Balfor and Terry 11

The vampires had pinned an advertisement for a new art gallery/nightclub right on top of a photo of a smiling and laughing Dino and Carmen on the notice board moments before Gerald and Anselmo had entered the cafe. Dino and Carmen were regulars at the N.P.V.E.S. Cafe and "Toledo" the owner (Who was from Bucharest) could have answered any of Anselmo and Gerald's questions about them. He even knew they had gone to Bali but he didn't tell, since no one was asking.

Gerald and Anselmo'd had the devil of a time hunting down Dino and Carmen's apartment, and to discover that they had flown the coop was a serious disappointment.

They had tried to get passenger lists for the recent flights from the airport but the bureaucratic connections which had allowed them to snoop their way to the apartment didn't look like stretching that far.

They had spoken with Dino and Carmen's neighbors and from the description of Dino that they had been given, Anselmo was beginning to hope that his son might still be alive.

Athos Hermes' isp had been very forthcoming. They had showed Anselmo his web site full of very revealing pictures, but Dino always wore a bejeweled blue and silver mask in these photos, so Anselmo was still not sure that he had found his son.

If the creature in the photos who had seen the missing person's web site was Dino, however, at least he knew that his father was looking for him.

Gerald and Anselmo were sure however, that they had found one of Friedrich and Balfor's surviving creations; why else would a person so reduced in their number of appendages be initiating searches on the web for those particular men? They wanted very much to talk to him and hopefully get his agreement to testify against Friedrichs and Cooper when the time came to drag them before the courts. After they had taken out some of their own frustrations on them hopefully first of course.

Anselmo wanted to leave. He didn't like the look of this place. A weird hatchet faced woman clad entirely in leather had just come in and gone up some rickety stairs above the vampire's heads. What was this place - some kind of brothel? He wished the three identical siamese cats on the stair would stop staring at him through the rungs of the banister.

Gerald's mobile phone rang. It was the chief of Police in Colon. Apparently a mute girl had been discovered by her mother with a skull that she kept under her bed, the dental records of which proved the skull to be that of Manuel Friedrichs. Her father had spoken of a couple of local farmers who had helped a man of Balfor Cooper's description make a stretcher to remove Friedrichs from the scene of a crash in the hill country nearby.

Gerald knew that Friedrichs was the one responsible for cutting up the prisoners at Calle Rosario. He had tracked down the man's woeful medical history in Brazil. He did not know whether to laugh or cry at the news. On one hand, he rejoiced that his son's chief torturer was dead, but on the other it vexed him that he was now beyond justice.

Gerald Macarthur had realized some time ago that his main reason for the quest was not to bring these men in but simply to get some sort of revenge. The possibility of this had now been removed in Friedrich's case; but there was still Cooper. He had confirmation now that there had been a crash and that Balfor Cooper had survived it.

He would concentrate his rage on this other man now. This Australian accomplice. He would make this man beg for death.

"We have to go back to Panama," he said to Anselmo. " They found the skull of Manuel Friedrichs. Apparently it came from Cooper's Landrover in a ravine off the road to Mandinga."

"Damn " cursed Anselmo "I wanted to kill him myself." Look at me he thought, just a foolish old buzzard talking tough. Who the hell do I think I am - Jacky Cooper?

"Me too, but at least it looks like the other one is still alive."

"Yes, lets get out of here and go see the car wreck."

They paid and left. On the way out Gerald tripped on a potted fuschia from Dino and Carmen's balcony. Its last flower fell off. The poor thing was already leggy and leaf deprived, suffering from the perpetual deep gloom of the arcade.

As he walked up the Avenida towards their hotel, the throbbing in his foot from where he twisted it made him wonder how much worse must the agonies have been that his son suffered at the hands of Cooper and Friedrichs.

Jeremy lay on the floor of his cell. Miraculously after drinking some of his Balfor-tainted water, he had managed to go to sleep.

Police lore claims that the guilt of a prisoner can be judged by whether he sleeps or not. If he sleeps he's guilty, knowing that his imprisonment is a fair cop. But if he jitters around all night like a lunatic, there's a possibility he's innocent, and his outrage and indignity is keeping him awake. Too many criminals know about this trick nowadays though, for it to be anything like an effective barometer.

Jeremy had slept the deep sleep of the guilty and condemned. He was happy at least the concrete was cool, and that Melanie and his baby were far away in Cancun where they were probably safe.

