Chapter 26

Tichy was in no hurry to let go of the boy's shrinking erection, and when he did, it was only to hug the boy tight to his body. For once, just this once, he didn't mind that he hadn't cum and that his erection slowly was subsiding inside the child's rectum. That was okay. For now, he just hugged Marek. He pulled him back, lying down on his back and wrapping himself around the boy's slender form, and they just lay there, glued together with cum until the coldness and runniness of it made it too awkward and uncomfortable to continue.

Eventually, the man rolled onto his side, slipping from inside Marek in the process even though he still held him close. He reached up with his left hand and caressed the boy's hair. What the fuck had just happened? He felt dazed. He felt like he had cum himself, almost too hard, even though he physically hadn't at all. He showered the boy's hair and face with gentle kisses, even over his closed eyes.

Marek was sure it would end right there, probably with a vigorous buggering as the man brought himself to his own orgasm. But to the boy's astonishment, Mr. Tichy just held him close, hugging him and leaving everything intact and in place from the recent awesomeness, if only for a short while longer, but it wasn't a short while. It was a long while, and the man not only didn't bugger him, he slipped from Marek's ass unsatisfied, which blew the boy's mind even more than the rest of it.

Finally, after a long while, Tichy pulled fully away. He needed a smoke. He reached over, but his Startky were still in the kitchen. He fumbled a bit more, his fingers gripping the blue box and fishing out the last Gauloise. It seemed a fitting occasion. He scooted a bit more upright, pulled the boy into a snuggled-up, close position that no longer was a hug, and took one of the deepest ever drags from a cigarette in his life. Thank fuck the Gauloises were so smooth, so he didn't end up coughing while holding the sweet smoke in his lungs until he let it out with a shuddering, orgasm-like huff. He wanted to say something. He felt like he should say something and assert himself. Instead, he just pulled Marek in tighter and took another drag.

For a moment, a silly moment, Marek contemplated whether he had died. Perhaps he had died of the stress of dealing with Tichy's mood swings, and this was what death was like, but he knew he wasn't dead. He could feel things. The cum on his abdomen had gone cold, and it dribbled quite conspicuously down his right side, tickling him as it trailed along.

The man gave him more caresses, even kisses. Did Mr. Tichy like him, now? Had he been forgiven? Was it over? His torment? Was his "thing" treatment a final test? Had he passed? Had he graduated? Was his orgasm a graduation gift from Mr. Tichy for completing the program? The boy simply couldn't explain what had just occurred. Not a bit of it. The man never had been like this before. Just what had happened, and why?

There were some adjustments in their position as Mr. Tichy grabbed a smoke. The boy thought that it had to be over now, and he opened his eyes. The room still was there. The rules still were posted on the door, but the man seemed to be in no hurry as he pulled Marek back into a hug. The last hour had been one of the strangest of Marek's life. It was going to take the boy some time to sort this all out.

Tichy smoked in silence. This was a different way of being somebody else's whole world for a while, as opposed to crushing him into near oblivion with pain and fear. Tichy found that he liked it. He'd never become this attached to one of his boys before, and for it to be the one named Hurta kind of blew his mind. He wasn't sure himself if he liked the kid or merely empathized with Marek's friendless and lonely existence. Either way, whatever its cause, this was nice.

The man smoked the Gauloise right down to its filter before stubbing it out and blinking, almost as if he was waking from a daze. He looked down. His cock was clean by post-fucking standards. It showed dried cream only, as far as visible stuff went. It presented a great opportunity to remind Marek that whatever had just happened hadn't permanently changed their roles. Marek no longer was a thing, but he was a wimp, and he was there to get Tichy off three times a day and clean his cock after fucking among other things. With those thoughts in mind, Tichy reached out to caress the back of Marek's neck and then slowly, but firmly steered him towards his cock.

"Clean," he said, "and then suck. Nice and slow and good. Keep your prize at the end," he said. It hardly sounded like a command, even though it still most definitely was.

Marek sat, or rather leaned against the man in silence. His head was spinning. He wasn't sure he could take the stress of being with Stanislaw Tichy without going mad. The man was firmly ensconced in every corner of the boy's head. What had just happened? In the weeks and months that Marek had known Mr. Tichy, the man had never been like that before. This had all come out of the blue, right after Marek had been restored to wimp status. He replayed those events in this mind. He had gone into the bedroom after his shower and climbed up on the bed to be fucked. He remembered being stroked and thinking that the man was going to allow him an orgasm, but he had not dared to expect it or even hope for it. He had banished those thoughts from his brain lest they fester there.

The man had been angry about Marek's attitude. He had misinterpreted Marek's obedience for sullenness, or indifference, but it wasn't. It wasn't at all. Marek had tried to explain that, and then, suddenly, everything had changed. The man seemed to understand, and he had become … different, in a way that Marek never had seen or experienced before. His touch, his words, his praise – all were different. Marek would have said loving, but it wasn't exactly loving. Soothing? Understanding? Indulgent? The boy didn't know the right words to describe it. Tender? That word might fit the best. Marek had literally thought of his mother during it, and she wasn't the most affectionate or tender person to begin with.

It was strange, but in his heart, Marek knew that he hadn't "graduated." He still had a little less than three years to be fried by Mr. Tichy. He didn't care. It was fine. Whatever Mr. Tichy wanted to do too him was fine. Right now, the man wanted to be cleaned and sucked to an orgasm, and that was fine too.

Marek sat up, and immediately went to work cleaning. He didn't care about the condition of the man's cock. He didn't even look. He cleaned the cream and the taste of his own ass from the man's penis and then knelt up to suck it. He did it the way Mr. Tichy liked it – slowly and continuously, with some swallows at the bottom.

"Mhhmmm, yesssss," confirmed the man. "Just like that." Tichy still was only partly upright, more lying than sitting, his body propped up on pillows. Seeing the handsome young boy kneel up and lean right over his crotch — which allowed Marek to slide his mouth down the man's rapidly erecting and soon-to-be-rock-hard shaft almost all the way down — was a lovely sight, and Tichy just enjoyed it at first, but then he realized that Marek's sideways, leaning-over position exposed his backside beautifully and put it well within reach of Tichy's arm. He slipped his hand over the boy's curved back, patted his buttocks, and then wiggled his finger straight into Marek's pliable anus.

The angle turned out to be a little uncomfortable as Tichy needed to turn his hand a bit so that he could poke against the boy's prostate with the pad of his finger, but he managed to find it and started to press down on the little knob through the wall of Marek's anus. He pressed down each time Marek slid down his shaft and gulped around it, giving the boy a firm poke for going down and a lighter poke for each swallow, all in perfect sync with the child's own actions.

Marek was concentrating on sucking the man to the best of his ability. The problem with being good at blowjobs and quickly learning new techniques was that the man expected them every time, and he knew when Marek was slacking, but Marek wasn't slacking anymore, nor was he going to in the future. He would do what Mr. Tichy wanted him to do without complaint and most definitely without oppositional thoughts or a put-upon, rebellious attitude. He concentrated on sucking. He would figure out what had happened earlier when he had time to himself. Right now, he-

Oooh. Mr. Tichy was fingering his bottom, pushing a finger up his butt hole. The sensation surprised Marek, but he kept right on sucking. He stayed in rhythm even as the man found his inner penis and began to poke him there. How did Mr. Tichy do that? How did he know where it was all the time? To Marek, the spot inside him seemed to move around, depending on angles, and physics, and complicated stuff like that. But Mr. Tichy homed right in on it. He was pressing and prodding it and making it feel good, and damned if his actions didn't cause Marek to get another erection right on the heels of the best damn orgasm he had ever experienced. Indeed, the cum from that orgasm still adorned his chest and abdomen and wasn't yet even fully dry.

The way Mr. Tichy was timing his pokes made it seem like Marek was the one controlling the sensation. He knew that it was Mr. Tichy's doing, but every time Marek slid down, and every time he swallowed, his spot reacted and tingled as the man touched it. He even varied the number of swallows to see for sure, doing two but then five, and sure enough, the man's finger poked him each time. It was kind of funny, really, and the boy smiled around the man's shaft as much as it was possible to do when you have an adult's erection in your mouth. Marek couldn't help but be pleased by the man's amused mood. What a strange day this was proving to be.

Tichy also was having fun, and since he now was in the business of draining the boy's balls, he thought he might as well do it properly once more before denying the boy an orgasm again for a stretch of time. The man knew or at least surmised that depriving the boy of sexual relief was more likely to make Marek more compliant and eager in the long run, but since he had just gotten off, another orgasm in quick succession to the first wouldn't derail any of the man's long-term plans. Today, it appeared, was Marek Hurta's lucky day.

"You're going to have to do a few things at the same time, slut puppy," mused the man in a playful murmur of a voice. "Well, first, pause," he tapped his head, "and focus on really relaxing your butthole. Rest your head on my belly if you need to. Relax that ring. I can feel tension. Relax it. More. Better than that. A bit more," said Tichy as he pressed a second finger into Marek's ass. It was a tight fit, but after all the ass-fucking the kid had taken recently from a full-grown adult cock – some of it none too gentle – Marek certainly could take it. Not that he had any choice in the matter, of course.

"That's good," encouraged Tichy. "Now suck, and each time you swallow with my cock down your throat, clench your butthole just as tight as you can. Clench every swallow. No cheating, Marek," he warned the boy. "Swallow and clench. Swallow and clench. Go on."

As Marek swallowed and clenched for the first time, Tichy used the tension for a two-fingered press-down against the boy's prostate, which rose against the pressure and received a proper massage that way. The sensation left Marek's cock quivering with a small amount of seminal fluid leaking out the tip.

"Good," encouraged Tichy. "Keep at it."

Marek's positioning from the start had been a bit different than usual, as he was facing down the man's cock rather than up it. Ironically, that made it a bit easier for him to take Mr. Tichy's shaft into his throat, but it also gave the man access to Marek's butt, and Mr. Tichy was taking full advantage of that – not, however, to Marek's displeasure. The boy had liked having that spot touched, poked, and prodded from the very first time the man had done it to him. He didn't know exactly what caused it, but it seemed like whatever it was down there was connected directly to his penis, almost like an extension of it. That's why he thought of it as his inner penis, but it might just as well have been some little ball of nerves that were connected to his genitals by an invisible electrical wire. Whatever it was, it felt good when Mr. Tichy touched it with his fingers or penis.

Marek listened carefully to the man's instructions because that was what he did now. He listened, and he obeyed, and he did not get all pissy about it even when the man called him slut puppy, which he didn't much like, but on the list of things that Mr. Tichy did and said to him of which he disapproved, that one was really, really far down. Besides, if the man wanted him to be slut puppy, that was what he was going to be, no questions asked. Marek was done fighting Stanislav Tichy. Whatever the man wanted, Marek would give it to him. That was the boy's new mantra.

Marek worked on clenching down with his anus and butt every time he swallowed the man's penis, massaging the man's member with his throat muscles just the way Mr. Tichy liked it. He decided on three swallows with each downward plunge – not that he was plunging anymore. Instead, he was gliding slowly downward, sneaking a breath like a swimmer about to do a lap underwater before proceeding the rest of the way. With the improved angle, he made it down about 6" [15cm] each time. When he reached the bottom, it was swallow/clench … swallow/clench … swallow/clench before he slowly slid his lips back up. If he tried any more than three swallows he wouldn't get enough oxygen, so three it would have to be.

With each swallow and clench, the man pressed on his spot. Oh, wow. Marek wished he understood the physiology of it, because wow and damn, that really felt pretty good, and it was making his cock very, very hard, even on the heels of his recent orgasm.

"Keep at it, good," encouraged Tichy. "Now, slut puppy, you're gonna get a puppygasm from it. I allow it, so you don't have to panic. Eventually, your balls are gonna clench and squirt cum, or possibly just ooze – it's different for every boy. It'll feel quite nice, but there will be a very strong urge to touch your cock. It'll feel challenging and weird not to, but you're going to resist that urge this time. It obviously feels much better when you stroke your cock during the process, but this time, you're going to experience a pure puppygasm. It will come purely from clenching and having your prostate poked at, and I want you to experience it exactly that way."

"Clench regularly now," continued Tichy. "Don't even wait for your swallows. You've been good, so you can just clench-relax-clench-relax even when you're sliding and catching a breath and so on. When you feel like you must touch your cock or go crazy, when you feel very close to cumming, hum around my cock to let me know. But you will not – and let me repeat this – you will not touch your cock with your hands or hump it against me or the bed," clarified Tichy as he kept jamming the pads of his two inserted fingers against the boy's G-spot. He was working the boy's prostate hard now, helped along by Marek's obedient clenching.

"Not even a little bit," he admonished the boy.

Tichy was starting to get close to his own orgasm from the boy's quality sucking and began to wonder if he could control this just enough to sync their orgasms together. It certainly would be fun to do, but unlike when he worked the boy's cock with his hand, it was a bit harder this way to anticipate just how close Marek was to oozing his cum.

Marek's very weird day as a newly restored wimp just kept getting weirder as the man told him that he was going to be allowed to cum a second time. At first, the boy wasn't even sure what the man meant, until he realized that a "puppygasm" wasn't really some different thing. It was just Mr. Tichy being weird, but the boy was not at all sure that he could have an orgasm like this.

Aside from his wet dreams, Marek never once had cum without touching himself. He had tried once, embarrassingly, while staring at Klaudie Drabek's chest at his old school. He had flexed his erection up and down in his pants, not touching it, just staring and flexing, willing himself to cum by the sheer horniness of it and by the lovely sight of Klaudie's budding breasts. He'd spent a good long time at it, too – 15 minutes or more – trying to flex his penis to an orgasm, the resulting mess in his underpants be damned, but he had not been able to get himself there, and in the end, it had been frustrating. His groin muscles hurt from all that flexing, and it had been another two classes before he had been able to get to the bathroom and take care of his need, and even then, with his hand hard at work, it hadn't been quite as nice as he had hoped it would be while staring at the gentle swells of Klaudie's 11-year-old chest.

Anyway, this felt like it might work, and Marek began to clench, using the same muscles he had used for Klaudie, just much more focused on his anus then his penis. He clenched and clenched again. He could feel his cock wagging. His sucking became erratic as his brain was having trouble doing both things at the same time. He slid down Mr. Tichy's shaft and did five consecutive swallowing gags to make up for it, all the while clenching and clenching away, but he would not touch his cock, even if this didn't work. Mr. Tichy seemed worried that he might, but Marek didn't think the man had ever felt a bullwhip on his balls, so it was not happening. No second warning about that was needed, but Marek wasn't sure he would need to touch himself to cum, because whatever the man was doing felt so nice.

This wasn't a first for Tichy. Giving boys cock-free orgasms – that intensely vulnerable, helpless, and dizzying sensation with a powerful, frustrating edge – was something he had discovered a long time ago and became a bit of an expert at over time. He had brought some very tough bullies to tears this way as they humped air and begged for at least one squeeze, one stroke of a cock, but never getting it, only to feel their bodies clench, expel cum, and experience something more akin to a female orgasm, spread out and tingling, more of a whole-body thing, never the sharp, cock-focused spike of a typical horny teen's ejaculation.

It wasn't just the spike that was missing this way; what also never came was the satisfied exhale, the relaxation, the loss of tension afterwards, the sudden dramatic decrease in need and arousal. Being milked without stimulating the cock kept the boy drained and simultaneously still craving sensation from his penis, still craving the usual kind of orgasm, still wanting that spike-and-release thing. It could be done quite a number of times, too; even when the boy's cock no longer fully cooperated and lost its firmness, the prostate could be stimulated far beyond that point, forced to squirt or ooze several more times after in fact, deepening that craving and frustration even as the boy was left depleted and exhausted, and by the end of it, unable to wank, and unable to get it up even if he were allowed to.

That result was what Tichy very much was working Marek toward, jab after jab, clench after clench. He could see that Marek would squirt before he was going to cum in the boy's mouth, but that was okay. He kept at it. He wasn't going to miss seeing Marek's response to this whole new sensation.

Marek liked the sensation a lot at first. It was intense. He could feel everything building towards a crescendo again. It did feel strange to have this all happening without the slightest touch or friction against his cock, but all the clenching he was doing was making it wag. Marek could feel it bobbing up and down even if he couldn't see it. Mr. Tichy kept touching his spot every time he clenched, and the feeling was electric. His sucking was really falling off now, but he kept the man's cock in his mouth and tried to apply some tongue even if his slides and bobs were not nearly up to his usual standards. Mr. Tichy didn't seem to mind; like Marek, he seemed more focused on what the boy was doing with his anal and groin muscles, which was clenching, unclenching, and clenching some more. Marek was close to shooting. He could feel it. The pressure was there, building higher and higher, until he was so close, so fucking close …

His anal muscles were getting tired, and that was unfortunate because he was near the point of orgasm. He would shoot in just another few clenches, he could feel it. But he clenched, and his penis bobbed, and he still wasn't quite there. It felt like he could do this, Klaudie Drabek be damned; the man was helping him, and there it was, he was cumming … but he wasn't. Or was he? He couldn't tell. It felt weird, good but strange, and … continuous. He stopped clenching for a moment as his penis seemed to spasm and pulse and do everything except shoot, which he very much wanted it to do, because he could tell it was going to be fucking epic when it did.

And there it was, just one more clench and he was going to explode, but … he didn't. Marek realized then that he hadn't sucked the man at all in a quite a while. Had it been a minute? Two? Mr. Tichy's cock was just sheathed in his mouth, forgotten. He went down on it again as he clenched some more, and it felt like he was cumming, but he hadn't shot anything. His cock twitched like it was, but it wasn't, and after a bit more of that, it just seemed weird and uncomfortable even. Marek could see why the man gave this sensation a different name, because it wasn't the same as a regular orgasm. Puppygasms were in their own category. After a time, Marek simply stopped clenching. It just felt too weird.

Tichy gripped Marek's hair and stopped him from sucking so the boy wouldn't bite him or something as the weird sensation hit him. Marek oozed cum. And then some more. And more. His boy balls were being slowly, frustratingly drained. It was then that the boy stopped clenching.

"Keep clenching!" Tichy commanded immediately. "You're still leaking. This isn't over until your balls have been drained," he said sternly, firmly. "Accept the sensation. Submit to it," he commanded. He could see the boy's cock dribbling, quivering, oh-so-badly needing to be touched directly, but Tichy merely continued jabbing at the youngster's prostate.

"Go on!" Tichy commanded. "Keep going. On and on! You're still leaking. You're not done! Take it all. Clench!" he said as he jabbed a bit harder. Marek wouldn't have to worry about wet dreams for a good long while after this!

Naively, Marek had thought that this was about his pleasure – that his oddest of odd mornings as a former thing was continuing with his second orgasm in as many hours, meant as a gift for him for some reason, or for no reason other than Mr. Tichy was in a good mood. But when the man barked his order, Marek tensed and realized that this was not about him or even necessarily about his pleasure at all. Mr. Tichy wanted his balls drained, and this was the method he was using to do it.

The boy resumed clenching again, this time with his sense of wonder and curiosity replaced by worry and concern. His muscles down there were tired, but he kept at it. His penis kept wagging, but perhaps not as stiffly as before. His spot kept feeling good, though. It still felt electric, but Marek didn't feel quite as close to cumming as he had before. All it would take was 10 seconds with his right hand and he would get the job done, but that was not allowed.

Another poke to his prostate made Marek shiver, as now it once again did feel like he might actually cum. He clenched with renewed vigor as an intense wave of … something washed over him. It was a wave of need. He needed to cum, but it just wouldn't happen – or would it? His toes and fingers curled and clenched. His groin and anal muscles clenched. He moaned through his nose, but he Still. Couldn't. Cum.

Of course, Tichy wasn't going to introduce Marek to this new experience gently. That wouldn't be at all like him if he did. He poked, and poked, and poked for as long as there was any fluid coming out of the boy's cock, no matter how little, no matter how slowly, just a nice, oozing dribble of sexual frustration. It was sweet. Tichy took his time. He kept at it until the streamer of cum from Marek's cockhead dripped off and broke, The boy's cock no longer rock-hard, just squidgy, and semi-erect. Ten solid minutes elapsed before he finally withdrew his fingers from Marek's tired, slightly sore anus and pushed the kid's face back down on his own erection.

"Now make me cum, slut puppy," he ordered the flustered 12-year-old. "Make it feel really nice. Really good."

Marek wasn't even sure exactly what was happening, in part because the man's cock remained firmly in his mouth, and he couldn't see his own penis. He kept clenching and clenching some more, but the pleasurable sensations were mostly gone now. He felt strange. He was a combination of aroused, drained, and unfulfilled. He still wanted to cum, but the sensation of the man poking his spot no longer was pleasurable. It was becoming more of an ordeal. It seemed like his cock had gone soft, too, as he no longer could feel it bob and wag when he clenched his groin muscles.

It was a relief when the man finally stopped and let him resume the blowjob. Marek wasn't at all sure what had just occurred, but then again, it wasn't the first time he had felt that way today – and it still was early in the morning. He had a job to do, and he set about sucking Mr. Tichy to the best of his ability. He still felt unfulfilled, but he also didn't feel like he needed to cum anymore, so he guessed that was okay. He concentrated on a slow-and-continuous pace, using lots of tongue and gag-swallowing at the bottom the way he knew the man liked his blowjobs.

He long ago had admitted to himself that he had gotten pretty good at this, not that he had any real basis for comparison. The only comparison he readily could make was to Ludmila, but that almost didn't count because it had been so obviously her first time when she had sucked Marek off in the laundry room. Marek assumed that he was not bad at blowjobs even compared to experienced suckers, although truth be told he had quite a bit of experience himself by now.

What a strange morning it had been. He had been allowed to cum, and … whatever else they had done. Mr. Tichy had been in a weird, charitable, and forgiving mood, but Marek was not fooled. He would not be lulled into letting his guard down. The man normally was not that way, and Marek had no expectation that he would remain that way even quasi-permanently. Mr. Tichy had a volatile temper, and he was quick to anger. Marek would be endangering himself if he concluded that anything was different or had changed because of one, strange, almost surreal morning.

His plan for dealing with Mr. Tichy had not changed and remained very much intact. Whatever the man wanted, Marek would give to him, without hesitation or complaint, and without any oppositional or seditious thoughts. He simply would not allow those thoughts to enter his mind ever again. He was here at the school for as long as Mr. Tichy wanted to keep him, and that was fine. He didn't need to go home to see anyone or talk on the telephone with them, and that was fine, too. He would not let himself be lulled into complacency. Home didn't matter. Family and friends didn't matter. None of those things mattered. What mattered was that he lived here, and Mr. Tichy owned him. He would do what the man said. He just didn't care anymore. Stuff that used to matter to him no longer did, and he was okay with that. It was fine. It just didn't matter anymore. He was tired of experiencing pain and fear. He was going to lose his mind over it if it didn't stop.

Tichy relaxed, his hands no longer on Marek. He let the boy take over, but he was aroused; what he had just done to Marek was about as satisfying for him as it was unsatisfying for the boy. He loved it, and now he was going to have a proper, strong orgasm himself, in stark contrast to the boy. Not that he was angry with Marek in any way. Not anymore. It had been a strange morning; some odd stuff had happened between them, and Tichy had taken a strange, painless, non-violent revenge on the boy.

His cock twitched inside Marek's mouth. Was he that close so soon? Yes. He already had been partly aroused ass-fucking the kid, then he nearly had cum in the boy's mouth earlier. His cock seemed to remember those times and was ready to shoot quite quickly. And so it was, just a couple of minutes in, that Tichy huffed, grunted, and filled Marek's mouth with a load that was unusually voluminous even for him.

Marek sucked the man, and he sucked well. He was rewarded with a massive load of cum, which he took in his mouth and struggled to swallow down. One orgasm down for the day, two to go. The boy would have to be on the lookout for other opportunities to bring the man off. For now, he awaited Mr. Tichy's next instruction. He would do absolutely anything the man told him to do, without complaint, and without hesitation.

Tichy let the bliss overcome him. He felt relaxed and pleased while squirting and cumming, closing his eyes briefly only to realize, as soon as he was finished, that Marek had swallowed his entire load without permission. He groaned.

"I actually don't want to punish you," he complained, "but which part of 'keep your prize' wasn't clear, Marek? Come on, kid," Tichy sighed, sounding younger, almost like he was talking to a buddy or friend as opposed to the boy he as much as owned like a slave.

Oh shit. Marek knew he had fucked up. The man's pre-blowjob instruction had been clear, but the boy had forgotten what he had been told to do. He had swallowed. Tichy's cumload had been big, larger than usual, and Marek had concentrated on not spilling any. He had swallowed it all, feeling somewhat pleased with himself that he hadn't spilled any of it. Damn it! Part of his new plan was to give the man no reason to be angry and hurt him. Marek did some of his most rebellious thinking when he was in pain. He knew that avoiding that pain stimulus would make his existence easier, and now he had gone and done this.

"Fuck it," said Tichy, before Marek could respond. "You do it. Punish yourself. You have five minutes," said Tichy, not adding any specific instruction to the peculiar command even as he sat up. "First fetch me my cigarettes though," he demanded.

Marek's eyes locked on Mr. Tichy's for a moment and then looked quickly away. The kid looked worried and a bit confused. He went to get the Startkas as the man's curious command reverberated in his brain. Punish … himself? If Mr. Tichy was trying to mess with the boy's mind, he had succeeded. How was he supposed to punish himself? And what was the severity of the offense? Marek had found himself being punished savagely for mere accidents before, so he had no idea how bad this transgression was on the Tichy 1-10 scale. Was it a 5? An 8? Or maybe just a 3?

He brought the cigarettes to the man, but the boy was bewildered. He couldn't beat himself, or, at least, he didn't think he could. He also didn't want to, although he supposed he probably could reach his butt with the flogger and beat himself by swinging it back there.

Tichy lit a cigarette as he looked at Marek. He meant it. The boy had to be punished for disobeying, but Tichy couldn't be bothered to do it. It was a funny idea – a first, as far as he could recall. He really should have put another boy on the spot like this before. Watching Marek's eyes go wide at the endless non-specificity of the instruction already was more fun than most of the punishments Tichy could have dolled out to the boy himself.

Marek was trying to think, but he had only five minutes. In the end, not knowing what else to do, he opted for corner time, right where the man had made him do it before. Knees spread, ass back, hands on head, leaning forward, he assumed the "fuck me, please" position that he damn well knew wasn't enough of a punishment if it lasted only five minutes, but he simply didn't know what else to do.

Just corner time? Tichy puffed away on his cigarette. Hmmmm.

"All right," he said after a while. "Stick that ass out more though. This needs to be a challenge if it's a punishment. Knees more apart, more back, and belly more forward. That pucker should be straining to open like a drain pipe when you do it," he added.

