Message-ID: <33544asstr$1006146603@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
Return-Path: <news@google.com>
X-Original-Path: not-for-mail
From: worthlesspainslut@hotmail.com (e. wolf)
X-Original-Message-ID: <f77c470c.0111181828.325e9ed2@posting.google.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
NNTP-Posting-Date: 19 Nov 2001 02:28:58 GMT
X-ASSTR-Arrival-Date: 18 Nov 2001 18:28:58 -0800
Subject: {ASSM} Jazz's Toys Part Three: Birthday Presents (MM/ff, nc, torture, rape, brutal)
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 00:10:03 -0500
Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail
Approved: <assm@asstr-mirror.org>
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d
X-Archived-At: <URL:http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/Year2001/33544>
X-Moderator-Contact: ASSTR ASSM moderation <story-ckought69@hotmail.com>
X-Story-Submission: <ckought69@hotmail.com>
X-Moderator-ID: hecate, dennyw

Disclaimer: Under-18's and people who aren't supposed to be reading
this should go somewhere else. The author thinks anyone who wants to
do stuff like this in real life should be under the care of a
psychiatrist. This is a work of fiction.

Jazz's Toys Part Three: Birthday Presents
(MM/ff, nc, torture, rape, brutal)

by e. wolf

"Sisters," Mungo said for about the hundredth time. "You never got
sisters before!"
Jazz nodded and turned the car off the highway on the road to Mungo's
farm.
"Yeah, I know." He smiled slightly. "This should be fun."
He pulled the car right into the barn and got out to slide the door
closed before he opened the trunk. The nearest neighbours were half a
mile away at least, but they didn't share Jazz's proclivities, as far
as he knew, and he wanted to keep his little hobby away from prying
eyes.
Jazz had never taken Mungo `shopping' with him before - he preferred
picking out his own toys - but it was Mungo's birthday and he thought
he'd do something special for his favourite cousin.
Mungo climbed out the passenger seat of the car, his hand down the
front of his sweat pants, already stroking his half-hard cock as Jazz
unloaded the trunk. The entire car heaved as he got out, the bulk of
his seven-foot, four-hundred pound frame making the frame seem to
groan with relief as he stood.
The girls weren't stunningly gorgeous but Mungo didn't seem to care -
he knew they'd be substantially less pretty by the time he and Jazz
were done with them anyway, so it didn't much matter how they started
out.
Jazz had encased both girls in the head-to-toe canvas bags he kept in
the car for his 'shopping' expeditions, and as he pulled the first one
out of the trunk the bundle squirmed and kicked like an angry Mexican
Jumping Bean. He dropped it on the hard-packed dirt floor of the barn
and gave it a kick somewhere around the midriff.
"Quit squirming," he snarled. The girl let out a whimper and was
still. It was hard to tell which was which when the two of them were
in the bags, but Jazz thought this must be the older one. The bag
seemed a little bigger, and the older one had been feisty. She'd been
screaming as Jazz loaded her into the trunk: `Leave my sister alone!
You fucking bastard, I'll kill you!'
Mungo was thrilled about the younger one - she was fifteen but looked
younger, with tiny just-budding tits and tiny, narrow hips - but Jazz
was particularly looking forward to breaking the older one's spirit.
They'd nabbed the girls on their way to school, the exclusive St.
Mulberry's Preparatory Academy, and there was something about teaching
an upper-class cunt her place that made Jazz throb.
Jazz pulled out his hunting knife and cut open the end of the bag. The
girl had been working at the fabric with her fingernails, but the
heavy canvas had barely budged. Her nails, on the other hand, were
ragged and several of them were bleeding. She looked up at Jazz, the
first real look she'd had at his face since they'd nabbed her from
behind, and she snarled at him with indignation.
"I don't know what makes you think you'll get away with this, you sick
bastard," she spat at him.
Jazz smiled and leaned in for a kiss. The girl was so startled it took
her a second to fight him, pushing at him with her bound hands and
sputtering with rage.
"What makes me think I'll get away with this?" he said with a look of
mild interest. "Well, I always have before."
That shocked the girl into silence for a moment, and Jazz looked over
at Mungo, who was taking the other bag out of the trunk.
