HT100 Flash Fiction #15: Creative Weaponry--Bad Blood
Title: Bad Blood
Author: Lyrastar
Pairing: B/m, K/m, B/K
Rating: Adults only
Warnings: Porn, violence, vulgarity, suffering, murder. Yeah, Oz.
Disclaimer: HBO productions, not me.
Notes: Set after The Truth and Nothing But and before Cruel and Unusual Punishments--you know, during that time when Keller is knocking off everyone who has sex with Toby. Both Beecher and Keller's podmates are non-canonical OC's. You can call it AU if you like. Writing done in a day, typing spilled over into the next, then editing added to protect the innocent. Big thanks to blackchaps for on-the-spot beta. Over the word limit by about 300%. They didn't really mean it, did they?
Summary: For the livejournal hardtime100 Flash Fiction Challenge #15: Creative Weaponry. Where do all of Toby's ex-lovers go?
BAD BLOOD
In Oz, security is the highest priority with every detail being carefully orchestrated and always in evolution. The prison board designs rules and procedures. The wardens customize and adapt them for their own facilities. The CO's fine tune and tweak and hone and when a new weapon does rear it head inside the walls, the full weight of the system swings into motion to refine the rules some more.
What no one realizes is that their carefully engineered plans can never work for keeping weapons out of Oz for one simple reason. Any given object is only a tool; the real weapons are the people who wield them, and the more they perfect their precious system, the more tightly all the weapons get locked inside.
--Augustus Hill, 1999
"Can you do it?" Keller rolled the wad of bills in his hand.
"I don't see why not." Under the stairs, Cudney eyed the cash. It wasn't that he was a stupid man; on the contrary, although certain that nothing good was intended to come of this, he was smart enough to rationalize with the best of them. As he saw it, he would be committing only a few innocent movements of the finger. With the smallest stroke of a pen and the tap of a key or two, he would have Keller's blood money to give to the greater glory of God. Whatever the fallout from his actions would be, well, that would be on Keller's hands, not his. All he was doing was paperwork, and paperwork was nowhere on the Bible's list of sins.
He would donate the money to save scores of helpless unborn from immolation; he would have to trust in God to save one living sinner from Chris Keller. Surely his God saw the logic in that.
"I need a 'yes,'" said Keller, pulling back his hand. "If everything isn't in position, the whole second stage will fall apart."
"It'll get done. They worry about the drugs, needles and scalpels, not the charts," said Cudney, eyes still fixed on the cash. "It might take me a day or two; it depends upon who's there. I'll tell you when it's done."
Keller peeled off two bills from the inside of the roll and stuffed the rest back in his pocket. "That's it for now. The rest when I have proof that it's done."
"Proof?" Cudney spluttered on the word. "What do you want me to do? Take a picture?"
"How else do I know that I can trust you? I need everything to be in place."
"I'm a Christian; I don't lie."
"You're a child murderer."
"And I pled guilty; I don't lie. I'll swear on my faith; if I tell you it's done, it's done."
Oddly enough, that made perfect sense, thought Keller. "Okay, but if you say it is and it isn't and the rest of it falls apart, it all comes back on you."
It occurred to Cudney that in the final reckoning, that would likely be a good mark on his side. But that was only a guess, and the money was here and now and tangible. One hundred twenty five thousand abortions being performed per day--it would take a well-financed army to combat that kind of slaughter. In his black and white mind, it wasn't even a close moral contest. "Fine."
They came out from under the stairs to see Toby watching them from his pod. When Cudney's back was to them and he could no longer see, Chris blew Toby a little Judas Kiss.
In the pod he shared with Beecher, Chuck Girard swung down from the top bunk just in time to see Chris Keller sit down at the chessboard with a very young and very pretty Latino boy. Fresh meat. It didn't take a rocket scientist to see what, or at least who, Toby was watching.
"Problem?" he asked.
"I don't know," said Toby. "That's the problem."
Girard counted to three. All that expensive education and lawyer boy kept coming back to Keller. If the guy was really that dumb, it's no wonder he got himself locked up. Fuck. If all defense attorneys were that dumb, it's no wonder Oz was way past maximum capacity.
But Toby was clean and mostly sane, and Toby put out, and all in all Toby wasn't a bad guy--for a jizzbag lawyer. Only eleven days into his eight-year stretch, that seemed like a pretty lucky combination in a roommate. Girard had done too much time to screw up a good thing over stupid little details like sentiment or brains.
"Well, what do you know?" asked Girard. "Maybe I can take your mind off of the rest." Moving slowly, he interposed his mass between the glass panes and Toby. He backed him into the corner comprising bed and back wall of the pod. "What do you know?" He repeated the words in a husky whisper, nibbling at Toby's neck and shoulder as he moved his hand through the fly and around Toby's rapidly swelling flesh.
"I don't know anymore," said Toby, not caring for anything except the promised oblivion that seemed just around the next stroke. Or the next. He liked his sex fast and often--the same way he had liked his drugs and for the same ephemeral moments of non-existence. He told himself that this was better; sex couldn't hurt him like drugs. Well, except for Schillinger....uh, and AIDS...and Keller, if you choose to look at it that way.
Well, this was different; Chuck wasn't like that. Chuck was just sex for sex. Sex for sex was good. Toby made a series of little cries as he came, and collapsed against Chuck's tattooed chest.
Chuck held him for a minute, the kissed him fully and deeply on the mouth.
It was the next day in the showers that it happened. Toby turned around and, like a painful back spasm, Chris was suddenly just there behind him, without any whys or wherefores, sending a sick feeling clear through to his gut.
Except that this particular spasm was naked but for a little white towel.
"I don't want you screwing around with him." Chris's voice was dangerously flat. Like the deceptively inviting water before a tsunami, Chris sounded civil, even businesslike. Fortunately--or unfortunately depending on one's perspective--Toby had ridden that particular wave before.
"Fuck off," said Toby, cinching his towel a little tighter about his waist.
"If that's what it takes to get you back, sure. I'm all yours." Chris offered his best bedroom smile.
Incredible. The guy never quits. "News flash for you, Keller: I won't be coming back because I don't like you."
Chris was unaffected. "Maybe not, but you love me; you'll be back." The interesting thing about psychopaths is that their lies and their wild guesses all come out sounding the same as do their gospel truths. Chris put his hands on Toby's shoulders. It wasn't the easy embrace of a friend, but the onerous weight of possession instead.
"Take your hands off of me." Toby thought it all through in less time than it took to stiffen. He was in no shape to fight Keller now. His limbs were barely healed. He was still out of shape from his convalescence. What he would count on was Keller's bastardized idea of remorse to want to protect him and not hurt him--physically at least--well, unless it happened to be one of those random days when Keller got the itch to kill him instead.
Sometimes you had to take a chance.
Toby twisted out from under the hold and made for the exit door. "Get out of my way!"
"I said," Chris reached for him again, not quite so carefully this time, "I don't want you screwing around with him."
"I know this is going to be a big shock to you, but guess what? It's not about what you want. It's about what I want, which is to suck every cock in Em City and laugh about how much better they are than yours. They're real men, Chris, not faggots who can only get it up by sniffing a dirty shithole. Real men, who just want blowjobs like everyone else. Now that's what I want and you can't give me." Toby turned back to the sink and reached for the shaving cream can.
Chris dropped his hands and froze. His voice was utterly impassive "You're hurt, Toby. For good reason. I hurt you, and so I'll forgive you for that remark. Just remember that when you're ready to come back, I'll be here. I love you."
One towel dropped to the floor. Chris's. He moved in behind Toby at the sink and met his eyes in the mirror. "Remember that. I love you Toby. Remember that. I love you and I forgave you." Chris leaned in and murmured the husky words so close to Toby's ear that they seemed to be mainlined straight into his brain.
As he spoke, Chris snaked his hand around Toby's thigh and pushed it slowly up and under the towel. It was not the tentative hesitation of a man waiting for permission, but the easy loping pace of a batter who has just hit the ball out of the park and knows that he has all the time in the world for his lap around the bases.
When it reached the crease where the thigh merged into other parts, Chris's hand touched the soft skin of the scrotum, and Toby couldn't help but press against it. Bending forward, curling both arms around Toby's front, Chris began to nibble the curve of the neck in the place that always drove Toby up the fucking wall.
