How It Feels
(Previously: “The Boy Gladiator”)
The Bahar’sool is bald and wears a thick, black beard; his body, huge and leathery and slick with oil and sweat, reads like an atlas of his many battles: each scar, every jagged groove and dimple, telling of a day her slew another, weaker man. The first time Justin sees his own intestines, it is this brute—Ghob’ok, so-called Dominator of the North—who shows them to him. He has worked poor Justin up against the wall, wrapped one enormous fist around his throat; he swings, but Ghob’ok grabs the blade barehanded, wrenches it from out the fighter’s grasp and takes it as his own. With bloodied palm, he grips the sword’s hilt, angles it for Justin’s naked waist. The hulking warrior completes his work with frightful ease, and Justin, glancing down, discovers that his belly has been slit across—a wholly natural event upon arena sands, yet unimaginable all the same.
And with my own blade, Justin thinks.
The first thing that he feels, almost earlier than even pain, is terrible embarrassment—he’s failed as a fighter, as a victor; now, as punishment, he must become the victim. Envy, too; he wants, more than all else, to feel whole again instead of broken—safe, secure, not open and exposed. He thinks of all the innards he has glimpsed, and wonders now if every butchered man he watched felt this ashamed. The pain is very bad indeed, but Justin manages to bear it, for mere physical sensation matters little in the face of utter violation...
Ghob’ok grins and bares his yellow teeth. His eyes are black as night, and Justin, gazing into them, finds the oblivion he knows awaits him after death. “Thok ook-amat,” the Bahar’sool says—“I have opened belly for you! Thok-chol ik’sah! Ik’sah!” Justin doesn’t speak the tribal tongue, but he has heard of thok-chol—when a southern warrior eviscerates himself and dies a man, like samurai committing hara-kiri. Perhaps, instead of disemboweling him outright, Ghob’ok is doing him a kindness: belly slit, he’s now allowed to stagger off and let his guts spill on their own terms—and indeed, the big man steps aside now, setting Justin free. The gladiator, swaying, weak-kneed, takes a few steps forward, palms pressed tight against the cut below his navel and between his hips; he knows that if he moves too quickly, something will emerge, and it is something he would not prefer to see—a thing which must remain inside, intact. He looks up at the audience: the crowd is quiet, watching closely—hoping, no doubt, that the gory prize they paid good coin to see will soon emerge. The burden is too great. He goes down on his knees, and the momentum urges his intestine to bulge outward—just a few loops, fat and slippery and pale pink, but he can feel the weight of everything behind it, eager to escape. He tries to hold it in but it is coming out and soon enough the audience erupts, applauding Justin’s innards. It’s perverse, this grueling contest he has entered into... yet he’s never felt more virile!
Justin holds his guts against his bloodied waist. His loincloth, once of purest white, is soaked a deep red, evidence of his impending doom...
No, Justin thinks. Not now... not yet!
Untying the garment’s knot, he strips his loins and tightly wraps the crimson cloth around his wounded middle, careful first to pack the spilling bowels away as best he can; the gesture may not save him (and it certainly will not please Ghob’ok), but it’s all that he can think of, and it may at least afford him time enough to go down fighting. Now he notices the smooth, blood-slick erection jutting from his hairy, naked crotch—the proof that he was meant to die like this one day, the way the men did on those gladiator shows he used to watch. He didn’t get it then, but now he does. He’s glad he’s here—he wouldn’t want it any other way!
Now Ghob’ok too unties his beaded leather loincloth, showing Justin and the howling audience his monstrous cock. The manhood—bulbous, club-shaped—glistens brightly in the sun, as red as blood and seemingly rock-hard. He’ll fuck me with it, if he gets his way, thinks Justin, shivering—he’ll fuck the guts right outta me!
Indeed, the Bahar’sool is angered, seeing Justin’s gut-slit bandaged up. “You cover guts,” he growls, “you not a warrior!”
“Why don’tcha show me yours,” says Justin, growing pale, chuckling against the pain. “It’s only fair.”
The hulking fighter’s face turns gravely serious. “You ask for my thok-chol?”
To dare a Bahar’sool to gut himself is no mere game, as Justin finds. Before he can so much as speak a single word, Ghob’ok slits into his enormous stomach, slicing neatly, clear down to his cock. His eyes are shining as he does it, teeth clenched, sweaty muscles twitching with the secret pleasure he has waited for so very, very long: the butchery of his own body. Right away, the pale, greasy guts obediently show their face, erupting quickly but then only very slowly sliding out and down, festooning Ghob’ok’s prick like bloody garlands. Ghob’ok slaps his chest, hard, loudly—first the left side, then the right. His giant breast heaves as he breathes in, silently enduring what will prove to be his final moments. Could I ever be that much a man? thinks Justin, gazing on the warrior, in awe of his endurance.
Just before the gutted gladiator dies and renders Justin winner by default, he takes his last, best pleasure. Using pre-cum, fresh warm blood and greasy sweat to ease the way, proud Ghob’ok masturbates, each long, slow stroke inspiring a throaty grunt. His back is tightly arched; he thrusts his hips, and with each eager, lusty lunge, another gory loop of gut slips out of him and hangs down, dangling between his knees. And Justin, staring, can’t help but join in himself—he’s close, and moaning uncontrollably as Ghob’ok nears that last and highest peak then finally lets loose: thick, sticky ropes of almost endless cum, and Justin spurts too, and their wasted seed is joined upon the sand in shining, silver pools.
Old Langrun’s healers are more skilled than most; he knows that Ferwin Howe, for instance, was eviscerated and yet lived to fight again, a wicked scar across his gut to mark the gruesome day. How did it feel, Justin asked him once, but Ferwin told him, You will know—before long, you will know... And now, at last, he does.