By Pickle

When I turned my barn into a gym, I invested in a secondhand ice bath.  I was never so happy I had done that as I was now.  I knew there’d be a shit-ton of inflammation in my tendons, muscles and joints since my body had been put under so much duress.  Pulled apart so unforgivingly!

I’d never endured any “test” so tough or extreme before, so I didn’t even bother to strip off before plunging myself into the bath of frigid water.  It felt like a billion tiny sharp needles jabbing my body as I lowered myself in, but once submerged, it began to numb some of the pain.  My endorphins were already in high gear from the torture. There was no other word for what Steve had made me endure, but the freezing cold water seemed to make my brain kick-in and deliver a more healing type of euphoria.  I stayed submerged for five minutes before slowly climbing out, looking like a drowned rat.  I took my wet clothes off and hung them on the line in back of the house.  When I finished, Steve was already sitting in an Adirondack chair, again swallowing down a beer.

I went inside and put on another pair of army silkies I’d bought at an online Army Surplus store.  I figured since Steve had taken me into the “Special Ops Resistance Training” headspace, he might enjoy seeing me wear them, and besides they felt really comfortable, and I knew my muscular legs made me look good in them.  In spite of the fear I was now feeling for the guy, something in me wanted to impress him. My still throbbing cock made a pretty nice tent in the lightweight boxers. I knew it wouldn’t go unnoticed.

On my way through the kitchen I grabbed a beer out of the fridge, and joined Steve.  I no longer knew what to think of him as … he’d been my best buddy before, but after what he’d just put me through, I was no longer sure if I could think of him as any kind of friend.  I found myself being a little nervous and unsure of him.

We said absolutely nothing for a good five minutes.  I was more than a little pissed off at him for what he’d just done to me, and my brains were kind of scrambled from the experience.  The continued endorphin rush had me floating too, so I felt disoriented.  The bastard had fuckin’ tortured me!  I wasn’t sure how to deal with that realization, or what to say to him.  He’d pretty much tortured me the previous afternoon too, but it wasn’t as brutal as this had been, and he’d made it up to me later with the wonderful and unexpected love-making session we’d had.

“Wanna play ring toss?”  He chuckled, staring at the front of my shorts.  “I’d say from the looks of that you must’ve enjoyed my little game, huh boy?”  He gave my pecker a playful flick with his finger.

“What the fuck dude?  You just tortured the shit outta me!”

“Yeah.  But ya liked it didn’t ya, Pick?”

“Fuck no!”  I replied, turning bright red.

“That’s not what your cock is sayin’ there, Jimbo.” He glanced at the front of my silkies. “It was practically tryin’ to break through the barn doors the entire time I was putting you through the challenge.  Torture seems to work better than that little blue pill on you, boy!”  He laughed and gave me a huge wink.  “Don’t be embarrassed Jimmy boy.  Guys who like getting tortured are the kinda fellas that make the best soldiers.”

I had no intention of ever becoming a soldier, but I had to admit that there was a part of me, both physical and mental, that enjoyed the toughness and masculinity of the trial he’d just put me through.  I’d always been competitive, and I did enjoy the challenge of manning-up to the ordeal. My ego was very happy to show Steve exactly how much I could take.  I figured he wouldn’t have made it as agonizingly difficult if he hadn’t thought I was capable of taking it. In an odd way I was flattered by how horrifically torturous he had made the test, and I knew I’d pleased him by suffering through it for him and not “safe phrasing” out early.

We sat soaking in the sun.  Few words were being spoken.  I didn’t really know what to say to the guy anymore.  Our easy camaraderie was gone.  I had a bunch of emotions running through me, from the pride of having made it through Steve’s tough torments, to resentment and rage that he’d been so incredibly evil, to a certain amount … I had to admit in spite of myself … of both admiration and lust for the motherfucker.  The guy was ruggedly handsome, and even though I’m seriously well-built, his physique made me look scrawny by comparison.