As Toby fell backwards into Chris's strength, he told himself that the fault was in his half-healed legs that couldn't hold him up quite yet. He told himself that an erection was nothing but an autonomic reflex, and that he was hot and damp and breathing hard only from the cloying air and the shower steam.
But any trial has two sides, and Chris Keller was a trial to beat them all, by gum. The defense side of Toby also told himself that the sweet things Chris whispered were no truer now than they were then. But then Chris's hand was on his dick and stroking it and it no longer mattered what was real and what was false because it brought back a rush of memories of the few contented times he had ever had in Oz--lying with Chris, being held by Chris--and it made him think that just maybe it could be that way again, even if just for a moment.
In the midst of a four-to-fifteen stretch of hell, one perfect moment can mean everything. Wasn't that worth a little self-deception?
Hell, he was an alcoholic, a world-class expert at denial. He should be able to do this without batting an eye.
Toby leaned back and let the words and the hands carry him back to a bed and a time when he had felt loved and cared for and even good and some part of his brain that still belonged to the bright young pre-law student tried to warn him that this was a far more dangerous drug than heroin had ever been. But Toby couldn't hear it because the hand had cupped his balls and was rolling them so carefully--just the way he liked--and despite himself Toby groaned and gasped, drowning out anything and everything but the feel of Chris's hand on his package and the blow of Chris's labored breath over his neck and head.
At the sound of the gasp, Chris sucked in on Toby's neck. Dammit, that will bruise. But Toby could feel the iron between Chris's legs pushing through the towel and against his crack and he knew that Chris needed him as much as he needed Chris and the thought made his balls contract and he nearly came there into the sink. Chris fucking Keller needed him!
He felt himself ooze--god, he was so close--but the rolling rhythm of fingers and balls would not be enough to get him there. Every now and again, Chris's hand brushed his dick, as if by accident, but Toby doubted Chris had ever touched a dick accidentally in his whole life.
Now mind game, torture, and control, that was Keller in a nutshell.
The thing about power is that the controller can only win if other people agree to play; Tobias Beecher had no intention of doing that. He clenched his cheeks and rocked his hips and focused all his sensation on the pressure in his balls and the feel of the fingers and the insistent press of Chris's prick against his ass. He summoned every erotic image of him and Chris and everything they had done or spoken of doing and every sick dream he had ever had, but still he could not get close enough.
He needed Chris's hand on his dick.
But Chris seemed oblivious. He massaged the balls and fucked the crack and panted senseless chants into Toby's ear, but the dick he ignored completely. Toby tried his mental powers of visualization, persuasion, and then even telekinesis to will Chris's hand to his shaft. None of them worked and when it came down to a choice between come or die, Toby knew he was lost when he felt the words rise in his throat that he would use to beg Psycho Chris Keller to touch his prick.
"Chris...touch it, please..." And then Chris did. And then Toby was coming in gallons all over the sink and wall and Chris's hand. He counted five, six, seven spurts. Eight! He didn't think it would ever stop. He couldn't breathe for contractions of his body and he thought he would die and dissolve right here. He would liquefy and become his own spunk and be washed away down the drain, out of Oz and into the sewer with all the rest of the shit.
But he wasn't to be so lucky. He lived, and he was still a man in Oz.
When he could think again, he found himself being held up mostly the embrace of Chris's arms. He tried to find his feet, but still Chris held his trunk. He was a mess. He groped for his towel, but it was long gone to down to the tile. Chris's naked prick was wedged into his crack, still as hard as when this had all started. Still Keller made no demands with it. He just held him, peppering gentle kisses over his neck, his back, his shoulders.
"I love you, Toby," Chris said over and over, as if after spreading enough layers of thin, cheap paint, the color you want might finally take hold.
They jumped apart as the shower-room door opened. It was Girard. Toby bent over for his towel, but his legs were still none too steady and he stumbled coming up.
"Everything all right here? Toby?" Girard assessed Keller's naked body, hard-on and all. That triumphant smile said even more than his prick.
Girard put his arm around Toby's shoulder. "Toby?"
Toby reached up to pat his hand. "I'm okay. Really, I'm fine." He straightened and wrapped the towel around his waist. He didn't sound it, but on the other hand, he didn't seem to be hurt, bruised, or bleeding and "fine" was a relative term in Oz.
"What you doing here Keller?" Girard left the tone as a simple question. It wasn't a challenge yet, but could easily be made one if need be.
Chris grinned, his pecker jutting out insolently in front. "Taking a shower, Girard."
"Pretty dry, for a shower, aren't you?"
"Oh, we'd just gotten started."
Toby caught a sidelong glance. Sonofabitch! Keller actually winked at him! Fuck, fuck, fuck! How could he have let Keller have this kind of power over him again? Fuming more at his own unintended weakness than Chris's fully intended strength, Toby tossed the other towel to Chris.
"I'm not ashamed of my body," said Chris, holding the towel an arm's length from his woody.
Toby snorted. "It's not for modesty; you're going to need some extra warmth. It'll be a cold day in hell before you ever get me back."
With that, together Chuck and Toby walked out the door, Chuck's arm around Toby's waist. Now Murphy finally noticed the situation.
Murphy rapped his baton on the railing. "You two, break it up."
Toby was too inured to even sigh. Fucking hacks.
In their pod, Chuck watched Toby dry and pull on his shorts. He saw the fading outline of a handprint on his shoulder and the incipient lip shaped bruises around his neck that tend to come from pleasure, and not from pain.
Beecher turned to see him watching. "Aren't you going to ask?"
Girard shrugged. "Wasn't planning on it. You're a big boy. If there's something you want to tell me, I figure you will. I don't care who you fuck around with."
Only one living person did. That had to count for something--love, or at least a passable imitation of it, right?
"Chuck, there is something I want to tell you." Toby drew on his most somber voice and made his face utterly flat. "I want you to fuck me senseless."
Chuck grinned. "Six hours and--" He checked his watch. "Forty-two minutes to go and I think that can be arranged. Hang in there, big boy." Girard slapped him on the ass.
Forgetting the rest of his clothes, Toby threw himself on his bunk. He'd just shot a load that would drown a hippopotamus and he was already horny again. He touched himself just enough to ease the surface tension, and his dick twitched in interest, but told himself he would not jerk-off now. If he did, he would only think of Chris, and the whole point of sexual oblivion was to free his mind from all that shit. Six hours and forty-one minutes until he could lie with his face in the pillow and think of nothing. He touched his balls again.
Christ, this was going to be a long evening.
When lights-out did come, the sex was frantic and hard. Toby would have bruises on his arms and legs, but he didn't care. They were nothing compared to the ones inside. If he wasn't going to be permitted comfort through pleasure, than pain would make an acceptable second choice. Besides, he needed this as badly as he needed air.
But for all the raw force and the humiliating words and the stinky spunk that shot up his ass, when Toby was pressed and crushed against the edge of the bed, what he felt was Chris's arm holding him at the middle, what he saw was the slightly off-kilter look of Chris's face distorted by the cheap, metal mirror, and what he heard was Chris's voice in his ear whispering I love you's as another man's cock filled his ass over and over again.
Keller's podmate--what was his name? Vommer? Voder? Oh, who the hell cared--looked up from the crapper. "You must be a fucking nutcase."
"I've been called that before," said Keller, slipping a razor blade into a slit in the waistband of his shorts. It was true. He had. But as far as he could remember, not by anyone who could still talk. It tended not to happen twice. "You have point?"
The guy--Vogger?--hopped up from the crapper and buttoned his jeans. "You already have, what, at least forty-nine years to go? You off someone in here, and you won't get out until you're senile--unless it's after a lethal injection."
"Nice of you to care, but I'm not going to kill anyone." Keller double-checked the blade's hiding place--it wouldn't do to have an accident with the family jewels--and pulled on his pants. "I just want to...make an impression."
"Count!" The buzzer rang. Keller grabbed a clean shirt and carefully tucked it in as he stepped through the door. He grinned from ear to ear as the morning routine started up another new same-old-day.
Impressions counted if a man wanted to get anywhere in life.
"Girard! See you a minute?" Keller called out from the laundry room.