He had been awake for a couple of hours by the time Balfor arrived.

Balfor hosed him down to get rid of his own piss smell, gruffly turning him over with his boot to do the other side.

"You were going to get married were you?" asked Balfor.

"What makes you say that?" Asked Jeremy warily, fearing for Melanie and his baby.

Balfor showed him the engagement ring that he had bought for Melanie at the Jewelry store the day before. It looked so tiny and delicate in his big formidable hand. "Don't worry, we're not going to hurt her or anything. We can tell that you're the stupid one and that all the debt and foolishness is yours to pay for.

"That's true." Jeremy sighed, hoping his contrition might win him some leniency.

"You know, a lot of children go hungry around here when an arse hole like you gets away with the kind of stunt you tried to pull, and by hunger, I mean the risk of death."

"I didn't know that."

"Well, ignorance is no defense under the law, and around here- I'm the law. As I said yesterday, I'm gonna hang you by the balls for a little while. Probably this afternoon at about two. Until then, you're going to be sitting on them."

Jeremy gulped at the perfectly nonchalant way in which Balfor had just strung those words together.

He untied Jeremy and for a second Jeremy considered fighting him. His own body was about half the weight of the big bear in denim and leathers and he by comparison was stark naked, very shy from it, and stiff from a night trussed up on the floor. There was no possibility of getting the better of him, and the big bastard knew it.

Balfor frog marched him to a larger underground concrete lined chamber with lots of things attached to the ceiling and the walls. There was an odd smell about the room, sort of a cross between a locker room and an abattoir. There was a strongly constructed wooden chair in the center of the room with shackles and chains attached to it at various points.

"What's your name again?" Asked Balfor.

"Jeremy."

"I'm Balfor. O.K. Jeremy, sit in this chair."

Jeremy looked at the chair, Balfor's big hand resting on it's back, steadying it for him. Balfor smiled benignly. Jeremy's face became a fallen ruin of misery as slowly he moved toward the chair. With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he sat his naked bottom down on it.

Balfor shackled his ankles to the legs of the chair, and tied his knees apart to give him good access to the young man's gonads. He didn't bother to tie his arms first, knowing he had given up hope of struggling already.

He pulled the his arms behind the chair and shackled them together in place.

Jeremy whimpered as Balfor reached between his legs and started fondling his balls gently. They were still a bit tender from the previous evening's mild kicking, but he was surprised that they didn't hurt as much as he had expected.

Balfor started tugging them out slightly and then secured a cord around them.

Before Jeremy knew what to expect Balfor had tipped him forward chair and all. Then he felt his balls pulled tightly backward between the gap between his arse and the seat of the chair.

When Balfor had tied the balls back to about the right distance for a good sitting on, securing the ends of the cord to a rung between the back legs of the chair, he said "Ready?"

Jeremy breathed in.

Holding Jeremy's cock back against his arse crack from behind in the palm of his hand, Balfor slowly tipped the chair and Jeremy back into an upright position until Jeremy was sitting almost his full weight on his own cock and balls. Balfor wiped his hand backwards and out from under him as the chair rocked completely upright.

"Oh my God please Mr no! Please let me up! Oh fuck! Oh fuck! Oh fuck!"... "Oh fuck!"

His face had gone red and he was already gasping and sweating profusely.

"Oh please let me loose it hurts O.K! Oh God it hurts!" Jeremy begged. "Please Mr!"

Jeremy tried to take as much weight off his agonized balls as he could, scissoring his thighs together as far as the bonds would allow and pushing them downward, and arching his back over the back of the chair, and this worked, but he knew he would not be able to keep it up for long. With every shift of his weight his trapped balls rolled under his bulk, increasing the pain.

He was sitting on his cock too, which had been pulled back between his legs and was now beginning to harden in that position jammed awkwardly backwards into his arse crack next to his balls. No amount of wriggling would set it free either, the chair's waxed wooden surface combined with the sweat and secretions of all the other naked arses that had sat on it, had given it the perfect surface for maximum frictional holding power against the more rubbery kinds of human skin.

"I'll see you at two." Said Balfor and made to leave.

"No! Please Mr no! Please! Ah Come back! Aah no! - Please don't leave me like this!" Jeremy cried, tears streaming down his face. "Oh fuck! Oh fuck! Oh fuck!"

"Sorry- people to see, things to do!"

Jeremy heard a heavy door slam somewhere behind him.