"If you stay like that long enough for me to consider it an adequate punishment, you're fine," said Tichy. "If you come over here any sooner than that, you're toast," he added ominously before pausing to evaluate the boy's compliance.

"It's an interesting choice you've made there," Tichy added. "I thought you were just gonna whack yourself a few times or something," chuckled the man as he picked up a book.

Marek's heart was racing as he awaited the man's verdict. Would it come right away, or would Mr. Tichy wait until the five-minute mark to announce his decision? The man liked count downs – oh, how Marek hated hearing the man's ominous voice as he started in on one: "Ten … nine … eight … ." It gave the boy the creeps. At the five-minute mark, would he simply announce that Marek had failed to punish himself adequately and that now he was taking over? Marek thought that he likely would – and he'd probably add another punishment, too, since Marek had failed at punishing himself. That was how things worked in Tichy World. There were punishments piled on punishments atop other punishments. There were punishments for failed punishments. There were endless punishments that Marek never seemed to be able to dig himself out from under, and that was why he had decided to surrender.

But the verdict came earlier than expected, and it came with new instructions. Marek was grateful for the guidance, and he complied instantly. The new position was awkward and painful, especially in his back. Somehow, his lower back seemed to be taking all the load and strain, although his thighs didn't like the position much better, and his neck was complaining as well, but Marek held the position. He did not want to be "toast." He concentrated on the task at hand. The taste of Mr. Tichy's cum still was in his mouth, reminding him of what he had done wrong. He tried to blank his mind. No thoughts were allowed, only compliance and obedience.

Tichy wasn't really planning on reading; instead, he was going to spend his time making sure that Marek was uncomfortably contorted and keeping that cute little puckered hole of his winked opened. The boy was going to have to keep up the position despite the strain obvious on his thighs and back, and that wasn't going to be easy, even for a lithe and strong 12-year-old athlete.

Marek's choice of punishment also gave Tichy some quiet time after all that had happened that morning and some much-needed time to process. The man pretended to read, occasionally turning a page over and then back again. He wasn't even looking at the letters but trying to recall how he had wrapped himself around Marek, cocooned him and made him feel oh-so-happy-and-safe, and then how he finally had milked the last drops of cum out of the boy's balls. He surely had messed with the kid's head with this morning's activities; the only problem was, he had messed with his own in the process.

For Marek, this was an actual punishment. It hurt. The boy's lower back was singing in pain and throbbing. He didn't know how long he could hold the position. Did Mr. Tichy know that this really hurt? He had made Marek stay in corner time for a long while before, but this position was twice as painful, and twice as difficult to hold. Just a couple of adjustments to his form had put tremendous stress on his lower back. The muscles there were spasming. His thighs and neck hurt a lot, too, but it was his lower back that was becoming excruciating.

Tichy, for once, didn't want to set Marek up to fail. Things already were confusing enough from this morning. After some ten minutes – enough time to make the position painful for the boy and feel like a punishment – he cleared his throat. Marek hadn't yet given up, but the boy obviously was straining and in pain, and Tichy didn't want him to overdo it and hurt himself out of fear.

"All right, all right, well done," Tichy announced. "Enough."

The man intervened just in time, and Marek was grateful. He knelt up, groaning as his lower back sang with pain. That had hurt.

"Come change the sheets," instructed Tichy. "Put on panties and t-shirt and take the cum-stained set down to the laundry. I'll call and make sure Ludmila is there. Remember that she gets to boss you about and play with you a bit if she wants, so don't be rude or disobedient," warned the man as he went to the phone to speak to Vacha. After that, he made another phone call, this one conducted in fast-spoken, slightly oddly accented Russian that was well beyond the boy's capacity to understand. He hung up the phone with a smile.

Marek's gratitude and relief at his punishment ending early was short-lived. He didn't want to deal with Ludmila. Not today. The girl was … into him, but Marek was not into the girl. Maybe she would just want to play chess, but not likely. He knew that he owed her for several things now, but he didn't want to pay. He had forgotten exactly what he owed her for, but she was sure to make him regret having gone to the well.

And just what was Mr. Tichy up to? The man had been in a weird mood all day, and that did not bode well for Marek in the long term. Then there was the matter of the phone call in fast-paced Russian. No matter. He didn't have to worry about things like that anymore. He just obeyed. He just fucking obeyed. He gathered the sheets and put panties on, followed by a t-shirt. Then he left the apartment and headed down to the laundry.

"Finally!" exclaimed Ludmila as soon as Marek stepped into the laundry room. She pulled him in and locked the door. "T-shirt off," she said. As soon as she caught a glimpse of his pink panties, she chuckled. "Those you can keep on." She threw the dirty laundry in, then placed a clean, sorted bundle on the counter for Marek. A blanket and some cushions lay suspiciously and incongruously on the floor.

Marek knew it was going to be a long morning as soon as he entered the laundry. Of course, there was his usual anxiety about Vacha. Where was the man? Marek was frightened of the old janitor. He was especially fearful of being caught by him while engaged with Ludmila, but the man was nowhere to be found. There was just a very excited Ludmila. She was too excited, as if she had been waiting for Marek for days, which he supposed she kind of had been.

Off went his t-shirt. There was no arguing. No feeling sorry for himself. He would deal with Ludmila the same way he dealt with Tichy, and he would survive. That was what this hellhole of a school was to Marek now: a survival challenge. Nothing else mattered. None of it mattered. Marek didn't care.

"I was beginning to worry you wouldn't come before the New Year to pay your debt!" said Ludmila. "I didn't want to get you into anymore trouble with Standa, but a deal's a deal," she said with a pout.

"I've been looking forward to this for a while, so you turn around," she commanded, and when he did, she slipped her sweatpants and panties down from her chubby hips and pulled them off her feet. She lay down amid the cushions and blanket on the floor and spread her meaty legs wide apart.

"C'mon, crawl over here and go down on me," she demanded. "And remember your promise: No feeling-sorry-for-yourself nonsense! Just do it!"

Marek turned around, then turned back, his eyes widening at the sight. Oh, jeez. Oh, no. She had taken off her clothes. He immediately went to hands and knees as commanded, but then hesitated. What on earth did she want him to do? She wanted him to go down on her? She wanted him to do it? Actual sex? Marek wasn't sure. It would violate Mr. Tichy's rules if he came. And what about a baby? Marek knew how those things worked.

He started to crawl towards her while thinking that she couldn't be serious. He stopped between her legs. He didn't like what he saw there. And the last thing he wanted to do was mount her. He wanted to obey – he was all about obedience, now – but he hesitated again.

"Do you really think we should do this?" he asked her in a pained voice. His milked cock was still flaccid, and he didn't think he could get an erection even if she said yes. He was about as far from aroused at the sight of a partially naked girl as it was possible for a boy his age to be.

"So, I can suck you, but you can't lick me?" she pouted. "Or are you such a weeetwe weetwe baybeee that you don't even know what it means to 'go down' on someone?" she smirked. "Did you forget about repaying the favor?" she asked.

"Get your mouth on my pussy!" she commanded in a no-nonsense voice. "Kiss it and lick it. Try and get your tongue in it. I'll tell you what feels good, you scaredy-cat. I'll make sure you don't mess it up."

Marek realized that he had been wrong. The one thing in the world he wanted to do less than mounting Ludmila, was licking her on her … down-there parts. The boy blanched. He looked down. Oh, my. What he saw there set his stomach to clenching. He thought that he honestly, truly, would rather eat out Mr. Tichy's ass again than lick that. As sick as the thought was, that's how revolting the girl's cunt was to the boy. It was also a matter of familiarity. He knew Tichy's ass, but he didn't know what to expect from Ludmila's genitalia in terms of odors and flavors.

Ludmila spread her legs wider and stuffed a thick cushion under her butt to make the angle easier for the Hurta boy. Her pussy was puffy and thick. Her belly was crunched into flabby rings above it. She was more than a little fat, as well as rotund and big. Her thighs were big and meaty, and her pussy was adorned with wiry, messy, curly dark hairs. Bisecting all that was a slit that smelled sharp and acidic with a hint of fish. The purplish pink inner lips of her pussy spilled out from between the fatty mounds of her outer lips, and she wasn't even all that aroused. Not yet.

For her part, Ludmila felt confident in what she was doing because of her unfettered authority over the younger, hapless, and hated first-year boy, but this was going to be her first time being eaten out and in fact, given that everyone had been home in their small flat these last few days, also her first orgasm in several days. She was horny, she had been waiting for this, and she wanted the boy's mouth on her pussy now. If he refused to do it, she planned to beat the living shit out of him until he changed his mind. She was older and stronger, and the Hurta boy was going to do what she told him to do, or else.

"Go on!" she commanded.

Marek was done fighting this shit anymore. Ludmila had him by the balls and he knew it. One word from her and Mr. Tichy would be all over his ass, probably with something made of wood or leather that Marek knew he wouldn't like. To be fair, he had owed her for a good long while now. She had shown him mercy before, but for a price, and this was the price he had to pay. He had to do this. Maybe he could pretend that she was beautiful, but he would have to do a lot of pretending for that to work.

He decided to lie down. It's what he did when he rimmed Mr. Tichy. He lay down between her legs. He already could smell what he soon would be licking. He closed his eyes. He couldn't stand the sight. Nonetheless, Marek forced himself to bring his face to the girl's slit and begin to lick.

Ludmila tasted tangy, sour, and metallic, with notes of copper and rusty iron. It was a strong flavor for a girl her age, not that Marek had any frame of reference. Partly because she was fat, and partly because she had rushed to the laundry after Standa's call and hadn't showered – there was no reason for her to shower or freshen up for the Hurta boy, of course – Marek got to taste her pussy as it was in its natural state. Not only was Ludmila not freshly showered, but she had worn the same panties for the past 24 hours and had only just peeled them down her legs when Marek arrived. Like most girls and women in communist Czechoslovakia, a full bush still was the standard down below, and that's what she sported.

Oh, Marek didn't like this at all. Ludmila tasted yucky. It was a different kind of yucky than what he was used to, but yucky all the same. There was nothing even remotely arousing about what he was doing. The boy wondered again if Mr. Tichy had managed to turn him into a homosexual. He thought that perhaps he had. The boy had enjoyed what had happened this morning, just as he had enjoyed it a few times before. Mostly he just serviced Mr. Tichy's seemingly insatiable appetite for sex, but even that had gotten easier over time. Being fucked no longer hurt that much unless the man wanted it to. Marek had gotten very good at giving blowjobs and was almost proud of his skills. All those things pointed toward a homosexual future. The fact that he was not attracted to Ludmila in the slightest merely served to confirm what he thought he already knew.

It hadn't even occurred to Ludmila that Marek might dislike what he found between her legs. She was aware that she wasn't the most attractive girl, but pretty or not, at least this wasn't gay for the first-year boy. Surely Marek would be pleased to be with an actual girl, especially an older and more mature one. Ludmila was no fool; she had seen Marek and other boys coming and going from Standa's apartment and office. Marek certainly would prefer to lick a girl's pussy after all the cock-sucking and taking it up the ass he undoubtedly was getting from the disciplinarian, and likely from some of the older boys, as well.

That thought made her shiver with arousal more than Marek's initial oral ministrations; the idea of Marek groaning in pain as Standa fucked him in the ass was a turn on for her, and her pussy quickly turned slick as she moaned. She could imagine the boy whimpering in pain from the hard cock he was receiving up his ass. She wished that he could be made to lick her pussy while he was getting fucked. Now that would be a good pussy-licking, but even as she enjoyed the feel of Marek's tongue, she would be staring not at the slender wisp of a little boy desperately licking away on her pussy, but at the big, strong Standa as he fucked the kid silly. Maybe she should even try and talk Standa into it at some point. He had provisionally agreed to involve her in some of Marek's punishments, and she knew he didn't just mean by occasionally sending down with laundry, half-dressed in panties and with instructions to be nice to her.

"Open your mouth properly and lick lower, dumbass," she commanded. "My pussy's actually down below," she told him while reaching down and slipping a finger inside herself to demonstrate.

Marek licked lower, his tongue encountering wetness and even more flavors. He didn't like this at all, but it really wasn't all that different from when Mr. Tichy made him eat out the man's ass. It was more like the times Mr. Tichy had made him do it when he wasn't particularly clean or showered. Marek's tongue found her opening and licked from there up the girl's slit. That must be where a penis would go to fuck her. Who knew it was so far down there? It really wasn't all that far from her butt hole, which made the boy nervous. He didn't want to have to lick her there.

Ludmila didn't seem to know or care that the boy didn't like what she was making him do. She used her hands to pull Marek's head against her pussy, then used them to steer his mouth where she wanted it to go. Using verbal commands, she made Marek give her long, deep twisting licks into her pussy, long dog-like laps from her opening to up over her slit, and then, after a lot of both of those, she made him clamp his mouth wide over her pussy and tongue and suck her inner folds and clit with a mouthful of pubic hair and feminine slickness in his mouth from her soft, fatty flesh. Soon, it started to feel more than just good for her, and she began to moan, pant and rock her hips against the boy's face.

"Mhmmm," she moaned. "Oh yeah. There, yes, there. Keep at it, yesssss! Faster! Harder! C'mon!!!!" she urged him.

It was exactly what Mr. Tichy made him do sometimes. Holding his head down, guiding and forcing him, instructing him how to lick and where, how to give him the most pleasure. Ludmila seemed in many ways to be cut from the same cloth as the man. No wonder they were friends, despite the age difference and the impracticality of it. The girl had a mean streak in her, a certain cruelty. It was different from Mr. Tichy's, but very much there. Marek guessed that it had been forged from the years of taunting and abuse that she had suffered from schoolboys who thought that it was funny to tease and ridicule her.

It was ironic, really. He and Ludmila both were outcasts at the school and picked on by the other boys, but he was so far below the bottom rung of the ladder that instead of being his ally and friend, Ludmila picked on him, too, and she did it with Mr. Tichy's full knowledge, permission, and encouragement. How had he sunk this low? Even the other victims picked on him. Even the bullied bullied him. It was utterly unfair, but there was no escaping it. One negative word from Ludmila and Mr. Tichy would scorch his ass and probably sack him, too. Marek knew that he couldn't win. He could only lose, lose, and lose some more. He was done with that. He was done feeling sorry for himself.

Having no choice, Marek did what he was told. He reminded himself that in effect, it was Mr. Tichy telling him to do this. He did whatever the man wanted him to do, and this was one of those things. He was not about to incur Ludmila's wrath today as that could undermine the progress he had made with Mr. Tichy. Not to mention that the girl was bigger and stronger than he was and could beat him up. Marek simply did what he was told and didn't dwell on it. He just didn't care anymore.

Unlike Tichy, Ludmila seemed happy enough with basic obedience and a good-enough effort from the boy; an obedient mouth and tongue working her pussy was enough. She didn't require enthusiasm or hard-to-achieve feats that would leave Marek breathless or in agony. It was just all a bit wet, slimy, and smelly for the boy – gross, but painless – but there was yet another thing that Marek didn't know about girls, and he was about to find out.

Ludmila bucked and came, shuddering, her pussy pulsing under his mouth in a way that made even an inexperienced boy know for certain what had just happened. She squirted a bit of pussy juice right into his face, almost as if she had peed on him, but it was just a quick little spray. It was not like when Mr. Tichy released his bladder and either made him drink his urine or soaked him with it. It was more spontaneous than that, more natural and organic.

Ludmila moaned as she came and pumped her hips against his face.

"Yesss, yesss," she exclaimed in the throes of her orgasm. "More!!! Tongue in, down below!!! Deep, fast! C'mon!!!" she drove him on straight away. There was no pause, no break. It was like one of Mr. Tichy's biathlons. She just wanted him to keep going.

Marek absolutely hated this and wanted it to be over. He hated the taste more than anything. It was revolting. Mr. Tichy tasted of sweat and earthiness and his cum had a bitter flavor to it, but this was tangier, more metallic, and somehow sweeter. Marek didn't like it. It also was much slicker. Marek's saliva wasn't making it wet; it was the girl's own juices. They were girl-sex juices: runny, flavorful, and just flat out gross. The boy shuddered with revulsion.

For Marek, this single experience pretty much confirmed for him the fact that Mr. Tichy had turned him into a homosexual. The truth was, he rather would be performing this on the man in a dark, humid, hairy place where no self-respecting, non-wimpish boy would wish to perform anything; yet however gross that was, this was even worse. He'd honestly, truthfully rather be rimming Mr. Tichy's ass, and that thought made him even more aware of how low he had sunk and what he had become.

Ludmila's heightened arousal was a surprise to Marek. He didn't know that girls orgasmed, but it seemed like Ludmila very much had. It also seemed that, Tichy-like, she very much wasn't finished using his mouth and tongue for her pleasure. The boy shuddered again as he complied with her instructions and kept just licking. His face was wet with her slimy yuck, at least from the bridge of his nose down. Oh, how he wished this would end. Couldn't they just play chess, now?

About two minutes later, Ludmila came again. For Marek, there was more slickness and more taste. Indeed, there was more of everything that he didn't want, yet still she wanted more. She kept driving him on, pushing on his head, sending him down below over her slit and across her clit. Marek's face was a total mess. They were both getting sweaty in the warm laundry room, yet she just kept on driving him harder. She tugged on his hair and yanked his face toward her pussy whenever he wasn't licking hard and fast enough for her liking.

Panting, she finally pushed him off, but only to steer him forcefully onto his back. She straddled his face, sitting down on it, her pussy pressed to his mouth.

"Lick!" she shouted at him breathlessly, her sweat dripping down on him in cold, slimy droplets. She started to rock her hips and ride his mouth, covering his face enough to trigger some of his claustrophobia as she ground her pussy back and forth over his lips, nose, and jaw.

Marek gasped a sigh of relief as the girl pushed him off, only to face renewed disgust as she manhandled him onto his back and straddled his face. Oh god, no! This was awful. It was horrifying. It was starting to get way worse than doing anything he did with Mr. Tichy. The taste and the wetness — everything was so disgustingly wet and slimy — were revolting to the boy. Even if Mr. Tichy never had touched him, Marek might have been driven homosexual just by this. It was every bit that bad, and Marek moaned at the horror of it. He longed to be done.

He licked, but his body was tense with revulsion and worry. Ludmila was acting like she was possessed, and Marek didn't know what to do. What could he do? The girl was bigger, older, stronger, and meaner than he was. He already was frightened of her, and now Ludmila had worked herself into a sexual frenzy the likes of which Marek had not seen before from Mr. Tichy or any of his boys.

With her pussy grinding on his face and making it almost impossible to breathe, Marek started to panic. "It" didn't come right away, but it was starting to kindle and come alive. The heat didn't help, and the fact that Ludmila was dripping sweat on him made it even more awful. Marek knew that "it" would come if he didn't stop this. He groaned in fear as he began to struggle and tried to pull his mouth away from the girl's slimy snatch. There was no question that she could beat him to a pulp if she chose to do so, but Marek simply had to get away.

"Not yet!!!" Ludmila growled animalistically as her frantic boy pet began to struggle and push against her. She grabbed his hair and clamped her thighs tight to the side of his head as she mashed and ground her pussy against his tortured face for several long, agonizing seconds. Maybe it was Marek's resulting struggles and thrashing about that got her off, but she came hard, shuddering deeply one last time, moaning and sighing at the pleasure of it as a feeling of serenity and bliss washed over her.

When she had finished orgasming for the final time, Ludmila felt completely spent and almost weak. She needed to pee and released her bladder, the sour, tangy pee flooding Marek's mouth, giving him no other option but to gulp it down or drown in it. She finally rolled off him after that, panting and gasping for air in post-orgasmic bliss.

Marek felt like he was drowning even before the girl grabbed his hair and saturated him with her juices. He couldn't breathe. "It" was coming, rising, knocking on the door now, threatening to send him to that place he didn't want to go. He fought it. He didn't want to experience that sack-like feeling, not here, not with Ludmila. He was drowning now, almost literally, but the girl was big, strong, and insistent. Marek was green with revulsion as she finished her orgasm, then used his face like a toilet, Tichy-like. They weren't just cut from the same cloth, they were twins.

Finally, it was over, and Marek rolled to the side, then onto his stomach, gasping for air as he held his mouth open and let whatever he could drool back out to the floor. His back rose and fell as he heaved and gasped for air. That had been unexpectedly awful. It had been horrifying.

"Not even a stiffy in your little panties?" Ludmila chuckled in a catching, rasping sort of way as she also caught her breath a bit. "You really are a little poof-boy, aren't you?" she pouted. "You liked my mouth on yours well enough though. Or maybe you're just selfish," she said with a shrug.

"Anyway. Get dressed, grab the sheets, and go!" she commanded even as she reached for her own clothes and hurriedly began to put them back on, still red-faced and sweaty, and clearly not up for a game of chess today.

Marek ignored the girl as she taunted him, and then, after a few seconds delay, he got to his knees and climbed wearily to his feet. His face was soaked with wetness, and he could smell urine as well as taste it in his mouth. He wanted a shower in the worst way, but he would settle for running his head through one of Vacha's industrial washing machines. On top of everything else, Ludmila seemed angry with him. That was just what he needed with Mr. Tichy. Why was she mad, and how mad was she? Would she say something to the man that would get him beaten or sacked? He almost asked her for a game of chess to calm her down, but that didn't seem like a good idea right now.

Ludmila got herself dressed in a hurry, hurriedly checking the machine containing Standa's stained bedsheets before unlocking the door.

"C'mon," she urged the somewhat dazed boy. "Dad's in a foul mood, and I don't want him to get suspicious. Weirdly, he seems to think I have a crush on you. That's probably better than if he knew the truth, but still. It's bad enough spending the holidays with a grumpy old drunk, but it would be a whole lot worse with a grumpy drunk who's pissed off with me – and with you," she added ominously as she pushed the shirtless, panty-clad boy out of the laundry room and followed him into the hall.

"That was good," she told the hapless kid. "We'll do it again soon. Now hurry home to Standa," she said in a teasing voice and with a wide grin as she pushed him away, then turned back and locked the door behind her.

Ludmila wasn't angry at the boy. Indeed, what they had just done had been way too good not to want more, but how could she arrange it? She felt a bit worried now that her pleasure had vanished. Her father already was suspicious of what she was up to with the Hurta boy, whom he didn't seem to like any more than anyone else did here at the school. He had told her off after she had spent an hour with Marek the last time. Her father had noticed, and he did mind, and he still was quite capable of whipping her bottom if he got angry. She didn't need or want an argument with him, especially when he was drunk.

Marek was in a daze and still not sure that he wasn't going to toss his cookies as Ludmila unceremoniously threw him out of the laundry room and sent him on his way without his shirt. There was no chance for a face wash or anything for him. Not that he had any feelings for the girl at all, but she was the only human being other than Mr. Tichy that he'd had any kind of interaction with since before the break even started. It had been almost two weeks since he'd had the slightest contact with anyone at the school other than the man, and it would have been nice if the girl hadn't just treated him like a sex toy and a toilet, but Marek was getting used to that kind of treatment. It wasn't much different from being a Thing.

And what did he care, anyway? He didn't, not anymore. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. He didn't care. When his best hope for an enjoyable day was a single game of chess with an ugly, nasty pug of a girl, it didn't even make sense to worry about things anymore. He lived here at the internat to do whatever the fuck Mr. Tichy told him to do, and that was that. Nothing else mattered. He didn't need to talk to anyone, and he didn't need to play chess. He simply didn't care.

Upstairs, Tichy was drinking coffee and eating cukroví. He had a plate of it ready for Marek, too, and made the boy a cup of tea when he arrived. He chuckled knowingly when he saw the state of the kid's face. The smell of pussy made his stomach turn a bit, so it wasn't entirely for Marek's benefit that he sent the boy to the bathroom immediately to have a proper, thorough wash.

Marek washed his face four times just to get the stink off, then brushed his teeth for a good long time before taking a long shower, standing under the showerhead and letting the water run off his face and into his mouth. Even after all that, the taste and smell of Ludmila's vagina remained with him as he emerged from the bathroom. He wasn't sure if or when it ever would go away. It was another taste that he was afraid would stay with him for the rest of his days, however long that would be.

"No chess today, eh?" asked Tichy as Marek came out of the bathroom. He didn't even seem to be mocking the boy as he inquired; it was more of a rhetorical question. "How are you doing physically? I appreciate that the last couple of days have been very tough on you, but are you up for a ski-trip today? We could have an early lunch and still get in a decent run today. The buses are going, I checked," suggested the man. "I'm thinking some exercise might do us both good, even if the weather isn't ideal."

Marek felt better after his shower and brushing, but he still was disgusted by his ordeal. He tried to put it out of his mind. It was just another thing he had to do, and there was no sense obsessing about it. Obsessing about things he didn't like to do was a very bad idea. It did not help. Thoughts like that led to actions that led to punishments, torture, and pain. There was always so much pain. He tried to make his mind go blank and not think about it.

He shook his head no at the chess remark, then listened as the man offered a ski trip, but Marek wasn't interested. He didn't care about normal things anymore. They distracted him from why he was here at the school. Partaking in normal things, like skiing and Christmas, just made him want those things more and feel resentful when he wasn't allowed to have them. It also made him resentful about the things he had been brought here to do. He was here to do what Mr. Tichy told him to do and be punished for being a Hurta, and that was that. He would go skiing if the man wanted him to go skiing. If it was up to him, which it seemed to be this time, the answer was no.

"No, thank you, sir," he responded politely.

"What is it?" asked Tichy. "Legs? Back? Butt?" The kid's response worried him a bit. The possibility that Marek may be physically well enough to ski but simply refusing to go didn't even occur to him. Just four days earlier, Marek had been totally overjoyed to get on his new skis, but it's not like the man had ever asked Marek if he was alright, and there surely had been beatings that could have left him injured or rough sex that could have left him with serious fissures or bleeding that was making him feel unwell and weak. Had he damaged the boy too much in delivering his point?

Tichy studied the boy as he awaited a response. Marek seemed a bit morose and quiet but otherwise fine. It occurred to the man then that Marek's issue might not be physical after all, and Tichy felt a surge of anger. If the boy was back to sulking and stupidly refusing small mercies, there was going to be unmitigated hell to pay. The kid's rejection felt like a slap in the face, especially after the maternal hug-fuck and orgasm the man had given him just this morning. He also had milked the boy dry to eliminate the risk of an unfair, cruel punishment for a wet dream or a similar accident, but before he murdered the kid, he waited to hear what Marek had to say for himself. Maybe it was just a pulled muscle or something after all.

Marek sensed danger. The man had offered a ski trip and he clearly expected the boy to accept it. Marek was a little sore, but nothing that would prevent him from skiing, and he knew that he could use the exercise – the man was right about that. Or was he? Why exactly did Marek "need" the exercise? What did it matter what kind of shape he was in? He didn't care about exercise. All he cared about was doing what the man told him to do. He didn't want to be distracted. He needed to concentrate on why he was here and what his role was. His only role here was to be punished for being named Hurta and do every motherfucking thing Stanislav Tichy told him to do. It was not to go skiing.