Steve broke the silence …

“Well Jimbo, my boy!  I’ve been thinkin’ about this for a while.  I’ve been enjoying your good looks and farm-built bod for quite some time.  You’ve improved that physique of yours quite a lot since you built that gym in there, but ya know, I think with a little “coaching” we can do even better.  Beef ya up!  Toughen you up!  I fuckin’ loved training soldiers to be able to endure a Helluva lot bud.  Turn ’em into torture resistant mother-fuckers.  I miss it!  Train ’em to the point that they’re almost superhuman, and can endure almost anything.

“That dressed-down country boy look of yours makes you look oh SO cocky, and I’ve been itchin’ to see exactly what I can do with you, boy.  Punishment is good for a guy like you Dill, focuses him, and when I see a dude sportin’ that look, I figure he’s a fella who requires extra … um … let’s just say ‘rigorous’ training.  So bro?  You feel like letting me make you into “the best that you can be?”

I grimace inwardly at the corny reference to the military slogan, but in spite of working-out six days a week, I’d hit a plateau in my gains in the past few months.  Despite the fact I was more than pissed off at Steve for the ordeal he’d just put me though, I had to admit I’d kinda like to be the toughest, strongest, most muscular dude I could become. And I knew the fuckin’ jerk sitting beside me wouldn’t settle for me to stay in my present condition, good as it is, so I told him to let me think about it.  I knew from the treatment I’d received on the beach the day before, and the torture test he’d put me through today, that he wouldn’t rest till he turned me into a friggin’ “warrior” … and I kinda liked the thought of that.

We each downed another beer before he said, “That’s enough ‘R & R’ for you Dill.  Time for the beach, boy!  Go change into something a little LESS comfortable.  I want you in jeans and another sleeveless button-up shirt Pick.  I like that real pale yellow one ya got.  Put that one on bro.  Oughta be able to see your wussy little physique through that one nicely, once it gets all wet and clingy.”

He notices that I’m stalling, and he gets up and stomps his heavy military booted foot into my crotch, pressing in hard with his 200 plus pounds of body weight.  “You lost the challenge motherfucker, now you pay the price!”

When he released me from my trapped spot in the chair, I get up and head inside to change into jeans and the shirt he specified.  As I put the shirt on I remembered again, Steve was the guy who started encouraging me to cut the sleeves off my shirts a few years ago when he moved into the cottage.

Once dressed, I took a look at myself in the hall mirror again, and had to admit this light yellow shirt looked really great stretched out over my deeply tanned chest.  I opened another few buttons till my top-most abs were peeking out. “Fuck yeah Dill.  Yer not lookin’ half-bad, bro!” I thought to myself.

I was beginning to feel like my buddy’s “bitch” the way he was treating me lately, but I did lose the challenge. So I had to be a good sport about it and take what was coming to me.  I knew from yesterday’s experience I wasn’t going to have a good time.

I felt like I needed a bit more of a time buffer after the torture Steve had just put me through in the barn, so I grabbed two more long-necks from the fridge on my way through the kitchen, and handed him one as I came out through the screen door.  He nodded and gave me a smirk, but no guff at least, and sat in one of the Adirondack chairs again.  “Stallin’ again… huh bud?”  He chuckled as we sat down.  “Dumb move bro.  Yer just gonna need to piss once I get ya all nicely spread-eagled down on the beach you know.”

“I’ll take a leak before ya tie me, dude.”

“I might not let ya!” He replied with an evil-lookin’ grin.

We finished the beers and I took the empties back inside with the others, to take to recycling the next time I ran errands in town.  I was dreading the salty waterboarding that my friend had planned for me.  I knew it was going to be bad, but there was no way to squirm out of it without looking like a pussy.

When I got back outside Steve was holding a heavy set of five-points.  I’d seen prison restraints like this in bdsm porn but never anything with as thick, heavy iron as these ones.  They showed traces of rust that had been cleaned off as much as possible.  Steve saw me look at them, and he said, “Yeah, they’re authentic.  Worn by real criminals, and yeah … they’ve got weight to ’em, boy!”

