didn't feel any circulation in my feet.

"Crawl on your knees. Forward."

He could seem defenseless on the road. Now he had complete control. I didn't have any choice except to obey him. I couldn't even ask what was going on.

It was not possible he wanted anything I had, I thought, shuffling one tiniest step after another. My ankles fastened together practically deprived me from the advance. I was scraping my knees on the floor moving forward for inches. He had to be very well off - according to his car and to the vast underground garage we were in. Ransom? I didn't have no one relative in the world that could pay it for me. Might he mistake me for somebody? I stuck to the idea - because it was bringing some hope to me, probably. As soon as he was going to take the gag out I would tell him my name and he would understand I was not the one he needed. Whoever he needed.

My knee-walk didn't last long. I saw the doors of the elevator in front of me - and when they opened I crawled inside, with my kidnapper following me.

"Sit on your heels."

I watched him pressing the top button on the panel. There were only three of them and the middle one was lit.

When the elevator stopped I walked out. I moved where the guiding hand showed me - so slowly - but it was only in several yards now: a spacious bed-room with the big wooden bed in the center. I crawled over the threshold - and at the same moment the piercing feeling bit me in the back of my neck. For a blink I felt the gentle palm of the man touching me - and I thought "Oh, not again!" - and stopped feeling and thinking.

This time, I suppose, I was back sooner. And I was able to clarify my position at once. I was still in the room I had entered before. I could see the bright window on the right of me and the immaculate ceiling above. I was prone in the bed and my hands and feet were stretched widely and fixed. I was not gagged any more. And I was undressed.

When I realized it I felt my cheeks blushed. If I raised my head to look in front of me I could see my own naked body, shamelessly exposed. Because I was so spread-eagled my rib-cage seemed prominent - and my belly hollow - and the worst of it - my fluffy bush of hair in its bottom part and my genitals in the shadow between the legs were displayed, too. I could move my wrists and ankles very slightly - the straps that fixed me were leather ones and they didn't cut into the skin - but I couldn't do anything to cover myself.

Because of shame or whatever I was chilly. It was a weird thing, really. This summer in New England was the hottest one in ten years - and here in the room the air was icy cold and wet; it enveloped me all over, making me shiver.

By the time the man appeared again I was already frozen. And I was scared really deeply, I have to say. The silence in the room was so absorbing that it rang in my ears - and even though I could hope somebody might hear me from behind the window (well, for all I knew it could be just one of old houses in the North-End of Boston) I didn't dare to scream.

The man was clothed in the thick woolen jumper with turtle-neck now - so, at least, I didn't imagine the cold, I thought. His face was neither hostile nor kind. He had a square box of the dictophone in his hands and a video-camera.

"Why do you..." I started - at last I had the chance! - and was stunned with the awkwardness of my tongue. The man dropped a glance at me, turned on the dictophone and said there:

"16:11. The second application has worn out. The condition is stable."

I became mute. There were several things that made me dumbfounded. It was four o'clock! And I stopped for him on the road at nine in the morning! Well, whether there was a day passed or a week didn't make real difference for me. The classes were over till September and until then nobody would ask where I was.

But what astonished me the most was the man's tranquil business-like tone. He was a psycho, I thought. The question was what plans he had for me.

He put the video-camera on the floor but didn't turn it on. Instead of it he approached and brought the dictophone to his mouth again.

"Joshua Atwood," he said my name. As soon as I started wondering how he could knew it I realized he had found my driver's license. He was walking along the bed, without taking his gaze from me. And I couldn't tear my eyes from him, too. His even voice was hypnotizing.

"What are you going to do to me?"

The man stopped abruptly. Calm blue eyes studied me - and the hand with the dictophone slid down.

"What do you think I am going to?"

"God!" I realized I tried to shrug - and hurt my shoulders. "I don't know! Why did you capture me?"

Fear and hope washed me in alternating waves. He looked so frail, his face alabaster-white, without any shade of beard, and his hands, half-hidden with the sleeves of the jumper, seemed child-like small. What harm could he bring to me? And still I knew he could do a lot of harm. The two injections he made left burning spots on my hand and on my neck, with all my body stiffening in cold. And the most startling was this serene expression - full of merely mild puzzlement.

