Terrible Tad 8

By PatrickNaked

Copyright 2022 by PatrickNaked all rights reserved

Terrible Tad 8: The Aftermath of the Bath

As stated previously, Tracie, Ellie and I still hadn't told Tad we had watched his bath time with Aunt Martha. We certainly hadn’t told him that thanks to Ellie, he now had an extensive modeling portfolio. He didn’t know that all the girls in our Society, including younger sisters and friends, had now perused that portfolio often and at length. Or that the photographs now illuminated his latest story in Annette’s book. Or that the book with his and so many other boys’ stories even existed.

All he knew for sure was that we had seen him naked from the back when Aunt Martha made him take off his dirty underpants. THAT was embarrassing enough for him. We had only to mention it and he'd poke his bottom lip out in a pout while his face turned a lovely shade of red. He'd usually follow up with something snappy like, "Shut up!"

He was highly suspicious that we hadn't stayed in the kitchen for the duration and had therefore seen much, much more than his dirty bottom. I'm sure he was 99% certain we had watched, but he needed confirmation on that last 1% so he'd know just how embarrassed to be.

If the roles had been reversed, I honestly don't know if I would've wanted the truth or if I'd rather live in ignorance. But not knowing was eating Tad alive.

He pestered us endlessly as a group and individually, asking,
"Did you watch?"
"Did you see me?"
"Did you watch the whole time or just part of it?"
"Just tell me, tell me. I won't be mad. I just need to know."

We didn't outright lie, just remained evasive, deflecting his questions.
"You heard Aunt Martha. She told us to stay in the kitchen."
"Why would we want to watch YOU get a bath?"
"Are you suggesting we're Peeping Toms? Only boys do that. Hence, the name Tom.”
"Why would we want to see that much of you right before lunch?”."

When his persistence became more annoying than amusing, we'd threaten to swat him on his bottom. He didn't know if we'd really do it or not, but he shut his mouth all the same. Temporarily.

Word of Aunt Martha’s naked scarecrow had quickly spread through the town, with most of the populace aware of it by the time he arrived at school on Monday. We didn’t know how many people actually saw him that day. If we took for truth every supposed first hand sighting, a mile long procession of vehicles would’ve been rolling by my aunt’s house that day.

Enough actual witnesses had recognized Tad that his parents had received seven phone calls Saturday night before my parents even arrived to pick us all up at 9:30 pm.

On Sunday morning, there was a tense exchange between Tad’s parents and Aunt Martha. It was quickly resolved, in about five minutes, with his mother and father agreeing that Tad’s conduct had been deplorable in destroying the dishes, and dangerous in his attempt to cross that mass of mud. Aunt Martha had acted promptly and appropriately in scrubbing him clean of the filth he found himself covered in… filth that could have sickened him with countless colonies of deadly bacterias. Aunt Martha may well have saved his young life with her quick thinking and timely actions.

As for making him stand naked to the world for the longest hour of his life, it was her prerogative to punish him in any way she found suitable when he was in her care. Maybe a little public humiliation would do what twelve years of lectures, groundings and spankings couldn’t.

On Sunday evening, the day after his bath, Tad received another spanking, this one at the hand of his mother. With his history of misbehavior, his parents spanked him often. Our houses were so close, I probably heard every time they had. He tended to be quite loud with his wails and cries and promises of “I’ll be GOOOOOD.”

I learned from him later what he had done to incite the most recent one. He had suggested to his parents that Aunt Martha had done all she did with malicious intent. She had never liked him, she punished him for things she knew he hadn’t done, and her treatment of him had grown more sadistic in the last few years. Usually insidiously so. As much as he liked playing in the woods with us, he told his parents that he had come to dread visiting Aunt Martha’s.

I was beginning to agree with his assessment. I had seen but only recognized in retrospect the pattern emerging and growing over the years. No single instance would have been considered over the line, but when all were assembled like pieces of a puzzle, a picture of persecution was revealed. Much of it so petty that it should’ve been beneath an adult, even more so an adult of my aunt’s age. Much of it was so subtle that voicing a suspicion would sound paranoid and ridiculous.

But starting just a few years ago, there had been a change. My aunt’s behavior towards Tad had become more severe. More hateful. But still not enough to be called into question by other adults. To everyone in town, she was gruff but good-hearted old Aunt Martha. No one would hear a word against her.

At the time, I had found these instances to be funny, or bemusing at the most. I saw it all through a child’s eyes, with little experience to aid my interpretation of what happened around me. Those adults though, had the years but not the desire to see the person inside the persona of my aunt. Why look when you can look away?

The most obvious indicator I could remember was when Tad was eight… the day of the F word. I recalled that look of wicked rapture as she spanked his bottom. How she had looked to make sure we girls were watching before she exposed him to us, just as I suspected she had on the day of the backyard bath.

Increasingly, there had been fewer subtleties in her treatment of Tad, and more overt acts of aggression. Aggressions still easily camouflaged for the intentionally obtuse.

I thought of two more incidents…

Bathroom Boy’s Story - Aunt Martha threw open the bathroom door and walked into the room. From where I sat on her bed looking through phonograph records with Tracie and Ellie, I could see ten year old Tad’s bare knees and skinny legs hanging over the front of the toilet, his pants and underpants gathered around his ankles. The door jamb rudely blocked any further view of the boy. I heard him cry out, “I’m on the TOILET!” My aunt replied, “I can see that, boy. How a kid your size can hold enough poop to take this long is beyond me. Hurry it up.”

We girls snickered. I, along with the others, craned my neck to see more. Unfortunately, I was only rewarded with a little more of his legs, almost up to the tops of his thighs, but not beyond. Still, it was more to tease him about later. We were audacious enough to stretch our necks for a better view, but not brave enough to actually relocate for a more revealing angle. And we certainly would never dare to follow my aunt into the room.

Tad knew all too well that the toilet was partially visible through the open bathroom door. We watched him squirm about trying to pull his legs out of our line of sight, but the clothing bundled around his ankles bound his feet together and it all caught up against the front of the toilet. He quickly gave up.

Aunt Martha moved to stand directly in front of him, no more than a foot away. Oh my. Toilet time was inviolate. The ultimate private moment. But there was poor Tad, pooping while my aunt glared down at him impatiently. Three more sets of younger eyes assailed his privacy. We couldn’t see much, but we knew what he was doing while we watched, and he knew we knew. All of this added up to endless teasing and endless embarrassment for many weeks to come. And it would be the greatest “Guess what WE saw” moment when we met up later with our other girlfriends for story time.

My aunt leaned way down, put her hands on the insides of his thighs and spread his legs. She said, “Let me see if you’ve done anything in there.” This prompted a shocked gasp from Tad, then a mournful wail, “Aunt MARTHAAAAAA!” He grabbed her wrists, but quickly let go when he realized what he had done.

We had been giggling at his misfortune, a sound I’m sure he heard. But at that moment the giggles died in our throats. We looked at each other, all three of us mouthing a silent “Oh my GOD.” We looked back in horrified fascination, like rubberneckers passing the site of a gruesome car wreck.

She looked for a few moments. It probably felt like an eternity to Tad. “Not much there. You constipated?” The beleaguered boy gave a sullen and soft-spoken, “No. Sometimes it just takes a while.” He knew we could hear, and discussions of his intimate bodily functions would give us that much more to tease him about.

She instructed, “Then hurry up before I take my sewer snake to you.” She came back into the bedroom.

Tad cried out again, “You didn’t close the DOOOOOOR!”

“You got two legs,” she replied over her shoulder.

“Pleeeeeeease, Aunt Martha. Come close the door.”

She sat in a chair by the bed and picked up some knitting she had been working on.. “I’m not your slave, you entitled urchin.”

Tad made a little flustered noise. Then another. How could a simple poop go so horribly wrong?

A minute or so passed, then we heard a few plopping noises from the toilet bowl. Then a few more. I could imagine Tad’s face twisting with embarrassment each time that sound informed us of how the evacuation was going.

His legs began to move back and forth a bit and his belt buckle jingled from down around his ankles. He must have finished and was wiping his bottom. As he writhed about, trying to do this inconspicuously, he ALMOST revealed what we so wanted to see. More than once. He was THAT close. We were frustrated and would all probably wake up to neck pain in the morning as the only fruit of our labor.

Tad called out hopefully, “I’m through, Aunt Martha.” He waited.

She replied, absently, “Good for you. I knew you could do it.”

Silence lengthened for a couple of more minutes. He didn’t ask again. He knew my aunt. When she set her mind to doing something, or NOT doing it, she was resolute.

I thought about getting up and closing the door for him myself. He had suffered enough. My motives were pure. If I got a brief glimpse of the boy on the toilet to remind him about forevermore, that was just a small reward for my altruism.

I really did think, though, that it had gone on long enough. I wanted to help him. But it was so weird that my aunt, an adult, had left him stranded like that. Grownups weren’t supposed to do those kinds of things. I had no idea what her reaction would be if I tried to help. It was one of those moments when I was a bit frightened of her.

Tracie and Ellie must’ve been thinking of a rescue, too. Tracie whispered to me, “Should we…?” I motioned at her “No”.

I’m sure Tad was frantically thinking of what he could do. He was trapped on the toilet. My aunt obviously wouldn’t help. He wouldn’t call out to ask one of us to come close the door because whoever did it would see him in full, perched on the toilet. He would rather flush himself down the plumbing than have a girl see him like that. He couldn’t ask his rescuer to not look. He knew any of us would ignore such a ridiculous request. He could try to hop down and quickly pull up the clothing that was bunched up around his feet before any of us saw anything. But he apparently had no faith in being able to manage that deft maneuver without accidentally exposing something.

