By Johnny Utah

Based on a suggestion by MetalbondNYC

Note: This is the final chapter. To start at the very beginning, click here.

The stocks sat in the middle of a sandy, sun-baked clearing, surrounded by big green old Army style tents and a few plywood buildings with tin roofs. Sweat was pouring into my eyes as I shuffled over to a low platform with two tall vertical posts and two cross members with holes cut in them for my head and arms. What had I got myself into!

A gorilla-sized guard of this hellhole pointed at me and said, “OK, shithead, this can go easy or I can go and get ten of my buddies and fuck you up for life, got it?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“You stay still while I get these chains off you.”

“Yes, Sir.”

I was unshackled and uncuffed.

“Put yer boots in the there.”

I dropped my booted feet into the half circles on the platform. A plank with another two half circles dropped in over my boots. My feet were trapped. In front of me was a crosspiece with cut-outs for my head and arms.

“Git yer head and hands in there!”

I leaned forward, put my head down, and, in a second, I was secured.

The wood was thick and beat up, it must have been there a long time – or it got a lot of use. The wood was also warm to the touch.

Hours crept by.

Fuck, it was hot! The sun just hung in the sky, baking me. I dreamed about jumping into an ice-cold swimming pool. I just hung there in the stocks, my legs spread and my ass vulnerable.  I dreaded to think what could happen to me. Sure enough, out of the corner of my eye, I see Captain Stiles approach. He’s going to fuck me, I thought right away, and he did.

Captain Stiles didn’t waste any time. He yanked my pants down and worked his way into me. He pumped me hard while I grunted with each trust. When he was done fucking my ass, he came round to the front of me. I could barely raise my head up to see him.

With sweat dripping in my eyes, I could just about make out a convict walking over to me from one of the plywood buildings. He was carrying a galvanized metal bucket and a white enameled ladle.  He was taking his sweet ass time, but eventually he got over to me and dipped the ladle into the bucket. I could tell the water in that bucket was cold as the outside of the bucket was covered in condensation. I managed to raise my head enough to get to the edge of the ladle filled with that delicious water. I had been thinking about a drink for so long.  If a guy came up to me and pissed on me, I wouldn’t have hesitated to take it down my throat.

I gulped down the first ladle of water and asked for a second, got that, then asked for a third. I grunted for a fourth.

“Nope, you get three. Don’t nobody get more, you’ll get sick. You don’t have too much longer. They’ll spring you at sunset.”

Sunset finally came – along with the bugs. They just came right on to feast on my blood and sweat. The sun was starting to go down. Florida has that way of the daylight hanging around and then it’s suddenly dark as fuck. A guard came out of the dimming light. He was as big as the gorilla who locked me into the stocks. He unlocked me. Every joint in my body was stiff. My hips were killing me. Whatever it took, I promised I’d never go back into them, no fucking way!

“Hold still, convict,” he said.  He put shackles on my feet, but my hands weren’t cuffed. I started to scratch at all the bites I had until the guard told me to “knock it the fuck off.”

“Get yes ass over to the Admin shack!” shouted the guard who unlocked me. He pointed in the direction of one of the plywood sided buildings, conveniently with a sign that said “Admin.” I wasn’t sure if it was OK to go off unescorted, but the motion of the guard’s hand made it clear I should get my butt moving. When I got to the door there was a stenciled warning in red paint, “All convicts must knock and wait for permission to enter.”

I knocked. I waited.

“Get yer ass in here!” was yelled at me from inside the building. I grabbed the door handle and stepped in.

It was so cold in there. Air conditioning! What a relief! There were three guards. One had three stripes on the sleeve of his shirt. Three stripes equals sergeant, I had learned from my jail and prison time. It was a small office, smelling of chewing tobacco. The sergeant looked at me like I was something dead on the shoreline.

As I stood there in front of the sergeant’s desk I slouched from the exhaustion of being in the stocks. One of the guards to my side gave me a jab in the ribs and I snapped up straight, putting my hands behind my back, parade-rest style. A lesson from Sergeant – now Captain Stiles.

“What’s yer name, convict?”

“Utah, Johnny,” I said, and out of reflex I rattled off my Florida State conviction number.

“Oh yeah, Stiles’ main squeeze.” The other guards chuckled.

“You can forget that Florida State number. You ass is here at camp now, you get one of our numbers.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The sergeant looked at a clipboard on his desk and then wrote something down.

“Your number is 913. You’d better drill that into your head, do it when Stiles is drilling you.” This guy a regular comedian.

“913, you’ve got assigned to tent four. You’re on a barrow crew. When you get to yer tent look for 828, he’s your partner on the barrow crew.”

I got tossed a pile of clothes.

“Git out!” the Sergeant ordered. I scrambled out as fast as my shacked legs could move.

I got to tent four, easy to spot since there was a big “4” on it. I moved the heavy flap and got into the tent. There were electric lights, bare light bulbs running down the ridge of the tent. There were rows of bunk beds, six to a side. The tent had screen sides to keep the bugs out, well most of them.  The tent smelled of BO, warm dirt, and old canvas. I wandered into the tent, feeling all eyes on me. I got the feeling of being the new meat in the yard, which I was.