"You will know soon," he said placidly.

"What is your name?" in some article I read about people taken hostages or something like that - and you were supposed to make contact with the captor. I didn't think he would tell me.

"Lance Mailer," he said. There was some little note in his voice - as if he was checking whether I could know him. I didn't react. His eyes wandered along my body and when he smiled - another kind of his smile for me today - there was something derisive in his lips. "Did you ever make sex with a man?"

"No," I answered quickly. "Do you want me to?.."

I had the thought before. Well, taking into account the position he had me in.

"I might," he smiled again. "It won't matter. It will even make it easy for you, maybe. Though I doubt..."

"You can do it," ooh, I knew he surely could do it - and how I hated it! - but I thought I'd better go along with him. Even in this worst case - it would be just sex. "You don't have to hurt me. You don't have to be cruel to me."

"I don't want to hurt you," he said. There was something in his voice that made me shudder - even though I stopped feeling cold a while ago. It was not that I didn't believe him. I believed him.

"I won't tell anyone," I went on hastily, trying to reassure him from what he could have against me.

"So, you will cooperate with me?" Lance said levelly. I stopped babbling. And what else could I do?

"Yes," I said. To hell everything, a lot of guys do it with men just because they like it!

"Will you enjoy it?"

"I don't know. Why not?" my voice became as flat as a sheet of paper. I guess I was quite pale in face by now.

"You said it yourself," he resumed. I stared at him when he stripped quickly. He shivered and chuckled involuntarily with cold.

Now I want to say, he didn't look disgusting to me. With me being rather skinny I always admired the guys with muscles and so on - but I guess I would be far more terrified right now if one of these would claim his making love to me. The thing about Lance was that he looked almost boyish - white-skinned, with very few hair, in his arm-pits and on his pubis mostly, and bony.

His cock was not childish, however. It was about 7", uncircumcised and rigid - and it was the sight of it that brought some sickness to me.

"I will like to do it to you, you see," he said - and I registered the shade of his previous reluctance back. "You are so very nice, Joshua."

He lay over me, finishing his speech. His light body was pleasantly hot, even though he already had gooseflesh. He crawled back a little and covered us with a blanket that was folded in the foot of the bed. His soft palm lay on my cheeks and he closed his face to mine.

Now I cloud see he still was pretty young. I couldn't even define his age exactly. He could be as young as twenty-four or something. It was his eyes that were deceptive - the most tired and... and knowing eyes I've ever seen.

"Kiss me, okay, Joshua?" his lips whispered and I felt his gentle tongue in my mouth. His chest was pressed to my chest, his legs stretched between mine - and his erect organ was poking in my belly above my own flabby genitals.

"You are sweet, you know," Lance muttered breaking our kiss that never became mutual. "Just as I thought you would. I enjoy you. And he... he will, too."

His breath was hot sliding down along my neck. I felt he licked me - my collar-bones and between them. I didn't look at him - I had some pains because I had been cold and now I started warming up. He took my nipple between his thumb and forefinger and rolled it gently. It couldn't turn me on. I continued to look upwards, feeling him squeezing my nipples. He sucked one, then the other for a little while.

When his hand slunk to my perineum I flinched really. It was not of pain. Under my balls his soft-skinned palm felt very hot and almost puzzled me. My former girl-friend never touched me like this. But he didn't stop. As soon as Lance's careful fingers found my anus I clamped myself shut.

I knew I didn't have to do it. Let him have what he wanted. But as the thing was so close I started panicking. I sucked breath so noisily and without control that it annoyed me. I heard Lance whispering something to me - or I only fancied it. He spat on his palm and wetted me there. It almost made me dizzy - the feeling of his saliva against my crack, cooling there. He moistened his cock next - and here we go! - I felt him pushing it to my hole.

