Date: Fri, 25 May 2001 10:30:18 EDT From: Bwstories8@aol.com Subject: Finding Love - chapter 10 Legal Notice: The following story contains descriptions of graphic sexual acts. The story is a work of fiction and has no basis in reality. Don't read this story if: **You're not 18 or over, **If it is illegal to read this type of material where you live, **Or if you don't want to read about gay/bi people in love or having sex. The author retains copyright to this story. Placing this story on a website or reproducing this story for distribution without the author's permission is a violation of that copyright. Legal action will be taken against violators. I wish to extend my thank you to Ed for his editorial assistance with this chapter. If you have enjoyed reading this story, you will find other stories by me at http://www.teenboyauthors.org/thewolf, in the 'Other Stories' section. E-mail responses to the stories, story suggestions, or other 'constructive' comments or advice may be sent to: bwstories8@aol.com. * * * * * * * * Finding Love - by BW Copyright 2000 by billwstories Chapter 10 - Desperate times. May 2000 Our new residence was worse than the shack where we had spent the past few months. This was just an adobe hovel in a small Mexican village, a boil on a dog's buttocks. This place wasn't as secure as the other place but, hell, we were hundreds of miles from our homes and we didn't speak the language. There was no need for this to be Fort Knox, as Sovie saw no way for us to escape now. We were locked into our own room, however, though the locking mechanism was a simple sliding bolt that fitted into a notch in the doorframe. Of course, we would be left naked still, but that didn't bother us because it was extremely hot where we were and there was very little air circulating in the hut. There was no window in this room, but there were three small holes in the upper wall, each about three to four inches in diameter, which allowed the hot air to escape or a small breeze to enter. I wasn't convinced of which way it actually operated, but it was our only connection to fresh air. I continued to scan the area around us. We had no mattress to sleep on this time. All we were given was a cheap foam slab, which wasn't very thick, and a couple of blankets. Instead of a tin bucket to serve as our toilet, we had an old cast iron cooking pot. It was a large pot, but the best part was that it also had a lid. That would help to keep the smell from totally filling the room 24 hours a day. There were also a couple of rolls of toilet paper, but that was it for the furnishings. There was nothing else in the room, not even a chair to sit on. Now my attention turned to our jailer. On our way here, we had discovered that his name was Diego. We heard him referred to or called by that name several times while we were riding in the bus-like vehicle that brought us here. He appeared to be a very cold, uncaring person, who didn't have much of a sense of humor, and we knew that we wouldn't be receiving any breaks from him concerning our care. This time things would be exactly as Sovie had requested, there was no doubt in my mind about that. Tad and I were pushed into our room and Tad began to cry as soon as the door was shut. "Oh God, Win. I'm so scared," he sobbed frantically. His chest was heaving from the exertion and his whole body was trembling almost uncontrollably. "They're going to sell us to some guy, so he can molest us whenever he wants and do who knows what else to us. We're never going to see either of our families again. They might even keep us from being together, once we get there. What are we going to do? We've got to get out of here and get back home. Maybe we should have tried to escape from that other place...when we were still in Texas. Maybe we ought to try to escape from here, as soon as we can. What do you think we should do and how do you think we should do it? Do you think we should?" Tad had been babbling, non-stop, since he began his little tirade. I'm not even sure he had taken a breath at any point before I stopped him by placing my hand over his mouth. "Tad, calm down. Get yourself under control. We'll think of something, I know we will. No, we shouldn't have tried to escape from the other place. Sure, it was closer to our homes, but even Dean told us that we would have died if we tried to run away from there. He was our friend and he wouldn't have lied to us. I'm convinced that he really wanted to help us. We'll figure something out," I leaned close to Tad's ear to whisper to him, "or maybe Dean will send someone down here to rescue us. He was going to tell the cops about Sovie, so maybe they'll be able to find us before he has a chance to sell us off to that other guy." I held Tad tightly to my body and stayed like that until I could see that he was starting to relax and calm down a bit. At that point, I reached up with one of my hands and started to run my fingers over the surface of his hair. After all of this time in captivity, our hair was quite long and it was pretty disgusting, because we hadn't had a real bath or