R. Preston

Now and Then

The clicking sound got slower and louder as his arms stretched upward and outward above his head. As he raised up on toes, and they eventual left the floor he could tell the tension on his arms and wrists was noticeably more than the other times when he was suspended with them right above his head. The man had warned him that it almost certainly would pull harder, but he also said that it would flair out his back and make him look better. The boy liked looking his best for the man and he was more than willing to put up with the added strain to do it. .

He looked up at the steel tube he was suspended from that they had just finished making together. It seemed strange to help make things that would bring him pain, but he liked doing it anyhow. The man was always very patient with him, showing him how to do things that he would have never learned otherwise.

"Lefty loosey, righty tighty" he recited to himself as he remembered how the man had taught him to tighten the nuts on the two eye bolts at the end of the bar that his wrists were now locked to and the third one directly above his head that the bar, and now he, were hanging from. An hour ago he hadn't even known what an eyebolt or even a nut was, or how to measure and drill holes in steel, but thanks to him, he did now.

The clicking eventually stopped, and he hung there limply by his wrists.

"Ok?" asked the man from behind him.

The boy just nodded in response. He knew he had a bit of time before the real pain started. The man always liked to look at him for a while first.

He always got nervous during this part, but not as much lately. He had learned early on that he always remembered the pain as being worse than it actually had been, and even though it was actually a little harder each time, it was never as bad as his memory of the time before.

He thought back to how he met the man and when he hurt him the first time. It was early spring and he had come home from school to find both his mother and her belongings missing from their apartment. He knew she had abandoned him, but having been in foster care before, and didn't want to go through that again, so he packed the few belongings he had into his backpack and fled before anyone saw him there.

It was after a few miserable days on the streets when he first met the man. He hadn't eaten anything or slept much for days. He'd never been that happy or well fed, but now he was more hungry and miserable than even. He'd cried until there were no more tears and had finally sat down leaning up against the wall of an alley a few feet from the street, rested his forehead on his knees and hoped to die.

He heard hundreds of people walk by; none paying attention to him, until he heard a set of shoes stop, and then walk toward where he was crouching. He wanted to run, but didn't have the will or energy for it.

"Are you Ok?" he heard a voice ask.

He shook his head no, and from somewhere he found some more tears.

"If you want to, you can follow me to my car and I'll take you home with me to get warm and have something to eat.' The voice had said.

He still doesn't know where he got the energy from, but he got up and followed the man to his car. He'd never been very far out of his own neighborhood before, and was surprised that in almost no time, they were out of the crowded city and pulling into the driveway of a house that was so remote that he couldn't even see the one on either side of it.

The man fed him some of the best food he had ever tasted and let him take a long hot bath while he washed his clothes for him before making up the sofa for him and letting him go to sleep. The man had been so nice to him; he was surprised the next day when he said, "Can I spank you?"

He had no idea what to say to that, so he just shrugged his shoulders.

The man was sitting in a chair and said, "If you will let me do it, just come here and lay over my lap."

He was scared, but the way the man had asked seemed like he wasn't mad or anything, and he figured he owed him a lot, so he slowly walked over and lay over his lap.

"Ready to begin?" The man asked from behind him, snapping him back to the present.

He nodded his head again between his up stretched arms, and said, "Yes sir"

It was funny, but even after all the times he had been here he still didn't know the man's name, although he thought it was John. He'd heard some older boys on the street talking once about men who like to do things to boys and he couldn't understand why but they said that they were always called John. When he needed a name he had always just called the man 'sir', and he seemed to like that. For his part he was always just called 'boy', or sometimes 'son'. He liked it when he got called that.

"I think I'll start with the bull whip again this time." The man said from behind.

The only response the boy gave was a bit of a moan. From what he remembered from the last time the bullwhip hurt a lot, but the worst part was the way that the man used it. He would always know it was coming when he felt it hit his right side, but he never knew how far it would wrap around him before the long single strip at the tip that gave by far the worst of the pain landed.

Looking back now, that first spanking had hardly hurt at all. After it was over the man had praised him for how well he had taken it, and gave him more money than he had ever had in his life. He also made him memorize his phone number and explained to him how to call him collect from a payphone if he ever needed to come back.

