Nothing and Yet Everything to Lose
(Previously: “The Tide Turns”)
Young Ferwin grits his teeth; the other boy, called Kirk, has got him pinned to the arena wall, the rough stone hard and jagged at his back. He bucks and strains, spine arching tightly but against his will, his belly jutting forth as if the guts within are eager to be spilt; at the same time, he sucks his stomach in until it’s concave, desperate to avoid the stabbing blade which even now is only inches from his sweat-slick, heaving navel. Are the muscles of his abdomen, he wonders, tough enough to keep the steel out? And for how long? It’s useless, he knows, but nonetheless he flexes till his belly meat grows firm—what can he do but try his best to keep young Kirk from disemboweling him?
Kirk grins; he’s cocky for his age, just nineteen years, but he is capable as well—a boy who’s fought with swords since he was small. Though somewhat shorter, Kirk is well-built, muscled lean, with copper skin and curly fur around his belly button and his nipples. “Ready for it?” Kirk asks, licking at his lips.
“I’m ready,” Ferwin tells him—“do it!”
Fascinated, Kirk inserts the sword’s tip slowly into Ferwin’s slim, brown middle, watching as the boy’s blood trickles down to stain his swelling loincloth. Ferwin groans; his frame is so lean that there’s little fat to keep the steel from the muscle, and the pressure of the prodding blade hurts worse than he imagined. Though he tries hard, moaning through his teeth, the boy is penetrated almost instantly, and Kirk inserts a single inch of cold, hard metal into Ferwin’s waist.
“You feel that?” says Kirk. “I’ve pierced your abdomen—your guts are helpless now, you’re done for!”
Sweat drips from the stabbed boy’s troubled brow. Poor Ferwin knows that should his foe press any deeper, it will gore his bowels, and he shall surely die. Despite the searing, burning pain, it feels good, somehow—a manly end, the sort of death he’d always dreamt of undergoing. Suddenly his seed is threatening to spill; he thinks of Breccan on the beach—how he’d erupted in his death throes, almost happy in defeat—and wonders if all gladiators die like this, their stiffened, stoic manhoods spurting fruitlessly within their bloody loincloths or upon their opened bellies...
“Urghk—a-are you gonna,” Ferwin pants, the pain increasing—“are you gonna slit me open?”
“Yes,” young Kirk replies. “You realize the crowd is here today to watch one or the other of us spill his innards, don’t you?”
“Henghfff... I suppose so,” Ferwin says. He’d been so fixed upon his own experience within the ring, the gladiator’s view, he hadn’t stopped to think about why people gather to enjoy the show, what they get out of it. On hearing Kirk’s words, Ferwin’s spine begins to shiver with the implication: as he spills his guts and dies, the audience will get a thrill, his suffering transmuted into pleasure. It’s a shame that his career has been cut short so early on—he’ll die a novice, and anonymous, forgotten by the very people who had paid to see his entrails drop into the dirt...
No—he’s resolved himself, he can’t die yet. He has to live—he has to fight again!
“Prepare yourself, my friend,” says Kirk. He puts both hands upon the hilt, then leans in for the slice...
Crack!
Ferwin butts his head against the other boy’s, escaping from his grasp and back into the center of the sandy pit; the crowd screams, realizing that the pretty youth won’t die—not yet, at least—and that the bout may be drawn out for several minutes more.
“Argh, bastard!” Kirk rubs at his skull. “Not ready to endure the pain, I see...”
“It’s not the pain I fear,” says Ferwin, “it’s the prospect that I’d lose so easily to one as weak as you!”
“I’ll gut you yet,” Kirk growls—“Come—let us see which one of us is strongest after all!”
The boys go at it several minutes—an eternity, in terms of an arena fight. They bring their all, engaging one another with the full potential of their handsome, youthful bodies, giving everything they have to offer and still more. Blood flies and splatters in the sand; each fighter wounds the other several times in turn, and soon their legs and arms, their swelling chests and flat, hard guts, are painted red. They tumble, grunting, roll together on the ground, entangled as they wrestle for control—until, at last, young Ferwin gains the upper hand: he’s got Kirk’s back pinned to the ground, his arms held tight behind his head, his stomach caked with sand. As Ferwin straddles him, their stiffened pricks begin to rub at one another through the fabric of their loincloths—Kirk is eager, he can tell, no less excited for the outcome of their combat than he is himself. Triumphantly, he lays his weapon’s edge against the furry spot where Kirk’s black pubes crawl underneath his bloodied garment; there, behind the wall of his abdominals, the boy’s intestines lie in wait, a treasure for the taking...
“Wait,” says Kirk. “If I’m to die, I wanna do it with my cock out.”
“Very well.” He tugs Kirk’s loincloth down, exposing his opponent’s prick. It’s beautiful: Rose-red, rock-hard, and glistening with oily sweat.
“You’re well endowed,” he tells Kirk.
“Show me yours?”
Ferwin takes his out too, and lays the swollen, meaty shaft against the other boy’s. They writhe together for a moment, moaning softly; they’ve forgotten that they’re enemies, forgotten what their purpose is: to gut each other, brutally as possible... but soon enough, Ferwin remembers, and young Kirk does, too.
“Eviscerate me,” Kirk demands; Ferwin obliges, slowly opening his waist. The veins pop out in Kirk’s flushed, straining neck. He bares his teeth and bites his lip—attempting, but inevitably failing to prevent a long, high squeal of pain from coming out his mouth. Chin pressed again his chest, he watches as the pretty victor scoops deep, churning out a heap of steaming, stinking viscera. “Arrrghhh... errrghhh... my gods-damned guts!”
The very moment that the crowd spots Kirk’s bowels glistening beneath the sun, they cry out loud, and soon the whole arena echoes with their cheers. The sound of it makes Kirk begin to climax, and his cock, wreathed with his guts, gives up its load, a long and plentiful release; Ferwin erupts as well—he yelps, then grips the shaft and adds his seed to Kirk’s, their mingled semen pooling at his belly button.
“I am strongest,” Ferwin tells him as he passes out.
He stands up, lifts his bloodied blade aloft, and bathes in the applause; behind him, not quite dead but near enough, young Kirk is swiftly butchered by the axeman—head lopped, body split, limbs hacked. A great big bowl is brought, and the defeated gladiator’s guts are piled in it—they’ll be made a feast for circus lions. The arena’s blood-soaked dirt is covered over with a clean new layer of sand; in moments, some new pair appears, another two young men with nothing and yet everything to lose...
(Next: “A Proper End”)