By Hunter Perez

As I stood in the pillory dreading the prospect of several extra hours added to my imprisonment, I tried to decipher why Nicky would ever consider proposing marriage to a screwball like Holmgren. Between the casual cruelty of his prankish behavior and his nonstop talking, I would imagine anyone who harbored romantic thoughts about Holmgren would eventually either turn homicidal or suicidal in having such a lunatic as a lover.

There wasn’t very much material for me to put together a portrait of what made Holmgren tick. The key to his character, I theorized, was that he remembered me from photos that Nicky copied from online. I wondered what kind of a person would have such a crisp recall of photos of a friend of a friend? Were my photos that stunning? I think he called one photo a “male model” shot, which no one ever said about me. Was he as obsessional as Nicky? I thought opposites attracted – perhaps not in this case.

It must have been weird for Holmgren to have his then-lover still pining over an ex-boyfriend from college. Was he being so ridiculous to me to enact revenge on someone he perceived either as a rival, even though I never knew he existed? Or was he just a kook? Was he playing mind games with me with that crazy story about the blacksmith castrating a prisoner? Or did he really coordinate such a scene?

What revolted me was that I found him attractive. His smile – that toothy grin accentuated by his overbite and framed by a thin handlebar mustache – was his best feature. When he was happy, he was cute – maybe in an obnoxious way, but he made for interesting eye candy. While I could tell he was thin, I couldn’t determine the exact nature of his physique because his uniform was rather boxy and not well tailored – his hands were large and looked strong, and I assumed he must have been lean-muscular given the demands of his job. After all, it was difficult to imagine someone with a skinny-frail body commanding respect in a prison environment. I began to wonder about what he looked like out of uniform – if Nicky, with his bodybuilder lifestyle, wanted to marry him, then he couldn’t have been the proverbial 98-pound weakling.

I began to feel depressed that I met him was under such bizarre circumstances and not in our own world. I imagined myself encountering him at a pre-Covid cocktail party and being amused by his motormouth personality. I wondered if he was the type to give a running commentary during sex or if he was someone who could be tamed into quiet during passion.

I shook my head – or, at least, shook it for as much as my pillory encasement would allow – and decided to try my own version of a mind game on him. I had spent too much time pleading with him, which obviously built up his sense of alpha worth. But what would happen if responded as an alpha to his tricks? I clearly wasn’t in a physical position to overpower him, but maybe the right words could seesaw this inanity in my favor?

While I was wallowing in such silly thoughts, I thought I heard the slight jingle of spurs coming up from behind me. I realized that my bare bottom half was open to attack, and my fears were justified when I felt a hand grab my balls and began to pull them up and down.

“Clang, clang, clang went the trolley – ding, ding, ding went the bell,” sang out Holmgren as he yanked repeatedly at my manhood.

“Shit!” I yelled out and his hands squeezed me much too tightly.

“What, you’re the one queen who doesn’t like Judy Garland?” he said from behind me in a voice thick with mock-unhappiness.

Now was the right time to see if my idea could work. “Get down on your knees and service me,” I yelled out.

There was a silence – a little too long of a silence. Holmgren finally responded in a squeak of a voice, “What did you say to me?”

“I want you on your knees servicing me,” I said, trying to sound as formidable as a pillory-locked man could sound. “I want to feel those lips on my cock, working it like the fate of the world depended on you. And after this is over, I want to see you horizontal on silk sheets. I want to wake up to the sun’s rays shining through the window and coating your naked body in a bath of golden light.”

I blinked in disbelief – what the hell was I saying? I never spoke that way before and immediately felt ashamed of myself for trying and failing to be erotic.

I closed my eyes and waited for Holmgren to respond with laughing and wisecracks and perhaps more assaults on my lower region. Instead, I heard the tinkling of keys and the click of pillory’s padlock being opened. The upper board that confined me in place started to ascend.

“Get up slowly,” he said, perhaps a bit nervously. “Don’t stand up too fast – you’ll feel better this way.”

I followed his direction and tried to straighten myself slowly, but I was sore and stiff at all points from my neck to my knees. I flexed my fingers and shook my arms, but I felt arthritic.

“Go sit down on the stairs,” he said in a serious tone, pointing to the steps leading off the platform.

I gingerly moved myself to the stairs and carefully descended. After standing for so long, it felt good to be sitting. Holmgren moved behind me and sat directly behind me, his fingers playing a soft massage on my shoulders which felt wonderfully therapeutic.

“Did you really think I would leave you in there for hours and hours?” he asked.

“Yeah, I did,” I responded, closing my eyes to enjoy his massage therapy across my shoulders and lower neck. After a few quiet minutes while he rubbed me out of soreness, I said, “You have very strong hands.”