He heard a slight swish and just had time to hold hid breath and tense up before the whip had wrapped all the way around him and drawn a line of pain across his back just below his shoulder blades. He twisted and bowed some, not that he could do much the way he was hanging, but he remained quiet. It was all right to struggle, in fact the man seemed to like it, but he preferred that the boy take the lashes in relative silence.

It had hurt, but much like the first time with the spanking, it wasn't as bad as he remembered it being the previous time. When the man had dropped him off, he was in good spirits, but by the next day his memory of the spanking had begun to change for the worse, and as a result, by the time he called the man, he was desperate and in almost as bad of shape as he'd been when they first met.

He didn't hear a sound for the second lash, and as a result had even less time to prepare for it. A split second after it touched his side it had wrapped around and snapped into the small of his back. He jerked forward, causing the cable and pulley above him to twang, but he was proud that even though he wasn't prepared he didn't cry out.

As he hung there he thought back to the first time he had ever been whipped. It was one of the many changes when he visited the man for the second time. The first thing he had noticed was that the empty room he had gone through to have his bath now looked like the kind of bedroom he had only ever dreamed of. He was shocked when the man told him that it was for him to use when he visited. He'd even bought new clothes for him, so instead of washing his old ones this time, he would be able to wear brand new ones, and even take them with him when he left.

He was so happy, but he knew there had to be a catch. Later, when they were both sitting in his new bed watching his TV, the man asked him if he'd ever seen anyone get whipped in an old movie or anything. The boy thought about lying to him, but decided to tell the truth and told him about seeing it done once with something called a cat with nine tails or something in an old pirate movie he'd seen.

Even though he promised that it wouldn't be nearly as hard as in the movie, "just enough to sting" he had said, and that he would quit if he asked him to, the boy was still scared when the man asked if he would let him do it to him. He wanted to say no, but the man had obviously spent so much money on him that he reluctantly agreed.

Another lash, but he heard this one coming and was better prepared when it landed between where the first two had been. He took it with relative ease.

It was to be the first of many times that the boy had made something that was intended to give him pain. The man took him downstairs to his workshop and dumped large number of thin strips of leather onto the workbench, and asked the boy to make the best whip he could from them. They were too long as they were, but he thought that if he folded them in half they would be just right. The only problem was that he couldn't get nine that way, only eight or ten, so he asked the man who was watching him from a distance what he should do.

"It doesn't have to be nine, but ten will probably hurt a little more than eight", the man had said

He wanted to make it just eight, but after thinking about all the man had done for him, he folded five of the long laces in half and taped them together forming a handle using the roll of tape the man had given him. When he handed it to the man and he counted the tails he said he was a brave boy and gave him a big hug.

Another swish and snap, this one from a little farther back, hitting his tightly stretched left side, just above the bottom of his ribcage, causing him to gasp and torque his torso to the right.

He had loved being hugged like that, and being told that he was brave was pretty good too, even if he wasn't too sure that he really felt all that brave at the time. With the whip made, it was time to get to the whipping, which as he had feared, but was half expecting, he learned was to be done with him both shirtless and tied. He reluctantly peeled his new t-shirt over his head and wanting to show that he appreciated the man's gifts, folded it carefully and put it on a clean spot on the workbench.

"You're so white 3; I guess I won't be able to do this quite as hard as I had hoped. The marks will show too much." The man had said when he saw the boy shirtless for the first time. Part of him felt relieved that he would be let off relatively easy, but a bigger part of him felt sad because he had disappointed the man, and now that the weather was getting warmer, he vowed to himself to never wear a shirt again whenever possible.

The lash landed again, this time on his stomach, just above the waistline of his jeans, causing him to give a slight grunt that he just managed to stifle.

The first time he was tied his chest was pressed tightly up against a flat side of one of the large square posts in the basement and there was a rope around each of his wrists, holding them both above him, and keeping him in place. Once he realized how securely he was tied he began to panic a bit, but the first lash was both quite easy, and came mercifully quickly. He'd learned since then, that it wasn't how the man preferred to do it, and realized that he must have read how scared he was getting and begun sooner than usual, letting him know that it wasn't going to be too bad.

With the first lash out of the way, and the boy somewhat calmer, he paused to tell him that he could struggle all he wanted, but he would like it if he was brave enough to take whipping in silence. The boy nodded that he understood and the whipping began. He struggled for all he was worth, but was determined to both stay silent, and not ask the man to stop. The lashes weren't that hard, just stinging as he had promised, but there were a lot of them, and they seemed to hurt more as time went by. The man would stop occasionally and let him catch his breath, and it was during one of those breaks that he noticed that the man seemed to like looking at him. By the time he finally stopped whipping him and cut the ropes from his wrists, his back and both sides felt like they were on fire, but he had never been so proud of himself in his life.