"What are we gonna do first, Birthday Boy?" he asked. "You wanna whip
this one?"
"Nah, I'm gonna fuck the little one," Mungo said, nearly drooling as
he tore into the bag. The girl inside was tiny, not even five feet
tall with dark hair and bright green eyes that were brimming with
tears as the sadistic giant began to untie her.
"No, please, stop," she whimpered. "I'm a virgin, please, I'm saving
myself."
"For what? A special occasion?" Mungo grinned, showing off gaps where
several of his teeth should have been. "It's my birthday, and I can't
think of a more special occasion than that."
Jazz smiled at that. He always enjoyed watching Mungo shoving his
monstrous prick into a girl's tight hole.
"Hang on a sec," Jazz told his cousin. "Let me hang this one up while
we wait. I want to make her watch." He lifted the girl off the ground
by her bound hands and carried her, still struggling and trying to
kick him, to a hook about eight feet off the ground. He hung her by
the wrists, dangling in the middle of the barn with all her weight
concentrated on her wrists and shoulders.
"You leave her alone," the older girl said, thrashing and sobbing.
"Hurt me if you want to, but leave her alone!"
Jazz frowned, genuinely puzzled.
"Why would I leave her alone?" he said. "I want to hurt both of you.
If I only wanted to hurt one bitch, I would have only taken one."
Again, the girl was at a loss for words, sobbing silently and trying
to free herself as Mungo began to tear her younger sister's clothes
from her body.
The tiny girl was barely able even to struggle as Mungo pinned her
wrists easily over her head with one of his massive hands. He tore off
her school blouse and kilt, then shredded her bra and panties, leaving
her in just her knee socks and patent leather shoes as he easily
spread her legs with his knee.
"This is gonna feel so good," he said, taking his enormous cock out of
his pants and showing it to the girl. "I mean, it's gonna feel good
for me. It's not gonna feel good for you at all." And he grinned,
seizing the girl's legs and bending them back toward her chest. He was
almost ready to cum before he even touched her, but managed to recover
his composure as he lined his huge organ up against her tiny virgin
slit.
"No! Please, mister, please, you'll hurt me too much, I - owww!"
Her pleas turned to a long, loud howl of agony as Mungo sank the first
few inches of his cock into her dry slit. He paused, a hungry grin on
his face as he leaned down to take the girl's tiny breasts into his
mouth, sucking and slurping as she sobbed, mourning the loss of her
maidenhood and wailing in pain as her tender flesh grew accustomed to
the huge intruder.
Mungo didn't linger long, though, before he began to fuck the girl in
earnest, rearing back to drive his massive purple cock into her tight
hole. She threw her head back and howled like a hurt puppy, incoherent
with pain as Mungo bottomed out against her cervix with each thrust.
After just a few minutes he let out a howl of his own and spewed cum
into her torn hole.
Mungo pulled out and knelt over the girl, slapping her tear-streaked
face with his softening cock.
"Clean it off," he said, and shoved it in her mouth. "C'mon, girly,
lick it like a lollipop. Candy for you."
The girl gagged and tried to turn her head away, but Mungo gripped her
curly black hair and held it fast. After a few seconds she opened her
mouth slightly and let her tongue creep out. Mungo wiped his
blood-and-cum smeared cock across her lips and tongue, slapping her
face with it when she wouldn't lick him. Finally she got the idea and
wrapped her lips around the head of her rapist's massive cock. It
barely fit in her tiny mouth, and the sight of her trying to work it
deeper to get all the cum off made Mungo began to get hard again. He
began to thrust his hips into her mouth, moaning with pleasure as the
girl choked and gagged on his large organ.
Jazz stood by and watched as the girl tried to get Mungo's cock deeper
into his mouth, her nose beginning to run as she sobbed and choked on
the intruder in her throat. Jazz reached down the front of his own
pants, feeling his own cock beginning to get hard. He turned his
attention to the older girl, running his large, rough hands up and
down her clothed body, giving her medium-sized tits a squeeze so hard
she made a tortured little moan: "NNNnn!"
"I think it's time to undress you now," Jazz said with a grin. "But I
can't be bothered with all those buttons and buckles. I think I'll
just whip your clothes off you."