I walked down the row of bunks, got midway and then saw the shirt of a big black man. Stenciled on the shirt was 828. His name was Tony, originally from Texas. He had been at the camp for almost two years. He’d been convicted of car theft and then had his charges increased. He had a ten-year sentence. Tony told me to keep quiet and not to piss the guards off. I had missed dinner, so I went to bed hungry.

Just before the sun came was morning count.  We all gathered into the main compound. We formed up in three ranks. Starting at the left front rank, we each bellowed out our number. When it was my turn, I yelled out “Sir, 913, Sir!”

After the count we got 30 minutes or so to get to the chow building.  We went in tent groups. We normally ate outside at picnic tables. You grabbed a shallow metal tray from a stack, then got a dollop of baked beans, a piece of bread, and weak black coffee but for some reason very sweet. Sunday was an exception; we got some fatty bacon mixed in the beans. After getting out of the chow tent it was time to form up for work. We shuffled out in a long line to the gravel piles. We had our hands free but were leg shackled.

My job was simple: Shovel gravel into a wheelbarrow – all fuckin day! My bunkmate, Tony, took the wheelbarrow from the gravel pile to the edge of the growing road base. This went on until a loud whistle from the crew boss announced lunch. We were slowly building the gravel road out into the swamp. Where it was going or what it was for, we didn’t know, it wasn’t for us to know.

We got a biscuit and some ham for lunch out at the gravel pile. You ate quick and kept working.  When it started to get dark we went back to the tents for a count and then dinner in the chow building. Dinner was always the same.  Ham and beans, cornbread, and coffee. Sunday dinner was a bit different sometimes with watermelon or an apple.

We’d work hard all day long. It was backbreaking just shoveling all day long.

Every three or four days we’d go to a big concrete pad called the hose down area. We’d line up, strip, get a bit of soap, and then get hosed down, not firehoses or anything like that, the water tower didn’t have the pressure for that, more like a garden hose.  Somehow that just made the whole process worse. We scrubbed our uniforms on this same concrete pad. We stripped. We got our uniforms, boxers, socks soaking wet and then got a big block of soap and a stiff bristled scrub brush. The soap was so rough it made your skin red. We hung everything up to dry. In the Florida humidity it took a while. We only had two sets of uniforms.

***

I was closing in on finishing my first year at camp. Every couple of weeks our whole tent was ordered out for haircuts, really a head shave. You stood in a long line, sat on a stool and another convict buzzed your hair down to the skin.

No problem. I stood in line until it was my turn. After I’d planted my butt on the stool one of the bigger guards, at least 6-foot-5 and a muscular 250 pounds, swaggered up to me and in a lazy Florida Panhandle drawl said, “No buzz for him, hawk ’im.”

I could see on the guys’ faces around me that this wasn’t good. What the fuck?

Sure enough I got a buzz but was left with a strip down the middle of my head. We formed up to go to the hose down area. Normally the hose down was time to talk and gossip but no one said a word to me until we got back to the tent after chow.

After lights out I whispered to Tony, “What the fuck’s going on? Why won’t anyone talk to me?”

“It’s what you’ve been selected for.”

“Selected?”

‘Yep, that’s what the mohawk is for.  They’ll let it grow out a bit more before you get sent over.”

“Sent over?  Sent over to where?”

“On the other side of the camp, have you ever seen over there?”

“No, I mean I know there’s stuff over there, buildings and shit.”

“That’s where you’ll be going in a few weeks. It’s rough, man. You’d better get ready for it.”

“What happens?” I asked, now scared shitless.

“You’re going to fight. You’re going to be a gladiator. The guards have a betting ring going over there. Convicts fight and the guards make money. People come from all over the state to watch. They bet a lot.”

“Do you mean like fight until one guy is dead?” I asked, thinking of ancient Rome and all those gladiator movies I used to think were hot.

“No. You don’t kill each other, but you are going to have to fight to keep having the shit beat out of you.”

“How do you know so much about it?”

“I was a gladiator for a year.”

“No shit?”

“No shit. It was tough, but I got through it. Those fuckers made a lot of money off my fists. You get one guy, could be a guard or some outsider who owns you and puts up the cash. You win your fight and he gets the cash.”

“I don’t know how to fight,” I said. I was beginning to think I’d just get pounded every day.

“You’ll learn,” Tony said. With that he shut up, and I did too.

I just laid there in my bunk. No question about who owned me. That had to be Captain Stiles. Not only did he get to fuck me, now he was going to make money off my ass.

The next Sunday four guards came to our tent.

“913!” There was a long pause, then, “Get your shit and get outside.”

I took a quick look at Tony and said, “Thanks.”

I hustled out of the tent as fast as my shackled legs could move.

“Move it, 913! Over to the Admin hut.”

“Sir, yes Sir.”

When I got to the Admin hut I stopped. A guard said, “Go inside, drop your gear on the desk and turn around and come right out, no offering last minute blow jobs.” The guards laughed. I did as they ordered, then we marched over to the center of the camp. There was a plywood wall running across the camp and just one gate.