He finally settled on an option that was probably worse. At least it made him look more ridiculous than the hopping down/pulling up maneuver would’ve, even if that one had inadvertently revealed a flash of boy parts.

Tad reached down and stretched the front of his t-shirt over his crotch. He slid down off the toilet and, with his pants and underpants hindering his movement, waddled awkwardly to the bathroom door.

His t-shirt was too small for him. He had long ago outgrown it. It always showed a band of skin between it and his pants. Once he was off the toilet, it wouldn’t cover his crotch while he was standing at full height (which wasn’t all that high), no matter how far down he stretched it. So he had to hunch down as he waddled, adding to his overall clownish appearance.

Reaching the door, he paused momentarily, frozen, staring at us wide-eyed and red-faced, his expression locked in a look of shock, before recovering and gently closing the door.

I’m sure he would’ve rather slammed it so hard that it fell over into the bedroom. But Aunt Martha was sitting right there waiting, an expectant look on her face, like she wanted him to do something of the sort. He had already received a harsh punishment, seemingly just for the crime of pooping. Damaging a door could very well end his life.

It took quite a while for Toilet Tad to live down our teasing and hilarity over this latest misadventure.

Of course, we also told the rest of the girls in the group. How could we not? It made a fine addition to the Tales of Tad.

Luckily for the boys in our book, there was very little clique crossover in our school. So the details of the boys’ transgressions and tribulations usually stayed safe within the confines of our story time and the notebook narrative. But every now and then, there would be a data leak. The incriminating info would somehow find its way out into the world at large.

Such was the case with Tad’s bathroom embarrassment.

A few days later, a girl in a group of kids walking towards him in the school hallway grabbed the hem of her shirt, stretched it down over her crotch, bent down and began waddling like a duck, while calling out “Aunt Marthaaaaa,” The group burst into laughter while Tad dropped his head and tried to slide by while leaving as little of his dignity and self-esteem behind as possible.

When he found me later in private, I had to endure a twenty minute, teary-eyed, excessively animated rant on the virtues of discretion and the perils of imprudence. I let him carry on yapping like an angry puppy till he almost collapsed from exhaustion. I owed him that much. Not that it would stop me from sharing his next embarrassing incident.

One of which was…

The Ball to the Balls - Tad, eleven now, was tossing a baseball in my aunt’s backyard. He would throw it, then run in the same direction as fast as he could. I think he was trying to see if he could throw a ball and catch it, too. He wasn’t succeeding. We girls were lounging around on lawn chairs, being luxuriously lazy.

Aunt Martha came out and watched him play for a while. He was in his own little world and didn’t notice her presence till she walked towards him and said, “Here. Toss it to me.”

He looked surprised. “Do you play?” He asked.

“Sure, I was on a team when I was younger, a few thousand years ago. We just used rocks back then,” she laughed. We had never seen my aunt joke with Tad before.

She and Tad tossed the ball back and forth casually for a while. They both seemed to really be enjoying themselves. I thought, maybe things won’t be so tense between them anymore.

After a while, Aunt Martha said, “That’s good for the warmup. Let’s pick up the pace now.” With that, she threw the ball harder, quite suddenly. Tad looked alarmed and tried to duck. The ball hit his shoulder with a thud. “You can’t flinch like that,” she chided. “Throw it back.”

Tad was rubbing his shoulder. He bent to pick up the ball, never taking his eyes off of Aunt Martha. The atmosphere had instantly changed, like a dark cloud had just suddenly appeared over the sun.

Tad threw the ball back at the same speed as before. “What was that?” My aunt taunted. “Throw it harder. This is the big league and you’re still acting like a pee wee.” Taking her own advice, she threw the ball harder still.

Tad caught it in the crotch this time. With an “Oooomph,” he doubled over and fell to his hands and knees. “Uh oh,” my aunt said calmly, “Got him in the gonads. My aim ain’t what it used to be.”

Tad tried to stand up, but couldn’t. He fell back to sitting on his heels. His face was white, his teeth clenched. He cupped his hands over his injured privates and leaned forward. I was sure from the sounds he was making that he was going to throw up.

My aunt took him by the arm, saying, “Come on, boy. We’d better see if you’re still able to carry on the family line.” She pulled him up, but he couldn’t stand straight. I finally had to take his other arm and between us, my aunt and I maneuvered Tad into the house and down the hall to her bedroom. Tears were running down his cheeks and he was still making unintelligible noises.

I had always heard a boy’s balls were very sensitive. I was now seeing this first hand. Their placement looked like a very poorly thought out design.

We laid him down on the bed, where he rolled over and curled up. My aunt told me to get a towel from the bathroom, take it to the kitchen and wrap it around some ice from the freezer. Meanwhile, she would assess the damage.

It took a while to chip away enough ice to fill the towel from the big block in the freezer. When I returned with the ice pack, my aunt was sitting on the bed, turned sideways. On the other side of her, Tad was laying on his back with his knees up. I could only see his head and his legs. Aunt Martha’s bulk hid everything in-between. His legs were bare except for the white socks on his feet.

All of his other clothing was piled up on the floor. Oh wow, I thought. Despite the circumstances, it excited me knowing Tad was naked except for those socks.

Tad, able to speak now, was whining to Aunt Martha about how she had stripped him. “Why did you have to take my shirt off, too? I’m completely naked.”

Aunt Martha told him it was in order to check his shoulder, where the first ball had hit him. “I might as well do it all while I’m playing doctor. Now… let’s check those little balls of yours.”

Tad pleaded, “Honest, Aunt Martha. You don’t need to. I’m ok. Please. Just let me lay here a while. Can I cover up?” Poor Tad. This had to be the most embarrassing thing to happen to him since my aunt had forcefully spread his legs to look between them while he was on the toilet.

Despite my sympathy, I was extremely, acutely aware that I was in the same room as a naked boy, with only my aunt between us. All I had to do was take a few steps to the side and I would see everything she saw. If Aunt Martha was the doctor, I could be the nurse. It would all be perfectly legitimate. I’d be helping Tad back to health and satisfying my natural curiosity at the same time.

“Where’s that girl with the ice pack?” My aunt turned her head and saw me. “Don’t just stand there letting it all melt. The boy’s going to start swelling. And not the kind of swelling boys usually do down there.”

Tad now knew I was in the room. “Don’t let her see me!” He shrieked.

I hesitantly brought her the ice pack. I still couldn’t see anything. Would she let me stay? I started to edge around to the side, but my aunt saw me move that way and smiled. “Not so fast, young missy. I’ll take care of the boy. You go back outside with your girlfriends. Close the door behind you.”

Darn.

I left and closed the door. But I didn’t go outside. I stayed and listened.

Aunt Martha was telling Tad, “You’re going to have to spread your legs. I can’t get to your sack like that.”

Tad whined, “I can do it myself, Aunt Martha. Please. Come on. I’m really, really, really embarrassed.”

“I said, stop your fussing, boy. Now spread your legs.” There was a long pause. “Now let me hold this out of the way.” I heard another small gasp. “There. We may just save them, yet.”

“Can I cover up now?”

“What did I say about fussing? And how would I hold the ice pack in place with you under the covers?” she snapped back at him.

“Teresa almost saw me,” he said, sounding sullen despite the pain.

“Well, she didn’t and why would she want to?” my aunt replied.

There was a minute or so of silence, then my aunt told Tad, wistfully, like she was recalling a fond memory, “You won’t remember it, but I changed your diapers when you were just a baby. Quite a few times when your folks and Teresa’s came to visit.”

I had never before heard her voice take on that odd tone. I had never before heard her speak to Tad for more than a minute. It was usually only long enough for her to tell him how stupid he was.

I felt sorry for Tad. I knew what it felt like for adults to mention changing your diaper. It obliterated all the years between then and now, making you feel like that baby again.

She continued, “I’d take over diaper duty to give your mother a rest. I’d have you laid out on a blanket on this very bed, about as naked as you are right now.”

“Aunt Martha!” Tad bleated.

“Yep,” she said. “You were always fussy then, too.” I heard the bed springs protest as she shifted her weight. “You were a tiny thing, then. A tiny thing WITH a tiny thing.” She laughed. Tad made a noise that clearly WASN’T a laugh.

“You’re not much bigger now,” she remarked. “I mean in height. In length, you’ve made a little more progress.” There was another “Aunt Martha!” This time louder and more aggrieved.

Oh my God, I thought. This was so weird. Why was she saying this? And was she staring at his thing the whole time she talked? Tad must be about to die. Never before or since had I heard my aunt talk to him this way. Or say these things. Even on that Saturday a year later, when she had him naked before her once again. She had been nothing but disparaging and dismissive that day. But here she was almost giving him a compliment. And the part of him she was almost complimenting made it all so much stranger.

“Bathed you, too. Quite a few times. I remember once, when you were about two years old, you had a little accident and piddled your pants. I helped your mom out and carried you to the bathroom. Took your clothes off just like I did today.” Tad made a wounded noise. “You didn’t mind being naked then. In fact, you liked it. You laughed and played in the tub while Aunt Martha washed you everywhere.”

Tad moaned, “Please stop.”

“Then you stood up, grabbed your little willie and said, ‘See what I got, Aunt Martha.’”

Was she telling him all of this just to embarrass him even more than he already was? He was naked on her bed with her holding an ice pack to his ballsack? How much more embarrassed could he be?

“There was another time. You were older. Maybe four. You somehow poured a whole jar of molasses over your head. I had to take you back for a bath. You stood there in the tub, bare-assed naked, running your fingers through your hair and sucking the molasses off.” She laughed. “You were bigger then. And you still didn’t mind being bare in front of Aunt Martha.”