Marek didn't want to be too specific about why he didn't want to go. If he mentioned a soreness, the man was likely to go all medical on him. It was better simply to say that he didn't feel like it.

"No, sir, it's just … the weather, and … I just don't feel like skiing today." Marek hoped that was okay with the man.

Tichy's eyes locked onto the boy like a guided missile. He visibly tensed. He breathed in a single heavy breath and exhaled it once again.

"Explain," he demanded. "Keep talking. Don't feel like skiing? You dragged yourself up Cerna Studnice voluntarily and down a killer slope on the wrong kind of skis, very nearly with a smile on your face on Tuesday and you don't feel like skiing today? Spill the beans. What is it, really? Why? I'll torture it out of you if it feels to me like you're holding back a more truthful answer," warned the man, once again throwing the T word out oh-so-casually, but it wasn't an idle threat. There wasn't going to be an easy way out of this for Marek now.

The blood ran out of Marek's face like somebody had pulled a plug on the back of his neck. He turned as white as a ghost. The man's tone and words signaled nothing but danger, and behind that danger, Marek already could feel the pain that it would bring. Mr. Tichy was angry with him again. But why? Nothing the boy tried or did seemed to work. Even when he was doing his best to be 100% obedient, it wasn't enough. The man was killing him. Slowly, but surely, a little bit each day, Marek was dying. He could feel it, but he couldn't seem to find a way to stop it.

Marek swallowed nervously. He shifted on his feet. His heart rate was through the roof – he could feel the veins pounding in his temples. The man was making him extremely anxious. More so even than usual, because if 100% focus on obedience wasn't good enough, Marek didn't have anything else to give. He didn't have a Plan B.

"Mr. Tichy, I- I'm trying, I- I'm trying to- to do your rules," the distraught boy stammered. "I'm really trying. I'm- I'm doing my best. I feel like- I mean, I get that you get to punish me, okay? For being … who I am. I'm just trying to do that so I don't make it worse. I always make it worse. You even said so. You were right."

"I'm trying to do everything you say," Marek continued, "so you don't have t-to punish me more. I'm trying as hard as I can. Please don't be mad at me."

Tichy rolled his eyes. He almost could understand the boy's logic. "Kurvadrát [Author's Note: "fucking hell"], Marek," he groaned. "You will not survive up here for three and a half years of resigned, self-flagellating masochism." He paused for a moment and took a deep breath before he killed the kid.

"You will not survive, in the long run, if you punish yourself even when I'm not punishing or training you," Tichy continued. "You cannot give up on being a human. You need to stay healthy and strong. You seem to have missed my point entirely with the frying. The idea is to make you into a decent man. If you intend to behave like a limp, damp sock and wither away gradually, then my effort is wasted. I'll end up with a malnourished, depressed, empty shell of a boy at the end. I can see what you're trying to do, finally. You want to be so weak and feeble and invisible that there's nothing about you and what you do to punish you for. Well, bad news, that's not gonna work," shrugged the man as he reached out to ruffle the boy's hair. He wasn't surprised when Marek flinched at his touch.

"You need to be strong, fit, and on your way to becoming a decent man," continued Tichy. "You need to be exercising, eating well, studying well, and enjoying what good stuff there is to enjoy. You need bits of normalcy in your life so that when I'm done with you, you have a normal routine to return to. You can't just mope around like a piece of trash for the rest of your time here. Do you really mean that little to yourself?" challenged the man with a frown, "because you mean more than that to me. I made it clear that while I chose a dark and painful way of molding and shaping you, I am making the effort. I'm putting the time and work in when I could have just snuffed you out like a candle."

"When you act like your life doesn't even matter, you're fooling yourself," Tichy added. "Your pride and sense of self-worth have been hurt and you may even think like you don't want to live, but you do. There's more to you than you realize. Do you need proof?" asked the man, calmly, almost softly now.

Marek's fight-or-flight response was fully engaged now, but of course, he could do neither thing. He had to stand and listen as the man who controlled his entire life lectured him and chewed him out. Marek didn't want to hear what the man was telling him because Mr. Tichy didn't understand. The man didn't understand because he couldn't understand, and Marek couldn't tell him. He couldn't tell him how Marek dreamed of escape, and revenge, and running away all the time if he let his mind wander. Marek couldn't tell him that he would do anything to get away from the school and from him. Anything.

Marek was beyond all that now. He would not think those thoughts. He would not be distracted. And things like skiing distracted him. Christmas had distracted him, and he had ended up beaten and tortured in the sack. He had even considered the suicidal plan of skiing back to Mr. Tichy's parents. Had Christmas been worth what had happened to him in the sack? No! A hundred Christmases wouldn't be worth that!

Marek listened because he had to listen, but the man's words hit home. They struck a nerve with the boy. Tears welled in his eyes, then overflowed. He hated himself for his weakness. It seemed like he always was crying. Did he mean that little to himself? He guessed that, yes, he did. Everyone hated him here. Literally everyone. Weeks and months of feeling that way had affected the boy and changed him. Tichy's tactics of isolation, humiliation, and ridicule had all but destroyed Marek's sense of self-worth. Those feelings had been magnified by the relentless hatred and bullying from the other boys. Tichy was looking at a boy whom he had broken not just physically, but mentally and emotionally, as well. Perhaps his plan had worked too well.

The boy had clung to his family and friends in Vacenovice. They loved him. They cared about him. But the sack had ended that. They could not help him. Marek knew that now. The boy was alone, swimming in a sea of hatred. He couldn't speak. Silent tears streamed down his face. Mr. Tichy didn't understand what he needed to do to survive.

He looked up at the man's question. Proof? Proof of what? The boy looked uncertain.

"C'mere, dumbass," said Tichy as he drew the boy into a slightly forceful hug, stroking his hair, letting him cry. Then he held him by both upper arms at an arm's length. "Our aim isn't an empty shell of a boy. Or some weird-ass Tibetan monk-type figure. I will make a strong socialist citizen out of you. Strong, you hear me? Not as proud and selfish and awful as your grandfather. Not as treacherous and sneaky as your father. But strong and good."

Marek tensed and then relaxed as Mr. Tichy drew him into a hug, but he still was worried. He couldn't tell the man how he used to spend every waking moment planning to escape, planning revenge, and coming up with coping strategies to defeat the man's design for him. He had been doing that for weeks and months, and if Tichy knew about that, he would torture him for sure. There was no question in Marek's mind what the man would do if he could read Marek's thoughts, because the boy never had bought into Mr. Tichy's plan for him. Only by admitting to himself that he was making his situation worse had Marek managed to get to the place he was now. He would do whatever Mr. Tichy said, and he would not feel resentful or oppositional about it. For that to work, though, he could not afford to be lulled into complacency or distracted. Things like Christmas and skiing distracted him.

"Let me tell you a little secret," continued Tichy. "If you didn't care about dying, truly didn't care, if you really emptied yourself out in some mystical, peculiar way, you wouldn't worry the least bit about the sack. The way your body and mind react to the sack is just a form of fearing death, did that never occur to you? It's a fear of being crushed and choked. It's a fear of dying. If you were oh-so-over yourself, you could slip into the sack and let me strap you in tight and go to sleep peacefully, but that's not the case, is it?" said the man with a smile.

Marek listened as Mr. Tichy explained his reaction to the sack, but he wasn't sure the man was right. Just because he had lost the will to live didn't mean he wanted to die in the sack or submit to it. He still felt "it" when "it" happened. He still didn't like "it."

"Let me show you how badly you actually want to live. How badly you need to be strong even as I continue … working on you," said the man. "Because that's what I want from you. I want you to be strong, and to use that strength the right way. You're no good to anyone, not even the socialist society, ultimately, if you're weak."

Tichy steered the boy into the bathroom, then grabbed the ironing board and put it in the tub. It was too long to lie flat; the end under the faucet rested on the bottom of the tub while the other end balanced on the far edge. He made Marek lie on it with his head tilted down, then pinned him down by squatting over his shoulders and arms.

"So, would it be better to die, here and now?" he asked the boy. "About the same as being alive? Kind of like you don't care one way or the other if you live or die?" he asked, curiously, even as he reached for a small hand towel.

The boy's anxiety level rose as Tichy took him to the bathroom. He wasn't sure he wanted to be shown how badly he wanted to live. He got the point, already. Mr. Tichy wanted him to be strong. He lay on the board in the tub willingly enough, but when the man asked his question, Marek's resolve began to crumble. What was the man going to do to him? Marek didn't like this at all, and suddenly, he didn't want to be lying down anymore.

"I w-want to live," he said, looking very unhappy and uncertain. He tried to sit up on the board. "Mr. Tichy, okay. I want to go skiing. I want to be strong." The boy's voice sounded very nervous because he was.

"Now you're just chickening out," replied Tichy. "You don't even believe what you're saying. I'm not persuaded."

"You've been annoying me with this resigned, half-there, half-not attitude for three days. I'm going to show you how strong you and your will to live can be. Then we can still go skiing, perhaps," he shrugged, even as he pushed Marek back to a tilted, lying-down position and threw the cloth over the kid's face.

Marek could not believe this was happening to him. He knew without any need to be told that Mr. Tichy was going to do something utterly horrible to him, and he could not understand why. From the boy's perspective, he had been the epitome of good, the exemplar of well-behaved, and the avatar of obedience. He had done everything the man asked, instantly, without hesitation or complaint. Even more than that – not that Mr. Tichy necessarily knew this – he hadn't had so much as a single bad thought. He hadn't planned an escape. He hadn't plotted revenge. He hadn't been oppositional even in the privacy of his own thoughts. He had even done everything Ludmila demanded of him in the same, obedient way. He had been, in a word, good. He had been as good as he was capable of being.

But it still wasn't enough. The man had interpreted his good behavior as something else. Mr. Tichy didn't like his attitude. How could Marek explain that he needed to shut the bad thoughts out, not get his hopes up, not expect things, and not want things he couldn't have? How could he explain to the man that he was doing what he was doing so he could obey the man and do what he was told without getting in more trouble and bringing himself more pain? He couldn't tell him those things because Mr. Tichy didn't want to listen. He just wanted to punish.

Marek had never heard of waterboarding. In 1979, the term wasn't widely known, even if the act itself had both its practitioners and its victims. The boy was about to become one of those victims. He wouldn't be the first, and he certainly wouldn't be the last, but he would be one of the minority of victims who brought with him to the waterboard a very severe, exacerbating case of claustrophobia. It turned out that waterboarding and claustrophobia were not at all compatible in any humane or merciful sense, although Tichy might have been one to disagree.

Tichy unscrewed the shower head and aimed a stream of water at the boy's nose and mouth through the cloth, and a moment later, the darkest recesses of hell descended on the boy. Water cascaded onto his mouth, up his nose, giving him the absolute, utter, horrifying sense of drowning. He immediately began to struggle and fight for air, but Tichy held the boy's wrists together and pushed them down on his chest, preventing the child's escape from the trauma. The man could see precisely to the exact fragment of a second when the effect of the waterboarding kicked in and when the drowning, gagging, panicking sensation completely overwhelmed the child. He silently counted to three, then cut the stream and allowed Marek to turn his head to the side to spit and sneeze the water out.

"You will not give up," Tichy intoned. "You will not be a damp, limp sock puppet. You will be strong, and you will use your strength to obey me and please me and to benefit your future self and the socialist society of this country," said the man firmly and darkly.

He replaced the cloth over Marek's mouth and nose and aimed the stream of water on it again. This time he counted to five after Marek began to panic, strain, and writhe underneath him.

"You'll be happy when I give you a chance to be happy," continued Tichy. "You'll appreciate the good things. You'll show gratitude. You'll not be an indifferent zombie. After all, you really, really, really want to live, now don't you, Marek?" asked Tichy as he pushed the boy back into position and filled his nose with water once again, counting to five, this time out loud.

"You know, no one drowns if you keep it under twenty," said Tichy. "Sometimes, people's hearts give out though," he added as he ran the water over Marek's hair, just to demonstrate how close he was to more of the same panicking agony.

"Will you be good?" he interrogated the boy. "Happy and grateful when you get a chance? Wouldn't you much rather be skiing than this?" he demanded, and this time, with the cloth in place and the stream only an inch away from renewing the torture, he waited for the boy to answer. He knew that Marek's heart was strong and young. It wasn't just going to stop beating. He could mess with the boy until Marek shat himself from the drowning sensation, and then some more, if he decided that doing so was necessary to improve the boy's attitude.

Marek couldn't believe how suddenly his world had turned to horror. He still was trying to comprehend how the man could be this angry at him for trying to be good when his world exploded into misery. It was by far and away the longest three seconds of his life, and not long after that it was supplanted by the longest five seconds of his life. In between each ordeal and after, Marek sputtered, choked, sneezed, and gasped for air. He couldn't speak. He could barely comprehend what was happening to him and try to breathe, much less could he form words.

But it happened a third time, and Marek writhed and struggled with great determination and a strong desire to live. The boy couldn't believe that the man had found something even worse to do to him than the sack, but he most certainly had. Every immersion was a trauma. Marek felt like he would lose his mind. "It" came to him then in full force, making him nearly catatonic with fear. Then the man drew the water away, drizzling it in his hair.

Marek couldn't think. He couldn't hear. And even if he heard anything the man said to him, he couldn't comprehend. The towel over his face made it difficult to breathe even through his mouth. His sinuses felt like they might explode. His world was spinning. He spluttered, coughed, sneezed, and choked. In the end, his heart didn't give out, but his mind did, as Marek slipped the surly bounds of consciousness and descended into blackness. He went still on the board as he passed out.

The claustrophobia angle barely even occurred to Tichy even though he was as good as pinning Marek to the board with his legs and body, constraining him, pressing him into position. He could see the panic when it kicked in though, but then, that was normal when you nearly drowned someone. And then the boy passed out. Oh well, thought Tichy. That concluded the lesson for the time being.

Tichy pushed Marek's head to the side and tilted the board a bit more to make sure the water all spilled out of his mouth and nose rather than trickling down into his windpipe. He lifted the boy up and towel-dried him before carrying him back into the bedroom, where he began to dress him like a doll.

Marek's sinuses were burning as he came to with a full-body spasm and a strong startle reaction. By then his socks and underpants already were on, and the ski pants were just being slipped onto his legs. The man gave him a hard, uncompassionate look.

"We're going skiing," Tichy announced, "unless perhaps you'd like another reminder that you need good things to happen, because in the absence of good things, there's far too much space for very bad things," he said darkly and left Marek to finish dressing himself. He slipped into his own overalls. They were going skiing whether Marek wanted to or not. Tichy already had prepared his usual bag, including a thermos with tea and some extra snacks. He couldn't face waiting for lunch. He needed to get the adrenaline out of his system now!

Marek's ordeal came roaring back to him vividly, every detail of the horror of what the man had done to him in the bathtub. Marek shuddered at the memory of it as the man chastised him. The boy had tried. He had tried to be what he thought Mr. Tichy wanted him to be, giving it all his effort, and yet he still had failed. He was at a new low. He had resisted capitulating to the man for months, and then finally had given in. He was so tired of making things worse. He had decided to submit to Mr. Tichy and let him do as he wished. That was the only way he could be sure to avoid the man's wrath and the ferocity of his punishments.

But surrendering hadn't helped him at all. What had just happened to him in the bathtub was among the most horrible things Mr. Tichy ever had done to him, and he had done it oh-so causally, like it was nothing. Marek hadn't deserved it. He didn't deserve it. The boy felt helpless. He continued to get dressed because the man told him to, but he seethed with absolute hatred. The boy's thoughts were homicidal. He literally would have killed Stanislav Tichy right there on the spot if he had had the means to do so.

He hadn't thought bad thoughts in several days, not since being in the sack and being beaten, but they all came rushing back now. It was if he were catching up on three or four days of dieting by binge eating everything in the house. He would burn the school down. He would stab Tichy in the back with the biggest knife he could find. He would kill Tichy's parents.

No amount of kindness from the man would ever overcome the seething, burning, visceral hated the boy had for him in that moment. Marek had tried as hard as he could. He never had felt more betrayed.

An evil kindled in Marek Hurta that day, something he never had felt before. It was homicidal evil wrapped in a crushing desire for vengeance. He would ski, but what he wanted to do was kill.

And ski they did. Well-dressed and with Tichy's rucksack stuffed even more full than ever, they carried their kit down the hill and took a bus all the way to Desna, where Tichy stopped in a pub near the station. They both had a goulash soup and a few slices of bread with lard. Tichy enjoyed a beer, while Marek had a Kofola. And then they set out, up the Bila Desna stream valley towards Milire – uphill, but not Cerna-Studnice so. They turned right, climbing a bit steeper over the ridge to a stunning view of a seamlessly white plateau below, which was the frozen-solid lake of Sous. They proceeded East and then North past the beautiful, rocky peak atop a hill-like summit of Jizera, the highest mountain in the region. And on they went, mostly west towards Olivetska hora, and on and on. Tichy wasn't asking Marek if he was okay or up for it. They were deep in the mountains now, surrounded by a veritable cemetery of acid-rain-eaten trees and snow that was 10 feet [3m] deep in most places, impassable where it wasn't packed down for skiing, as it thankfully was on the main track. On they went in a sort of a loop.

Marek's mood did not improve as they set out. He did not look at the man for fear that Mr. Tichy could read his thoughts. Hs thoughts were vengeful, and indeed, homicidal. Every bad thought he could conjure cycled through his brain as they rode the bus, ate, and began to ski. Tichy kept conversation to a minimum and it was good that he did. Marek was in no mood. The man could drag him to the nearest water source and drown him again and it wasn't going to improve the boy's thinking. The skiing was taxing, however, and Marek soon found himself distracted with the effort. The only difference was that now he didn't want to be distracted from his treasonous thoughts. He wanted to have them, every one of them.

He had decided on arson. He knew a place to start a fire. Not in the dorms — he had not moved on to mass murder, not yet anyway — but in the administration building. In that alcove with the eaves. He could start a fire there; he was sure of it. With enough fuel, he could burn the entire fucking administration building down, including Tichy's office, and Skala's, too. He'd ruin this stupid fucking school for all the teachers who taught there and the asshole students who went there. If they figured out that he had done it he'd just laugh as they took him away from the worst fucking prison on the face of the earth and transported him to a nicer one where he wouldn't have to deal with Stanislav Tichy ever again.

He skied, but there was no conversation. There was also no joy. Marek hated skiing now. If Tichy liked skiing, it was ruined for Marek forever. Even though he was consumed with hatred now, Marek still noticed that they had stopped meeting any other skiers a good while ago, and that the snow around them was no longer brilliant white from the sun, but yellowy orange as the fiery ball sunk closer to the horizon. It was going to be dark soon, and they were high up, in the peaks, at least fifteen kilometers away as the crow flies from where they started, but much more if they followed the ski tracks, which was the only way they could go. It was getting late, but Marek assumed that the man had another trick up his sleeve. A town with a train station. His Aunt Zelda's cabin, maybe. Marek didn't give a fuck.

The mountains went silent, as silent as a graveyard. And then, just as Tichy stopped at a corner with markers and a turn off up towards a hill that looked almost too steep for cross country, the sun finally dipped below the horizon, and it became obvious that they weren't going to be returning to Brod. They were going to be alone, in the dark, in the middle of nowhere – just an exhausted young boy and the man who had threatened to kill him and had tortured him for his lack of enthusiasm earlier in the day.

It was getting dark, and Marek was getting very tired. Where were they? He wasn't about to ask. He wasn't going to initiate any conversations with the man. He wanted to kill Stanislav Tichy, not talk to him. Maybe his buddies from the army would show up in a truck and take them back to the school, or maybe Tichy had miscalculated and taken them too far out. Skiers and hikers had died in these hills. What was Tichy's game?

"We are over ten kilometers from the nearest road we can reach on these tracks," said Tichy finally. "Five kilometers from Bily Potok, but through impassable terrain. It will be pitch black dark and impossible to continue to move in twenty minutes, and soon after far too cold for these overalls to keep us alive unless we keep moving. We're as good as dead in forty minutes. And contrary to popular belief, dying of freezing is not a nice and painless death. Suggestions? Solutions?" asked the man as he leaned against a sign that said "Rudolfov 10km" and "Jizerka 17km" in the opposite direction, and "Bedrichov 10km" towards the insane, uphill slope. He gazed into the distance, seemingly unperturbed, and lit up a cigarette, then focused his eyes on Marek.

"Thirty-nine minutes till dead," he declared.

Marek was surprised when the man started to speak. As if by mutual agreement, they had said nothing to each other since they left the pub. The last word Marek had spoken was "yes," and that was to the waitress, not to Tichy. The man had asked him if he needed to use the bathroom back at the pub, but Marek had either shaken his head or muttered a perfunctory "no, sir" at the man. They had stopped to pee overlooking the Sous. Marek couldn't remember if they had spoken then, or not. He didn't think so.

As Marek listened, he started to feel a bit colder in his ski kit. What was going on? And why was the man asking him for solutions? Marek hadn't planned the trip, Tichy had. Marek hadn't even wanted to go on it. This wasn't an accident. Whatever this was, Tichy had planned it, and Marek didn't think for one minute that Tichy was planning on freezing to death himself. But what was his game? They did appear to be too far out. Thirty-nine minutes till dead? What game was this?

Marek shrugged. He didn't believe the man. Was he trying to scare him? Marek was mildly curious, but not scared, and he really wasn't all that curious. Well, he was, but only to know what Tichy was up to. The man had no way of knowing that Marek didn't really care all that much what happened to him.

"Tsssk," the man made a dismissive sound. "You're no fun! You could at least try and guess. Anyway, this way," he said as he stubbed out and pocketed the butt of his cigarette. He never just flicked them off into the snow; Tichy had too much respect for the natural beauty that surrounded them to do that.

"Keep left, keep close," instructed Tichy. "For once, Jesus will show us the way," he added with a smirk as he set out in the one direction to which no ski-tracks led, and no sign pointed. Soon they were almost knee-deep in snow, but it was light powder, and they were going downhill so it was easy enough.

Marek was forced to push his thoughts of homicide and arson away to concentrate on the here and now. What in the world was going on? Tichy was up to something, and he was acting all weird about it. They set off, and Marek concentrated on skiing. It was dark, and he stayed close to the man. All around them, the trees were shadowy, and perhaps, if Marek were being honest with his 12-year-old self, a little scary. He hated Tichy but was glad to be with him in this moment. While he knew the man had to have a plan, Marek certainly didn't, and if Tichy were not with him, Marek might very well have been in trouble. Not just trouble, but very likely eventually dead. Not in 31 and a half minutes, necessarily, but he wouldn't make the night. And he likely wouldn't make the closest town either, not on his own.

It was amazing how much colder it felt after dark. Some of it had to be psychological because Marek didn't think the sun really provided all that much warmth on a day like this one, but whatever the cause of it – and perhaps because Tichy had planted the seed – it seemed a lot colder than it had been only 30 minutes before. Only the exertion of skiing was keeping the boy warm now, not his overalls or his coat. Marek had the feeling that if he stopped to rest for only 10 minutes, he would cool down quickly. Very quickly. Too quickly.

Somewhere, he had an uncle, or a great uncle on his mother's side, or something. The man was Hungarian. Marek could remember meeting him only once, and he couldn't remember the details or even his name, but what he did remember was that the man had no feet. They had been amputated. The man had walked awkwardly on two prosthetic feet made of wood that strapped and laced onto his legs below the knee. Marek had been younger then, perhaps eight years old, and curious. He had asked about it.

His uncle had explained that he had lost his feet in the war while serving with the Hungarian army somewhere in Russia, where the temperatures dropped well below freezing for days and days at a time. His feet had frozen into chunks of ice in his boots. He had gone to an aid station, then been withdrawn to a field hospital. There, his feet had been amputated. He had been 20 years old at the time. He was in his mid-50s when he told his story, and Marek remembered wondering what it would be like to be without feet for most of his life. He had also wondered where the man's feet had ended up, and if they were buried or just thrown in a garbage bin. That night, he had had a nightmare. He didn't remember what it was, but it was something about his uncle's missing feet, and it had scared him.

Marek wasn't scared now, but it would be fair to say that he was anxious. Despite his hatred for the man, he had utmost faith in Tichy's abilities, including his skiing prowess and his familiarity with the region, but everyone miscalculated. Everyone made mistakes. He didn't think Tichy had made one here, but what if he had?

Suddenly, Tichy stopped and helped Marek to stop as well. The man took his skis off and bade the boy to do the same. To the right was a sheer slope into a crevasse, ahead of them only a marginally shallower dip into utter darkness. Tichy clipped his skis and poles together and began to wade and slide down the slope. He didn't go far before turning and beckoning Marek to follow him.

The terrain to either side looked ominous. They were skidding their way down the slope. There was a small area of flatter, deeper snow before the terrain dipped steeply again, but Tichy stopped and pointed. Up on a granite rock, almost glowing in the near darkness, was a pale blue-and-gold picture of Jesus. Marek looked up to see the incongruous Jesus staring out from the granite rock face. So that was what Tichy had meant when he had referenced the son of God.

Suddenly, Tichy turned to the right and plunged into the darkness below. Just like that, he was gone. Marek's heart began beating faster in his chest as he waded closer to where the man had been standing and tried to peer into the inky darkness. Had Tichy fallen? Marek couldn't see a thing. What if he had? What if he had broken his leg? Then what? Marek suddenly found himself worrying about the safety of the man he wanted to kill. He looked to his left for a tree branch or something else he could use to help pull the man back up.

"Don't jump," Tichy called after a tense moment in which he may well have been dead. "Just take a small step and slide down," he instructed. There was less snow in the crevasse, enough to land softly after a small, sliding fall. Tichy found a mound of snow and jammed both sets of skis into it. There was a dark, black, glossy line in front of them. It was a stream under a shiny crust of ice with a small frozen waterfall to the right; there was only utter darkness and who-knew-what to the left. If Tichy killed Marek now, no one was going to find the boy's body. Not till spring at least, anyway.

When Tichy called out, Marek exhaled a held breath. What were they doing? Where were they going? Aside from the Jesus portrait, there was no sign that anyone had ever been to this place before. Feeling like he had no choice, the boy gathered himself before stepping into darkness and following the man in sliding down the slope.

When the boy reached the bottom, Tichy carefully stepped across the frozen stream, grabbed a birch tree, and pulled himself up, lifting almost his whole height up a very steep slope. Turning around, he straddled the birch, lowered his arm, and lifted Marek up over the steepest bit. Then they scrambled together through a thicket of young, living spruces and pines until they hit a wall. It was a huge, completely vertical wall of granite. There clearly was no scaling that; not even in the summer, let alone now in what by now was a black-and-white sort of darkness. There only was the white snow and the dark outlines of everything else, not even much in terms of stars overhead. Wind howled above the crevasse, and the sky was overcast.

