CHAPTER ONE
Benedict Davison brought the back wheel of his mountain bike in a wide arc as he slammed on the brakes and brought himself to a juddering halt, spewing a semi-circle of dry dirt up in the air. He steadied his own heavy breathing, and listened carefully, and after a short while he heard it again: a high pitched shriek. It sounded like a girl, in distress, but it didn't sound dangerous; not like someone being murdered or anything.
With care, he climbed off his bike, and began wheeling it off the track and into the forest proper, his eyes scanning carefully for any possible source of trouble. He didn't want to get into anything he couldn't handle, but on the other hand that sound had stirred something primeval in his twelve year old body, and he had to see what was causing it. As his breathing slowed his ears attuned to the sound of the birds in the forest, his nose attuned to the sweet smell of the ancient oaks and beeches that were in full leaf.
He heard the sound again, only this time its tone had changed, half shriek, half whimper. He changed direction slightly, homing in on it, ready to leap back on his bike and pedal for his life at the first sign of danger. He quickened his pace a little as he pushed his bike up the slope, through the thinning trees; breathing heavily again, afraid he might miss whatever was at the root of this noise.
"Bugger" he said quietly, as he realised he wouldn't be able to crest the rise because of the thick undergrowth ahead of him. He looked left and right and seeing no clue to which way would be best, he turned to his right and skirted the brambles and nettles blocking his path. The smell of the trees was still with him, but mixed with it now was the smell of grass, of the nettles, of the brambles. Hard, green, unripe blackberries followed him around, impassively.
After a few minutes another shriek split the air, this one sharp and with no hint of a whimper, and Benedict broke into a jog, desperately searching for a way through the vegetation. Eventually he spied a gap, just wide enough, and the nettles guarding this pass were trampled down, marking it as a path used recently by others. He paused, looked round carefully, and rested his bike gently on the ground near the break.
With care, he crossed the trampled nettles and squeezed himself into the gap. His faded black jeans protected him from the brambles that tried to snatch at him, but his short sleeved polo shirt did a poor job of protecting his arms and upper body. He gritted his teeth as the freshly tanned flesh of his arms was scratched and torn, and he forced his way between the brambles with urgency. The gap turned, and turned again, and Benedict became afraid that he was going to come to a halt in a dead end. But just as he began to contemplate the misery of the unrewarded return journey, he saw the gap open up ahead of him. Space and light, more trampled nettles, trees in the distance, and another shriek, louder this time, and with a discernible significance -- "Nooooo!"
Benedict hurried, his mind filled with noble intent: to aid, to rescue, to bring succour to this tormented soul, who, as he was now certain, was a girl. Of course it would depend on what the situation was; the precise nature of the threat. He rehearsed several scenarios in his mind as he fought his way though the last few yards of bramble and broke out into the open again, barely registering the scratches. If it was a snake, and there were adders in the forest, he knew, he would fight it off with a stick. If it was a bear, he wasn't sure if there were bears in the forest, then maybe he could throw rocks at it; if he could find any to throw. If it was other kids, then, well, maybe he could be brave and fight them off, or if the success of that seemed unlikely, then he could run and get help.
Either way he'd be able to do something, and earn the respect and gratitude of the damsel in distress. He desperately hoped she was pretty, or if not, then would at least show him her breasts in gratitude. He hoped it was a bear, that would be best, that would be the most frightening, yield the most gratitude, and maybe she'd be injured. Not too much obviously, but enough. Enough so that he might have to tend to her wounds, perhaps tear some of her clothes off to make bandages, or get to the wounds to heal them. No one could blame him, not if he had saved her from a bear and was now saving her life. He'd be a hero.
He was running across thick grass now, and stopped suddenly, jerked out of his mental reverie by a steep dirt slope, a mini cliff gouged into the landscape, and he looked down. Below him was a grassy hollow, a stream, an old wooden building which looked long abandoned. A quick scan of the landscape revealed no bears, not even one.
Slightly disappointed, he lowered himself over the edge and tried to navigate the steep slope carefully, but as soon as he released the pressure of his hands on the top he slid right to the bottom on the seat of his trousers, the cloud of dust he threw up choked him and stung his scratched arms. He landed in a crumpled heap in the grass below, and paused to catch his breath.
He might have rested longer, gathering his thoughts and recovering from the shock and the stinging, but another shriek, this time more of an "Eeeeek", jerked him to his feet. It had definitely come from the old wooden building.
He kept low, body hunched, and he ran across the grass as fast as his awkward posture would allow. He straightened himself briefly to jump the stream, then crouched low again, slowing as the building grew nearer. By the time he reached its tired wooden side, his heart was thumping and his breathing was ragged. He didn't stop. Hugging the wall, he moved quickly for some means of entry, or better still some means to spy on what lay within.