Tad was groaning, whether from the pain or my aunt’s recollections, I couldn’t tell. I guessed BOTH were painful.

“Bathed you a few times at your house when I came to visit. Up till you were around five years old.”

How many bath time stories did my aunt have? And I hoped she didn’t ramble on to others about changing MY diapers and bathing me. My face burned at just the possibility.

“You were a rampaging hellion even back then, so I was always willing to help your poor, exhausted mother out. I always made sure I washed you up good, worked that soap in by hand before I ever took a washrag to you, took my time making sure everything was clean, ‘cause your mother probably never had time to make a proper job of it. And you liked it. It was REAL obvious you liked it.”

She paused a few moments. Tad was practically whimpering for her to stop. “This is too much, Aunt Martha. I don’t want to hear this stuff. Please.”

I wanted to hear it, though. I was learning all kinds of really private stuff about Tad. And I liked knowing secrets. My mother had told me people have an angel on one shoulder whispering in their ear to be good. And a devil on the other telling them to be bad. And you had a choice who you listened to. I wanted to be good. But I usually followed the devil.

My aunt’s voice changed. Became harder. “You were five when you started getting balky. Didn’t want me touching you anymore. Said you were a big boy. You could do it yourself. I paid you no mind. Children don’t tell me what to do.”

Her voice got a little louder. “And I showed you that you weren’t a ‘big boy’. I picked you up out of the tub and dangled you upside down by one foot and said ‘Could I do THAT to a BIG BOY?’ You cried and cried. Big boy, my ass. I called you Tiny Tad. And I pointed to that little dinky dingus between your legs and called it Teeny Tiny Tad. You didn’t like that one bit.”

Aunt Martha was REALLY trying to embarrass him. This was mean. And right after she hit him in his balls with the baseball.

“Bathed you a few more times after that. Bath time wasn’t fun for you anymore. You’d beg your mother to do it. But she knew I was just trying to help out. She’d get after you good if you kept whining about it. You’d even try to stop me from washing your willie. At five years old. I made you stand in the tub with your hands on top of your head while I lathered you up good. I’d get my hands up into every nook and cranny. You’d squirm like a worm on a hook. And for all that fussing, it was still obvious you really liked it. Then I’d scrub you with the rag. Hard. Everywhere.” She paused, panting. “Treat ME like I’ve got the hands of a leper… I showed YOU.”

She stopped, catching her breath. When she resumed, her voice had returned to normal. “But that’s all bathwater under the bridge.”

Tad begged her again, “Aunt Martha, please stop talking about this. It’s humiliating. Especially with me laying here like this.”

She gave a long suffering sigh. “I’m just trying to tell you you’ve got nothing to be embarrassed about. I’ve seen you and your thingee there plenty of times before. For most of your life.”

“Aunt Martha, pleeeeeeease!”

“I’ve seen it. I’ve washed it. I touched it just today to move it out of the way. It didn’t rot and fall off, did it? So what’s all the caterwauling about?”

“Because I’m eleven years old now. You shouldn’t be seeing me. I know you’re helping me out today. And I appreciate it. I do. But I’m not five years old anymore. So could you pull just a little of the bedspread over me there?” He really sounded pitiful. “Just enough to cover my private parts? You could still hold the ice pack.”

“Goddamit!” My aunt exploded. “You thankless, self-centered little brat!”

Her sudden rage scared me. And Tad HAD thanked her. I heard him.

She continued, loudly, “What do I get? What do I EVER get?”

“I don’t know, Aunt Martha,” Tad said. I could tell he had been frightened, too. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Of course you don’t. You’re selfish. It’s all about YOU. Why would you, any of you, spare a thought for what I need? I’m just old Aunt Martha. Always there to help. Well, never again. Not for you, little boy. I show you kindness and you throw it back in my face. You were ungrateful when you were five, and you’re still the same. ”

I was so very confused. I felt like I had come in on the middle of a conversation and had no idea what it was about. But I had been there from the beginning.

There was another long silence. Finally, she spoke again. Calmly now. That sudden flare of anger seemed to have burned itself out. “But that’s ok. You’re a child. Children are selfish.”

Tad said, “I’m sorry, Aunt Martha. I’ll try to do better.”

She replied, “I’m sure you’ll try. Here, let me adjust this a bit.” Tad cried out.

“There,” my aunt said. “That’s better.”

I waited for a few more minutes by the door. There was mostly silence, broken occasionally by the squeak of the bed springs. And once by Tad’s voice, so soft I could barely hear it, “No, please.” When there had been no more talk for a while, I sighed and went back outside. I told Tracie and Ellie all about Tad being naked on Aunt Martha’s bed. They gasped and giggled.

My aunt and Tad were inside for another thirty minutes or so. When they joined us outside, Tad’s face showed none of the pain from earlier. It was completely impassive. He wandered past us without a word to sit in the grass by himself, facing away from everyone else. I guessed he was embarrassed by what had happened, being injured in such a private place. And by my aunt seeing him naked.

As the rest of us sat out in the sun, our conversation threading its way through a variety of subjects, I kept looking over at the ball in the grass. Had my aunt really played baseball? And how good WAS her aim?

There were other instances, to greater and lesser degrees of unpleasantness for Tad. Events that had seemed amusing or just confusing at the time changed shape into something very ugly in retrospect.

After my later experiences in the Society, incited and inspired by my aunt and the backyard bath, I began to see disturbing parallels between my aunt’s ‘care’ of Tad over the years and the things I did to boys. But I still couldn’t fully, consciously commit to the conclusion. It was like trying to touch a flame, but jerking my hand away from the heat when I got too close.

Tad’s accusation on that Sunday after his very public punishment the day before was more than his mother could abide. She said Tad had abused my aunt’s generous hospitality and now was slandering that poor old woman with vicious lies. So over the lap he went. I don’t know how his mother’s spanking compared to my aunt’s in severity, but even if it was much milder, it came on the heels of the rather harsh one from just the day before. He certainly wailed louder than usual.

Later that evening, I sneaked out my window and crept the few feet over to his. His window was open, like mine, to let in what little breeze there was. His light was out, but the sky was clear and the moon was bright. Looking in, I saw him in bed, laying on his side with his back to me. I rapped lightly on the sill.

Tad half turned to look over his shoulder. In a small voice, he said, “Go away, Teresa. Please. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

I left him there and crept back to my own bedroom, feeling sad and unsettled.

I dreamed of Tad again that night. He had been bad. He was laying over my lap, looking back at me, pleading with his eyes. I remembered pulling his pants and underpants down for a spanking, but when I looked again they weren’t just down. They were completely gone. His t-shirt was gone, too. He was naked. I looked at his bottom. I laid my hand across the rounded buttocks. Could I bring myself to smack them repeatedly? Violently? Aunt Martha was telling me it was my duty. I had to tame unruly boys.

I rubbed my hand back and forth over his buttocks. Feeling the firmness. Feeling them separate. I felt his thing against my leg as it begin to stiffen. It was so close. It was almost right there in a place it shouldn’t be.

Tad was such an innocent, but in my sleep I made him an incubus. He looked back at me again, but this time his look was beckoning. It held a hunger I had never seen on his face in the waking world. I had taken it from my own face and put it there. He was standing before a dark doorway. With a last glance over his shoulder he disappeared inside. I knew what lay beyond. I knew what I would do if I followed him.

I forced myself awake, as I always did when Tad found himself in my dreams.

The next day, Monday, could’ve been SO much worse for Tad since most of the kids at school knew of his somewhat underdressed exhibition. But Tad had put his brain to work on that inevitability and had come up with a plan. Every now and then he’d do something to remind us there was actually a brain in there, if a somewhat underused one.

The teasing began at school, en masse, before the first bell. Tad bore it for a short while, then held up his hand for silence.

He didn’t try to deny the incident. He just reframed it as a piece of performance art. A protest against the town of Hammond. Against its oppressive mediocrity and its smothering blanket of middle class morality. At the collars it’s adults used to choke the spirit and individuality from the children. At the reins attached to those collars to keep them corralled within its very limiting city limits so they could never venture into the wider world and learn that anywhere was better than here.

Tad’s nude body, standing straight and proud for all to see, was a rigid middle finger to the town and its elders.

Tad wasn’t a victim. When our peers saw a victim, they saw something weak. Something they could victimize further, hoping they’d be seen as strong in so doing, and wouldn’t become victims themselves.

Instead, Tad was a nonconformist. A freedom fighter. A rebel, unafraid to give everything for the cause, even his clothes. Especially his clothes. His nudity was a direct assault on the stifling mores and conventions of a town entrenched in the ultraconservative orthodoxy of an age long past.

Tad became a minor hero, even for the kids who were dubious of the explanation. It just sounded good. It sounded like something they wished THEY could do, but didn’t dare. So they made it true in their minds and lived the rebellion through Tad.

The adults in town knew the truth. At least the bare bones of it, if not my aunt’s motivations. A misbehaving boy had gotten a harsh but well earned punishment. But the kids had their own truth and wouldn’t hear otherwise.

I was glad of this development. I loved to tease Tad. I loved his reactions. He was so arrogant and full of himself. But under that thin veneer, he was a tightly bound bundle of emotions that was fun to prod and poke. His emotions were so unfiltered when they possessed his face that they looked like cartoon versions of emotions. And I liked watching cartoons.

But as much as I loved to tease the little imp myself, I didn’t want his soul to be crushed beneath a never ending barrage of teasing and bullying, which is what could’ve started on that Monday morning.

But for once, I had to do nothing. Tad got himself out of trouble.