A soft lash, just slightly above the last he handled easily, but a lash like that was usually a warning that the next one would more than make up for it.

As bad as his back had been, his wrists were the worst, causing the man to comment that they had better do something about that for their next project together. Back up in his new room, the man had put cool washcloths on his back, and before long the burning feeling had gone away enough that he was able to go to sleep in his new bed. The next day, much to his surprise, the marks had almost completely gone away. The man asked him if he wanted to go back, and thinking that it meant that the man wanted him to go, he said yes. The man gave him another stack of small bills, took him back to the park that he had been hiding out in lately, and after telling him not to wait until he was starving before calling next time let him go.

It was a brutal lash, he could hear it coming much faster than the others, and it wrapped all the way around him before cracking into his right armpit. His body twisted as far to the right as it could, and while not a scream, a loud squeal escaped from his mouth before he could slam it shut and grit his teeth. They both knew it had been too hard, but it happened sometimes. They had found from experience that apologies just spoiled the mood, so they now just stayed in character and went on,

"Am I going to have to gag you boy?" The man asked.

"No sir, I'll try to be quiet." The gag had been another project, but he hated it. Not only did it make his jaw ache and leave a bad taste in his mouth, it also meant that he wasn't tough enough to stay quiet on his own.

"How are your wrists?" the man asked.

The boy looked up at them, they hurt a bit, and were turning quite red, but he said, "Ok for a few more."

The wrist cuffs he was hanging from had been their project on his next visit. As his days alone went by, his memory once again tried to make the whipping seem worse than it had actually been, but this time he remembered better how he had felt at the time. It couldn't have been as bad as it now seemed, or he would have asked the man to stop, and he could still remember how proud of himself he had been once it was over. The marks on his back were completely gone just the day after he was returned to the park, and since seeing that he had hardly worn his shirt at all. He'd never tried to get a tan before, but after almost getting a sunburn the first day, his upper body had quite quickly become noticeably darker.

Because of the way the man had looked at him, he decided that he wanted to look his best for him, so he started doing the only three exercises he knew, several times a day, sit ups, push ups, and whenever he could find an appropriate spot, pull ups. He wasn't even out of money yet when he called the man again. He was afraid it was too soon, but the man seemed to be really happy to hear from him. That day they had made wrist restraints, and while they took a lot longer to make and he couldn't do everything himself like he had with the whip, he did most of them.

They had to wait overnight for the glue holding the fur that padded the inside of them to dry, but early the next morning they got their first chance to try them out. The boy was nervous when he took off his shirt, afraid the man wouldn't notice, but he saw the changes in the boy right away, both the tan and even more surprisingly, the slight improvement in muscle tone, and heaped all kinds of praise on him. The man looked at him even more that time, and rather than tying him to the post, bound him stretched up out in the open so he had full access to whip and look at all the sides of him.

Five across the stomach. Not very hard, but one after the other as quick as they could be laid on. By the time the last one landed, his knees had involuntarily pulled up so tight to his chest that a sixth would have been impossible. He heard the man put down the whip and the clicking sound began again as he felt himself being lowered toward the floor. He didn't think that it was over, but he guessed correctly that the man must have decided that he had been hanging too long and was lowering him just enough to stand on the floor for the remainder of the flogging. The cuffs they had made were good, but even they would only allow for brief suspensions.

Once he could take most of his weight on his toes the clicking stopped and the man stepped up close behind him. Reaching under his outstretched arms found, and began to play with, the boy's nipples. The man had taught him how good it felt to have them gently played with, but he had taught him how much pain they could bring him as well.

That had been their project just a week after making the wrist cuffs. His visits were becoming more frequent, but the man didn't complain, and the boy, while he still didn't really like the painful parts, loved the praise it earned him, and he liked how happy it seemed to make the man.

For the first time the boy was helping the man to make something that he had no idea what it was for. There were two items they made that week. He had a good idea that they were somehow related to causing him pain, but he wasn't sure how. The first project was easy; all he had to do was drill a hole through a small rubber ball and feed a thin strap with a buckle through it.