It hurt a lot when he got himself in - but, well, I could stand it. The sensation of something of this size filling me was dazzling. I breathed with his movements. Lance had his hands on my shoulders, digging his fingers in my skin - but it was not too bad, his nails had to be really short.

His warm belly was slapping against my pubis - and there was a smacking sound of his member thrusting into me. I didn't know what squelched so loudly there. Rather repulsively some liquids were leaking out of me. Every time he sent his shaft through the ring of my anus I felt some sharp minor pain. But, apart from it, the feeling of something penetrating me, stuffing me from the wrong end, was just stunning.

Lance started panting and the slamming motions of his bottom belly speeded up. I made a guess he was coming. He inhaled sharply, as if he had sore throat or something - and he mumbled some words under his nose; I could discern them but I didn't understand them:

"Chaugnar Faugn! Nyarlathotep! Cthulhu!"

He breathed in - and then he dropped his head on my chest and bit me there. It really made me wince. His teeth injured me. But I could stand it, too, I thought. Lance banged me really heavily several times more - and then more warm fluids washed me inside.

For a while he lay on me without taking his cock out. The little flow of blood trickled on my chest. Both his and my breaths normalized.

"Aah," he moaned thinly dragging his prick out of me. The feeling was odd. To tell the truth, it seemed to me he fucked a channel in me, empty now. "Oh, Joshua!" he moved his face seeing how he had bitten me and there was some remorse in his tranquil voice. He lapped on the blood casually. "I was looking for you for so long!"

"Lance," I called him. "You didn't do it before, right?"

He exhaled sharply through his nose and I felt his head nodding.

"No, I didn't."

I didn't know what to say. I knew only one thing - well, only one thing I wanted to know: he didn't hurt me too bad until now. I wanted to ask him if he would let me loose - but I feared to frighten him off. He curled half on me, half on the bed, with his head on my chest, and he fingered my chest hair thoughtfully.

"Why is it so cold here?" I asked after a while.

"Ah, this..." he paused a little and answered absent-mindedly. "He needs it."

He tinkered with me some more, kissing my mouth and pinching my tits. My muscles ached with the stretching but I could bear it nevertheless. I was thankful that he stayed with me - because like that I was covered with the blanket almost entirely. My hands, fixed a bit above, were icy, however.

When Lance pulled the blanket open it was dark behind the big window. I was mildly surprised how many hours we spent like that. He dressed quickly, without taking care about me. He turned the light on. Under the electric lamp he became to look older again. His face seemed remote to me.

"Now I'll untie you," he said. "You are not going to do any silly things, okay, Joshua?"

"Okay," I said. Was he letting me go? I saw him turning some lever at the bed post - for a moment the stretching of my limbs became unbearable - and then the shackles hung slack.

"Stand up slowly," Lance said. When I did it - God, the floor under my bare feet was like ice! - I understood I wouldn't be able to do silly things regardless if I wanted it or not. After the half-day in the rack-like position I barely could toddle.

Lance had the video-camera in his hand. Somehow apprehensively I looked at it. I knew he didn't film us - but even the thought about it was bitterly unpleasant.

"Go to the lift," he said passing me forward. That was it! He was releasing me. Or he was going to kill me, suddenly I thought with sickening feeling. But I still hoped. I linked my hope to the comparative kindness he showed me in bed - and to the time we spent together even without doing anything.

"My clothes..." I started in order to comfort myself.

"Don't worry," he cut me short.

It was too near to the elevator for me to become mad with fear. Lance waited for me to step inside. He didn't follow - and I felt hope again. He put the video-camera on the floor instead.

"When the lift stops," he said calmly and deliberately, as if urging me into obedience, "put it on the gap between the doors, lens outside, and push the button. Then get out."

I didn't know what his instructions meant. But it looked like a good sign for me that he trusted me to do something, even incomprehensible. He reached his hand and pressed the button on the panel inside the elevator - the bottom one. I looked at his face while the doors slid together.

"Joshua," he said. "I am really fond of you, you know."