"Fuck off, Keller. What goes on between Toby and me is none of your damned business." Girard kept walking past.
"If you hadn't noticed, dipshit, I'm talking to you. I don't see Toby anywhere around, do you?" Keller stood in just tennis shoes and gym shorts. His laundry was half in and half out of a dryer.
"So what do you want?"
"Same thing Toby has; a piece of you." It came out as breezily as, "please pass me the salt."
Girard swore. "I knew it. Listen--"
Keller chuckled. "Relax." To both of their surprise, Girard did. Chris Keller could charm a cobra out of his fangs if he set his mind to it. "I just figure fair is fair. Toby gets to suck your cock, so should I. He told me you have a pretty one," Keller lied. He still held the laundry room door open with his arm.
"Let me get this straight: you want to suck the dick of the guy who's banging your ex?" Girard crossed his arms in front of his chest.
Keller's eyes grew hard. "Let's just say that I don't want Beecher getting any action without me. And that I wouldn't mind pissing him off."
Now that sounded like Keller.
Girard wondered where this was going. Why not test the waters? "Beecher bends over for me."
Keller kept his face impassive. "I'm sure he does. He bends over for everyone."
"You gonna take a piece of that too?"
"If that's what it takes," said Keller. "I want everything that little whore gets off of you and then some."
Girard licked his lips and stepped in the door.
"Over here." Keller motioned to the narrow space between the last washer-dryer and the sidewall. "You can't see in from the common area. Come on, I want to see that pretty dick."
Girard balked at the small, dark space. He'd done enough time in other prisons to know a deathtrap when he saw one.
Keller grinned. "I get it." He spread his arms. "Go ahead; pat me down. Do a thorough job of it. In fact," Keller jutted out his pelvis for emphasis, "I'd like it if you did."
Girard wavered. "Take off your shoes."
Keller did.
"Put them on the counter over there."
Keller did. "Happy now?"
"Spread your toes."
They were clean.
One didn't end up in Oz by having more brains than impulse control, and so Chuck Girard moved in. Without preamble, Girard stuck his hand down the front of Keller's shorts and fondled until his hand covered every square millimeter. Then he went back to the middle and started all over again, taking his sweet time now.
Keller leaned his palms back against the counter for support. His eyes rolled back in his head and his breathing grew rough. His whole body tensed and he clenched and unclenched his teeth. "Oh yeah, Chuck, do me like that."
Girard removed his hand. "The deal was: you were supposed to blow me."
"Sure, sure." Keller stroked his own dick. "But not here. You want to get thrown in the hole?" Keller gestured out to the common room. Fiona was already watching the action discreetly.
Keller tossed his head toward the nook. "Go on. In there."
Again, Girard paused, but Keller made an obscene gesture with his tongue and it was game over. Led on a leash by his pecker, Girard slid in against the side of the last machine, and undoing his pants even as he crossed the floor.
The nook went back far enough to allow extra room along the wall, but was narrow enough to be cramped for two grown men. That made it perfect for Keller's purposes, though it was going to be awkward for a blowjob. Keller crouched, interweaving their knees, to find his nose almost up against Girard's stinking pubes. He took Girard's full erection in his hand.
"Toby's got taste, it is a pretty dick. It's so pretty I want to eat it all at once."
Girard groaned. "Come on! Do it! Suck me!"
Keller swallowed him up to the hilt.
Cramped and sweating in the heat of the laundry, Girard couldn't help but rock himself into the caress of that mouth and the tease of that tongue and he tried to stop before it passed the point where he wouldn't be fucking Keller or anyone else this morning but it all felt so bloody good that he just ceased to care or think and he let himself be sucked to Nirvana.
Chris Keller knew a thing or two about blowjobs--yes indeed he did--but mostly Chris Keller liked to be the best at whatever he tried. On top of that, he was on a mission here and so he licked and sucked and used the other lesser known (at least among the living) talents of his lying lips and brought Girard up to the edge in record time.
Then he stopped.
Girard howled in frustration. Keller grabbed his wrists. "Chuck, knock it off! You're making too much noise."
"What?" Girard's breath was jerky and sweat had beaded on his chest. His eyes were unfocused. He rocked his pelvis in and out impotently towards Keller's mouth just out of reach.
"Noise. You're banging on the machines. You're going to attract the hacks."
"Sorry," Girard gasped. "I'm so damned close. Finish it, Chris! Finish it now!" Girard broke away from Keller's hold, grabbed his head, and pulled it back into his crotch.
Keller opened his mouth and Girard's dick jerked in anticipation. Fluid beaded at the tip, and Keller stuck out his tongue. Girard moaned; his eyes widened. "Oh yes, you little faggot, lick my spunk."
Keller rolled his eyes upward and inched his neck forward. He let his open mouth hover over the tip of Girard's dick and held there, breathing hot, steamy breath onto the skin, but with careful calculation, not touching it with his mouth.
Blind with frustration, Girard arched his weight back against the machines. The metal rumbled. Keller put lips to dick for just a split second and Girard yelped in a relief that was even more torture when taken away.
Keller pulled back and sprang to his feet, his erection tenting his shorts far out in front. Girard reached for his own prick. Keller grabbed both his wrists again. "Chuck! Stop it! You're making too much noise. "
Girard writhed against him, pushing his turgid dick mercilessly into the muscle of Keller's hip. "Fuck you, cocksucker! You've got to get me off! I'm dying here. You get me off now!"
"I will, but Chuck, you've got to stop the noise or we're both in for it." For once, Keller sounded like the sane man in the room, and Girard tried his best to regain a modicum of control.
But then Keller crouched, and with his tongue, made one lap around the glans, sucked just twice and then let go.
Girard threw himself back against the metal again.
"Chuck, Chuck, let's change sides," said Keller. His voice was almost patronizing--like an instructor, or at least like an egomaniac in control of a weaker soul.
"What?" Girard struggled to free his wrists, to touch himself, to do anything except go on like this.
"Change sides. You up against the wall," Keller said, "Then you won't be banging the metal."
"Fine, just hurry," said Girard. He rolled his head for no apparent reason.
In a stilted dance of sticky frottage, Keller turned them around until Chuck was up against the wall. He put his mouth onto the dick again, and with agonizing slowness, Chris began to move his tongue alone.
Girard gasped and choked. He pounded the cement wall to no avail. He clutched at Chris's head, and banged fists against his neck, but still Chris licked with the deliberate slowness of a metronome in remedial student time.
At the first taste of salt, Keller pulled away again.
"You fucking fucker of a fuckwad--!" Girard panted for breath. Sweat was rolling off of him now, and his pulse hammered far too rapidly in every vein of his neck.
"Easy Chuck. We're almost there." Again covering his dick with his mouth and breath so Girard couldn't jerk himself, Keller reached between Girard's legs and ran his thumb along that special spot from hole to sack where the prostate is closest to the skin.
Girard shuddered and a drop of salt fell on Keller's tongue.
Rhythmically, Keller repeated his caress.
It was more of a guttural grunt than a string of words, but Keller took it for, "Yes, yes, yes!" He massaged the gland and delicately, oh so delicately lapped at the dick, paying minute attention to the grunts. One "yes!" before the anticipated crescendo, Keller stopped again.
Girard wailed, this time in pure agony. His balls felt like neutron bombs.
That cry made Keller harder than ever, but that wasn't really the point.
Girard quivered on shaky legs, too hot, too focused, too utterly undone to even protest in words.
"You know what I'd like to do?" asked Keller, still fingering the spot between Girard's legs, but ever so lightly now.
His only answer was panted obscenities, barely discernable as words, which meant Keller's plan was right on target. "I'd like to eat your ass."
This time Girard groaned and nodded. He spread his legs a little wider.
Keller slid his thumb up to the hairy shithole. "I want to stick my tongue in your hole and eat you from inside out until you come shooting every bit of that jizz into my hands. Would you like that? Would you?"
Girard nodded weakly, and continued to rock his hips making helpless jerking motions with his hands.
"Okay, then, turn around and spread 'em against the wall."
Girard stumbled trying to turn.
Keller laughed. "Oh man, you're a wreck. Let me help you." He stood up and positioned Girard flat against the wall. He opened the last dryer door. "Here, hold on to this."