“Turn around, Dill!  … Fuck bro.  I love this shirt on ya dude!  Looking’ good there Pickleboy!  One nice, laid-back lookin’, hunky country boy if ever I saw one.”

I turned around, knowing I really had no choice.  I ignored his compliment, since I wasn’t sure if he was sincere or just yanking’ my chain.  Whatever, I figured I might as well get my punishment for losing the challenge in the rearview mirror as soon as possible anyway!

Steve took his time putting the five-points on me, starting with the heavy collar.  When he closed it with a loud “ka-chunk!” my cock gave a twitch, and I got that ‘I’m totally screwed’ feeling, deep in my very sore guts.

He continued, and trapped first my left wrist, pulling it roughly behind me, then grabbed the right one and pulled it back and locked it in too.  There was enough chain to allow my arms to return almost to my sides.  “Can’t have that now can we Pick?”  He must have pulled a small carabiner out of one of his pockets cuz he grabbed the chain between my wrists and shortened it by hooking it through loops of the chain to shorten it.  My wrists were now locked behind my back, almost touching, so it put a mild stretch on my shoulders, that were already in a shit-load of pain from my little ordeal hanging in the barn.  “That’s better, now ain’t it, Dilly-boy?”

I only half-jokingly replied, “Shit dude, where’d my buddy Steve go?”  He gave a maniacal and somehow not quite human sounding chuckle, but said nothing.  I got a weird dejá vu feeling from that laugh but didn’t know why.  He bent down and shackled my ankles.  “So Pick? …  How far is it down to the cottage from here again?”  I knew he knew it was a little over a kilometre, but he was just making me think about the ‘perp walk’ I was about to take, sporting the chains, and a now raging boner … again!”

I was diggin’ the feeling of these five heavy-duty restraints that were now locked on my body, not to mention the chains that held them together.  The chain between my wrists and ankles was a little too short for my 6-foot-1 frame, so I had the choice of either arching backward a little, or bending my knees slightly.  This bastard knew what he was doing.  Just a little extra torture for me.  Steve-o was definitely out to get me good!

“One last thing, Pick,” he announced as he took out another carabiner and shortened the chains between my ankles.  I was left with no more than a foot between them.  He grabbed a shoulder and spun me around.  I nearly fell as I lost my balance, but he grabbed me and saved the fall.  He was even stronger than I remembered from times we’d playfully wrestled.

“I lied!  Now THIS is the last thing that’s gonna complete yer new look, bro.”  He fastened another heavy chain around my waist and then used carabiners to clip the link of the chain closest to each of the fetters on each of my wrists to my waist chain.  “Yeah!  Now this is a real good make-over.  I’m likin’ ya like this Pickleboy!”

He moved around behind me and attached something to my metal collar.  It felt like he was screwing something into it.  “This is gonna give me just a little more control over ya on our little hike Jimbo.”  I could tell he was holding a pole that was now attached to the wide, thick, heavy ring around my neck that was already feeling nasty on my collarbones.  “It’s gonna be a L-O-N-G walk down to the beach, huh dude?”

I responded with, “You’re a fuckin’ prick, ya know that?”

Steve just chuckled and gave me a shove to get me moving.   “March, Dill!  Move it!  We’ve got waves to catch.”  I knew he didn’t mean we were about to go surfing.  We walked the slightly more than a kilometre down to the beach with Steve giving me a hard push every now and then, just to be a prick, and with me occasionally stumbling even without the shove from him.

The chain between my ankles was so short that it made walking even a few feet difficult.  This hike was meant to be part of the punishment for me, and it definitely was … between the chain keeping my ankles close together, and the short chain from my collar to my wrists and then on to the ankle restraints, it was a fuckin’ pain to walk.  I wound up alternating between bending at the knees and bending backwards for the entire hike.  I normally walk pretty fast, so this inhibited walk was tedious to say the least.

Once we got down the bank to the beach I noticed that my “trainer” had already pounded stakes into the sand.  They were very obviously further down the incline to the water than on the previous afternoon.  The tide was out a little further, so farther away from the stakes than things had started out yesterday, so I was going to have a longer time stretched out on the sand to think about things as the tide changed and began to come in.