It was a long way. So long that I couldn't count if it took minutes. So long that it was only possible if I were going to the top floor of a sky-scraper. But I was going down. And when it stopped moving it was so cold that it hurt. I stepped out and set the video-camera the way Lance told me.

* * *

"June 27, 199..." I breathed at my fingers, noticing the thin cloud of warm air coming out of my mouth. The stream of coldness emanating from the lift meant that Joshua had left the camera in the required way. Well, I thought he would.

It was twenty-six minutes since I sent Joshua to the lift. After all these films I've seen I could guess what was going on right now. And, as always when I thought about it, some dizziness overwhelmed me.

You see, I could spare myself from knowing. Well, as much as it was possible, taking into account what my duties were. But since I had done it for him for the first time - and mind you, when our father told me, I didn't agreed at once, no, I was too afraid - since then year after year it fascinated me. I put the photo-camera down at first, with the treat and simply alone. A lot of pictures failed - taken too early, or with wrong recourse, or the lens was in his shadow. But when I got one at last I yelped.

You know, when I was tiny he came upstairs some times. And then he seemed hideous to me - a figure from nightmares, even though our parents tried to make me get accustomed to him. Our father was always with him, keeping close to his back as he stood in the doorway of my room and his expressionless eyes were glued to me.

On this photo he was not expressionless. I had the picture framed and on the wall now - and little by little I got used to seeing it. I put it on the wall to get used, whatever it cost me. He was sitting on his haunches and looking right to the camera with his small reddish eyes. It was when I for the first time realized how big he was. It could be the reason why he didn't go up any more - he could be too big for the lift cabin.

But what shocked me the most - not his form or the texture of his skin - it was the clear and easily recognizable grimace on his face. He was contented. He was ironic. And his upper limb was a little raised, as if he greeted me.

A while later, when I used the video-camera, I found out that he still could speak - and sometimes - not often, fortunately - I heard my own name coming from his strangely-shaped lips. I ran my fingers over the shelves in my working room. Everything I knew, everything I found out, every name and every clip - it was here, written and saved and stored. It was another thing that made me go on, I thought sometimes. That I was the only one who had this knowledge.

I rubbed my hands against each other. Like dead things they were - white and wooden. It was what I never could get used to - since I was a little boy - cold. Well, I was not cold with Joshua under the blanket. Ooh, when I thought about it - he was not just one more poor doomed waiting in the bed for the hour. When I thought about it pleasure tossed and turned inside me in a tight ball. He was so lovely - so light and slender and fair. I liked feeling him under me when I fucked him. So patient he was, pliant and accepting.

But why, of course, he was not just one of many! He was one of us. Our kin.

There was a notebook I took from the shelf. The neat family tree drawn in ink. Names and names and names. Our father started it - and I went on. It took so long for me to find Joshua. Elsa Mailer, one of three sisters of Robert Mailer, my grand-grand-father, married Douglas Atwood in 1912 and left the country. I didn't know how to call this relationship. I called him my cousin for me. And he didn't even grown with his family! He was turned away and adopted. And alone now, with his foster parents dead. I felt the swell in my heart. A great ball of warmth. Joshua.

"It was the first time for you, Lance?" he asked me.

Of course. It should have been like that.

I sat over the notebook for hours. Sometimes I caught myself on the thought that I was listening to what happened under the house. There never was a sound. But I heard when the elevator went up. I shook and stretched myself, waiting. I knew I would need every bit of my strength.

Usually he returned them to me dead. I liked it this way much better then when there was no much left of them - but they still breathed and annoyed me. I learned how to finish them quickly - knocking out their vertebrae. But the worst thing was when they were mad. It was really not to my nerves, you know - and I started thinking then if I really needed it all, if my kin feeling was so sharp - and if my promise to our father meant anything.

But, you see, I knew meanwhile that the issue was not the promise - or the pity I felt to him - and really, he didn't have anyone except me - and I didn't have anyone except him - but I liked to do what I was doing. It brought the sense to my life - and it differed my life from anyone else's.