Girard stuck out his right hand and clenched the door.
Keller reached behind, first for the little magnet stuck to the metal, then he used the magnet to extract the razor blade he had hidden between the washer and dryer levels. He palmed it is his right. With his left he spread Girard's cheeks.
Girard begged, "Now, now, now!"
"Yeah, baby, now." Keller stroked one finger over the asshole.
Girard groaned "Do me now!" His eyes were closed and he moved his pelvis rhythmically as a man mesmerized by something unseen.
"Oh yeah. Let me pump your dick at the same time," Keller said and with his right hand he reached around front. In one swift movement, he shifted Girard's hips toward the dryer door, cut across Girard's groin, then slid the blade back between the machines.
"Aaaaagh!" Girard's cry pierced the air. Bright red blood spurted everywhere in brisk volcanic bursts.
"Shit!" Keller wiped his bloody hand on the dryer door--especially on a ragged piece of metal on the edge--and . "You cut yourself bad." He dragged Girard by the waist over to the door. "Help guard! Somebody help!"
"Lockdown!" The familiar buzzer rang.
Officers Sean Murphy and Claire Howell ran in. Howell threw Keller up against the wall, jamming her baton into his neck.
"Easy!" said Keller, his hands high in the air. "He caught his leg on the door; I was just trying to help."
"Help him pull his pants down?
"I had to check the wound. It's bad."
"Sure is; it's the femoral artery," said Murphy. "Alert Doctor Nathan we are bringing Charles Girard down with an arterial bleed."
"Is he going to be okay?" Keller sounded for all the world like he cared.
No one answered.
"Claire, give me a hand." Murphy threw one of Girard's arms over his shoulder. "Hold pressure on the wound." A fresh stream of blood sprayed up and into Claire's face as they moved Girard into position for the carry.
"Fuck. Why do these things always happen to me?" Claire wiped at her face.
Keller laughed.
"Keller! Your pod, now!" Howell pointed her baton.
"Yes, ma'am. Just trying to help."
"Now!"
"My laundry--"
Claire's face mottled an unhealthy purple as she screamed, "Now, asswipe, or you'll be in the infirmary with him!"
Grinning at no one in particular, Keller ambled easily up the stairs.
Down in the hospital ward was the routine chaos of an emergency. Despite all the bustling, the scrambling, the yelling out of orders, everyone had a job and plan. After all, bleeding prisoners are the staple food of the hospital ward. They transferred the now unconscious Girard onto a bed and slipped in two IV's in under a minute. "BP ninety over seventy and dropping," someone called.
Nathan moved to examine the wound. It shot out another pulse of bright red blood. "It must be a through and through laceration of the external femoral artery at least. Maybe the internal too. I'm going to have to explore it and repair it surgically."
"BP eighty over fifty. Heart rate 150."
"He's shocky," said Nathan. "We need to stabilize him first. What blood type is he?"
"O positive," said the nurse with his chart.
"Good! We have lots of that. Transfuse four units wide open and bring me a surgical tray."
"Type and cross?" asked the nurse.
"No time," said Nathan. "Type specific only. Go!"
The nurse ran to the blood bank and came back with four bags.
"Seventy over palpable!" said a nurse.
"Squeeze them in," said Nathan, "I need him tanked for surgery."
Two nurses hung the blood and squeezed. "Ninety over sixty. Heart rate coming down---no, wait--"
"Aiiiiiee!" Girard gave a blood-curdling scream and bolted upright on the table.
"Is that good or bad?" asked a nurse, struggling to keep the IV's flowing.
"I don't know," said Nathan, "but him hold him down if you have to. Get that blood in!"
But Girard would not be calmed. He screamed louder and stronger and thrashed against the restraints. "The pain! The pain! Aiiieee!"
Finally, mercifully, after a howl that that pierced every eardrum in the room, he passed out again.
"Doctor! Blood pressure dropping fast!"
"What?" Nathan looked to the wound. Her pressure dressing held, soaked, but no longer pouring blood. "Could he be bleeding internally?"
"Doctor! His temperature is shooting up! It's over 102!"
"Are you sure?"
"Feel for yourself!" Indeed, Girard's skin was burning up. "Blood pressure almost undetectable."
"Hang the other blood. Start it now. Hold the skin retractors; I'm going in" With a hasty betadine prep, Nathan opened the wound. She found the external femoral artery cut, but already slaked off in flow.
"Then what--?" Nathan stared into the wound.
"Doctor! V tach!" The monitor now showed a wildly jagged tracing.
"Get the crash cart! Give me the paddles! Charge to two hundred and stand back!" Nathan applied the current to his chest, and the body jumped. the cardiac monitor stayed the same,
"Still V tach! Charge to three hundred!" She shocked him again. Still nothing. "Three sixty, and ready an amp of epi and the amiodarone."
"Doctor, look at this." A nurse pointed to the body. Not just where the paddles had been, but all over, there were ugly, bluish blemishes and the skin itself was turning a jaundiced yellow right before their eyes. "The shocks?"
"No," said Nathan. "It's the blood! It's bad blood! Stop the blood. Hang saline instead, start CPR and check those bags!" She grabbed the chart. "O positive. What do the labels say?"
"All O positive, doctor."
Nathan puzzled. For all the world, it looked like a major transfusion reaction. "Push a hundred milligrams of Benadryl and one gram of hydrocortisone anyway. Save the blood bags. Maybe one was mislabeled." Nathan creased her brow. She had to think. She peered at the chart again. Where the blood type was handwritten in, was the vertical line of the + maybe a little different ink than the rest? Or maybe it was smudged. Was someone unsure when they made the chart?
"Check the computer records; confirm his blood type there," said Nathan.
"O positive," someone called from her desk. It was Pete. Somehow she always appeared where needed.
"Maybe it isn't really him," someone suggested. "You know, maybe he switched identities with someone with a different blood type."
"It doesn't matter now," said a nurse. She pointed to the cardiac monitor. Flat line. "Whoever he is, he's dead."
Nathan stared blankly at the screen. So many deaths no matter how hard she tried. She took a breath. But they would replace him--tomorrow or the next day--with someone else who needed her help just as much. There wasn't much else to do but go on. "Bag him up and his belongings."
"An autopsy?" The nurse waited expectantly.
Nathan shook her head. "We don't have enough money for the living. All we can give the dead is respect." Before stripping off her gloves, she took a moment to fasten Girard's pants up around his waist.
"The warden will want to know what happened," said Pete. "Apparently he was alone with another inmate under suspicious circumstances. If this was murder..."
Gloria shook her head. "Tell Glynn the cut didn't kill him. We were getting him back from that. It was pretty shallow; the big internal artery was intact. Any inmate here would have known to go deeper, or better still, go for the carotids.
"It was some kind of a freak allergy--maybe to the preserved blood, I don't know--but that's what killed him, not the cut." She pulled the bed sheet over his head and went to her desk to fill out the legion of forms that went with an inside death.
For now, all is right with the world, thought Keller as he rested his palms against the glass of his pod. He stared down at Beecher, all alone in his. He might not have Beecher, but neither would anyone else, and that was a kind of ownership too. He smiled and waved magnanimously--his hands still caked with Girard's blood--like some entitled beneficent king. I warned you, Toby. I gave you a chance to stop this, which was one more chance than you deserved. It's not my fault if you didn't take it. You should be on your knees thanking me. No one has ever loved you as much as I do.
Keller's new roommate--Vogel, that was his name--watched from his bunk. He took in the blood that covered Keller from neck to knees. "Looks like you made a hell of an impression there."
The drying blood was making his skin itch and it smelt unpleasant too--like airborne metal filings in hot machine shop. That smell had never seemed right for human blood. Human blood should be sweet, he thought. Keller went to the sink to wash. He checked the mirror. Fine dots had splattered his face and hair. It was funny how blood went everywhere like that. He had almost forgotten that part....
He dunked his head in the cool water and the sink turned a dirty red. It was a peculiar property of blood that a little could discolor so much. He wiped his neck down easily enough, but when he tried to wash his chest, the blood more smeared and stuck than came clean.
Looking up into the mirror, he saw Vogel watching him still. He hadn't answered him. What had he said? Oh yeah.