I also saw Steve had made preparations to make himself comfortable.  He had brought a nicely padded lounge chair and a large cooler that I assumed contained beer and water.  When we got to the stakes in the sand he gave me a hard enough push to knock me down hard onto my gut.  The metal restraints hurt both my wrists and ankles as I fell, and I knew there’d be good bruises on them from it.  The chain running from my collar to my ankles held me in a very shallow hogtie, and that was all that kept my face from being slammed into the sand as I fell.

“Fuck YOU” left my lips, and I sure as Hell meant it.  I was pissed off at this supposed “friend” at this point, and starting to think I might evict him from my cottage.

“Just toughenin’ you up a little!  … And “recruit,” … that’s “Sir, Fuck you, SIR!” buddy boy!”  As he laughingly said that, he straddled me, picked me up by the arm pits slightly and dragged me on my gut to place me between the stakes.  My front was now soaked from the wet sand, and the term “sugar cookie” came immediately to mind.  I had read that’s what they call Marines when they’re going through training their Drill Sergeants put them through, in and out of the water on the base on Coronado Island.  They get ’em good and wet, then put ’em through push-ups and sit-ups, etc., in the sand on the beach, then back in the water, then calisthenics on the beach … and repeat till every last one is fatigued to total exhaustion, only to be ordered to pick up a heavy log as a team and carry it a mile down the beach, where they again were sent into the water before more calisthenics in the sand.

I knew Steve was going to make my life THAT kind of living Hell from now on.  He was loving every second of dominating me, under the guise of “toughening me up.”  I had to admit, there was a part of me that was kind of enjoying this treatment too.  I must be fuckin’ crazy!

Steve unlocked my wrists from the wide metal cuffs, then rolled me over onto my back.  The guy is astoundingly strong, so he had no trouble rolling me over even though I was still arched backward by the chain from my neck to my ankles.   He positioned me as he wanted, basically draping my armpits over two of the stakes, and then tying first one wrist and then the other to the two stakes that were toward my hip level but out to my sides.  My arms were now in a wide, shallow, inverted vee.  He made sure to pull each arm down HARD, so that my armpits were jammed up tight against each stake.

He then tied figure 8 loops around my shoulders on each side of its corresponding wooden spike.  The poles were long enough there was no way to wriggle up and over them.  It was the same for my wrists. I was already well-trapped but Stevie-boy decided to make it worse.   He grabbed two more long stakes and a heavy maul and came back over, stood over me sneering down at my face and took the first one, placing it at the inside of my right elbow.  He pushed against my arm with the post till the strain felt like he was going to pull it out of its socket as a result.  He then hammered the stake into the sand.  When he was satisfied my arm was stretched enough, and I had absolutely no hope in Hell of escape, he repeated the same actions on my other arm.

My ankles were then unlocked from their shackles, and he grabbed me by each of them and yanked me down firmly enough that I felt like I was being racked, and then tied each one to its stake.  Fuck this dude is strong!  I was essentially looking like a “hangman” diagram … legs spread out, arms spread outward but slightly down toward my feet.

Once he had me secured he released me from the heavy collar that had now bruised my shoulders and collarbone and rubbed them raw I felt sure.  Knowing in an hour or so the tide would be washing over my face I tested things out, trying to lift myself up in basically a feeble, shallow crunch position.  The stakes in my armpits prevented me from raising my shoulders up off the sand even an inch.  I wasn’t going to be able to help myself out much.  All I could do was lift my head as far as my neck would allow.  I began to really panic inside but I wasn’t about to let my prick of a buddy know it.

Lying face-up, with my head this far down on the incline to the water, the waves were going to really waterboard me.  This new-to-me sadistic side of Steve made me wonder just how far he was going to go with this.  How bad was he going to let this punishment get?

I had read that it was possible to drown from asphyxia pneumonia a day of two after you’d taken water into your lungs, and that waterboarding, done wrong, could do this to a person.  I didn’t think Steve would intentionally allow me to die, but I felt I no longer really knew this guy who had been my best buddy for years now … and this truly felt unsafe.  My trust in him was diminishing … fast!