He might have missed the jagged hole near the bottom of the wall if he hadn't heard the voice drifting up from it "... like tourists." it had said. Benedict froze, looked down, and then dropped to his belly to peer through, in the hope of finding out what was going on.
The first thing he saw was someone's back, just half a dozen feet from the hole. Someone kneeling, bent forwards; kneeling on something. As Benedict took this in he realised that the skirt and the long blond hair suggested that it was a girl, and she appeared to be kneeling on someone else's arm. A bare arm, or at least as far as Benedict could tell.
"I won't, I won't, I won't..." came a desperate girl's whine from out of Benedict's view. He wondered if she was the one who needed rescuing, and he flattened himself a little more, easing forwards for a better view.
What he saw next shocked him to his core. He couldn't see the face of the girl whose arm was being knelt on, but he could see the boy kneeling on her other arm, and he could see the bottom half of a naked chest, the whole of a naked tummy, a pair of pink and orange stripy knickers, and the tops of a pair of naked thighs. His mind raced, and his pulse quickened. He could not escape from the realisation that he was looking at a girl of not dissimilar age to himself, who was stripped down to her knickers, and by all the available evidence he had to conclude that she had not consented to this treatment.
Benedict took a big gulp of air, feeling like he'd had the wind knocked out of him. He'd never seen a girl as undressed as this before; he'd never seen or even heard of a girl being stripped like this. He felt his stomach fall, and inside his pants his willy lurched. He had never felt so excited in all his life.
He didn't even calculate his chances of a successful rescue. The idea of rescuing this girl had been abandoned without a grain of guilt. He wanted to see what they were going to do next. He wanted to help the captors. He had no idea what this game was, but he wanted to play it more than he had ever wanted anything in his life before.
As he lay paralysed by the desire coursing within him, he saw a third person, just briefly. A head of long black hair obscuring what must have been another girl's face, leaning into view. Two arms, two hands, and many fingers wiggling down the captive's flanks. The captive's shriek sounded deafening to Benedict at this range, and he watched as the girl, pinned to the floor, wriggled and squirmed in her futile attempts to avoid her torment.
Benedict quickly ran his eyes up and down her body, and in his desperation nearly shouted out to the girl kneeling in front of him to get out of the way so he could see if the captive's breast were bare, and, if so - stab them with his eyes. He nearly jumped when the boy spoke "Shall we get her knickers off then?" he said, almost lazily, as if such a thing were of no consequence, as if he was suggesting something utterly mundane. Benedict squinted his eyes to get a better look at the boy, but didn't get any impression of indifference from him. He looked to be about thirteen years old, with shoulder length muddy brown hair, and dark eyes. His face was finely featured, cast slightly femininely; and flushed. Even Benedict could see that the boy was breathing rapidly, and even Benedict could see that as the boy knelt forward slightly, the front of his trousers bulged outwards.
The captive started struggling again, and moaning "No! Please! I didn't know... I'm sorry... Please don't do... that." The black haired girl had retreated from view when the boy had queried the fate of the girl's underwear, but now her hands came back into view and rested on the top of the captive's knickers "Might as well get her naked" she said, but showed no sign of haste in the operation.
The captive began to struggle even harder, shouting and crying out incoherently. Some pleading and begging, some threats, some exclamations of the impossibility of what they were suggesting doing to her. The blond girl in front of Benedict shifted slightly to keep a grip on the girl's arm, to keep her pinned down; and for just a second, he caught a glimpse of a bare breast, a bare nipple. The sight of that young budding breast, that nubile erect nipple, added to the awesome anticipation of the girl's knickers coming off caused Benedict to groan viscerally.
The muddy haired boy looked up quickly, his expression changing swiftly from lust to shock. The blond girl twisted her body round, her face following. The black haired girl bent forward quickly, her head turning directly to the hole. The captive's body heaved upwards as she filled her lungs "HELP!!!"
Benedict abandoned all intentions of helping anyone but himself. He shot up to his feet and ran faster than he had ever run in his life. He flew across the grass, leapt the stream, and nearly broke the sound barrier before his body slammed into the dirt incline. His hands and feet clawed at the dirt, as he scrambled up the slope, and he didn't so much as pause for breath until he had hauled himself up over the ridge and collapsed onto the grass exhausted. He didn't pause for long. Two big gulps of air, and he span himself around, to look back down towards the building, to see if there was any pursuit, to see how close it might be. Nothing. He saw nothing. As he recovered his breath, his chest heaving up and down on the grass, he mentally kicked himself for being so stupid. He shouldn't have allowed himself to groan, and afterwards he should never have panicked. Obviously they hadn't suspected they were being spied on, obviously they hadn't known he was there. They turned and looked, and then... probably just disregarded the sound, as... something of no importance. After all, they had a girl's knickers to pull off.
He closed his eyes, tried to recall the sight of the girl lying nearly naked on the floor. Brought to mind her breast, her tummy, the impending knicker removal. The erection that had fled his penis as fast as he had fled the building, had returned. He was rigid.