"I try my best, Vogel. I do try."
Author: Lyrastar
Pairing: B/m, K/m, B/K
Rating: Adults only
Warnings: Porn, violence, vulgarity, suffering, murder. Yeah, Oz.
Disclaimer: HBO productions, not me.
Notes: Set after The Truth and Nothing But and before Cruel and Unusual Punishments--you know, during that time when Keller is knocking off everyone who has sex with Toby. Both Beecher and Keller's podmates are non-canonical OC's. You can call it AU if you like. Writing done in a day, typing spilled over into the next, then editing added to protect the innocent. Big thanks to blackchaps for on-the-spot beta. Over the word limit by about 300%. They didn't really mean it, did they?
Summary: For the livejournal hardtime100 Flash Fiction Challenge #15: Creative Weaponry. Where do all of Toby's ex-lovers go?
BAD BLOOD
In Oz, security is the highest priority with every detail being carefully orchestrated and always in evolution. The prison board designs rules and procedures. The wardens customize and adapt them for their own facilities. The CO's fine tune and tweak and hone and when a new weapon does rear it head inside the walls, the full weight of the system swings into motion to refine the rules some more.
What no one realizes is that their carefully engineered plans can never work for keeping weapons out of Oz for one simple reason. Any given object is only a tool; the real weapons are the people who wield them, and the more they perfect their precious system, the more tightly all the weapons get locked inside.
--Augustus Hill, 1999
"Can you do it?" Keller rolled the wad of bills in his hand.
"I don't see why not." Under the stairs, Cudney eyed the cash. It wasn't that he was a stupid man; on the contrary, although certain that nothing good was intended to come of this, he was smart enough to rationalize with the best of them. As he saw it, he would be committing only a few innocent movements of the finger. With the smallest stroke of a pen and the tap of a key or two, he would have Keller's blood money to give to the greater glory of God. Whatever the fallout from his actions would be, well, that would be on Keller's hands, not his. All he was doing was paperwork, and paperwork was nowhere on the Bible's list of sins.
He would donate the money to save scores of helpless unborn from immolation; he would have to trust in God to save one living sinner from Chris Keller. Surely his God saw the logic in that.
"I need a 'yes,'" said Keller, pulling back his hand. "If everything isn't in position, the whole second stage will fall apart."
"It'll get done. They worry about the drugs, needles and scalpels, not the charts," said Cudney, eyes still fixed on the cash. "It might take me a day or two; it depends upon who's there. I'll tell you when it's done."
Keller peeled off two bills from the inside of the roll and stuffed the rest back in his pocket. "That's it for now. The rest when I have proof that it's done."
"Proof?" Cudney spluttered on the word. "What do you want me to do? Take a picture?"
"How else do I know that I can trust you? I need everything to be in place."
"I'm a Christian; I don't lie."
"You're a child murderer."
"And I pled guilty; I don't lie. I'll swear on my faith; if I tell you it's done, it's done."
Oddly enough, that made perfect sense, thought Keller. "Okay, but if you say it is and it isn't and the rest of it falls apart, it all comes back on you."
It occurred to Cudney that in the final reckoning, that would likely be a good mark on his side. But that was only a guess, and the money was here and now and tangible. One hundred twenty five thousand abortions being performed per day--it would take a well-financed army to combat that kind of slaughter. In his black and white mind, it wasn't even a close moral contest. "Fine."
They came out from under the stairs to see Toby watching them from his pod. When Cudney's back was to them and he could no longer see, Chris blew Toby a little Judas Kiss.
In the pod he shared with Beecher, Chuck Girard swung down from the top bunk just in time to see Chris Keller sit down at the chessboard with a very young and very pretty Latino boy. Fresh meat. It didn't take a rocket scientist to see what, or at least who, Toby was watching.
"Problem?" he asked.
"I don't know," said Toby. "That's the problem."
Girard counted to three. All that expensive education and lawyer boy kept coming back to Keller. If the guy was really that dumb, it's no wonder he got himself locked up. Fuck. If all defense attorneys were that dumb, it's no wonder Oz was way past maximum capacity.
But Toby was clean and mostly sane, and Toby put out, and all in all Toby wasn't a bad guy--for a jizzbag lawyer. Only eleven days into his eight-year stretch, that seemed like a pretty lucky combination in a roommate. Girard had done too much time to screw up a good thing over stupid little details like sentiment or brains.
"Well, what do you know?" asked Girard. "Maybe I can take your mind off of the rest." Moving slowly, he interposed his mass between the glass panes and Toby. He backed him into the corner comprising bed and back wall of the pod. "What do you know?" He repeated the words in a husky whisper, nibbling at Toby's neck and shoulder as he moved his hand through the fly and around Toby's rapidly swelling flesh.
"I don't know anymore," said Toby, not caring for anything except the promised oblivion that seemed just around the next stroke. Or the next. He liked his sex fast and often--the same way he had liked his drugs and for the same ephemeral moments of non-existence. He told himself that this was better; sex couldn't hurt him like drugs. Well, except for Schillinger....uh, and AIDS...and Keller, if you choose to look at it that way.
Well, this was different; Chuck wasn't like that. Chuck was just sex for sex. Sex for sex was good. Toby made a series of little cries as he came, and collapsed against Chuck's tattooed chest.
Chuck held him for a minute, the kissed him fully and deeply on the mouth.
It was the next day in the showers that it happened. Toby turned around and, like a painful back spasm, Chris was suddenly just there behind him, without any whys or wherefores, sending a sick feeling clear through to his gut.
Except that this particular spasm was naked but for a little white towel.
"I don't want you screwing around with him." Chris's voice was dangerously flat. Like the deceptively inviting water before a tsunami, Chris sounded civil, even businesslike. Fortunately--or unfortunately depending on one's perspective--Toby had ridden that particular wave before.
"Fuck off," said Toby, cinching his towel a little tighter about his waist.
"If that's what it takes to get you back, sure. I'm all yours." Chris offered his best bedroom smile.
Incredible. The guy never quits. "News flash for you, Keller: I won't be coming back because I don't like you."
Chris was unaffected. "Maybe not, but you love me; you'll be back." The interesting thing about psychopaths is that their lies and their wild guesses all come out sounding the same as do their gospel truths. Chris put his hands on Toby's shoulders. It wasn't the easy embrace of a friend, but the onerous weight of possession instead.
"Take your hands off of me." Toby thought it all through in less time than it took to stiffen. He was in no shape to fight Keller now. His limbs were barely healed. He was still out of shape from his convalescence. What he would count on was Keller's bastardized idea of remorse to want to protect him and not hurt him--physically at least--well, unless it happened to be one of those random days when Keller got the itch to kill him instead.
Sometimes you had to take a chance.
Toby twisted out from under the hold and made for the exit door. "Get out of my way!"
"I said," Chris reached for him again, not quite so carefully this time, "I don't want you screwing around with him."
"I know this is going to be a big shock to you, but guess what? It's not about what you want. It's about what I want, which is to suck every cock in Em City and laugh about how much better they are than yours. They're real men, Chris, not faggots who can only get it up by sniffing a dirty shithole. Real men, who just want blowjobs like everyone else. Now that's what I want and you can't give me." Toby turned back to the sink and reached for the shaving cream can.
Chris dropped his hands and froze. His voice was utterly impassive "You're hurt, Toby. For good reason. I hurt you, and so I'll forgive you for that remark. Just remember that when you're ready to come back, I'll be here. I love you."
One towel dropped to the floor. Chris's. He moved in behind Toby at the sink and met his eyes in the mirror. "Remember that. I love you Toby. Remember that. I love you and I forgave you." Chris leaned in and murmured the husky words so close to Toby's ear that they seemed to be mainlined straight into his brain.
As he spoke, Chris snaked his hand around Toby's thigh and pushed it slowly up and under the towel. It was not the tentative hesitation of a man waiting for permission, but the easy loping pace of a batter who has just hit the ball out of the park and knows that he has all the time in the world for his lap around the bases.
When it reached the crease where the thigh merged into other parts, Chris's hand touched the soft skin of the scrotum, and Toby couldn't help but press against it. Bending forward, curling both arms around Toby's front, Chris began to nibble the curve of the neck in the place that always drove Toby up the fucking wall.