“So, why do you want to fuck me so badly?” he asked.

I closed my eyes and rolled my head about, trying to erase the knots in my neck. “Because I want to. I tried to imagine you out of that uniform. I liked what my imagination created. I bet your cock is long and thick.”

“Would you marry me?” he inquired. “Or aren’t you the marrying type? I think you’re sort of like Bobby in ‘Company.’”

“Who?” I said, a bit annoyed at not getting the reference.

Holmgren leaned his face next to mine and started singing. “Someone to hold me too close. Someone to hurt me too deep. Someone to sit in my chair and ruin my sleep.”

“I don’t get what you’re referencing,” I muttered.

“Eh, you don’t have any appreciation of talent,” he said, with a tinge of disappointment. “Merrifield likes my singing.”

“Who?” I said, confused again with his prattling.

“Merrifield – the warden’s nephew,” he said, a bit too loud. “Remember, you’re going to work with him? Merrifield doesn’t talk and I’ve never seen him smile, but once when I was with him I sang a couple of tunes from ‘Company’ and I thought I saw him smile.”

“It was probably just indigestion,” I cracked.

Holmgren stopped massaging me and crossed his forearms across my chest. Pulling me back to him, he put his lips directly to my left ear and whispered, “You must always remember the first rule of the penal system – the prisoner is never funnier than the jailer.”

Holmgren then stuck his tongue into my ear and sloshed it around, causing me to giggle. He quickly ran his fingers up and down my sides, unleashing a ticklishness that got me into a happy hysteria. I tried to pull away, but he pulled me back, tickling me feverishly and laughing as I laughed. After a minute, he stopped and hugged me from behind, holding me in a firm but affectionate grip.

“I do like you,” he said.

“You’re a nut, but I like you, too,” I said, enjoying the strength of his embrace.

“I hope I didn’t hurt you in that thing,” he said. “I was just having fun, but I got carried away.”

“It’s all good,” I said, feeling very comfortable in his arms. “It was worth putting up with that silliness just to have this moment.”

He began to breathe deeply and tightened his embrace. We sat for a few minutes before he let go of me and bounced up.

“We have work to do,” he said. “Can you get up?”

I stood up slowly and did not feel any soreness. “Yeah, I think it’s all copacetic. You have magical hands.”

He didn’t respond – in fact, he seemed oddly detached. I followed him across the courtyard and into the prison building, where we zigzagged through long corridors before coming to a cell door positioned at the end of a quiet hallway.

“That’s Merrifield,” he said, pointing into the cell.

I peeked into the cell and panicked over what I saw. I began to slowly step backward. Holmgren didn’t realize I was moving away until I was about 10 feet from him.

“Where are you going?” he yelled out to me.

“I just remembered – I left my jacuzzi on fast forward,” I said, turning to run. Alas, I felt Holmgren’s strong hands on my collar as he dragged me back to the cell.

“He’s not going to hurt you,” he declared. “He just looks that way.”

“You’re not making me feel good about this,” I answered.

Holmgren shoved me into the bars of the cell and called inside to its occupant. “Merrifield, you’re going to have a new cellmate. I want you guys to get along.”

“Yeah, just don’t kill me – or if you do, make it fast and painless,” I yelled, which brought a smack by Holmgren to the back of my head, who then pulled me back down the hall.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he said, putting his angry face into mine. “I am relying on you to make this work. He needs help, not jokes. I’m serious about this. I think you’re the only one who can do it. None of these idiots in the 19th century know anything about helping people with mental health issues.”

“Damn it, what’s wrong with you?” I shot back. “I’m not an expert in mental health. And this guy is scary. I’ve never such a huge man in my life. I used to watch WWE, and this guy makes those wrestlers look like Pee Wee Herman. And what kind of results do you expect? What is my deadline for this?”

“However long it takes,” Holmgren responded, with no degree of warmth or friendship. “Once I lock you in there, you had better get results. I don’t care if you’re in there for years – I need you to help him.”

I tried to yank myself out of his grasp. “Well, I don’t want to be in there for years with him. Go back to the sheriff’s office – maybe Nicky sent another of his ex-lovers from the 21st century.”

It was no consolation to acknowledge my suspicion that Holmgren’s lean physique was strong – he dragged me back through the corridor effortlessly and held me with one hand while he fished out the key to the cell with another. Opening the cell door, he threw me in as if he was tossing a garbage bag into a dumpster and slammed the cell door shut, locking it with a theatrical flourish.

“Oh, Merrifield,” he said to the cell’s occupant. “Be nice to your new cellmate. I am sure you two will get along.”

And with that, Holmgren quickly disappeared down the corridor. I turned around to view the man with whom I would be sharing a cell for the indefinite future.

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