Balfor returned at quarter to two.

Jeremy had been sitting on his own cock and balls for three and a half hours. His face was ashen and twitching slightly, eyes staring into space. A ribbon of dribble was running down his chin and his breath came in shallow concentrated bursts.

He was clearly concentrating very hard not to breathe too much or move.

Balfor cut the cord and picked Jeremy up out of the chair slightly so that his genitals bounced forward from under him to their natural position.

Jeremy cried out with the pain of his balls snapping back. But soon his relief was palpable. His endorphins had kicked in.

Balfor untied the cord around the balls, massaged them for a moment and then retied them to the chair's front rung so they were stretched out forward this time between his thighs.

Fluid was oozing from Jeremy's piss slit. A pool of semen had gathered under his bum, but he had not had anything like an orgasm.

Balfor took off his shoes and socks. Inspired by Diegos' trick he stuffed one of his socks in Jeremy's mouth and then put one of his feet relatively gently on the young man's cock and balls and rolled them around while squeezing his nipples. Though Jeremy was extremely apprehensive about what he knew was coming next somehow his cock was behaving with a mind of its own. It became hard as a rock and soon shot a load of almost transparent cum, most of his spermatozoons having been expelled from their vesicles already.

As Jeremy came, Balfor stood on the chair between his legs steadying himself with a hand on Jeremy's head, and applied more seriously squishy weight with his foot until the screaming started sounding hoarse through the sock.

Balfor was angry that Jeremy had come. He had just wanted him hard so as to have an erect cock to stand on rather than a soft one.

"It's almost two." Said Balfor feeling the rapid post orgasmic detumescence of Jeremy's cock under his foot.

Balfor untied and unshackled him and pushed him sideways out of the chair with one arm.

"Take the sock out of your mouth and lick that up." said Balfor, nodding toward the gluey seat of the chair.

Jeremy thought he might have a chance if he could crack the chair over Balfor's head. Balfor obviously had thought of this though, because he had both hands on it's back holding in place. "Lick! We haven't got all day! - Oh no wait - actually we have." He laughed.

Jeremy gagged with the disgust of licking up the sperm from the sweaty seat of the chair where the weight of his own body had squeezed it out like toothpaste from a tube. He could smell the combined musk of countless other men's arses as he licked up his own secretions.

Balfor put his foot on the chair, the one he'd rubbed and squashed his cock into orgasm with. "You know what to do." He said.

Balking at the manly scent of Balfor's sweaty foot, Jeremy forced his tongue to obey his will, and licked the foot clean of some drops of the pathetic watery cum that had somehow gotten onto it.

"You might as well do between the toes while you're there."

Jeremy did, and then the other foot as well.

"Very good" Said Balfor patting him on the head like a dog. "Now present balls."

"What?" Asked Jeremy in disbelief.

Balfor clouted him hard across the head. "I said present balls! Hold them out for me!"

"Mr I can't." He was crying. His dignity would not permit him to collude to that extent. "Please don't torture me any more. I'll give you anything I can. Please don't hang me up by the balls."

"Present balls." Said Balfor. "I said I was going to hang you up by them. You won't make me go back on my word. Now lets get this over and done with. You know I can make it worse."

The man was obviously completely intractable.

With chattering teeth, Jeremy took hold of his balls and made a fist of them in his right hand, and held them forward, thrusting his hips slowly forward also, staring desperately into Balfor's implacable eyes.

Balfor took them from him, held them roughly, pulled on them, continuing to hold Jeremy's gaze.

"Very good." he said.

He looped a rope the balls and tightened it very securely, adding another knot on top of the first.

Jeremy saw that the rope was threaded through a pulley in the ceiling. He whimpered in spite of his determination to be brave.

"You can try and hold onto the rope if you like, but it won't do you much good for keeping the weight off, except to keep you upright. Apparently it's less painful if you can manage to stay as upright as possible, judging from the quality of the screaming during all the other times I've done this" said Balfor matter of factly.

He moved the chair over to the wall next to a large wheel that looked like it had come from the bridge of an old ship.

"This wheel is so I can hoist you up nice and easy and slow," said Balfor threading the rope through another pulley and then drawing in around the spoke of the wheel. "Us torturers like to take our time, and we don't like to exert ourselves unduly."

He began very slowly to turn the wheel.

"Go over to that basin and clean your teeth, then gargle with the mouthwash. Have a drink of water while you're there. There's a fresh brush for you."