The girl's eyes, wide and green like her sister's, bugged out of her
head with horror as she struggled to figure out whether this
psychopath was serious or just having a sick joke at her expense. She
soon found out, though, when he opened a trap door in the floor and
produced a bullwhip that looked like it could tear her in two. In
fact, it probably could have, but Jazz knew what he was doing. He
stood well back away from the girl and gave her a wicked smile.
"I wouldn't move around too much if I were you," he said. "I'd hate to
miss."
The girl began to cry then, but forced herself to stand as still as
possible as the madman with the shaved head and the tattoos drew back
his well-muscled arm and let loose with the whip. It cracked like
thunder, and the girl felt the wind from the lash as it cut through
the fabric of her clothes like it was nothing. Her blouse fell open,
buttons flying, and her skirt tore. A few more lashes and chunks of
fabric were floating gently to the floor. More, and she stood in just
her white cotton bra and panties, the cuffs of her blouse the only
part of her school uniform still clinging to her body.
Jazz put down the whip and approached her, running his hands over her
now-bare belly and up and down her upper thighs.
"Very nice," he muttered. "You did that very well."
"T-thank you," she managed to whisper, not sure if she was accepting
the compliment or expressing appreciation that he didn't tear her skin
to shreds along with her clothing.
He stepped back and looked the girl over appraisingly. 
"You don't have a bad body," he said, "but it's a little plain. We
should mark it up a little. What do you think, Mungo?"
He looked over at his cousin, who was fucking the younger girl's face
in earnest now. The girl was purple from lack of oxygen as Mungo's
cock sank deeper into her throat.
"Wait - a - min - ute," he gasped as he rode the teenager's head hard.
The older girl found her voice then, and began to shriek.
"He's killing her! Make him stop! Please, leave her alone!"
"He's not gonna kill her," Jazz said easily. "Not right yet, anyway.
But now, let's get to you. Let's get that bra and panties off."
He had to cut the straps of the girl's bra to remove it since her arms
were still tied over her head. Her panties he just guided down to her
ankles and left them to hang: her bound ankles wouldn't allow them to
come off, either.
Mungo let out a feral grunt as he churned his second load of cum into
the tiny girl, flooding her throat with his salty jism. She sputtered
and thrashed, trying to spit it out, gagging and trying to expel him.
By the time he was ready to pull out, the girl was growing faint from
lack of oxygen, a bluish tinge coming over her face. Mungo pulled her
into a sitting position and held her up by the hair until her
breathing was normal again. She was exhausted from the struggle,
though, and looked like she was about to pass out. Mungo grabbed a
coil of rope from a spike in the wall and bound her to one of the
barn's supporting pillars, facing her sister.
"Watch this," Mungo said with a childlike grin. "We're gonna mess her
up real bad."
He selected a long, thick cane from a barrel and approached the girl
dangling from the ceiling. Suddenly the older sister's concern was for
herself again as she realized what this enormous man was about to do
to her.
"Please, no. I'll do anything you want me to do, I promise."
"Well, that's interestin'," Mungo said. "Anything I want, huh?"
"Yes, ANYTHING!"
"Okay. Well, I want you to hurt a whole bunch." And he brought the
cane crashing across her pale white belly, leaving a wide red welt in
its wake.
Jazz smiled and selected a buggy whip from the trap door in the floor.
He set to work on the girl's tits as Mungo crouched to bring the cane
across her upper thighs ten, twelve, fifteen times. Then Mungo circled
around back to cane her back awhile as Jazz concentrated on her tits
and belly. Around and around her they moved, Mungo's cane THWAP-ping
down across her skin, leaving deep bruises and welts while Jazz's whip
cracked across her epidermis, breaking the skin in several places and
leaving huge raised welts in others. The girl thrashed and squalled,
her shoulders aching and dislocated from supporting her weight as she
swung from her rope-burned wrists.
Half an hour or more they kept it up, the rhythm of their strokes
interrupted only when the girl fainted momentarily from the pain. Jazz
held up a hand for Mungo to stop what he was doing and he checked the
girl's pulse, letting her rest for a minute and regain consciousness
before they started again.
It was a few minutes before the younger sister came to enough herself
to realize what was being done to her older sister, and she joined in
the chorus of screams: "No! Stop! Leave her alone!"