shower since Sovie took us away. That meant that our hair had not been shampooed during all of that time and it was filthy and greasy. It wasn't something that you would want to run your fingers through. I don't even think you could run your fingers through our hair without getting them caught in the multitude of tangles that were present. This would also cause the owner pain, as his hair was pulled away from his scalp. I needed a way to alleviate Tad's fears and help him control his emotions. I was trying to come up with something to help me to do this, when I remembered something from long ago. I bent forward and kissed Tad on his forehead, gently, as I cradled him in my arms. Next, I kissed the lids of each of his eyes, which were closed tightly, before I kissed the tip of his nose, and then I finally placed a little angel kiss on his lips. I did this because I remembered reading about a character in a book doing this once. This was the way a mother kissed her son before he went to sleep each night, and it was also the way she kissed him farewell when he signed aboard a ship and went out to sea. I just felt that this seemed to be a tender, calming type of gesture that I could use to reassure Tad that everything would be fine. Now, I just held him in my arms. I had done everything else that I could do to prevent him from reacting like this, but I should have realized that he was intelligent and that he would be able to draw the same conclusions that I had. He was right, though. This was a desperate situation for us to be in. Before long we would have to come up with our own plan, because we couldn't depend on anyone coming to our rescue in the near future. Maybe we could escape and hide out long enough to give the cops a chance to find us, but we definitely had to do something on our own before the deal was finalized. I kept Tad calmed down for the rest of the day. I knew that he was still worried, but he trusted me when I told him that we would do everything we could to get out of this mess. Later that evening, Diego brought us our dinner, if you can call it that. It was a plate full of beans with a thick slice of bread and a bottle of water. I know that they loaded the supplies from the shack into the plane when we were brought here, so I was not expecting this. It must be that Diego was keeping the better stuff for himself. This was not a good sign and it definitely wasn't a good meal. We went to sleep that evening quite disheartened. I pulled Tad over to me and I spooned up behind him. I put one arm over his chest and draped it across his body. He clung to my arm with both of his, like a drowning man clinging to a log. Our sleep came in spurts, dozing off for intervals only to awake in a cold sweat or in a stifled scream from the nightmares that were haunting our slumber. By the time breakfast arrived, we were still as tired as we were the night before. As it turned out, it was a shame that we couldn't have slept through breakfast. We were served the same meal as the night before. We were given a plate of beans, a thick slice of bread, and a bottle of water. The chef obviously had a stunted menu selection. The next few days our situation and our meals were nearly identical. Tad and I would spend all of our time without any other contacts, totally isolated from the outside world. Every meal that we were given consisted of the same things, beans, bread, and water. We might have complained about all of the gas that the beans were causing us to produce, if our room didn't also serve as our toilet. To break the monotony of this boring existence, we tried to formulate our plan to escape from this place and from Sovie's control, but every scheme we came up with had more holes in it than a slice of Swiss cheese. We may not have been accomplishing much, but it made us feel better that at least we were trying to do something. Diego was an enigma. He never spoke to us, he never lingered in our presence, and we could neither hear nor see anything that he was doing in the other room. We weren't even sure if he was remaining in that room during the day or if he was going out somewhere else. We did see him one time, however, when he came in to empty our non-flushable toilet. Other than that single exception, the only time we saw him was when he gave us our breakfast and our dinner. Yes, if you noticed that I omitted lunch from the things that he gave us, that observation was correct. From the first day that we arrived here, we have been given only two meals a day, the same meal twice a day, every day. A few days after we arrived there, I finally got up the nerve to ask Diego a question. When he opened the door to give us our dinner, I posed my query. "Diego, can we have the creams and oils that Dean got us for our skin?" "Bart says that I don't give you anything but your meals." "Well, it will probably be your ass when the guy decides that he doesn't want to pay so much money for damaged goods. Once he sees our skin rashes, from not being able to wash and not have the stuff to clear it up, he's probably going to cut the purchase price