Tichy grabbed Marek's arm once again and pulled him along the bottom of the granite wall that eventually swallowed them as it turned first into an overhang, and then almost a cave-like space above them. Now they had rock to the side and rock above, and nothing but darkness and a sheer fall in the other direction.

Tichy seemed to know where he was and where he was going as he guided Marek along the granite wall. The boy was cold now, and it wasn't the type of cold that was going to go away if they resumed skiing. They couldn't keep going like this for long. They would need to build a fire, but Marek was confident that Tichy would have kindling in his pack, which was stuffed fuller than usual. They would need to build that fire soon. Under the rock ledge would be a good place, but where would they find firewood, and how?

Tichy pulled Marek deeper under the rock, and then he hit something with his foot, fell to his knees, and snorted with amusement.

"Here we are," he said as he stood up. The cliff was so huge above them now that there was no snow here, just frozen clay. It was cold. According to Tichy's original calculation, they were now less than 15 minutes away from being dead, except that there was something wooden there, and Tichy steered Marek to it. It was a ladder, which he urged the boy to climb. What was this? And where did it lead? Marek tentatively began to make his way up it. He had never been to a place like this before. Vacenovice was flat, and the boy had no experience with mountainous terrain. He reached the top of the ladder with Mr. Tichy close behind.

Tichy followed Marek up and fumbled in the utter darkness by memory alone until he found the bar, pulled it aside and opened a crude door, pulling Marek into a space that was as dark as the patchwork sack before closing the door once again. Marek heard the clank of iron and the creak of the door, and suddenly he found himself inside a confined space, in inky blackness, much like a cave.

"Don't move," commanded Tichy. Their teeth were chattering now. The man struck a match. Was he really going to smoke now? But no. Soon the flame of an oil lamp filled the space, and a few tea-lights followed. Marek could see that they were in a small cabin-like space, with two bunk beds, one on either side, and a small table in between. The furniture all was rough-hewn, still bearing axe-and-saw marks from the making. The floor was part stone and part round logs placed side by side with moss and clay stuffed between the cracks.

There also was an old cast-iron stove. Tichy opened it, grinned broadly when he found it as expected, and struck another match to light it. Hesitantly at first, but with growing speed, the flames spread and soon there was a hot, crackling fire, and the small, enclosed, but somewhat-vaulted and not-really-all-that-claustrophobic space quickly began to warm up.

As Tichy went about lighting lamps and candles, Marek surveyed the small space that seemingly had materialized out of nowhere. The boy was stunned. How had Tichy found this in the dark? How had he known that he would? How had he known that it was here? And what was it? Then his thoughts turned a bit more ominous. What if Tichy hadn't found it? What if he had miscalculated? What if he had misjudged? Marek was freezing. His teeth were chattering. He might not have dropped dead in his tracks at the 40-minute mark, but he never would have survived the night. He might not have made it another hour, and almost certainly not two.

It seemed to Marek that Tichy had taken a risk with both of their lives, but he had also been confident in his abilities and sense of direction, even after dark. It had worked. The stove worked, too. Marek moved closer to it as it came to life.

"Welcome to Kamenac," said Tichy as he turned to the boy and smiled.

So Kamenac was the name of the place, but what did it mean? What was it? Marek wanted to ask the man about it. Why was it here? Who used it? And how on earth did anyone ever haul a cast-iron stove up here? But the boy still was angry at Tichy, so he didn't ask.

Marek stepped even closer to the stove and took off his gloves to warm his hands. The ski trip had turned interesting, more than he had thought. Kamenac. Interesting. But why had Tichy wanted to come here? Especially after dark in the dead of winter?

"Your overalls are soaked, and probably the rest of your clothes, too," commented the man. "Take everything off and put these on," he said and handed the boy over a dry pair of thick, woolen socks, high enough to reach almost to his knees. They were bit big and very itchy, but they would be plenty warm.

Marek wasn't about to argue with Tichy, especially not here and not now, so he immediately pulled his boots off and began to strip. Soon enough, he was naked. Despite the warming fire, the floor underneath his bare feet was very cold, and he was happy to don the woolen socks the man provided to him. Tichy had thought of everything it seemed. Obviously, he had planned this all along.

Marek took another opportunity to look about. Kamenac was amazing, just in the sheer audacity of it being here when it very clearly shouldn't be. The boy knew that Tichy must have been here before, and Marek wanted to ask him about that, but he didn't. He still was very angry from earlier. Perhaps not homicidal – it wouldn't do to kill the man here, after all – but still angry.

It was hard to put a descriptive name on this place. Was it a bunker? A cave? A hermitage? The floor was levelled with crude wood, but mostly comprised of natural rock. So were the walls and the ceiling. The cave was low near the entrance and grew taller towards the back where the stove was located. The area around the chimney seemed to be filled in, but otherwise, presumably, the chimney continued that way, up towards the sky.

Tichy reached to the side and found a few chunkier, well-cut, dry logs and started stuffing them into the stove. Eventually, the floor itself and the space immediately above it was soon the only bit of the cavernous room that was not warming steadily. This was not just spruce kindling, but seasoned beech wood. As it caught fire, the room darkened a bit after the orangey explosion of the initial kindling, but the temperature continued to climb right up towards toasty.

Tichy hung Marek's clothes on a raised horizontal wooden bar that seemed to be a part of the crude structure that kept the stove and especially its old, chinked, dented chimney in place. He grabbed a large, old, and battered aluminum kettle and a mess-kit pot and went back outside. He returned with them piled high with compressed snow and put them on top of the stove, which clearly once had belonged to a much larger room. Even in the dead of winter it was overkill, especially now that it happily was consuming dry, seasoned hardwood.

Tichy unpacked his rucksack, emptied a dehydrated soup packet into the mess kit with the snow already mostly melted, and began stirring the resulting mush. He stripped down to his boxer shorts and socks himself, hanging his own wet clothes up. Soon his forehead glistened with a sheen of sweat. He choked the air-inlet into the stove back a bit. He didn't want to waste wood or turn the space into an absolute sauna.

It dawned on Marek that he owed the man not one but two more orgasms today if he wanted to avoid being punished. Tichy had come once from a blowjob before Marek had gone to see Ludmila, but he hadn't orgasmed since. The last time Marek forgot to give the man his daily due he had been punished for it. Worse than the punishment was the five orgasms the man had demanded the next day to make up for it, which had left Marek sore and exhausted. As much as the boy didn't want to have to ask, especially not here and not now, he wanted to avoid being beaten and being forced to perform an orgasm marathon tomorrow even more.

Mustering his courage, Marek turned to face his nemesis.

"Sir, would you like me to give you a blowjob?" he asked as politely as he possibly could.

Tichy's lips curved into a crooked, playful smile. The boy was learning. This was more like it. He stirred the now-dissolved soup-thing slushie.

"Yes, slut puppy, well-remembered," he replied. "But let's drink and eat a bit first. The soup is thick, and it'll burn if I stop stirring it," he explained.

Soon enough, the rich, thick, paprika-and-bacon-flavored cabbage soup was ready. Tichy produced a big tin mug of very sweet tea and added a small dash of cheap rum to it. When the meal was ready, Tichy sat on one of the two crude benches of the table space and pointed to the space opposite him. They both were very close to the fire, even though that no longer was necessary as the entire place had become quite warm.

The meal consisted of soup, bread, and sweet tea, as well as a good cut of the Uherak from Skala. It was a hearty repast. Marek was hungry, and as angry as he was at the man, he had to give Tichy credit for having the foresight to bring all the food with him, hauling it in his pack over several kilometers of skiing. The boy didn't care for the slut puppy remark — if Tichy knew how close to death he was, he wouldn't have said that – but Marek dug into his meal nonetheless, thinking thoughts that were slightly less homicidal, but not by much.

The boy still seethed with the unfairness of what the man had done to him in the bathtub. It had been pointlessly, needlessly cruel. It had been especially cruel because Tichy knew all about Marek's claustrophobia and had just casually, indifferently, subjected the boy to a trip to hell for trying to be good. Marek started to work himself up and get angrier as he thought about the episode. He had not deserved that. He knew in his heart that he hadn't deserved it. He had been trying to survive, and Tichy had tortured him for it. He had been trying to be good, and Tichy had responded with unmitigated cruelty. Someday, he would return and kill the man. He probably wouldn't try to kill him now, but later on he absolutely would.

When he was finished eating, Tichy took a few swigs of the rum straight from the bottle and got off the bench onto one of the crude bunks. The beds even had a semblance of a mattress – just a very rough fabric with a layer of straw under – but this way Marek wouldn't have to kneel on the cold floor as he sucked cock. Tichy peeled his boxer shorts down, and his musk filled the air. He nodded at Marek.

Resigned to his cocksucking fate, Marek reluctantly climbed up on the rickety twin beds and knee-walked between the man's legs. He would have to suck the man in his sweaty, just-finished-skiing-25-kilometers condition. He could taste the man's salty, sour sweat on his taste buds even before he lipped Tichy's cockhead into his mouth and began to wet it for sucking.

Tichy moaned. Some things had quickly become certainties in his life, and Marek's mouth feeling wonderful on his cock was one of them. The man quickly got immersed in the dirty-talk and teasing; he was aroused and loving every moment of it.

"Mhmmm, yessss, suck that filthy cock, slut puppy," he teased the boy. "Nice and good! Proper tongue work all over that dirty cock now, c'mon! Sniff that sweaty smell and suck!"

"And this time, do not forget," he warned the boy. "I want to see a mouthful of cum when you're done. No swallowing until I tell you to swallow. I want a nice slut-puppy cum show before I let you gulp it down! And don't suck too deep. I don't have enough food for another supper for you, so no tossing under any circumstances or I'll make you eat your own vomit," said Tichy as he closed his eyes and let Marek get on with it.

Marek had just started to do the slow up-and-down thing that Tichy liked when the man started in on him with the teasing. He hadn't let that stuff bother him for weeks, but after not letting anything bother him for the last four days and being unmercifully tortured for it, Marek felt every cutting word from the man. The boy seethed. Why? Why did Tichy do this to him? Why did he have to punish and use him for sex and berate him and put him down? Why? How could he hate him that much? Why? He understood the punishments he was due for being a Hurta. He understood the sex. But why did the man have to taunt him like this? Why?

Marek pulled off. The boy was seething with injustice, but also scared and near tears.

"Why do always you have to make fun of me?" he asked, as his body seemed to construct and shrivel in fear. He knew better than to challenge Tichy, but he did it, anyway. "Why do you always have to be mean?" Marek knew he was in easy slapping range, but he didn't care.

Tichy groaned. He was just turned on, and the words had come more from his balls and the pit of his belly than out of some mean corner of his mind – although he doubted the boy truly understood sexual sadism. He didn't massively fancy a conversation right now. What a time for the kid to pick to question things. His voice was hard and icy like the night outside when he responded.

"Mouth on cock," he told the wayward kid. "Let me feel your tongue. Eye contact. Then we can continue this conversation. Last chance before I show you just how angry you just made me!" snarled the man as he waited to see if Marek had enough sense to resume sucking as he waited for his answer.

Marek looked at the man fiercely for a moment as his eyes simultaneously welled with tears. The boy seethed with injustice. There was no fairness in Tichy. There was no mercy. The man thought that mixing in some occasional fun or even being nice to him once in a while was enough, but his default was cruelty. His approach was to taunt and demean Marek, to put him down even when he was trying to be good. Like right now. He had remembered to offer and now he was sucking. Was Tichy content with that? No. He had to tease Marek, demean him, put him down, treat him meanly, and act like Marek didn't have any feelings.

And when Marek tried not to have any feelings to hurt and tried not to get upset and mad at what the man said and did, he got tortured for it. It was like punching him down to the floor and then making him stand up and punching him down all over again. Only the meanest and most depraved bullies did that, and Tichy was the meanest of them all.

Marek could sense a near-death experience coming his way, so he resumed sucking. He kept eye contact with the man – at first narrow daggers of hate – before he stopped even that and just sobbed as he sucked. He was very tired from all the skiing, and he could tell that it was affecting his decisions and emotions. Tears ran down his face as he sucked and bobbed on the man's erection.

Marek did not know just how close he had come to facing the man's wrath. He had escaped Tichy's vengeance only at the last-second escape with his cute little cryjob. Tichy let him suck and cry for a bit. On another occasion, he would have minded the theatrics and punished the boy for his attitude, but today the situation was working for him. Marek was sucking obediently while crying and hating it, and Tichy could live with that. Indeed, he could work with that. He could cum with it, too.

"That bit, you're just taking too personally, actually," said Tichy. He hoped honestly that his explanation wasn't going to backfire. "When I emphasize the contrast between us and our roles when we fuck or when you suck me, it's got nothing to do with wanting to be mean to you. I can see how it might feel like I'm rubbing it in or taunting you for the sake of it when I'm already getting what I want, but that's not true. Different people like different things during sex to feel the best they possibly can, to be aroused, turned on, and ultimately happy."

"You enjoy being held and kept safe," Tichy continued. "You enjoy letting go of your anxieties and fears and submitting to a primordial authority," mused Tichy. "And probably some other things, too, but that one's weird and specific enough to give you an idea. If I had just humped your butt half-heartedly this this morning, your reaction and pleasure wouldn't have been nearly the same or as powerful and pleasurable for you. It had to happen in a specific way to be magic for you, to resonate with that deep need inside you."

"Me, I like to feel powerful," the man continued as the boy sucked on. "I like to feel all-powerful and all-important during sex. Like a God, but a cruel, dark, blood-thirsty Aztec god, not some fertility deity from old Europe," he smirked. "I like it when you have to put up with some smell, some pain, and some humiliation while sucking nicely and obediently even as I degrade you further. I like it even more when it's made worse by the smell or whatever else emphasizes the contrast between us. That creates the magic for me."

"If we just went through the motions, if you just sucked me but didn't really have to, or if you liked sucking me and I just sort of enjoyed being sucked and that was all there was to it, that magic would be gone, or at least it wouldn't be the same. My cock has to be dirty for me to feel like I'm challenging you. That gets the magic going for me. I want to feel high and worshipped, and of course that means that you have to be low to do the worshipping, but it's not personal. It's not even a punishment. I don't do that bit for you, but for me."

"On a simpler level," he said with a smile for the boy who was about to have a nice sticky load of cum deposited in his mouth, "it's not about you. Not everything is all about you. You keep forgetting that."

Marek listened as the man spoke, and after a time, he stopped crying and feeling sorry for himself. He just listened, and it kind of made sense. Certainly, what he said about Marek made sense. He had felt that way this morning, when everything had seemed to be going right, and he wasn't a Thing, and the man had been nice – so nice that Marek had momentarily thought that maybe his entire torment was at an end. The boy wasn't sure about primordial authorities, but the man had made him feel good in a way that was even better than the way his cock alone had felt. The man had augmented the pleasure in Marek's cock by the way he had done it. He hadn't just let Marek cum. He had let Marek cum in a way that was special to the boy.

It made sense that Tichy was different, and that he liked it a different way. In fact, it made a lot of sense. Marek pondered all of this as he sucked. If the man was telling the truth, it would explain a lot of things. It explained why Tichy could be nice one minute and then go back to being mean and cruel the next. Marek hoped that it was true, because he thought he understood what the man was telling him. He wanted it to be true, because if the man didn't hate him as much as he seemed to, it would be a lot easier to do the things Tichy wanted him to do.

Was it possibly true? Was that really what it was? Was it possible that it wasn't personal, and it wasn't a punishment, and he wasn't doing it out of hatred? Marek had assumed all along that it had to be hatred. All this time he had thought so, but Tichy had implied before that he didn't hate Marek. The boy had never understood what he meant. All the signs and all the cruelty and mistreatment pointed to hatred, but maybe they didn't. Maybe it wasn't hatred after all. And if it wasn't, it would make things a lot easier to take. A lot easier.

Maybe it wasn't all about Marek, but Marek had never thought that it was – or had he? That part was confusing. The other part, he thought he understood, but he had a couple of questions. He followed what Tichy told him. He'd never known before why Tichy was the way he was. Marek felt like he was starting to get it, at least on a basic level, like a beginning swimmer taking those first few strokes and not sinking or drowning. Marek suddenly didn't feel quite as hated, or even hated at all.

It took a good while for Tichy to cum, because trying to explain something that complex had distracted him. Marek took the load when it came, turning his mouth into a cum reservoir. He pulled off to show the man, awaiting permission to swallow.

Tichy stretched when he finished cumming, shuddering as a few trickles of sweat tickled him as they rolled their way down his back. He had slightly overdone it with the beechwood logs in his hurry to heat the place. The stove was now blazing, so much so that the lower part of the chimney had a slight but visible reddish glow to it. The air was a little smoky and hot, close to 85 degrees [30C] at a guess, and it was continuing to rise. Kamenac didn't really have windows to open. Two of the slats in the front wooden wall had been replaced with plexiglass to let some light in during the day, and the door had a little plexiglass rectangle in it, but it was more a peep hole than a real window. The only way of airing out the space was by opening the whole big creaky door and letting totally frosty air in. Tichy decided that he preferred to be hot. The memory of their chilling, dark scramble across the stream and up the slope towards here was still far too fresh for him to fancy an icy breeze on his naked, sweaty skin.

Besides, Marek looked so cute with his mouth open and filled with cum, looking at the man and obediently waiting to swallow. Tichy's cock visibly twitched as he looked at the boy, and he could see that Marek noticed.

"See?" he said with a smile. "I wasn't lying. This part turns me on. It's not pointless cruelty. It would give me no joy to do this to – I don't know – Radek. You're cute and handsome, and you're paying your frying tuition to me with sex. I'm talking, watching your mouth fill with drool while knowing that your nose is full of the scent of my cum, and it amuses me. It turns me on that you know that you'll be punished if you swallow too soon. If you didn't turn me on at all, the act wouldn't either," said the man with a shrug. "And if I couldn't play the games that turns me on, you wouldn't turn me on all that much either, not by yourself. Not even," he reached and traced the handsome curve of Marek's shoulder and biceps, "a mighty fine specimen of a boy such as yourself," he grinned.

Tichy was tempted to push the boy, to taunt and tease him, but he didn't want to undermine the point he had just made, and it seemed like something had clicked inside Marek. Tichy was, for once, curious to hear what Marek wanted to say or ask.

"Okay, swallow," he said finally. "And drink some more tea. We don't want you to wake up with a sore throat halfway down the Maly Stolpich canyon. And if you have things to ask or say, make sure to do so politely," added Tichy. "You very nearly got yourself into seriously unpleasant trouble the way you snapped at me earlier," warned Tichy calmly but with a gravely serious undertone to his voice.

Marek held the man's cum steady in his mouth, awaiting permission to swallow. It was yet another one of Tichy's humiliations that the boy hated, but this time, following on the heels of his prior remarks, Tichy explained why he made Marek do it. His words immediately resonated with the boy, just as his earlier explanation had seemed to make sense. Marek had seen the man's cock twitch a moment ago, and now he thought he understood why. It seemed like it had to be true, and as a truth, it was revealing. It would be hard even for Tichy to make that explanation up on the fly.

If the boy had been fully aware of just how close his verbal challenge to Tichy had come to a horrific punishment directed his way he would have been unlikely to have undertaken the risk, but now he was extremely glad that he had confronted the man. Based on his single outburst, in the span of the last 10 minutes, the boy thought he had gained more insight into what made Stanislav Tichy tick than in all their prior sessions put together. Most important of all to the perpetually sad and lonely boy was the fact that the man he both despised and admired – in a sad, reverse-Dr.-Jeckyl-and-Mr.-Hyde kind of way – didn't do everything he did to the boy out of pure hatred.

A psychologist would have had a field day analyzing Marek's views of Tichy. In many ways, the man was a god to the boy. He possessed god-like powers, and he ruled over the internat and the boy in a god-like way, but Tichy also was also the closest thing to a father figure that the boy had ever had. Between all the punishments and humiliations, the beatings, and the tortures, he had taught the boy skills and praised him when he excelled. Even if some of those skills were of a perverted, sexual nature, the boy's subconscious reveled in the praise. The man also was the best and likely the only person who actually was interested in Marek at the school. Although the good of that interest came with an awful lot of painful, humiliating bad things, the man had shared fun, friendly, and even tender moments with the boy – more so, in fact, than all the other teachers, students, and staff at the school combined.

At the end of the day, Marek craved acceptance and recognition of any kind, and in Brod, the only person who gave him that was Mr. Tichy. It was agonizing to the boy that the man whom he admired so much hated him with such passion, and it was a relief to know that at least some of what the boy had interpreted as hatred – the wanton cruelty, the taunting, and the humiliation – wasn't really born of hatred at all. The man also seemed to find him handsome and attractive, which Marek liked to hear even if it did make Mr. Tichy a poof – and probably Marek one, too.

Marek finally was given permission to swallow, and he gulped the man's cumload quickly into his tummy. He had learned a lot over the past few minutes, and he no longer harbored homicidal thoughts toward the man, but there were a few things he wanted to know. He gathered his thoughts for a moment to ensure that he asked them in the politest way possible. Then came the first of his questions.

"Do you make the other boys do the things you make me do, sir?"

Tichy couldn't help but smile as the boy asked his first question. What a strange and yet, weirdly appropriate place Kamenac was for an honest, deep, revealing discussion. Here they were alone in this deep cavern, a triangular prism of space inside the typical blue-grey granite of the Jizera Mountains, lit by an oil lamp and a few candles. It was warm and almost cozy, with deathly cold darkness just a few feet away outside. Only a few crudely crafted planks of spruce wood separated them from freezing to death.

Tichy paused to consider his response. He slipped off the bed, fetched his Startky, and lit up. He grabbed a straw bale and leaned against it, sat up and motioned for Marek to come sit close, both of them slightly curled up and facing each other, their feet touching each other's knees as Tichy smoked.

"That really depends on what you mean by 'the things,'" said Tichy. "All my boys suck, lick and take it up the ass, and all know better than to protest when I throw a mean comment at them or make it just that bit harder for them to please and appease me. And when they mess up, they get punished. But no one is being trained to become a better boy like you are. No one has been selected, chosen, and focused on quite like you. No one spends as much time with me and gets as much of my attention, for better or worse. No one else has been in the sack, but then again, no one's been skiing with me either. You're a special case."

Marek nodded. He accepted that answer.

"Do you also like it and feel the magic when you punish and hurt me, sir?" It was something that Marek suspected and had wanted to confirm for a long time

"Now, with punishments, it's complicated," replied Tichy. "Sometimes, especially when they are very humiliating, yes, I like the process of punishing you, or some aspect or part of it. But I'm also usually angry with you when you're being punished. I'm disappointed, frustrated, and fed-up, which doesn't mix terribly well with enjoyment. When it's a small and sexual punishment, like when I rough-fuck your ass to remind you of your place, I like that. But when I flog you with a whip, it's weird. I feel mixed about it. It's complicated. I sort of hate that I have to do it, so there are some unpleasant feelings, but as I punish you, they seem to go away. They burn off, and I feel relieved. And sometimes, when they've burned away enough, or even in the process of burning away that can feel good, too. It can feel powerful and satisfying. But it's not at all the same as talking dirty and making sex sound dirtier and naughtier than it really is, like when when you suck my 'dirty,' 'nasty' cock," he said with a chuckle.

"If I sense right where you're aiming with that question, let me tell you this," continued Tichy. "I'd much rather you behaved so we could keep your punishments to the slut-puppy sort. Maybe I'd spank your bottom, or make you suck a smelly cock, or say a few naughty things. Maybe I'd make you gag on my cock or wear panties, or maybe I'd make you kneel just a bit longer than you'd ordinarily want to just to prove your dedication. The sack is an extreme measure I reached for out of anger, probably what you would call hatred. If you ever stopped winding me up, I'd happily let it collect dust unused. I would prefer to get my pleasure without feeling the bile rise into my throat first and without wrecking your body and mind for hours and days after," he finished.

Marek nodded when the man finished. He thought he understood, and he was learning more about what made Tichy tick than ever before. This was going well, but he had more questions to ask.

"Are you actually trying to make me a better person, or do you just like doing things to me, sir?"

"I genuinely want to turn you into a better boy and a better man," replied Tichy immediately. "For your sake and mine, for the sake of my family, and as vengeance for the region and for the future of socialism. Those are all things I truly believe in."

Marek nodded again. The man couldn't possibly have lied about that. His answer had been too immediate and certain. Marek had just one additional question.

"Are you ever actually going to stop doing things to me even if I become a better person, sir?"

"'Things' is about as vague as it gets," answered Tichy truthfully. "Even I don't know the final answer to that. What's my intention? Punishing you — frying you — yes, I want to be done with that one day before we part ways. The occasional test of your character and obedience, and the sex – no. You're stuck with my cock and doing things to make it feel good till the end of your school days."

Tichy paused and looked the boy straight in his eyes to be sure he had his full attention for what he said next.

"All this is just something you're going to have to deal with, Marek, and you can choose to make it easy or hard on yourself. It's totally your choice. It's really just a matter of how much and how often you want to be hurt. That part's pretty much up to you because in case you haven't figured it out already, I can cause you as much pain as you think you need to obey and submit to me. At the end of the day, you will obey, and you will submit, and I hope that this little conversation has made that crystal clear.

Chapter 27

With the familiar taste of the man's cum still in his mouth, Marek joined Mr. Tichy on the floor. Kamenac had warmed up quickly and was now a bit too warm, but the floor still felt cool under the boy's naked backside. They were quite physically close here, touching in places as Marek asked his questions and listened to the man's responses. He wasn't surprised to learn that he was a special case for Mr. Tichy, as he pretty much had figured that one out on his own several weeks back. The man didn't treat any of the other boys at the school the way he treated Marek. The question itself had been more of a litmus test to see if the man would tell him the truth, and he seemed to have. His answer correlated with everything Marek suspected or already knew.

He wasn't as sure about the second answer. While the man acknowledged sometimes enjoying the physical punishments he inflicted, he denied it with respect to the extreme ones. Marek suspected this wasn't true, and his best evidence for that was the sack. The sack had been lovingly, painstakingly made, and the boy had known that Mr. Tichy would put him in it the very first time he saw it. It had had to be designed before it could be assembled. It had to have taken hours and hours to sew together. Either Mr. Tichy had made it himself, or he had paid good money or called in significant favors to have it made for him. Either way, it looked to Marek like Mr. Tichy had been eager to use the sack. Yes, he had waited several days to deploy it, but its use had been inevitable. Mr. Tichy had wanted to see Marek suffer in the sack, just as he had cruelly exploited the boy's claustrophobia from the moment he first had learned of it. Marek was unconvinced that Mr. Tichy didn't enjoy doing those things to him.