Two weeks to the day after Tad’s latest encounter with Aunt Martha, he, Tracie, Ellie and I were prowling about the town in a white hot, blindingly bright Texas heatwave. We were all sweating freely. Our clothes were drenched and clung to our bodies. Normally I’d be self-conscious to be seen in public in such a state. But the whole town was sweating so I blended right in.

We pooled our allowance money and had just enough to buy four ice slushes from the convenience store a few blocks down the cracked asphalt road.

The ding of the little bell above the door announced our entry. The old lady at the counter eyed us suspiciously. She always looked at us like that. She just KNEW all kids were shoplifters. The only thing preventing all the merchandise on the shelves from disappearing into our pockets was that uncompromising stare she gave each and every underage offender when they walked in the door.

The slushes, our salvation, awaited. Tad got strawberry, Tracie and I got lime, and Ellie got something blue.

The old lady took forever counting and recounting our money. There was one crumpled dollar bill and the rest was in change. She must’ve lost the ability to count a century or so ago, and had to keep redoing it… all the while glaring at us as if we were the cause of her memory loss.

She finally was satisfied the proper amount was there and we had no diabolical plan to short her a penny. She then stared intently at Tad over the top of her narrow reading glasses. He looked nervous at this scrutiny and stepped slightly behind me.

"Ain’t you the boy who was out showing his willy to the world?" she asked. We girls tried not to giggle. We really did.

Tad looked at the floor. "It wasn't my choice," he sulked. He knew better than to try the rebel story on a grownup.

"I'd hope not," she replied. “You’re a child. You ought to at least wait till you got something to show the ladies." Tad's face turned as red as his strawberry slush.

As we started to leave, he turned back. His need to know just how embarrassed to be asserted itself. "Did YOU see me?"

"Nope, not me," she said. "I just heard from some who did. My friend Agnes, whose eyes ain't what they used to be, thought old Martha had herself a new garden statue. You know, like one of them cherubs that pee in the fountain?"

She stared even more intently at Tad. "You weren't out there peeing, were you?"

"No!" he exclaimed, outraged. "I didn't pee."

"Hmmm," the old lady looked at him dubiously. "You boys are like dogs. You go around hiking your leg on everything. Don't know how many times I've caught boys hosing down the back wall of my store. I take a broom and chase 'em off with their peters hanging out leavin' a trail behind 'em."

Tad turned to me in exasperation. "Teresa, tell her I didn't pee."

"He didn't pee," I assured her.

Before we made it out the door, I heard the old lady call out, "Keep that boy away from my back wall!" We began giggling again.

Once we were outside, Tad stamped his foot angrily and glared at us. "It isn't funny. Y'all stop laughing at me," he ordered, looking petulant. "That Saturday was the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to me. And Aunt Martha’s done some pretty embarrassing stuff, so that’s saying something. And y'all have been laughing about it for two weeks. There'll be no more laughing. And none of you will say anything about the bath ever again." He paused for effect. "I forbid it."

This brought on a new wave of laughter. Tad certainly didn't know how to word his directives for maximum desired effect. Not that any demands he made would be all that effective anyway.

He stared at us, stunned. He had given a direct order and we had laughed even more. He started saying, "How..." but stopped. I knew he had been about to say, "How DARE you," but realized how silly and cliche he would've sounded.

I motioned for Tracie and Ellie to cease laughing. I marched up to him to stand inches away. Even though I couldn't tower over the little shrimp like Aunt Martha could, I was still taller than him. He shrank back, uncertain. "This is serious, Tad," I said in a very stern voice, "You DO know, don't you, that the word 'embarrass' ends with 'bare ass." I paused for moment till I couldn't contain the laughter any more. I reached out and tousled his rather sweaty hair.

He jerked his head away. "Y'all are MEAN. I don't know why I let you hang out with me."

My feelings toward Tad had changed. He had always felt like a little brother to me. A very annoying little brother, but one just the same. I think Tracie and Ellie felt likewise.

I wondered if that was the reason we only kind of accepted him as a friend for all those years. He seemed more like someone’s kid brother tagging along, rather than an actual member of the group. We liked him, we tolerated his antics, we tried to protect him from the worst of himself. But he never felt quite to be a member of the pack. He was the little brother. EVERYONE’S little brother.

It was a bit like our relationship with our stringers. Some of them were actual little sisters of girls in our group. The rest felt like little sisters even though they weren’t. We liked them, we mentored them, we nurtured their curiosity in those strange boy creatures. But they were younger than the rest of us, most being only nine or ten years old. So they weren’t quite full members of the group.

In time, they would be our age and hopefully become full members. As more time passed, we would move on and they would become the core of the group.

Tad was the same age as Tracie and Ellie, twelve years old. He was a number of months younger than them, but he seemed even younger still. With his little boy looks and his immature actions, he appeared to be more the age of our stringers. Hence, the little brother designation.

But after that Saturday, I felt more of a bond with him. We had all shared an intense experience, even if he didn’t know for sure that we girls had been along for the ride. We certainly knew a lot more about him than we had the Friday before. We knew what he looked like under his clothes. What every bit of him looked like, even his most privates places. I was more sure than ever that Aunt Martha had staged that scene for our eyes. But as some kind of reward for us or as another way to demean Tad, I didn’t know.

We knew much more about Tad on the inside also. We had glimpsed behind the curtain of his bravado to see the scared little boy trembling in the dark. We had seen his insecurities and inhibitions. We had seen his face project a deep shame that seemed rooted in more than the embarrassment of being bathed by an adult.

I was starting to glimpse a vague but complex diagram connecting his past experiences with his present behavior. When I tried to concentrate on it and read the meanings behind the lines, it all slipped away and I was left with nothing. Less than nothing. Just looking at a question caused it to split into more questions. The act of trying to solve the riddle insured there were too many riddles to solve. I thought of Alice in Wonderland. “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.”

Only one thing was certain. Aunt Martha sat at the center of that complex diagram of connecting lines. Like a spider in its web.

I needed something to help me understand. I didn’t know it then, but that something would come to me naturally through the years. It was merely more experience with life.

But even as I felt this new bond with Tad… even as I started seeing him as a real friend and not just a tagalong… I had still shared his latest story and the photographs that accompanied it with all the girls in the Society. That devil on my shoulder was very seductive. And I was happy to be seduced.

It was nice to think about that devil. He was an outside influence, tempting me into bad decisions and worse behavior. If I did wrong, it wasn’t ENTIRELY my fault. I was overwhelmed by his persuasive skills.

But I knew there was no devil on my shoulder. There was only the monster within. And it wasn’t something I could foist blame upon. The monster was just the worst of my nature. So all the blame was on me.

There were other matters at hand in those weeks after bath time with Tad. He had unknowingly presented me, Tracie, and Ellie with our first sight of intriguing boyflesh. And while there was much of it on display, it was only an appetizer making us hungry for more.

It was then, when we formalized our group with a name, that I decided I needed to get more serious about its structure.

The Society had three separate but closely aligned objectives. I divided them into departments…

The Collection Department: This embodied the original purpose of our group… the search for and acquisition of stories about embarrassed boys that we could entertain each other with during story time… The Boy in the Invisible Bathing Suit, The Boy in the Puddle, etc.

The Engineering Department: Where we engineered those embarrassments ourselves… the naked boys thrown into the school hallway, the capture and strip scenarios.

The Blackmail Department: Where we put what we had learned from Collections, and the photos we had taken in Engineering, and used it all as leverage for more stories and photos.

It was all very cyclic and efficient… a smooth running machine. Soon, Annette had to trade in her notebook for a huge scrapbook. I had visions of a whole library of scrapbooks. We had almost a whole year of junior high left, then four years of high school. All those boys waiting to be picked and peeled like bananas.

One banana we peeled was named Lucas. Kayden had mentioned him in his war story. Lucas, like the odious Elijah, had a sausage where other boys had mere wieners. I had him on my list of likely candidates to contact, but before I had the chance, he was delivered to us by his sister, Abigail, a friend of one of our stringers.

A Boy and His Bear - Lucas was fourteen and still slept with a fluffy friend, his teddy bear Benjamin. No one outside of his immediate family knew of this. At least not until his viciously vengeful sister set us upon him. Fratricide would’ve been kinder.

Lucas wore his hair longer than what was acceptable for boys in Texas of 1962. The hippie era hadn’t yet taken root. It never would in Hammond. The longish hair and his slim face and build made him look slightly effeminate, something for which he should’ve received endless teasing from the other boys. But, according to Kayden, the girth and length of his sausage more than made up for his perceived lack of maleness everywhere else.

A rumor of bedtime with teddy could tip the scales back the other way into ridicule, but we were going to ensure that never happened. His secret would be safe with us. For the small price of a photo shoot. With teddy.

Our entire group and three of our stringers showed up at his house one day while his parents were out. Little sister was in. She had told us when to arrive. The house was a large, rather grandiose two story. There was a swimming pool in the backyard; a rarity in our town. Lucas’ parents had a lot more money than the typical Hammond family.

We got there at nine in the morning on a Saturday. Abigail, wearing a huge grin, let us in through the back door. We had decided that an entire girl gang showing up at the front door might be something the neighbors would inform Lucas’ parents of. Stealth and secrecy were essential in our line of work. So we had sneaked in through a gate in the backyard.

Abigail led us up a back stairway to the upper floor. Down the hall to the left was our target’s bedroom. We filed silently into his room. Like the house, it was large. Three east facing windows let a flood of early morning light in.

Being a teenage boy at that hour on that day, Lucas was still in bed, asleep. With teddy. The covers were pulled up to mid-chest. He wasn’t wearing a t-shirt or pajama top. What else he might not be wearing would soon be revealed. One arm clutched teddy to his chest. The other arm was thrown up over his head on the pillow.