As Toby fell backwards into Chris's strength, he told himself that the fault was in his half-healed legs that couldn't hold him up quite yet. He told himself that an erection was nothing but an autonomic reflex, and that he was hot and damp and breathing hard only from the cloying air and the shower steam.
But any trial has two sides, and Chris Keller was a trial to beat them all, by gum. The defense side of Toby also told himself that the sweet things Chris whispered were no truer now than they were then. But then Chris's hand was on his dick and stroking it and it no longer mattered what was real and what was false because it brought back a rush of memories of the few contented times he had ever had in Oz--lying with Chris, being held by Chris--and it made him think that just maybe it could be that way again, even if just for a moment.
In the midst of a four-to-fifteen stretch of hell, one perfect moment can mean everything. Wasn't that worth a little self-deception?
Hell, he was an alcoholic, a world-class expert at denial. He should be able to do this without batting an eye.
Toby leaned back and let the words and the hands carry him back to a bed and a time when he had felt loved and cared for and even good and some part of his brain that still belonged to the bright young pre-law student tried to warn him that this was a far more dangerous drug than heroin had ever been. But Toby couldn't hear it because the hand had cupped his balls and was rolling them so carefully--just the way he liked--and despite himself Toby groaned and gasped, drowning out anything and everything but the feel of Chris's hand on his package and the blow of Chris's labored breath over his neck and head.
At the sound of the gasp, Chris sucked in on Toby's neck. Dammit, that will bruise. But Toby could feel the iron between Chris's legs pushing through the towel and against his crack and he knew that Chris needed him as much as he needed Chris and the thought made his balls contract and he nearly came there into the sink. Chris fucking Keller needed him!
He felt himself ooze--god, he was so close--but the rolling rhythm of fingers and balls would not be enough to get him there. Every now and again, Chris's hand brushed his dick, as if by accident, but Toby doubted Chris had ever touched a dick accidentally in his whole life.
Now mind game, torture, and control, that was Keller in a nutshell.
The thing about power is that the controller can only win if other people agree to play; Tobias Beecher had no intention of doing that. He clenched his cheeks and rocked his hips and focused all his sensation on the pressure in his balls and the feel of the fingers and the insistent press of Chris's prick against his ass. He summoned every erotic image of him and Chris and everything they had done or spoken of doing and every sick dream he had ever had, but still he could not get close enough.
He needed Chris's hand on his dick.
But Chris seemed oblivious. He massaged the balls and fucked the crack and panted senseless chants into Toby's ear, but the dick he ignored completely. Toby tried his mental powers of visualization, persuasion, and then even telekinesis to will Chris's hand to his shaft. None of them worked and when it came down to a choice between come or die, Toby knew he was lost when he felt the words rise in his throat that he would use to beg Psycho Chris Keller to touch his prick.
"Chris...touch it, please..." And then Chris did. And then Toby was coming in gallons all over the sink and wall and Chris's hand. He counted five, six, seven spurts. Eight! He didn't think it would ever stop. He couldn't breathe for contractions of his body and he thought he would die and dissolve right here. He would liquefy and become his own spunk and be washed away down the drain, out of Oz and into the sewer with all the rest of the shit.
But he wasn't to be so lucky. He lived, and he was still a man in Oz.
When he could think again, he found himself being held up mostly the embrace of Chris's arms. He tried to find his feet, but still Chris held his trunk. He was a mess. He groped for his towel, but it was long gone to down to the tile. Chris's naked prick was wedged into his crack, still as hard as when this had all started. Still Keller made no demands with it. He just held him, peppering gentle kisses over his neck, his back, his shoulders.
"I love you, Toby," Chris said over and over, as if after spreading enough layers of thin, cheap paint, the color you want might finally take hold.
They jumped apart as the shower-room door opened. It was Girard. Toby bent over for his towel, but his legs were still none too steady and he stumbled coming up.
"Everything all right here? Toby?" Girard assessed Keller's naked body, hard-on and all. That triumphant smile said even more than his prick.
Girard put his arm around Toby's shoulder. "Toby?"
Toby reached up to pat his hand. "I'm okay. Really, I'm fine." He straightened and wrapped the towel around his waist. He didn't sound it, but on the other hand, he didn't seem to be hurt, bruised, or bleeding and "fine" was a relative term in Oz.
"What you doing here Keller?" Girard left the tone as a simple question. It wasn't a challenge yet, but could easily be made one if need be.
Chris grinned, his pecker jutting out insolently in front. "Taking a shower, Girard."
"Pretty dry, for a shower, aren't you?"
"Oh, we'd just gotten started."
Toby caught a sidelong glance. Sonofabitch! Keller actually winked at him! Fuck, fuck, fuck! How could he have let Keller have this kind of power over him again? Fuming more at his own unintended weakness than Chris's fully intended strength, Toby tossed the other towel to Chris.
"I'm not ashamed of my body," said Chris, holding the towel an arm's length from his woody.
Toby snorted. "It's not for modesty; you're going to need some extra warmth. It'll be a cold day in hell before you ever get me back."
With that, together Chuck and Toby walked out the door, Chuck's arm around Toby's waist. Now Murphy finally noticed the situation.
Murphy rapped his baton on the railing. "You two, break it up."
Toby was too inured to even sigh. Fucking hacks.
In their pod, Chuck watched Toby dry and pull on his shorts. He saw the fading outline of a handprint on his shoulder and the incipient lip shaped bruises around his neck that tend to come from pleasure, and not from pain.
Beecher turned to see him watching. "Aren't you going to ask?"
Girard shrugged. "Wasn't planning on it. You're a big boy. If there's something you want to tell me, I figure you will. I don't care who you fuck around with."
Only one living person did. That had to count for something--love, or at least a passable imitation of it, right?
"Chuck, there is something I want to tell you." Toby drew on his most somber voice and made his face utterly flat. "I want you to fuck me senseless."
Chuck grinned. "Six hours and--" He checked his watch. "Forty-two minutes to go and I think that can be arranged. Hang in there, big boy." Girard slapped him on the ass.
Forgetting the rest of his clothes, Toby threw himself on his bunk. He'd just shot a load that would drown a hippopotamus and he was already horny again. He touched himself just enough to ease the surface tension, and his dick twitched in interest, but told himself he would not jerk-off now. If he did, he would only think of Chris, and the whole point of sexual oblivion was to free his mind from all that shit. Six hours and forty-one minutes until he could lie with his face in the pillow and think of nothing. He touched his balls again.
Christ, this was going to be a long evening.
When lights-out did come, the sex was frantic and hard. Toby would have bruises on his arms and legs, but he didn't care. They were nothing compared to the ones inside. If he wasn't going to be permitted comfort through pleasure, than pain would make an acceptable second choice. Besides, he needed this as badly as he needed air.
But for all the raw force and the humiliating words and the stinky spunk that shot up his ass, when Toby was pressed and crushed against the edge of the bed, what he felt was Chris's arm holding him at the middle, what he saw was the slightly off-kilter look of Chris's face distorted by the cheap, metal mirror, and what he heard was Chris's voice in his ear whispering I love you's as another man's cock filled his ass over and over again.
Keller's podmate--what was his name? Vommer? Voder? Oh, who the hell cared--looked up from the crapper. "You must be a fucking nutcase."
"I've been called that before," said Keller, slipping a razor blade into a slit in the waistband of his shorts. It was true. He had. But as far as he could remember, not by anyone who could still talk. It tended not to happen twice. "You have point?"
The guy--Vogger?--hopped up from the crapper and buttoned his jeans. "You already have, what, at least forty-nine years to go? You off someone in here, and you won't get out until you're senile--unless it's after a lethal injection."
"Nice of you to care, but I'm not going to kill anyone." Keller double-checked the blade's hiding place--it wouldn't do to have an accident with the family jewels--and pulled on his pants. "I just want to...make an impression."
"Count!" The buzzer rang. Keller grabbed a clean shirt and carefully tucked it in as he stepped through the door. He grinned from ear to ear as the morning routine started up another new same-old-day.
Impressions counted if a man wanted to get anywhere in life.
"Girard! See you a minute?" Keller called out from the laundry room.