He believed the man's response to the third question, that Mr. Tichy wanted to make him a better man. It was not hard to trust him on that. Mr. Tichy was a true, hardline believer in the Communist system. Everyone at the school knew that. Marek understood that the man would consider him damaged goods because of his lineage until he had been fixed and transformed. That concept had been drilled into the boy's head enough times to resonate.

It was the man's response to the fourth question that troubled Marek the most. He believed Mr. Tichy when he said that even he didn't know what the future held, but the parts of the man's answer that weren't uncertain confirmed that he would continue to use Marek for sex and "test" him until the end of his days here at the school. And since Mr. Tichy already had confirmed that humiliation and awfulness, if not also suffering and pain, came with the sex, Marek pretty much knew what he would be in for over the next three years. Tichy might stop the most terrible of the punishments and pain, but he never would stop all of them, and he never would just stop. And because Marek could never be perfectly obedient, he should expect more of the worst kinds of punishments, too, basically endlessly.

"Mr. Tichy, do you think that I should just agree to let you do this to me, sir?"

"Drop the 'just' and it's a yes, boy," said the man with a smile. "To submit to someone, to truly submit and accept this process, is no small thing. There's no 'just' in it. It's a big deal, but yes, of course. You should and must accept your role and not just let me do this to you, but actively do it with me. You must play an active part in your transformation and the payment for it," said Tichy confidently.

"Would you try to escape or stop what was happening if someone did this to you, sir?" was the next question Marek asked.

"I can't really answer that question," replied Tichy. "I can't put myself into the mind of a boy your age, or someone with such a horrid heritage. It's too removed from me. I sure would find it hard to accept that I need to go through a process like this to grow up the right way, but once I understood it and saw it as inevitable, I rather hope I'd become good at it. But it's just too hypothetical for me to answer. Like I said, my experience doesn't overlap with yours enough for that question to make sense, sorry."

"Did you even know what kind of a person I was before you brought me here to punish me?" asked Marek. He already knew the answer to that one, but he wanted to hear it again.

"We already discussed this before Christmas, you'll remember," said the man. "I didn't really. I was going on your family history, and you aren't quite what I expected."

"Enough talking," announced the man. "You ask a lot of questions, and I don't even have proof that you're listening and understanding properly," huffed the man.

"Now, think about it for a while and come up with an idea for butt-sex that will feel really special to me," demanded Tichy. "Something really satisfying, here and now, with something you will not like, and I will. Something that ups the contrast, the odds, and creates the magic. Prove to me that you were listening properly."

Just like that, question time was over. Marek was thankful that the man had answered any of them; they both knew he didn't have to. The boy supposed that he should have been grateful. He was glad to know that the man didn't truly hate him or deeply despise him. If the boy thought that Mr. Tichy was doing all of this out of a sense of pure hatred and cruelty, he might very well have looked for ways to kill himself rather than endure it. It helped at least a little bit that the man thought he was fixing Marek and rehabilitating him, but the rest of it gave Marek no solace. Basically, his torments would continue, endlessly, until he physically got away from the man. Obedience hadn't worked and wouldn't work. What Mr. Tichy planned to do to him even if he submitted to it, was the problem. Marek could never do it "with" Mr. Tichy. He didn't believe in it. At core, that was the problem. He simply didn't believe in Mr. Tichy's right to do it to him.

The other problem was that Mr. Tichy couldn't tolerate what it took Marek to be obedient. The boy knew that to submit to the man and allow his transformation to happen over his own innate opposition, he needed to keep his mind free from distractions and bad thoughts, but Mr. Tichy didn't like that. He treated that as if Marek had a bad attitude. He had punished Marek savagely for trying to do everything he was told without distraction and delay. Marek had thought he had found the winning formula, but it had proven to be the opposite.

The man's answers essentially drove Marek back to where he had been before. He had to escape. He had to get away. He had to leave Mr. Tichy and the internat forever. He couldn't go home, because Mr. Tichy would find him there, and because of the photographs. He had put Vacenovice out of his mind, anyway. He would escape. He would find a way to go to the west. He would forge a new life …

But for now, there was Mr. Tichy to deal with. There was always Mr. Tichy to deal with. The man had given him a while to think. But Marek was spending that time thinking about escape. The bad thoughts were coming back in force.

Tichy looked at the boy, who seemed to be processing and digesting what had just been said. It all seemed rather hopeful as far as he was concerned. He took another swig of rum, opened the stove, re-arranged the wood in there, stuffed a single chunky log in, and resisted the urge to light up again. He had only the one pack with him, and it already was half-empty; only some nine odd cigarettes were left, and there was the entire morning and the trip back to think of. He knew that he would want a smoke after he buggered Marek – he hoped in a satisfyingly sadistic way that the boy himself was going to suggest.

Eventually, Tichy cleared his throat. Marek had been thinking long enough. He wanted to hear from the boy again, but this time not a question but an answer.

Marek could tell what the man was up to, and it was clever. He wanted Marek to accept the process of his own transformation and do it with Mr. Tichy. Coming up with an idea for butt sex that Tichy liked, and Marek didn't like was part of that, but Marek didn't agree with the process. He didn't want to submit to it, and he most definitely was not going to partner with Mr. Tichy and help him. He would obey for the time being, but he would not help.

The man cleared his throat. This was a test, and Marek knew it. He also knew he was about to fail.

"I can't think of anything, Mr. Tichy," he said with some trepidation. It was oppositional, but also true. He hadn't thought of anything. He hadn't really thought about it, nor was he going to.

"Well, that's lazy and unfair," criticized Tichy. "What's the point of explaining things to you if you don't make use of it? You do realize, I hope, that until you start to work on the process with me, until you take a positive, active role in your change, I'll keep pushing you. Breaking you. With the sack. The water. With the other boys, with everything else I can get my hands on?" warned the man.

"Every time you pass up the opportunity to learn, I'll teach you the hard way," Tichy said as he reached into the rucksack and pulled out two lengths of rope. Soon, Marek's wrists were tightly bound together, and so were his elbows, behind his back, quickly rendering him even more helpless than he already had been, naked and alone in the middle of nowhere with his tormentor.

"You could have taken a little control," lamented Tichy, "but you messed up. This is going to be one of those punishments that I really do enjoy," said the man with a shrug.

He grabbed a tube of cream – because of course he had skied all that way with anal lube; he was Tichy after all – and smeared it on his cock. He sat on the bench near the stove and steered Marek up, folding the boy into a squatting position facing away from the man toward the fire.

"Sink down," Tichy commanded the boy who was about to be buggered. "Slide onto it," he added as he gripped his cock to hold it in place to make it possible for the bound boy to comply.

As the man lectured and tied him, Marek wondered whether maybe he would have been better off not asking the questions. Mr. Tichy had made it clear that not only was Marek not allowed to check out and just mindlessly obey him, but he also expected the boy to submit to the process, engage with it, and take an active role. At least now he knew why Mr. Tichy had gotten so angry with him when he was trying so hard to be obedient.

But it never was going to happen. Never. Marek would obey because he had to, but he wasn't going to participate. He might be able to force himself to pretend – he'd probably have to, given what the man was threatening to do to him if he didn't give in – but he never would agree to it. He couldn't. He didn't believe in it. At core, that was the problem. He didn't agree that he needed to be transformed or that Mr. Tichy had the right to transform him.

Marek was nervous. This wasn't just going to be a fucking; it was going to be a punishment. Maybe he shouldn't have asked his questions and provoked the man, but at least it was all out there on the table now. Now Marek knew the rules of the game.

He slid down on the man's erection, and it hurt some. It always did. He was under no illusions that it wasn't about to hurt more, but his expression was fixed. He would endure, but he would not submit. Fuck Stanislav Tichy.

"Move," demanded the man. "Up and down. I know it hurts because you can't relax in this position, but it's nicer and tighter for me. Clench your ass on me. Pain for you, pleasure for me. And obedience." He let Marek try for a bit, guiding him only as much as he deemed necessary.

"Now the problem is, even if you were willing and dedicated and trying your hardest, using your strength towards your transformation," said Tichy, "it would take you a while to master it. With your 'can't think of anything' attitude, it's even harder to feel that you're seriously learning and trying to feel good, too. That's where violence comes in. When you don't actively meet me, when you don't play my game, you will be forced. I can very easily get that ass clenching around me much harder, and I'll like it, and you won't."

"I wouldn't have to do this to you if you hadn't refused to come up with an idea of your own," explained Tichy as his hands wrapped around the boy's throat from behind and began to strangle him. The act caused Marek's anus to clamp around his cock with a vice-like grip at that exact moment, whether the boy wanted it to or not.

Marek's mind was spinning with newfound knowledge, bad thoughts, and anxiety. He had so much new information to process, but every time he processed it, the bad thoughts returned. Mr. Tichy never was going to stop tormenting him. Marek never would be rehabilitated. The man was going to use him for sex – the kind of sex that Mr. Tichy liked, which was hard, humiliating, and cruel – for as long as he had Marek at the school. It never would get any better. There was no light at the end of the tunnel for Marek. The man's honesty essentially had deprived the boy of hope.

Marek let all the bad thoughts and words back into his brain. Escape. Vengeance. Homicide. Arson. Skala. Police. Running. Hiding. They all came back from banishment, every single one of them. I told you so! they said. I told you that sending us away would never work! You need us, ha ha ha!

His anxiety came from what Mr. Tichy was going to do to him. The man was angry with him. He knew that Marek was not on board. They knew each other well enough by this point that Marek didn't need to send him a telegram. He began the up-and-downs that Mr. Tichy wanted. The man was right – it did hurt more facing this way, and there was no pleasure in it, either.

Marek listened with growing dread as the man threatened violence, and then he administered that violence, his hands encircling Marek's neck. The boy couldn't breathe. Nor could he move a muscle to free or help himself. He stopped undulating atop the man as fear overtook him once again.

"Keep pumping! Move!" commanded Tichy. "No air until I feel you working for it," he said simply, although he was pressing on Marek's throat in a way that cut off only around 90% of his air — enough to make him gag, panic, and his ass clench around the man's cock wonderfully, but he still could gasp for a bit of air, at least so far. Tichy lightened his grip slightly as Marek began to move.

"Clench," the man demanded, but he wasn't satisfied, and his hands crushed down on the boy's windpipe once more.

"Better." He released his grip, letting Marek breathe.

"Move," the man demanded. "Clench. Clench hard and tight and good."

"Almost good enough," he allowed. "Not quite." He shut Marek's air off and made his body clench on his cock, this time holding the grip for a very uncomfortable length of time.

"Move, or I'll crunch down harder!" he warned. Marek moved, although Tichy couldn't be 100% sure if it was even voluntary, but he gave the boy the benefit of the doubt and let him breathe some more.

"The difference between cooperating actively and me dragging you through the process is exactly the difference between you doing the clenching all by yourself, until I'm satisfied, and me forcing your body to clench on me the way I want it to without you having any control or say in it," explained Tichy. "Do you really want to take this second route, in the long term? Do you enjoy this?" asked Tichy as his hands closed around the boy's throat once more but didn't clamp down. Not quite yet.

Marek's eyes bulged and filled with tears as the man brutalized him once again. He had no choice but to try to resume the up-and-down motion that the man wanted. He was only getting a fraction of the air he needed, and he understood that Tichy could take that away at any moment. He tried to clench. He was willing to clench, but the man was relentless. He shut off the boy's air supply like he was flipping a light switch. Marek's face turned red. Tears dribbled down his cheeks. He hated this. Tichy was punishing him. The man was always, always punishing him for something.

He rode up and down, as best he could, trying to clench, perspiring now in the persistent heat.

Tichy relented some, and the boy gasped for air. He listened as the man threatened him with more.

"Noooo!" the 12-year-old sobbed. His head was spinning once again, as it so often did in this crazy world he found himself in. He would have clenched if Mr. Tichy had told him to, but the man had never even asked before he started choking him.

"Well then, you will not like your life any time soon unless you accept that what's happening is necessary, and that you need to and should play an active part in it," responded the man. "Down. Clench. Up. Clench. Down. Clench!" he said as he guided the boy into a steady pace of self-abuse.

"That's better," said Tichy as he kept his hands loosely around Marek's throat in warning. "Keep it up."

"As a final part of your punishment for not demonstrating your understanding and compliance after I took time, energy, and thought to explain it to you, there will be no air for you as I'm cumming," Tichy explained. "There's nothing you can do about that anymore. I'll just clamp down as I start cumming, and release when I'm done. For now, down, clench, up, clench. And breathe, but you'll be choked once more at least. It was a perfectly avoidable discomfort, Marek," he chastised the boy. "That's something to remember." The man could feel his orgasm building inside him despite all the talking.

Marek clenched and sobbed, sobbed, and clenched. He hated this. He hated all of it. He hated what Tichy was telling him, what he was threatening, what he was offering and promising for Marek's future. The man wasn't offering much except more torment, endlessly, for the next three and a half years as Mr. Tichy transformed him and used him for sex – the kind of sex that Marek now knew Mr. Tichy liked. Marek had learned to obey, and he would obey, just as he was obeying now, but he would not agree to it. He would not help the man. He would not actively participate in his own transformation. He couldn't. He just didn't believe in it.

For now, though, he was obeying. He had been willing to obey before, but it hadn't been enough. He rode the man's cock, clenching, working, perspiring, and panting. How long would the man's orgasm last? Marek dreaded finding out.

Tichy's orgasm hit suddenly, and he unleashed hell on the boy. He had calculated his last punishment with precision. As the tension in him peaked, but before the first actual spurt of cum, he clenched down hard on Marek's windpipe and cut off the boy's air, letting Marek's panicking, choking spasms bring him over the edge.

Marek's oxygen was completely cut off, and as he had been working hard physically to maintain his hands-free, up-and-down motion atop the man's groin, his need for that oxygen was acute. It was denied to him. For several long, agonizing seconds, and still several more after that, Marek could not breathe. He fought for air. He strained for it. He tried to suck air in through his open mouth and nose. He tensed and clenched for it, but no air flowed. Nothing worked. No oxygen entered his lungs.

Marek's eyes bulged. He simply could not breathe. It was a sensation not unlike what he had experienced earlier that day in the bathtub. His temples throbbed. His vision blurred, and not just from his tears as his brain started to shut off non-vital functions, preserving the last of the oxygen in Marek's bloodstream for itself. The boy quivered and clenched as he fought for air. He struggled and writhed, his fingers and toes clenching along with his anus and rectum around Tichy's cock.

The man knew that Marek had been on an out breath when he clamped down, and now the boy's body was fighting, clenching, spasming, and writhing for air as Tichy held him tight and let the child's agony milk every drop of cum out of the man's raging, quivering erection.

Marek had his answer: The man's orgasm was endless. It was infinite. He bucked on Tichy's lap in a last, frantic effort to free himself. He couldn't. His torment continued for several more seconds before the straining boy simply shuddered and then went limp as he passed out for the second time that day.

Tichy was enthralled with the boy's performance. Something odd had happened right at the end; the hard, strong, no faster than two-or-three a second clenches of the boy's rectum turned into a seizure-like tremor of insanely rapid, fully involuntarily spasms that felt amazing on Tichy's cock. He held onto Marek's throat in surprise just a moment longer than he needed to, almost puzzling over the sensation he was feeling on his cock as the boy strained one last time and went limp.

Tichy relaxed his grip and held the boy against his chest and belly so he wouldn't fall off the bench. A second or two passed, and just as Tichy contemplated shaking or pinching the boy to come to, Marek gasped the deepest of breaths on his own and came to with a start.

"Now think about it," said Tichy as the boy regained consciousness. "Do you want to submit to me and have a true connection like we had this morning when I wrapped myself all around you, and do we work together in our aim and work, or do you want to be forced again, and again, and again?" asked the man as his hands found the boy's throat once more while he waited for the answer.

Marek wasn't unconscious for long. His body protected him, subconsciously seeking life-giving oxygen even after his conscious brain had given up the effort. He gasped to life again with a startle as his lungs filled with air, his legs kicking out. He began to writhe and squirm as consciousness returned. He was reclined for some reason, and he wanted to sit up. He heard words as if in a dream state. Did he want … what? He was still trying to get his bearings when the man's hands and fingers encircled his throat once again.

Marek simply lost it. With a preternatural squeal of dismay, he writhed and struggled and tried to roll off the man's lap. He still wasn't quite sure where he was, not for a few seconds, anyway, perhaps five or six ticks from his first, huge, restorative gasp. In those seconds he fought fiercely against an unknown foe, twisting, writhing, kicking, all the while gasping and grunting with effort.

When he realized where he was, who was holding him, and what had happened, the boy immediately went limp with a sob of dismay. Tichy had asked him something, but the boy didn't know what it was. His head throbbed and he began to tremble as the man repeated himself, his voice louder, angrier, and more insistent than before. Marek whimpered as the man tightened his grip on the boy's slender throat. His chest and stomach heaved with panting breaths that he knew could be taken away at any time.

It wasn't a fair question, of course, or a fair time to ask it. Marek would have agreed to anything the man said in that moment, and so he did.

"Yes," he gasped. "Yes, sir.' His voice was little more than a whisper. Marek was whimpering basically nonstop. He was feeling terribly constricted and claustrophobic and he desperately wanted to get up and off the man, but Tichy wouldn't let him, instead holding him down. Fortunately, "it" did not happen, and the boy felt the cloying, horrifying sensation start to dissipate as he drew more and more panicked, hyperventilated breaths into his lungs. His heart was racing, and his eyes seemed to be flitting uncontrollably. He blinked hard to regain dominion over them.

"That was an either-or question, not a yes-no," chuckled the man. "But I guess it's hard to think straight when you've just switched off like a light bulb for a bit." He helped Marek off his lap, and off the bench, down on his knees, sitting sideways on the bench and spreading his legs.

Something activated inside Marek, and his systems returned to some semblance of normality just as the man tipped him to the floor. He knew what he had to do and was in no condition even to think about noncompliance.

"Clean me up, then I'll ask again," demanded Tichy. He reached over from the bench to the bunk bed to grab his Startky from the very confined, compact space that was only just long and high enough not to feel claustrophobic. He lit up. He had no idea if his cock was clean or dirty; he didn't really want to torture Marek with shit, but there was no way he was going to sleep dirty and sticky and with no good access to water to wash himself up, Marek was going to have to suck and slurp off whatever was on his cock.

Marek was too shaky. and the little cave was too dark for him to know, or much care, what was on Tichy's cock. Still whimpering with distress, the hyperventilating boy licked, cleaned, and sucked what he needed to from the man's penis and testicles. He'd done this so many times before he could almost do it by rote, and that was a good thing, because he still wasn't all there.

When he was done, or close enough to considered done, Tichy asked again.

"Would you rather submit to me fully and be cared for, held, protected by me like this morning, or do you want to be forced every step of the way, like I just forced your ass to clench down on my cock?"

The man asked his question again as Marek trembled and whimpered. The boy made little moans of despair and angst as he contemplated what to say. He knew he could never do what the man wanted him to do – submit, participate, and enjoy it – but the man had asked the same question before, and Marek's wrong answer had gotten him tortured in the sack. Given the choices, there was only one answer to give, and Marek died inside a little bit more as he gave it.

"I w-want to submit," he sobbed, but he was lying, and he knew it.

Tichy sensed it too, but it was getting late, and they were physically over-exerted. This wasn't a good time to push his luck and test the boy's truthfulness. He had said it, and that was a start. The boy would believe it and internalize it soon enough. He had ways of making boys compliant to his wishes. He caressed Marek's hair, finished his smoke, and had a final swig of rum, but they still had one more unpleasant task to do. Tichy pulled Marek to his feet.

"Better get this over quickly," he informed the boy as he pulled him to his feet, steered him toward the door, and opened it into utter, impenetrable darkness.

Marek's eyes went wide with terror as the man pulled him up and directed him toward the door. His words were as chilling as the cold, outside air against his naked skin. "Better get this over quickly," Mr. Tichy had said. Was this it? Did Tichy know he had lied about submitting? The boy suspected that he did. At least it would be over quickly. Marek's eyes flooded with tears one last time. He hadn't expected this, but it would be okay. It probably was for the best. They both knew it couldn't go on like this. They both knew that Marek wasn't fixable or even worth the effort to try.

It was so impenetrably dark out that having one's eyes open or closed made absolutely no difference once the man closed the door behind them. He grabbed Marek's arm and hand and guided it to the top rung of the diagonal ladder. He grabbed the boy's foot and unerringly placed it two rungs below.

The cold bit at every inch of the slender boy, instantly reducing him to shivers. He could see nothing. His tears nearly froze in his eyes. The boy shivered and trembled as Tichy guided him to the ladder. Why not just throw him off right here, or would his body be too close to Kamenac when they discovered it in the Spring? He did as the man told him one last time. He thought of his mother. His feet were so cold. All of him was.

"Climb down," commanded Tichy. "Never let go with both hands. Always have one leg or one foot moving and one foot and one hand holding on. Go."

The man wanted him to climb, but Marek just wanted to curl up right where he was. He wanted a last minute of alone time. He thought he deserved that, but instead they descended into the darkness below. It was like being both blind and dead. The frosty air cut into their naked skin so sharply that it hurt even before it even started to register as actual cold. Tichy grabbed Marek's upper arm and forced him five or six stumbling steps forward, then pulled him back abruptly. He still had no vision whatsoever.

"Piss," Tichy ordered the boy as he did the same himself, his left hand never letting go of Marek's upper arm the entire time.

When the man's command came, Marek was stunned, but he reached for his shrinking penis and he pissed, before it suddenly dawned on him that the man wasn't going to kill him after all …

Tichy soon turned the boy around, firmly steered him toward the rock, then pointed him with both hands and a foot on the ladder and made him climb. Back up the ladder they went. Marek was chilled to the bone. His slender body was unable to retain heat. The cold knifed through him. His feet were numb. The top of the ladder wasn't totally invisible now with the glow coming out of the shelter and their eyes now partially adjusted to the otherwise total darkness. Tichy ushered Marek up the ladder, across and in, then closed and bolted the door.

And just like that, they were back inside Kamenac. The freezing swirl of outside wind was gone as soon as the door swung shut, but Marek was so cold that he barely could feel the heat from the fire. Tichy stoked the fire with several big logs, and pulled out a single large sleeping bag from his rucksack, blew out the tea lights and turning the oil lamp off before slipping in. The glow from the fire barely lit the room.

"Come on!" he said as the boy hesitated. "It feels hot now, but we likely won't manage to keep the fire going all night and it will get cold. You'll need to be in here with me," he explained.

The man was crazy. How had he done that? Why had he done that? Marek was in awe, but he still was out of sorts from his terror. He didn't want to sleep with the man. Not after that. Not after today. Not after everything. But it wasn't a request, so Marek went to the sleeping bag and climbed in with his back facing the man. He would welcome sleep as soon as it came and took him away from his life once again.

Tichy was too tired to punish Marek for lack of enthusiasm and hesitation. He wrapped his arm around the boy, the two of them quickly warming each other up. Sleep overtook the beleaguered boy and he fell into rest. He woke up a few times during the night but did not dream.

Tichy's watch beeped after three hours. He unzipped the bag, moved without waking Marek, and stuffed the stove completely full before getting himself back in once again. He set his alarm for 7:00 a.m. and managed to fall asleep even as the cave got stuffy, and they both became sweaty and hot inside the sleeping bag. He slept the rest of the night without interruption.

When his watch beeped again, Tichy woke up with a bit of a start. He puffed a big breath out and smiled; hardly any noticeable steam was coming out of his mouth. The fire had died down, but not completely, and not all that long ago. The temperature inside never hit freezing. He wiggled out of the bag and threw a handful of kindling into the stove, blew on it, and once he had brought the hot ashes and last few glowing embers back to life, he stuffed a few thinner logs into the stove and shut it. He shook Marek's shoulder.

"C'mon," he said to the boy. Clad only in his boxer shorts, Tichy grabbed a roll of toilet paper and with Marek still naked, he steered the boy to the door, out and down the steps. Light was just cutting through the darkness outside.

Marek awoke rested, and this time, when Tichy directed him outside, he had a pretty good idea what they were going to do as they retraced their steps from the night before. It was cold, but because it was light, it didn't seem as cold as on their prior trip. The sky was bluish-grey, and a real frost had settled in overnight.

Tichy hurried the boy down the ladder and towards the cliff – they had pissed only a step and a half away from a very sheer drop down in the dark! The man really was a bit nuts, but now he pulled Marek over a snowy patch towards a thicket of young spruces a few more steps away from the shelter.

"Squat, piss, and shit," he commanded. "And hurry up with it!" he added. It was the fourth day of making Marek go with iron regularity, and he really hoped the boy's bowels weren't going to protest on this occasion as he didn't want to stand here much longer himself. He grabbed his cock and pissed to the side, even as he kept an eye on the shivering boy.

Marek did as the man directed and his body complied. He finished defecating before his stream even fell off. The boy was shocked at how close they had come to the edge of the ledge in the darkness. It seemed that another one of Tichy's powers was night vision. Marek didn't question it. The man seemed to have eyes in the back of his head, so why should he be shocked that he could see like a bat in the dark? It was cold, however, and Marek wiped quickly. Handing the roll back to Tichy, he washed his hands with of snow. Damn that was cold. The boy was cold all over. He wanted to go back inside.

Tichy was weirdly, irrationally – and not fully aware of the why of it – pleased that the boy literally shat on command now. It was a bit of a power trip, probably deriving from the same naughty, kinky, magical thing he tried to explain to Marek last night. He hurried the boy right back up the ladder, and through the door into the shelter before closing it and staying put as his eyes adjusted to the dimness inside. He lit the oil lamp and a couple of candles at the back of Kamenac and opened the air vent to the stove; it was coming to life only reluctantly and slowly with the front door closed, and Tichy grunted at himself for having forgotten about the ventilation. It was still some 55 degrees [13c] in the cave and as the fire whooshed and began to swallow the beech sticks and thin logs, the temperature began to rise much faster. He grabbed the large kettle and went outside to stuff it with a huge heap of fresh snow to melt and boil for tea.

Marek warmed up by the fire as Tichy went back outside again. It didn't take long before the chill was off, and he felt warm again. He contemplated the day ahead. Mr. Tichy's orgasm count had reset to zero again, so there was that to deal with. The boy owed him three orgasms using his butt or mouth. There also was skiing back yet to do – no choices to make there. There would be breakfast to eat, and Marek was hungry. Whatever else the man did to him, he took care of the boy when it came to food. Even back at the internat, he made sure that Marek ate whether he was hungry or not. Marek supposed that was something.

There was this other thing to contend with now, the one where he was required to be eager and engaged to do things that Tichy wanted to do to him. He would just add that to the obedience pile. He would do everything the man told him to do, instantly and without hesitation. He would also agree to do anything the man offered. That was his mistake from yesterday, even though what Tichy appeared to have offered wasn't really an offer at all. It was just as much of a command as anything else. The boy got that now. From now on, his answer would be "yes" every single time.