He had a small, sparse tuft of hair in his armpit. The hairs were so few, I could probably count them easily. I decided that before we left, I would do just that. Even with as little as he had, he still beat poor Tad in the body hair department. Of course, Lucas was about two years older than Tad, so the comparison wasn’t fair.

We lined up around his bed in a semi-circle. Thirteen girls, including his sister Abigail, watching an unsuspecting boy sleep serenely in what should’ve been the sanctity of his bedroom. We were invaders in his private realm.

Ellie, camera already in hand, snapped a photo of the sleeping boy with his precious teddy. I had to admit, that bear looked very snuggly.

I cleared my throat loudly. “Lucas… wake up, sleepyhead.” He stirred, but didn’t wake.

I repeated myself, more loudly this time. He stirred a bit more and mumbled, “I’m up, mom.”

I reached over and yanked teddy from his hand. This brought him awake instantly. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, saying, “What… what?”

Not even noticing us yet, he looked around the bed, presumably for teddy. Not finding him, he finally looked up to see the small crowd of girls surrounding his bed. He let out a yelp and pulled the covers up to his chin. “Who are y’all? What are you doing in my room?” he cried. Then he began to recognize some of our faces. We were girls from his school. He might’ve recognized some or all of the stringers as friends of his little sister.

He then saw Abigail standing directly at the foot of the bed. She was still wearing that grin like a permanent feature.

“Abby, what’s going on? Why are they all here in my room?”

I answered for her, “We’re here to make a deal. One to our mutual benefit.”

Lucas’ shock quickly turned to anger. He yelled, “I’m not making any deal with y’all. Get out of my room, now!” He turned to Abigail, “I’m telling Mom about this. Whatever this is.”

Abigail replied cooly, “Oh, I don’t think so. You’d better listen to what they have to say.”

I asked him, “Why don’t you get out of bed so we can talk?” He glanced down at the covers uneasily, then back up to me.

He told me defiantly, “I’m not getting out of bed. You’re getting out of my room.”

Abigail told us in a stage whisper, “He sleeps in only his undies.”

Lucas glared at her.

I decided this was sufficient prelude. I told him, “Here’s the deal, Lucas. We know you sleep with teddy here.” I tossed his friend back to him. As he caught it, he released the covers, which fell down to his belly button. Now we saw a little more of the boy’s bare skin, but still definitely not enough.

We weren’t leaving till we had seen and cataloged every inch of him. Ellie always carried LOTS of photo packs. She had told her parents she had taken an interest in wildlife photography. They were happy to bankroll her new hobby. They hoped it would keep her mind off of boys.

I continued, “If we were to go public with what we know…” I motioned to Ellie and she brought over the photo she had just taken, now fully developed. She held it up for the boy to see. “It wouldn’t be merely a rumor. We have the photographic proof.”

He looked at me, stricken. “Why are you doing this? What do you want?”

“We don’t want much. Just a few hours of your time,” I informed him. “Get out of bed and we’ll discuss it.”

Lucas glared at his sister again. “I can’t get out of bed. Abby just told you I sleep in my underwear. I’m not having a bunch of girls that shouldn’t even be in my room see me in just my underwear.”

I leaned in close to him. “Believe me, Lucas, by the time we’re through, you’ll WISH we were seeing you in just your underwear. Now, get out of bed. You have five seconds, then Ellie takes that photo of you and Mr. Fuzzy and makes the rounds to show it to everyone she, and you, knows.”

Lucas still looked scared but resolute. The thought of a whole roomful of girls seeing him in his underwear was intolerable.

“I mean it,” I warned. Once I count down to one, Ellie leaves and will NOT turn back, even if you change your mind. Five… four… three…”

Lucas sprang out of bed, tangling himself in the covers briefly, but freeing himself before I got to one. I slowed the count for him towards the end. Revealing his love for teddy to the world wasn’t our desired goal.

Lucas stood before the assembled girls in his white underpants and nothing but. He did the predictable move of covering his crotch with his hands. I told him to drop his hands to his sides. He did it almost immediately, then stared down at his bare feet. He had accepted our authority over him. One little photo could do wonders.

Lucas was very slim, but not bony. He was taller than Tad, but still fell about an inch short of my height. The bulge in his briefs told me the our Scout hadn’t exaggerated.

“What do you want,” he asked sullenly.

“First, turn around,” I instructed. “We’ve seen your front. Now we want to see what your little tushy looks like in your underpants.”

He looked at me, shocked. He still hadn’t figured out what this was about. He probably thought we wanted money because his family was well off. My demand directly referencing how he looked in his state of near nakedness caught him by surprise.

“Turn around, boy,” I ordered again when he didn’t immediately comply. He turned and stopped. It was hard to tell how well his bottom was shaped because his underpants, while tight in the front, were a bit baggy in the rear.

“OK,” he told us, looking over his shoulder. “You’ve seen me in my underwear. If you were trying to embarrass me, you succeeded. Now you can leave.”

This boy was an optimist.

I ordered him to turn back around to face us. Then I told him what all was going to happen in the next few hours before mommy and daddy got home. Abigail threw in a few suggestions, some of which were actually quite good.

We obviously meant business, and he was visibly scared. While we explained what we were going to do to him, he had slowly backed up against the wall of his bedroom. The hard surface behind him emphasized that he had no escape. His fate was in our hands. His body would soon be, too.

He tried to negotiate. He said he could get us money. He knew where his dad kept reserves of it. I told him we weren’t interested in his money. Tina held up her hand and said, “Um, actually…” I cut her off.

Then I told him the next time he balked at any command, Ellie would leave with that photo without even a countdown.

Ellie snapped a few photos of him in his underwear, from various angles.

I gestured at his underpants. “Let’s see what the rest looks like.”

Lucas still hesitated. Even knowing the penalty for refusal, he couldn’t bring himself to completely undress before a roomful of girls, including his little sister. I glanced over at Ellie. He saw the look and pulled his underpants down to his ankles. He stayed bent over that way. He knew standing back up would reveal it all.

“Lucas…” I warned.

I heard him sigh. He maneuvered the underwear off of his feet, then stood back up to face the crowd. He started to cover with his hands, just briefly, then dropped them to his sides. He hung his head again, his soft, longish hair hanging down over his eyes. He let out a sob.

While the rest of him was so slender… face, torso, arms, legs… his thing was thick. It was long. The bulge in his underwear hadn’t nearly told the whole story. In fact, it had outright lied in its omission.

Many boys and girls at our school referred to the penis as a ‘thing’. I didn’t know where or when this synonym started. Or if it’s use extended beyond the bounds of our town. I suspected it did. I was fairly sure WHY it was used, though. Grownups thought the word penis, and even more so the word vagina, on the lips of a susceptible child would conjure unhealthy interest in what the word represented. So children were taught euphemisms. A penis became a peter, a tallywacker, a thing. Cute little non-threatening substitutions. I won’t tell you the euphemisms for vagina. They’re all quite embarrassing. Boys weren’t taught THOSE words anyway. Parents prayed their boys wouldn’t even discover the existence of vaginas till age twenty five or so.

When I looked at Lucas standing there naked, I couldn’t take in the sight of him as a singular being. There was Lucas. And there was his THING. In all capital letters. The word fit so well, it could’ve been coined for him. It was no euphemism.

It hung off of him like a plump, meaty sausage, swaying ponderously. It was incongruous with the rest of him.

There was hair between Lucas’ legs. A thick brown thatch. He had much more hair down there than he did under his arms.

Ellie had been snapping pictures. Some from a distance. Some up close. Some REALLY up close.

Lucas’s hands were balled up into his fists at his sides. His face was clenched in a grimace, like he was in actual physical pain. His eyes revealed his misery even more. He kept asking why we were doing this to him. I told him we were implementing his side of the contract. Silence for show. In order for us to be silent, he had to show.

“And,” I added, “We want to acquaint ourselves with everything we can about boys. We have to live around them. We have to put up with them. We deserve to know as much as we can about them.”

He looked over to Abagail, who was still grinning. Her face was going to be sore from that tomorrow. “Why, Abby?” he asked. “Why are YOU doing this?” Tears rolled down his face.

Her grin disappeared for a moment. Her face hardened. She told him, “You KNOW why.” She turned to me and said, “Take some pictures of him with the bear.”

Lucas snapped at her angrily, “His name is Benjamin. You know that. He’s Benjamin the Bear!”

Abigail amended her statement. “Take some pictures with BENJAMIN. Benjamin the BEAR.””

Good idea. I handed Lucas his friend. We took some photos of the bare and the bear. My favorite had Lucas standing, looking straight into the camera with big, sad eyes, holding Benjamin demurely over his groin with both hands. We took an extra so Abigail could keep one.

Throughout all of this, I had heard the other girls’ laughter and chatter in the background.
“Look how big it is.”
“It looks like he’s wearing another boy’s thing.”
“He’s got more hair than my brother.”
“He’s always looked so girly. Who knew he had THAT?
“He’s a DOLL.”
“Not like my old Ken doll. Not at all.”


I decided then that we needed to bring a ruler along with us in future meetings with our victims to get precise measurements for their entries in our book. We’d measure them first soft, then hard, for comparison. We didn’t have a ruler that day, but we could always catch Lucas later to get his specifics.

But at the moment, Ellie was snapping pictures as the girls gathered round for intimate, up close views of what Lucas had hanging between his legs.

I allowed no touching. Yet.

I ordered Lucas to turn around. He reluctantly did so, exposing the other side to our eager eyes. Now that his bottom was free of his underpants, it proved as slender as the rest of him. He was so enticingly slim all over. Not skinny. I’m not even sure what the difference is, but it’s obvious to the eye even as it defies description.