By the time they'd covered every inch of her body with welts Jazz's
thick, hard cock was drooling precum and threatening to explode in his
pants.
"Take the cunt down," he gasped at Mungo, taking out his cock. Mungo
lifted the girl down and set her up on her hands and knees,
anticipating Jazz's need. The girl's sore wrists collapsed under her
weight but her ass remained high in the air, ready for Jazz to plunge
his engorged cock into her tight shithole, eliciting a hoarse moan
from the girl. Mungo watched as his cousin fucked the girl's asshole
from behind, her face rubbing in the dirt with every thrust, making
her weep with pain and humiliation.
When he'd finished cumming, Jazz pulled the girl's head around to him
and wiped his cock on her hair.
"That was lovely, cunt," he said, running his hands over her bruised
and bloodied body. "Such a nice, tight ass. Are you a virgin like your
sister was?"
The girl gasped for enough breath to answer, her face smeared with
makeup and tears. She raised her bound wrists to her face to wipe her
running nose.
"N-no, Sir, I'm not," she sobbed.
"Too bad," Jazz said with a grin. "I was hoping to give my cousin two
nice tight pussies for his birthday. Don't want him to have to put his
cock in some stretched-out, sloppy cunt on his birthday."
"That's okay," Mungo said, grinning as well. "I'll just fuck her
sister in the ass. Only thing is, her cunt's all slimed-up. I think
big sister needs to clean it out for her."
"Not a bad idea, cousin," Jazz said with a grin. He picked the older
sister up by the hair and shoved her toward the other girl. "Go on,
slut. Clean her up."
The older girl began to sob as she knelt between her sister's legs and
began to wipe at the girl's bloody, cum-filled pussy with the scraps
of her shirt. Jazz and Mungo both laughed heartily.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing, cunt?"
"Y-you said clean her up."
"Not like that, cumstain. Use your tongue. Go on, give her a good
lick. You might even like it. Put on a good show for us and maybe
we'll even let you go when we're done with you."
Jazz liked that line - he used it a lot. Of course, it was mostly to
scare his toys - he was a rapist, not a murderer. He always let them
go when he was done with them, although half the time they were so
psychologically fucked-up they didn't know their own names, let alone
remember what had happened to them.
The older girl choked and gasped as she began to lick the congealed
cum and blood from her younger sister's cunt and upper thighs. Mungo
looked on enraptured as the older girl retched her way through the
task at hand. The younger girl was asleep, exhausted from her ordeal.
Her legs twitched slightly as
Finally Jazz rolled his eyes as he pulled the older girl away from the
younger.
"That's enough of that," he said. "It's time for Mungo to blow out his
candles. Lay down on the ground there."
"Candles?" the younger girl said, half-waking up.
"That's right," Jazz said happily, as if he was talking to a
two-year-old. "We're gonna light some candles for the birthday boy."
Jazz found some more rope and eight wooden stakes, then proceeded to
tie the two girls spread-eagled on the dirt floor of the barn, the
stakes driven deep enough into the ground that they wouldn't easily
come out. The girls just lay petrified, helpless to defend themselves
as Jazz shuffled around in the backseat of the car. He produced a
large shopping bag and pulled it out to show the girls.
"Look what I got: birthday candles," he said with a grin. They were,
too: the kind for cakes, with tiny metal holders like miniature golf
tees. And much to the delight of his cousin Mungo - and the chagrin of
his birthday gifts - he began to install the spiked metal holders in
the girls' skin - he inserted several into each of the girls' breasts,
into the soft flesh of their bellies and upper thighs, along the
undersides of their arms. They both began to struggle anew as Jazz's
strong hands shoved the tiny spikes into them.
"Oh, come now," Jazz said with a smile. "That can't possibly hurt.
Those aren't going more than a centimetre deep ... and I haven't even
lit the candles yet." He finished the older girl off with a little
circle of candles around each aureola, and one spike deep into the
centre of each nipple.
The girls wailed, the older one beginning to screech "Why? Why are you
doing this?" as if she expected to hear an answer that would satisfy
her. Jazz had really gone all-out, too - he'd bought the store's
entire supply of birthday candles, all different colours - red, blue,
green, yellow. Soon the girls were barely visible beneath the silvery
spikes and the bright candles.