Contrary to Tichy's apparent belief, the boy did not enjoy being brutalized. He would do all these things – maybe he could even pretend to be happy to do them – but he was back to planning and plotting. That was dangerous, and on the one hand, he wished Tichy had simply accepted his obedience instead of torturing him and telling him it was not enough, but on the other hand, Tichy's reaction had been clarifying: Obedience alone would not solve Marek's problem. The bad thoughts came back because that was the natural state of things. The other way – banishing them – always had been a ruse.

Tichy returned to the cave and left Marek alone for a moment to thaw by the crackling stove. He had brought a rather large sack of Christmas cookies for breakfast together with a soy-based bar called Sojovy Suk for each of them. They were not all that good-tasting and had a chewy, gluey consistency, but they also had a good supply of protein, sugar, and fat to keep the body going.

The tea took a bit longer, but before the stove warmed up and the snow melted and started to boil and steam, Kamenac already was warm and cozy once again.

"You seemed to do the ladder up and down fast enough," observed Tichy. "You good? Not too sore? We have to ski back today," he added.

Marek felt fine. Not even sore. "I'm good, sir," he replied as politely as he could. Same politeness. Same obedience. Just agree to everything. "I'm not really sore from yesterday, at least not yet," added the boy. "I can definitely ski."

Was that sufficiently happy and upbeat for the man? Or would he torture Marek for having not quite the proper tonality or voice inflection?

"Good," said Tichy with a nod. "You know, you have the capability to become an amazing athlete, Marek. You could possibly play football for a living if you practiced hard enough, or maybe you could play another sport. It's a great way to make it through the army unscathed, you know, being a medal-winning athlete, among other things."

Tichy tidied the place up and checked that their clothes were dry. Now that the sun was out, he picked up an axe from under the bed and went outside to make more kindling, leaving a pile of it next to the stove. He cleaned as many ashes out of the stove as was possible while it still was hot and glowing, then gave the shelter a once-over. He fished out an old notebook from a plastic bag hiding in a far corner behind the stove and scribbled something in it before dropping a few coins into a rusty old loose-leaf tea tin next to it. He packed his rucksack and told Marek to get dressed. He had a smoke, his eyes gliding around the space once more to make sure the two of them hadn't left any mess or damage behind. When they left, he double-checked that the door was properly closed and the latch locked in place.

By then, the day was so bright that the snow almost blinded them; even here in the valley it was dazzling. Getting out of here in bright light was far easier than getting in when it was almost dark and with strong winds were howling. Their skis were covered with a sheet of ice and took some cleaning, scraping, and re-waxing before they were trail-worthy once again. Climbing up the near-vertical, seven-foot slope turned out to be the hardest bit. Tichy had to scramble and climb out first, pull out all the skiing equipment, and then pull Marek up with a ski pole so the boy could climb out of the crevasse.

What they had slid down in less than a minute last night turned out into a half-hour climb back up, followed by a wade in the snow before they finally could put their skis on and proceed with their trip. Soon enough they were back at the Bila Kuchyne crossroads before they turned towards Hrebinek, Ptaci Kupy. It still was a bit early for lunch when they arrived at Knejpa. Knejpa was a magical little place, a mini log-cabin pub in the middle of the mountains that was supplied almost entirely by skiers, local mountaineers, and volunteers, with only the bulkiest of supplies being brought in about once per week by the mountain rescue's snowmobile.

Marek spoke enough to be engaged, and truth be told, the day was fun for the boy even if the bad thoughts continued to compete for attention in his brain. The scenery was beautiful, and Marek found himself liking this area of the country. If not for the reality of his situation, he might have considered returning to visit it again someday.

They stopped for a coffee, cocoa, and a snack at Knejpa because there were no more stops on their way after that. They would go past Jizera, around the other side of Sous lake and into Korenov, which technically wasn't part of the Jizera mountains anymore, but part of the foothills of Krkonose, also known as The Giant Mountains. The only pub in Korenov was closed, so they had to thaw in the station's waiting room for nearly an hour while they waited for the first train down. Between changing trains and waiting some more in Tanvald they had missed lunch, so Tichy treated Marek to an early supper at the Nadrazni, a smokey, pub-style restaurant that served simple, but hearty food.

When they finally returned to the flat, it had been nearly two whole days since they left, and the place felt a bit cold, abandoned, and musty. Tichy cracked open a bottle of beer as the flat aired out, then hung his clothes out to dry.

"Thanks for being good company and a good sport," he winked at Marek even as the boy stripped out of his wet clothes, leaving himself naked without needing to be told. "Those are some of my favorite places in the world, and possibly we just did my most favorite ski trails," Tichy added.

The exercise had felt good to Marek, and he felt pleasantly tired, as if – as was true – he had exerted himself for much of the day. It was a nice feeling. He knew he would be sore tomorrow, but for right now, it was a pleasant feeling. Now he was back in the man's apartment, and the bad thoughts were talking to him. He planned to be obedient just as before. He would accept whatever the man told him to do, asked him to do, or offered to him. He would try to have a better attitude. He would try to avoid the man's wrath, but he already knew that he was going to have problems. The man wanted him to do even more than that, to be an active participant in his own transformation. On that issue, the boy could do no better than to pretend.

Tichy eyed the boy. He bit his lower lip and smiled a mischievous smile.

"There's one thing I really want to do to you right now," he said playfully, even as he planted a finger over the boy's mouth.

"Ssssh," said Tichy. "No talking. Last night, that conversation was important and good. But let's not overdo it and right now, I don't want words. In fact … " he said as he fumbled in one of the kitchen drawers until he found a pacifier. He presented it to Marek with a goofy grin and slipped it into the boy's mouth.

"Yes, it's silly and a bit humiliating, but it'll do you no harm and it will remind you not to talk for now," the man explained. "You do look kind of cute with it in," he added with a chuckle.

So here they were, back in the apartment with the rules still posted on the door. It was getting late, and Marek knew that the man hadn't had a single orgasm yet today. There had been no chance to offer a blowjob while they skied, but it that didn't change anything. It was Marek's obligation to offer. He was contemplating the best way to do it when the man gave him a strange look and began to speak. Marek listened. He always listened, trying to pick up cues on the man's mood and his plans. The pacifier went in his mouth. Although he hadn't sucked on one of those since he was a toddler, he didn't see it as a humiliation. It was just Tichy's means of keeping him quiet, and Marek was fine with that. His mouth often got him in trouble anyway.

Tichy made Marek stand in the kitchen corner and closed the door into the hall for a bit, returning some ten minutes later and leading Marek out again. He took the boy to the bathroom and helped him into a big, very nearly full bathtub filled with hot water and fragrant bubbles. He picked up a sponge and slowly began to wash the boy. Then he made Marek kneel and repeated the process, then made him sit and eventually lie and recline, all the while gently and slowly scrubbing the boy's body with the soapy, frothy sponge. He worked the kid from head to toes, rinsing and repeating several times, before eventually ditching the sponge altogether and repeating the process in a massage-like fashion, his bare hands roaming tantalizingly all over the boy's hair, face, neck, and then his lithe young body, his fingers working out any residual tension he felt in the boy's muscles from the physical exertions of the day.

Marek couldn't help but worry as the man disappeared again and the boy heard water running in the bathroom. Was Tichy going to drown him again? The boy couldn't do that again. He would fight it, and then Mr. Tichy would get angry, and … It was not something the boy wanted to think about, but when the man called him in, it was the opposite. It was gentle, soothing, and slow-paced. It was neither frantic nor fear-inducing, and it wasn't at all painful. It felt good. It was pleasant and nice, and Marek felt himself letting go again. Was he giving into the primordial being again? The man's touch was so soft and gentle, so kind and loving, how could he not react to it? The boy felt almost emotional. Why couldn't it be like this more often? Why not all the time?

Mr. Tichy had explained things, and Marek knew that there were two very different sides to this coin – what he needed and what the man needed – but why couldn't he have this side more often? Why couldn't he have it just a bit more? He was doing the other side for the man, and he would continue to do the other side, all of it, on command, every time. He would do anything the man wanted, but he liked this, while he still hated the other thing. The problem was, Mr. Tichy wanted him to like both.

Tichy eventually soaped up his right hand very generously and slid his other hand under Marek's hip to lift the youngster up, then reached into the suds and grabbed the boy's cock ever so gently. He squeezed and teased it until it began to plump and firm, and once it came alive and hard in his hand, he began to stroke it.

"Relax, it will be fine," he promised as he jerked the boy slowly. He knew that the kid had been well-milked just yesterday and wasn't about to cum anywhere near as easily and quickly as the trigger-happy version of him from a few days ago. This gave Tichy more space to play with Marek without it becoming a tense, dangerous, and fear-filled game for the boy and a difficult and challenging task for the man.

It felt nice, and Marek gave into it. The man's hands felt soothing and good as they roamed all over his skin, bringing goosepimples in their wake. The warm water felt good on his tired body, and when Tichy reached for his penis, Marek gave a little sigh. His member began to erect in seconds, but there was no urgency, no imperative need. Tichy stroked him slowly and languidly. The boy closed his eyes. Why couldn't it be more like this? Why couldn't it be like this all the time? Marek didn't care if it made him a homosexual. After all that had happened, that didn't even really seem to matter anymore. What mattered was what felt good, and this did. It felt very good, and Marek surrendered to it.

"I have been thinking about yesterday … a lot," the man admitted eventually. "And I think you need some positive motivation beyond simply being a better man one day far into the future – something to help you and drive you to play along actively, deeply, on all levels like I want you to. I decided to link it to the grading system I mentioned earlier. Right now, you're a wimp, and if you hugely mess up, you'll become a thing. If, however, you start to really, properly submit to me and take an active role in your change, you'll be promoted to Adept." He paused for a moment to let that all sink in.

The boy was so tired of fighting, so tired of coping. It was an exhausting business being Marek Hurta these days. Learning the ropes of his new existence had been a long, drawn-out trauma-inducing process for the 12-year-old. He had tried to deal with it in every way possible. He had fought it, tried to escape it, reasoned against it, tried to deal with it, fought it, acquiesced to it, rebelled against it, given in to it, opposed it, and tried to cope with it, over and over, cyclically, for weeks and months. But Tichy had outlasted, outsmarted, and outdone him at every turn. In the end, Marek had capitulated and given Tichy every single last thing he thought the man wanted. He had even cleared his mind of oppositional thoughts so that he could keep on obeying, endlessly obeying, to keep the pain away.

But it hadn't been enough, and last night, Tichy had explained to him why. He wanted Marek's buy in, plain and simple. He wanted the boy's active participation in the process. He wanted Marek to embrace the whole idea and not just obey him, but willingly give the man what he demanded. He wanted Marek to work to please him by assisting in the boy's own transformation.

Marek knew that the man's expectations took things to an entirely different and more difficult level. Marek had thought that complete, instant obedience was the outcome the man desired, but it turned out that that was only the first step. It had taken weeks and months just for Marek to get to the point of obedience, but now the man wanted more.

"Adept will get encouragement," continued Tichy. "Every day, at least for a moment, he'll get a taste of something like this. Something nice and connective. And more importantly, Adept will answer only to me. And will not serve any others unless I'm right there and demand it. That means no more games with Ludmila in the laundry room, no more sucking Radek in your dorm room or being fucked by the other Tichy Boys. It'll just be you and me. And if you accept the hard – the bad, as you may think of it – you'll also get the good, and I mean consistently. I don't want you to talk about it or answer right now. It's for you to think about. Sleep on it. Digest it."

Marek listened to the details as the man slowly stroked him. The physical contact felt nice, but the boy was focusing on what he had heard. If he behaved, he would have a new status up from Wimp with lots of things that sounded very good to the boy. It was something positive, anyway, compared to what to that point had really been just a series of endless torments. Answering only to Tichy would be an enormous improvement just on its own, and the other stuff – this stuff – would be nice as well.

Marek would sleep on it, but there was a big problem with the proposal, and the boy already knew what it was: He hadn't bought into Tichy's plans for him. He didn't believe in the need for his transformation. He didn't want to take an active role in his change because he didn't think he needed to change.

He would have to say yes, of course. This was just like the offer to ski; declining it was not an option. Marek knew that Tichy would go ballistic if the boy declined a plan that the man had been thinking about for an entire day and proposed in so much detail, complete with new rules and terms. Tichy would reduce him to a Thing and torture him ruthlessly and unmercifully if he said no, but Marek was just as fucked if he said yes. It would take Tichy about one day to determine that the boy had lied, that he hadn't bought in, and that he was just pretending. Marek wasn't that good of an actor. He could obey because it was mindless to do so, but he couldn't pretend to like or agree with something he didn't believe in, and he didn't believe in this.

Tichy began stroking Marek a bit faster, until he could see signs of the boy getting closer, then he stopped, pulled out the pacifier, and kissed Marek on the lips. He stood him up, drained the bath and dried him.

"Brush your teeth and meet me in the bedroom."

It was a pensive, worried boy who went to meet Tichy in the bedroom. Tichy was sitting at the foot of the bed in just his boxer shorts, smoking a Startka. He took a deep drag and puffed it out before taking a normal breath in preparation for saying what he had to say.

"I don't want an answer," he told the boy. "Not a verbal one, anyway. I don't want a lie, and I don't want you to tell me you can't quite do it yet and then be pissed off with you. That's too much of an … " Tichy's voice trailed off as he fished for the right word, " … entrapment. So, keep your thoughts to yourself. I'll judge you on your actions as time goes by."

"It is, however, still decision time for you," reminded Tichy. "Rule 4. It's seven in the evening and we're both tired and likely going to want to go to sleep early. So, either I can go have a thorough wash now; shower and all, and then you take care of not breaking Rule 4 all by yourself, all with your effort, on your terms. I don't care how you do it; you can suck me until I cum three different times or ride my cock with your butt. It'll be a helluva hard job to make me cum three times in quick succession, but realistically you can pull it off before midnight if you work your little ass off."

"I repeat: If you chose plan A, it'll be fully and entirely up to you, including the consequences if you fail," said Tichy, "but before you decide, here's plan B. We're going to make 'magic' happen. I ain't washing till after. You are going to kiss and lick my feet to start with. Tongue my asshole. Lick my balls and suck my dick. If I don't cum in your mouth fast enough, I'll cum in your ass instead a bit roughly probably, and you'll suck me clean afterwards, but it will be just once. Just one orgasm. After that, we clean up and go to sleep right away and suspend Rule 4 for today, or rather trade it off for your cooperation in making my magic happen."

The man paused for a moment before continuing. He wanted to give the kid a chance to make the right decision.

"So, A or B?" he asked Marek after a brief period of silence. "No punishments, either way, it's not a trick question, except if in Plan A you fail to get me off three times before midnight, you'll be punished, or if you attempt to chicken out as you proceed with Pan B, I'll force you to keep at it until I'm satisfied and until I cum the way I really like to cum – like it or not."

Tichy took another drag of his cigarette and looked at Marek.

"So?"

Marek wasn't sure what to expect when he entered the bedroom. He never knew what to expect when it came to Mr. Tichy. The man had made it clear that he didn't even want an answer from Marek on the "Adept" thing before morning, so the boy wasn't terribly worried about that – at least not yet. What he had noticed, however, was that the man had not bathed. He had given Marek a careful, thorough, pleasurable bath, but he had not gotten in the tub or showered himself, and that was after two days of skiing and sleeping in the hot, sweat-inducing, almost sauna-like conditions of Kamenac.

Marek was not surprised to hear Rule 4 come up. He almost knew it would. He had been thinking about it most of the day, but it never had seemed like a good time to offer his services. Now the man was giving him a choice. Plan A represented hours of exhausting work to get the man off three times in a row, complete with a penalty for failure. Plan A would be very, very difficult. Plan B was different. It was much nastier, but potentially easier. Not just potentially – it would be easier if he didn't throw up. Even if he vomited in disgust, it still might be easier.

The reality was, Marek never had performed a triathlon – not that he even knew Tichy's name for it. The boy already was tired, and he knew instinctively that bringing the man to three orgasms in a row would be hard, exhausting, painful, and – depending on the punishment that Mr. Tichy had in mind for him – potentially agonizing if he failed. On the other hand, Plan B would be nasty, humiliating, and gross. It also would be much, much easier.

It wasn't much of a choice, not really. This was a decision Marek could make with confidence. Humiliation didn't really matter to him all that much anymore, especially after yesterday's explanation. If it wasn't born of hatred but instead out of a desire for magic, Marek could handle humiliation.

Only one question nagged at the boy. Would he be punished for taking the wimp way out, like the time Mr. Tichy had made him stay in bed for 36 hours straight because he had declined to give the man a second blowjob after professing to be tired? He had learned his lesson then about taking the easier path, but Plan B seemed easier. Mr. Tichy had said no punishments either way, but he had said that before. "No punishments" did not mean that he would not get angry. "No punishments" did not mean that the man wouldn't … punish him.

"I would like to choose Plan B, sir, unless you want me to do Plan A, 'cause I will," said Marek. "I'll do either one you want me to do. I don't want to be a wimp," he added, although Wimp apparently was his official status right now.

"It honestly isn't a trap," said Tichy with a smile after he heard Marek's thoroughly inoffensive answer. "Thank you for opting for magic. It's actually my preferred option if that does anything to settle your mind," he added with a shrug.

Marek had been nervous as he gave his answer, but the man's response put him more at ease. He had been waterboarded two days ago for giving the wrong answer, and he knew that Mr. Tichy's retribution could be swift, violent, and horrible, but the kid also wanted to believe what the man said – that he wouldn't be punished, and that Mr. Tichy wouldn't get mad. It seemed that way. Marek chose to believe, especially when Mr. Tichy confirmed that he preferred Marek's choice.

"You know what makes it magic now," said the man. "I explained it better than I thought I even could explain it last night. So, give yourself a boner. Then drop down on all fours, slutpuppy. Crawl over here slowly and sensually with your belly low and your ass nice and high. Keep eye contact with me as best as you can. Start with a sniff," he said as he moved further back on the bed with only his feet dangling over the edge now. "Sniff, kiss, and lick. I want a sad, unhappy, slutpuppy face, because my feet are stinky, but then I want you to lick them all over, even the lint-stuffed gaps between my toes. I want you to make love to those stinky, sweaty feet."

"Come on," encouraged the man. "Show me what you've got. Show me some magic, slutpuppy."

Marek steeled himself for what he had to do. Magic. Not humiliation, but magic. This was not being mean for the sake of being mean. It was magic, not hatred. Marek thought he understood. It wasn't about hatred – the boy desperately wanted Mr. Tichy not to hate him. Being hated by the man hurt him deeply. He had interpreted everything that had happened before as meanness born of hatred, but it wasn't. It was magic, and that explained a lot. Marek thought he could do magic. He was willing to try.

His hand immediately went to his cock, and despite the boy's embarrassment, it soon erected. He went to his hands and knees, and this time when he crawled, he wasn't seething. He wasn't even angry. He crawled like a slutpuppy. He crawled like he enjoyed being a slutpuppy. He would try to give the magic the man wanted, and for some reason, this time it didn't feel like a burden. It felt okay because Marek knew that it didn't come from hatred.

With good posture, sensuously, and feeling it, Marek crawled. He gave eye contact, and this time it was wiling. He felt a little weird acting this slutty, mainly because he didn't even mind. Before he had hated it, but now he was trying for magic. It felt weird, but somehow also liberating.

He brought himself to the man's feet, and he nuzzled them. And sniffed. They were nasty, but he didn't let that affect him. They both knew that smelly feet weren't the worst things Marek had licked. He looked up a little sadly, but also coquettishly, and nuzzled them again. Was he doing it right? Was he doing the magic? He licked at the man's feet, then he tongued them with long, broad strokes. He made eye contact, and he didn't really … mind it. Throughout it all, his cock remained erect.

What was going on? Was he losing his mind? Why didn't he hate this? Why wasn't he seething?

The answer was simple: He didn't believe that he was being made to do it out of meanness or hatred, and that made all the difference to the boy. It made all the difference in the world.

Tichy's eyes were locked with Marek's and when the boy sniffed and licked at his feet, they widened in surprise, almost awe. They stayed locked on the boy and remained wide, with big, almost exaggerated pupils. They certainly were not hateful eyes. The man was surprised at how much this was turning him on. He was completely absorbed in the moment. His normally cold, hard eyes seemed almost warm as he watched the boy begin to worship him. His cock, half-erect to start with, sprung to life, so abruptly that Marek couldn't have overlooked it. Magic wasn't bullshit, and it made Tichy's cock throb. It made his heart race in his chest. He felt the pit of his belly tingle and flutter in a way that he hadn't felt in a long, long while.

Something about what was happening put Tichy in a strange, half-forgotten state of mind. When he was little, even though he was already a pioneer, a sceptic, and an aspiring communist, he used to love the local stories of Krakonos, the Odin-like god of the Krkonose mountains, and of the fair and beautiful princess-fairy Izerinka, a pioneer's reborn version of the ancient Celtic goddess Isara, who gave the mountains, the river, and the whole region their names two millennia ago. There and then, with his slutpuppy suddenly feeling oh, so very real, oh, so very slutty, Tichy's cock twitched, and he was a believer in those ancient myths. He couldn't bear the warmth and intensity of Marek's gaze; he tilted his head up and moaned, his cock quivering, his body shuddering.

"Suck those filthy toes, slutpuppy," he commanded, but his voice was husky, and much higher in pitch, choked with arousal even as he tried to sound bossy and commanding.

Marek was mystified. Was this what the man wanted? Was this what he had wanted all along? Marek might have given it to him sooner if he had known. It would have taken him weeks and weeks under even the best of circumstances to reconcile himself to the fact that Tichy could make him do any of this, but once the boy had admitted to himself that he could not escape or defeat the man, he might have been able to avoid some of the worst punishments and tortures that Mr. Tichy had doled out to him if only the man had explained the magic part. Marek could understand that different things appealed to different people. He understood. He just hadn't understood what appealed to Tichy before last night, or before today, really. It all was starting to click.

The other thing that was so weird about it was that Marek found that he actually … didn't mind doing it. Now that was weird. He hadn't expected that at all, but Mr. Tichy essentially had asked him to do this instead of making him do it. He had even given Marek a choice, although the boy did wonder what would have happened if he had made the wrong choice, which he had been concerned was the right choice but which he now knew was the wrong choice, because Tichy had wanted him to choose the magic, and …

It was all so confusing. It was confusing and new, but it gave Marek hope, because he didn't actually fucking hate this. He didn't hate it because Mr. Tichy liked it, and how weird was that? Marek had always hated the slutpuppy routine. He hated being called that. He despised the command "Eyes" more than just about anything else that Mr. Tichy said to him. He could take the pain. He could take being fucked, licking ass, and giving head. He didn't like those things, but he had gotten used to them. He could do them. But he hated being made to humiliate himself. It was like an extra level of rubbing-it-in meanness that drove him crazy with hatred for the man. He had wondered so many times why Mr. Tichy had to be that way even when Marek was trying. Why? Why? How could a man he had never done anything to hate him that much?

But … it wasn't that.

Marek sucked the man's toes. He licked them. He slurped and nuzzled them. He found that he wanted to give the man the magic, and that was the weirdest thing of all.

Tichy gasped as he shuddered again. He wanted to say something coherent and bossy, but the first words that came out of his mouth altogether were different.

"Oh … fuck … oh … yesssss," the man groaned with pleasure. Tichy had so much blood running down into his cock that he hardly could think straight, but he needed this to follow a certain path for the magic to keep happening. It couldn't just be Marek tonguing his toes for the rest of the night. Tichy wasn't a foot fetishist, not from either the giving or the receiving point of view; this aroused him only because it was so filthy. It was filthy, stinky, and oh-so-degrading, and Marek was fucking doing it! The boy looked a bit dazed, and sad, maybe, but not really. No. He was fucking willing. He was worshipping the man, and deep down, Tichy wanted to be worshipped like one of those old, half-forgotten spirits or pagan gods that his parents told him so much about when he was a little boy.

Marek worked his tongue, lips, and mouth across the man's feet for a good long time because … he wanted to. He would clean the man's feet, toe by toe, and give the man magic there, and not to avoid the other things, either. He would do it thoroughly and well because he didn't feel like the man was making him. He didn't feel hated. He didn't feel like a worthless piece of shit to Stanislav Tichy. He felt like a partner in giving the man magic and making him feel good, and that made all the difference.

The man reached into Marek's hair and gripped it just right. Firmly, but not brutally. Not carefully, either. He just … gripped it, then pushed the kid's head away and wiggled his way towards the end of the bed, revealing his very musky ass-crack as he pulled the boy toward it, just shy of Marek's lips connecting with it, which was going to feel oh-so-fucking nice when it happened.

"I want to see your boner first," said Tichy. "Stand up and show me, and I want see it again when you're done," he demanded, in a husky, slightly trembling sort of voice. He waited for Marek to stand up and reveal his erection, and as soon as he saw it, he knew that they had entered a new phase of the boy's reconditioning.

"Get that sweet, beautiful, cute pink tongue up my filthy, stinking asshole, sluttpuppy," he commanded, but it really came out as more of a moan.

Marek's cock was as rigid as it had ever been, and that also surprised the boy. Usually when he was doing something this distasteful his cock was as disinterested as an old, floppy sock that had lost its elastic, but for some reason, Marek was not just hard, he was steel-hard. Diamond-hard. As the man repositioned himself for the next part of the magic, Marek stood up and showed the man his genitals. He felt a bit proud, and confident, too. He felt like he wasn't pretending; he wasn't just lying to Tichy to survive. It was a weight off his shoulders, at least for now.

If the man punished him now, for this, for the way he was doing this, Marek would give up. He would be positively suicidal because this wasn't faked. He wasn't pretending. He wasn't coping. He was trying to give magic to the man, and he was giving it his best effort, and if it wasn't good enough – if he got beaten or tortured for it again – he was just going to lose it. It would be the end because he didn't have anything else to give. He didn't have another gear.

He knelt and brought his face to the man's ass, not because Tichy hated him and made him, but because he wanted to give the man his magic. He peered around the man's balls, curious to see the man's expression. This time, he didn't need to hear the command, "Eyes."

He grimaced at the taste of the man's ass. It was a very stark reminder that he didn't like this, not at all. He would have preferred not to have to do it, even now, even knowing what he knew about the magic. Given the choice he would have declined, but he could tolerate it now. He could do it because the man wasn't making him do it out of hatred.

The man spoke then, humiliating the boy, but Marek didn't rebel; he simply licked the man's hole, and then he pointed his tongue and plunged it past the man's anal ring and into his rectum. The act still was sick and gross, and Marek hated doing it, but it wasn't the threat of a punishment that impelled him, it was the quest for magic, and that mattered a lot.

