Chapter One

The Criminal

 

Here he was, doing it again.

In an exclusive suburb of Southern California, halfway between the mountains and the sea, eighteen year-old Alex Downing lay in bed, naked.

The bed was large and luxurious, like the bedroom and mansion around it. He had the best of everything money could buy, from the lawyers who'd ensured his freedom to the tablet computer in his left hand. His right was otherwise shamefully engaged.

Just under six feet tall, Alex' body was well-built and fit. He'd come to his full height if not heft and knew without the need for vanity that he was appealing. Athletically gifted, he'd played varsity wide receiver as a sophomore. When not wrenched with effort and anguish, his features were pleasing, with guileless blue eyes. The pale blonde of fresh-cut pine, his shoulder-length locks (kept in a habitual ponytail) were thick and lustrous.

Spare of facial or even much body hair, his skin easily took and maintained a perfect tan. Clear of blemish, it had all the smoothness of pampered youth. Expensive dentistry provided the flawless smile and before his fall he'd dated half a dozen of the hottest girls in school. Even at the clinic, the female staff and inmates (not to mention the gays) had been drawn to him despite his monstrous crime. Now look at him: it was eleven-thirty Saturday night and he was home alone jerking off - and crying while he did it.

Despite rehab and the year of court-ordered therapy which had been his only punishment for murder, Alex felt more fucked-up than ever. Nor would any neutral party quibble. Beyond the fact that he was streaming tears as he beat off, and had already decided to kill himself, just look at what was on that tablet! Look at what he was beating off to! The video showed a trio of women whipping, shocking and sexually torturing a tied-up naked man.

His formerly perfectly ordinary fantasy life had become twisted into bitterness and perversion. Wracked with remorse for his acts, and guilt for escaping the punishment he deserved, his craving for retribution was so pervasive it had infected his arousal mechanisms.

Unworthy of the liberties he was taking but as unable to resist onanism as any adolescent, he now wallowed in imagining compensatory suffering. Disturbing as it was, the so-called 'femdom' video gripped him as compellingly as his fist.

"Quit bawling, you vile piece of repellent shit! Filthy male asshole, you deserve this and so much worse!"

A buxom black woman in thigh-high boots, naked but for a spike-studded body harness, harangued the lucky fuck hanging by his bound wrists. Similarly bound feet dangling a foot above the floor, he shuddered and squalled into his ball-gag as she resumed beating him.

Formed of supple leather straps, the flogger she used hissed and cracked. Blindfolded and with his genitals tied up into grotesquely bulging balls below a bloated, rigid pole, the prisoner yelped piteously when the petite Asian woman to his other side left off slapping and twisting and viciously yanking the latter to suddenly brutally squeeze the former.

"Ha: listen to him squeal! What a pathetic fuck!" She spat on him and resumed her cruelly abusive penile manipulation.

Alex ground his teeth, adopting the insults for his own. He jerked himself harder, wrenching at his organ in desperate emulation, then savagely bending it unnaturally back. Had he a baculum it would have been broken, and the pain in his increasingly raw penis was more arousing than the pleasure that it offset and exacerbated. All too aware that he was compounding an already unforgivable offense, the criminal kept his attention desperately riveted to that little screen - lest even more compromising scenes arise in his mind.

He panted and whimpered, wept and moaned. He twisted his cock as he pumped it, almost tearing the reddened skin with his vehemence. Long minutes passed as coincidental punishments continued. Then at last the third dominatrix, skimpy skintight latex molded to her svelte body, stepped in with an electric shock-prod. Knowing what was coming, Alex' breath began to hitch.

She jammed her weapon against the captive's swollen, straining glans. Sparks discharged, and a wisp of smoke wafted up. Immediately he went into flopping paroxysms, howling and jittering as she continued pressing the electricity home.

That did it, at least for Alex.

Though the actor in the film went on getting paid for enduring what the condemned in his bed would have given everything to appropriate, that unworthy was driven beyond his limits. Crying out his miserable climax, he spouted.

Writhing and pumping through the last gobbet and drop, Alex wondered if he would come so hard when he finally hung himself. He'd heard that's what happened, and that's why people so dangerously played that way - David Carradine, for example.