Jazz went back into the car then and produced another bag.
"Oh, we're not done yet," he said, pulling out two large pillar
candles. "I think we just need a finishing touch for each of you. Open
wide."
He placed a candle in each girl's mouth, reaching his fingers between
their teeth to stretch their jaws wide enough for the large pillars.
Their cries were reduced to muffled whines as Jazz told them not to
move.
"You drop any of those candles, I'd hate to think what would happen,"
he said. "I'd hate for your nice hair to catch fire, or for those
pretty faces of yours to get burned. Now, I think it's time we lit
those candles."
Jazz pulled out his lighter and set to work on the candles, lighting
the younger girl first, then her older sister. Soon they glowed eerily
beneath what looked like a solid layer of flickering flame.
"Mmm, that's pretty," Jazz said with a smile. "Happy birthday, Mungo."
"Thanks, cousin," Mungo said with a grin. 
Jazz pulled a six-pack out of his back seat and sat along the wall to
watch the two girls begin to squirm as the candles melted down some
and began to drip. Mungo sat beside him, and they cracked the six-pack
and began to drink as they sat and laughed at the girls' suffering.
"You know what I want to do next?" Mungo said eagerly as he downed his
second beer. "I want to see how much of my arm I can get into each of
these cunts."
"Mmm, that sounds like fun," Jazz said. "I have an idea, though. Why
don't we make it a contest? You put your fist in one of them, I'll put
mine in the other, and whichever one drops the candle in their mouth
first gets to take that monster cock of yours up their ass."
"That sounds like a good contest," Mungo said with a grin. He'd never
met a slut who could take his cock in the ass without tearing. "But
what about a runner-up prize? We need something for the slut who comes
in second ... or is that first place?"
"Whoever holds onto their candle longest obviously has superior oral
skills," Jazz grinned. "I think they should get to swallow my cock as
a reward."
"Sounds like a deal." Mungo looked over the two girls critically. "How
'bout you take the big one? I already stretched the cunt on the little
one, so she should be able to take my fist."
"Okay, that's fine." Jazz crawled over to where the older girl lay and
looked into her wide green eyes with his steely grey ones. She tried
to look away, but there was no way for her to turn her head without
dropping the candle - and much as she loved her sister, she didn't
want to lose this contest. There was no way she could fit Mungo's cock
into her asshole, even after it had been stretched and torn by Jazz.
She tried not to shudder as Jazz stared into her eyes, a smile playing
at the corners of his lips.
"I'm gonna put my hand in you now, slut," he said. "Do you like that
idea? I bet you do. I bet you want to feel me inside you, feel my
fingers clenching and unclenching inside your tight little cunt. Only
after tonight it's not ever gonna be tight again. You'll be a cheap
whore with a big loose cunt. I bet your boyfriend won't even be able
to feel it when he puts his pathetic little cock in you, will he?" He
laughed, reached down between her legs and began to stroke the girl's
labia almost gently. He could feel her entire body tensing, trying not
to react to him as he probed his middle finger into her warm, moist
channel. She inhaled sharply through her nose as he slid a second,
then a third finger inside her. He leaned in to blow softly on her
pussy, running his free hand through the girl's soft, neatly-trimmed
dark brown bush and bringing his thumb to rest on her clitoris.
"Oh, look what I found," Jazz said with a smile the girl couldn't see
from her vantage point. He licked his fingers and began to manipulate
her clit gently but firmly, producing a whimper of a slightly
different tone than her previous ones. "Good girl." He worked the tip
of his baby finger into her, then cupped his hand to force his thumb
in as well. She lubricated for him as he continued to rub at her clit,
her entire body quivering with the effort to stay still. He slid his
hand deeper into her, stretching, probing.
A few feet away Jazz could hear the younger girl's muffled screams as
Mungo drove four fingers into the girl's already-sore cunt, eagerly
trying to jam his thumb in as well, prodding harshly as the girl
struggled as hard as her sister to keep her head from moving. Their
bodies were both covered with brightly-coloured wax drippings, and the
candles in their mouths were dripping down onto their cheeks. Jazz
worked his hand deeper into the older girl, feeling the walls of her
cunt grow damp as he stimulated her with his other hand.
