he knelt naked and handbound and blindfolded next to the driver's seat of my old Chevy van. he was cold and damp; shivering a little. From time to time, he rubbed his pale and moist face against my jeanclad leg and I stroked his fine, bald head. My tenderness is never a trick. The tenderness is real. The violence with which it alternates is also real.

he shifted his weight and scraped his knee on the rusted metal beneath him. he winced slightly.

Outside the van, the rain fell hard and the wiper blades slapped a loose, shambolic rhythm. The sky was grey and the road was grey and the scene that we passed was also grey. The water seeped into the van in rivulets through leaks in the roof and puddled on the floor at my feet; puddled on the floor about the naked boy at my side.

"Sir," he said.

"Yes?"

"I really have to pee, Sir."

Kept driving. Didn't answer him. I didn't much care if he couldn't hold his piss. Couldn't possibly do much damage to the van. We were almost there anyway. And he knew better than to ask again.

I looked down at my boy. I wished in that moment I'd found brown, deer-in-the-headlights eyes staring back at me. But the blindfold was necessary. I never let him know where I'm taking him.

he was shivering harder by now. his cock was shriveled from the cold and his balls had crawled back up into his body. his nipples were small and hard. The ring in the right one had trapped droplets of rain. I flicked at it with my finger and he gasped at the suddenness of the contact.

When we got there, I stopped the van pretty suddenly, carelessly, and the boy tried to steady himself; failed; toppled over against the passenger seat. I threw my bag over my shoulder, jumped out, came around to the sliding side door of the van and opened it. he was still trying to right himself. I grabbed a fistful of balls and pulled him toward me. he scrambled about to keep himself from falling again and made his way, with my encouragement, out the door.

The rain was if anything coming down harder now. he tilted his head up at the sky and opened his mouth. I covered it with my mouth. We kissed long and slow and I held him close while he shivered, now more or less uncontrollably.

I pulled him away from the van, spun him about and pushed him forward. his hands instinctively shot out in front of him trying to feel his way, but there was nothing yet to feel. When we got to the center of the clearing I dropped my bag to the ground, pushed him first to his knees, then to the mud and onto his belly. I pulled him over to his back by his bindings and lay down on top of him, pushing against his bladder.

I bit his ear and whispered into it, "Okay. Piss."

More shivering. And now low moans. It's hard for him to piss on command under any circumstances. It was doubly hard for him to concentrate on the task when the cold and the wet and my weight against him so distracted him. But, at last, he did piss. When he did, he cried out, but softly, as he soaked my jeans with his warm, flowing urine. I kissed him hard there in the mud and he peed until he was all peed out.

I pulled off, knelt next to him and bent across him to suck softly on his cold, retracted left nipple. Gradually it softened and spread until it felt normal and relaxed. I reached into my pocket for an alligator clip and fastened it to the small brown flesh I'd made tender and ready. A hiss escaped from his lips and his head jerked off the ground, but I caressed him and he settled back slowly.

I scooped up a small handful of mud and grass and smeared it across his face. And then across his chest, his arms and his belly. Soon his body was caked with brown and green. The boy smiled, his teeth shining white. The rain continued to fall hard and pooled on the boy, drizzled across his chest and belly and face, left streaks of white flesh exposed through the muck.

I helped the boy up and cinched a rope from my bag around his upper torso, under his armpits, leaving enough lead to pull him walking behind me. And we walked, in the rain, out of the clearing and into the low scrub. Bushes raked at his skin.

Occasionally he tripped on a stone embedded in the path or a low branch across the path and his hands would flail about to find something to help steady his movement, but they found nothing but bushes that gave way when he pulled. Occasionally too a blackberry vine would drag across his body and scratch or tear at him and he'd let fly a sharp bark of pain.

The path widened to another clearing with two large fir trees, roughly 10 feet apart. I turned and faced the boy. he couldn't see it, of course, but I smiled. The pale, seemingly translucent canvas of his body was now a kind of abstract expressionist work of mud and grass and trickles of blood, piss and rainwater. The knuckles of his toes bore gashes. The boy panted slightly. And shivered. Of course.

Pulling more rope from the bag, I made cuffs and secured him by the wrists & ankles (pulling his feet as wide as would allow him to remain balanced without locking his knees) between the trees. I screwed a two-foot dog-chain stake into the ground between his legs.

Pulling hard at his cock and balls I tied them off tight with the end of a ten-foot length of rope. I passed the loose end through the stake between his legs, across his back and then up and around between his teeth like a gag. This last knot pulled the connection between his head and his genitalia taut.

I returned to the scrub and gathered several lengths of blackberry vine. Old blackberry vine. I wanted to remove his blindfold so I could see his frightened eyes. I restrained myself. Starting with his arms, I wrapped him tightly in thorns. I took special care to wrap his cock and balls most thoroughly. his panting was more pronounced now.

I used the heavy flogger. I started at his ankles and calves, at first only brushing them, stirring the thorns wrapped there. Then worked up toward his thighs, still using the same, light brushing stroke. And across his ass and then over his cock and balls. his belly and chest. his upper back. he flexed and tensed a little in the ropes, in the vines. he whimpered.

The lashes grew more insistent. This was really going to fuck up the flogger. Mud and grass and blood.

Jesus. Really a mess. Ah, well.

As the strokes grew in intensity, so did his noise, which was by now growling, and his movement, which became a kind of dance in the ropes and the thorns and the cold and the rain. The vines, whipped, began to claw at him. By the time that the whipping alone would have reached a point that approached what the boy had considered his limits, the thorns had already surpassed them, made them null and meaningless.

The boy did not safeword, but cried out. I cried out with him. And I whipped him until I'd peeled him clean of mud and vines; until his screams, which I received as love songs, had grown hoarse.

And then I was done. I removed the rope from his mouth and his cock and balls. I removed the alligator clip (he screamed again). I got out the grey woolen blanket from my bag and wrapped him in it as I cut the ropes from his limbs. I cradled him in my arms. his mouth was open and his tongue extended, so I gave him my mouth and he sucked on it greedily.

Walking back to the van with an armload of boy, it occurred to me to say something to him. But I changed my mind. I nuzzled my beard against his face. he nuzzled back.

He's my boy.  And I'm falling