Jeremy went to the limits of the rope's slack and gladly did what he was told. In spite of what was coming, it felt good to get the taste of two men's sweaty socks out of his mouth, and stale cum, piss tainted water; not to mention an arshole stinking chair. He considered trying to quickly undo the knot but obviously Balfor would just get angry and tie it on again. He just had time to spit the mouthwash into the basin before he found himself dragged toward the spot directly under the pulley as the slack was taken up with tortuous slowness. He began to feel very disappointed with himself that he had let it get this far without any fighting at all.

"One of your parents is some kind of strict authority figure isn't that right?" Asked Balfor.

"My father is a Police Lieutenant."

"Yeah I thought it was something like that, he never really let you learn how to stand up for yourself did he? Not only that, you never really had to learn how to fight did you - your daddy being a police man and all. No school yard bullying for you! Still fighting me wouldn't have made any difference, just would have got you more banged up. Isn't that right? I am a lot bigger than you. You can call me sir if you like."

"Yes sir."

"I see your daddy trained you real well."

"Yes sir."

Soon Jeremy was standing on tip toe. He grasped the tightening rope in front of him with both hands. A part of him still could not believe this was happening. It was like he was somewhere else, watching this on television, surprised when he could actually feel the results of the action.

Balfor clamped the wheel into place at the point where Jeremy was gasping and really straining onto the limit of his toes to keep the weight off his balls. He lit a cigar. "I like this bit the best." he said.

He walked over to Jeremy. "Kiss me." he said.

So that was why the mouthwash.

Jeremy had never kissed a man before and could not imagine ever doing so. He was straight for fuck's sake! This was just going too far. There was no way.

Balfor's face moved in, cigar smoke trailing out of his nostrils. His tongue came out and touched Jeremy's lips. "You'd really better kiss me you know." Said Balfor smiling charmingly. Balfor's rakish smile reminded Jeremy of Clark Gable in "Gone With the Wind," though he couldn't think of that actor's name right now, or the name of the movie either, or anything at all except was happening right now.

Legs beginning to cramp from the effort of straightening them so arduously, the rope making soft cracking noises as it adjusted to the tension, Jeremy learned the taste of Balfor's mouth. It was a totally weird and disgusting new sensation for him to have a man's beard brushing his face. Their lips opened and moved together. Balfor's tongue buried itself down in the folds of his mouth. It was a proper kiss, and Jeremy was appalled with himself to find it arousing, it reminded him of kissing Melanie, but it seemed to come from the other side somehow. Jeremy realized it was because Balfor made him feel like the girl.

The kiss went on for what seemed a very long time for Jeremy.

"Mm nice," said Balfor hugging him tightly. "You're a sweet boy, and don't feel bad about that erection, you're still probably straight."

Balfor was pleased with the kiss and disappointed at the same time. He had conquered Jeremy's pride invading his mouth, but it was at a this stage that he liked to apply his cigar to their bellies, making them bounce as they dangled on their own balls to punish them for not kissing him properly.

He liked to continue this until they did finally kiss him properly. Jeremy's quick pliability had deprived him of a considerable quantity of fun.

Gay rights had desensitized people and made some even obviously straight men far too ready to accept the idea of two men kissing. It was a very disappointing development.

He returned to his chair and continued to tighten the rope.

"My father is going to come looking for me, then you'll know it." Said Jeremy, trying to recover some shred of his dignity.

"Men like your father disown their children when they're stupid enough to get caught breaking the law. You weren't down here collecting butterflies were you. He's probably not as dumb as you think he is; and unless you want to get slapped around you will address me as sir. "

"He'll forgive me. He's a Christian, sir."

"He'll forgive you but he won't forgive me? What is he, half a Christian?"

Jeremy's balls were two shining dark purple marbly orbs straining upwards past his navel. They were bearing fifty percent of his body mass now.

Jeremy knew Balfor would not tolerate him winding the rope around his arm so he didn't try it.

Once again Balfor clamped the wheel.

He walked over to the half hung Jeremy and touched his balls lightly with his fingers, feeling the silky scrotum stretched drum tight over it's precious contents.

"Please?" Pleaded Jeremy between gritted teeth. "Sir?"

"Here we go." Said Balfor, returning to the wheel.