in half, or even more." Diego thought about this for a minute or so. "Okay, I'll get the shit for you. I'll even bring you a cloth and a bowl of warm water every day, so you can wash up a little bit. The only thing you can't do will be to tell Bart. You'll have to keep it hidden in your room. I don't want it anywhere in sight, just in case he stops in. Do you promise?" "Oh, yeah," we echoed. Diego went out and came back with our supplies. We put it in the corner of the room and threw one of the blankets over it. We promised him that's how it would be kept during the day, once we were up. We could tell that he wasn't pleased at having to give in, or being outsmarted, but he knew that I was right. A rash like that would lower our value to a prospective buyer. Thank God we were smarter than the average bear, or boy in this case. Not only did these supplies bring us needed relief from our skin problem, but they also allowed us to continue having sex. Not that we had much strength or desire, under the conditions, but there still were times when we desired that unique connection with each other. I can't begin to tell you have terrified we were because of what was happening to us, but making love to one another would provide us with that escape each time we hit bottom. Whenever things got to the point where we thought we couldn't bear it any longer, we would make love to one another and fill our lover with that new secretion that our bodies had just begun to make. During the time we were intimate and for the period after, we usually slept soundly after a good session; we were temporarily away from the misery, suffering, and fear we endured the rest of the time. It was our hiatus from our time in purgatory, if not hell. It was a couple of weeks later that we finally came up with a strategy that we thought would work to help us escape, even though we didn't have all of the answers that we needed. We went over this plan several times, to see if we could detect any noticeable flaws, before we decided on a time to implement this plan into action. We decided to be ready to go when Diego came in to give us our evening meal. Tad waited behind where the door would open, holding the item that he would need to assist him. When Diego opened the door, he scanned the room quickly. "Hey, where's the other kid?" he shouted at me. He grabbed the door and pulled it toward him, so he could look behind it. When he did, Tad took the cast iron pot, which was less than half full with our bodily wastes, and sent the contents of the kettle flying into Diego's face. Diego spit and sputtered, the urine burning his eyes. He bent forward to allow the waste to drop from his upper body and to let the liquid drip from his skin and onto the floor. As he was doing this, Tad took the handle of the pot, swung the pot and his body around in a 180 degree spin, and he swung the container up forcefully against our jailer's head. Tad looked like a guy at a track meet getting ready to throw the hammer, but he never released what he was holding. There was a dull thud as the container smacked bone, and Diego stumbled and collapsed from the blow. Without hesitation, Tad and I bolted through the door, across the other room, and out the main entrance. We were naked, on a dirt pathway, and it was approaching dusk. We had no real plan, once we were out of our temporary abode, other than to locate a hiding place quickly. We looked about and did a quick appraisal of our situation. There was nowhere to go in front of us, without being completely visible, so I called for Tad to follow me. We ran around the side of the building and behind another structure. We continued to weave our way along walls, between other buildings and past other edifices, until we could not advance further undetected. Suddenly we found ourselves at the outskirts of the village, with nothing but openness before us. There was no place to hide and nothing to conceal our movements once we cleared the village limits. Frantically, I looked around to see if I could spot a place to hide. It would be dark soon and we would be harder to find once the sunlight had completely faded. I spotted a two-story building; it might be a barn, a garage, or simply a storage area, but whatever its purpose, it was a shelter. Tad followed me to it and we found an opening through which we could enter. Once inside, we spotted a ladder leading to an upper level, so we climbed it rapidly and looked for a hiding place. Quickly but noiselessly, we moved to a rear corner where we could hide behind a pile of refuse. We huddled together behind this collection of discarded outdated appliances, and we remained motionless and completely silent. I don't think that either of breathed for a couple of minutes, until we were sure that our unauthorized entry had gone undetected. As I glanced at Tad's face, I could see the fear in his eyes. I assumed that he was thinking about Diego's revenge and he was worried about what Diego would do if he caught us. My heart was still pounding within my chest and the sound of the blood pulsing through the arteries