Joshua was not dead. I mean, he had to know who Joshua was - and what he was for - and he restrained himself, as much as he could. When the lift stopped and the doors slid open I stood for several seconds looking at the curled body on the floor. I stepped inside. I checked the tape. The camera did its job okay. I retrieved it and bent to my cousin.

His pretty-looking longish body was defected. I looked at his flaccid limbs - he had at least one shoulder dislocated and one of his ankles was in the ring of dark swelling, so, I guessed it could be broken. You see, I didn't know why he broke them - and I couldn't say exactly even when I had the tapes. I guess, maybe, he liked it.

I slid my hand around Joshua's neck, under his long fair hair, matted and tangled now. I couldn't raise him, of course, but I tried to minimize the pain while I would drag him. He made a sound. He had to be in his senses, even if he didn't move. It was a kind of hiss coming out of his throat. His body was burning cold and I thought that it could done at least the same damage to him as the injuries.

There was only one his eye in the socket - and some bloody mess instead of the other. His gaze was turned to me - but I was sure he was not able to recognize me. Then his mashed, blackened lips trembled as if he wanted to say something.

If he was not what he was - if he was not supposed what he was supposed for - I would turn him on his face and stop his life, at least because he was so good with me by day. But I pulled and tugged him, and made him uncurl. His belly was the purple blue mass of bruises and tender flesh - and I found the place on it - two inches above his pubis. He quivered helplessly when I pressed my hand there - but I felt it already. I felt the tiny beat of pulsation against my palm from insides of his belly.

I exhaled. I stood up and grasped his body and tugged to the bedroom, making myself deaf to the tiny heart-breaking wails he made.

* * *

The horror was with me even when the pain was abating. I was not conscious all the time - but the last thing leaving me and the first coming back was the realization of what was being done to me. I felt every little thing this being was doing to me - cold, pain, taste, reeking, voice, blood filling my mouth, pain again. I remembered it. I remembered it the same clear when I regained consciousness in the bed of Lance Mailer.

It didn't kill me - and he didn't kill me either. I knew he had been doing his own things with my body - probably fixing it. It hurt so much. While at first I was stunned with the enormousness of pain and it seemed to flood me all over, after a little while I started registering the separate sources of it. I knew what this thing did to me to inflict this or that - but at times I wondered remotely how could I realize it and still be in clear mind. I felt the burning ball of pain instead of my genitals and I understood it must have torn me when it penetrated me. I knew that more than one of my bones was broken.

It was twilight in the room when I was able to open my eyes. Well, my eye - I felt the wet cloth clinging to my face in the place where the other had been. It was the same bitter cold as always - but it was minor for me now; I could dispense it. I felt some very urgent ache in my belly, approaching cramp-like, as if wringing my bowels. I tried to move. Not that I wanted it - but I had some vague idea that I had to know my position.

I was tied to the bed again. My arms were spread in crucified position but my legs were not. There were some white bandages on them. In the vein of my left hand there was a needle stuck - and I followed the tube with my eyes - to the bottle of strange-looking dark-green liquid fixed over the bed. It made my arm numb where it was coming in.

All my body was battered distastefully. Everywhere where I looked I saw it. Part of me was terrified with it - and part disgusted. There was a visible bulge on my stomach, right below my navel. It was prominent on my flat belly.

In the door I saw Lance Mailer entering. For a moment in silence he looked at me with screwed up eyes - and then he turned on the light. I saw the box of the dictophone in his hand again.

"June 28, 18:00," his soft voice didn't hold any emotions except mild curiosity, maybe. It hurt to look at him, I found it almost unendurable - but I followed him with my gaze. It hurt to speak with my burnt mouth but I thought I had to.

"Why did you do it to me?"

For a split second it seemed that there was some embarrassment in his short smirk - but then his expression became cold again.

"Because I had to."

I looked at him, swimming in pain and fear, and so tired that it almost seemed all the same for me. Suddenly there was some animation in his calm porcelain-like face. He stooped to me - and I cringed thinking that he could touch me and hurt me.