He had no intention of debasing his repayment by touching himself so, but he was still likely to blow his load as the rope closed about his throat. Would that final, involuntary ejaculation at his moment of expiation grant him a sick bit of transcendence at the end? Or would there only be the blessed relief from horror? He gave a blubbery exhalation.

Orgasm past, Alex thumbed off the tablet. Leaving the mess to trickle, he crossed his arms over his face. Now he really cried, sobbing uncontrollably into his crooked elbows.

Guilt, shame, remorse, resentment of his parents, disturbing sexual issues and the most virulent self-hatred imaginable tortured him worse than any possible physical affliction. How he ached to end it all! Alex Senior may have seen to it that his son and only heir escaped prison for his crimes. But the son had passed sentence on himself regardless. And now that his hope for the ideal executioner was lost, he was going to carry it out. He just had to make sure the message his suicide sent was received.

Eventually Alex stopped sobbing. He used the box of tissues next to him to blow his nose and wipe his face. He let the semen stay to degrade him. Still his eyes leaked as he listlessly lay back. As always when occupied by the ruin of his life (and when was he not?), he reviewed the unsuspected progression that had taken him from innocence to damnation.

What was the first hint of trouble? Three years ago the only flaw in his privileged existence had been his asshole old man and domineering mother. They'd had his life all planned out for him from their first attempt at conception to when he would eventually step into his father's shoes at the head of the company.

What sports he would play, what classes he took, what people he could associate with, all these choices had been made for him. Though the family money shielded him from any threat or lack, it was a gilded cage. Alex came to resent it, and to rebel in small ways.

Yet really, was drinking alcohol such a rebellion?

It was forbidden. Still everyone did it, from his parents themselves to all the rich kids at school: the very peer group they'd imposed on him. Even when the careless got caught they didn't get in too much trouble. It actually seemed they were being subtly encouraged to break this rule, as a test of independence and rite of passage.

So Alex drank, and like most other kids he got away with it. Encouraged, he started smoking pot, and he got away with that too. Visine and Listerine, baby: keep the eyes and breath clean and no one was the wiser. Even easier to hide, pills were passed around at school as well, most of them looted from their parents' medicine cabinets.

Pain pills and stress pills, these were actually habituating narcotics like Valium, Xanax, Vicodin or Oxycontin. All perfectly legal, doctors passed them out like candy to anyone who had insurance. What did Bill Maher say about Anna Nicole Smith, who died under the influence of no less than eight controlled substances? They cut her open and a Walgreens fell out.

Alex had heard a hundred such jokes and stories at the clinic. At school though he'd been utterly blithe, experimenting with these too and happily on his way to becoming a serious waste product. By the time he reached sixteen he was partying all the time, though as yet he suffered no dependency. However, he was also given a car upon reaching that licensable milestone. One rebellion led to another, and irresponsibility to atrocity.

Chafing under parental restrictions, Alex began sneaking out at night to party. Taking his sporty little jeep to pick up a couple equally rebellious friends, they would park in some secluded spot or visit a local hangout to drink and drug and shoot the shit in time-honored fashion from midnight until four or five in the morning before slipping home over the back roads.

Alex knew it was stupid to drive fucked up. He knew what could happen. Every town has tales of kids who'd killed themselves. But youth has delusions of invulnerability. With very few other cars on the road at those hours, the risk had seemed lessened enough to dare.

No doubt millions assumed likewise and were proved right. But for Alex the gamble eventually failed. One night he took a few too many pills, washed down with too much booze. In the process of swerving and trying to miss him, the car he sideswiped rolled, caught fire and exploded. While he broke his collarbone, a man and his infant daughter were immolated. All he had to do was close his eyes at any time since to hear again their bloodcurdling final screams.

Of course this being America - or hell, any country in the world - justice had to kiss the ass of Mammon.

Given his previously spotless record, his ready admission of guilt and obvious remorse, no court could ruin the life of a boy of such heady prospects. And if certain campaign contributions suddenly shot up just before the next election cycle, well, the system must be working.

Good judgment had earned its reward. Though Alex had admitted to horrifically murdering a baby, had volunteered for and looked forward to life in prison (since there was no death penalty for minors), his interfering father had it fixed so that he was only sentenced to a year of drug rehab and counseling. Good grief.