Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2015 13:37:36 +0200
From: Dampies Dampis <dampies1960@gmail.com>
Subject: Sheep in Wolf's Clothing 15

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Ben Jordaan and Lt. Vosloo were finding the lack of attention in the psych
ward unsettling. They didn't talk to each other—the awkwardness of their
shared obsession (the insanely charming and cute Gay-Boy)—still the
pachyderm in the plantation.

The morning after their arrival dawned and an orderly came by to hand them
some of their belongings; toothbrushes, shaving gear and underwear, but
then left them to their own devices. He didn't say a word to them, just
throwing the mostly empty *balsak* (literally ball bag, meaning regulation
kit bag) on each man's bunk.

They were fed in the ward. Most of the inmates fiddled listlessly with
their slop, whether from the singularly unappetizing look of it, or due to
the fact that they were so drugged that they couldn't face food. After
"breakfast" the trays were removed and the room was locked again. Most men
just lay right back on their beds and fell asleep, the boredom and apathy
induced by their environment and drugs combining to numb them to the
absurdity of their situation.

About mid-morning the door rattled and two burly orderlies came to remove
one of the guys. His departure caused the first stir in the room, some of
the less incapacitated men even beginning to show signs of agitation. One
or two began to pace the room nervously, sitting down on bunks, only to get
up and walk a few steps before sitting down again.

After about twenty minutes the man who had been fetched returned but not
under his own steam. He was on a stretcher and the orderlies dumped him
unceremoniously onto his bed, where he lay whimpering pathetically. One of
the men who had been pacing was next. As the orderlies approached him, he
backed away, terror clearly visible on his haggard face.

"No, fuck, leave me alone!" he shouted and tried in vain to fight off the
clearly stronger orderlies who managed to subdue him in spite of his heroic
efforts not to be dragged bodily out of the room and down the passage,
still screaming hoarsely, chilling Pretorius and Vosloo to the core.

When the noise subsided Ben Jordaan got up and went over to the recently
returned man. He sat down on the side of his bunk and put his hand on the
still quivering soldier's side. He flinched as if he had been scalded.

"Relax, man, I'm not going to hurt you," Ben said softly.

The terrified man seemed to hear something reassuring in Ben's voice,
because he calmed down and turned his head to look at him. Tears were
streaming out of his eyes and down the side of his face.

"What did they do to you?" Ben asked. His voice was kind but he was clearly
distressed by the sorry state of the poor man.

The soldier shook his head as he struggled to articulate what he felt. He
didn't manage to bring any coherent thoughts to light and mute tears just
rolled down his face.

The silence was broken by a belligerent voice booming across the room.

"What the fuck do you *think* they did to him? They tortured him same as
they torture all of us!"

Ben's head turned so fast he almost pulled a muscle. He couldn't believe he
hadn't seen the speaker—or shouter, rather—before: a huge man, as big as
Ben himself, stuck away in a corner. He'd not drawn attention to himself,
staying hidden under his covers, almost as if to deliberately avoid
attention. Now he stood next to his bed and dwarfed every other man in the
near vicinity.

Ben stood up and hobbled over to the guy, who stood his ground and looked
him in the eye. It was an unfamiliar experience for Ben to have somebody
level a gaze at him. He liked the feeling. He stuck out his hand and after
a brief hesitation the man grabbed it, although there was nothing friendly
in his regard.

"Ben Jordaan.

"I know who you are," the giant said without volunteering his own name.

"And I know who *he* is too," he sneered, looking askance at Vosloo, who
was watching the exchange with cautious interest.

"I also know what he did," he said, dropped Ben's hand and turned
meaningfully towards the officer.

"Be sure, *little *lieutenant, that I'm watching you—you'd better watch
your back..."

"What did he do?" Ben knew that something had gone down but he still needed
confirmation that it had anything to do with Bennie.

"You mean you don't know? He's here because he tried to rape a *troep*. The
fucker is a piece of work. But if he decided to end up with a bunch of
queers, this was the wrong place. Us guys are going to sort him out good."
His next words were heavy with innuendo.

"Yes pretty boy, would you like some of your *own medicine?"*

Ben felt his body go cold. When he looked over at Vosloo his face was
granite. The officer didn't miss it. He felt his heart skip a beat as he
realized he was completely alone in this hellhole. He would be watching his
back for sure.

During the course of the morning Ben saw one man after the other dragged
out of the room and returned later, in much worse shape. He tried to pump
them for info, but to no avail. Only the rough giant, still nameless,
walked back under his own steam, although it was clear that he did so with
effort.

For some reason Ben stayed close to Vosloo. Each was the only familiar face
in a world suddenly gone even more mad, if that were possible. The room
they found themselves in was a capsule of insanity, a bubble out of which
men disappeared one by one, only to return just that bit more broken.

Ben knew that it was only a matter of time before he and Vosloo would take
their turn and he wondered what nameless terrors the victims endured. He
took some comfort in the fact that the silent giant still managed to keep
his head up, and he hoped that he would have the strength to do the same.

The men in the ward didn't talk to each other in the normal way—the sense
of camaraderie that was present even between very different guys, faced
with a situation that forced them to seek comfort in each other's company,
totally absent. Each man seemed to be locked behind a fuzzy, yet
impenetrable wall of despair and fear. So Ben's efforts at finding out what
was going on met with a maddening lethargy as each man that returned
quickly sought refuge in the numbness of his own brain.