"Do you know who he is?" he sounded fascinated. I convulsed inside, with some immense effort taking myself under control. I shook my head. His tender lips became curved ruthlessly and he almost sang. "Right! Nobody knows!"

His pale face was so close to mine - as if he was going to kiss me. I watched the alteration of expressions on it.

"You know, our family lived here since 1700," suddenly he said straightening. "People always thought us strange. The Mailer family, I mean. There were rumors. About the children. Very wrong children. The ones nobody never sees. Did you hear about it?"

It was so hard to speak - but I whispered hoarsely to him:

"How can I?"

He smiled again.

"But you are one of us, you know."

I lay exhausted. The conversation was wearing me out - and it didn't distract me from the pains flooding my body. Lance stayed close to me - silent for a while - and his soft palm lay down on the bulge on my belly and patted it.

"You could be my brother, Joshua," he said. "My on-the-earth brother. You know what?" he bounced excitedly all of a sudden. "Look here! Look, will you tell me..."

He moved. In front of me the two sliding doors moved apart and revealed the huge screen of the video center. I saw him pushing the tape in. I was mute for a moment when it started. Just dumbfounded. And in this pause he spoke pointing at the screen:

"Look, what is it? What he is doing to you? Explain me!"

I heard my own scream rising in my chest. It rang in my ears louder than the sounds coming from the screen. I screwed my eye up shut and screamed again. I was in more pain than before - making such fierce movements - but I didn't care. I wanted to die - of pain or of anything else - just so that not to have to look at it.

Perhaps I fainted because when I looked again there was nothing on TV. Lance was at my side, his gentle hands pawing my face, quite delicate with my empty hurting socket. I realized my face was wet - with sweat or with tears.

"Don't," Lance said almost tenderly. "Don't, my dear cousin."

He readjusted the needle in my forearm and left.

Next time when he came back I was struggling with the pain. The most part of my body felt it getting dull, calming down almost imperceptibly. The only one thing that was going wrong was the pain in my belly. I tried to reason myself that it couldn't be - I was recovering, not getting worse. But it grew - and it seemed to me that the swelling inside me became bigger, as if my belly was bloating from inside.

Lance had a glass with him and he brought it to my mouth. I was bitterly dehydrated by them - but the pain when he touched my burned lips was unendurable. He grasped my head and held my this way while I drank. His emotionless eyes slid over my body.

"What is it?" I asked when I finished the drink. "What is it with my stomach?"

His face changed.

"Ah," he dropped easily. "It is his baby. You are bearing a child."

His words didn't make sense. He went on.

"He came into you, remember it?"

With a flash of black lightening I recalled how after this thing had splashed its boiling semen onto my body and in my mouth - then it stayed in me while coming - and I felt the fluid fire ball burning out my insides.

There was nothing funny in it - and still less in the pain that was mauling my bowels - but somehow I giggled.

"But I am male," I said wearily. Lance's hands were on the roundness of my belly again, palpating and caressing it.

"It doesn't matter," he said. "He doesn't need womb to grow. It is in your abdomen. Feel it?" I jerked with the cramp that shot pain through my insides. "Don't worry. This is your guts giving way to it."

I didn't believe him. I couldn't. He came after a little while again and measured the bulge with the roulette and he recorded to his dictophone:

"Day three. The egg's diameter is eight comma three inches, the blunt edge is turned down. The pulsation is stable and steady."

I was incoherent. The pain was pretty wretched - and it was only increasing with every hour. Lance made me drink again and restored the liquid in the bottle attached to the needle. He looked light and fresh for me - close to eighteen-year-old. Or, maybe, it seemed - because I felt so worn-out and desperate. The thing inside me grew - whatever it was - and I couldn't deny it any more. It was prominent under the stretched skin of my belly - and I could already discern the egg shape Lance spoke about.

"It hurts," I said to him next time when he came. I knew he wouldn't sympathize me, still less do anything to relieve me. But my torment was too big to be silent.

"I know," his hands were soft on my moist cheeks. "It is because it crumples your organs. They are being rearranged for the child."