Jeremy did not scream as he lifted off, instead his face clamped tight into a rictus of hard concentration. Eyes tightly shut, refusing to acknowledge the scene. He held his breath and for dear life clung onto the rope, gasping and shocked to feel almost his full weight on his balls as the floor retreated from under him.

The pain in his crotch was unimaginable. He had thought it had been bad to sit on his own balls for three hours or so. That had been nothing he now knew. Nothing at all.

It was like his balls were being ripped slowly out of him, on fire at he same time. the Chinese burn feeling of the stretching scrotum was almost as bad as the deep raw, drawing pain of his cords straining against wherever it was they connected inside him.

He cried out, his thighs closing together, feet apart as if he was wearing a hobble skirt. His toes splayed out in the air underneath him.

He tried to pull himself up the rope.

It appalled him how quickly his arms became too tired, his hands refusing to clamp tightly enough to bear his weight, all of which was now on his balls.

He opened his eyes, and was shocked to see how far out his balls were stretched. His cock which had become half hard, had disappeared inside a little pocket as the scrotum pulled out over it. Still he tried unsuccessfully to climb the rope.

His mind warping agony continued to wax like something apocalyptically horrible crawling up out of the earth.

Suddenly he lost control of his whole pelvic area and was horrified as he pissed and shat himself. It was like someone else was doing it for him. He heard the sound of his own soft crap slopping onto the floor underneath him as piss welled up out of the hole in his scrotum.

Although he didn't know it he had stopped breathing with the shock. He thought it was pain that made him feel faint but actually it was lack of oxygen. Everything began to swim before his eyes. He felt his grasp on the rope slackening. The ceiling spinning. Balfor upside down.

Blackness descended as his consciousness winked out.

Balfor clamped the wheel into place and watched the slack form of Jeremy Macarthur swing slightly from the rope. He was hanging upside down now, his bent legs spread, thighs arcing gracefully in line with his abdomen. His arms dangled slackly below his head.

He grabbed a hose and washed the shit out Jeremy's inverted arse crack, sluicing it all far down into a drain in the center of floor with a couple of bucketsful of water.

The kid had strong cords. More than once he had seen a man slip down suddenly accompanied by a pair of snapping sounds in rapid fire succession as his cords broke free of their moorings. The scrotum would stretch to tremendous lengths at this point, but rarely tear off unless the victim was grossly overweight.

Jeremy, unconscious, light and muscular, was still suspended from his cords.

What a beautiful sight, thought Balfor.

He left him there and went to get a beer.

He was still out to it when he returned. Balfor cracked open his beer and started drinking, waiting for Jeremy to come to.

The quick gaspy sound of his breathing indicated that he had regained consciousness, but his absolute stillness meant he was clever enough not to struggle or even try and move. He was smart enough by now not to bother with begging for leniency either.

The pain blossomed out in Jeremy's crotch again as his consciousness returned to it's full luminosity. He wished he could just faint again. Or even die. Any kind of oblivion was preferable right now.

The urgency of the burgeoning agony made it necessary for him to try and motivate himself to swing up and grab the rope again.

He knew that this would lead to a very bad increase in pain followed by maybe slightly less pain, if what Balfor had said was correct.

Soon he realized he had to try it though because the position he was in now was rapidly becoming intolerable. He seriously expected his balls to pull right off at any moment.

He straightened out his legs and swung them down and his arms up, glad to have been good at school gymnastics.

He gasped with the horror of the renewed pulses of pain from his whole tortured reproductive system. every tube in there, every valve and pulpy structure that made him a man was singing with blinding agony as it pulled out of him by the roots.

He failed, but used the momentum to swing up again and this time he managed to grasp the rope with two of his fingers. It was enough. He roared with renewed screaming and new spasms of fire as he dragged himself back into an upright position.

Balfor had been right. It was considerably less painful upright with the balls pulling up toward his belly. In the midst of his torment, he found himself wondering abstractly why that was.

His buns were cramping. He had barely noticed that pain, buried as it was amongst the rest. His toes splayed out by themselves in the air, curling and uncurling. His whole body was taut like a wire.

Balfor sat in the chair by the wheel smoking the remainder of his cigar. There was a huge bulge of appreciation and excitement in his pants.

There was a long, moment of silence as Jeremy wondered when he would be let down again.

Balfor stripped and walked over to Jeremy to judge the height of his arse above the floor.

He was hanging a little high, so Balfor let the rope a bit.