Steve knew I liked getting my abs tested with friendly, brotherly punches, so now that I was so nicely secured, he took the heavy hammer he’d pounded the last two stakes into the sand with and jammed the head of it down into my navel.  The thing had to weigh a good 15 or 20 pounds, so it elicited a loud grunt … and an even louder fart outta of me.  I couldn’t help it.  He’d squeezed my guts so deeply and hard with that fuckin’ maul any gas in my guts had to go somewhere.

He must have enjoyed it cuz he rammed the thing into my gut another ten or eleven times.  “Looks like ya like that, Pick!” he jeered, obviously looking at the bulge in my jeans.  “Fuck dude, I love makin’ your shirttails “dance” bro!”  He chuckled and then stomped a foot onto the spot he’d been jabbing me with the maul.  Then he moved his foot and pressed it heavily down on my cock and balls.  “Guess we’d better do something with these, huh Jimmy boy?” He opened my fly and pulled my goods out into the open.

Steve then went over to the ice chest and grabbed ziplock bag full of ice cubes and placed it on my extremely sore gut.  He half-giggled, “There now buddy, see … I CAN be a nice guy!”

He then opened the bag and took out two ice cubes rubbing them up and down my cock shaft, and when that proved only semi-successful in decreasing my raging hard-on, he held a cube under my balls for a minute.  Initially my cock got hard from the treatment but the cold then worked its magic and my rod became more limp.

“Let’s get this on while we’ve got you under some semblance of control, my boy.”  He jeered.  He’d taken a short trip to a knapsack he had hidden behind his lounge chair, and returned, applying a spiked cock cage to my appendage.  “I had this one made just for you, Pick!  Extra long, and nicely sharpened spikes.  I’ve noticed how horny you get when I work on your navel.  It’d be kinda bad if something like that happened now, huh boy?” His laughter no longer sounded even vaguely familiar to me.  I was learning the Asshole was pure evil.

After another trip to the knapsack he showed me a ball parachute he’d also commissioned from a leather worker he knew.  The thing also had nasty-looking metal spikes protruding from the inside of it.  It got tightened on with straps that cinched the horrible contraption tight around my balls.  “Kinda Medieval, huh Pickleboy?”  I had to agree with him.

The parachute had two D-rings on the bottom end of it and he attached a ratchet rope to them.  He took the other end and clipped it to a metal post up the incline of sand toward the bank, pulling it more than taut.  “Comfy, Dill?”

“You fuckin’ piece of rat shit!”

He pulled it tighter!  “Now now ‘recruit,’ from now on it’s ‘Sir, yes SIR!’ or ‘Sir, no SIR!’ or ‘Sir, Permission to speak, SIR!’ or we’re gonna have to make things a little more unpleasant for ya.  You don’t really want that, now do ya recruit?”

I could see he was planning to keep goin’ with the military recruit thing, and even though the military is the last job I’d ever sign up for for real, I was now his reticent trainee.  “Well Dill, looks like you’re gonna get toughened up, like it or not.” I thought to myself.

“Fuck Dill!  You look so friggin’ hot like this boy!  Really love this shirt on ya dude!”  Steve was standing about a yard away from my feet.  “Ya know somethin’ Pick?  It’s gonna be forty-five minutes or so before the tide starts having its way with ya, so we don’t want you getting bored or anything, do we boy?  What d’ya say we make yer shirttails dance a bit more while we wait, huh?”  He had moved over to my side and gave my midsection a heavy stomp with his booted heel, then replaced it using his full weight on his toe, grinding it into me as if he was putting out a cigarette.

He walked away to his stash of implements hidden behind the lounge chair.  I lift and turn my head as much as possible. Straining, trying to see what this sadistic dude was going to fetch.  He picked up one of those steel maces used for working out.  I had a bunch of them of different weights in the barn that I used almost daily.  “Figured this, and that nice, deep innie of yours should become intimately acquainted, Dill.”  As the words were coming out of his face he held it about a foot above my navel and just kept it hovering there for several seconds.  Making me think about what he was about to do.  Then he let it drop.  It felt like I’d been punched by “The Hulk” himself.  “FAAAAAAWK dude!  You trying’ to kill me?”