"Fuck off, Keller. What goes on between Toby and me is none of your damned business." Girard kept walking past.
"If you hadn't noticed, dipshit, I'm talking to you. I don't see Toby anywhere around, do you?" Keller stood in just tennis shoes and gym shorts. His laundry was half in and half out of a dryer.
"So what do you want?"
"Same thing Toby has; a piece of you." It came out as breezily as, "please pass me the salt."
Girard swore. "I knew it. Listen--"
Keller chuckled. "Relax." To both of their surprise, Girard did. Chris Keller could charm a cobra out of his fangs if he set his mind to it. "I just figure fair is fair. Toby gets to suck your cock, so should I. He told me you have a pretty one," Keller lied. He still held the laundry room door open with his arm.
"Let me get this straight: you want to suck the dick of the guy who's banging your ex?" Girard crossed his arms in front of his chest.
Keller's eyes grew hard. "Let's just say that I don't want Beecher getting any action without me. And that I wouldn't mind pissing him off."
Now that sounded like Keller.
Girard wondered where this was going. Why not test the waters? "Beecher bends over for me."
Keller kept his face impassive. "I'm sure he does. He bends over for everyone."
"You gonna take a piece of that too?"
"If that's what it takes," said Keller. "I want everything that little whore gets off of you and then some."
Girard licked his lips and stepped in the door.
"Over here." Keller motioned to the narrow space between the last washer-dryer and the sidewall. "You can't see in from the common area. Come on, I want to see that pretty dick."
Girard balked at the small, dark space. He'd done enough time in other prisons to know a deathtrap when he saw one.
Keller grinned. "I get it." He spread his arms. "Go ahead; pat me down. Do a thorough job of it. In fact," Keller jutted out his pelvis for emphasis, "I'd like it if you did."
Girard wavered. "Take off your shoes."
Keller did.
"Put them on the counter over there."
Keller did. "Happy now?"
"Spread your toes."
They were clean.
One didn't end up in Oz by having more brains than impulse control, and so Chuck Girard moved in. Without preamble, Girard stuck his hand down the front of Keller's shorts and fondled until his hand covered every square millimeter. Then he went back to the middle and started all over again, taking his sweet time now.
Keller leaned his palms back against the counter for support. His eyes rolled back in his head and his breathing grew rough. His whole body tensed and he clenched and unclenched his teeth. "Oh yeah, Chuck, do me like that."
Girard removed his hand. "The deal was: you were supposed to blow me."
"Sure, sure." Keller stroked his own dick. "But not here. You want to get thrown in the hole?" Keller gestured out to the common room. Fiona was already watching the action discreetly.
Keller tossed his head toward the nook. "Go on. In there."
Again, Girard paused, but Keller made an obscene gesture with his tongue and it was game over. Led on a leash by his pecker, Girard slid in against the side of the last machine, and undoing his pants even as he crossed the floor.
The nook went back far enough to allow extra room along the wall, but was narrow enough to be cramped for two grown men. That made it perfect for Keller's purposes, though it was going to be awkward for a blowjob. Keller crouched, interweaving their knees, to find his nose almost up against Girard's stinking pubes. He took Girard's full erection in his hand.
"Toby's got taste, it is a pretty dick. It's so pretty I want to eat it all at once."
Girard groaned. "Come on! Do it! Suck me!"
Keller swallowed him up to the hilt.
Cramped and sweating in the heat of the laundry, Girard couldn't help but rock himself into the caress of that mouth and the tease of that tongue and he tried to stop before it passed the point where he wouldn't be fucking Keller or anyone else this morning but it all felt so bloody good that he just ceased to care or think and he let himself be sucked to Nirvana.
Chris Keller knew a thing or two about blowjobs--yes indeed he did--but mostly Chris Keller liked to be the best at whatever he tried. On top of that, he was on a mission here and so he licked and sucked and used the other lesser known (at least among the living) talents of his lying lips and brought Girard up to the edge in record time.
Then he stopped.
Girard howled in frustration. Keller grabbed his wrists. "Chuck, knock it off! You're making too much noise."
"What?" Girard's breath was jerky and sweat had beaded on his chest. His eyes were unfocused. He rocked his pelvis in and out impotently towards Keller's mouth just out of reach.
"Noise. You're banging on the machines. You're going to attract the hacks."
"Sorry," Girard gasped. "I'm so damned close. Finish it, Chris! Finish it now!" Girard broke away from Keller's hold, grabbed his head, and pulled it back into his crotch.
Keller opened his mouth and Girard's dick jerked in anticipation. Fluid beaded at the tip, and Keller stuck out his tongue. Girard moaned; his eyes widened. "Oh yes, you little faggot, lick my spunk."
Keller rolled his eyes upward and inched his neck forward. He let his open mouth hover over the tip of Girard's dick and held there, breathing hot, steamy breath onto the skin, but with careful calculation, not touching it with his mouth.
Blind with frustration, Girard arched his weight back against the machines. The metal rumbled. Keller put lips to dick for just a split second and Girard yelped in a relief that was even more torture when taken away.
Keller pulled back and sprang to his feet, his erection tenting his shorts far out in front. Girard reached for his own prick. Keller grabbed both his wrists again. "Chuck! Stop it! You're making too much noise. "
Girard writhed against him, pushing his turgid dick mercilessly into the muscle of Keller's hip. "Fuck you, cocksucker! You've got to get me off! I'm dying here. You get me off now!"
"I will, but Chuck, you've got to stop the noise or we're both in for it." For once, Keller sounded like the sane man in the room, and Girard tried his best to regain a modicum of control.
But then Keller crouched, and with his tongue, made one lap around the glans, sucked just twice and then let go.
Girard threw himself back against the metal again.
"Chuck, Chuck, let's change sides," said Keller. His voice was almost patronizing--like an instructor, or at least like an egomaniac in control of a weaker soul.
"What?" Girard struggled to free his wrists, to touch himself, to do anything except go on like this.
"Change sides. You up against the wall," Keller said, "Then you won't be banging the metal."
"Fine, just hurry," said Girard. He rolled his head for no apparent reason.
In a stilted dance of sticky frottage, Keller turned them around until Chuck was up against the wall. He put his mouth onto the dick again, and with agonizing slowness, Chris began to move his tongue alone.
Girard gasped and choked. He pounded the cement wall to no avail. He clutched at Chris's head, and banged fists against his neck, but still Chris licked with the deliberate slowness of a metronome in remedial student time.
At the first taste of salt, Keller pulled away again.
"You fucking fucker of a fuckwad--!" Girard panted for breath. Sweat was rolling off of him now, and his pulse hammered far too rapidly in every vein of his neck.
"Easy Chuck. We're almost there." Again covering his dick with his mouth and breath so Girard couldn't jerk himself, Keller reached between Girard's legs and ran his thumb along that special spot from hole to sack where the prostate is closest to the skin.
Girard shuddered and a drop of salt fell on Keller's tongue.
Rhythmically, Keller repeated his caress.
It was more of a guttural grunt than a string of words, but Keller took it for, "Yes, yes, yes!" He massaged the gland and delicately, oh so delicately lapped at the dick, paying minute attention to the grunts. One "yes!" before the anticipated crescendo, Keller stopped again.
Girard wailed, this time in pure agony. His balls felt like neutron bombs.
That cry made Keller harder than ever, but that wasn't really the point.
Girard quivered on shaky legs, too hot, too focused, too utterly undone to even protest in words.
"You know what I'd like to do?" asked Keller, still fingering the spot between Girard's legs, but ever so lightly now.
His only answer was panted obscenities, barely discernable as words, which meant Keller's plan was right on target. "I'd like to eat your ass."
This time Girard groaned and nodded. He spread his legs a little wider.
Keller slid his thumb up to the hairy shithole. "I want to stick my tongue in your hole and eat you from inside out until you come shooting every bit of that jizz into my hands. Would you like that? Would you?"
Girard nodded weakly, and continued to rock his hips making helpless jerking motions with his hands.
"Okay, then, turn around and spread 'em against the wall."
Girard stumbled trying to turn.
Keller laughed. "Oh man, you're a wreck. Let me help you." He stood up and positioned Girard flat against the wall. He opened the last dryer door. "Here, hold on to this."