The girls continued their running dialog, their laughter. Abigail continued to grin. It was a malicious grin. I could easily imagine it on her face as she pulled his arms and legs off like a bug. What had happened between these two?

As Ellie snapped her pictures, she didn’t smile or laugh or trade comments with the other girls about the boy’s anatomy. She just did her job. She was quickly becoming the consummate professional.

I gave Lucas his next instruction. “Bend over and grab your ankles.” I heard my aunt’s voice in my head saying it as I mouthed the words. For a moment I also heard the angel on my shoulder screaming in my ear. I turned away to the more alluring and less annoying devil. I had done this many times before. I’d have thought that angel would’ve given up on me by now.

Lucas looked over his shoulder at me in shock. His face had actually gone almost white. “Oh, no. Please no.”

I patiently told him, “Lucas, you know the rules. You know the consequences. And now there are a lot more photos, a lot more EXPLICIT photos, than the first one we took. Do you want Ellie to walk out that door with them?”

“No,” he cried, “I don’t. But please, please. Don’t make me do this. Please. It’s SHAMEFUL”

I had to laugh at a boy using that word. It sounded like what someone would say jokingly. But Lucas was very, very serious. Perhaps the most he had been in his whole life. He was horrified at the thought of a roomful of girls seeing him there. Of taking photographs of him there. Of the possibility that others would see those photographs.

He kept pleading, sometimes crying so hard that his words were incoherent. I could see he was going to be a problem. It wasn’t that he would refuse to comply, but that he was so stricken at the prospect he was unable to. We could always overpower him physically as we had done with so many boys before. But sometimes I wanted coerced compliance. It could be so much more satisfying. As Kayden had lamented of the war games at Scout camp… it was worse for the boy when he was an active participant in his own humiliation.

I had decided that Lucas would submit, so there was no other option. Physical force was out of the question. I wasn’t going to let this boy compel me into changing tactics. THAT would make ME the weak one.

And I couldn’t follow through on our standard threat… sending Ellie out into the world with that cache of photos. That would be of no benefit to us. It wouldn’t even be good as an example to other boys of what would happen to them if THEY didn’t follow the rules. We didn’t want to send any messages or advance warnings. We wanted to keep these activities secret. We didn’t want other boys to know what we did before it was their turn. There could be no rumors of some secret organization preying on the young boys of Hammond. There was too much danger there. The danger of discovery.

Our victims, once they had received a visit and fulfilled their end of the bargain, were our co-conspirators in that secrecy. They didn’t want anyone else to know what transpired any more than we did. They weren’t going to tell anyone what happened when the Society came to call. It was all too SHAMEFUL, as Lucas would say.

But Lucas wasn’t playing the game. He was calling our bluff, intentionally or not. I was becoming angry. Who did this boy think he was to defy the rules? Our rules. MY rules. Did he think he was better than me?

I tried one more tactic. I slapped Lucas on his bottom. Hard. The sound of the smack was sharp and loud. No one in the room was expecting it, and they reacted as if they had received it themselves.

The sound and its accompaniment of pain cut through his hysteria. He instantly stopped that ridiculous emotional display. Lucas looked over his shoulder at me, mouth open in shock. His astonished look conveyed the brief disbelief that a girl had dared to smack him on his bare bottom like he was a small, misbehaving child. But the stinging sensation in his buttock couldn’t be denied. He had been duly chastised.

That was all it took to curb his conduct… the hand of authority. Like many boys, Lucas just needed a strong hand to guide his behavior… so strong it left a red imprint on his bare buttock. He bent over, grabbed his ankles, and presented his most private area to the room.

There was a cacophony of delighted screams and laughter. Lucas, with his prolonged and hilariously hysterical refusal to give us what was ours had made his inevitable downfall much more entertaining. Boys never learned.

Above the screaming and catcalls, I heard Abigail yell, “Gotcha, big bother!”

Every girl there had a little of Abigail in her, the part that took evil, malicious glee in forcing a boy to completely debase himself before her. When Lucas assumed that degrading position, every girl gave voice to her inner demon’s delight. The sound of screaming derisive laughter reverberated around the room, augmenting itself till I was sure the whole town could hear. But that chaos of noise, with all its disparate voices, could be reduced down to a single sound, a two syllable word already voiced by Abigail. Gotcha.

For a brief moment, I didn’t see the girls around me. I saw their monsters, snapping and slavering at that tender morsel of a boy before them. I didn’t hear the laughter. I heard a demonic, demented chorus, off-key and off-kilter. I shook my head and the moment was gone.

I turned my attention back to Lucas. First and foremost was his little pink bottomhole, disclosed for all to see, as he well knew. The sobbing sounds and the tears that fell to the carpeted floor enticed the monsters further as they gorged themselves on his sweet, succulent shame.

Lucas’ ballsack, large like his wiener, hung heavily below his bottomhole. It was hairless. Good. I preferred them that way. Beyond his ballsack was that length of wiener, much more being visible from the rear than any boy before him. Ellie moved in for the closeups.

She then stepped back and instructed Lucas to look over his shoulder at the camera so she could get his face and everything else in the same photo.

Lucas wasn’t sobbing so much now, but he was still silently crying. After all the girls had gotten a good look, I allowed him to stand up straight again.

When he turned around, shame was so inscribed in his face, I thought it might never leave. He knew what the girls had seen. He had heard their raucous laughter. How could any sense of pride and self-esteem survive that onslaught? The girls’ view of him overwrote his own self image. He saw the naked, ridiculous boy, pathetic and powerless, crying while he showed his butthole to the world.

It was time for the next phase. I told him to lie face down on his bed. He looked at me, concerned, as he crawled up on the mattress. “What are you going to do?” he asked uneasily.

I told him, “It’s exploration time. Usually we start with the front, but I think this time we’ll play with your bottom first.” I turned to the girls, “Alright, you can touch him wherever you want. However you want. Feel free to reposition him. Spread his legs. Whatever. Just don’t hurt him. We’re not here to be mean.” I heard Abigail announce, “I am!”

I continued, “We’re here to learn everything we can about a boy’s body. This is an educational endeavor. We’ll start with his back, then move on to his front. Afterwards there will be a question and answer period. I’m sure our generous volunteer will be more than happy to fully answer any queries related to his body and it’s functions. I’m sure many of you will be eager to hear a detailed account of every step of his journey thus far down the path of puberty.”

Lucas had been face down as instructed. But as I spoke, he raised up on his elbows. He turned his head to look at me with alarm. “You can’t be serious,” he blurted. “Y’all are going to touch me? All over? You can’t do this. Please. You’ve already humiliated me. Showing you my… that was enough. Why are you doing this?”

Boys often voiced that question. Repeatedly. It was beyond annoying. And it was presumptuous. With the question came the implied demand that it be answered. Who were they to make demands of ME?

But I tried to quell my irritation. I could almost sympathize with Lucas. When he had retired to his bed last night with Benjamin the Bear snuggled to his cheek, all was well with the world. But with the morning, that world had changed. He’d been rudely awakened to a naked nightmare by a pack of wild girls who seemed unaware of their proper place in the hierarchy. They had invaded his bedroom, forced him to shed his underpants, stand naked for their lascivious scrutiny, pose in that state for photos that who knew how many others would see, and bend over in an unbearably demeaning way to shamefully show his hole. He had cried like a baby before them. He had abased himself by pleading and begging. And now he was to be subjected to their grasping and groping.

And worse, these weren’t strangers he’d never see again when this was all over. He knew these girls, if some of them only by sight. He would see many of them in just two days at school. Their faces would be a constant reminder of all they had seen. And then, there were the photos. How many girls beyond this mob of marauders would see them?

His sister Abigail was the worst of the bunch. She had broken an unwritten family code. She had told outside of their home what went on within its walls. She had broken the seal of privacy. She had betrayed him by telling others about Benjamin. Sure, they had their differences. All siblings did. But the extent of her vengeful act stunned him as much as anything that day.

Lucas was still up on his elbows. I reminded him, yet again, of the ramifications of refusing or even questioning our orders. He let out a ragged, despairing sigh and started to drop back down on the mattress.

But Abigail commanded him to stop. She took Benjamin and shoved him rudely under Lucas’ crotch. She told Ellie, “Take a picture of him humping his precious teddy.” This girl could be wicked. And I liked it.

He reluctantly posed for a number of shots of him grinding his wiener into poor, innocent Benjamin. Could their relationship survive this molestation? Or might they perhaps become even closer?

Lucas looked at me bitterly. “There. I did it. It was disgusting, but I did it. Can I get off of Benjamin now? He didn’t deserve this.”

Barb spoke up then. “Make him do it some more. Only for real. I want to see him really doing it.” There was a general murmuring of agreement.

“You heard her,” I told him. “Do it some more. And pick up the pace. We want to see some real action.” I thought about one of Kayden’s tormentors at the Scout campout telling Ted and him to ‘Put some passion in it’. I shrugged off the comparison. What WE did was different. We were just putting boys in their place.

I was interested to see what Lucas’ idea of ‘really doing it’ was. I had overheard older girls talking about their boyfriends’ fumbling, bumbling attempts in the back seats of cars… sometimes ending before it all really began with a premature discharge all over the girl and the upholstery. The boys, despite their clumsy ineptitude, seemed to have some instinctive motions instilled by evolution for the purpose of procreation.

There would be no such procreation here, though. Lucas and Benjamin were both male and of incompatible species, besides.