“Naw, just toughen you up a little there Wimp-shit!”

He repeated this mace pounding several times, as if he was churning butter, and lifting the thing higher each time he let it drop.  I was already in major agony deep in my guts from the beating he’d given me while he had me hanging in the barn, so this was damned cruel treatment, and he knew it.  “Shit Dill, this makes those shirttails of yours flap real nice dude!  Gotta love that.  That’s what ya get for dressin’ down like this, Pick my boy.  Makes your gut look mighty inviting to a prick like me, boy!  Makes ya look like a REAL punishable kinda fella. If you ask me, you always look like yer askin’ for it buddy.  I’m just giving you what you know you want pal.  What ya know you NEED!  Gotta say, a sloppy hotdog like you always looks like the kinda dude that requires shit-ton of EXTRA punishment, Pickleboy!”

With that little pronouncement made he went back to the rucksack behind his chair and pulled out his next implement of torment.  I couldn’t see what he had in his hands till he was placing it dead centre in my navel.  It was one of those portable seats … basically a single aluminum extendable pole with a folding seat on it.

Once the end of the pole was placed in my bellybutton, Steve unfolded the seat and said, “Well now Pick my boy, THIS seems like as good a spot as any to watch the tide come in now doesn’t it?”  With that he plunked his 200 plus pound ass down on the seat … HARD!  It had the effect of ramming my navel right down to my spinal column, and my spine right down to the sand beneath my back.  He swivelled so the pole turned in my guts and put one booted foot on one side of me.  He lifted the other one and put the sole of it just above my lips.  “Lick it Fuckwad!  Clean every grain of sand off of it or I’ll make you eat the whole boot!”  I hesitated, and he lifted it and hit my right pec with the back edge of the heel!

“Fuuuuuck!  You goddamn mother-fuckin’ PRICK!”  I screamed at him, and meant it.

He lifted his boot again and nailed me in the same spot.  Reiterating the previous statement the heel of his boot had made.  I held back any reaction.  He did it again and I screamed in pain!  He grinned a demonic smile and then rammed the back edge of his boot heel down on my other pec.  “Havin’ fun yet, bro?  … I am! … NOW, clean it, boy!”  I obeyed, and was rewarded with a mouthful of sand from the bottom of his boot.

He sat on the damned portable seat, easing his weight and then ramming it down again full force, as if he was weighting and unweighting while skiing, centred on my “sweet spot” … up – – – down, up – – – down, up – – – down …  It was putting me in excruciating pain, but it was also having Steve-o’s desired effect.  My cock was ramrod stiff!  Pressing hard against the spikes of the metal sheath surrounding it.   Squeezing it, now that my cock was as erect as it could get.  He grinned his handsome, shit-eating grin down at my face.  “Man, what a great spot to watch the tide come in from.  Best seat in the house!”  He bounced on my guts some more, with the pole jamming my navel deeply through my innards with every jab.  I could feel organs moving out of the way every time he put his weight down on that torturous chair.

I felt a wave touch the top of my head, and thought, “Oh good, he’ll waterboard me and we can get this over with!”  Steve got up from his perch on my gut.  Lifted his “chair” out of my navel and stared down at me.  “Fuck bro, you make one sexy, boyishly charming, masculine-lookin’, sloppy fella!  I REALLY like this look on ya, dude!  Makes me really wanna fuckin’ TORTURE ya though dude!  Ya know, you were born for this look, right Dill?  I think we really hafta make sure this becomes a permanent look for you, Pick my boy!”