I was vaguely aware about time passing - the light and the darkness interchanging behind the window. My belly was huge blown. Every time I looked down at myself I saw only the round bulging sphere of my stomach. It was prominent not only below my navel but above it, too.

I had problems with breathing. When Lance came to me I tried to say about it - but my words robbed me from even this little amount of air. I felt thick blood leaking out of my nose.

"It is your diaphragm," his expression was a bit solemn. "I can't do anything."

He sat for a while with me, stroking my belly with his palms and pressing his lips to it. His breath and his smooth cheek was stunningly warm on my icy skin. He spoke something into my belly - but again I didn't know the words or this language.

With more time passing I became so hypoxic that my vision was blackened. My own shallow, helplessly frequent breath was the only sound I was aware of. I couldn't moan because I didn't have air for it. But even if I had I wouldn't probably. The pain was for so long that I was past vocalizing it. I knew that my bladder was so squeezed that it didn't keep anything in - I was seeping piss all the time. I felt that there was something expelling out of my rectum - but it was minor in comparison with the pain and lack of the air.

I didn't know if it was dark or I just couldn't see anything when I got to know Lance's presence in the room. The pain in my horribly bloated belly came to the new turn. I felt the steady rhythm of pulsation inside me - so strong and insistent that it was tearing me, tearing my unbearably tensed skin. I groaned feebly with every insufficient breath I still could make.

"Yes, yes, it is coming," I heard Lance hissing over me. There was tiny clinking of some metal things close to me. And then there was a great sharp pain gnawing in me from both sides - from outside and from inside of me. I thrashed as much as I could - and I couldn't much. The pain was ripping me open. I felt blood flooding my belly - and through the pain there were soft palms of Lance Mailer submerging into me. And I felt him taking something huge out of me - and though I was half-mad I knew what it was - he was receiving the baby.

"Here, here, you are my beauty," I heard him repeating.

I lay open, knowing that my belly was cut in the middle, displaying all my destroyed guts there - and blood was getting cold on my body. And I listened to the screechy inhuman voice crying close to me. And then I felt the weight that was put on my ripped stomach - and even with all the wetness of my blood I could feel the clammy texture of the little body on me. The little sharp claws stuck into my skin, under my ribs, pulling the body upwards. The familiar scent - something like from depth of the sea, rotting water-plants, maybe - I felt it again. I felt the slimy muzzle approaching my face, as if looking into it - but I had my eye tight shut. Every my muscle trembled.

And then the being crawled downwards on me again - and I felt his keen tiny teeth clasping on my nipple - and on the drawn blood it started sucking.

When I came back again there was almost no pain. I didn't know if it meant I was dying - practically dead - or what. I was still and letting my senses return to me slowly. Cold. Cold was here every moment, even when I was not here enough to feel it. My stretched numb arms and wrists were fixed tightly. I was in the same bed again. Well, I guess I never left it.

Carefully I raised my head. And what I saw made me understand how much time had to pass since I fainted. I had the scar on my belly that was absolutely flat again - on the left of my navel, very long and very rough looking, ugly. But it was not too fresh.

So, I survived, I thought. I went through it - I remembered, oh, it was not something one could forget. Was it over? I didn't know.

There was Lance Mailer entering the room. His lips curled in smile when he met my gaze. It was uncomfortable to look at him with the huge dark spot on the place of my right eye and I turned my head awkwardly. He approached me - and there was some exhilarating expression on his white face.

"You know," he said, "I am proud with you, Joshua."

I didn't answer. I waited.

"You are even closer to our kin now," he said confidentially. "You fathered my nephew, you know it?" and then his voice became sing-sang again, as it happened before. "Ain't I great? I healed you - I managed! I could keep you alive!"

I didn't feel like speaking. And thanks God - he didn't insist. He washed my body - his hands with the wet rag sliding over my chest lazily, caressing. He was saying something to me; something almost tender.

He gave me to drink. After he had taken the glass from my lips he kissed my mouth, licking the residuals of the drink from my lips. When he touched my face I felt there was no bandage on my empty socket any more.