The next one was a little more involved, but he carefully filed the little teeth off the spring-loaded clips like the man asked him to and then watched as the man wired them open and dipped the toothless ends into a can of liquid rubber before hanging them up to dry overnight. He still hadn't been given a clue to their purpose the next morning when they attached a light chain between the two of them and the man declared them finished, but he was sure he would find out soon enough.

By then he had taken to never wearing a shirt when he was at the man's house and even though they weren't locked on, he wore the wrist cuffs almost constantly now, so in no time he was locked with his hands stretched tightly above him, nervously waiting to see what he was going to have to endure that week. It started out nice enough, as the man started to gently roll his nipples between his fingers, but he was a smart enough kid to figure out that two nipples, and two spring loaded clips, even without teeth and rubber coated wasn't a good thing for him.

When the first clip went onto his erect nipple it felt like someone had just touched a red ho poker to his chest, and when the second one felt even worse he lost it and started screaming and flailing about until the man had to take them off just a few seconds after they had been put on.

One of the mans hands had left the nipple it was toying with and was now running over the tanned ridges on the boy's tight stomach. The boy liked that the man seemed to like them, and was glad that he had done all of those sit ups to get them there.

Once the nipple clips were off, the man immediately started trying to assure the boy that it was ok that he couldn't stand them, and that it was probably too hard for a boy his age, but the boy still felt bad about it. He asked how the ball thing they had made was supposed to hurt him, hoping that he could stand it better and make the man happy that way, but the man explained that it was just something to keep him quiet and not designed to hurt.

As he stood there, with his arms still stretched up above him, he became determined to conquer the clamps for the man. He surprised the man, and even more himself, when he asked to have the gag put on, and then the clamps, telling the man not to remove them no matter what. The man tried to talk him out of it, but the boy was determined so eventually he forced the ball into the boy's mouth, buckled the strap behind his head, and reapplied the clamps. They seemed to hurt even more than the first time, and he screamed into the gag at first, but he learned that while they hurt a lot all the time they were on, the pain eventually faded a little, and he was able to stay quiet on his own then.

The man was now running his hands along the boy's sides, the parts that widened out when he was stretched up to the new crossbar that they had just made. It tickled a little bit, but the boy managed to stay still and silent.

He was a little worried, because the man hadn't seemed himself this time, and the boy was afraid that maybe he had been coming too often and the man was going to tell him not to come back again. The man didn't seem mad or anything, but then he never did. Even when the boy had made a mistake when he was braiding together the bull whip kit that the man had bought a couple of weeks ago and they had to unravel the whole thing and start again the man was totally calm.

Even now when the man was running his hands gently over his body the boy could tell that his mind was elsewhere. All of a sudden he stopped and walked around to the front of the boy. He seemed to have made a decision, and was about to say something important, and the boy was terrified of what it might be. The man may have hurt him, but he was the only adult that the boy trusted and knew he could turn too. Living alone in the park was bad enough, but it would be unbearable knowing that he had no one at all to turn to.

The man looked as nervous as the boy felt, but eventually got up the courage and asked the bound boy in front of him.

"How would you like to live here all of the time?"

The boy was ecstatic. It was what he had hoped for all along and grinned from ear to ear.

"You'd only have to do things like this once and a while, maybe once or twice a month."

The boy couldn't believe it when the man said that. He knew how much the man liked doing these things to him, and while he didn't really like the pain, he liked how happy it made the man. After thinking about it for a moment he realized that the man had promised to hurt him so seldom because he really wanted the boy to come live with him, and was willing to do things with him far less often than he would have liked, in the hope of having the boy agree to stay. Knowing how miserable that would make the man the boy made his decision and said, "Make it once or twice a week and you've got a deal Sir."

The man looked shocked, but immediately knelt down and began hugging the boy, making the boy wish he wasn't still bound with his arms over his head so he couldn't hug the man back It was what they had both wanted since soon after they met, but both where so afraid of losing the other, that they had been afraid to ask.

After a long time hugging the boy the man finally stepped back and asked the boy, "Do you want to be let down now?"

Part of the boy wanted to, so he could hug the man who had just made him so happy, but he decided to give the man a treat and said,

"No sir, I want clamps put on my nipples, and I want at least a hundred lashes on my back and sides with the ten tail before you take them off again.

The End