Around the farm I didn’t care how “sloppy” I looked.  Comfortable and practical was the name of the game and all I really cared about, but there were places I didn’t want to have to dress down like this … a nice restaurant, someone’s wedding or funeral, an upscale store, the theatre, an appointment at the bank, on a date, etc. There were times I wanted control of how I was dressed.  “Permanent look?”  WTF did Steve mean by “permanent?”  I had my pride, and I knew people would look at me like “white trash” if I was dressed down like this in certain inappropriate settings.  For the most part, I’m a pretty confident guy.  My own man!  But the thought of what he was saying made me realize I might have more of an inhibition about dressing-down like this in public, at times, than I might want to admit.  At any rate, I liked to be in control of how I looked, and didn’t want that pulled out from under me … and I sure as Hell didn’t want Steve in charge of how I looked in public.

My “former buddy” went over to the lawn chair he’d placed in the sand near me, and began to remove his boots.  He replaced them with another set of boots, but these ones were cleated I was soon to realize.

“You’re a tough guy, Dill.  Let’s just see what your guts can take, huh boy?”  With this he stood on my upper abs and starting trampling my guts.  He made sure to “work” my entire plate of armour.  My entire eight pack.  First he tromped on my abs two at a time, and then he used the ball of each foot to hone in on one ab at a time with those fiendish cleated soles.  Then he began to jump up and down on my guts, as if I was his own personal trampoline.  FUCK!  I wanted to kill him!  He gave my guts a short reprieve by trampling my pecs with these Hellish clod-hoppers, and then back to my abs again.  The shirt my “buddy” claimed he liked on me so much, was now in shreds, and most of the front of my torso was now bared, exposed and bloody.

He continued this process till the waves were beginning to wash over my face.  I felt my hair wafting back and forth, like seaweed in the tide, and had to make sure I kept my mouth shut, and didn’t breathe in any time a wave hit.  Mercifully, Steve stopped the tromping.

He returned with his portable chair and placed it carefully in my navel again.  Dropping his full weight in the seat and facing the waves with a foot on either side of my upper torso.  He smiled down at me, and for a split second I thought I saw the face of the alien who seemed to be in control of my inspection and torment on the ship that horrible night.  No, I must be imagining that.  It’s just the abuse I’m taking from this asshole of a buddy of mine that’s making my brain play tricks on me.  My mind doesn’t want me to believe my “friend” could do something this horrific to me, so it’s transporting me, kind of making hallucinatory excuses, so I don’t think it’s really Steve doing this to me.

I pass out briefly and come to again with Steve holding smelling salts under my nose.  “Uh-uh buddy boy!  Don’t go doin’ that on me now.  Don’t want ya to drown or anything do we?”  Again, that maniacal chuckle.

He moves up the bank, grabs the free end of the ratchet rope that’s attached to the spiked parachute on my balls, and gives it one Hell of a hard tug.  I scream, and he says, “There now boy, that oughta help keep you awake!”  The yank makes my guts ache even deeper than they already are, and the spikes feel as though an acupuncturist is using my nuts as pincushion for practice.

The seawater was now flowing over my face with nearly every wave.  I lift my head up as much as I can but my movement is limited by the thorough bondage.  There’s no escaping the incoming tide, and I learn to sync my breathing to the rhythm of the waves, though every now and then a wave will disobey the order of things and take me by surprise.

Steve sits back in his lounge chair just observing as I suffer for him.  It reaches the point where the incoming edge of the sea is climbing up the incline and sliding across the sand up beyond my feet.  I’m submerged for a good five seconds each time a wave comes in now, and I feel them cover not only my face but my entire torso.  I feel what’s left of my shirttails wafting up and down, exposing my bloodied abs as the surf washes in and out over me.

My head is now underwater more than it’s out and Steve allows me to splutter and cough for a good ten minutes before he comes to my aid.  I feel him approach and feel huge relief since I assume he’s going to release me.  “No-o-o-o!”  He simply goes into the water above my head, kneels in the incoming tide, and props my head up a bit on the incline created by the slant of his lap.  It has the effect of pushing my head and neck forward, and he pushes his kneecaps forward as far into my shoulder blades as he can.

He’s getting soaked but he’s also grinning maniacally down into my drowning face.  “Told ya you were gonna suffer for losing that challenge, now didn’t I Pick my boy?”