"Lovely, my lovely cousin!" he whispered in my mouth, fingering my hair. I was prone and motionless under what he wanted to do. There was no pain in my body - and he didn't hurt me. He lapped on my torn nipple, even though there was no blood here and his gentle fingers nibbled on the freaky seam on my body. He didn't take off his clothes when he lay down on me. His woolen jumper was soft on my skin.

Lance was playing with my scar, passing his tongue over it up and down, wet and warm. His smooth tender cheek pressed to my pubis and he breathed into my hair and chuckled mildly and licked me there. He took my prick into his mouth - but it stayed soft and useless all the time. I even thought he didn't want me to get hard - and I couldn't. Maybe, I would never be able to. His small delicate digits groped for my balls. It was not painful - even though I had thought once it would be forever.

I felt him touching my anus - and I knew I had stitches there, too. He caressed me there, his hand light and playful.

"I am crazy about you, Joshua, you know," he whispered. "I want to fuck you so much that I go mad. But I won't. Not today. You see, I was asked to restrain for a while."

He lay in the same pose - with his head on my chest and his slight body curled at my side - as he had lain on the day before he turned me to his brother under the house. I didn't say anything. I didn't feel anything - and somehow it seemed pleasurable for me - to be spared from pain.

When it was evening he got up, left and returned with the video-camera in his hands. I shivered seeing it. I couldn't stand the sight of it. He put it on the fixture and said before raising his dictophone to his mouth:

"I am not supposed to be here, I guess. But I would like to see it. July 15, 199... Joshua Atwood," he was speaking to the dictophone, "and Taarkh Gwaan Kemetri Atwood."

He walked out. I lay and didn't think and wandered my eyes around the room.

It was quite a while after when I heard the elevator going up. And even before that I felt the current of freezy cold filling the room. It was long-long while the elevator was going. Then its doors resounded sliding to the sides - and on the floor I heard the steady slap of the steps - wet and heavy.

I didn't shut my eye from it. I faced it when it entered.

It was bigger than me. Not so big as the adult one, however. Its bones under dark skin resembled human. Its face didn't, however.

I was regulating my breath with effort. I put all my strength and my thoughts into the process of normal breath. It stopped at the bed and looked at me - right locked with its eyes on my own. And then the place of his head where his mouth could be stretched aside - and even though there was nothing human in his expression I understood the mimic. It smiled to me.

It was swarming on my body. The heaviness almost prevented me from breathing - but he was not rude. Not like that one. When he was so close the reeking was unbearable. He held my face in his huge long-fingered hands. His lips moved. He was speaking to me. Mostly I didn't understand the words - but as I caught the recognizable ones sometimes I knew he was speaking English.

His half-foot long tongue wound out of his mouth and touched my empty socket. I couldn't breath with the smell. I shuddered under him unable to control myself. He put his mouth upon mine and filled it with his tongue. His claws were not small any more - and even if he didn't want to injure me I felt the little trickle of blood on my cheek-bone from under one of them. He was licking with his tongue inside my mouth and deep in my throat.

I felt his organ erect. Solid as one more limb and the same big it was and it was heavy on my belly with its round blunt tip. I knew what I would feel when he raised himself on his upper limbs and rearranged it into my perineum. I didn't stay still. I thrashed and arched under him when he thrust this thing into me. I felt the stitches and my flesh torn and blood soaking into the sheets under me.

He held me tightly with his weight and with his claws when fucking me - and I felt more blood running from where his claws entered my face. It was how I had lost my right eye then.

The speed of his thighs beating on my body was inhuman. And the same was the pain that was ripping my rectum under his organ. He was fucking me into helpless doll, flat and broken.

And then he suddenly yanked his rigid cock out of me and I convulsed with pain of my rectum tearing out of me. But he raised once again - and I felt the splash of his burning semen leaking out on my belly.

I gasped. I was mute with the pain of the scalding liquid steaming on my skin. His clammy huge body dropped on me again - and the low strange voice whispered into my ear:

"Sorry, father. I don't want to make you pregnant again. At least not yet."

The End