Tichy's sounds that followed were largely non-verbal. They were "uhs" and "ohs" mostly, mixed with the odd "huh" and "ah." With a shuddering "fuck yeah," he felt his cock leaking a noticeable amount of precum for the first time in … he couldn't possibly remember, but it had been a long, long fucking time since he had last drooled pre.

"Oh fuck!" Tichy exclaimed. "Oh yessss … fuck. Fuck. Man!" he groaned. "Oh fuck, slutpuppy. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck." He shuddered and he felt his cock twitching; he very nearly came from having his ass tongued alone, with no stimulation of his cock or prostate, just the adorable pink tongue of 12-year-old Marek Hurta eating out his sweaty, smelly asshole. He shook and shuddered. He wanted to say something mean and nasty to stretch this out, but his brain wasn't forming coherent thoughts. He wanted to make it last, and he would have, or maybe not, or …

Marek licked, tongued, and speared at the man's ass and he didn't like it, not one bit, but he did it anyway. The difference between all the other time and this one was that he didn't seethe at the utter humiliation of it because he didn't feel humiliated. He didn't feel hated. It was like the weight of a 100-pound sack had been slipped from his slender shoulders.

He still didn't like doing it – Tichy and his magic never could make him like this thing in particular. Truth be told, he fucking hated it – the fetid taste, the humidity, the cloying, claustrophobic feeling of having his mouth and nose pressed deep in the man's ass – but he didn't sense that the man would ever require him to like it or pretend to. Marek could legitimately hate what he was doing and still do the magic. Indeed, hating it but doing it anyway was part of the magic as he understood it. Even if he detested doing it, he still could be the man's slutpuppy for this and help him to feel the magic, so he licked, tongued, cleaned, and did all those things. He did his best to make eye contact when he could; he wanted to see the man's reaction, but he also wanted the man to see him trying. He was trying. The effort to make magic for Mr. Tichy certainly was there.

When the pleasure became too much, Tichy sucked in a sharp breath, pushed the boy off, sat up, then pulled the boy's willing mouth back onto his cock, and without Marek even trying, he came, just like that, howling in pleasure and shuddering as huge squirts of cum spurted between the boy's lips. Tichy shuddered, shivered, and shook, his eyes closed and blind, his mind blank, as he came, and came, and came. It was a solid twenty seconds later that he finally stopped cumming and released the boy's head before collapsing back on the bed, hiccupping and gasping in a way that suspiciously resembled crying.

Mr. Tichy seemed to be liking it, but then, suddenly, he pulled the boy to his cock, as if Marek had spent too long on the other thing. He took the man's cockhead in his mouth, his tongue getting it wet, readying it, before it just fired like a gun, surprising Marek, causing him to gag briefly as he tried to gather the man's ejaculate. Was he supposed to hold it and wait for permission? He tried not to swallow any more of it than he needed to, but he was half choking from the surprise of it. Why had the man cum so quickly? Marek had never seen that before. He hadn't been ready.

When the man finally finished and let him go, Marek's eyes revealed his worry as he pulled off and showed what cum he had managed to gather. He awaited permission to swallow. He couldn't help but feel nervous. What had just happened was unprecedented. Now he was worried that he wouldn't be able to keep his erection, but he was pretty sure he still was hard.

Tichy shuddered and clenched like a bug trying to hold onto a leaf in the wind as he came hard, then went briefly limp. When he finally regained some sense of what was going on, his brain still bliss-fried, he just reached down and pulled Marek up onto the bed and settled him into a tight, warm, whole-body hug, just wrapping his arms and legs around the boy, pressing the kid's head into the gap between his own neck and head, gently squeezing, and softly stroking him. It took him two minutes of just breathing before he found any words.

"Thank you, slutpuppy," Tichy said. "Thank you, Marek. That really was something. That was some serious magic."

Somewhere in there, the boy swallowed the cum load on his own accord as Mr. Tichy was acting very weird. Marek soon found himself on the bed snuggling with the man whom only yesterday, he had fantasized about killing slowly ad painfully. This, too, was unprecedented. The man had never snuggled with him after a blowjob. Not once. Usually, he either made the boy suck until he was ready for another one or told the kid to get lost.

What was going on? The man was stroking and caressing him, and it dawned on Marek that he had just done the magic thing very, very well. Mr. Tichy was pleased, and this was his way of saying it.

But it wasn't his only way of saying it because Tichy then said it. He thanked Marek. The boy was stunned. Not surprised, stunned. To the best of Marek's recollection, Stanislav Tichy had never, ever thanked him for a blowjob. Or for any kind of sex. Not once that Marek could recall. Yes, he had made it clear when he thought Marek had done a good job. But thanking him? That never had happened.

Marek was blown away. He thought he could get used to this magic thing. And he was okay with not cumming himself. Fine with it. He hadn't expected to.

Eventually, Tichy realized that the boy pressed against him, skin on naked skin, still was erect. He reached down and gave Marek's cock a squeeze.

"Such a good boy," he cooed. "Such a good puppy. Not tonight. You not cumming is a part of my magic, but if you ask nicely tomorrow … " he said with a wink and a shrug as his voice trailed off. He hugged Marek for a bit longer, just breathing, cooling off, and coming down from his high.

"Go brush your teeth, piss if you need to," the man instructed. "Let's sleep. It's early, but fuck it, let's get some rest. We both deserve it," said the man, and he meant it.

Marek climbed off the man and nodded. He needed to use the bathroom, and he really wanted to get the stink off his face and mouth.

"Thank you, sir," he said as he scampered off to the bathroom. The boy felt good for a change. He felt free, like a burden had been lifted. It was a nice feeling.

Tichy nodded. He wasn't sure what to say. Was Marek really thanking him after being used in filthy, degrading ways? The man's mind couldn't fully compute it, but it was beyond even trying.

The irony was that if Marek truly wanted to murder the man, this would have been his best chance because Tichy just passed out naked on the bed. He was spent, dazed with beer, and reveling in the afterglow of almost-too-good-to-be-true sex. The man was completely sated in a way he was not used to. Something that happened between him and Marek. Something real had happened.

The man was stinky with two days of dried sweat. He really should have showered and brushed his teeth again after smoking, but he just didn't care. He was sated in a way that he didn't have a conscious precedent for; almost like a milk-filled baby that had a full tummy and no other worry in the whole big world. He passed out in the scooted-to-the-side sort of position that left just the right amount of space for Marek to join him in their usual big-spoon, small-spoon position.

Marek washed his face and mouth thoroughly with soap and water, even his lips, and even the inside part of his lips. He got the taste of soap in his mouth, but it was a lot better than the other tastes he had there, and he would be brushing his teeth soon enough. For now, he washed the parts of him that had licked certain parts of Mr. Tichy, and then he washed again. He was tired, so two times ought to do it.

He brushed, and then peed. All the while, he tried to figure out what had just happened. He still wasn't completely sure, but one thing was certain: Trying to give the man magic was a lot easier than he had thought it would be. It felt so much better to give magic and be appreciated than to simply obey and feel hated. It was the difference between being a person and being a piece of furniture.

But was it real? Was the man just using him and playing with his mind? What did Tichy really think about him? Did he truly hate Marek and was now faking it? Did he tolerate Marek simply because the boy he was useful for sex? Was he truly working to transform Marek, or was that all just a cover story? Did the man like him on some level? Was that even possible?

Even in the privacy of his own mind, Marek didn't want to go there. The boy knew that Tichy never would like him because of his lineage. The man despised his grandfather and father, and he never would be able to see Marek other than through that lens. The boy wished it could be different. If only he hadn't been born a Hurta, Mr. Tichy might see him as more than just the grandson of Josef Hurta and the son of Ludek Hurta. Of course, then he never would have been brought to the internat in the first place, but what if he had been somehow? What if he weren't named Hurta and he had come to the school, and he had met Mr. Tichy just as his football coach, or his gym instructor or something, or even as the school's disciplinarian. Could things have been different between them? Would Mr. Tichy have … liked him? Could they have been friends?

Marek didn't know. When he came back to the bedroom, the man already was asleep. He still hadn't showered, and the bedroom smelled like it, but Marek didn't care. He climbed into bed and adjusted himself into the little spoon against Mr. Tichy's sticky body. Although Marek was tired, he could have sucked the man again, but Mr. Tichy already was fast asleep and lightly snoring.

Tichy slept far more soundly and peacefully than a man as evil and criminal as he was had any right to, but then again, doing things he had no right to be doing – and getting away with it – was kind of Tichy's specialty. He woke up hot, slightly confused and quite itchy and uncomfortable. He glanced at the alarm clock. It was not even 6:40 a.m. quite yet, but they had gone to sleep ludicrously early. He slipped out of the bed without waking Marek and went to have an extra-long, extra-thorough shower. He washed his hair and brushed his teeth. He made a nice coffee in the mocha pot.

The sun shone brightly outside, another clear but very frosty day. Tichy sipped on his coffee and contemplated what to do next. He and Marek had arrived at a strange new point on their journey, and it felt a bit like a crossroads. He opened the bread bin, but bread that remained from his last shopping trip was beyond stale; tough and hard with the first dots of mold beginning to show. Tichy chucked it, opened the larder, and without even thinking about it, started to whisk together some pancake batter. It would be the sizzling sounds and the intense smell of sweet, frying crepes that woke Marek up. Tichy had also made a cup of hot chocolate, not with cheap powdered cocoa, but melting half a bar of dark chocolate in cream and stirring in a spoonful of sugar and a dash of rum.

Marek was skied out, sexed out, and emotionally and mentally exhausted, and he slept like it. He slept hard – dreamlessly as far as he knew – and virtually right through until morning. It was a good, long, restful sleep for the 12-year-old, and when he awoke, he gave a long, drawn-out, naked, full-body stretch, arms above his head and toes pointing the other way, accompanied by the groaning grunt of a yawning boy as he smelled something delicious coming from the kitchen. For some reason, the boy was absolutely famished. His tummy felt hollow. The last thing he had eaten last night was a big load of Mr. Tichy's cum.

Tichy poked his head into the bedroom.

"Chop, chop, breakfast is ready," he told the stirring youngster. "And it's six fifty-nine," he added meaningfully.

Marek was sitting up, yawning again, as the man entered the bedroom. Six fight-nine. It was time for his morning thing.

Marek padded on bare feet to the bathroom, peed, squatted, and was able to make happen what he needed to make happen, all by 7:03 a.m. He cleaned up and sauntered naked into the kitchen. He felt quite rested, but he gave one additional big yawn for good measure. Rule 4 had reset overnight, and the boy began to contemplate his daily duty and how best to fulfill it.

The breakfast Tichy had concocted was ludicrously luxurious. There were crepes with jam, syrup, and whipped cream, as well as canned peaches. The hot chocolate was so strong and proper that a spoon could almost stand upright in it by itself. The coffee smelled nice in the room.

Tichy smiled at the boy as he entered the kitchen and stepped up to him, gently reaching down to tease his package.

"It was hard work making all this. I'd appreciate if you ate it … hard," he said with a wink as he teased Marek just enough to give him a good erection. Then he nodded.

"Eat, drink, and enjoy. You burned a week's worth of calories in the last two days and we didn't eat that much. You must be ravenous." He went and sat at his usual place at the table to eat, too.

"I'm hungry, sir," he said with a nod and … a bit of smile? Marek was in a good mood.

The food that Mr. Tichy served – good God. Did the man have any idea how opulent it looked to Marek? Back home he'd always had enough to eat, but it never was like this. Mr. Tichy served more good food in one sitting than Marek's mother did in the better part of a month. In Vacenovice, they ate a lot of rabbit, and that was for the meals they were lucky enough to have meat. His aunt and uncle raised rabbits for food and gave Marek's mother one per week. The food was grudgingly given. His relatives made sure to let Marek and his mother know that they were living, in part, on charity.

But this was just magnificent. The man had gotten him hard, and Marek stroked a bit between bites to keep himself that way. His cock was pleasantly aroused, but not close to firing. He remembered the man's promise from yesterday, that if he begged just the right way today, he might be able to get some relief, but he would deal with that later. For now, the crepes were amazing. The food – the entire meal – was amazing. It was better even than what they had eaten in the restaurants, and those meals had been a treat for Marek, too.

"How are you?" asked the man. "Legs? Back?"

"I feel really good, sir," Marek replied. "I mean, my calves, right down here," he said as he slid his hand over his right calf muscle. "And then, kinda, right here," he added, as he pushed out from the table and stood up to show Mr. Tichy the spots where his groin met the inside of his legs, flanking his erect penis. He was sore there, but he also wanted the man to see that he still was erect.

"Hmmm," said Tichy. "We'll take a break today, but you are fit. I love that about you. We'll keep you on a good track. With the right amount of effort, you'll look like a Greek god; you already look like a young hero from some Greco-Roman myth or fable," chuckled the man, eyeing the boy who stood in front of him, proudly showing off that he had kept up his erection.

"Good boy," Tichy acknowledged almost absent-mindedly. "Can you keep that up for me?" he added with a wry smile on his lips.

Marek sat back down and resumed eating. It felt kind of nice and free to be able to stroke his penis and make it feel good basically right in front of the man. He certainly couldn't do that at home! The man's compliments made the boy's heart sing. Marek wouldn't have admitted even to himself how much he worshipped the man, because he didn't even know it himself; that all was in his subconscious, but Tichy's words made him feel good. The man liked his body – even if in truth it was much, much scrawnier than Mr. Tichy's.

He nodded at the man's request. He could keep it up. He would try, for sure. Every 45 seconds or so, his right hand moved in for a little reminder, and that's all his penis seemed to need, at least for now.

As Tichy drank his coffee, he contemplated how to spend this lazy day with no plans, and mercifully, with no punishments looming for Mare. He thought he could have some fun with the kid, and for once Marek might even be game and not a boo-boo-faced spoilsport. At least Tichy hoped so, as echoes of the previous night's magic still reverberated in his brain.

"Do you know what edging is?" he asked the youngster. "Do you know how it works or dare to take a guess?" he added with a smile after a bit of silence.

Marek had been contemplating the best way to bring up the possibility of his own orgasm when the man spoke first. Edging? Like the edge of the cliff face they had peed off of at Kamenac? Edging? The boy racked his brain, but he didn't know what edging was.

"I'm not sure, sir?" he said as he reached down for another little stroke. "Something to- no, I- I don't really know,"

"It's bringing someone really close to cumming, but not letting them cum," Tichy explained. "It creates a very special, intense state of body and mind, especially if you do it repeatedly. It gives you a burning-hot desire that's almost like a sort of dizziness. It creates a tingling tension, a craving, a fire-like hunger. It's fun. And when – or if – you finally get to cum, it tends to be extra special and extra intense."

"I would like to edge you today, several times," the man continued. "Now, for that to be fun for me, you have to play along and try and hold it and resist cumming when I get you very close. You need to fight it, not just sabotage it by letting yourself cum as soon as you get a chance. I need you to be playing honestly and maybe be a little bit afraid of cumming, but for it to be fun for you, we need to change the severity of what happens if you fail. I don't want you terrified and panicking the whole time. It wouldn't be fun if you didn't see it as a game, but as a punishment or pure torture," Tichy added as he downed his coffee.

"So, suggest a punishment for yourself if you cum too soon without permission that doesn't leave you in agony for days afterwards, but that I'll believe you still won't take lightly," the man continued. "I want something that will make you try hard not to come. Something sort of halfway between the old punishment, which isn't at all game-like, and no punishment at all."

Marek was not good at setting punishments for himself. He was not good at that at all. He never truly knew what level of severity the man expected, and he hated to specify something painful. The kid was not good at pain. He didn't like it. He still thought that he had at least partially gotten himself into this mess by wimping out on his initial spanking, even if subsequent disclosures by Tichy had made it clear that Marek had been targeted by the man long before that.

He also knew that he had to think fast. Mr. Tichy was a lot of things, but patient was not one of them. He could go from calm to volcanic in the blink of an eye. He also expected immediate answers when he asked a question, unless he specifically told the boy to think it over before replying.

The punishment for cumming without permission was extreme. Having a whip applied to his genitals was even worse than the cane on the beating scale, surpassed in severity and dread in Marek's mind only by the sack-type punishments that triggered his "it" sensation. This punishment needed to be at least halfway between agonizing and nothing, but Marek wasn't sure what it should be. Could he choose ginger root for and corner time? Cane strokes? What about the slipper? It was to have been his original punishment, although now it seemed like mere child's play. That had been before Marek knew what pain was. Maybe twenty-five with the slipper? Was that enough? Mr. Tichy had taken Radek's slipper to him in their dorm room. He had given him more than 25 then, and it had been excruciating, but Marek had been out of sorts at the time after being suffocated between the mattresses. Maybe it hadn't really been that bad.

"Um, Mr. Tichy?" the boy inquired tentatively. "I'm not trying to get out of it, but could you like, give me some ideas, or like, I mean, kind of … or like an example, or something?" Marek wanted to make sure he was at the right range of severity. He was sure he would be strong enough not to cum while being edged, but he didn't want to make it any worse than it needed to be if he had an accident.

"Nah," replied Tichy with a shake of his head. "That's boring. That's just giving you options again. Let's negotiate. You can always suggest something milder, and I'll make you build on it, expand it, or make it worse somehow if it doesn't seem fair to me. It should be something we can do today, and that you won't really see or feel the consequences of much tomorrow, but something you want to avoid. Like if I simply suggested a light slippering as a trade-off for cumming, you might think that's a fair-enough bargain in exchange for cumming. I want you to really not want to cum, to really try not to cum, unless or until you have permission."

"You can't play if you're not a player," continued Tichy, "but we both know that you can be when you put your mind to it. So, suggest something. We'll work from there. There are no bad ideas. Again, I promise that this is not a trap."

Marek did not get what he had hoped for from the man. Mr. Tichy was going to make him come up with the punishment. He reviewed his options. The sack-style punishments were right out. He would not propose them under any circumstances. That left the beating-type punishments. The whip, the cane, or various other implements. He hated the cane, and it still would hurt tomorrow, so that seemed out. The man already had torpedoed the slippering idea as not harsh enough. Go figure.

Then there was the category of burning substances, like the tiger-balm stuff, or the ginger root, or the fermented ginger root. All of them were exceedingly unpleasant. He kept coming back to corner time, but there was no way the man was going to go for that again.

"Maybe, if I cum, it could be, maybe the ginger root and corner time?" Marek offered uncertainly. "Is that bad enough?"

Tichy shrugged. "Almost, but that's a bit boring. How about fermented ginger root and a biathlon blowjob?" he suggested. "The root stays in your ass until my second cum," he added firmly, but on the inside, the man was smiling. Marek finally was playing. The boy finally was cooperating. In a way, he was doing exactly what Tichy had wanted all along. The fact that Marek didn't seem all gloomy, tense, and mad as he fashioned a punishment for himself suggested that the boy understood that this really was meant to be a game, a fun thing to do, ultimately – at least it would be for Tichy

"Deal?" Tichy persisted. "Remember, it's only if you fail. I want you a bit worried about it, but not frantic. Does a ginger-root biathlon feel like it's in that zone?" he asked, as he noticed that Marek had finished eating. "And are you still hard, even thinking about these things? Stand up and show me."

Two blowjobs with the ginger root in? Marek remembered the very first time he had felt the ginger root way back in Mr. Tichy's office during his first week of wimp punishments. That had been terrible. Awful. It had been the way that the man introduced him to blowjobs. Marek had been so frantic to get the ginger root out of his ass that he had dropped to his knees and sucked the man like a born poof. In that moment, he couldn't have cared less what he was sucking if it would get the man to take the burning root out of his ass.

But two blowjobs might take forever, and the thing with ginger root, as Marek well knew, was that it got worse and worse the longer it was in. Marek wasn't sure how much worse it could get from what he had already experienced, but in a two-blowjob scenario, he knew that he was sure to find out.

He knew that he would have to agree to the man's terms, but the bottom line was, he just couldn't cum while he was being edged. No way, no shape, no how.

"Deal, sir," Marek said. He seemed confident as he stood on the man's command. He still was mostly hard, but not … fully. He had been thinking about things that did not exactly lead to arousal – more like the opposite – and his boyhood had deflated and sagged in the process.

"Good," said Tichy. "Deal. Let's play," he added with a grin as he steered Marek into the bedroom.

Tichy opened the ropes-and-straps drawer and promptly tied Marek wrist to wrist with some rope in between so he didn't get uncomfortable too soon. Then he tied another rope through the boy's bound wrists and tossed it over the ceiling hook, keeping Marek's hands stretched up above his head with a good bit of slack and his elbows at eye-level. He then tied Marek's legs apart to the now-familiar spreader bar. He spread the boy wide, tying one ankle to each end. That had the effect of raising the boy's arms a bit more as he couldn't stand quite as tall with his legs apart. Then he prepared a few other items on his desk, which was situated behind Marek so that the boy couldn't see.

"Rules of the game," he announced with a smile. "You do not cum without permission. Obviously. If you do, it's game over, I'm going to be disappointed and sad, and you'll be up for some fermented ginger root up your pooper and a very long sucking session.

"Once it starts getting to be a bit much, you can beg for permission to cum," the man continued. "You can plead, bargain, and even make promises while you're begging, but be careful when you do, because I'll make sure that you make good on anything you promise."

"If you are about to lose it, you must say so out loud," the man continued. "And if you actually lose, you have to shout out loud, 'I'm cumming!' You cannot quit. Don't bother to beg for the game to end, as that would ruin the fun. Either I'll make you cum or drive you crazy before you do, but we play until I decide it's no longer fun."

"You already know not to tattle, but this next bit, specifically, will be our secret!" warned the man as he slipped a strip of soft flannel over Marek's eyes and tied it off, blindfolding the boy. Then he squatted and slid his lips over the youngster's half-erect shaft before sucking the whole of Marek's cock into his mouth. He took the boy's member down to the hilt before beginning to mold and tease it with his tongue. It was a pleasurable, swirling shock of wet, warm motion that probably would make Marek cum in less than a minute if Tichy kept it up.

Marek felt like he could do this. Back home, when he masturbated, it always was a race. He simply jerked his hand over his cock in a blur until he came. The idea of edging himself never had occurred to the boy. Wasn't the point of jerking off to cum? But here at the internat, there were times when he knew Tichy was prolonging the blowjobs Marek gave him. Marek had assumed that this was out of meanness, but now he wasn't so sure. And then there had been that time with Ludmila. She had edged Marek, scaring the daylights out of him when she took him right up to the cusp of an orgasm before backing away at the last-possible fraction of a second. Marek had been right to worry about cumming that time, as Tichy had taken the bullwhip to his cock not long after that for the same offense, but regardless of how close Ludmila had taken him on that occasion, Marek was pretty sure he could hold it this time. The punishment they had decided on gave him plenty of incentive to do so.

Marek remained tied in position as he listened to the rules of the game. It wasn't Marek's first choice of a game to play today (chess came to mind as a preferred alternative), but since it wasn't his choice, he thought he was okay with it. His dick certainly was going to get a lot of attention, that much was for sure. As the man continued to speak, however, Marek realized that this was not going to be easy. Mr. Tichy made it clear that it was going to last for a while and be difficult. Marek steeled himself, He was going to have to start thinking of a lot of unsavory things, and fast.

The blindfold added a bit to the mystique, and then …

… holy shit! Was Mr. Tichy doing what Marek already damn well knew he was doing? Oh, yes, he absolutely was! Marek was astonished. Mr. Tichy was doing that. The boy couldn't believe it. Mr. Tichy was sucking his cock! The man was doing one of the most degrading, homosexual things Marek could imagine, and he was doing it to Marek instead of the other way around! The world really had been turned upside down with this whole magic thing.

"Oh, wow, sir … when can I start begging?" the boy said, even though he already knew that he couldn't start with that anywhere near this early.

Tichy chuckled around the boy's cock, pulled off, and chuckled some more.

"I wouldn't waste it before at least three separate edges, and I wouldn't get your hopes up that there's something I'd like to hear or have promised to me that'll make me give you permission to cum before you reach six or so," he said before he wrapped his mouth around Marek's stiffy once again. This was fun. The boy was cute, fit, young, and horny, and the man basically was torturing him, or would be, soon, only this time it was pure sweetness.

Tichy licked, sucked, tongued the boy's rigid shaft. He could just barely fit the whole of Marek's cock inside his mouth without it really bothering him. It reached the back of his mouth, but if he kept the angle right, it didn't make him gag. He went on until Marek's cock twitched inside his mouth for the first time, then he slowed down a little. He knew a fair bit about orgasms and was determined to bring the boy quite close to one before he pulled off, but he kept his ears open. If Marek told him that he basically was there, Tichy was going to listen at least the first few times so as not to ruin the game prematurely.

Marek already was reassessing his odds of avoiding the ginger root, lowering his chances at success dramatically as the man sucked his penis. Mr. Tichy simply was way better at this than Ludmila had been. His mouth felt amazing on the boy's cock and his tongue, too. He was grateful when the man pulled off to answer his question because Marek quite seriously thought he could lose the game inside of the first minute. The boy knew that if that had happened, Mr. Tichy would not be happy. It had taken them considerably longer than that just to set the game up and prepare to play it.

The boy wished he could see Mr. Tichy's mouth around his cock. He knew it was there, but he simply could not conjure up the image in his mind's eye. On one level, he knew that the man was a poof, but on another level, he couldn't really wrap his mind around the fact that the strong, fit, handsome man really was a homosexual. Tichy being a poof did not fit Marek's notion of manliness, so he subconsciously rejected the idea. In his mind, Tichy was an opportunistic non-poof who simply liked to be pleasured to orgasms by the boys under his control. That was how it all aligned in the boy's brain.

Marek thought about football. He thought about the sack. He thought about the ginger root. He thought about anything and everything except the fucking god-like pleasure emanating from his loins. Oh, did this feel good. This was better than jerking off. It was so, so much better than jerking off. His cock twitched, and Marek involuntarily moaned. How close was he supposed to get before he warned the man?

Tichy seemed to think that the answer to that question was dangerously close. He took the boy close enough that if Marek clenched a few times and relaxed, he probably could have ended up squirting into the man's mouth – an offense for which the boy would have been punished well beyond some fermented ginger root, that was for sure. Tichy carefully slipped off the boy's cock before it got to that point as soon as the pulses in Marek's cock reached any semblance of regularity, but it was close. The concept of edging didn't really need any more explaining than that, plain and simple. Tichy had driven the boy almost to the point of cumming, to a point where the only natural, logical outcome was to cum, a point where Marek's body, mind, and soul all were ready to cum and shoot, and then he simply had withdrawn with a teasing smile that the blindfolded boy, of course, couldn't see.

"Count 'em," the man commanded. "I want to hear it out loud every time you get close or think you're starting to cum. I want you to say it out loud," commanded the man.