I manage a “Fuck YOU!” and get rewarded by Steve hammering my gut with the maul he’d used to ram the stakes into the sand five times, splashing us both since the water is now shallowly covering my belly.  “Guess you don’t want my help then, huh Jimbo?”  He pulls himself out from under the back of my head and lets it drop.  I’m immediately submerged again.

He moves around and plops himself down on my gut.  Dropping full-force from good foot above me, landing hard with his butt, and nearly knocking the wind out if me.  It makes me cough just as another wave covers my face.  I take in a lung-full of seawater and feel like I’m not going to make it out of this “pay-up” of Steve’s. My brain is instinctively fighting for survival but it’s only thought beyond that is, “the bastard’s gonna kill me!”  … Blackness!

The smell of ammonia and salt water pervades my sinuses.  He’s got his knees pushed up under the back of my head again as he continues to wave the container under my nostrils.  If he’s planning on letting me die here it seems like he’s going to do the deed slowly, making me suffer through every second of it in wakefulness.

I start to really panic.  I’d scream for help but I’m underwater from my head to my waist most of the time now.  There’s no way to beg Steve for mercy other than pleading to him with my eyes in the few seconds my face emerges from the waves.  I hear his taunting laugh, see his evil sneering mug, feel his knees behind my head, see an intense flare of light … then nothing.

Without warning I’m back on the alien ship.  I’m splayed-out as I had been in the sand, with something supporting my head and the back of my neck.  There’s some sort of mask over my face, and a briny fluid surging, then retreating, surging, then retreating … filling the mask and emptying it again.  I’m choking, coughing and sputtering.  Gasping for breath in the fleeting second before the mask is filled again.

I’m aware there are creatures looking down at me on the table they’ve got me spread out upon.  Studying me.  One of them is looking down at me from the top of my head, just as Steve had been doing before I passed out.  The sneering face reminding me of his just before I lost consciousness.

As I stared up through the mask and the engulfing fluid I saw the alien’s face transform to Steve’s likeness for a good ten seconds.  I wondered if I had died.  If maybe Steve had drowned me on the beach and the synapsis in my brain were shooting off in all directions, like out-of-control fireworks, and creating this illusionary, surreal world I was now experiencing.  Maybe I was in the process of dying and this is what it was like.

Within my brain I “felt” the creatures assuring me I was very much alive.  Damn “bugs” had read my mind again.  I’d forgotten they read my every thought. They were telling me that during the “milking” process they had found me to be an “extra robust” specimen and had decided to use me for further testing.  They were checking for endurance and survival instincts of the male Earthling species when they happened upon this particularly interesting example.  They scared the Hell out of me with, “YOU are an excellent physical sample and will undergo our full testing procedures.  You must be studied.  We’re hoping you will prove worthy of cloning.”

“Our clones are genetically modified, tweaked to produce even more ejaculate than the already rather impressive amount we’ve already collected from you, Pickle,” the aliens told me telepathically.  “We must say, you’ve more than lived up to our expectations in that department.  This ‘Jim Dill unit’ has been producing a rather substantial amount of ‘pickle juice.’  We’re extremely pleased with your performance, so far, but we’re certain you can be enhanced further, and persuaded to do much better with a little ‘“coaxing.’  We have techniques designed to achieve that goal from our ‘life extenders.’  After all we intend to keep OUR species surviving for a very long time.”

Somehow, none of this information served to put me at ease.  My mind was racing, knowing I was trapped and at the mercy of these elongated “insects.”  All I could think about was how aphids are farmed by ants for a secretion they create, called “honeydew.”  The comparison of being milked for the benefit of these aliens was slapping me in the face, and the thought terrified me.  How long would they keep me here, this time?

I was then hit with a new, highly pressurized gush of whatever the solution was that was being flushed into my mask and down my throat.  The alien whose face kept cross-fading in and out with Steve’s held one boney “paw” on the top of my head and another on my chest, and I completely relaxed.

To be continued …