in my ears was masking all other noises. I'm sure we were still breathing heavily from the exertion of our jaunt here and I only prayed that it wasn't loud enough that others could detect our presence. We stayed there, as the night grew darker and it became more and more difficult to see. At various times we could hear commotions in the area, but I don't think that anyone entered the building or searched it in any way. As the minutes passed into hours, I whispered to Tad that we would need to go down and look for a safer place to hide. Once it became daylight it would be easy to find us here and we would have to locate someplace less obvious, in order to remain undetected. Once the noises of the village faded into silence and the night sky had become pitch black, we climbed back down the ladder to look around for a new place to hide. We sneaked around the deserted village, sometimes crawling, sometimes crouching, and sometimes darting from place to place to remain undetected. Regardless of our efforts, we weren't having much success in finding a new safe haven. Dawn was now approaching and the sky was beginning to slowly brighten. I was just about ready to suggest that we return to our original hiding place when I observed something worth exploring. It was a small door covering a portion of the ground. I tried to lift the wooden covering but it wouldn't budge. Tad observed that there were two small slats of wood nailed to the frame and positioned to prevent the door from accidentally opening. We rotated those pieces of wood, so they wouldn't interfere with the door's operation, and we tried to lift it again. This time the door rose skyward and I looked quickly inside to see what it protected. It appeared to lead down to a small root cellar that someone was using for storage. I signaled Tad to follow me and we crawled down a makeshift ladder to the dirt floor below. As we entered the area, closing the door behind us, we moved to a far corner where we would remain unseen by casual observers. An hour or so later the sun rose above the horizon and we began to hear movement in the immediate area as the residents scurried about, carrying out their daily endeavors. The sunlight slowly filtered through the cracks in the door's construction and this allowed us to look around a bit. There wasn't much to see and we realized that we didn't really have much protection here. This was just a small, damp, and musty smelling hole in the ground and there wasn't enough stored in it to keep us from being spotted if a search were conducted. Eventually we stopped concentrating on its flaws and we settled down enough to fall asleep in each other's embrace. When we awoke, it was very bright out, probably around midday, and we had not heard anything other than the normal sounds of the daily activity in the area. We hadn't eaten in over 24 hours and our stomachs were beginning to growl. Believe it or not, we could actually hear the noises that our friend's belly was making and we wondered if the sounds of our hunger could be heard by those moving about above. After some thought, we determined that the noises weren't loud enough to attract attention, but it was loud enough to make us uncomfortable with our situation. We whispered to each other, trying to decide what we should do about procuring food and clothing and otherwise improving our situation. We agreed that once it was late into the night, we'd move out to look around and see what we could find. Until that time, we would sit tight and pass the time as best we could. Later that night, we sneaked out of our earthen dungeon and moved about the surface in search of things that we could use. After making quite a lengthy examination of the area, we came up with absolutely nothing that we could use to meet our immediate needs for food and clothing. It looks like the people in this village only have the bare minimum of items and there is nothing left over for us to confiscate. We didn't notice any extra clothes hanging on wash lines or any food left lying around that we could grab for ourselves. The only excess that we had discovered so far were the few worn out and discarded items that were stored in the loft of that first building and the few tools and containers that were kept stored in the root cellar. When we began to feel that we had been out long enough and we were beginning to tempt fate, we headed back to our hideout before it started to get lighter. Dejected by our lack of success, we climbed back down into the root cellar to spend another day naked and hungry. Once we were back in our little hole in the ground, we cuddled together and commiserated before we fell asleep. I'm not sure how long we had been there before we were awakened by the sound of the door covering this area being lifted and dropped open on the ground. We both sat bolt upright upon hearing the noise of our sanctuary being entered. We grabbed onto each other and remained speechless, waiting to see what was going to happen next. We saw a pair of legs, dressed in dirty white pants and sandals, come down the ladder. It appeared