In an effort to maintain some sense of his own sanity, Ben even tried to
talk to Vosloo but his conversation met with a stony silence. Ben wanted
Vosloo to deny the charge that the nameless young giant had leveled at him.
His instinctive loyalty, forged by the months of military indoctrination,
wanted him to cleave to the officer, to believe the best of him. He didn't
understand that the system was designed to make him hate and defend the
same man in an aberrant parody of the natural affinity men had for each
other. It exploited the homoerotic currents innate in masculine interaction
while at the same time charging them with homophobia. Men were trapped in
the best and the worst of their nature—an eternal AC-DC of magnetism and
resultant self-loathing that boomeranged backwards and forwards. Then it
found its expression in an irrational hatred that was so easily exploited
and channeled into warfare.

Ben Jordaan was a simple man, although not unintelligent. He didn't try to
analyze what he felt, but went with it in a direct route. When he had felt
his heart morph in the presence of Bennie Pretorius he had known not to
resist. It had felt wholesome and true, a path to goodness and joy and his
instinct had proven to be trustworthy.

That same instinct now pulled him in the direction of giving Vosloo the
benefit of the doubt. When he looked at him, the ambivalence that he felt,
the vacillation between revenge and loyalty drew him to the latter. He knew
that given the chance he would wait to hear Vosloo's side of the story. But
the officer resisted any attempts at conversation.

Vosloo was trapped in his own cell of guilt and uncertainty. He dreaded
facing what he saw when each victim displayed when they were reintroduced
into the ward.

He also feared Ben, knowing that the man would turn on him the moment that
he knew what he had done to Bennie Pretorius. He was certain that not even
Jordaan's unflagging good nature would survive the knowledge of what he,
Vosloo, had done to the Gay-Boy.

He couldn't credit that he had gotten so lost in the maze of his twisted
heart that he had *tried to rape a man—*and *Bennie Pretorius*, of all
people. His shame rankled in his guts, rage at himself for squandering the
opportunity to get close to something that drew him in a way that defied
his comprehension.

He remembered how he had felt the first time that he had seen the boy. He
wondered why he thought of Pretorius as a boy. He was in his twenties, more
or less the same age as Vosloo himself, but there was something about the
man that made him want to protect him, make everything ok for him. The
feeling had been so confusing that he had lashed out in a way that
completely contradicted what he felt. The attraction that assailed his
heart caught him so by surprise that he expelled it from his consciousness
with such vehemence that it had no time to nest, and so upend all that
Vosloo had come to believe about himself. But at the same time he had
watched as his tirade had played itself out on Bennie's face, first as
surprise and dismay, and then as determination and loathing.

But it wouldn't leave him alone. When he touched Pretorius' body in the
execution of his duties, the natural care and empathy that caused him to be
a physiotherapist in the first place, mixed with the pull that the patient
had on his heart. It was an appealing concoction that befuddled his senses
and made first his emotions, and then his body, respond in profoundly
traitorous ways. The professional mask that he always adopted when dealing
with war amputees couldn't withstand the surprising grief that he felt when
he touched Pretorius' stumps. Internally he shook his head, aghast at the
inconceivable violence that a system inflicted on young lives, so drenched
with promise and vitality.

But then again, his whole being rejected the Trojan horse that Bennie
Pretorius inserted behind the fortified lines of his heart with his winning
vulnerability—and his plump ass.

The scene of his "seduction" of Bennie Jordaan played in his mind, a
twisted tableau, so far from what he had envisioned as to be a complete
parody. He again mentally shook his head as if to clear his mind of the
shame that quaked his being when he remembered the look on Bennie's face
when he had opened the door naked. But he hadn't known what to do to bring
to the Lance Corporal's attention the fact that he secretly desired him. It
wasn't as if he knew how to act in the unfamiliar landscape in which he
suddenly found himself wandering. He could only trust that the *troep's* own
attraction to him would be the road on which they would meet and discover
each other. But of course the giant obstacle, Ben Jordaan, stood between
him and every time he peeked around the block of a man to try and catch a
glimpse of the beautiful boy that he longed for, he could only catch sight
of the unbreakable cord of devotion that linked the men.

He wondered what Ben had done to forge such a tie. What did the giant have
that had clinched the deal so suddenly, so completely? Weeks of working
with Pretorius while he vacillated between revulsion at his own twisted
attraction to the boy and irresistible tenderness that he felt for him had
obviously derailed any chance that he had of winning the young man's
affections.

Is that what he wanted? His affections? Didn't he just want to fuck the
cute ass as he had done with the disgusting Parvus? Again he shook his head
internally. What he had done to Parvus was a perverted attempt to sate his
lust. A lust he knew was a pale shadow of the emotion that wafted through
his heart; a fragrance of a promise of joy and satisfaction. He knew that
he had squandered an opportunity to know a deep connection with another
man, something that his attraction to Bennie had woken in him, and that he
knew his clumsy attempts at wooing had perversely repelled, rather than
attracted.

He was shaken from his reverie when suddenly the lights went out and the
room, not well lit or ventilated by any means, was plunged into a darkness
so solid, so unrelenting that Vosloo and Jordaan felt as if they had been
momentarily dipped in molasses. Vosloo reached out for what he thought was
the certainty of Ben Jordaan's reassuring presence. He felt a stump-like
arm and held onto it as a bastion of familiarity. His relief at knowing
that Ben was close was short-lived. A malevolent voice whispered in his
ear, the warm breath tantalizing as it chilled.

"Yes, pretty boy, time for your medicine. *Your ass is mine!"*