Sighing loudly, Lucas raised up all the way with his arms, looking like he was about to do pushups. His thing lay on top of Benjamin, nestled in the bear’s soft fur. Lucas began thrusting tentatively. I told him, “Faster, Lucas. Put some passion in it.” Oops. I had said the words.

He increased the speed, and also the force, of his thrusts. He seemed to have an idea of what he was doing. Was it instinct, or had he humped things like this before. I had learned that boys liked to rub themselves against all manner of objects. As with those other boys, I’d learn about Lucas’ habits later during the question and answer period.

Even as his body fell into an apparently familiar motion, he began crying again. He looked at me imploringly while he pounded Benjamin into the bedsheets. “Please, don’t make me do this. It’s awful.”

I shook my head and made him continue, telling him again to increase the pace. His thing was still soft, even if it was longer than many boys in their hardened state. I was anxious to see how much he would gain when we coaxed him into an inevitable erection.

Lucas was eventually thrusting so hard that the headboard of his bed was slamming into the wall. I wondered nervously if the neighbors could hear it, but decided they couldn’t. Not in that big fancy house, so insulated from the rest of the shabby town.

Lucas began to get hard. The imitation of the sex act convinced his brain the act was real. Or the sensation of rubbing his sensitive organ against the soft fur of his teddy aroused him. Maybe teddy just aroused him anyway, and that’s why they slept together. Maybe performing this naked act before a female audience excited the boy despite his protests.

Whatever the cause, Lucas was soon fully erect. I noted with interest that his gain was minimal. Many boys, when hard, sported twice or three times the length of their softened selves. Lucas lengthened about two inches. The only major difference was in the rigidity.

Without stopping, Lucas looked down at himself in even deeper humiliation. These girls had forced him into this grotesque parody of copulation, and now they were seeing him in a state of physical arousal as though he were actually enjoying it.

Ellie was ever diligent with her trusty Polaroid for the before and after comparison pictures.

The carnal coupling between boy and bear went on and on. Lucas was sweating heavily. And panting, drawing in and releasing deep, loud breaths. He was making little grunting noises. His forward thrusts were accented with little circular motions with his hips. Tears ran down his face and dropped to the mattress.

I told the girls, “It’s exploration time.” I had announced this earlier, but Abigail had hijacked the moment with her idea of the fornication photo op. Now that moment naturally segued into the perfect time for touching. Lucas was sweaty, hard, and pumping furiously. We had never examined a male body while it was in full rut before. This was going to be a much more action packed session than what I had planned.

We were all crowded around him, inches away. Close enough to feel his heat. Smell his scent. We reached out and ran our hands over his slippery, sweaty skin. Over his back, down his sides, his belly, over his clenching, plunging buttocks and beyond. Twelve sets of hands fondled his flesh. Some caressing softly, some groping awkwardly, some almost mauling him as if they wanted to take souvenirs home.

Abigail stood back from the mob. She didn’t want to partake in touching the boy’s body. He was her brother. Ewwww. But she was quite happy to watch.

I reached into one of his armpits and toyed with the hair I had observed earlier, now wet with sweat. Many of our victims had yet to grow any hair in that area, so I always made sure to fully appreciate the ones who did.

I slid my hand over his chest and played with his nipples. I thought of Tad while I did this. What would Tad do if one day I reached up into his t-shirt with both hands and ran my thumbs over and around his nipples? And why was my mind on Tad while I had a naked boy, hard and humping, right in front of me?

Lucas was finally completely lost in the moment. As with so many other boys who were initially reluctant, he had crossed a line into a zone where his animal urges took control. He stared sightlessly straight ahead while he plowed poor teddy into the mattress.

I slid my hand further down over his belly to the base of his thing. I wrapped my hand around the shaft, forcing my fingers between it and the bear. The thick, solid shaft moved back and forth in my grasp with his frantic thrusts. It felt like I was masterbating him, but my hand was still and he provided all the motion.

Still holding his peter, I reached over him to run my other hand along his bottom, my forefinger sliding down his crack and over his hole. I paused a moment there to press in lightly and feel it’s texture. That should’ve grossed me out, but it didn’t. I must’ve been as feverish as Lucas.

I continued down between his butt cheeks to grasp his sweaty, swinging ballsack. I kneaded it in my hand, rolling the balls around. I pulled it backwards till I was sure he’d cry out, but he was too lost in his libido to notice.

I liked having my hands down there in the sweaty heat of his crotch while he furiously, mindlessly pushed and pumped. With my orders, I had provoked his current state of ardor, quite against his will. And I was right there in the middle of it still. He couldn’t escape me.

I would just be sure to wash my hands later. Twice.

Lucas suddenly cried, “Oh no. Oh, NO!” He arched his back, bucked like a steer at the rodeo. We all instinctively knew what was about to happen. We got down on our knees around his bed to better see beneath the boy.

He began squirting out jets of stuff. Long bursts of it. Over and over. His thing spat out long sticky strings all over poor Benjamin and the sheets. There was a LOT. His balls must’ve been almost bursting with the stuff. We had actually done him a favor, letting him release it.

Lucas collapsed on the bed, landing in the mess he had just made. He seemed not to notice. He was breathing in huge gasps. His whole body shuddered. He let out a long, wavering moan. I gave him some time to recover.

We girls excitedly discussed all we had just seen and done. All we had touched. We looked through the stacks of photos Ellie had taken.

I looked over at Lucas to discover he was asleep. That wouldn’t do. I wanted him awake and aware to appreciate every moment of our time together. I yelled, “Lucas!”

Lucas mumbled, “I’m up, Mom.” A repeat of the words he said when we first arrived.

“NOW!” I commanded. I imbued my voice with all the authority I possessed, which was greater than that of his mere Mom. She only gave birth to him. I OWNED him. He was mine to play with till I tired of his diversions and magnanimously set him free. Which could be a while. That thing between his legs was quite diverting indeed.

He pushed himself up groggily, saying "OK, OK." He looked at me, confused. I didn't LOOK like his mom. Realization dawned in his eyes. This wasn't the first time he had awakened this morning, and the day’s events hadn't been a terrible dream. He swung his legs over the bed as he sat fully up. His stuff was all over his belly. His thing lay over one thigh.

He looked at me sullenly. But his expression quickly changed to one of revulsion. I was about to get VERY offended till I watched him look down and lift one leg up to see what was beneath. The boy was sitting in his own nasty discharge. To fill out that icky feeling he must be experiencing, the sheets were also soaked completely through with sweat.

Lucas looked over to his other side. There lay Benjamin the Bear, webbed to the mattress with the sticky residue of his tryst with the boy.

Lucas howled his dismay. He leaned over to gingerly lift his soggy teddy from the bed. Long strings of boy stuff drooled from it down to the sheets. Lucas could really make a mess. I wondered if he had to keep a bucket handy when he played with himself.

He looked down at the syrupy little bear in his arms. His face was twisted in grief. But grief quickly turned to anger when he looked up at me. As if I was the one who had just squirted all over the poor thing. “Look at what you made me do! You…” Let’s just say he combined the F word and the B word. Aunt Martha would’ve rammed a bar of soap straight up his butt.

Silence dropped on the room, killing all conversation. Thirteen girls stood frozen in place, mouths open, eyes staring at the foul mouthed, disrespectful, sweaty, sticky boy on the bed.

Their eyes, wide from the shock of his language and insolence, narrowed in cold anger. Their lips compressed into thin razor lines.

At first Lucas was unaware of the icy wind that had just swept into the room. He was still staring at me in a rage. Gradually, as the silence stretched on, he began to notice the chill that seemed so extreme it had frozen all movement. His eyes darted left and right. Realization began to set in. He had just angered a roomful of the torturers and tormentors that had turned his life into a living hell all morning. And they hadn’t even been angry then. What would they do to him now?

“Allow me to rephrase that,” he peeped.

Who did this privileged brat think he was? Did he think just because mommy and daddy had money that he could speak to me any way he chose? I was about to disabuse him of that elitist idea.

I had taken it easy on him because I thought he was so cute with his little teddy bear. I had instructed the girls to not hurt him. He only had a dozen or so scratches from the touchy-feely session. In return for my restraint, he called me an F-ing B.

Of late, I had been disturbed when I recognized some of my aunt’s attributes in me. But I decided I was going to intentionally invoke my inner aunt to deal with this rude, arrogant little snob. He thought he was so much better than us that he didn’t have to treat us civilly or speak to us in a courteous manner?

We were about to show him that he was nothing but an ill-behaved, bratty, spoiled child. We were going to give him what all naughty children should receive.

“Lucas, get on your hands and knees on the bed right now,” I demanded. “You’re parents probably gave you everything you wanted. But they didn’t give you what you needed. A good old fashioned bare ass spanking.”

I waited for the round of cheering to die down. Lucas hadn’t joined in..

“And every second you delay getting into position will be another minute of punishment.” Lucas began scrambling to attain the position, but he kept sliding around on the slick, soggy sheets.

I turned to the girls. “Everyone get in line. Each one of you will get a turn. Each turn will consist of ten slaps to the bottom. Five per butt cheek. If, at the end, we vote and decide that young Lucas has learned his lesson, the punishment will be over. If we decide he’s unrepentant, it will all start again.”

I looked over at Lucas. He was on his hands and knees, trembling.

Before we began, Abigail spoke up. “Milk him like a cow while you spank him.”

Good Lord, this girl had a grudge.

But her ideas were sound. “You heard her. Half of you line up on one side of the bed, half on the other. One side spanks while the other side milks. After the spanker reaches ten, the girl on each side goes to the back of the other line. Everyone gets to spank and milk. Forget the voting. We continue till Lucas squirts all over his sheets again.”

Lucas was still trembling. He was staring straight forward. Waiting.