"Oh no!" Screamed Jeremy knowing what this meant as Balfor approached him again, smoothing oil onto his rampant erection which preceded him like the figure head of a sailing ship.

Balfor took Jeremy's ankles and parted them, stepping in between his thighs. He put the ankles on his shoulders.

Jeremy still held tight to the rope, his body jackknifed. He had hoped to take some weight on Balfor's shoulders, but it wasn't working like that, because he was slumped in an awkward position.

He felt Balfor's big arms around him and the glorious blissful feeling of the weight leaving his balls as Balfor picked him up and then lowered him onto his big iron hard cock.

Jeremy felt his tight cramped sphincter open over the bulbous head of Balfor's cock as it invaded him. It seemed a curious unfamiliar feeling, like a very big shit going the wrong way.

Balfor set in fucking Jeremy very slowly and languidly and Jeremy was glad of it because he knew when he was finished he'd be left hanging by the balls again.

He felt Balfor deep inside him, and knew that this pain alone would cause him to scream if his pelvic area had not already been overloaded with agony.

More and more rapidly Balfor pile drove his arse, holding him tighter and then he groaned with pleasure driving his cock right in and crushing Jeremy's already agonized balls against his belly.

Jeremy felt one of the discs in his back pop as Balfor crushed him with his intensifying embrace. He screamed at the limit of his lungs.

Balfor let him go. He couldn't hold on to the rope. He slipped and the disc popped back again as he hung upside down by his balls once more, still impaled on Balfor's rod. His heart thumped like a suffocating animal in his chest. Was he having an attack? He felt he would surely die of this pain, and knew that it was possible to do so.

Everything went black again.

Balfor continued to fuck the unconscious upside down Jeremy until he came, then sated, pulled out, and wandered back to the chair in a pleasant daze.

He unclamped the wheel and as it spun out of control, Jeremy descended like a spider on the end of a silk strand.

"You tenderized this pair very thoroughly," said Freddy rudely with his mouth full the next evening at dinner. Jeremy had been installed in the hospital straight after his nut hang, and Freddy had removed his balls immediately upon returning from Rio because they looked like they might die anyway.

"Isn't it unkosher to eat one man's balls with someone else's casseroled bicep?"

"Not as a side dish."

"How was Rio?"

"They still haven't launched the big Jesus."

Gwyn Lloyd was short of breath but at least his pain had abated.

He rested amongst the ivy and moss covered roots of an oak for a moment and then continued his solitary walk through the tussock and bracken of Cwm Gwynant, the valley of the white stream, to the boulder strewn summit of Dinas Emrys. It was a clear day, and he hoped very much to get a good view of the craggy slopes leading up to Yr Wyddfa, his beloved sacred mountain. If there were Gods worth worshipping, that was where the head of them lived as far as he was concerned.

He was doing his last grand tour of Cymru, his beloved Gwlad Hen, his old land. The country of his fathers, which the speakers of the thin language insist upon calling Wales.

He took great pride in the family legend that his lineage traced all the way back to Pwyll the Prince of Dyfed, who had earned the friendship of Arawn, king of Annwn, the underworld, and received from him gifts of horses and hawks and the special white hounds with the red ears.

Like quite a few of his fellow Cymry, he regarded the Neolithic chamber tomb of Pentre Ifan as the head office of his family plot. He had thought this, standing and staring at the Christian graves of his first wife Rachel and their son Dai in the hard barren soil of Pisgah near Cwm Crogau. Rachel's parents had insisted upon the stone crucifixes, which had now become covered with lichen and moss. The locals had thought Rachel a witch, and not without reason. He had left a fat bunch of flowers for his lost family in a jar of water- cornflowers they were, Rachel's favorite.

Over the previous three weeks he'd stayed in countless tiny pubs, ridden in countless little buses swarming like a solitary ant over the rolling hills of home. He'd seen the Black Book of Carmarthen, and the White Book of Rhydderch. The Laws of Hywell Dda. He'd meditated in the close dark, sitting inside the Bryn Celli Ddu on the isle of Mon, trekked through the gloomy rhododendron infested forests of the Mynydd Ddu, fished along all four banks of the Afon Dyfrdwy in the Vale of Llangollen...

Not for him the Roman forts. Not for him the Norman castles. They were too new. Their significance was paltry. Better to ignore them as far as he was concerned, and concentrate on what mattered, the real Pre-Christian heritage, from before Britain became the world's whore, ravished by the Romans and the Normans and the Saxons and the Vikings and anybody else who came along in a boat with a new idea and a new language and a new religion and a bunch of new laws to thumb the people under with.