The only gate opened, and I stepped into the other side of the camp. In front of me was Captain Stiles, hands on his hips. On either side of him were two guards, both well-built goons with Smokey the Bear hats and mirror sunglasses.

“Strip!” I did so as fast as I could.

“Get your face in the dirt.”

I dropped down onto the ground.

“All the way!” Captain Stiles used his boot to push my face in the dirt.

“Crawl over to the registration shed!”

“Yes, Sir!” I crawled as best as I could with my legs shackled.

I got over to the shed, Captain Stiles booted the door open for me and I went in, still on all fours.  In front of me was a big wooden block, about 2 feet high.

“Put your head on the block!”

A metal collar about a quarter inch thick was in Captain Stiles’ hands. In a second it was around my neck. A bolt went in. No key. A pair of pliers crushed the bolt. No escape. A little white tag with “913” dangled from a ring on the collar. I was close to tears.

“Lift your head up!” Captain Stiles looked me in the eyes, “You’re a fighter now, you’re my fighter. You’re going to do this. You’ll do it because I want it. You’ll do it because I tell you to do it. Now stop crying. Be a man.”

I was worked hard. Lifting, running, hours on the punching bag. Captain Stiles was right there with me. Lifting pound for pound, running lap for lap and punch for punch on the bag. I was fed well. Lots of protein drinks, too. I bulked up. I was Captain Stiles’ beast. I got to smell him during the day. Most nights I got fucked by him, not every night. Some nights I was just put in a cage.

You fight in a circular pen of chain link fencing.  The object was to knock out or pin the other fighter, or worst of all make the other fighter give up. We don’t wear much, just boxer shorts.

My first fight wasn’t too good. The crowd was small since this was a first-time fight for me and the guy I was facing. I was kind of expecting a huge crowd, but the reality was I was small time. I never found out if there was a lot of money on or against me. The guy I was facing was about the same build as me. A blond guy with a lot of tatts. I scrambled around. I got one or two good hits, but so did my opponent. At one point I had the wind knocked out of me – snot bubbles and everything. Eventually we were both too tired to fight and the contest was declared a draw. Captain Stiles grabbed me by my collar and led me out of the ring. I was expecting punishment, but instead Captain Stiles told me he was proud of me. I got all my strength back in an instant. I whispered in his ear, “Sir, please fuck me.” He took me back to the training area and bent me over and fucked me hard.

After four days it was time for my second fight. I was pumped up. Maybe it was the anticipation of a post-fight fucking that did it.

I walked into the ring all cocky – kind of literally as I was kind of hard. I had to admit it the prospect of fighting was a huge turn on for me. I bounced around, dodged a few swings, then got my legs cut out from under me and got pounded. Captain Stiles dragged me out of ring while the crowd howled. I got put in my cage for the rest of the night.

I had two other fights. I won one, lost one. I wasn’t a good bet. My job was to make money and that wasn’t happening. Captain Stiles took me to the Registration shed. I hadn’t seen that place in almost a year. My head was down on that wooden block again. The bolt on my collar was cut off with a hacksaw while I sweated with each pull of the saw blade that was close to my neck.

Captain Stiles got me up from the block. “OK, time for you to go back. Not that you didn’t try to fight, but you’re not cut out for fighting. Don’t think there’s not penalty for failing as a fighter. All the time you spent on the other side won’t count towards your sentence. In fact, to teach you a lesson, in case you hadn’t learned your place, I added a year for disciplinary punishment.”

“I’m sorry, Sir,” was my pathetic reply.

“One more thing before you go back to your tent. I’m going to shave that fighter mohawk off.” Captain Stiles took his cock out of his uniform pants. He alternated between a swipe of the clippers and a few pumps of his cock. By the time I had lost my proud mohawk, Captain Stiles was ready. He pushed my head toward his cock, and I opened my mouth wide and went to work until he came.

***

Two years later…

Our crew was working hard at the side of the road. It was typical Florida hot and humid, and we were sweating our asses off. There was tough thorny undergrowth to hack down. There was a ton of trash hidden underneath it. We were at it for hours in the hot sun. We found bumpers, tires, a ladder, all kinds of trash.

I was working on another year long stretch for disciplinary punishment. I was looking forward to the hose down when we got back to camp. It wasn’t as good as the showers back at the main prisons, but it was better than stinking all night. I was taking a drink from the cooler on the back of the camp pick up. The pickup followed us out from the camp when we went out to work.

Just across the road, not too well hidden by some trees, was a guy watching us. Off to the right of him must have been his car, nothing special but it had New York plates, so he was from out of state. The guy was white, tall, about 6-foot-plus, and had a shaved head or at least cut very close. He wore jeans, a black T Shirt, and black boots. He was looking at us working. I recognized that look right away. I knew exactly what he was thinking. He was thinking what I thought all those years ago when I saw my first work crew.

Then I saw a white corrections van pull up behind where the guy was standing. The guy didn’t see or hear it. Captain Stiles got out, a pair of handcuffs in his gloved hands…

The End

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Metal would like to thank the author Johnny Utah, for this story!