to be a villager, maybe even the owner of our hideaway. He had turned away from us and began to pick through the collection of hand tools leaning against the far wall. When he turned back to climb back up to the surface, he spotted us and his body jerked rigid from the surprise of the encounter. Tad and I were clutching each other, shaking with fright and holding our breath, uncertain of what to do next. While we waited to see what the man who going to do, I studied his face to see if that would give me any indication of what might happen next. It didn't seem as though he wanted to hurt us or that he had even been looking for us when he came here. He must have found us completely by accident. I slowly lifted a finger to my lips, letting him know that we didn't want him to scream out or be afraid (like an adult would be afraid of two naked boys huddling together). He nodded his head to confirm his understanding and he winked at us to put us at ease, before he threw the tools up and out of the opening. Then he climbed back up the ladder and closed the covering to our hiding place. Tad and I looked at each other but we didn't speak for several minutes. Finally, we began breathing again and we began to discuss what had just happened. "You don't think he's going to tell on us, do you?" Tad asked, deeply concerned that Diego would find us. "No, I don't think he'll say anything. He did nod and wink at us, and I think that means that he understands that we want to remain hidden." "But what are we going to do now? We need to eat or we're going to starve to death." "I know," I said as I tried to soothe Tad's fears. "We'll still go back out tonight and look around some more, just as we would have if he hadn't spotted us. We're bound to find something we can use tonight. Just calm down and get some more rest. We'll need to conserve all of our strength for later." He nodded his agreement and we cuddled back against each other. After being unable to fall asleep for what seemed like forever, we had just started to drift off when the door opened again. We now feared that our whereabouts had been given away by the guy who had discovered us earlier. We watched intently as he climbed down the ladder, stopping half way to reach out and grab a bag from the surface, that he lowered to the floor of the cellar. He walked toward us and began to open the bag. He pulled out two white pieces of cloth and he handed them to us. We looked at them and realized that they were two pairs of crude pants that were similar to the ones he was wearing. We slipped them on, but they were much too large for our small bodies. He chuckled a little before he reached back into the bag and brought out a collection of fruits and raw vegetables. We dove in and ate greedily from the selection he gave us, not caring what they were or what they tasted like. We just needed something to ease that hollow feeling in the pit of our stomachs and to stop the non-stop rumbling those empty organs were producing. When we had finished devouring that first collection of health foods, he reached back into the bag and drew out a few more. He handed them to us and patted us on the tops of our heads before he turned and left. That simple gesture let us know that he would help keep us safe from discovery and that we could relax a little, not always imagining the worst. Now we wouldn't have to go back out tonight to search for items we could use. He had taken care of our immediate needs and we could stay put in relative safety. Staying in this hole throughout the entire night was somewhat disconcerting. It was very dark down there and we felt as if there would be creepy, crawly things moving about unseen along the floor and walls. We spent a very restless evening and sleep was totally out of the question. I came up with a plan to keep us from thinking about the bad things and we passed the night by talking about what we wanted to do once we got home. First, Tad told me about all of the things that he wanted to do with his parents. He told me that I was included in all of these plans. He also told me that there were many things that he wanted to say to his mom and dad, things that he had always taken for granted before, but things that he appreciated now that he had been without them for so long. There were all those little things, like the way his parents talked to him or kissed him when he went to bed at night. It also included all of the special times they set aside for him and how they were so concerned about his happiness. I could see it in his face, but mostly in his eyes, how much he missed his parents and how he longed to be in their protective embrace once more. I thanked him for including me in his plans, but I told him that I wanted to spend time at home first. I wanted to try to talk to my mother when I got home, to see if we couldn't set things right again and forge new and closer ties. "I have heard so many comments from other people that would lead me to believe that she still loves me, and I want to give it one more try to see if we can really have a mother-son relationship. I've