Even blindfolded and distracted, Marek could tell the man was in a very good mood. All of this, of course, was new to the 12-year-old. Bound, naked, and blindfolded, his young cock had never felt this good and never been this hard. Marek floated on it, unable to see as his cock became the center of his universe. The sensation was amazing, but in the back of his mind – no, the front – he also knew that he could not, under any circumstances, cum. The punishment for cumming was very real, so the boy danced with the Devil as he simultaneously loved and hated the sensation building in his loins.

His cock was twitching with need as the man pulled off. Marek clenched his groin muscles hard, arching his erection skyward as he willed the sensations he had just experienced to come to a screeching halt. His penis quivered and glistened from the man's attentions. Marek thought that if he humped his hips and simulated thrusting, he might have been able to cum without any further contact.

So that was an edge. Wow.

"One, sir," came his voice. He sounded uncertain and a bit surprised, but willing.

Tichy had explored Marek's fine young body before during punishments and humiliations, but there always had been a tension of anger and hatred between them then that had inhibited the man's enjoyment of the act. He felt far more relaxed as he reexamined the boy's body now. He touched the kid's legs and feet, kissing the insides of his knees. He licked over the child's coccyx and ran his tongue slowly up the boy's spine, feeling boyishly pleased when Marek shuddered in helpless pleasure, a crop of goosebumps arising on his skin despite the warmth of the room.

As the man went to work on his body, kissing, licking, and tonguing, Marek felt at peace. He was helplessly floating with this, and his eyes would have been closed even had he not been blindfolded. He gave himself completely to the man. He trusted the man not to hurt him but to keep doing what he was doing that not only felt so good but made him feel … loved. The man simply could not do what he was doing out of hatred. It was too gentle, too intimate, and too personal to be born of hate. Marek floated on the wondrous wave of it. He gave into it, submitting to it fully. He gave his body to the man trustingly, almost adoringly.

Tichy stood up and moved slowly around the boy, having fun, and feeling not even the least bit self-conscious as he circled the helpless boy like a cat toying with a mouse, planting a kiss here and another kiss there. He ran his fingers over the side of the boy's ribcage, then dragged them just above his bellybutton. He moved both hands slowly up the boy's body to a point just below his armpits. He could have tickled the boy unmercifully if he had wanted to, but he was going for a lighter touch today that tantalized but didn't trigger a tickling sensation.

His mouth found Marek's nipples. He gave them a few licks each to tenderize and sensitize them before grazing his upper teeth over first one and then the other. He licked the left one sensuously, bringing the child goosepimples there, and then softly bit it – hard enough to hurt but only a little bit, and the pleasure of the sensation probably still made up for what little pain there was. Marek drew in a shivery breath as he felt the man's teeth, but his full trust was there and given. He knew that the man would not hurt him and even if he did, it would not be hatred that motivated his actions. They were one in this moment, as the boy stood with his legs forcibly spread, motionless, soundless, and trusting. His cock remained nail hard. He flexed it with groin muscles alone. It had never felt so alive. Marek felt the same way. This was spiritual.

Tichy went down on the boy again, his mouth enveloping Marek's quivering cock. After a few deep, tight sucks, he began to poke and tease Marek's cock by swirling his tongue around in a vortex of sensation. He brought the boy to the edge much faster this time and took more of a risk.

Marek had to warn him that he was close, and Tichy pulled off just a few heartbeats away from the point of no return; if Marek wasn't clenching and holding back, he would have cum.

"Two," the boy gasped as he clenched and fought the lava rising in his loins. His member glistened and flinched as he fought back the tide. He had no concept of time. Time simply didn't matter.

Tichy rose and gripped Marek's hair, tilting the boy's blindfolded head back. He kissed, licked, and nibbled the front and sides of the boy's exposed throat for several long minutes. He was careful not the give the boy a hickey, even though he was tempted to as he sucked the skin into his mouth and bit down just a little bit. He added some more teeth grazing, licking, and teasing, then moved on to the boy's ears for a short session of nibbling, tonguing, and kissing. By then he was sure Marek would have come down from his second edge, so he returned his attention to the boy's needy cock.

This time, Tichy used only his tongue tip and lips to tease the boy's penis. He also worked more slowly, swirling his tongue, and licking sensuously to bring the boy to the same twitching state as before, before withdrawing once again and leaving Marek needy and unsatisfied. Tichy knew that by now, the successive edges were cumulating, building a deeper need and frustration in the boy, and possibly beginning to hurt a little bit as Marek's balls began to ache with need.

Marek gave himself body and soul to the man. He floated on it, on the sensations, on the man's touch and the feel of his lips and tongue on his body, never knowing where Mr. Tichy might next turn his attention. Everything the man did felt good. Everywhere he touched felt alive. Marek's cock never once so much as deviated from its crystal-hard state. It remained the center of his being no matter whether the man was touching or ignoring it. Marek flexed it with his groin muscles. For some reason, he wanted to feel tired there, tired from all the humping and clenching.

When Mr. Tichy returned to his cock, it was only mere seconds before the boy felt the lava flow beginning to churn in his balls. He let it build for a moment, reveling in the pleasure of it almost a bit too long, almost a bit too dangerously close, before he warned the man in a gasping voice. His cock flinched of its own volition as the sudden cold air blanketed it. The boy could feel it spasming and he clenched down and stuffed the lava back into his balls. He kept on clenching even after the crisis had passed, sending the lava as far away as he could so that he could enjoy the sensation of the man's mouth on his cock that much longer the next time.

"Three, sir," he remembered to say after a delay.

Tichy said nothing but stood up and surprised Marek with a deep, long, and sensuous mouth-on-mouth kiss. Tichy tasted of black coffee and cigarette smoke and his face was smooth and clean-shaven as he snogged the willing, needy youngster. When he broke the kiss, he gave the boy's butt a light tap. He moved away, and when he returned it was to tease inside the boy's butthole with a lubed finger, but not his prostate – Tichy went nowhere near so deep – just gently, slowly, and patiently teasing the child's sensitive puckered starfish with his touch.

Marek wanted to cum now. The sensation was amazing, incredible, and tantalizing, but Marek wanted to spray his cum against the wall and groan with the sheer, animalistic energy of it. His balls literally ached now. They had endured so much clenching. The boy gave himself to the kiss. He didn't care what it was or what it made him. His cock flinched with need as the man prodded at his opening. He sighed. He had not known there were this many places on his body to touch, yet Mr. Tichy methodically was finding and touching all of them.

Tichy knew Marek had come very close on the third go, so he spent a much longer time toying with Marek's butthole, taint, and balls this time, giving Marek longer than usual to cool off. Of course, although the boy's cock-focused, squirt-now need was given a chance to abate somewhat, his overall arousal and sensitivity was on the rise. On some level, it was simple biology, and Tichy had mastered the art of it and was doing it now in an artful, immersive, and loving way, unlike ever before.

The boy was being edged but he was on edge, too. His balls seemed to glow with need. His tummy was tensed and hard as the man's seemingly random touches began to play with the boy's mind. He tried to combat the disorientation by anticipating where the man would touch next on his body, but he found that he could not. The expectation of the man's touch combined with the randomness of it contributed to a floating, cock-centered, out-of-body experience for the boy. His body was not his own. It belonged to Stanislav Tichy, who also would decide if the boy would be allowed to cum.

For the fourth go, Tichy heavily lubricated his hands with what he normally used as anal lube and grabbed the boy's cock with one hand and planted his palm over Marek's glans with the other. He then turned and twisted his top hand with a good grip on. It was a shock of sensation, a complete bolt of overstimulation. He watched very carefully for signs of an approaching orgasm; it took just a few seconds before he saw Marek really struggling with the overwhelming sensation. In addition to almost coming, it also felt to the boy like he needed to piss and shake from the tickling sensation and stimulation overload. Boys' cocks were not made to have very nearly every nerve ending in the glans intensely and firmly stimulated all at once continually for tens of seconds at a time.

Marek expected to feel the man's mouth on his cock for round four, but instead he felt the man's hand, gripping, grasping, holding, and then … a massive tickling sensation, all at once, everywhere across the boy's sensitive cockhead. No shaft stimulation, just the head, in a powerful, hyper-intense flood of sensation where there had been none a moment before. It was too much. It was over-stimulating, and Marek rocked his hips back the few inches he could.

"Ohhhh, uhhhhh," he gasped, as his cockhead erupted in a kaleidoscope of sensations, mostly of the tickling variety, but coupled with a profound need to urinate. It was too much. Too much. He couldn't even tell if he was close to coming because the other sensations drowned out the signals from his balls. Marek sensed danger. Could he cum from cockhead stimulation alone? He didn't know. He moaned with the intensity of it.

Tichy popped his hands off almost like he'd done a magic trick as soon as he realized he had come as close as he could without messing this up. It was like another shock; from far too much sensation to none in the span of a quarter second. He gave Marek half a minute to absorb that before he touched the boy again.

Marek sighed with relief. That had been too much. Too intense. He flexed his cock to test it. He hadn't cum. He could feel the ache and need return as the other sensations diminished and fell off one by one.

"Ohhh," he gasped. He wasn't sure if that one even counted, but it seemed like it did. "Four, sir," he said, as he panted.

When Tichy next touched the boy, his arms were warm. Too warm. Unnaturally, surprisingly, almost painfully warm, and they were dripping, but not with water. Tichy's hand ran up Marek's side from the outside of the boy's thigh all the way his hip, chest, armpit, and arm, all the way up to his elbow, where it was too bent to continue the motion. He did it again on the other side, then used both hands. His hands were slick, gliding too warmly, too easily over the boy's skin. The man must have somehow warmed up his hands and coated them with even warmer oil. Gliding motion after gliding motion, he covered Marek in that oil. From the tops of the boy's feet all the way to his neck. It was a different sensation from before. It was slick, smooth, and warm.

Each time there was a pause, the man returned with more oil and more warmth, using just enough so that Marek wasn't dripping, but he kept at it until the boy was glistening all over. It was easy now to slide and glide all over his body in a very sensual way. Tichy's palms drifted this way and then, up, down, over Marek's shoulder and shoulder-blades, across his back, butt, thighs, calves, knees, hips, belly, and chest, on and on, sometimes in firmer, shorter strokes but mostly in long, languid wave-like strokes that flowed from one body part to another. The man's hands went down and up, diagonally, across and over.

Then there was a pause and then Tichy's hand appeared out of an unseen nowhere and firmly gripped Marek's cock. It was dripping with oil, and so hot that initially it almost hurt, as he began unhurriedly to squeeze and stroke the boy's member. The feeling of it, with this new, slicker, easier lube was very different from the previous build-up. And it was much, much slower, too, like the man was alternating styles on purpose, which he was.

Marek sighed as he gave himself over to the oil treatment. It felt so good, like a warm massage. It was a warm, naked, sensuous, rock-hard-erection massage, complete with balls that ached with need. His body felt slippery and sexy even to him, and he wasn't the one running his hands over it. The oil coated him like a layer of insulation, feeling almost warm. He could smell it. The man's touch was fluid, yet everywhere. Mr. Tichy's touch was unpredictable. Marek floated on it. He reveled in it. He never had experienced anything like this before.

He longed for the man's hand to return to his cock covered with slippery goodness, and when it did, Marek moaned with pleasure and need. He wanted to cum right now, but the man's touch was slow, languid, and massaging rather than highly stimulating. Marek craved more stimulation. He flexed his groin muscles, making his cock quiver in the man's hand, hinting and asking for more.

Tichy slowly stroked him.

"Don't forget the rules of the game!" he warned the boy. "Don't forget the game itself," he chuckled, even as he smoothly, almost lazily wanked the boy. He started adding some sideways strokes, moving his hand like the speedometer gauge of an accelerating car. Whoosh over. Stroke up, stroke down, whoosh over again. He ran the oily pad of his thumb over the boy's piss-slit. And again. And again after that. It was just the perfect amount of stimulation now, not too much, and not too little. It was just a steady, firm build-up to make Marek's balls boil.

His other hand found Marek's previously played with pucker and slid over it, not even teasingly, barely penetrating it now, just sliding over it, rubbing it in an oily, slick sort of way.

To Marek, the oil seemed to be everywhere, lubricating, sensualizing even the most innocent touch. The man's hand felt so good. It was only after Mr. Tichy spoke that Marek remembered the other part of it. The game. The part where he could beg the man to cum. He had surpassed three already. This was five.

"Please, sir, please let me cum," he begged the man. "Just like that only … faster. Uhhhhhhhh."

What could he offer the man in return? He could offer to make him feel very, very good using the techniques that he knew the man liked most of all.

"I- I want to lick your feet," the boy begged. "I want to suck your toes. I want to lick your balls and taste your cock, Mr. Tichy. I want to do it slow, super slow, and swallow at the bottom while I rub your balls. I want to be your slutpuppy, Mr. Tichy – after you let me cum."

Tichy smiled. Now they were playing. "Mhmmmm. Nice. I do like my feet licked. Especially by a willing, eager slutpuppy who will swallow up my cock right after and suck it oh-so-slowly," he said with obvious amusement as he continued to stroke the boy at an unchanged pace.

"But, no, you can't cum. Not this time. This one will be an edge. You will clench and hold. You will not cum," decided Tichy. He stroked on.

"Warn me in time," he warned the boy again. "Remember the rules. Remember the punishment if you fail me!" He didn't just say "fail," it was "fail me," and with an emphasis on the "me" part. If Marek failed, he wasn't going to fail some abstract rule, process, or project. He was going to fail and disappoint this new Mr. Tichy who was touching him oh, so sweetly and oh, so amazingly.

Marek was hopeful. He was hopeful and needy. He wasn't sure of the rules – how much begging it would take, how many more edges Mr. Tichy had in mind, or even whether he would be allowed to cum. The man seemed happy with his first attempt, which was good, but he wasn't allowed to cum, and now he would have to clench the lava tide back once again.

The man's squeezing, tantalizing, lubricated hand continued to pleasure the boy, building him up again, slowly this time, with the inevitability of a glacier. It started to feel very, very good. The oil made it soooo nice – nicer, even, than the man's mouth. For a moment, Marek was tempted to fail. But he braced and clenched, again perhaps a moment too late.

"Close … really close!" he gasped, as his toes clenched, and his cock started to spasm with orgasm. He fought it with everything he had, grunting, and moaning. He was so, so close …

Tichy let go completely as soon as Marek huffed the first 'close'; he knew they were playing with fire and didn't want to mess up their fun, not with such a clear warning. He didn't want Marek to fail. He especially didn't want to make him fail, because that might leave them both feeling annoyed and miserable. He watched Marek's cock twitch, watched him clamp down and clench with all his might and push back the beginnings of an orgasm.

"Good boy!" Tichy praised him. "Such a good boy. My sweet, sweet, amazing slutpuppy!"

Tichy loved this game, and now they would be able to go another round. If he were playing with another adult, he'd have to allow for those moments when the victim's cock went limp between edging attempts, but there was no such problem with a boy of Marek's age. The boy had been continually nail-hard and at least mostly erect from the start of breakfast, well over an hour ago now.

Marek clenched his way down from the abyss. That had been close. The only time he had ever been closer and managed to pull back from the brink was when Ludmila had sucked him in the laundry room. He had felt his balls let go that time even as he clenched in terror at the thought of what Mr. Tichy would do to him. Oddly, with this, he wasn't scared. He knew what the punishment for failure would be, but he wasn't afraid of that so much as he didn't want to fail at the game. He wanted to cum only with permission – guilt-free, and with the man's approval.

"Five, sir," he said in a relieved voice when he was sure that number five was in the books.

The man praised him, and Marek felt good. This game really was a game. It was fun for him. It seemed to be fun for the man.

Suddenly, something bristly and slightly scratchy touched Marek's back. Tichy was toying with a brush; not a floor-brush, but not a soft clothes brush, either. Then he switched to something rubbery with little buds or spots on it. It was hard to tell what it was, but it had just the right amount of grip on the boy's skin to provide a new, rather pleasant dragging sensation. Tichy softly scratched Marek's back, chest, and belly, then waited for the boy to beg some more. Or was his slutpuppy going to be silent until he grabbed his cock again? Perhaps the boy was that confident in his begging skills. Tichy chuckled softly, straight into Marek's ear, then licked it.

Marek felt the odd, massaging sensation on his back. It felt nice, even a little bracing, but it was his somewhere else that he wanted it to touch. His cock flexed as he clenched his groin muscles. The boy's balls ached with need.

"Please, Mr. Tichy," he pleaded. "I want to make you feel sooooo good. I want to lick and suck you everywhere, but I can't until you let me cum. Please let your slutpuppy cum so I can make you feel good, Mr. Tichy. I can't do it until you untie me. And I need to cum before you do."

Tichy listened. He slipped on a coarse glove of some sort, and when he touched the boy again, his hand was cold. It was a shock after all that warmth, and it took Marek's skin and brain a moment to realize what it was. It felt like rounded wire-mesh, almost like a chainmail glove. It was an eerie sensation, weird and stimulating, but entirely painless. Marek felt like he was experiencing every touch sensation that there ever was. It was such a strange sensation, but also so neglectful of his cock. Marek wanted to cum. His balls ached with need. His cock had been erect for so long that it was becoming painful.

Tichy removed the glove, stood up, and massaged the boy's shoulders.

"Can you do thumbs up for me with both hands?" he asked. "Just checking for circulation," he added matter-of-factly. "Good," he added as the boy gave the sign.

There was another pumping sound. A cool, oily palm pressed Marek's cock against his belly.

"You really want to make me feel good, slutpuppy?" Tichy asked. The man was in his element. This game, along with what had happened yesterday, really was a game-changer, across fields.

Marek did want to make the man feel good, so he nodded in the affirmative.

"Yes, sir," he replied in a whispered voice.

"What if I told you," said Tichy as the hand over Marek's cock just rested there, feeling oily, warm, and soft "that the one thing I want most right now is to feel proud of you. I want you to edge yourself for me. This time all by yourself. I'll keep my hand there. You'll hump into it. And you'll stop just in time. You'll be in charge. You'll edge yourself. Then you can beg some more, and maybe that'll be enough for today, but I want you to do that for me first. Go on!"

The man wanted to be proud of him? The emotion hit Marek like a tidal wave. Mr. Tichy wanted to feel proud of him? The boy's lower lip quivered as his blindfolded eyes filled with tears. Proud of him, a boy from Moravia who shouldn't even be at the school? The man didn't even like him; Mr. Tichy didn't see any worth in Marek Hurta. Even if he didn't hate him, there was nothing to be proud of, was there?

The boy felt silly. Why was he crying? This was just a game, but you didn't feel proud of someone you didn't like. It wasn't possible. Those two concepts could not coexist. If you didn't like someone, you didn't care what they accomplished, and you never would feel proud of what they did. The most you ever could give was grudging respect, but Mr. Tichy had used the word proud. He had emphasized that word among the others. Marek felt light-headed. Did the man see worth in him? In him?

Marek was determined to edge himself properly. He would do it without cheating and he would not fail, and he would do it fairly and honestly within the rules of the game. He began to hump the man's hand, rhythmically and patiently. He would do this and control it and the man would be proud of him.

"No cheating," emphasized Tichy. "You're in control, but I want you to take yourself as close as you feel you can. Don't go easy on yourself, but you'll also most definitely not cum, because you can stop anytime. I won't move. You're fully responsible for this one, and if you give yourself a nice, good edge, I'll be very pleased, happy, and very proud of you," Tichy whispered as he planted a kiss on Marek's sweaty brow.

"Show me what you've got," he said, as he held his palm with his wrist up and his fingers down, the center of it pressed against Marek's glans so as the boy humped, he was sliding his penis the full, oiled length of it.

"Give yourself a nice, close edge, Marek," encouraged the man. "I'll be able to tell, and I'll be disappointed if you chicken out far too early. You'll do this right, and you'll do this well, even if your cock hurts a bit, even if your balls ache, and even if you really don't want to stop. You will stop, for me."

There was no way Marek was going to cheat. No way. He would not feel proud if he did, and he would not make Mr. Tichy feel proud of him. He was going to take himself right to the edge, to the very edge, and pull it back and make Mr. Tichy feel proud of him. He would not chicken out. He would not disappoint, not this time, but he also would not rush. He needed a slow build up for what he had planned. He intended to get Ludmila-close and show the man how much control he had. That was how close he was going to go. He had done it before – Ludmila-close, where the orgasm was already starting before he clamped it down and stopped it.

Rhythmically, slowly, he fucked himself against the man's hand as his balls started to unlimber once again for the fire alarm that always seemed to be false.

"Good boy, good boy," Tichy kept repeating, almost like a mantra, as Marek willingly humped his hand.

Lost in his own thoughts, Tichy wondered whether maybe he should have taken a softer approach with the kid from the start, but if he had, would they be here, doing this, in this sort of a situation, with this dynamic? If he had been subtler with his approach and had waited for some semblance of willingness on the boy's part, would he ever have gotten it? Tichy didn't know, and he had no real regrets because this was happening now, and he was loving it. He could feel the boy's cock twitch against his palm.

"Careful now!" he whispered. "Edge yourself, but don't cum!" He could see and sense that Marek was obediently, diligently trying, and it seemed not just trying to obey for once but trying to impress. He hoped that the boy had a good enough idea of how close was too close, but if he came during this round, he couldn't possibly blame his tormentor for taking it too far despite a warning.

The man kept his hand in place, motionless, and watched Marek's expression despite the bandana. It was quite a sight to behold; the focused effort mixed with far-too-much pleasure looked just delicious on the part of the young boy's face that could be seen below the blindfold.

Marek had a plan. He knew exactly what he was going to do. He would be careful, yes, but at the same time, he would take himself right up to the edge with no cheating or chickening out. He didn't know exactly how the man would know how close he took himself, but Mr. Tichy knew everything, and somehow the boy knew that he would know this, too. The man would feel proud when he saw how close Marek had come. He would not feel cheated. He would not feel that the boy had chickened out. He would feel proud, and Marek confidently would call out "Six, sir," in a slightly tired voice, because he would be tired, and Mr. Tichy would know that, too.

Marek humped the man's hand, slid against it, and allowed his balls to begin the process that he so much wanted to complete but wouldn't let himself right now. He was going to get Ludmila-close. He might even think of the girl as he was backing away from the edge.

Closer, closer, closer, closer. He could feel it now. It was starting. There was a rumbling deep in his loins and, and the lava was rising. He humped on, bringing himself Ludmila-close. Marek continued to hump Mr. Tichy's hand, bringing himself closer and closer, then one more time …

Suddenly, the boy found himself clamping and clenching. He gritted his teeth. The tip of his cock was tingling. The whole shaft seemed to have become electrified.

"Close," he gasped. He was Ludmila-close. He fought it back from the edge with all his effort – every last bit of effort and energy that he could muster – but it kept coming. Despite the biggest clench a 12-year-old boy had ever clenched in the history of clenches, it just drilled through and kept going, up, up, up, and … out. Not shooting. Oozing through the clench, then dribbling some more as the boy's cockhead pulsed unsatisfyingly.

Marek whimpered in misery as he clenched so hard his balls threatened to retract into his brain, but he could feel it happening. He could feel failure oozing out of the tip of his cock in a very condescending, unfulfilling, taunting kind of way. He felt very, very ashamed of what he had done.

"Oh," said Tichy. It was all he said, but his voice sounded surprised with a sad little edge to it that would have been hard to fake. He removed his cum-coated hand and for a moment, there was nothing; there were no words, no sensation. Then he wiped his hand in a hurry and pulled Marek's blindfold off and the ropes around his ankles and bars. They were all safety knots, with the string folded onto itself, so Marek was free in about four tugs in as many seconds.

Marek knew he had failed as soon as the first, wretched ooze of liquid left his cockhead. He didn't need to see it to know. Ludmila-close had proven to be too close. Why it had worked then and not now was a mystery to the boy, but that didn't matter. He hadn't been as strong as he had thought he could be. He hadn't been able to pull himself back from the very precipice of an orgasm as he had thought he would.

Once Marek was untied, Tichy pulled the boy into a hug. By that time, his usual cocky smile, albeit a bit softer, was back on his lips, but unlike usual, there was no shouting, berating, and no immediate pain for Marek's failure. The man simply grabbed the boy and pulled him close. Then he stepped back, sat on the bed, and made Marek kneel in front of him, stroking his hair and then tugging on it to make Marek look up into his eyes.

He could hear the disappointment in the man's voice. There was no anger, but they both knew that Marek had failed. The silence was deafening as the man embraced the boy. Marek was tired and full of a profound sense of failure, but he knelt and looked up on the man's command. Disappointment, embarrassment, and shame were etched on his face.

"I've seen that happen before," Tichy said, "and, even though you lost, as far as the rules of our game go, it's at least a draw in terms of my little challenge there. I'm still quite proud of you. That there is called a ruined orgasm, and any boy your age I know wouldn't be able to resist the urge to hump against my hand some more to give himself a proper one if they got that far."

"Also, it proves that you're finally a player," Tichy continued. "You went as far as you dared and took a risk, and I can respect that. You knew the price – well, the punishment – for failure, and it was a game well-played. I hope you're not left feeling too sad?" asked the man as he gently poked the tip of Marek's nose. "Hmmm?" he added as he ruffled Marek's hair and pulled the boy into another hug.

"If you stay brave for me, and willing, maybe you'll win the next game," continued Tichy. "Stay at it and you'll probably succeed 100%, in the next challenge. Now, how about a glass of water, and maybe a shower? You're all oily," chucked the man, but he didn't release Marek from the hug quite yet.

The man was being kind, and Marek appreciated that, but the boy knew that he had missed the opportunity to make him proud. Mr. Tichy had said that he was quite proud, but it was like Marek had come in 4th place in a race. It was that kind of proud. Marek felt sad, but not about the punishment. He didn't care about the punishment. He was sad for failing. He was disappointed for the opportunity lost.

"I'm not sad about the punishment, sir," he said. "And I'll still do those things I promised. His tone was morose.

He nodded at the idea of a drink, and the shower would be ok, too.

"Yeah, I know you're not sad about the punishment," said Tichy. "I know you well enough by now. You're sad that you didn't make it, that you didn't win. You really wanted to make me proud, and I honestly appreciate that. Now, go get yourself a drink. Take a shower. Get that gloomy frown off your face. I want my slutpuppy back in twenty minutes tops, in a decent form! Don't be a sore loser!" Tichy let him go and ruffled his hair again.

"You tried," the man emphasized once again. "If it makes any difference, I don't have even the slightest bit of doubt in my mind that you didn't do that on purpose. You tried, and you tried hard. You can become better at it with practice, but you need to get over this one and get back on the horse. You played the game well, and if you have a positive attitude, next time will go even better.

"Now, go," he said as he helped the boy up and tapped his butt gently. It looked like Marek needed some time to sort himself out and get over the disappointment of his failure.

To Be Continued