Soames watched casually from behind the counter as Pangborn Mislaburski wandered through the aisles, looking unhappy.
What could Pang want?
Pang had been the "punk" of a series of muscular young men, supporting them royally as comptroller of a chain of coin laundries across the state.
Soames was unsure how Pang did it, but he'd pick up a young man here or there, usually the sort that hung around in the parking lot of Buttermilk Falls's Tool Emporium and Lumber.
Pang would look querulously from his Beemer at the few non-illegal aliens in the group hoping someone would take them and give them day labor in some housewife's garden or cleaning the attic.
Then he'd take one home, and train the hulking idjit to be a Master.
Soon enough Moose or Bubba would be getting stoned and watching "Sportscenter" all day until Pang got home from work; and then it would start--
"You're late, you pissy-bitch...get my razor strop! Get your clothes off"
And Pang would strip and bend over a hassock, and take his whipping, fellate the young man, and go around cleaning the house, with Moose following him, lashing now and then.
Inadvertently, Pang would give the fellow a key to Pang's chastity belt, and that might go well, the rare if supervised masturbation thingie.
But now and then, the young man would disappear; and Pang would have to come back to the Gift Shop an have Soames make him a new key.
Soames wondered now, if there was a death of young men at the lumberyard.
Pangborne sure looked distressed.
Pang finally asked Soames if Cope was available.F.X. Copeland was the handyman and the inventive genius of various penile tortures in the Gift Shop; and Soames motioned to where Cope's workshop was.
Pang must be planning something terrible for himself.
Over near the electrical toys, Rusty and Maxine Gavineaux, old and trusty customers, were browsing heavily.
Rusty looked nervous; his wife was quite experimental when it came to testicles and shocks...
Babs Bonsaint-Sainsbury, now married to rich Slave master, wandered past the register, waving over at the Gavineauxes. Babs, before her operation had been a young thug called Vulture, but seemed happier as a sissy-gurl now, and of course old Sainsbury was fairly well off...
You could tell, though that Babs had some hetero male left in her from the way she gazed at Maxie's full buttocks...
Maxie seemed to have set off the interest of the entire store.
Usborne DeWeese, the peculiar stock clerk who had worked at the Gift Shop for years, stared at Maxine and giggled...
Soames watched Uz playing pocket-pool with one gnarled, arthritic hand, while holding the mop with the other.
Soames knew he should reprimand Usborne, but things didn't work the way they did in other stories.
Maxie noticed Uz's onanism and just winked at him. It was that kind of store.
Soames remembered when he first entered the Dungeonopolis Gift Shop, years ago, with one of his first submissives...
And saw Usborne at the register, dirty hair, yellowed teeth...a glass eye that he would abstractedly take out of his socket and suck on...
Irvina, Soames's subbie girlfriend had laughed casually. "Usborne's peed in my mouth, he's old school."
"Really?"