I bent down and looked between his legs. “Spread your legs more so the milkers have better access.” He immediately did so. He actually WAS learning.

Abigail positioned herself at the foot of the bed again so she had the best and most degrading view of his soon to be ill-treated ass. She told the other girls, “His balls are hanging right there. They make a big target. You can smack THEM around a little too, if you want.”

Angry as I was, I vetoed that suggestion. I had seen what a shot to the balls had done to Tad. I wanted to inflict pain and humiliation, not outright injury.

The first spanker in line was Linda. She looked at his bottom and said, “Ewww. He sat in his stuff. It’s all over his butt. I’m not touching that.” I told her to clean him with the bedspread.

Lucas let out a sob as she did so. It was like he was a baby again, getting his bottom wiped. How the high and mighty had fallen. The girls he thought so little of that he would curse in their faces were diminishing him with every act.

The punishment commenced. Some girls put everything they had behind each smack on his tender butt. Some barely touched him, letting their hand lightly brush his bottom after each contact, with a longer caress as they made way for the next in line. I’d have to keep my eye on THEM.

On the other hand, and the other side of the bed, all the milkers were uniformly enthusiastic. Lucas’ thing had almost instantly attained an erection when the first girl in line had wrapped her hand around it. Now that engorged beast was being eagerly pumped and pulled, fondled and flogged by every girl in the room. Except Evil Abigail. She was content to just watch what she had wrought.

The tearful Lucas was caught between wailing at the painful assault on his bottom and moaning and gasping at the manipulations of the milkmaids. He had begun thrusting his hips forward and back as though the girls weren’t already doing all the heavy lifting for him.

Shortly after everyone had their third turn at both sides, Lucas threw his head back, crying out, “There it is! There it is!” The girl on pump duty was Donna. She started stroking him even harder.

Abigail screamed, “Keep spanking while he does it! Don’t stop!”

Tracie was spanking him at that time. She increased the rate and power of the smacks.

Lucas began spurting all over the sheets again. With each thrust of his hips, another line of fluid surged from his thing. Donna was tugging on it so hard I thought it might detach.

Lucas flopped forward onto the bed again. His breathing was a ragged whining sound. Donna’s hand was trapped under his groin. The boy was unresponsive to our demands that he move, so Linda and I half rolled him over so Donna could extricate herself. Lucas had leaked on her. She wiped it off on the bedspread.

Lucas was semi-comatose for over five minutes. He just lay on the bed in about a gallon of semen and sweat.

When he finally came back to the world, he sat up painfully. He didn’t raise his head. He didn’t speak. He certainly didn’t use any of the language that had brought this latest indignity upon him.

I told him to listen. What I was going to say was very important. “We’re almost through here. We just have a little question and answer session to get through. It’ll be agonizingly personal for you. When we’re through, we’ll know everything about you. You’ll have no secrets. Then again, after this morning, you should be primed and predisposed to our knowing and seeing everything that is you.”

I continued, “After we leave and your parents get home, you’re not going to come if they call you. They’ll come upstairs to find you. They’ll knock on your door, repeatedly. They’ll finally open it and see you laying naked on your bed, with your sheets soaked through with sweat and boy stuff, playing with yourself in mad abandon. I don’t know when the last time was that your parents saw you naked. We’ll find out during the Q&A session. But if it’s been a while, today will more than make up for it.

“You’ll get out of bed and stand in front of them, still stroking. You’ll cry and tell them you just can’t help yourself. It’s an uncontrollable compulsion. The crying part should come easily given the circumstances. If they happen to notice your red bottom, tell them you sometimes spank yourself while you do it to enhance the feeling. I suggest you DON’T let them see it, or you’ll be in therapy for years instead of just months.

“What happens after that will be up to fate. Abigail will inform us of the details.”

I warned him, “Abigail will also be watching and listening to make sure you do everything as instructed. If you do, your debt is paid in full. Never mention this to anyone and we’ll do the same. If you don’t do as instructed, these photos,” I held them out to see, “will find their way into a number of well chosen mailboxes. So unless you want the whole town to see your butthole, keep your mouth shut.”

I took a few much needed breaths and continued, “And remember, none of us are in the pictures. You can accuse us all you want, but who is going to believe such a story? We’re sweet, innocent girls.” I leaned in so close my lips brushed his cheek as I told him, “And if you DO accuse us, you’ll wake to find us surrounding your bed again one morning. And Abigail will be in charge this time. She won’t be nearly as restrained as I’ve been.”

I looked him in the eyes. “Are you going to be a good boy?”

“I’ll be a good boy,” Lucas said softly.

I said, regretfully, “If you hadn’t called me an F-ing B, this would’ve ended much sooner. No spanking. No need for your parents. No need for therapy. You’re like another boy I know who’s his own worst enemy,”

I later felt a bit of regret over the things I made Lucas do in regards to his parents. That had been cruel. I should’ve kept it all between the Society and it’s victim. All that vindictiveness just welled up from some dark hollow within me. From the place my monster lived. I thought again of my aunt and how we were connected. She was actually not my aunt. She was a more distant relation. But still, we were disturbingly close.

The question and answer session was very enlightening. Among other things, we learned…

Lucas was indeed an experienced humper. There wasn’t a couch cushion, pillow, rocker/recliner, padded footstool, bed, or any other soft surface in the house that he hadn’t rubbed his wiener into. Abigail looked around herself in horror. She’d be loathe to touch anything in the house ever again.

Lucas played with himself on a daily basis. Three to four times a day, sometimes. He’d do it by hand, but preferred the furniture when he had the house to himself. I may have done him a favor with my instructions to tell his parents he was a compulsive masterbator.

His thing had always been big, even before puberty. He was very self-conscious of its size. Sometimes other boys made fun of him, calling him ‘donkey dick’. I told him that even I, a girl, could see they were driven by envy.

I was glad to learn that Lucas hadn’t had an unnatural, cross-species attraction for Benjamin. His love had been purely platonic.

He told us about the progression of puberty in a boy, at least according to his own personal experience. Like many boys, he had begun masterbating long before he had any stuff to release. I had always thought it was odd that a boy could feel the pleasurable sensation of ejaculating without anything actually squirting out. But boys were weird, and that was just another example. Lucas said a lot of boys missed the old version of self pleasure that didn’t require cleanup afterwards. But he liked to see as well as feel what he had accomplished.

The last question of the day wasn’t for Lucas. It was for his little sister Abigail. I asked her just what had happened between the two siblings that gave rise to such animosity.

Her face hardened again at the memory. “It was Benjamin. Benjamin the Bear. He was MINE and Lucas took him from me.”

We later learned there had been serious talk of military school for Lucas to straighten the boy up. But his tearful pleas held stronger sway over his parents than they had with us, and mom and dad had settled on the therapy I had predicted.

He wasn’t allowed to be home alone, and the bedroom and bathroom doors had to remain open at all times until his parents were satisfied the therapy was proving effective. This allowed Abigail further opportunities to humiliate her brother as he changed clothes, showered and used the toilet. Lucas complained to his parents about the excessively intense scrutiny. They told him Abigail was just being a good sister, looking out for her brother in this troubled stage of his life. When he learned to keep his hands off himself, he’d no longer need a bathroom monitor.

One of the questions in the Q&A had been, when was the last time either of his parents had seen him naked. It had been at least two years. But with the new rules in place, it became an everyday thing. He was regularly observed by his parents, Abigail, his grandmother or whoever else was recruited to keep watch on him on the days everyone else was out. Sometimes it was the young housecleaner that came three days a week. He had fantasized about her often, but none of those fantasies had involved her watching and snickering while he used the toilet. Privacy was a thing of the past for poor Lucas.

The mattress that had seen and absorbed so much action that day had to be thrown out. It was soaked completely through. The cost of the new one was docked from Lucas’ allowance for about a year.

His mother also installed a mattress protector in case of further emissions. It was made of stiff plastic, and the crinkly, crackly sound it made every time he moved was a mood killer. Because of it, he no longer had any desire to masterbate in bed. The protector nevertheless came in handy. We learned if a boy didn’t release his stuff manually, he would soon have a naughty dream one night and it would squirt out of him all on its own. As Lucas had no chance to pleasure himself anymore, he had a number of these accidents. Due to the volume of what he released, he’d soak his underpants as well as the sheets.

His mother refused to believe he wasn’t playing with himself under the covers till his father stepped up, an unlikely ally. He too had suffered this biological embarrassment when he was Lucas’ age, and Lucas’ grandmother, angered at having to clean his sticky sheets, hadn’t believed him either. Lucas thought he had scored at least one victory till his mother presented him with the diaper and rubber pants he would be wearing to bed from then on. Abigail LOVED his new bedtime attire.

The wall behind his bed had sustained heavy damage from the hammering headboard. The cost of repairs was docked from Lucas’ allowance also.

Benjamin the Bear had been thrown out along with the mattress. I felt bad about that. Benjamin was an innocent victim in all this. Both siblings had been heartbroken. Abigail had wanted Benjamin back even after witnessing his horrid, torrid lovemaking session with Lucas. Her victory over her brother had been bittersweet at best.

I had fibbed a bit to Lucas when I said we were done with him. There was still the measuring to do. I was thinking of bringing him and Tad together to measure them at the same time, if only to embarrass the ever arrogant Tad with his comparative lack of length.

Of course, I’d have to tell Tad all about watching and photographing him at Aunt Martha’s. And I’d have to treat him like any other victim. My thoughts had begun to lean dangerously in that direction.

But the angel on my shoulder kept telling me to let this one little fish off the hook. And for once, the angel’s advice was more tempting than the devil’s.