But he had banged his head against that wall all his life and now he had no time for frustrations any more, so he'd laughed to find himself dancing naked to wind and bird and insect generated music that only he could hear crackling and tinkling around the stones of Penhros-Feilw at midnight. Freezing his balls off, and tripping on acid and drunk on the local foamy brew. A mad old man with silver hair and a flying white beard, crazy and gyrating under the moon and star filled swirling darkness.

The excitement had given him his first hard on in weeks and he had come, rolling in the grass, tripping out of his head and thrusting his long thin cock into the grass and along the soft earth itself. (Until he had switched to manual, worrying about broken glass and spiders and itchiness in general.)

As he fucked his hand, rolling on the grass and the soil the whole universe became Rachel to envelope him. Her bright happy eyes. Smooth creamy skin. The warm yielding female fug of her, bearing him along in a flood of love, just as she had when they were young and stealing each other's company. For the first time in fifty years she did not magically retreat from him like a horse borne Rhiannon. His heart burst with the joy of not feeling alone after so long. It was all Rachel around him and had been all along, if only he'd had the eyes to see it and the heart to feel it. He cried out into the dark to her. Beautiful Rachel forever young who had drunk herself into a stupor and gassed herself in the oven, unable to deal with the death of their son, hit by a car so long ago and as painful now as it had ever been. To think that his memory of them had lived so fresh all this time, as the lichen spread millimeter by millimeter to cover the stones of their graves.

What was it all but a bunch of atoms, he thought, atoms which arrange themselves in finite patterns. With an infinite time to work with, like monkeys typing Shakespeare they will make his Rachel again somewhere, sometime on some other infinitely distant world identical in every way with this one... And he will be there too, and little Dai only this time he will see the car bearing down on him in time to get out of the way. It will all come back together again but as it should be, better, proper. Eternal.

But it won't be him really. It won't be his Rachel, nor his Dai. Not possible. Not really.

Gwyn had long suspected the world to be a kind of hell, but that did not mean he thought there might be a heaven waiting for him if he was good.

We are already wraiths, he thought; shadows. Less than memory. All of us. Lost.

Snap out of it.

He'd found another woman to marry, a well bred English woman. Other children had come, but it was always Rachel who he had fucked in his mind, calling out her name one too many times while coming inside his second wife Nerida, and so he had been ejected from the marriage, and had drifted away to sea to be alone with his memories.

He'd visited with the few remaining of his old friends in Gwynedd, drinking with them and sharing stories in Welsh about his bold exploits on the edge of the law in the Far East as the captain of the "Brenhines Blaidd" His beloved wolf queen of the sea. He had named the ship after Rachel really. Always a little mad, she had once bitten him hard on the neck and the ear during one of their grassy outdoor romps and then shouted and howled out as she came "I am the Wolf Queen! Aoooooohhhhh" The light in her vehement flashing eyes, her black hair stripling in the wind as she stood over him triumphantly smiling gleefully. It had been deeply shocking to see his own blood on her chin; on her teeth, the shocking twisted - was it dragon shaped? - splash of red, set vampire like against her alabaster skin and white enamel as she sat back down hard in the viridian grass next to him; but he loved her anyway, possibly more so because she was unpredictable and exiting, though he doubted he would have tolerated behavior like it from any other woman.

He was pretty sure that was the particular fuck that conceived little Dai. Would his son have grown up to be as mad as his mother? Perhaps it was best not to find out. So much blood there was on his shirt to see later.

He had not mentioned the cancer to his friends. Better for them to think of him as fading away to a distant shore. He did not want to go into detail about how his doctor had discovered the cancer, feeling among his ribs, which still pained him though they ought to have mended by then from the beating they took in a park in Fairfield in the Western Suburbs of Sydney. A beating which had left him in a coma for three weeks. Damn kid punks. Jackals. And low rent! All that fuss for seventy five measly Australian dollars. If there had been any less than five of them he'd have been able to fight them off even at seventy five.

He'd had a good prosperous life. The kind that leaves a man tired of living. Now that he could feel death eating him from the inside he had no real regrets. It was with a detached, absent sort of weak melancholy that he knew this was the last time he would see the old friends, and visit his special places.

In a week he would fly to Indonesia, to die at the house of his son Oliver in Bali.