He looked over at Mungo, who had begun to fist-fuck the younger girl
in earnest. She sobbed and moaned, her head bobbing madly, the candle
flickering dangerously close to her hair on several occasions.
"Mungo, watch her head," Jazz called over. He had no desire to be
engulfed in flame from some cunt's hair.
"Okay, Jazz, sorry, man."
Jazz slid the rest of his hand into the older girl, who moaned with
pain as she felt the flesh of her cunt begin to give. He stretched out
his fingers as wide as he could, and the girl bucked her hips in
response to the huge intruder.
The younger girl was thrashing her head around now, wax spraying
across her face and the floor around her as Mungo pummelled her
insides. Jazz could see her jaw working to expel the candle, trying to
manage a scream that wouldn't come out past the huge chunk of wax in
her mouth. He laughed.
"I think we have a winner." He reached out and caught the flying
candle as the girl flung it from her mouth, shrieking with agony. The
candle was still burning, and with a wicked grin he pulled his hand
out of the older girl and snuffed out the flame on her engorged
clitoris. She whipped her head around and very nearly set herself on
fire trying to escape the pain.
Jazz pulled the candle out of her mouth and smiled.
"Very good, cunt," he told her. "Now you get to swallow my cock. You
should say `thank you' - I don't give this honour to all my toys."
"T-thank you," she whispered, glancing over, petrified, at her sister.
Mungo was kneeling over her triumphantly, his hand still buried
wrist-deep in her ruined cunt.
"Hey, Mungo, you should put out those candles before you fuck her
ass," Jazz said with a grin.
"Oh, yeah."
Mungo pulled his hand from the girl's cunt with a wet POP and stood
over her. He pulled his still-soft cock back out of his pants and
waved it over the small teen, then let loose a seemingly neverending
stream of urine that extinguished most of the candles. The smell of
carbon and piss filled the room and Jazz and Mungo both laughed as the
small girl whimpered and squeezed her eyes and mouth closed.
Jazz turned back to the older girl and knelt beside her, stroking her
wax-encrusted cheek with his huge callused fingers.
"I'm gonna put my cock down your throat now," he said softly. "And I
tell you now, if I feel so much as a tooth brushing against the shaft
I'm going to let Mungo put one hand up your cunt and the other one
down your throat until they meet in the middle. Understand?"
"Yessir," she whispered.
"Good cunt."
Jazz knelt over the girl's head and straddled her face from above,
using his thumbs to prise her jaw open as wide as it would go. He let
his flaccid penis drop into her mouth and sat motionless for a minute.
The girl lay still under his weight, unsure what was going to happen.
She was startled as she felt a stream of warm liquid filling her
mouth, and gagged as she realized he was pissing into her mouth.
"Swallow it all, bitch," he said calmly. "Enjoy your drink."
The motion of her tongue as she worked to choke down his hot piss
began to make him hard again, and as he murmured "Keep sucking, cunt,"
he began to pluck the candle holders from her tortured flesh and
extinguish the flames on her tits and belly.
He glanced over at Mungo, who hadn't bothered to remove the
smouldering candles or the holders before he flipped the other girl
over. She was hysterical with pain as her weight drove the spikes
deeper into her flesh.
As Mungo's huge cock tore into the small girl's last virgin hole, Jazz
spewed his last load of the day down her older sister's throat.

They waited overnight before they brought the girls back to where
they'd found them, half a day's drive away where no one knew them. The
half-conscious, mutilated teens were found cowering in the woods
behind St. Mulberry's prep school by the school's football coach. They
recovered fully, more or less, except that neither sister ever let a
man touch her again.


End of Part Three. The author welcomes any
questions/comments/suggestions for future installments:
worthlesspainslut@hotmail.com

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| alt.sex.stories.moderated ----- send stories to: <ckought69@hotmail.com> |
| FAQ: <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org/faq.html>  Moderator: <story-ckought69@hotmail.com> |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Archive: <http://assm.asstr-mirror.org> Hosted by Alt.Sex.Stories Text Repository |
|<http://www.asstr-mirror.org>, an entity supported entirely by donations.         |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+