dreamed about it for so long and, if there is any chance that I can make it work, I will give it my best effort. I know that I've said that I've hated her in the past, but down deep in my heart I still love her. She is my mother and she did give me life. I've got to try, Tad. I can't just say no, if there's a chance that she might still love me." "I understand, Win, and I don't blame you. If I were in your shoes, I'd do exactly the same thing. I just want you to know that if it doesn't work out, you still have a home with us. You know, with my mom and dad and." Tad stopped in the middle of his sentence when the door to the cellar was lifted once more. We both looked toward the opening and we held our breath, until we saw the familiar pant leg begin its descent down the ladder. In one hand he was carrying two plates as he used the other to navigate down the wooden steps. He handed the two plates to us before he turned and went back up the ladder, without saying a word. The plates contained some kind of food, though we didn't recognize it. It looked like a circular piece of flat dough-like material folded over a collection of other ingredients. We didn't care what it was because we were ravenous. We lifted it up immediately and started eating it, as some of the inner contents fell out and landed on the plate. The villager came back carrying a bottle and some twine, a golden colored thin rope-like item that was too thick to be called string. He sat the twine down on the ground, so he could pull the cork out of the bottle. After it had been removed, he handed the bottle to us. I got the bottle first and I took a gulp of its contents. I almost spit it back out, but I managed not to do that. It was some kind of strong, homemade (there was no label on the bottle) wine. I warned Tad before he took a swig and he was more careful about his first encounter with this new brew. We both drank it in very little portions, taking only enough to help wash down our food. It wasn't long before our meal had been gulped down completely and our Mexican benefactor smiled at our satisfied expressions. After we finished eating, our host reached out his hand to me. I gripped it and he pulled me to my feet. I had to grab my pants, so they didn't fall to the ground, and we all chuckled. He reached down and picked up the piece of twine, looped it around my waist, over the top of the pants, and he tied it in a bow, making a belt for me. He pulled a jackknife out of his pocket and cut off the excess twine and patted me on the shoulder to let me know I was all set. Then he motioned for Tad to come over to him and he did the same thing for him. Now we could walk about without having to worry about losing our drawers. The Mexican pulled me toward the ladder and I followed him, somewhat unwillingly. I wasn't sure what he was planning to do, but I did decide to trust him because he had been good to us so far. He reached up and tugged lightly at my long golden locks and said, "Sol". I didn't understand and I must have had a puzzled look on my face. He pointed up through the opening toward the sky. "Sol," he repeated, pointing upward and then to my hair. "I think he's saying sun, Win," Tad informed me. "I believe that he's trying to tell you that your hair is the same color as the sun or that it looks like the sun, maybe both." I smiled at him, nodded and repeated his word. "Sol," I said while smiling at him. "Si. Si," he said triumphantly. Now, he went over to Tad and began to finger his hair. He ran back to the ladder and climbed up and grabbed a small box. He opened it and extracted a wooden match, striking it on the rough striking pad. When the match lit, he pointed to the flame and then to Tad's hair. "Fuego," he exclaimed. "I think he's saying you hair is like the flame, or fire. Yes, I think that's it. He is saying that your hair is the color of fire." Tad nodded and pulled a strand of his hair in front of his face. "Fuego," he repeated to our new friend." "Si. Si," the Mexican said again. Then he pointed to my head and said "sol", and then to Tad, saying "fuego". He repeated this action several times before we understood what he was doing. "I think that he just named us," Tad informed me. "He is calling you 'sun' and me 'fire'. I guess those will be our new names while we are here." To let him know that we understood what he meant, we both pointed toward Tad and said "fuego" in unison, and then we pointed toward me and echoed "sol". He seemed pleased and started dancing around, with a huge grin on his face. "Si. Si. Sol, (pointing to me), fuego (pointing to Tad)." We both nodded and repeated the names once again. He came over and picked up the plates and went back to the ladder. He turned and waved at us, before he began to climb, and then he said "adios" just before he popped through the opening. The door was lowered shut and we were left alone again. * * * * * * * * If you have enjoyed reading this story, you will find other stories by me at http://members.tripod.de/wolfslair, in the 'Other Stories' section. E-mails may be sent to: bwstories8@aol.com.