He didn't know what to do. He wanted to return. He wanted to get back to the hole, get back to watching whatever game this was, although he didn't really think it was a game. He wanted to see the girl, to see her naked body, see her knickers being pulled off, see her...
But he couldn't. He was sure that by the time he got there it would be too late. And they could emerge at any moment. He might be caught. What would they do to him if they caught him? He didn't have the courage. But maybe they wouldn't emerge. Maybe it wouldn't all be over. Maybe she was still lying there now. Knickerless for sure, but still lying there, being tickled, being... what else might they do to her? He didn't know, didn't dare imagine. They wouldn't rape her would they?
He rolled onto his back and stared up at the sky. His stomach churned, his mind was in turmoil. He couldn't drag himself away, but nor could he raise the courage to go back down there and risk being caught.
As much as his mind yearned to be witnessing those events in the old wooden building, his body ached for it more. His body ached in a way he had never experienced before, and he felt hot and flushed all over. Instinctively he thrust his hand down into the front of his jeans, inside his pants, and slid it across the still unfamiliar hairs at the top of his groin, until at last he took hold of his raging erection. He tugged it upward into a more comfortable position, and felt a brief thrill run up his spine. His hand felt a little sticky, and he pulled it out again, and raised it to his nose, sniffing cautiously.
Benedict had never masturbated, and although he had heard about the practise, didn't really know exactly what it was, or how it was done. He sighed deeply, and frowned unhappily, his whole being in a state of complete agitation.
Two weeks ago he had led a perfectly normal life in Gloucestershire, near Coleford in the Forest of Dean, where he never saw anything like he'd seen a few minutes ago. His father, working for the Forestry Commission, had been transferred to the New Forest in Hampshire, and had held the transfer off until the summer holidays, so that Benedict's and his sister Amy's schooling wouldn't be disrupted. Benedict would start at his new school in September, a new school year, but that had meant that Benedict hadn't had the chance to make any friends yet.
He wondered if he could make friends with the children he'd seen tormenting the girl. He wondered if he wanted to. If he could have the chance to see a girl naked, tickle her like that, touch her... His penis throbbed at the prospect. But then, if they do that sort of thing, they might do it to him, it could be deadly dangerous. He couldn't imagine being in that position. No one saw him naked, and hadn't for years, and certainly not since he'd started to grow hair down there. It was inconceivable, he'd simply die. He couldn't make friends with them, but maybe he could come back and spy another time, maybe he'd see another girl. Or, maybe, if he could scout the place out properly, when no-ne was around, he could find a really good hiding place, where no-one would find him, where he would be able to see everything. His penis throbbed again at the prospect.
He rolled onto his tummy, peering back down at the building. He was still not completely decided on whether he should risk sneaking back down for another peek, or whether he should just leave. He finally decided to do neither when he realised that there was a possibility that they might throw the girl out of the building naked, and he might get to see her from here, without taking any unnecessary risks. This, he was sure, was a good idea: the best of both worlds.
He tugged a thick stalk of grass out of the ground, chewed it slowly, and waited. While he waited he ran the whole scene through his mind again, trying to recapture every detail. It was the breast that kept gnawing at his attention, and kept him agitated. Then something else slipped into his mind, what was it she had said? Something about being sorry, and not doing it again. Yes, that was it. So she'd done something wrong. She was being punished. That put a whole different complexion on things. He could be their friend after all. They wouldn't do anything like that to him, because he hadn't done anything wrong. So he'd be safe.
He almost stood up, before realising that he had done something wrong. He'd been spying on them. They might not take that too well. That might warrant punishment too. He slumped down again. They didn't know he'd spied on them though, so if he stayed where he was he'd be safe. But if he went back down and he got caught... or, he thought, what if I just go in and say hello, introduce myself. That wouldn't be spying. And, if they got angry, threatened me, I could threaten to tell on them, unless they let me play too. He was almost convinced. He wanted to see that girl naked so badly he could almost burst.
And he nearly did burst. "Hello" said a voice behind him. He leapt out of his skin, and was bolt upright in a second. He saw a girl stood there studying him curiously. She was maybe eleven years old, with long blond hair, like the kneeling girl in the building; she looked amused.
"I didn't do anything" Benedict blurted out "I didn't see anything... I wasn't spying" he said growing ever more desperate. The way she just smiled at him sweetly sent him into a panic, and he threw himself at the brambles, fighting his way back into the gap, oblivious to the scratches he was receiving.
"Nice bum" she called after him, but Benedict didn't hear her. His advance was fast and furious, and he battled his way through the vicious vegetation until he emerged tattered and bleeding at the other side. He looked around frantically for his bike, wrenched it up from the floor and, on the third running attempt, mounted it and pedalled away as if the devil was chasing him.
Continued in Chapter Two