Girard stuck out his right hand and clenched the door.
Keller reached behind, first for the little magnet stuck to the metal, then he used the magnet to extract the razor blade he had hidden between the washer and dryer levels. He palmed it is his right. With his left he spread Girard's cheeks.
Girard begged, "Now, now, now!"
"Yeah, baby, now." Keller stroked one finger over the asshole.
Girard groaned "Do me now!" His eyes were closed and he moved his pelvis rhythmically as a man mesmerized by something unseen.
"Oh yeah. Let me pump your dick at the same time," Keller said and with his right hand he reached around front. In one swift movement, he shifted Girard's hips toward the dryer door, cut across Girard's groin, then slid the blade back between the machines.
"Aaaaagh!" Girard's cry pierced the air. Bright red blood spurted everywhere in brisk volcanic bursts.
"Shit!" Keller wiped his bloody hand on the dryer door--especially on a ragged piece of metal on the edge--and . "You cut yourself bad." He dragged Girard by the waist over to the door. "Help guard! Somebody help!"
"Lockdown!" The familiar buzzer rang.
Officers Sean Murphy and Claire Howell ran in. Howell threw Keller up against the wall, jamming her baton into his neck.
"Easy!" said Keller, his hands high in the air. "He caught his leg on the door; I was just trying to help."
"Help him pull his pants down?
"I had to check the wound. It's bad."
"Sure is; it's the femoral artery," said Murphy. "Alert Doctor Nathan we are bringing Charles Girard down with an arterial bleed."
"Is he going to be okay?" Keller sounded for all the world like he cared.
No one answered.
"Claire, give me a hand." Murphy threw one of Girard's arms over his shoulder. "Hold pressure on the wound." A fresh stream of blood sprayed up and into Claire's face as they moved Girard into position for the carry.
"Fuck. Why do these things always happen to me?" Claire wiped at her face.
Keller laughed.
"Keller! Your pod, now!" Howell pointed her baton.
"Yes, ma'am. Just trying to help."
"Now!"
"My laundry--"
Claire's face mottled an unhealthy purple as she screamed, "Now, asswipe, or you'll be in the infirmary with him!"
Grinning at no one in particular, Keller ambled easily up the stairs.
Down in the hospital ward was the routine chaos of an emergency. Despite all the bustling, the scrambling, the yelling out of orders, everyone had a job and plan. After all, bleeding prisoners are the staple food of the hospital ward. They transferred the now unconscious Girard onto a bed and slipped in two IV's in under a minute. "BP ninety over seventy and dropping," someone called.
Nathan moved to examine the wound. It shot out another pulse of bright red blood. "It must be a through and through laceration of the external femoral artery at least. Maybe the internal too. I'm going to have to explore it and repair it surgically."
"BP eighty over fifty. Heart rate 150."
"He's shocky," said Nathan. "We need to stabilize him first. What blood type is he?"
"O positive," said the nurse with his chart.
"Good! We have lots of that. Transfuse four units wide open and bring me a surgical tray."
"Type and cross?" asked the nurse.
"No time," said Nathan. "Type specific only. Go!"
The nurse ran to the blood bank and came back with four bags.
"Seventy over palpable!" said a nurse.
"Squeeze them in," said Nathan, "I need him tanked for surgery."
Two nurses hung the blood and squeezed. "Ninety over sixty. Heart rate coming down---no, wait--"
"Aiiiiiee!" Girard gave a blood-curdling scream and bolted upright on the table.
"Is that good or bad?" asked a nurse, struggling to keep the IV's flowing.
"I don't know," said Nathan, "but him hold him down if you have to. Get that blood in!"
But Girard would not be calmed. He screamed louder and stronger and thrashed against the restraints. "The pain! The pain! Aiiieee!"
Finally, mercifully, after a howl that that pierced every eardrum in the room, he passed out again.
"Doctor! Blood pressure dropping fast!"
"What?" Nathan looked to the wound. Her pressure dressing held, soaked, but no longer pouring blood. "Could he be bleeding internally?"
"Doctor! His temperature is shooting up! It's over 102!"
"Are you sure?"
"Feel for yourself!" Indeed, Girard's skin was burning up. "Blood pressure almost undetectable."
"Hang the other blood. Start it now. Hold the skin retractors; I'm going in" With a hasty betadine prep, Nathan opened the wound. She found the external femoral artery cut, but already slaked off in flow.
"Then what--?" Nathan stared into the wound.
"Doctor! V tach!" The monitor now showed a wildly jagged tracing.
"Get the crash cart! Give me the paddles! Charge to two hundred and stand back!" Nathan applied the current to his chest, and the body jumped. the cardiac monitor stayed the same,
"Still V tach! Charge to three hundred!" She shocked him again. Still nothing. "Three sixty, and ready an amp of epi and the amiodarone."
"Doctor, look at this." A nurse pointed to the body. Not just where the paddles had been, but all over, there were ugly, bluish blemishes and the skin itself was turning a jaundiced yellow right before their eyes. "The shocks?"
"No," said Nathan. "It's the blood! It's bad blood! Stop the blood. Hang saline instead, start CPR and check those bags!" She grabbed the chart. "O positive. What do the labels say?"
"All O positive, doctor."
Nathan puzzled. For all the world, it looked like a major transfusion reaction. "Push a hundred milligrams of Benadryl and one gram of hydrocortisone anyway. Save the blood bags. Maybe one was mislabeled." Nathan creased her brow. She had to think. She peered at the chart again. Where the blood type was handwritten in, was the vertical line of the + maybe a little different ink than the rest? Or maybe it was smudged. Was someone unsure when they made the chart?
"Check the computer records; confirm his blood type there," said Nathan.
"O positive," someone called from her desk. It was Pete. Somehow she always appeared where needed.
"Maybe it isn't really him," someone suggested. "You know, maybe he switched identities with someone with a different blood type."
"It doesn't matter now," said a nurse. She pointed to the cardiac monitor. Flat line. "Whoever he is, he's dead."
Nathan stared blankly at the screen. So many deaths no matter how hard she tried. She took a breath. But they would replace him--tomorrow or the next day--with someone else who needed her help just as much. There wasn't much else to do but go on. "Bag him up and his belongings."
"An autopsy?" The nurse waited expectantly.
Nathan shook her head. "We don't have enough money for the living. All we can give the dead is respect." Before stripping off her gloves, she took a moment to fasten Girard's pants up around his waist.
"The warden will want to know what happened," said Pete. "Apparently he was alone with another inmate under suspicious circumstances. If this was murder..."
Gloria shook her head. "Tell Glynn the cut didn't kill him. We were getting him back from that. It was pretty shallow; the big internal artery was intact. Any inmate here would have known to go deeper, or better still, go for the carotids.
"It was some kind of a freak allergy--maybe to the preserved blood, I don't know--but that's what killed him, not the cut." She pulled the bed sheet over his head and went to her desk to fill out the legion of forms that went with an inside death.
For now, all is right with the world, thought Keller as he rested his palms against the glass of his pod. He stared down at Beecher, all alone in his. He might not have Beecher, but neither would anyone else, and that was a kind of ownership too. He smiled and waved magnanimously--his hands still caked with Girard's blood--like some entitled beneficent king. I warned you, Toby. I gave you a chance to stop this, which was one more chance than you deserved. It's not my fault if you didn't take it. You should be on your knees thanking me. No one has ever loved you as much as I do.
Keller's new roommate--Vogel, that was his name--watched from his bunk. He took in the blood that covered Keller from neck to knees. "Looks like you made a hell of an impression there."
The drying blood was making his skin itch and it smelt unpleasant too--like airborne metal filings in hot machine shop. That smell had never seemed right for human blood. Human blood should be sweet, he thought. Keller went to the sink to wash. He checked the mirror. Fine dots had splattered his face and hair. It was funny how blood went everywhere like that. He had almost forgotten that part....
He dunked his head in the cool water and the sink turned a dirty red. It was a peculiar property of blood that a little could discolor so much. He wiped his neck down easily enough, but when he tried to wash his chest, the blood more smeared and stuck than came clean.
Looking up into the mirror, he saw Vogel watching him still. He hadn't answered him. What had he said? Oh yeah.
"I try my best, Vogel. I do try."